Dogmatic Lessons of Father John Romanides (3 of 7)

...continued from part two.

Summary of "An Outline of Orthodox Patristic Dogmatics" by Fr. John Romanides

By Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos and Agiou Vlasiou

The examination of dogmatic issues is divided into four chapters for easier understanding, namely 1) God and the World, 2) the Holy Trinity, 3) Christology, 4) the Church.

1. The Relationship Between God and the World

When one understands the relationship between God and the world, according to the teachings of the Prophets, Apostles and Saints, then one can approach the Triadological and Christological dogma.

The Fathers of the Church do not accept the Platonic view, according to which the world is a copy of archetypal ideas, but they teach that the world is a creation of God. According to the Fathers of the Church, in order to understand the relationship between God and the world, man must have three teachings in mind.

The first teaching is that there is a difference between that which is created and that which is uncreated. The created refers to creations, while the uncreated refers to God. This difference is also emphasized by the heretics, such as Arius. Man cannot know God with his created mind, as the idolaters believed.

The second teaching is the distinction between the essence and energy of God, which distinction is not philosophical, but revelatory and is observed in the entirety of Holy Scripture and the patristic tradition. The Prophets and the Apostles knew about God through His energies and not His essence. And the heretics in the East talked about the difference between essence and energy in God, but in the Franco-Latin theology of the West this distinction does not exist, since the essence is identified with the energy of God and it is said that God is purely energy (actus purus).

The distinction between essence and energy in God helps us to understand the creation of the world from nothing, from non-existent matter. God creates with His energy whatever He wants, whenever He wants, without affecting His essence, without the Aristotelian principle of perfection applying to God. In other words, God did not create the world so that He could be perfected.

God's energies are uncreated, they are His natural and eternal powers, and with them He comes into communion with His creations and with man. While in the West the principle of "I believe in order to understand" applies, i.e. first one believes and after baptism one will understand and come to the knowledge of the essence of God, in the patristic tradition the catechumen receives the betrothal of the Spirit through baptism, and marriage follows by partaking in the uncreated Grace of God. Thus, man becomes God's friend by Grace and energy.

The third teaching is that the world we see is unique and not a copy of another world. God has no ideas and shapes in His mind, but He created the world by energy and by will. Man comes from nothing, according to the will of God, and goes through stages of perfection. He was created as an infant or potentially perfect by God with the ability to grow and be perfected.

The world is divided into the material as well as the spiritual, which are the Angels, who are not immortal by nature, but according to the will of God. By immortality, we mean theosis.

Thus, the world was created by God's uncreated energy and not by His essence, and God's relations with the world are relations by energy and not by essence.

PART FOUR