[26] Ed. Theotoki, LXXXIV, p. 480-481; Wensinck, XXVII, P. 136.

[27] PG, t. 34, col. 544 D.

[28] Homily 27.

Chapter XII. CONCLUSION. THE FEAST OF THE KINGDOM

In the introduction to our book, we emphasized the inner and indissoluble connection between theology and mysticism, between dogmatic teaching and spiritual life. We can consider the spiritual life only in the light of dogmas, because dogmas are its outward expression, the only objective evidence of experience confirmed by the Church. By virtue of the catholicity of the Christian tradition, the experience of individuals and the general experience of the Church are identical. And Christian tradition is not only the totality of dogmas, sacred institutions and rites preserved by the Church, but, first of all, that which is expressed in these external forms; it is a living tradition, it is an unceasing revelation of the Holy Spirit in the Church, a life to which each of its members can partake in his own measure. To be in tradition means to participate experientially in the revealed mysteries of the Church. Dogmatic tradition is the landmarks established by the Church on the path and knowledge of God, while mystical tradition is the acquired experience of the mysteries of faith; they cannot be separated from each other or opposed to each other. We cannot understand dogma outside of experience, we cannot have the fullness of experience outside of true teaching. That is why we wanted to present in these pages the tradition of the Eastern Church as a mystical theology, as a teaching and experience that condition each other.

We have consistently examined the basic principles of Orthodox theology, never losing sight of the ultimate goal - our union with God. Directed towards this goal, always deliberately soteriological, this dogmatic tradition appeared to us completely homogeneous, despite the richness and diversity of its experience, despite the diversity of the epochs and cultures it embraced. It is a single spiritual family, in which we can easily recognize the kinship of its members, although they are separated from each other both in time and space. Bearing witness to one and the same spiritual vision, we could refer to Dionysius the Areopagite and St. Gregory Palamas, to St. Macarius of Egypt and St. Seraphim of Sarov, to St. Gregory of Nyssa and Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow, to St. Maximus the Confessor and contemporary Russian theologians, and passing from one epoch to another, we did not feel a change in the "spiritual climate." For the Church, in which human persons fulfill their calling, in which their union with God takes place, is always the same, despite the fact that her "oikonomia" in relation to the external world must change according to the different epochs and different environments in which the Church carries out her mission. The Fathers and Teachers of the Church, who at different historical moments had to defend and formulate different dogmas, nevertheless belong to one and the same Tradition, for they are witnesses to the same experience. This tradition remained common to the East and to the West as long as the Church bore clear witness to the truths pertaining to the Incarnation. But the dogmas that seem to be more hidden, as if more mysterious, those that relate to Pentecost, to the teaching about the Holy Spirit, about grace, about the Church, are no longer common to the Church of Rome and the Churches of the East. Here two separate traditions are opposed to each other. And even that which up to a certain moment was common in retrospect acquires a different bias, now appears in a different light, as the spiritual realities of different spiritual experiences. Now St. Basil the Great, for example, or Blessed Augustine are interpreted in different ways, depending on whether they are viewed in the light of Roman Catholic tradition or Orthodox tradition. This is inevitable, for we can recognize the authority of some ecclesiastical author only in the spirit of the tradition to which we ourselves belong. In our essay we have tried to emphasize aspects characteristic of the tradition of the Orthodox Church, based exclusively on the testimony of the Eastern Fathers, in order to avoid any possible confusion or misunderstanding.

In the course of our study of the mystical theology of the Eastern Church, we have repeatedly had to state the apophatic position inherent in this religious way of thinking. As we have seen, the negations that point to God's unknowability do not forbid knowledge; Apophaticism, far from being a limitation, forces us to transcend all concepts, every field of philosophical speculation. It is an aspiration to an ever-increasing fullness that transforms knowledge into ignorance, conceptual theology into contemplation, and dogmas into the experience of ineffable mysteries. It is also an existential theology, involving the whole man, placing him on the path of union with God, forcing him to change, to transform his nature, in order to reach the true "gnosis" – the contemplation of the Most Holy Trinity. However, "change of mind," metanoia, means repentance. The apophatic path of Eastern theology is the repentance of the human person before the Face of the Living God. It is an incessant change of the human being, striving towards the fullness of his revelation, towards union with God, accomplished by the Divine grace and freedom of man. But the fullness of the Godhead, the final completion to which created persons aspire, is revealed in the Holy Spirit. He is the Mystery Guide on the apophatic path, where the negations indicate the presence of the Ineffable, the Unlimited, the Absolute Fullness. He is the secret tradition in the open tradition and "preached on the housetops." It is a mystery hidden in the teaching of the Church, although it imparts to it its certainty, inner certainty, life, warmth, and light, which are inherent in Christian truth.

Apophaticism, in which the character of the entire contemplation of God in the Eastern Church is manifested, is an unceasing testimony to the presence of the Holy Spirit, who fills up all deficiencies, who overcomes all limitations, who imparts to the knowledge of the Unknowable the fullness of experience, who transforms the Divine darkness into the light in which we partake of God.

That is why the unknowable God reveals Himself as the Holy Trinity, why His unknowability is represented by the mystery of the three Persons and one nature, that the Holy Spirit reveals to our contemplation the fullness of the Divine being. Therefore, in the Eastern Church, the day of Pentecost is called the feast of the Trinity. It is the absolute immutability, the limit of all contemplation, of all ascent, and at the same time the beginning of all theology, the primordial truth, the primordial datum from which all thought and all being originate. St. Gregory the Theologian, Evagrius of Pontus, St. Maximus the Confessor, and other Fathers identify the perfect knowledge of the Most Holy Trinity with the Kingdom of God, the ultimate perfection to which created beings are called. The mystical theology of the Eastern Church always asserts itself as triadocentric. For him, the knowledge of God is the knowledge of the Most Holy Trinity, a mystical union, a single life with the Three Persons of the Godhead. The antinomy of the Trinitarian dogma, the mysterious identity of the Unity-Trinity, is jealously guarded by the spirit of Eastern apophaticism, which opposes the Western formula of the procession of the Holy Spirit à utroque, so as not to emphasize the unity of nature to the detriment of the personal fullness of the "Three Shrines, which converge in one Lordship and Divinity"[1]. The unity of command of the Father is always affirmed, the one Source of Persons, in Whom dwells the infinite richness of the one nature.

Constantly striving to perceive ever greater fullness, to overcome all the restrictive concepts that define the Divinity in a rationalistic way, the theology of the Eastern Church refuses to give the divine nature the character of an essence enclosed in Itself. God, the one essence in Three Persons, is greater than His essence: He passes beyond His essence, manifests Himself outside of it, the Incommunicable by nature communicates to the created. The processions of the Godhead outside of His essence, the outpourings of Divine abundance, are the energies, the mode of existence peculiar to God, who pours out the fullness of His Divinity through the Holy Spirit on all those who are capable of receiving it. Therefore, in one of the troparia of the canon to the Holy Spirit at Compline of Pentecost, it is said about the Holy Spirit: "For Thou art the river of the Godhead, proceeding from the Father by the Son."

The same striving for completeness is manifested in the doctrine relating to the creation of the world. If the existence of the created world does not have the character of necessity, if its creation is accidental, then it is precisely in this absolute freedom of the Divine will that the created world finds its perfection. For God has created out of nothing a completely new work - the cosmos, which is not a bad copy of God, but a work desired, "conceived" in the "Divine Council". In fact, in the theology of the Eastern Church, the Divine ideas, as we have seen, are presented in the dynamic aspect of forces, volitions, and creative words. They define created beings as their external causes, but at the same time they call them to perfection, to "well-being," eu einai in union with God. Thus, the created world appears to us as a dynamic reality, striving towards the fullness of the future, which for God is always the fullness of the present. The unshakable foundation of the world created out of nothing lies in its perfection, as the end of its becoming. But He Who completes, Who imparts fullness to every creature, is the Holy Spirit. A created being, considered in itself, is always incompleteness; considered in the Holy Spirit, it is the fullness of the deified creature. Throughout its history, the created world has been between these two limits, and it is never possible to conceive of "pure nature" and grace as two realities that would be added to each other. The Tradition of the Eastern Church speaks of a creature striving towards deification, constantly perfecting itself in grace; it also speaks of a fallen creature separating itself from God and entering a new existential plane, the plane of sin and death; but it avoids attributing a static perfection to created nature, considered in itself. Indeed, this would mean giving a limited fullness, a natural self-sufficiency, to those beings who were created in order to find their fullness in union with God.

In anthropology and the asceticism that follows from it, the limitation that we must transcend is the limitation of the individual, the individual being, the result of the confusion of personality and nature.

In the unity of the common nature, the personalities are not its parts, but each is a certain whole, completing its perfection in union with God. The person, the indestructible image of God, always strives for this fullness, although he sometimes seeks it outside of God; it knows, desires, and acts according to a nature darkened by sin, according to a nature that no longer has the likeness of God. In this way, the mystery of the Godhead, the distinction between the one nature and the Divine Persons, is reflected in humanity, which is called to participate in the life of the Most Holy Trinity. Both poles of man - nature and personality - find their fullness: the first in unity, the second in absolute difference, for each person is united with God in the way that is peculiar to him alone. The unity of purified nature is recreated and "headed" by Christ; the plurality of persons is affirmed by the Holy Spirit, who communicates Himself to each member of the Body of Christ. The new fullness, the new existential realm that entered the universe after Golgotha, the Resurrection, and Pentecost, is called the Church.

Only in the Church, only through the eyes of the Church, is Christ perceived in the spiritual life of the Eastern tradition. In other words, He is seen in the Holy Spirit. Orthodoxy always sees Christ in the fullness of His Divinity, glorified and triumphant even in suffering, even in the grave. Exhaustion, kenwsiV, is always replenished by the radiance of the Divine. Dead and resting in the tomb, Christ descends into hell as a conqueror and forever crushes the power of the enemy. In the resurrected and ascended Christ to heaven, the Church can see only one of the Persons of the Most Holy Trinity, "trampling down death" and "sitting at the right hand of the Father." The "historical" Christ, "Jesus of Nazareth," as He appeared to the eyes of foreign witnesses, Christ outside the Church, is always fulfilled in the fullness of Revelation given to His true witnesses, the sons of the Church, enlightened by the Holy Spirit. The cult of Christ's humanity is alien to the tradition of the Eastern Church, or, rather, this deified humanity is clothed here in the same glorified image as the disciples saw Christ on Mount Tabor; it is the humanity of the Son, through whom His Divinity is visible, common with the Father and the Spirit. The spiritual life of the Eastern Church does not follow the path of imitation of Christ. And indeed, it would seem to be somewhat inferior here, it would be some kind of external relationship to Christ. For the spiritual life of the Eastern Church, the only way that likens us to Christ is the path of acquiring the grace communicated by the Holy Spirit. The saints of the Eastern Church never had stigmata - external imprints that likened some of the great saints and mystics of the West to the suffering Christ. But, on the other hand, the saints of the Eastern Church were very often transfigured by the inner light of uncreated grace and were illumined, like Christ in His Transfiguration.