“God became man so that man may become God.” In this pithy aphorism, Saint Athanasius is saying that deification (theosis) is grounded in incarnation (sarkosis), that our ascent (anabasis) to God is rooted in God’s descent (katabasis) in becoming human. God takes on our human nature so that we may partake in his divine nature (2 Peter 1:4). Grace is… Read more »
‘No confusion: no division,’ does not define the indefinable but indicates a healthy openness between unity and difference which Christ the Logos communicates in the desert. Wisdom neither asserts nor denies but leaves these two signs or indications, pointing the way to avoid the degeneration of union into confusion or the disintegration of communion into division. The ethos which the divine-human… Read more »
The hidden wisdom of Heraclitus lies concealed within the Logos that the desert welcomed home at the heart of its mortal, immortal life, dying its life and living its death in the paradoxes of the divine-human Logos. Gnomic wisdom tradition in the desert revered wisdom that hearkened to the Logos, not only because wisdom IS the Logos awakening the heart… Read more »
Heraclitus said that wisdom discerns the Logos that directs all through all (Heraclitus 34). Listening to the Logos, desert wisdom remembers the One in all, gathering all into remembrance of the One in everything. Truth, a-lethia, is un-forgetting that un-conceals the Logos of glory from scattering dissipation, recollecting what unites in whole remembrance, anamnesis. But like the Delphic Oracle, ‘Know Thyself,’ Heraclitus… Read more »
Restoration of glory is called glorification by desert Hesychasm and glorification begins and ends in glory, proceeding from the originating image of glory to eschatological likeness as glory. Glorification is initiated in purification, empowered by Baptism and it is sustained by illumination, empowered by Chrismation, but its ultimate fulfilment is revealed in glorification itself, empowered by the Holy Liturgy of the Eucharist…. Read more »