Vision of God

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Theoria is wisdom’s vision of glory in the Name, not our unaided visual perception of God but God’s deifying vision of God in Holy Trinity.  Vision of God is uncreated grace, gift of uncreated light, not objectifying, visual perception of something empirically perceptible, but wisdom’s awareness of imperceptible glory, awakened in the Name. This is why Scripture says we cannot see God and then says the vision of God is the whole point of our existence.   Apparently a conceptual contradiction, wisdom’s revelation is in fact a holy paradox that reveals its meaning when wisdom turns and sees.  Theoria is the Greek word for what in Latin was called contemplatio, contemplation, which may be acquired through the practice of recollection but is consummated through infused contemplation, which is the uncreated grace of union through communion in the Holy Spirit.  In this sense, vision of God is the living practice of active communion, the very heart of Orthodox spiritual activity.

Nominal Christianity distances itself from theoria, preferring to speculate in theory rather than experience God in practice, causing untimely postponement of timely timelessness.  Distance separates and divides the activity that in God is one, causing dislocation and dissipation of the unifying dispensation of grace.  Deifying activity, also called energy, is uncreated, curing separation by healing division.  The communion of grace changes nominal into living Christian experience, initiating turning, metanoia, through seeing, theoria, completing sanctification through deification, theosis.  The Biblical word for Greek wisdom’s theosis is glorification, doxasmos, which activates doxology, doxologia, both modes of deifying participation in uncreated grace.  Holy Orthodoxy is, before everything else, deifying glorification, rather than any kind of self-righteous religiosity, glory bearing grateful witness to the beauty of holiness hallowing saints.

Living Orthodoxy is the living vision of God, nominal in conventional circles, actual among saints.  Vision turns right round from speculation to participation in uncreated grace, actualising wisdom’s vision of glory in the hallowing Name.  Vision of God is normal in God’s coming reign of glory, so normative even for conventional Christianity. But delusional distance claims a perverse right to separate what it cannot yet assimilate, preferring postponement to deification.  To realise eschatology is to abide in God’s future reign of glory in the timely present of God’s timeless presence.  It is to sever past and future from God’s living presence NOW, abiding in the timeless glory of God.  Wisdom is no longer nominal but actual, realising the end of time in timely timelessness.  Holy Orthodoxy is consequently rather rarer than was thought, despite the pretentious claims of the nominally orthodox.  But living saints bear witness to Orthodoxy’s presence in God, activating glorification of Holy Trinity in Holy Trinity.