God Father and God the Son
22 “All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows who the Son is except the Father, and no one knows who the Father is except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”
23 Then he turned to his disciples and said privately, “Blessed are the eyes that see what you see. 24 For I tell you that many prophets and kings wanted to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.”
The knowledge of God in the real circumstances of life
Pr. prof. Dumitru Stăniloae, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, The Publishing House of the Biblical and Orthodox Missionary Institute , 2010, vol. I, pp. 143-145
God is known by every believer through His providential action by which is led in the particular circumstances of his life sometimes being given assets other times being pedagogically deprived by them. This last way of leading him is called by Saint Maximus leading through judgment.
Everyone knows God by the call He makes to him placing him in various circumstances in contact with different people who demand from him the fulfillment of certain duties which put his patience to great trials. Everyone knows Him by the pricks of his conscience for the wickedness he had committed and in the end he knows Him in his troubles, in his ephemeral or long lasting failures in his diseases or the diseases of his dear ones as a result of the wickedness which had been committed or as means of moral progress, of spiritual strengthening but also in the help he receives from Him in overcoming them and in overcoming other obstacles and difficulties which come in his way. It is a knowledge which helps at the leading of every man on a personal way of evolution to perfection.
It is a palpitating and burdensome and painful and joyful knowledge which awakens in our being the responsibility and warms up the prayer and makes it stick to God closer. In it our being practically experiences God`s kindness, power, righteousness wisdom, His careful concern for us, His special plan for it. In this relation the human experiences a relation of special intimacy with God as Supreme Person.
In this knowledge I don`t see God anymore only as the Creator and author of providence of all or as the Mystery which makes itself visible to all filling all with approximately the same joys. I know Him in His special care for me, in His intimate relation with me, in His history of the relationship with me, in His plan which leads me in a special way towards the common aim by the particular pains, claims and directions He addresses to me in life. Of course this intimate relation of God with me doesn`t take me out from my solidarity with the others, from my duties to others, towards the family, nation, my place, my time, the world from my time
But He makes Himself known in the calls He addresses to me especially to stimulate me to accomplish my duties
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