"All
the truths of Orthodoxy emerge from one truth and converge on one truth,
infinite and eternal. That truth is the God-man Christ. If you
experience any truth of Orthodoxy to its limit, you will inevitably
discover that its kernel is the God-man Christ. In fact, all the truths
of Orthodoxy are nothing other than different aspects of the one
Truth--the God-man Christ.
Orthodoxy
is Orthodoxy by reason of the God-man, and not by reason of anything
else or anyone else. Hence another name for Orthodoxy is God-manhood. In
it nothing exists through man or by man, but everything comes from the
God-man and exists through the God-man. This means that man experiences
and finds out about the fundamental eternal truth of life and the world
only with the help of the God-man, in the God-man. And it means
something else: man learns the complete truth about man, about the
purpose and meaning of his existence only through the God-man. Outside
of Him a man turns into an apparition, into a scarecrow, into nonsense.
Instead of a man you find the dregs of a man, the fragments of a man,
the scraps of a man. Therefore, true manhood lies only in God-manhood;
and no other manhood exists under heaven.
Why
is the God-man the fundamental truth of Orthodoxy? Because He answered
all the questions that torture and torment the human spirit: the
question of life and death, the question of good and evil, the question
of earth and heaven, the question of truth and falsehood, the question
of love and hate, the question of justice and injustice. In brief: the
question of man and God.
Why
is the God-man the fundamental truth of Orthodoxy? Because He proved in
the most obvious way by His own earthly life that He is the incarnate,
humanized, and personified eternal Truth, eternal Justice, eternal Love,
eternal Joy, eternal Power: Total-Truth, Total-Justice, Total-Love,
Total-Joy, Total-Power.
He
brought down all the divine perfections from heaven to earth. And He did
not just bring them down, but also taught them to us and gave us
grace-filled power to transform them into our life, into our thoughts,
into our feelings, into our deeds. Hence, our calling is to incarnate
them in ourselves and in the world around us.
Consider
the best of the best people in the human race. In all of them it is the
God-man that is best, most important and most eternal. For He is the
holiness of the Saints, the martyrdom of the Martyrs, the righteousness
of the Righteous, the apostleship of the Apostles, the goodness of the
Good, the mercy of the Merciful, the love of the Loving. Why is the
God-man each and every aspect of Orthodoxy? Because He, as One of the
Holy Trinity, the incarnate Son of God, is distinct as God, as
Comforter, as Defender, as Teacher, and as Saviour. Only in Him, in the
all-merciful Lord Jesus, does man, tormented by earthly tragedies, find
the God who can truly give meaning to suffering, the Comforter who can
truly give comfort in every misfortune and sorrow, the Defender who can
truly defend from every evil, the Saviour who can truly save from death
and sin, the Teacher who can truly teach eternal Truth and Justice.
The
God-man is each and every aspect of Orthodoxy, for He infinitely
magnifies man. He elevates him to God; He makes him a god by grace. And
He did this without reckoning man less than God, but filled man with all
divine perfections. The God-man has glorified man as no other has. He
has given him life eternal, Truth eternal, Love eternal, Justice
eternal, Joy eternal, Goodness eternal, Blessedness eternal. Man has
become divine majesty through the God-man.
While
the God-man is the fundamental truth of Orthodoxy, the fundamental truth
of every heterodoxy is man, or fragments of his being--reason, the will,
the senses, the soul, the body, expertise.
Integral
man does not exist in heterodoxy; the whole man is divided into atoms,
into particles. And it is all for the glory of man's greatness. But just
as "art for the sake of art" is nonsense, so also is it
nonsense to say "man for the sake of man." That path leads to
a most pitiful pandemonium, where man is the supreme idol--and nowhere
is there a more pitiful idol than he.
The
first truth of Orthodoxy is that man does not exist for the sake of man,
but for the sake of God or, more fully, for the sake of the God-man.
Therefore, we stay with the God-man in the name of man. In Him alone is
an understanding of man's being possible; in Him alone is a
justification for man's existence possible. All the mysteries of heaven
and earth are attained in this truth, all the values of all the worlds
that man can contemplate, all the joys of all the perfections that man
can attain.
Indirectly
and directly, the God-man is everything in Orthodoxy, and thus man is
in Him, but in heterodoxy there is merely man.
In
its very essence, Orthodoxy is nothing other than the Personality of the
God-man Christ extended across all ages, extended as the Church.
Orthodoxy has its own seal and sign by which it distinguishes itself. It
is the radiant Person of the God-man Jesus.
Everything
that does not have that Person is not Orthodox. Everything that does not
have the God-man's Justice, Truth, Love, and Eternity is not Orthodox.
Everything that wants to carry out the God-man's Gospel in this world
through the methods of this world and through the methods of the
kingdoms of this world is not Orthodox, but implies enslavement to the
third temptation of the devil.
To
be Orthodox means to have the God-man constantly in your soul, to live
in Him, think in Him, feel in Him, act in Him. In other words, to be
Orthodox means to be a Christ-bearer and a Spirit-bearer.
A
man attains this when, in the body of Christ--the Church, his whole
being is filled with the God-man Christ from top to bottom. For this
reason the Orthodox man “is hidden with Christ in God" (Col.
3:1-3).
The
God-man is the axis of all worlds, from the world of the atom to the
world of the cherubim. Whatever being breaks off from that axis, tumbles
into terror, into tortures, into agony. Lucifer broke off--and became
Satan; angels broke off--and became demons; man broke off in large part-and
became inhuman ("non-man").
Anything
created that breaks off from it inevitably plunges into chaos and grief.
And when a people, as a group, deny the God-man, their history turns
into a journey through hell and its horrors.
The
God-man is not just the fundamental truth of Orthodoxy, but the power
and omnipotence of Orthodoxy as well; for He alone saves man from death,
sin, and the devil.
No
man whatsoever, nor even mankind as a whole ever could, can, or will be
able to do that. The outcome of man's struggle with death, sin, and the
devil is always defeat, unless he is led by the God-man. Only through
the God-man Christ can man conquer death, sin, and the devil.
Hence,
the purpose of man is: to fill himself with the God-man, in His
body--the Orthodox Church; to be transfigured in Him through
grace-filled feats; to become omnipotent. Even while he walks
prayerfully through the gloomy earthly anthill in the body, in his soul
he lives above, where Christ Sits at the right hand of God, for his life
is constantly stretched out between earth and heaven by prayers, like a
rainbow that connects the summit of heaven with the abyss of earth.
To
become immortal in Him by the power of the Holy Spirit, to become God,
to become the God-man--this is the purpose, the true purpose of the
whole human race. It is also the joy, the only joy in this world of
boundless sorrow and toxic bitterness.
Orthodoxy
is Orthodoxy through the God-man. And we Orthodox, by confessing the
God-man, indirectly confess the Christ-image of man, the divine origin
of man, the divine exaltation of man, and thus also the divine value and
sacredness of the human personality.
In
fact, the struggle for the God-man is the struggle for man. Not the
humanists, but the people of the Orthodox faith and life of the God-man
are struggling for true man, man in the image of God and the image of
Christ."
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