What is John Chrysostom’s gnosiology (the theory or philosophy of learning) which forms his understanding of the revelation of God. I know that this may be rather abstract, but it believe it will become clearer as you read on.

St. John insists that a clear distinction should be made between those things pertaining to God in    Himself and those things pertaining to God’s action or operation in the world. In reference to this distinction, John first emphasizes the fact that God, by His very nature, is immutable and inaccessible. He also asserts that God in Himself, in His essence and nature, is truly invisible and also incomprehensible, and as such can neither be seen nor comprehended. But if this is so, how does God reveal Himself to man? Chrysostom provides us with the following answer which can be found in an address he gave to Eutropius. He wrote:

 When He wishes to show Himself, He does not appear as He is, nor is His bare essence revealed – for no one has seen God as He is. For at His condescension even the cherubim trembled…. He appears not as He is, but as that which the beholder is able to see. That is why   He sometimes appears aged, and            sometimes you, sometimes in fire, and sometimes in a breeze… not changing His essence, but fashioning His appearance according to the different circumstances.

The key word in John’s description of the divine economy is the word “condescension”, for it is by His       condescension that God reveals Himself to man. He does this, John says, not by suffering change in His essence, but by conforming, shaping or adapting Himself to the capacity of His creature. John is not here referring to created effects in God’s revelation to man, for condescension denotes the loving descent and participation of God Himself in the life of His creature. So, it is precisely God’s condescension which reveals His love for mankind, and which finds its ultimate expression in the Incarnation – the         condescension of the Son and Word of God, in the flesh.

So what does this all mean. It means that we can never really know or see God as He really is. We can have an idea of Who He is, but we cannot truly know Him as He is. So He, because of His love for us, became a human being so that He could share with us how to live and, therefore, gain all of the benefits that He built into life itself. He so loved us that He wanted to make sure that we could, if we so desired, learn how to really live human life and derive all the benefit that we can as a human being. All this was done out of love for us!