{"id":3383,"date":"2015-11-29T10:00:43","date_gmt":"2015-11-29T15:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/?p=3383"},"modified":"2015-11-28T13:22:09","modified_gmt":"2015-11-28T18:22:09","slug":"learning-our-faith-from-the-greek-fathers-of-the-church-20151129","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/?p=3383","title":{"rendered":"Learning Our Faith From the Greek Fathers of the Church — 20151129"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"capadocios\"<\/a>St. Basil writes that the function of the Holy Spirit is not to reveal Himself, but to reveal the Son \u201cthrough whom all things were made\u201d and who is also personally known in His humanity as Jesus Christ. He also writes that \u201cit is impossible to give a precise definition of the person or hypostasis of the Holy Spirit and we must simply resist errors concerning Him which come from various sides.\u201d The personal existence of the Holy Spirit thus remains a mystery. It is an existence whose fulfillment consists in manifesting the kingship of the Logos (Word) in creation and in salvation history.<\/p>\n

For the Cappadocian Fathers, the Trinitarian interpretation of all the acts of God implies the participation of the Spirit in the act of creation. When Genesis mentions \u201cthe Spirit of God moving upon the face of the waters\u201d, patristic tradition interprets the passage in the sense of a primeval maintenance of all things by the Spirit, which made possible the subsequent appearance of a created logical order through the Word of God. Absolutely no chronological sequence is implied here, of course; and the action of the Spirit is part of the continuous creative action of God in the world. \u201cThe principle of all things is one,\u201d writes Basil, \u201cwhich creates through the Son and perfects in the Spirit.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is, of course, can be a very difficult thing for us to understand. What Basil is attempting to say is that God, as Trinity, calls all things into existence. The Father has the intention to create, <\/em>the Son truly expresses the intention to create specific things and the Spirit <\/em>actualizes that which is intended.<\/p>\n

Basil identifies this function of perfecting<\/em> or actualizing <\/em>creation as sanctification<\/em>, and implies that not only man, but nature as a whole, is perfectly itself only when it is in communion with God and when it is filled with the Spirit. The secular<\/em> is always imperfect, or rather it exists only as a fallen and defective state of creation. This is particularly true of man, whose nature consists precisely in his being theocentric<\/em>. Man received this theocentricity<\/em>, which the Greek Fathers always understood as a real participation<\/em> in the life of God, when he was created and when God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life<\/em>. This breath <\/em>of God\u2019s life, identified with the Holy Spirit on the basis of the Septuagint version, is what made man to be God\u2019s image.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n

Our Greek-based Christianity stresses that we share in God\u2019s own life<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

St. Basil writes that the function of the Holy Spirit is not to reveal Himself, but to reveal the Son \u201cthrough whom all things were made\u201d and who is also personally known in His humanity as Jesus Christ. He also … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-learning-our-faith-form-the-church-fathers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3383"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3383\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3384,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3383\/revisions\/3384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}