{"id":5383,"date":"2017-06-10T22:55:00","date_gmt":"2017-06-11T02:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/?p=5383"},"modified":"2017-06-10T22:55:00","modified_gmt":"2017-06-11T02:55:00","slug":"learning-our-faith-from-the-greek-fathers-of-the-church-20170611","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/?p=5383","title":{"rendered":"Learning Our Faith From the Greek Fathers of the Church — 20170611"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Gregory admits that if God does not possess a body, then God must be \u201cincorporeal.\u201d The term incorporeal \u201cdoes not yet set before us – or contain within itself – his essence.\u201d Neither do other terms such as unbegotten, unoriginate, unchanging, incorruptible or \u201cany other predicate which is used concerning God or in reference to him. For what effect is produced upon his being or substance by his having no beginning and being incapable of change of limitation?\u201d Other human predicates we sometimes employ, such as \u201ccorporeal, begotten, or mortal,\u201d fall short unless one \u201cclearly and adequately\u201d describes the subject to which they\u00a0apply. All, for example, could equally apply to \u201ca man, or a cow, or a horse.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hence, Gregory believes those who would speak well of God must reverently and humbly move beyond a merely negative or apophatic theology. To describe God only in negative terms would be much like a mathematician \u201cwho, when asked how many twice five make, should answer, \u201cnot two, nor three, nor four, nor five, nor twenty, nor thirty, not in short any number below ten, nor any multiple of ten, but refused to answer, \u201cten.\u201d A better path to follow, both in mathematics and in theology, is to broaden our knowledge \u201cboth by the elimination of negatives and the assertion of positives to arrive at a comprehension of the truth.\u201d The best theologians, then, will know both when to speak and when to remain silent.<\/p>\n

On the basis of this methodology, Gregory begins to add to and arrange his fundamental building blocks concerning God. Having concluded that God is incorporeal, Gregory explores the relationship of God to space. Is God \u201cnowhere or somewhere\u201d? If God is nowhere, is it reasonable or coherent to speak of God as existing at all? Gregory thinks not. \u201cFor if the nonexistent is nowhere, then that which is nowhere is also perhaps nonexistent.\u201d On the other hand, if God is somewhere, where is he? The only two options seem to be a spatial location within the universe or existence \u201cabove the universe.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hopefully my readers can see the great efforts that Fathers of the Church, like Gregory, put into coming up with the understanding of God that we say is true. I know that some may feel that all of this is quite pedantic and useless. I share this only because I feel that each of us has to really answer the question: What do I really believe God is like? Why? In order to have a relationship with Him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gregory admits that if God does not possess a body, then God must be \u201cincorporeal.\u201d The term incorporeal \u201cdoes not yet set before us – or contain within itself – his essence.\u201d Neither do other terms such as unbegotten, unoriginate, … 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":[5,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-learning-our-faith-form-the-church-fathers","category-st-gregory-of-nyssa-learning-our-faith-form-the-church-fathers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5383","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=5383"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5383\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5384,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5383\/revisions\/5384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}