God as True and Complete Being.
In Gregory's contemplation God is the full completeness of true
and Sovereign Being. His being is the only Being, and Being is His very nature.
"There is nothing which properly exists apart from and except for God's Being.
It is above all essence and is the cause of everything," Gregory writes. The
Divinity is bound less and infinite, eternal and simple. "The nature of the
Divinity is simple, unified, and uncompound." The Divinity is one, uninterrupted
within Itself, boundless, infinite, and there is nothing to hinder it or contain
it. God has the motion of life within Himself, for "He is Life, and life is
active within Him. This life never grows or diminishes through any addition or
subtraction." Nothing can be added to that which is eternal and nothing can be
removed from an impassive nature.
The eternity of the Divinity can be expressed by the symbol of
a circle. A circle never begins; it has no first or last point; it is unified,
and it is contained within itself. The eternity of God is also like this. "If we
extend our thoughts from the central point of the present moment into the
eternity of Divine Life, we see that this life is like a circle and is
constantly overtaking itself. Everywhere we see the Divinity, which cannot be
encompassed, never ends, and has no interruptions. We cannot recognize in It any
individual part or boundary."
The Unending and Eternal Bliss of Divine Life.
Gregory attempts to express the "unending and eternal bliss of
Divine Life" through a series of definitions and images. "God is the One Who is
beyond the boundary of everything, and Who has nothing beyond Himself. He has no
end to His Being and He always exists from everywhere. The infinity of His being
transcends the concepts of a final goal or an ultimate source. Every name of God
expresses His eternity." Gregory's doctrine of the eternity of the Divinity is
similar to the teaching of Origen, as is also his identification of
unconditional being with goodness and bliss. All good is true being. God by His
nature is every good that the mind can conceive. He is beyond every good that
can be grasped by the intellect, beyond beauty, beyond goodness and virtue. God
is completeness and the source of everything, and therefore He is superior to
everything that exists. He is completeness and bliss. "In contemplating Himself
God has everything He desires and He desires everything He has. He does not have
anything from outside Himself." God is love and the source of love. "The life of
the nature of the Supreme Being is love." God knows and realizes Himself as
beauty, and God is love because He is beauty. As a Hellenist Gregory connects
love with beauty and goodness. Goodness can also be an ethical concept, as is
indicated by the relation of the words καλλος and
καλος.
The soul receives this vision of God through contemplating
itself because in this contemplation it sees within itself the outline of the
image of God and the living imprint of the perfections of the Divinity. The soul
by nature is similar to these and can participate in them. We do not come to
know the attributes of the Divinity through rational inference but by the
contemplation of their reduced reflections within ourselves. We are images and
we strive to return to our Archetype.
source:
http://www.holytrinitymission.org/books/english/fathers_florovsky_1.htm#_Toc3723877
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