Triune Progress
by Dumitru Staniloae
Orthodox spirituality has as its goal the
deification of man and his union with God, without being merged with Him.
It has as a basic conviction the existence of a personal God, who is the supreme
source of radiating love. He prizes man and doesn't want to confuse him with
Himself, but maintains and raises him to an eternal dialogue of love.
Such spirituality has no place where an evolutionary progress of man, connected
to a divinity conceived as an impersonal essence, is affirmed.
This progress can have no result other than man's disappearance in the
impersonal divinity. But the personal God, and thus the supreme source of love,
can't be conceived of as a single person, but as a community of persons in a
perfect unity.
You see then why the Christian teaching of a Trinity of Persons in a unity of
essence is the only one which can constitute the basis of a perfect spirituality
for man, understood as a full communion with God in love, without his being lost
in it.
Dumitru Staniloae,
Orthodox Spirituality, A practical Guide for the Faithful and a Definitive
Manual for the Scholar (St Tikhon's Seminary Press)
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