This may sound controversial, as a lot of things written in this blog, but I guess I'll just say it.
I think I'm growing in the discipline of practicing the presence of God up to the point where I think I can existentially distinguish the between the presence of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in my consciousness! Of course I knew all the fundamental doctrines of the Trinity, all 3 members being God, all being distinct in personality, yet all having the divine traits in the one substance of God. But for a lot of my life, this theology was all abstract to me. And during this journey of the Game with Minutes, I'm actually learning to rectify the centuries-old mistake of protestants of separating theological understanding with personal spiritual experience. That's why I like a lot of the medieval Catholic writers, to a lot of them, like Madame Guyon and St. Teresa of Avlia, when they write, they don't separate theological doctrine from their personal experience on their spiritual journey. To use a modern analogy, they don't research decades on a prospective romantic partner's background while they spending very little time dating him/her. They "date" and learn about that partner at the same time. Not the best analogy, but that's how it is with a lot of these Catholic mystics.
Anyways, all that to say, I think within my consciousness, I am learning to practically distinguish between directly interacting with the Holy Spirit, Jesus, and the Father. It's kind of cool too, rather than just vaguely knowing that all 3 of them are God and ambiguously communicating to "all 3 of them at the same time and somehow it works out".
Once again, this is extremely hard to describe as to what it actually feels like, so forgive me if I have to resort to using analogies. First of all, the presence of God has been becoming more and more real to me. Picture someone who has lived indoor all their lives and was born blind. Then picture this person constantly being told what the sun is like. The various characteristics of it, how it heats you up if you're in it's presence, how it's so bright it can make you go blind if you look at it directly for an extended period of time, how it helps your body produce vitamin D if you're exposed to it, how you can get a suntan if you're exposed to it for a long period of time. Then, picture this person finally walking out one day when he's 25 years old into the outdoor beach on a bright sunny day. He's still blind, he still can't see the sun. But something in his educated intuition feels like he's being exposed directly in the presence of it. He feels like he's being warmed up by it's heat. He feels like it's "brighter" even though he's blind and can't see properly. His friends tell him after he's been in the sun for a while that they can see a suntan on his skin. He KNOWS that he's directly in the presence of the sun even though he can't prove directly, or can't see it directly. But he knows it's there. That's how it's been with me and God's presence metaphorically.
And now, with the distinction of the different members of the Trinity in my consciousness. Picture a blind alien who has never been to planet earth before. Picture this blind alien who has never been exposed to H20 (aka water) before. But this blind alien has heard about it, all its properties, its effects, its possible states (liquid, solid [ice], gas). But one day, this blind alien gets transported to earth, and he begins to feel with his 4 senses the difference between water in liquid form, solid form, and gas form. Although he can't see the difference of these forms in his eyes, he nevertheless knows that it's all H20 and can sense the difference. That is a little like how it feels right now.
And it's pretty cool man, to be able to experience the subjective textures of first-person consciousness in interacting with different members of the Trinity. They really are distinct persons of a holy community that interact with each other, and are not clones of each other, or divine siamese triplets or something. Of course we might know this in our head. But experiencing it is a whole new universe.
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I tried posting this comment earlier today, but it seemed not to take. Let's see if it does this time. I was using a different computer earlier. I think I am also going to blog this comment to your post as a testimony at my blog as well. I hope you don't mind. Many of the posts at Cost of Discipleship blog are actually comments left elsewhere. This is what I wanted to say…
ReplyDeleteThe Orthodox fathers use the sun as an analogy to the Holy and Divine Triad. The sun itself is the Heavenly Father. The light of the sun is the Divine Word and Son of God. The heat of the sun is the Holy Spirit.
No one can see the sun, except by the light, which enters our eyes and shows it to us. We have no other way to be in contact with the sun or even know for sure that it is there, but for the light (and the heat). If you approached the sun to touch it, you would be incinerated long before you reached it. The Father, thus, is ever intangible and unreachable to us, in His essence.
The light of the sun, though, both shows us what the sun looks like and that it is there. 'Who sees Me sees the Father,' says Jesus the Son and Word of God. In Jesus the Father is both visible and reachable. We make our prayers known to the Father through the Son. Moreover, light itself has two natures. It is both particles (photons) and waves (pure energy), and in the same way, Jesus the Son of God is both human and Divine. Yes, and He is the Phos ek Photon, 'Light from Light'.
The heat of the sun will be evidence, as you have written, even to a blind man, that the sun, or at least some source of heat, is out there, because we can feel its effect on us. In a similar way, even if a man is spiritually blind, he can still feel the warmth of the Holy Spirit falling on him, telling him that there is a Father in heaven, yet he can still move out of that sunlight and into the shadows. It is his choice.
There was never a sun without light and heat, yet the light is not the sun, nor is the heat the sun; each is distinct, yet inseparable from the source. In the same way, the Orthodox fathers teach that the Father is the source and principle of the Godhead, of the Divine Nature. The Son (only one of Him) is begotten eternally from the Father as light emanates from the sun. As heat proceeds from the sun by means of the light that emanates from it, the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone, but by means of the Son of God, who said, 'I will ask the Father and He will send you another Advocate.'
Co-eternal, consubstantial—these are words that seem overpowering and mystery-laden, making the Holy Triad seem to be unthinkable and unexperienceable by man. But the Orthodox fathers show us that the mystery is not that God should be three yet one, but that we could have ever imagined a God who is only one.
The unity of the Divine Nature, 'Hear, O Israel, Yahweh is our God, Yahweh is One' is not diminished by His nature being a Triad. His Oneness is so One without a second, so beyond numerical oneness, that even His triadic nature does not take away from it.
God is changeless, and yet He is One. God is changeless, and yet He is love. There can be no love except 'between' and no pure love, impartial and selfless love, except between 'three'. Hence, the Divine Nature says, 'Let us make man in our image.'
No one has ever seen God, only the Son of God, Jesus Christ, has made Him known and shown Him to us, being Himself God and yet not the Father. And the Holy Spirit, that third member of the One God in Triad, is our own membership in that Society of Persons which we call the Holy Trinity. Through Him, through the Spirit, we take our places at the banquet of the Divine Nature, becoming by genuine adoption what Christ is by nature, sons and daughters of the Most-High.
Théosis is what we were made for, sotiría (salvation) is the process of transfiguration.
ReplyDeleteChrist was, is, and is to come.
We were saved, are being saved, and are to be saved, that is, to be one with the Divine and Holy Triad, as Christ prays, 'that they may be One, even as You, Father, and I are One.'
See the Orthodox ikon of the Holy Trinity. Search for Rublev Trinity and you will see the three 'angels' seated around a table, with one place left open for another. That one is you.
I'm glad that you can relate to what I've been experiencing too! it's so awesome eh? Thanks for your comments/thoughts! Eastern Orthodoxy rules!
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