Let us all reflect on this image of love as a manifestation, as life, as the reality of the Holy Trinity. But we must also remember what seems extremely important to me. No matter how exalted, mysterious this teaching about the One God in the Holy Trinity may be, it belongs to the realm of revelation, that is, the realm where man is still able to meet God, comprehend Him, understand Him in communion and contemplation.
But God is not limited. We talked about the Faces of God, but as soon as we talk about the Holy Trinity, One God in Three Persons, we talk about life, about being beyond everything we mean when we talk about personalities, beyond any limitations. “I am in the Father and the Father in Me. I and the Father are one” (Jn. 10:38, 30). We can grasp the personal aspect and can grow through this contemplation of the Three Faces, which are superpersonal, Whose life does not fit into any limitations of personality. We can grow into the vision of God, Who in Three Faces and simultaneously – One Divine Reality, personal, but not in our limited and limiting sense of the word. And further, even beyond this – all the depth and mystery of Who God is in Himself, beyond any revelation, though not beyond communication to some extent. Revelation – this is a face-to-face meeting of this personal (yet, however, superpersonal) God with the fullness of human personality, God, Whom we can recognize, perceive no differently than as a blinding radiance. This God communicates with us by pouring Himself out, not only by manifestation in the Face of Jesus Christ, but by pouring Himself out in what we call Divine energies, Divine grace. This Grace is poured out not from One of the Faces, but from the Unity of God in Three Faces and in experience makes us partakers of the unity, which is beyond any expression, because it is the Unity of God; partakers to such an extent that we cannot even imagine…
Who slightly understood what the Church is talking about when it comes to “personality”, “hypostasis”, about which ineffable, indescribable mystery It proclaims, to which greatness it calls us [“Be perfect, as your heavenly Father”], can immediately move on to the next section, skipping what I am about to discuss now. We will duplicate the father’s words about God-Love-Personality, that is, we will talk about the same, just in other words. Why? You will understand later. But first, we will say something more about the criterion, to have a tool for recognizing the Orthodox theology of the Church from pagan philosophies, whoever propagates them – pope, patriarch.., or a council of bishops.
We said that revelation is the revelation of Hypostasis, Person, not of nature. Therefore, the Church does not speak about nature, that is, essence, but only about the energies of nature, as the consequences of the influence of Hypostasis on nature, and these energies interest Her insofar as they manifest and give the opportunity to partake in the mystery of Another Hypostasis, Personality, and reveal the mode of existence of Personality (“as it is”, but in no case not “what it is”), which gives the possibility for another hypostasis to have a commonality of being with it [here is an example, it is inadequate, but from this parable we can understand something: we came to a concert of a composer with a world name to listen to his works, which he will perform himself. Let the individual-composer, his soul, and body, and spirit taken together – this is hypostasis, personality, and the instrument on which he will play (let’s take a piano) – this is his nature, essence; at the concert we are not interested in the piano, and even not the sounds it produces, as a result of the influence of hypostasis (individual-composer) on nature (musical instrument), but the unique inner world of the composer, his spirit, hypostasis, his unique and unrepeatable “I”, which we partake of through the sounds (energies) that are born during the composer’s playing of the instrument (the influence of hypostasis on nature). This is an absolutely inadequate example-parable (as indeed any word when we talk about personality), but as some direction for the mind, or a hook for thinking, we can tell it. Another inadequate analogy-parable can be given: an airfield, a military parade, a pilot-individuality – this is “hypostasis, I”, and the airplane – this is his “nature”; we came to watch not the airplane itself (this can be done in a museum, in safe conditions), that is, we are not interested at the airfield in “what is an airplane?”, we are interested in “how is it?”, that is, the master class of the pilot – hypostasis…]. Thus, the Church speaks about Hypostasis and about energies, in which the Personality reveals itself, gives itself to be known, partake, but never about essence, nature, which is unknowable. Sin – this is precisely to know nature, better to say, the attempt to know it – that is, the intervention of consciousness in the unconscious, focusing of personality on nature, not on another personality [more about sin we will talk about in the section: “Sin”]. Kant spoke about the “thing in itself”, which can never be known. Therefore, sin is the focusing of one’s “gaze” on nature or energy [any, whether Divine or human, no matter] unrelated to hypostasis, outside of personal communication [science for the sake of science, philosophy for the sake of philosophy, progress for the sake of progress, pleasure for the sake of pleasure, or seeking it as a goal [True pleasure is always a result of hypostatic communication of personalities, in which the goal is not pleasure, but the Other, His unique Hypostasis; and where the goal is pleasure, there the Other becomes a means, an object – this satanic setting of the spirit is called fornication. See “Marriage”]… that is, everything that does not aim at the Other, Personality and Her good, everything that is outside the context of communication of personalities in Love – sin, fornication].