All pagan dogmatics [books written by people, “churches” from the fleshly mind, not from the experience of God – Personality in Three Hypostases, which (these books) often lead infants astray with loud titles “Orthodox Dogmatic Theology…” etc.; with these books, unfortunately, and still in many Orthodox seminaries “professors” enlighten seminarians, future pastors-enlighteners; what kind of light to expect from such darkness?!], guides, in which supposedly “illuminates” the faith of the Church, that is, the experience of the Church as a God-man Reality and Truth, as the experience of Hypostatic Life in Love, have and take not Hypostasis, Personality and relate everything to it, but, on the contrary – an abstract, faceless Divine nature and as an addition to it later mention still about Three Hypostases, because so it is written in the Gospel, about which it is necessary to say, so that the philosophical system be completed, including in it all available (of course, only written, not experienced) facts. The experience of the Church is absolutely different from pagan philosophical interpretations. The experience of the Church – it is always the experience of Personality. The Church never talks about nature, but only about Hypostatic Life, and relates everything with It: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with (to) God, and the Word was God”, “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Him whom You have sent, Jesus Christ”, “That they all may be one: as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You, that they also may be one in Us – that the world may believe that You have sent Me. And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one; I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me and have loved them as You have loved Me.”… One could rewrite the whole Bible, and everything would be about one thing – about Personality, Hypostatic, Personal Being. Even from these three quotes it is evident that the purpose of the existence of everything – the Father (Hypostasis, not Divine Nature, about which it is said somewhere: “God dwells in unapproachable light”, “No one has seen God at any time, nor can see”), Personality in Three Hypostases (“Father… and Him whom You have sent”: Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit), and that it is not about nature is obviously visible to the naked eye: the unity of man by nature cannot be the goal (“that they may be one, just as We are one”), because in man and in God (human hypostases and Divine) one nature (human for human hypostases, “I” and Divine for Divine Hypostases, “I”), as a fact (yes, the Church knows this, and we, the proclaimed, so far perceive it by faith, through revelation), so it is exclusively about Hypostatic Unity (“You, Father, in Me, and I in You”, “I and the Father are one”). If still Divine unity and human unity can somehow be philosophically fantasized and fervently defended (even to blood) one’s position, then the unity of God and man by nature (“I in them, and You in Me”) no philosophical stretch can withstand – the Church, as the Mystery of Hypostatic Life, lives by this Unity and only testifies to it, and only preaches it. Someone will say: “Do not rush to put a period. Look: Jesus Christ, speaking about His Body and Blood, says – ‘this is My Body’, ‘this is My Blood’, ‘take, eat’, ‘who does not eat and drink…’, then is He not talking about nature?” And the apostle Paul directly enjoins to think “about the Lord’s Body”, because who does not consider (does not try to understand, as far as possible, for the mind, crippled by sin) about the Lord’s Body and Blood, partakes unto judgment and condemnation”. The response to this remark will be given in detail in the next chapter, which is entirely devoted to the topic of the Eucharist, and now only note that in those words the talk is not about Christ’s deified flesh and blood, which we supposedly eat under the appearance of Bread and Wine, this is a pagan, born of the fleshly mind fantasy (yes, and Catholic, and Protestant as well, and what’s even scarier, even many who call and advertise themselves as right- slavish, but think…), which knows no other unity, than by flesh (by nature – pantheism, materialism, monophysitism…) does not know (we are talking about philosophical fantasies, not about experience), and without the Holy Spirit and Eucharistic life cannot know. So what then does the Lord speak about? – in the next chapter.
Such pseudo-Orthodox booklets, which with their loud title pretend to present the faith of the Church, can be recognized even by the form of presentation of the content (yes, in such a book you can find a lot of Orthodox, quotes from the Bible and a bunch of excerpts from the Holy Fathers, quoting well-known Orthodox theologians, or even entire chapters from their works [we will dwell on this disease in more detail in the section:
“Sacred Scripture. Quoting”], but all this is done with one purpose [this can even be very sincere, with good intentions, but very often good intentions pave the way to…] – to present one’s own philosophical vision, but by no means the faith of the Church, as She knows, knows God. For example, from the same words [good in themselves] you can compose either a blessing or a curse; from the same, good in themselves [Orthodox quotes, articles], elements, to build road signs, signs that will show diametrically opposite directions; the same atomic energy can be used for the good of humanity [for example, for the production of electricity], or for its destruction [for example, an atomic bomb]). So how can one determine by the content of a given scholastic booklet to what extent it is pagan [that is, born exclusively of an earthly mind, without experience of the Holy Spirit, even to a small extent]? If, for example, the teaching about God begins with the chapter “About God, one by nature”, that is, with the teaching about the Divine nature and its properties, then such a booklet is highly scholastic, and I would advise to immediately close it and if possible “burn” it.