Having outlined the general context, now we can also define and describe the main, fundamental terms and concepts:
GOD, HYPOSTASIS, PERSONALITY, TRUTH,
FREEDOM, LOVE – these are identical, interchangeable terms (if they will denote their specific historical meaning “in flesh”, and this is not obviously from the context, we will clarify – V.A.). Since these terms indicate a Divine reality that cannot be defined, designated, or delineated, we must correct ourselves – we will be describing the reality they point to. The word “never” can contain that which is ineffable… (Since we have declared such a grand theme as an introduction to the theology of the Orthodox Church, then in giving a description of the key, fundamental terms, we will try simultaneously to reveal, and we will be revealing throughout the entire booklet, the essence of Orthodoxy and the criteria for discerning spirits – whether this is the theology of the Orthodox Church, or just the same name, form, but a spirit foreign, not of Truth. What is this experience that these words about God point to, how they originated: from the living experience of communion with God, God-perception, or is it theology in the pagan understanding of this word, that is, the word about gods, one of whom is the God that Christians believe in and preach, about whom these theologian-pagans read in the Christian Holy Scripture, and taking the theme, plot, began to fantasize and reflect on God [see below: Holy Scripture] and build their scholastic theories-fantasies, or about which god these words, and simultaneously we will know, “discern spirits, from whom they are”: whether from God, or from the fantasies of man, or from Satanic deception.
Necessary condition of Orthodox theology – is the teaching about Personality, Hypostasis, and everything said must correlate with the Mystery of Personality, Hypostatic being; for the essence, the core of Divine Revelation – revelation of Personality, Mystery of Hypostasis: God Trinity, Personality in three Divine Hypostases and Jesus Christ, God-man
– One Personality, hypostasizing two natures – Divine and human; unity in trinity and duality in unity; one nature [Divine] in three Hypostases – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and two natures [Divine and human] in one Hypostasis of the Logos, Jesus Christ respectively, according to the single mystery of Personality. Man also is a Mystery of Personality, as the image and likeness of God. Man, as one nature in billions of hypostases – potential personality, “image”, which realizes itself in “likeness” – in deification, Divine mode [way] of existence.
God-Trinity, God-man Jesus Christ and man, as the image and likeness of God – the Mystery of Personality and Hypostatic
Life – in this experience [in which the Church lives] and in it is born, and by it lives the Theology of the Orthodox Church, as a reflection on the Revelation, on entering into Divine reality, on partaking of Eternal Life, “the third heaven”… If some thoughts about God, Church, salvation, morality, asceticism, canons, etc. are autonomous, having value in themselves irrespective of Hypostatic Being, outside the revelation of Personality – a sign of paganism, fleshly mind, fantasies on the theme: “God”, “Trinity”, “Salvation” etc., as for example, fantasizes Catholicism, Protestantism and philosophers of various persuasions. This is a sign that the interlocutor has only heard about God, remaining outside the Church, or thinks they are in the Church, but actually “have not heard that there is a Holy Spirit” and remain without the experience of the Holy Spirit, which alone introduces a person to the mystery of Hypostatic, Personal Divine Life. This is a necessary condition, but insufficient, because one can talk a lot about personality, hypostasis, but not understand the essence of Revelation, not understand what the Church talks about and not have the experience of Hypostatic Being in the Holy Spirit. Catholicism is a telling example, which talks about the Trihypostatic God and about Personality, but its “filioque” and all its heretical scholastic teaching show that this teaching and these words about hypostasis, personality were born not from the catholic [universal] experience of the Church, the experience of life in the Holy Spirit, but are the progeny of the fleshly, proud mind, fantasies and conjectures, not true God-perception. Existentialist philosophers also talk a lot about personality, but it is – insights, intuitions of the human mind, not Revelation; yes, these philosophers sometimes have interesting and correct guesses, but it’s all guessing “on coffee grounds”, intuition, partial natural knowledge, which, as inherent to every person, irrespective of their faith [though distorted, twisted, darkened by sin], is proper to each person. But the possibility to talk about Personality in the absolute understanding of this word, about absolute freedom, appeared only after the Revelation of Hypostatic, Trinitarian, Divine Life by the Son of God, the second Hypostasis of the Holy Trinity. And through the salvific feat of Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit, we are given the possibility to become godlike personalities, we “have been given the power to become children of God”, who receive their being and life from God the Father through the Son by the Holy Spirit, i.e., become partakers and participants of the Divine, Hypostatic Eternal Life. Therefore, one can talk and guess a lot based on rumors, which come from the Church outward [whether orally or by Scripture], what Personality, Love, Freedom are, but to know the experience, the tangible reality, to which they point, is possible only in the Church, in the Sacrament of partaking in Divine Life – the Eucharist. Someone will say, it’s not about the words. Yes, but there is a centuries-old Tradition of the Church, which has polished terms, concepts, sought out, selected God-worthy words, there is a three-thousand-year symbolic language of the Church, not just rational nominalism. But the main thing is that we read the indication of the experience of the Church, in which God reveals Himself, gives Himself to “taste”, to be known, as the Trinity of Divine Hypostases, God as Humble Kenotic [Sacrificial] Love, God as Personality in Three Hypostases, which live absolute Unity [for example, the creative word of Christian writers, in which the Mystery of Personality is read: