Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and many others, who were neither in holy orders nor specialists of academic ratio-philosophical theology]. If we do not read this experience [in the broad understanding of this word, which presupposes not just the checking of rational categories and constructions, but the integral experience of Communion with God], then such theology – is not Ecclesiastical, even if it dresses itself under all kinds of “angelic” names: “Orthodox…”, “Catholic…”, “Revelation…”, “God-given insightful elder…” and other “light-bearing” names and titles…
And now let’s give the floor to the father. We will try to select and compile his quotes in such a way as to describe the reality they point to as simply as possible. During the reading of the entire booklet, we will highlight and emphasize certain nuances, facets of these multi-layered, multifaceted term-symbols, and, as needed, specify what we mean in a specific context – V.A.).
“The Church, which utters these words (or better said, uses them to reveal its experience of God-perception – V.A.), is not an institution or academy writing doctoral or candidate dissertations. The Church is Life in the Holy Spirit. Thus, everything within it correlates with this experience of hypostatic life, and everything (Sacraments, Scriptures, rites, rituals, music, icons, architecture, etc. – V.A.) points to this Joy of Knowing the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit, which is the life of the Body of Christ. Therefore, these term-symbols we wish to describe are not rational categories valuable in themselves and that can be quoted, used in one’s rational theories, philosophical constructs, or fantasies on the subject… (see section: Scriptures. Quoting – V.A.). They are rational symbols that have value and significance only when related to the reality they ‘manifest’ and point towards. Therefore, they are only alive within the context (when they point to… – V.A.) of life in the Mystery of the Holy Trinity, into which we are invited to enter and of which we partake through the Holy Spirit. When a philosopher or scientist creates their theoretical model or hypothesis (of course, only about the world within the limits of created nature, within the limits of created intellect, they are not given more without Revelation – V.A.) and even receives partial confirmation through a laboratory experiment, as a person who reads, these results incite me to nothing but rational agreement or disagreement and, at most, a moral stance. But every Word of the Church is an appeal, a call (addressed to the whole person, not just the intellect – V.A.) to communion, to life in and with God; to actualize ‘one’s’ life as a Personality – a Divine, Trinitarian mode of existence. This summons, this call, must be clearly understood. Therefore, to understand Whom the Church’s Theology (Whom the Church knows – V.A.) is about, let us briefly describe the key word-terms-symbols.
The beginning, the foundation, the possibility of all theology – the Word, the Logos Jesus Christ – is the Revelation of God in Man. Theology, God-perception begins and is born only there, where there is an experience of God, that is where God and the human-theologian are one. In the Old Testament there was Revelation, but there was no theology; prophets knew there was a God, communicated with a God who was an external, formidable authority to them and this communication happened through the mediator Angel of Yahweh; in images, symbols, shadows they saw ‘the shadow of God.’ God (Who He is – Personality, Trinity of Divine Hypostases; how He is – Humble Sacrificial Love – V.A.). The Old Testament, like all pagan religions, did not know, does not know, and cannot know anything without Jesus Christ, who says, ‘no one knows the Father, except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him; no one comes to the Father, except through the Son; I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life’ (we, Christians, take these Words of God in their absolute meaning: there is no other way to the Father – only through Jesus Christ, the God-man – V.A.). All prophets prophesied about the coming Messiah as the Lord gave them, but none of them knew the mystery of the Incarnation, nor could they contain it, and the cherubim with the flaming sword guarded the Mystery of the entry into the world of the Second Hypostasis of the Holy Trinity. Incarnation – when a person knows God by experience, when the Divine and human natures are united inseparably, unchangeably, indivisibly, and inseparably in the Hypostasis of the Logos Jesus Christ; in the Logos, God and Man became one – Man knows, knows God tangibly ‘as He is’ (Theology exists only in the Orthodox Church, which lives the catholic experience of God in the Mystery of the Eucharist; and partially in the Roman Catholic, which knows God to the extent of its proximity to [or rather distance from] the Church and as a memory [rational] of a millennium-long presence in the Catholic [Universal] Church, and in which there is the Eucharist, but the key to its understanding is lost – the Mystery of Personality, Hypostatic Being; and in Protestants and all other religions – only guesses, conjectures, ideologies, which cannot be questioned, but must be taken on (faith), and which can only be verified after death [in them there is no Eucharist – experiential knowledge of the Triune God] – V.A.).