You wonder why I sometimes put a question-doubt ‘if?’ (e.g., if there is a God? If God is Love? If it is really as the Orthodox Christians say?). Few can talk nonsense, fantasize. Therefore: ‘Test everything’, check, ask for arguments (where did you get this from?), demand logical consistency. (And report to yourself: on what basis do you trust someone?! For example, Orthodox Christians – just because they call themselves that and shout that they know the most; I think this is not a reason to trust them! Let them first present arguments, and then we will talk about something with them!). And if it is as it is said, then ‘Hold on to what is good’… (And then we say ‘God exists’, but we live like atheists; we say, repeating like parrots after someone, ‘God is Love’, but we live like pagans… Then what are we talking about when we say something – pouring from the empty into the void?!).
God is Love, and this means that God does not take risks, in the sense that He does not do something without knowing the result in advance, randomly (e.g., creates free beings and does not know whether they will reach the fullness of being, deification, Happiness or not?!). Love is always seeing, knowing, responsible. (Therefore, since God-Love creates free beings, He knows how to lead them to the Fullness of Being!
Yes, yes, and considers, having weighed His powers, the freedom of created beings and their possibility to refuse God (Fullness of Being) and choose non-existence. God knows, since He is Love, how to convert the lost to the truth, how to bring to Fullness, the Completion of His creation, when He will be all in all!).
The Church, when it proclaims that God is Love, testifies to this Truth precisely because it already knows the fullness of Being (Resurrection), testifies about this Truth with knowledge of the irreversible process of deification of all creation (which began with the Annunciation, when the Word became Man), or better said: the irreversible process of revelation of the Kingdom of God, deification in free beings, which has already been accomplished in Christ, the first fruit of which is the Most Holy Theotokos, who has already achieved deification. Indeed, the Church can confidently testify something when it knows something for sure, and not just sees some process, the end of which is not known for sure. The Church could not testify that God is Love if all creation had not already been saved, deified, brought to fullness of Being, to ‘the measure of the stature of Christ’. Love is absolute responsibility. Therefore, God, being Love, when creating the world, took on Himself the responsibility for all creation – that nothing would perish, but all would be given Eternal Life! If even one being was not saved, not deified (not capable of containing God), then the Church could not say ‘God is Love’ (because the Church, being the pillar and bulwark of the Truth, cannot speak untruth, and only speaks what it knows), at most, what it could say is that God Loves (because He still saves), but not at all that He ‘loved to the end’. ‘By their fruits you shall know them’, by the fruits the Church recognized God as Love, in the responsibility that God manifested in saving and bringing Creation to completion, deification!
If the Orthodox Christians are telling the truth (not those who only call themselves Orthodox – they say nothing, and at best (at most) can only repeat someone else’s words, quote someone, usually not understanding the content, but those who are Orthodox in their lives, Spirit-bearers), as they claim, they know God, who is Love, then it means that we are all already deified, saved, resurrected. The Lord gave the Gift of the Holy Spirit, having poured It out on all flesh at Pentecost (the actualization of which occurs in each creature in its own time). But God gives the Gift, necessarily responsibly (because He is seeing, true, knowledgeable Love), only to those who can receive It without harm to themselves. (When it comes to receiving the Holy Spirit, containing It in oneself, it is not about becoming a vessel or a temple in which, like some ‘substance’, the Holy Spirit will be contained, it is about us becoming spiritual, our being must become spiritual, all being must be ‘pierced’, ‘saturated’ with the Holy Spirit; it is about mutual penetration, mutual knowing (a sword heated to redness – fire and iron: see above)). The Kingdom of God is the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Deification, the Spirit of Resurrection, Eternal Life… To receive the Spirit of resurrection, one must resurrect, to receive the Holy Spirit – one must already be spiritual in all being, to receive the Kingdom of God, Eternal Life, one must be in Eternity (sitting at the right hand of the Father). It is precisely about this that the verbal icon of the Lord’s Ascension into Heaven speaks (in the symbolic language of the Church: ascension is not a spatial-temporal category, but a process of spiritualization, deification of human being; heaven is not a cosmic category, it is the Kingdom of God, it is a dynamic state, the flow of Trinitarian Divine Life), that is, the manifestation of absolute deification, spiritualization of our being, which is already capable of containing the fullness of Divine Life (This happened at the Annunciation, and appeared at Pentecost; incidentally, the apostles could not have seen the Resurrected, not being such themselves! Compare the conversation between Seraphim of Sarov and Motovilov about the meaning of life: ‘You could not have seen me in the Holy Spirit if you were not in It yourself’; ‘like attracts like’ and ‘like sees like’; be attentive when considering the chronology (and order) of events on verbal icons, especially when it comes to the period from the Resurrection to Pentecost, and on the icon it is often the other way around: the future is shown as the past, and the past – as the future, so be careful!). Therefore, it is said that there was not yet the Spirit on the apostles (He is with you and will be in you…), because Jesus had not yet been glorified, that is, had not yet resurrected us (our being) in Himself. But when he resurrected, then during the ‘forty’ (in the symbolic language the number ‘forty’ signifies fullness, in this context, a preparatory period for something; e.g., Moses fasted for 40 days to be able to receive the Law, Elijah prepared for 40 days for the vision of God, the Lord fasted for 40 days before His Messianic ministry, etc.) days ‘He showed Himself alive with many reliable proofs’ and spoke about the Kingdom of God, taught how to be citizens of the Kingdom of God, which they (like each of us) already are, as those who have resurrected! (That is why he commanded the apostles: ‘Go, teach all nations (how to be children of God – V.A.), baptizing (and then give birth to Eternal Life, that is, introduce them into the flow of Divine, Hypostatic Life)’; teaching and baptism mutually precede one another: no baptism without teaching, no teaching without baptism). We are all already resurrected, but not all have yet discovered resurrection in themselves (The Kingdom of God is among us and in us, but we are not yet in the Kingdom of God!). We have already resurrected (although not everyone sees it yet – see below) – we cannot die anymore (although we can, through folly, through ignorance, not being proclaimed, want this – to fall away from God).