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The visibility of God

God is not a physical thing and thus naturally enough God is not visible to us in the way largish physical objects are. Nor is God visible in the metaphorical sense physical particles, forces, etc, are. On the other hand I think that the proposition “God is invisible” is grossly misleading. I say God is visible, indeed more visible than the people around us. After all, we can basically only see peoples’ bodies, and in a rough analogy God’s visible body would be nature itself. But we can see the person of God directly and immediately in a way we can’t see the people around us.

Thus to experience beauty is to experience God. God *is* beauty, beauty is in the essential nature of God, one foundation of all of God’s perfections. I will here state but not argue that what we call “good” is simply the beauty of an action or disposition. Of course we can experience beauty in some weaker or stronger sense, but the actual beauty we experience is God. Thus in experiencing beauty we touch God, we have knowledge by acquaintance of God in a way that is beyond our usual experience of the people around us. And to create something of beauty is to reveal God to oneself and to others.

Secondly, to experience love – the kind of self-transcending universal love that Christ realized and demonstrated in His life among us – to experience that love is to experience God too. Actually it is not just to directly and immediately experience God. It is to partake in God’s nature, it is to transform oneself into the character of Christ, it is to achieve that which is called repentance. It is for this reason that the church speaks of the charity in our soul as the most significant thing of all. It is actually the only thing that’s significant and all other aspects of faith are the servants of that one thing. An act of love is an act of creation – by loving we become Christ’s co-creators.

The third experience of God is that of experiencing being itself. In a sense this goes deeper than experiencing for it is the very ground of it. The fundamental nature of the human condition, the very fact that we are here, our very state of consciousness, is that of being sustained by God. I will state but not argue that truth is just what characterizes those thoughts that comport with being, those thoughts that guide us to a better understanding or to the realization of what there is.

Finally I find that there is a natural way to associate these three experiences or interactions with the absolute, with the three hypostases of God as spoken of in the Christian tradition. Thus beauty naturally associates with the Holy Spirit, our Comforter (and in the Orthodox and Catholic traditions with the veneration of Mary). Love naturally associates with Christ, the actual embodiment of love, the creator force of all that is us and around of us. And being naturally associates with the Father. Since beauty and love are the passive and active dimensions of being and all three are necessary for perfection, we get to the basic understanding of the trinity: namely of the three distinct hypostases of the same being and substance, and of not one being without the other. It may be a coincidence, but probably it isn’t, how well the idea comports with the traditional “from the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit”: “from being, through love, in beauty”. And how it illuminates the sentences “the Son is begotten by the Father”: “being begets love”. And “the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father”: “beauty proceeds from being”. And of course the Father is neither begotten nor proceeds. Finally we may sometimes lose sight of the Son and of the Holy Spirit – of love and of beauty – but we can’t possibly lose sight of the Father – of being. Thus it’s not wonder that the Father was in the initial revelation to us.

Again, it may be a coincidence but if so it is a beautiful coincidence that the holy books of the three great monotheistic religions include in turn the sentences “God is truth”, “God is love”, and “God is beauty”.

Finally I would like to testify how good it is to have the sense that we live truly and absolutely immersed in God: That our very being and all that is valuable in every second of our lives is God. We in God, like a fish in the sea.

Dianelos Georgoudis, June 2017
 

questfortruth

Well-Known Member
God is not a physical thing and thus naturally enough God is not visible to us in the way largish physical objects are. Nor is God visible in the metaphorical sense physical particles, forces, etc, are. On the other hand I think that the proposition “God is invisible” is grossly misleading. I say God is visible, indeed more visible than the people around us. After all, we can basically only see peoples’ bodies, and in a rough analogy God’s visible body would be nature itself. But we can see the person of God directly and immediately in a way we can’t see the people around us.

Thus to experience beauty is to experience God. God *is* beauty, beauty is in the essential nature of God, one foundation of all of God’s perfections. I will here state but not argue that what we call “good” is simply the beauty of an action or disposition. Of course we can experience beauty in some weaker or stronger sense, but the actual beauty we experience is God. Thus in experiencing beauty we touch God, we have knowledge by acquaintance of God in a way that is beyond our usual experience of the people around us. And to create something of beauty is to reveal God to oneself and to others.

Secondly, to experience love – the kind of self-transcending universal love that Christ realized and demonstrated in His life among us – to experience that love is to experience God too. Actually it is not just to directly and immediately experience God. It is to partake in God’s nature, it is to transform oneself into the character of Christ, it is to achieve that which is called repentance. It is for this reason that the church speaks of the charity in our soul as the most significant thing of all. It is actually the only thing that’s significant and all other aspects of faith are the servants of that one thing. An act of love is an act of creation – by loving we become Christ’s co-creators.

The third experience of God is that of experiencing being itself. In a sense this goes deeper than experiencing for it is the very ground of it. The fundamental nature of the human condition, the very fact that we are here, our very state of consciousness, is that of being sustained by God. I will state but not argue that truth is just what characterizes those thoughts that comport with being, those thoughts that guide us to a better understanding or to the realization of what there is.

Finally I find that there is a natural way to associate these three experiences or interactions with the absolute, with the three hypostases of God as spoken of in the Christian tradition. Thus beauty naturally associates with the Holy Spirit, our Comforter (and in the Orthodox and Catholic traditions with the veneration of Mary). Love naturally associates with Christ, the actual embodiment of love, the creator force of all that is us and around of us. And being naturally associates with the Father. Since beauty and love are the passive and active dimensions of being and all three are necessary for perfection, we get to the basic understanding of the trinity: namely of the three distinct hypostases of the same being and substance, and of not one being without the other. It may be a coincidence, but probably it isn’t, how well the idea comports with the traditional “from the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit”: “from being, through love, in beauty”. And how it illuminates the sentences “the Son is begotten by the Father”: “being begets love”. And “the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father”: “beauty proceeds from being”. And of course the Father is neither begotten nor proceeds. Finally we may sometimes lose sight of the Son and of the Holy Spirit – of love and of beauty – but we can’t possibly lose sight of the Father – of being. Thus it’s not wonder that the Father was in the initial revelation to us.

Again, it may be a coincidence but if so it is a beautiful coincidence that the holy books of the three great monotheistic religions include in turn the sentences “God is truth”, “God is love”, and “God is beauty”.

Finally I would like to testify how good it is to have the sense that we live truly and absolutely immersed in God: That our very being and all that is valuable in every second of our lives is God. We in God, like a fish in the sea.

Dianelos Georgoudis, June 2017
The deep text you have. P.S. I can see Him by the God given mind:
On absolute truth and its source, the God: the cyclic definition and proof
 
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