how can one earn the Grace of God?

[davidthegreek]

any thoughts on how someone can earn God's Grace?

Thanks.

 

[Shiranui117]

You don't earn God's grace. No one does.

 

[SageTree]

What is grace in the Orthodox Church, if you can touch on a few points please.

 

[Shiranui117]

What is grace in the Orthodox Church, if you can touch on a few points please.

In the Orthodox Church, we believe that God's grace is synonymous with His Energies, i.e. His interaction with His creation. Since God's actions are all done with the intent to bring us to salvation and eternal life with Him, we can speak of His Energies as being "saving Grace." And since God's grace is His action, we believe that His grace is uncreated, unlike some Protestants who say that there is such a thing as "created grace." Rather, since God's actions are a part of Who He is, we must logically hold that His graces/Energies are uncreated.

 

[SageTree]

In the Orthodox Church, we believe that God's grace is synonymous with His Energies, i.e. His interaction with His creation. Since God's actions are all done with the intent to bring us to salvation and eternal life with Him, we can speak of His Energies as being "saving Grace." And since God's grace is His action, we believe that His grace is uncreated, unlike some Protestants who say that there is such a thing as "created grace." Rather, since God's actions are a part of Who He is, we must logically hold that His graces/Energies are uncreated.

Would Grace and the Holy Spirit be similar, as I feel it is also referred to as 'the actions' of God in the world?

Thanks for this answer and all the rest as well.

:namaste

 

[davidthegreek]

In the Orthodox Church, we believe that God's grace is synonymous with His Energies, i.e. His interaction with His creation. Since God's actions are all done with the intent to bring us to salvation and eternal life with Him, we can speak of His Energies as being "saving Grace." And since God's grace is His action, we believe that His grace is uncreated, unlike some Protestants who say that there is such a thing as "created grace." Rather, since God's actions are a part of Who He is, we must logically hold that His graces/Energies are uncreated.

agreed. Some people (protestants), just don't know what to do with the Bible, that is why, they have messed it up all over the Globe. If it wasn't for them, People wouldn't be so confused regarding the good intentions of God for humanity.

 

[davidthegreek]

Would Grace and the Holy Spirit be similar, as I feel it is also referred to as 'the actions' of God in the world?

Thanks for this answer and all the rest as well.

:namaste

If I am mistaken I am sure someone will correct me. But I think Grace is the energies of the Holy spirit. But it definitely is uncreated. In fact, Grace is the nature of God in action. God acts according to his nature. His nature is Love, Grace, Justice, and mercy.

 

[Willamena]

If I am mistaken I am sure someone will correct me. But I think Grace is the energies of the Holy spirit. But it definitely is uncreated. In fact, Grace is the nature of God in action. God acts according to his nature. His nature is Love, Grace, Justice, and mercy.

Then how does one earn the Grace of God?

 

[Shiranui117]

Would Grace and the Holy Spirit be similar, as I feel it is also referred to as 'the actions' of God in the world?

No, the Holy Spirit is a Person, not a force. The Holy Spirit is the mediator of graces, but isn't in and of Himself the same thing as God's Energy. Those who say that the Holy Spirit is nothing more than "God's action in the world" are subscribing to later heterodox innovations, and are not in agreement with the Orthodox Church.

If I am mistaken I am sure someone will correct me. But I think Grace is the energies of the Holy spirit. But it definitely is uncreated. In fact, Grace is the nature of God in action. God acts according to his nature. His nature is Love, Grace, Justice, and mercy.

This is all perfectly correct. Just keep in mind that the Energies of Father, Son AND Holy Spirit are all synonymous with uncreated grace.

Then how does one earn the Grace of God?

It is not earned. God's grace is His gift to us that He gives without any preconditions, no matter where we are in life. We can never "earn" anything of God's.

Ephesians 2:9-10 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, 9 not of works, lest anyone should boast.

We're not worthy of God's grace and we can't earn it, but He gives it to us anyway. All we have to do is accept His grace and conform ourselves to it. So it's not really a question of "how do we EARN God's grace," but "how do we receive and cooperate with God's grace?"

 

[davidthegreek]

This is all perfectly correct. Just keep in mind that the Energies of Father, Son AND Holy Spirit are all synonymous with uncreated grace.


I think I stated it.


"how do we receive and cooperate with God's grace?"

can you share your thoughts regarding that?

Thanks.

 

[SageTree]

No, the Holy Spirit is a Person, not a force. The Holy Spirit is the mediator of graces, but isn't in and of Himself the same thing as God's Energy. Those who say that the Holy Spirit is nothing more than "God's action in the world" are subscribing to later heterodox innovations, and are not in agreement with the Orthodox Church.

So if you were to set up an office structure... how would you place the Trinity into it.

Admittedly, while I think I get the physics the Trinity is trying to describe,
I'm not completely sure I understand it.

I tend to feel more Unitarian about the whole order, feeling that emphasis the God-head, encapsulates veneration of the Three distinct personalities.

The Trinity, to me, feels like a 'means' to get to know God, like a deity in Hinduism ultimately points to Brahman... the Uncreated... the Energy behind the Trimurti of Brahma/Vishnu/Shiva.

I'm not closed to the idea, of course, but that is where I am coming from.
I am open-minded, as you know by now I'm sure....
So any Light you can shed on this from doctrine or personal explanation would be rightly accepted and considered.

 

[Shiranui117]

I think I stated it.

You did. I was just emphasizing Father, Son AND Holy Spirit.

can you share your thoughts regarding that?

Thanks.

We accept God's grace by acknowledging His existence, and the fact that we must return to Him, and that we cannot accomplish this on our own; we need His help in doing so. We cooperate with God's grace by building a relationship with Him through payer, and by recognizing Him in all things, and by recognizing God's image within all people. The way to cooperate with God's grace is to love God and to love our fellow man, following the commands of Christ and walking with Him, being open to the Holy Spirit and His guiding presence.

All this is laid out in the Bible, really The Church has kept pure the Faith that Christ taught us, so there is also a great and sure source of guidance in living the Christian faith.

 

[Shiranui117]

So if you were to set up an office structure... how would you place the Trinity into it.

All 3 would be CEO's. But yeah, I don't know crap about business, so IDK if I'd be able to work with this metaphor very well...

Though, to be honest, the Trinity is a paradox; each metaphor fails to convey the full doctrine of the Trinity, and can only accurately cover a few aspects. One cannot take any of these metaphors too far, or else you get sidetracked into some or another heresy because of the inherent weaknesses of describing God in terms of His creation.

Think of speech as a mouth, voice and breath. The Father is the mouth, the voice is Christ, and the breath is the Spirit. Both voice and breath are needed to speak, but they have their source from the mouth. Speech is, of course, the Trinity.

One last attempt at a metaphor is to have ice, water and vapor; each is H2O, yet each shares their own properties. For the sake of the metaphor, let us assume that each stays in its own state; ice will always remain ice, water will always remain water, and vapor will always remain vapor. Each is H2O, yet distinct.

Admittedly, while I think I get the physics the Trinity is trying to describe,
I'm not completely sure I understand it.

If I may ask, is there anything specific you need clarified?

I tend to feel more Unitarian about the whole order, feeling that emphasis the God-head, encapsulates veneration of the Three distinct personalities.

Can you elaborate here? I think I understand what you're saying, but I want to be sure.

The Trinity, to me, feels like a 'means' to get to know God, like a deity in Hinduism ultimately points to Brahman... the Uncreated... the Energy behind the Trimurti of Brahma/Vishnu/Shiva.

This may be something that is only preserved in non-Protestant Christianity, but Orthodoxy in particular likes to think of three Persons in one God. In the West, it's one God in three Persons.

Looking at the link you gave, correct me if I'm wrong, but the views on the Trimurti seem to be more Modalist than strictly Trinitarian. Would you say that description is accurate?

I'm not closed to the idea, of course, but that is where I am coming from.
I am open-minded, as you know by now I'm sure....
So any Light you can shed on this from doctrine or personal explanation would be rightly accepted and considered.

Yes, I know you are indeed open-minded.

I used this as a reference point in a debate with Shermana a while back, I hope you don't mind if I bring it here, and I beg your pardon if this isn't the first time you've seen it...

This is from Metropolitan Kallistos Ware’s book “The Orthodox Way.” (pp. 29-31)

The central and decisive affirmation in the Creed is that Jesus Christ is “true God from true God”, “one in essence” or “consubstantial” (homoousios) with God the Father. In other words, Jesus Christ is equal to God the Father; he is God in the same sense that the Father is God, and yet they are not two Gods but one. Developing this teaching, the Greek Fathers of the later fourth century said the same about the Holy Spirit; he is likewise truly God, “one in essence with the Faher and the Son. But although Father, Son and Spirit are one single God, yet each of them is from all eternity a person, a distinct centre of conscious selfhood. God the Trinity is thus to be described as “three persons in one essence”. There is eternally in God true unity, combined with genuinely personal differentiation: the term “essence”, substance” or “being” (ousia) indicates the unity, and the term “person” (hypostasis, prosopon) indicates the differentiation. Let us try to understand what is signified by this somewhat baffling language, for the dogma of the Holy Trinity is vital to our own salvation.

Father, Son and Spirit are one in essence, not merely in the sense that all three are examples of the same group or general class, but in the sense that they form a single, unique, specific reality. There is in this respect an important difference between the sense in which the three divine persons are one, and the sense in three human persons may be termed one. Three human persons, Peter, James and John, belong to the same general class “man.” Yet, however closely they co-operate together, each retains his own will and his own energy, acting by virtue of his own separate power of initiative. In short, they are three men and not one man. But in the case of the three persons of the Trinity, such is not the case. There is distinction, but never separation. Father, Son and Spirit—so the saints affirm, following the testimony of Scripture—have only one will and not three, only one energy and not three. None of the three ever acts separately, apart from the other two. They are not three Gods, but one God.

Yet, although the three persons never act apart from each other, there is in God genuine diversity as well as specific unity. In our experience of God at work within our life, while we find that the three are always acting together, yet we know that each is acting within us in a different manner. We experience God as three-in-one, and we believe that this threefold differentiation in God’s outward action reflects a threefold differentiation in his inner life. The distinction between the three persons is to be regarded as an eternal distinction existing within the nature of God himself; it does not apply merely to his exterior activity in the world. Father, Son and Spirit are not just “modes” or “moods” of the Divinity, not just masks which God assumes for a time in his dealings with creation and then lays aside. They are on the contrary three coequal and coeternal persons. A human father is older than his child, but when speaking of God as “Father” and “Son” we are not to interpret the terms in this literal sense. We affirm of the Son “There was never a time when he was not”. And the same is said of the Spirit.

. . .Each possesses, not one third of the Godhead, but the entire Godhead in its totality; yet each lives and is this one Godhead in his own distinctive and personal way.

Elsewhere in the book, the Metropolitan speaks of the relationship between various members of the Trinity. I will summarize it as follows:

-The Father is the source(Greek: arche) of the Trinity, and so is in a certain sense "greater" than the Son and Spirit. Not by virtue of being more God than the other two, but by virtue of being the source of the Trinity. It is from Him that the Son is begotten and it is from Him that the Holy Spirit proceeds.

-The Son is eternally begotten of the Father, and is also called the "Logos" or "Word" of the Father. The traditional interpretation of this is that the Son is the Word by which God spoke the world into being. The Son is not a created being, for as it says in John 1:2-3, "He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made."

-The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father, or from the Father THROUGH the Son (The Latin filioque, "proceeds from the Father AND the Son", is not original and toes the line of heresy). Yet the Holy Spirit is not subordinate to the Father or the Son. As for how "being begotten" is different from "proceeding from," we cannot say.

When speaking of God's essence, we Trinitarians do not refer to "essence" as a general class or nature; for example, a human nature. Rather, we speak of God's Essence as signifying "the whole God as he is in himself," as Ware said. This shows an essence that is unique to God alone; for instance, I am different from you in how I am within myself (AKA, in my essence), and you are different from me in how you are in yourself (AKA, in your essence).

In Trinitarian thought, it is impossible to have just part of the Divine Essence; either you have the fulness of it, or you have none of it. If you have the fulness of the Divine Essence, then you are yourself fully God.

 

[SageTree]

Thank you, Friend.
I'm going to have to chew on that one...

but here are some answers... or more questions

I tend to feel more Unitarian about the whole order, feeling that emphasis the God-head, encapsulates veneration of the Three distinct personalities.

Can you elaborate here? I think I understand what you're saying, but I want to be sure.

What I'm saying is why do I have to go through the Trinity... why can't I contemplate and direct my Self towards knowing 'Speech' instead of it's parts, to use your metaphor?

The Trinity, to me, feels like a 'means' to get to know God, like a deity in Hinduism ultimately points to Brahman... the Uncreated... the Energy behind the Trimurti of Brahma/Vishnu/Shiva.

This may be something that is only preserved in non-Protestant Christianity, but Orthodoxy in particular likes to think of three Persons in one God. In the West, it's one God in three Persons.

Looking at the link you gave, correct me if I'm wrong, but the views on the Trimurti seem to be more Modalist than strictly Trinitarian. Would you say that description is accurate?

Interesting 3 in 1 vs 1 in 3..... in that way it DOES make more sense and I see the different distinction in language of person, essence, mode etc... which is sinking in slowly... sorry

In the Modalist way... yes... the Trimurti is made up of Gods that represent Modes of One God.
Perhaps I don't understand a strict Trinitarian model?
Are there any words beyond what you've share here, or a concept/language aid that might help further explain this to me so that I might realize it for myself.

For starters I'm going to read this page and see where it takes me.
Essence

Blessings of your sharing. Thank you.
SageTree