So in other words you are saying we can be like Jesus but we can’t BE Jesus?
But Jesus said greater works you shall do because I go to the Father.
Barb
In a sense that’s what is being said, but putting it the way you did kind of skirts the real issue. A more exact thing to say is that we can live with the Life of God, but we can’t BE the Life of God.
The reason that simply saying we can be like Jesus (or just God) without being God is that “like” can be taken to mean that we don’t actually share anything substantial with Him, but that we just resemble Him. The authentic Tradition is that we DO share something substantial with Him in terms of Grace and Divinity, just as we share something substantial with Him in terms of human nature. You and I are “like” eachother, but we also share the same nature, so our likeness goes beyond mere outward appearance or similarity, and reaches down to the very core of what we are. If we both run, we are “like” eachother, but in a much less profound way that the sense in which we are “like” eachother because we share humanity.
Our likeness to God is by both ways, but not to the extent that we ARE God the way the Trinity is. We share in God’s Life, His very nature, without being God in precisely the same way as the Trinity. So by God sharing Himself substantially with us (through Grace and the Holy Spirit) we are able to do things “like God does”, like Love with Divine Charity rather than merely human emotion, and see God face to face as the Trinity does.
Catholic Dude: The “essence of Divinity”, in the theological approach you’re quoting, is to be all of those attributes all at once, eternally, without division or distinction, utterly simple and yet possessing all of it. Note that it’s to BE these attributes, not merely HAVE those attributes. The human mind is utterly unable to understand such a reality as this, and therefore can be said to not have any understanding of the Essence of God. We can speak of the attributes, and talk about the Essence in a certain way, but never “as it is” (utterly complete and simple and infinite), only in a vague and hazy way. Even speaking of the attributes takes us away from the “true essence” of God, because in God these attributes couldn’t be discussed separately at all; by even talking about them as individual things we demonstrate how far removed we are from understanding “the essence of God”.
So the Energies are a convenient way to say that we’re talking about these real “attributes” in a distinct way without violating the fact that they’re not truly distinct and separate. They are still God, it’s just that it’s God put through our “lense”, similar to how clear “white light” becomes all the colors of the rainbow when put through a prism. In fact I think “white light” is perhaps the most appropriate analogy, and one that was unfortunately unavailable to the ancients because they didn’t understand the properties of light and color to the extent that we do.
Basically clear light contains all colors in it, yet it’s utterly invisible. Only when it hits an object that reflects a certain color do we actually see this light, and then we only see the color/colors being reflected. Space, for example, is utterly dark, yet is FILLED with light from every direction; only when this light hits dust, or a planet, or what have you does it become visible, and yet when it becomes visible it’s not the “pure light that contains all colors” the way it naturally is.
God is a bit like the clear light; utterly perfect and containing all attributes and perfections as one simple being in a manner similar to how clear light contains all colors in a simple form. When we see colors we are actually seeing clear light being “broken down”, and when we speak of God’s attributes it is like speaking of “red” or “blue” which are both contained in clear light without division or distinction.
continued…
