Simple or Everywhere?

  • Thread starter Thread starter thinkandmull
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
T

thinkandmull

Guest
How does the East understand God? Do they speak of Him as simple (in the Western sense). Take a balloon: is God everywhere in it, almost extended (like I use to believe as a child). Or is he there only in it by His causation and power of presence (Aquinas’s view)?

Thanks 🙂
 
Hi,

Syriac Tradition:

God pre-exists all creations (both earthly and heavenly) and is Self-Existent. God is a mystery whose nature can’t be comprehended, and only through His divine revelation to us can we know something about God. Creatures are not able to penetrate this mystery, but God crossing the chasm can reveal something about Himself – ex: The Trinity.

All of creation is God’s self-revelation, which is imprinted in types and symbols.

I hope this helps,
keefa bar morun
 
How does the East understand God? Do they speak of Him as simple (in the Western sense). Take a balloon: is God everywhere in it, almost extended (like I use to believe as a child). Or is he there only in it by His causation and power of presence (Aquinas’s view)?

Thanks 🙂
From The Incarnation (by St. Athanasius)(17) There is a paradox in this last statement which we must now examine. The Word was not hedged in by His body, nor did His presence in the body prevent His being present elsewhere as well. When He moved His body He did not cease also to direct the universe by His Mind and might. No. The marvelous truth is, that being the Word, so far from being Himself contained by anything, He actually contained all things Himself. In creation He is present everywhere, yet is distinct in being from it; ordering, directing, giving life to all, containing all, yet is He Himself the Uncontained, existing solely in His Father. As with the whole, so also is it with the part. Existing in a human body, to which He Himself gives life, He is still Source of life to all the universe, present in every part of it, yet outside the whole; and He is revealed both through the works of His body and through His activity in the world.

spurgeon.org/~phil/history/ath-inc.htm
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top