GOD

GOD. According to the theology (q.v.) of the Orthodox Church, as in for example Gregory of Nyssa and Dionysius the Areopagite (qq.v.), the word “God” denotes an activity of the transcendent and ineffable Creator. When it does not refer to the person of God the Father, it thus indicates the divine providence. “God” is how the divinity manifests itself to us and saves us. Divine providence has revealed itself most fully and finally in Jesus Christ, and thus in the persons of the Holy Trinity (q.v.). In confronting Orthodox thought, one must keep in mind its twin emphases on person and action. “God” is never abstract, never a mere concept. One does not, and cannot, approach the godhead as essence or being. The popular American phrase, “Supreme Being,” would not, for example, have found ready acceptance among the Church Fathers (q.v.) because they would have read it as wrongly including the divinity within the hierarchy of beings that constitutes created existence. Being and essence are instead the gifts of “God,” pointing to the divine activities (“energies”) that create and sustain the universe. Knowledge of God therefore means the experience of his grace and the encounter, in the Holy Spirit (q.v.), with the person of the incarnate Son of the Father.