...[There is a] sense, however, in which we...agree as Orthodox that God does cataphatically condescend to us in Biblical words and images (icons) which do reveal His mind to us in the mind of Christ. Moreover, we can hear and speak this Word and the words as the Truth of God without ever once falling into the analogical trap of falsely and idolatrously believing God's mind to be an extrapolation of the created realities we encounter here below. We owe it to our Scholastic and moderate-realist friends to emphatically affirm that Orthodox apophatic theology is not a Gnostic repudiation of language. Even further, by virtue of the Incarnation in which Deity and humanity have been perfectly joined, we can affirm in Christ realities, perhaps even Grace, which are both created and uncreated. Also, "`There is nothing strange,' Palamas writes, `in using the word "grace" both for the created and the uncreated and in speaking of a created grace distinct from the created.'" (John Meyendorff, _A Study of Gregory Palamas_, The Faith Press / St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1964, 1974 [French, 1959], p.164).

November, 1997

APOPHASIS / TRANSCENDENTALS

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Index