“As God’s loving-kindness is ineffable and His love for our race surpasses human speech and reason, so too it belongs to the divine goodness alone, for this is ‘the peace of God which passes all understanding’ (Phil. 4:7). Likewise it follows that His union with those whom He loves surpasses every union of which one might conceive, and cannot be compared with any model.”

The Life in Christ, trans. C.J. deCatanzaro (Crestwood 1974) 45-46.

Fair summary?

- V.

“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God. And every one that loves is born of God and knows God. He that loves not, knows not God, ***for God is love.*** By this was the love of God manifested towards us, because God has sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we may live through him. In this is love - not as though we have loved God, but because He has first loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God has so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God abides in us, and his love is perfected in us.”

Expresses the apophatic nicely (”no one has seen God at any time”), while also making the statement that God is love.

Thoughts?

- V.

“God is a jealous God.”
“…Lest he become angry…”
etc.

We do not understand these, however, in the sense that English adjectives convey to the heterodox mind. We consider them not attributes of a person, nor conditions of a person, but instead actions or, if you will, energies of a person. For us, as the Muslims say “God be merciful” we may say “Lord have mercy”. The energies of God are God uncreate, and we do not consider these to be analogous to our own condition: “My ways are not your ways.”

So there are a handful of ways that adjectives are used:
* One might say God is loving. But more correctly, God loves us. In a particular place and time, or for all eternity particular persons. But never in general.
* One might say God is a jealous God. And there we mean not an attribute of God, but an energy, if you will.
* We might say God be merciful to me a sinner, where we more often say “have mercy on me” - we are not asking God to change his quality but to change his activity toward us; this is an important distinction.
* When we say God is holy. Remember, we also say that none is holy except God. So we are definitely not making an analogy - how can we? Instead, we are stating that what God is, is incomparable, beyond being beyond comparison, unattainable by anything else, and still we remember that we refer to God’s energies, and not God’s essence, which is indescribable. To say that God is holy is like saying that God is the Lord. God is what we can never be, except by deification - by becoming God. And that is a union in the Energies of God, not the essence.

I’m willing to be corrected, of course, if I’ve erred, but I think I haven’t.

Was I reading him correctly?