Man's Purpose According to Orthodox (Union With Divine Eros)

[St_Michael]

According to the Orthodox tradition of Christianity, God’s love is an uncreated energy. The purpose of man’s life is union with Divine eros or Theosis:

God, according to the Orthodox theological view, is One in a Trinity and a Trinity in One. As St. Maximus the Confessor, St. Dionysius the Areopagite, and other holy Fathers repeatedly say, God is filled with a divine love, a divine eros for His creatures. Because of this infinite and ecstatic love of His, He comes out of Himself and seeks to unite with them. This is expressed and realised by means of His energy or, better, His energies.

Here’s the full article:

THEOSIS* - DEIFICATION AS THE PURPOSE OF MAN’S LIFE

greekorthodoxchurch.org/theosis_how.html

This agrees with the Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga in Warranted Christian Belief:

Of course expressions of this eros are not found only in the Psalms. In Isaiah, we read, “I will rejoice over Jerusalem and take delight in my people” (65:19); “As a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will your God rejoice over you” (62:5b). This implies, I take it, not merely that God will rejoice over his people the way a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, but that the bride will return this love; when things go properly, God’s people love him the way a bride loves her new husband, with a similar sort of erotic desire.

The church is the bride of Christ, not his little sister. Theses scriptural images imply that God isn’t impassive, and that his love for us is not exclusively agapeic. They suggest that God’s love for his people involves an element of desire: he desires the right kind of response from us, and union with us, just as we desire union with him.

[St_Michael]

From the Orthodox Church in America:

God is love

The second definition of love as eros is love for the sake of union with the other. Erotic love is no sin when it is free from sinful passions. It can be the utterly pure desire for communion with the other, including God. All spiritual writers have insisted that such love should exist between God and man as the pattern for all erotic love in the world between husband and wife (See Sexuality, Marriage, and Family). Thus the mystical writers and spiritual fathers have used the Old Testament’s Song of Songs as the poetic image of God’s love for man and man’s love for God (Philo the Jew, Gregory of Nyssa, Bernard of Clairvaux, John of the Cross, Richard Rolle in England, et al.). Indeed the prophets have used the image of erotic love in explaining the Lord’s relation with Israel (Is 54; Jer 2–3,31; Ezek 16; Hos). And Saint Paul uses this image for Christ’s love of the Church (Eph 6). In the scriptures, the union of man with the Lord in the Kingdom of God is primarily revealed in the image of eros (Mt 22, Rev 19–22).

Full article here:

oca.org/orthodoxy/the-orthodox-faith/spirituality/the-greatest-virtue-is-love/god-is-love

[St_Michael]

Eros is most often associated with sexual arousal, but essayist Noelle Oxenhandler recognizes it’s presence in the midst of parenting. She describes the overwhelming delight of caring for her baby daughter. “I remember how palpably I experienced her too-muchness. It was a shudder in my body, an energy I had to soften, reign in, lest I squeeze her too hard, startle her with too exuberant a kiss.” She adds, “It is this feeling I want to call the eros of parenthood: an upswelling of tenderness, often with a tinge of amazement” ~~ Holy Eros, Pathways to a Passionate God, page 16 by Whitehead

[St_Michael]

To learn more about Holy Eros here’s a good book on the subject called “Holy Eros: Pathways to a Passionate God”

amazon.com/Holy-Eros-Pathways-Passionate-God/dp/1570758131/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1508981416&sr=8-1&keywords=holy+eros

Evelyn Eaton Whitehead is a developmental psychologist (Ph.D., University of Chicago) whose work focuses on spiritual development in adult life. James D. Whitehead is a theologian (Ph.D., Harvard University) who studies the interplay of religion and culture. In their shared career spanning forty-five years and fifteen books, the Whiteheads continue to explore the vital themes emerging in contemporary Christian spirituality.

[St_Michael]

One more quote from the book. From the chapter “Eros of Compassion”

Jesus told the story of a wayward son who returned to the father he had sorely wronged. The son’s homecoming took a surprising turn when his father did not respond in anger or withhold his welcome until after he had received an apology. He seemed uninterested in pointing out the error of his son’s ways or in ensuring that he had learned his lesson. Instead, the father rushed out to meet his son, overjoyed at his return. Sensing the boy’s humiliation and despair, his father treated him as an honored guest and planned a great celebration. Jesus tells us this is what God is like. God receives us not as judge but Abba, an extravagantly loving parent who wants our care for one another to show the same abundant concern. The lives of the godly will be marked not so much by the conspicuous good deeds of the righteous as by the humble compassion of those who to the world’s needs. Compassion is an experience of eros. Ordinarily we think of compassion as commiseration, as feeling the suffering of another person, but compassion has a more expansive meaning.

[St_Michael]

From the above article from the Orthodox church in America:

So it is that love as goodness (agape), love as union (eros), love as friendship (phila) are all to be found in God and man, between God and man, and between human beings. There is no form of true love which lays outside the realm of the spiritual life.

Here’s the link again:

oca.org/orthodoxy/the-orthodox-faith/spirituality/the-greatest-virtue-is-love/god-is-love

[St_Michael]

I have this up already but I will share it here. At the cross, Satan was defeated in the spirit realm by Michael the archangel. In the Catholic tradition, Michael the Archangel is the guardian and protector of the Holy Eucharist. For the Christian, the “Holy Grail” is the Eucharist or coming into union with Christ. That is, falling in love with Christ. Here’s what Mother Mary said in an apparition on September 25 in the 90’s (on my birthday) in Medjugorje:

Today I invite you to fall in love with Jesus in the most holy sacrament. Adore Him…Jesus will become your friend.

[St_Michael]

This language of falling in love is what the Orthodox teaches in it’s doctrine of theosis. Here’s another quote from the above Greek Orthodox:

The psyche of man, who is created in the image and likeness of God, yearns for God and desires union with Him. No matter how moral, how good man may be, no matter how many good deeds he may perform, if he does not find God, if he does not unite with Him, he finds no rest. Because holy God Himself placed within him this holy thirst, the divine eros, the desire for union with Him, for deification (gr. theosis). He has in himself the erotic power, which he receives from his Creator, in order to love truly, strongly, selflessly, just as his holy Creator falls in love with His world, with His creatures. This is so that with this holy erotic impetus and loving power, he falls in love with God. If man did not have the image of God in himself, he would not be able to seek its prototype. Each of us is an image of God, and God is our prototype. The image seeks the prototype, and only when it finds it does it find rest.

Link

greekorthodoxchurch.org/theosis_how.html

[St_Michael]

I have this up in another thread but it fits here with the theme of Holy Eros. This is the Christian Artist KB singing a song to his baby daughter about falling in love with her:

[St_Michael]

According to the Catholic Thomas Dubay in “The Evidential Power of Beauty”:

A genuine falling in love, our fifth need, is a capitulation to the beautiful. Falling in love here does not refer to superficial infatuations or egocentric lust but rather to a selfless commitment made to a fascinating beloved. While this is seen in ideal holy marriages, it is especially clear in the case of saints who are head over heals in love with the supreme Beloved, whose name is God. Saints see and are smitten. page 20

Most of all we are attracted by the radiance of a pure and saintly soul, one devoid of egocentrism and profoundly in love, possessing a profound contemplative prayer life and the transforming effects it brings along with it. p. 31

We first center our attention on the union aspect of this summit, a marvelous oneness between God and man. We do not become Divine in a literal sense. This union is a remarkable oneness of the human will with the Divine will, and the transfiguring likeness that results. Being head over heals in love with the Lord, man at this pinnacle of prayer intimacy is now freed from all selfish clinging’s and possesses an inner purity from anything ungodly pp. 253-254

The key to this is found in humility:

Perhaps the most radical condition for perfecting our eye is a growing freedom from egoism, a being stripped clean of self-centeredness. Why does one microbiologist thrill in the study of a living cell, while another seems unmoved? This first has no screens before his appreciative vision, no avarice, no vanity, no lust, no envy, no egoism. Just as the removal of cataracts restores clear vision, so does repentance restore the joy of youth and a capacity for the beautiful. Wonder at reality demands the humility to sit at the foot of a dandelion. The proud are so full of themselves that there is little room to marvel at anything else. Saints are typically awestruck at an insect, a flower, a star because they are burning with love and rooted in a perceiving honesty. That is, they are humble. p. 77