Our Online Course of the Mystical Orthodox Theology for Our English Orthodox Friends

Online Course of the Mystical Orthodox Theology

By Father Drd. Dorin Octavian Picioruş

Introduction

3 November 2006

We propose a course for initiation in pompous and unknown depth of orthodox theology, namely in the Mystical Theology. The course is not ready and we deliver it to you, but will appear as an interaction between me and you.

Every discourse you will be able to ask questions strictly on what was presented previously. The quaestions, the remarks, the additions will serve as guidance for subsequent lectures. But, although we do not have the exact content of the lectures we know what we will discuss in great and where we get. Nothing will be at fortune. Bibliography course will be to strengthen the allegations presented and not in place.

You’ll hand, if you work with us, a non-conformist course in exposure but with dogmatic fidelity in content. We wish: audition leafy heart!

The First Discourse

3 November 2006

Validity / current rate, or about life as Theology

If we are beginners in theological knowledge or if we are in advanced knowledge Teology we need to charge depths Orthodox faith is a real need, and still burning. Reporting our God is a living subject, should be a lively topic for the whole of our being. Even if we do not write longing of God, if it does not describe and it exists, and our prayers are depictions of own heart to God, then everything we write, in a certain way, what we feel.

Theological writings of the Scripture and of the Church Parents have emerged as the personal testimony of truth and love hearts, written in deliberately. They could not be written, according to Saint John Mouth of Gold / Chrysostom [introduction to the Homylies at Matthew], if we hoarded clean heart, to contemplation itself God. Writing, confession, written testimony arose as a matter of fixing the truth, for those who need to read again. In other words, not written the book appeared as a replacement live our experience with God, but to ensure reliability of our sensation, to help us understand our vices of love, that is how some of our exagerations refer to God. The book appeared for those who do not have the heart of hot, but hard, made of stone.

What we call Holy Books, are the writings we have remained from those we recognize as Saints. The problem of the sanctity and the Saints will be handled in full in our future lectures.

What we call Holy Books are, above all, reports the accuracy, earnestly, spiritual of events oeconomy of God with the world.

The simple beliver honor in the first place Holy Scripture. He don’t know much about the authors themselves, how shows manuscripts in which to hold us, about how it should be interpreted, but it an honor that Holy. So, and is: quite Scripture is sacred, everything revealed, quite a large divinely enigmas, which can not be crossed only on the extent of your experience. You can not talk only with the knowledge, in mesure of your experience. What should you exceed honore very reverence and leave the others higher than yourself, to talk about those things.

If you start to read Scripture does not mean that we get somewhere, at one end. The one reading of Scripture, that is the first reading them, not only a means accommodation with scriptural events, how they put the problem, with its mysteries. It assumes that alone without any help, you can understand Scripture is pure suicide. Not that we did not understand anything, but we understand what hallows us, what really fills us.

You must read Scripture and we will make an end life and, insofar as this reading leads us to understand that we are at the first steps, however, that we did not understand much about this from what we read, then stay well with reading. It means that God has enlightened minds in essentially, to understand that Scripture is a huge ocean, you’ll never be able to contemplate in its depth and beauty, but that, without it, we do not have any chance of incipient truth.

The collocation incipient truth we have not really said a random. At one time we propose a different set of phrases, which will relieve the fact that the literal knowledge of Scripture is the lowest possible level of understanding. Reading, must understand and to note the issue, is not knowledge. In the field of Theology, to read means to be informed. To get information means to be full of books, but no Theologian.

Theology is a harismatical gift, a guerdon a holy life, of continuu accenssion in grace, we all say.

Theology that I speak about now is perception and living of the fact, that relationship with God means living life to God, that is the feelling His grace.

If we talk about life, experience and action it is supposed that we live, that we are alive. If you do not believe we are alive it means that we are crazy or jokers.

A man in all minds recognizes before all that he is alive and will fully prouve his vitality. If you move, you are alive. If your head hurts, you know that it means that you have a head.

And if we know that we exist and recognize God as our Creator, then, the more recognize that God is alive.

Scripture has in her words The Living God [Josua 3, 10; IV Kings 19, 4; 19, 16; East. 6, 13; Ps. 41, 2, 83, 2, Is. 37, 4, 37.17; Dan. 6, 27, Bal. 1, 6, Mat. 26, 36, I Tim. 4, 10, 6, 17; Ebr. 3, 12 cf ed. BOR 1988, a Romanian edition of Bible]. Scripture does not imply that God is alive, but the authors had experience of life with God on their own skin, id est personaly. They have not imaginated that they were seeing, that know things that they did not know, nor have told stories to which we asleep while reading them. They said what was at the begenning, what they have heard, what they saw and what they felt either directly [Cf I In.1, 1] from their life with God and His manifestation in the world, in His creation.

If they wrote what they felt from God and God is alive, is most alive as possible, the only truly Living and above all life, they have not written about death, but about life. They wrote about the life of God, about God and have written for some people alive, very alive, and energically alive.

God has not left written His truth to some stupid people, to lose-summer or sinners who have not repent, but some Saints. Holiness, if we already talked about life, about life experience, should be in touch with life.

When you say someone is Holy, we say, no dobt about, that he lived and lived as a Saint. What is Saint, I repeat, will speak on the go.

But we revendicate Saints of those who have lived holy and not fairy tales. We believe in the evidences. While going through the heads of many that we believe in what we see is not and has not seen anyone, our faith is evidence. For that, I said before, the authors of Scripture have written things for sure about certain things. If you do not accept that Scripture is to write things safe and say that their authors are not real, all as well we can say that nobody has ever written and that, actually, there is nobody there to the face of this earth.

We may denied and so on Eminescu [the national poet of Romania], because we have not got it in life (and, therefore, what we do not see, doesen‘t exist), we can not believe in waves mobile thelephony (because that is not detectable with eye, doesen‘t exist] and we believe that neither our mother, even we exist and we have slow mind.

But we believe and maintain that we are alive, and that Eminescu, mobile phone waves and mothers are actually there.

So if we exist, then God exists and He has created us, and we are not created for nothing. It means that He has a plan with us. And if He is alive and made us alive and His words are spirit and life, it means that the problem of live should especially preoccupies us. Not that life as long and by any means, but the intensity of life and love our relationship with God.