Zi: 6 octombrie 2014

Rev. D.Th. Dorin Octavian Picioruş

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The Theology of the Sight of God 

Studies and translations

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Here are the parts 1, 2, 3…

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1. 2. 3. Moses and the Experience of the Glory of God

Although Exod. 3, 2 tells us, that into that language of fire was shown the Angel of the Lord, in the v. 4 not an Angel speaks with Moses, but the Lord^[1]. The revelational discussion (Exod. 3, 4–4, 17) of the two is impressive, it having extensive details.

looked toward earth before the Lord (Ibidem)^[2]. The interior state of Moses, then when he sees on God, is one of love obedient and not of ostentation. He feels that the place where God appeared to him is holy one and he receives the divine message with all liability. Moses is not considered worthy to lead the people of the promises (Exod. 3, 11), but the Lord just this thing waits: the self-denial of Moses and the putting of hope only in Him.

This God is the One who reveals Himself and from He comes out the divine brilliance.

„The pillar of cloud” and „the bright cloud” are two ecstatic descriptions, faithful the mode in that is seen the divine light sprang from God. From our point of view, the visions are descriptions of divine realities, discovered by God and in no way symbolic or mythical elements.

Just therefore we analyze all divine sights as living links, direct of God with the people and we see in ecstasy the most fully mode through which acquires the intimacy with God.

From putting in contrast of the places from Exod. 19, 17 and Exod. 19, 19 emerges that the coming of people to meet with God and his state at the base of mount Sinai is not identical with the state on the mountaintop, where God reveals Himself again in fire.

„The fume”, as well as „the cloud”, are ecstatic elements and not meteorological phenomena, as some simple „exercises of power” of God, through which to impress the mass of people from the base of mountain.

The discoveries of His glory are not cheap spectacular events, but they are constituted in divine oikonomic scores of human’s life and of the course of world history.

God is present on mount Sinai in the sight of Moses, is more intimate with him, in evident mode, but He is present and for people, He is in front of people, even if the people feels intimacy with God much more diminished.

placed in antithesis with the glory, His light, as long as this darkness produces divine brilliance in the being of people. The paradoxical remark of Scripture conceals an ecstatic meaning, for that in the place where we enter at God we are no longer seen by people and we do not see anything other than on Him^[5].

Moses does not know the passionate logic of the interval. He is in front of God, he talks with Him, his being is filled of divine light, of brightness and he bears the divine revelations as on some indelible fingerprints in his being. Therefore, he makes the things of holy tent after the face of those shown in mountain (cf. Exod. 25, 40; 27, 8), after the face of those on which he had seen in divine sight.

Moses is proving altogether open to God. He did not have something to hide from God and therefore and God is so intimate with him. Moses approaches to the Lord, he comes before Him (Exod. 24, 2), has the boldness of a clean heart, unfalsifiable by any passion.

made from sapphire and this sight {had} the strength of heavenly cleansing”) [Exod. 24, 10].

moment when has been shed the typological blood, stand the Lord and may be seen by the cleaned, sanctified through it.

This ecstatic event, spent into a liturgical context, heralded the universality of God’s vision, if you reconcile with God, through the blood of His Son and you live in your intimacy the feeling of the Ghost.

mountaintop”) before the children of Israel (Exod. 24, 17).

The mode in which was refelt His light kept, in evident mode, of the interior life of those who saw it. The scriptural description of ecstasies marks and the ghostual development of those who had them.

The glory of God, which appears for the first date as being in cloud, in the LXX, at Exod. 16, 10, will be evidenced by Scripture as presence and direct work of God in world.

However the ecstatic proximity is not exterior but, paradoxical, interior. We see those of God not in outside us, but in our being, in the depth of our being.

Therefore Moses stands on the plateau of mount Sinai, in the glory of God, but this glory not perceive with physical eyes but with the heart clean of passions.

The pillar of cloud stood at the door of the tent of the testimony (Deut. 31, 15) but it filled and the whole tent (Exod. 40, 34). The light of God was irradiating all around and was comprising all where it was seen.

[1] The Lord, in the words of Scripture, is none other than God the Logos/ the Word. The presence of Son in His creation, enunciated at Jn. 1, 10, is confirmed by all His revelations towards the Saints of Scripture.

[2] But the editions BOR 1988 and 2001 encourage the idea of ​​„fear” and not „godliness”. WTT stakes all on idea of fear of Moses, which stays before the Lord. VUL speaks only of concealing face, for not to see on the Lord, without to emphasize the motivation of act done.

[3] In his commentary at Pentateuch, when he reaches at the text from Gen. 3, 14, Saint Bede says: „Answered God to Moses: I am, ie the One who have been with your fathers; the One who are, ie I am and with you, for that I am who I am, ie I am before the ages and will be. For I am, ie the Son, the One who are, ie the Holy Ghost and the One who is, ie the Father. […] For that I am in the Old Testament, Which are and in the New”, cf. Venerabilis Bedae, In Pentateuchum Commentarii, in PL 91, col. 295B.

[4] The BOR 2001 edition is posted on the idea that people were shuddered, absorbing partial the LXX text, while the BOR 1988 edition pretake the variant offered by KJV, speaking of a strong earthquake that would be hit the Sinai mountain.

[5] In his commentary at the whole of Scripture, Robert Jamieson sees in the thunders and the lightnings from Exod. 20, 18 some „emblems of the Deity’s descent”, ie symbols, and not direct manifestations of divine glory. Although he not grants an ecstatic reality of this verse, he defends the uncognoscibility of divine being, saying that „they perceived not the Deity Himself”, cf. Robert Jamieson, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, in „Christian Classics Ethereal Library”, Pub. Grand Rapids, p. 138, cf.

http://www.ccel.org/ccel/jamieson/jfb.x.ii.xx.html.

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Rev. D.Th. Dorin Octavian Picioruş

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The Theology of the Sight of God 

Studies and translations

 ***

The first part and the 2nd.

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1. 2. 2. Abraham and the Foreboding Ecstasy

Gen. 15, 12-16 present us on the Father of the faithful, on Abram, in the hypostasis of before seer of the enormous weights, on which will support the people that will come out of his loins.

The ecstatic context, all just as lapidary as and precedent, is formulated at Gen. 15, 12: „But at sunset Abram fell in ecstasy and, behold, have comprised fear and great

We observe in the first row, that the ecstasy produces fulgurating of quick and Abram does nothing else than to live it effective. He suffers an interior change, which shuddered him, and the entrance into this new state of existence, in the ecstatic state, is designated right „darkness”.

The notion of „darkness” as and the one of „sleep” will be ample debated by the Holy Fathers, they indicating both the immersion in the divine light, what and the desoldering of everything that means historical human condition.

The imaginal contrast between the sun which sets and Saint Abram which enters in the darkness of divine light is not by chance.

[1] All in the commentary at Genesis cited anterior, Saint John Chrysostom reclaims Gen. 15, 12 as on an ecstatic place, about which he speaks explained: „Therefore fell upon him, and the ecstasy and fear and great darkness, as through the ones made ​​[with him] to come to the understanding of God’s

Rev. D.Th. Dorin Octavian Picioruş

*

The Theology of the Sight of God 

Studies and translations

 ***

The first part

*

1. 2. The Scriptural Paradigms of the Sight of God

In the current section, with all the weight on which we refelt it in to choose the ecstatic exemplifications, from the cause of their diversity, we will try to debate the theological consequences of the sight of God from Scripture.

And namely, we will detect a number of fundamental details of the ecstatic sight, which will help us to understand the divine-human uniqueness of these personal events of salvation and the relation with God, of high intimacy, of the livers of these.

The Old Testament

1. 2. 1. The Protoparent Adam and the Prime Scriptural Evidence of the Ecstasy
The body, the soul and the breath of God, the divine grace, into a full unity, forms theThe scriptural anthropology does not see on man, as on a full being, without the breath of grace in our being^[1].

Just the grace of God is the one who makes on man to be a living soul, which reigns over body and not a „dead” soul, which blunts the senses in the coarse materiality of the vices.

In this context, of the man full of grace, LXX proposes us the first discussion of Scripture about ecstasy and namely at Gen. 2, 21: „And God made fall on Adam in ecstasy and to fall asleep^[2]. And he took one from his ribs

The building of Eve from a rib of Adam (the same and in VUL: „unam de costis eius”) occurs into an ecstatic state of him. The first woman is born into a state of great ghostuality of her man and she is receipted by him in prophetic words, cf. Gen. 2, 23^[3].

But, from the textual lapidarity of the verse, emerge capital things for our discussion. We find a series of details which we will meet in all ecstatic contexts which we will analyze.

We find, in the first row, that the ecstasy was at the initiative of God and that He pulled on man from time and He united him with His glory. The direct author of ecstasy is God and the one who experiences it is the man full of grace, ie Saint Adam.

The notion of „sleep”, which appears in this context, does not enter in the normal parameters of what we know about the current biological sleep, but introduces us in the state of experiential rupture, which produces it the ecstatic sight.

The ecstasy and the sleep are not congruent experiences. The ecstasy is a divine initiative in the life of a ghostual man, while the sleep is inscribed in „the normality” of our post-lapsarial condition.

But the sleep is an excellent paradigm for to emphasize the fact of full introduction of which has an ecstasy in the state of seer of those revealed by God.

[1] In the commentary at Hexaemeron of Saint Bede, we find at 1, 27, that the reference of Moses at the face of the Trinity from us is, of fact, the confirmation of the grace (confirmationis gratia) from our being, conf. Venerabilis Bedae, Hexaemeron, sive libri quatuor in principium Genesis, usque ad nativitatem Isaac et electionem Ismaelis, in PL 91, col. 30B.

[2] The appetency for the ecstatic understanding of 2, 21, in despite of scriptural literality, is low or inexistent.

We give the following examples:

For J. B. Coffman, at 2, 21-22 is word about a profound sleep but, in the same time, typological. About the typology of this sleep, this says: „The sleep coming upon Adam was a prophecy of the death of Christ, the God-Man, on Calvary”. About Eve’s birth, this says: and „the wife of Adam I was taken from his side during that sleep, so that Church of Jesus Christ, the Bride of Adam II was, in a figure, taken from the side of Jesus Christ”. The citations are taken from:

James Burton Coffman, Commentaries on the Old and New Testament, Genesis, 2,

conf. http://www.studylight.org/com/bcc/view.cgi?book=ge&chapter=002.

Adam Clarke is of opinion that in the case of 2, 21, we have of to do with a „deep sleep” and not with a swoon or ecstasy, conf. Adam Clarke, Commentary, Genesis, 2, apud

http://www.studylight.org/com/acc/view.cgi?book=ge&chapter=002.

John Gill speaks, in this case, of a supernatural sleep. He says: „a sound sleep: his senses were so locked up by it, that he perceived not anything that was done to him”, conf. John Gill, Exposition of the Entire Bible, apud

http://www.studylight.org/com/geb/view.cgi?book=ge&chapter=002&verse=02.

speaking thus about a supernatural state which Adam lives it at the creation of Eve. But neither Saint John does not insist on the explication of this supernatural state which Adam lives it.

In the romanian translation of Father Fecioru, are equalized, into an inadmissible mode, the ecstasy with the sleep (cf. Sfântul Ioan Gură de Aur, Omilii la Facere (I) Scrieri. Partea întâia [Saint John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis (I) Writings. Part One], trad., introd., indici şi note de Pr. D.[umitru] Fecioru, în col. PSB, vol. 21, Ed. IBMBOR, Bucureşti [trans., introd., indices and notes by Rev. D.[umitru] Fecioru, in coll. PSB, vol. 21, Pub. IBMBOR, Bucharest], 1987, p. 166),

But Father Fecioru knew, certainly, that ecstasy means, in the first row, divine sight, but he conformed with a mode to translate in romanian language, in which is not followed the text of Septuagint, but is attempted, almost always, a translation melange of Scripture.

Just therefore, the readers accustomed with the actual text of orthodox Scripture, in the ultimate editions, synodal, romanian, are surprised, shocked by the ghostual robustness of the Septuagint, for that we did not have and nor have we, with all recent attempts, an integral version of the Septuagint, which does not take account of other textual variants, but to be a translation, in itself, of the text.

[3] Saint John Chrysostom remarks textually this thing: „for he has uttered these through the prophesying grace, being inbreathed by the teaching of the Holy Ghost”, cf. Joannes Chrysostomus, In Genesim (homiliae 1-67), in PG 53, col. 122, apud TLG #112.53.122.49-#112.53.122.51.