Searching for the Truth

ORTHODOX CATECHISM TOPICS

Searching for the Truth

By: Fr. Anthony Alevizopoulos
PhD. of Theology, PhD. of Philosophy

http://www.egolpion.com/searching_truth.en.aspx

 The problem of where the truth lies has occupied mankind down through the ages; it is a problem that is always contemporary and of its very nature leads man to seek an answer. The Philosophers, especially the ancient Greeks, posed the question: "What is the truth?" and most men have searched for it rationally. Some said that truth is an Idea, a "principle of all things", the "prime mover unmoved" and called it God.

But this "God", the God of the philosophers, cannot redeem. He touches only man's rational faculty, and not man as a whole; no one can come into personal commu­nion with him since he is not a person, but something impersonal; an universal Mind that acts blindly, or is so distant and so transcendental that he has no interest in man or in the world.

What is Divine Revelation?

ORTHODOX CATECHISM TOPICS

What is Divine Revelation?
By Fr. Anthony Alevizopoulos.

According to the Orthodox faith, the Church is not founded on written texts but on the confession that Christ is God-Man (Theanthropos), namely that in the person of Christ, God was joined with man, “indivisibly, immovably, unmistakably, inseparably,” and man has come into actual communion with God, and in the person of Christ God and man were hypostatically united, in one unique hypostasis.

The Son and Word of God continues to be hypostatically united with His body and as the Head of the Church, He is always united with us (Matt. 18:20; 28:20). The presence of Christ is acti-vated by the Holy Spirit in the life of the Church (1 Cor. 12: 3). This is why the Church is also “….the pillar and ground of the truth” (1Tim. 3:15; 1Cor. 2:7-11).

Orthodox catechism topics.The Church

ORTHODOX CATECHISM TOPICS

The Church

By: Fr. Anthony Alevizopoulos
PhD. of Theology, PhD. of Philosophy

http://www.egolpion.com/

 The Church as the Body of Christ is a Divine-human (theanthropic) organism, i.e. an invisible and visible reality. The invisible dimension of the Church refers to the communion between God and man having as its model the communion between the three Persons of the Holy Trinity. With the creation of the angels the heaven­ly Church was constituted; to this Church man was added: " but ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and Church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of the just men made perfect" (Heb. 12, 22-23).