Malankara World

Inspirational and Spiritual Articles

Triune Progress

by Dumitru Staniloae

Orthodox spirituality has as its goal the deification of man and his union with God, without being merged with Him.

It has as a basic conviction the existence of a personal God, who is the supreme source of radiating love. He prizes man and doesn't want to confuse him with Himself, but maintains and raises him to an eternal dialogue of love.

Such spirituality has no place where an evolutionary progress of man, connected to a divinity conceived as an impersonal essence, is affirmed.

This progress can have no result other than man's disappearance in the impersonal divinity. But the personal God, and thus the supreme source of love, can't be conceived of as a single person, but as a community of persons in a perfect unity.

You see then why the Christian teaching of a Trinity of Persons in a unity of essence is the only one which can constitute the basis of a perfect spirituality for man, understood as a full communion with God in love, without his being lost in it.


Dumitru Staniloae,
Orthodox Spirituality, A practical Guide for the Faithful and a Definitive Manual for the Scholar (St Tikhon's Seminary Press)

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