Theology & Dogma
27 topics
EssentialTheology & DogmaNicene-Constantinopolitan CreedThe definitive statement of Orthodox faith, formulated at the First (325) and Second (381) Ecumenical Councils. Recited at every Divine Liturgy. Affirms: one God, the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, the Second Coming, one holy catholic and apostolic Church, one baptism, and the life of the age to come.EssentialTheology & DogmaThe Holy TrinityThe central dogma of Orthodox Christianity: One God in Three Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Co-eternal, co-equal, consubstantial (homoousios). The Father is the sole Cause (aitia) and Source (pege) of the Godhead.EssentialTheology & DogmaThe IncarnationGod the Son (Logos) took on human nature, becoming fully God and fully man in the person of Jesus Christ. Born of the Virgin Mary by the Holy Spirit. The Incarnation is the foundation of salvation: Christ assumed human nature to heal and deify it.EssentialTheology & DogmaTheosis (Deification)The ultimate goal of human life in Orthodoxy: union with God, becoming 'partakers of the divine nature' (2 Peter 1:4). Not becoming God in essence but participating in God's uncreated energies. As St. Athanasius wrote: 'God became man so that man might become god.'EssentialTheology & DogmaChristologyOrthodox Christology affirms that Jesus Christ is one Person (hypostasis) with two complete natures, divine and human, without confusion, change, division, or separation (Chalcedonian Definition). Christ has two wills (dyothelitism) and two operations.EssentialTheology & DogmaEssence-Energies DistinctionA key Orthodox theological distinction, formally affirmed at the Councils of 1341 and 1351. God's essence (ousia) is absolutely unknowable and imparticipable. God's uncreated energies (grace, light, life) are the means by which God communicates Himself to creation. Both essence and energies are fully God: not a division in God.EssentialTheology & DogmaHoly TraditionThe living transmission of the faith from the Apostles through the Church. Includes Scripture, the Ecumenical Councils, the writings of the Church Fathers, liturgical practice, canon law, and iconography. Scripture is part of Tradition, not separate from it. The Holy Spirit guides the Church in preserving Tradition.EssentialTheology & DogmaPneumatology (Holy Spirit)The Holy Spirit is the Third Person of the Trinity, proceeding from the Father alone (John 15:26). The Spirit is co-eternal and consubstantial with the Father and Son. Orthodoxy rejects the Filioque addition ('and the Son') to the Creed as a Western innovation that distorts Trinitarian theology.EssentialTheology & DogmaSoteriology (Salvation)Orthodox soteriology is therapeutic rather than juridical. Salvation is healing from the disease of sin and death, restoration of communion with God, and ultimately theosis. Christ's death and resurrection conquered death itself. Salvation is understood as Christus Victor (Christ the Conqueror) and recapitulation (anakephalaiosis).EssentialTheology & DogmaThe Cross & CrucifixionThe Cross is the central symbol of Orthodoxy: not merely an instrument of death but the means of victory over death, sin, and the devil. Christ's death was voluntary, an act of supreme love. On the Cross, Christ descended into the depths of human suffering and Hades itself, destroying death 'by death.' The Cross is venerated, signed on oneself, and placed in every Orthodox home and church.EssentialTheology & DogmaTheotokos (Mother of God)The Virgin Mary bears the title 'Theotokos' (God-Bearer), affirmed at the Council of Ephesus (431). This is primarily a Christological statement: she bore not merely a man but the incarnate God. Mary is venerated as the highest of all saints, 'more honorable than the Cherubim and beyond compare more glorious than the Seraphim.'ImportantTheology & DogmaEcclesiology (Doctrine of the Church)The Church is the Body of Christ, the continuation of Pentecost, the community of the faithful united in the Eucharist under the bishop. The Church is One (undivided), Holy (sanctified by the Spirit), Catholic (universal in fullness), and Apostolic (founded on the Apostles). The Church is not an institution but a living organism: the mystical Body of Christ.ImportantTheology & DogmaFilioque ControversyThe Western (Latin) addition of 'and the Son' (Filioque) to the Nicene Creed regarding the procession of the Holy Spirit. Orthodoxy maintains the original Creed: the Spirit proceeds from the Father alone. The Filioque was a major theological cause of the Great Schism of 1054.ImportantTheology & DogmaGrace Is UncreatedIn Orthodoxy grace is not a created gift that God makes and hands over. It is God Himself, in His uncreated energies, given to His creatures: the light on Tabor, the fire at Pentecost and the grace of the Mysteries are God communicating Himself, not a substance produced for the purpose. This follows from the essence-energies distinction, and it is the point on which Orthodox and scholastic theology divide most sharply, since a created grace can only ever be a thing between God and the soul. Theosis depends on it entirely: a creature cannot be made a partaker of the divine nature by receiving something created.ImportantTheology & DogmaHomoousios (Consubstantial)Greek term meaning 'of one substance/essence.' Affirmed at Nicaea I (325) to declare the Son is of the same essence as the Father: not a created being (contra Arianism). Central term of the Nicene Creed.ImportantTheology & DogmaHypostasis (Person)In Trinitarian theology, 'hypostasis' denotes a distinct Person of the Trinity. Three Hypostases share one Ousia (Essence). The Cappadocian Fathers clarified this distinction, resolving confusion between 'ousia' and 'hypostasis.'ImportantTheology & DogmaImage & Likeness of GodHumanity is created 'in the image' (kat' eikona) and 'according to the likeness' (kath' homoiosin) of God (Genesis 1:26). The 'image' is the inherent capacity for reason, freedom, and relationship with God. It can be obscured but never destroyed. The 'likeness' is the dynamic goal, theosis, the actualization of the image through free cooperation with grace.ImportantTheology & DogmaOusia (Essence/Nature)The divine essence shared equally by all three Persons of the Trinity. God's essence is unknowable and incomprehensible to created beings; we know God through His energies, not His essence.ImportantTheology & DogmaAncestral Sin (vs. Original Sin)Orthodoxy teaches 'ancestral sin' (propatorikon hamartema) rather than Western 'original sin.' Humanity inherits the consequences of Adam's sin, which are mortality, corruption and the bent toward sinning, but NOT inherited guilt. Each person bears responsibility only for their own sins.ImportantTheology & DogmaApophatic TheologyThe approach of knowing God by negation: affirming what God is NOT, since God transcends all human concepts and language. God is not merely 'good' or 'being' in any way we can comprehend. Complemented by cataphatic (positive) theology. Central to Orthodox mystical tradition.ImportantTheology & DogmaArianismThe heresy of Arius of Alexandria (c. 256-336) teaching that the Son of God is a created being: 'there was when He was not.' Condemned at Nicaea I (325) and Constantinople I (381). The Nicene Creed was formulated specifically to counter Arianism. St. Athanasius spent his life fighting it.ImportantTheology & DogmaCreation & CosmologyGod created the world ex nihilo (from nothing) as a free act of love, not necessity. Creation is inherently good (Genesis 1:31) but not divine: it is distinct from God, yet sustained by His uncreated energies. The material world is not evil (contra Gnosticism). The whole cosmos is destined for transfiguration, not destruction.ImportantTheology & DogmaSynergy (Free Will & Grace)Orthodoxy teaches synergy, synergeia, the working together of divine grace and human freedom. Grace goes before, awakens and enables; the will must consent and keep consenting, and it remains free to refuse. This rules out Pelagianism, which makes salvation the work of human effort, and it rules out absolute predestination, the decree that saves or damns without regard to the will. Scripture does speak of those God foreknew and predestined, and the Fathers read that as foreknowledge, not as compulsion: God knows what a free creature will choose without choosing it for him.ImportantTheology & DogmaThe Theotokos and the Immaculate ConceptionOrthodoxy honours the Theotokos above every creature and does not hold the Immaculate Conception, the dogma defined at Rome in 1854 that she was preserved from the stain of original sin from the first moment of her conception. The Orthodox objection is not that she is less holy but that the dogma answers a question Orthodoxy does not ask: it presupposes inherited guilt, which the East has never taught, so there is no stain for her to be preserved from. She was mortal as we are mortal, she died, and her purity is the fruit of a free obedience rather than an exemption granted before she could consent. Making her an exception makes her less like us, and it is precisely as one of us that she gave the Word His flesh.Theology & DogmaAngelic & Demonic RealmAngels are bodiless spiritual beings created before the material world. Orthodox tradition follows Pseudo-Dionysius in describing nine angelic orders in three triads: Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones; Dominions, Powers, Authorities; Principalities, Archangels, Angels. Satan (Lucifer) and the demons are fallen angels who rebelled through pride. Guardian angels are assigned to each person at baptism.Theology & DogmaMonophysitismThe teaching of Eutyches that after the union Christ has one nature only, His humanity absorbed into His divinity as a drop of wine into the sea. Condemned at Chalcedon in 451, which confessed one Person in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation. The condemnation stands and has never been revisited.Theology & DogmaNestorianismThe teaching attributed to Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople (c. 386-451), that Christ consisted of two loosely joined persons: divine and human. Condemned at Ephesus (431). Led to the affirmation of 'Theotokos': Mary bore God incarnate, not merely the human 'Christ-bearer' (Christotokos).