Vision of Being
At the core of Orthodox theology is the idea of Vision – Vision of God, specifically. That is why we have icons. That is why we honor saints. We believe that God in Jesus Christ became incarnate; he became as we are in order to make us as He is. So we honor the incarnation of the Son of God, the Second Person (Hypostasis) of the Trinity; and we honor those saintly men and women who reflected the Incarnation in their own being.
At the entrance of our Holy Trinity Church we have the traditional icon of The Hospitality of Abraham (shown above), which is a representation of what we read in Genesis 18. The great Russian iconographer Rublev in his icon of the same scene removed Abraham and Sarah and thus gave a timelessness to the image of the three angelic beings, almost as if we are given a peek at the eternal dialogue of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Rublev icon of the Trinity painted in the year 1425 and shown below invites us to visualize the pre-eternal dialogue within the Trinity, the dialogue that led to the creation of human beings.
And here is where our Tradition has been bold not only to use images but also words to expand on what we read in Genesis 1:26. God speaks – to whom? to God! in the pre-eternal council of the Trinity! – “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” From the very beginning of creation, God’s intention was always the Incarnation and the deification of human beings!
One of the Trinity asked:
“What if man falls?”
The Son, the second Person of the Trinity,
answered:
“Then I will go and save him.”
That is how our theology works. We are bold to be creative in our language and in our imagery because we are made in the image and likeness of God, the ultimate Creator. As one present-day Orthodox monk and theologian has written:
When we receive His grace we also have the gift of creativity; we become co-workers with Him in our re-creation, in our refashioning and regeneration. When we receive this grace our heart is enlarged to embrace heaven and earth and to bring every creature before God, that is, to spread the creative energy of God and the blessing of God over all creation.
(Arch. Zacharias, Man, The Target of God, p. 250)
This is the vision that underlays our theology and our mission of living on earth. The Orthodox Church takes EVERY single verse of Scripture seriously, and we read every verse of Scripture through the lens of what the Trinity has intended and accomplished for man, in man, and through man. (Sorry for not indulging in some form of gender non-specific language. I prefer to use traditional language whenever it communicates more directly and more powerfully.) At its deepest level, Orthodox theology seeks to bring us face to face with True Being, as we see it in God and as it is reflected in sanctified humanity.
Our theology is a Theology of Being.