Богопознание

What do we know about God? My sheep obey My voice (John 10:27). This is how God is understood - through hearing His commandments and through fulfilling what is heard. This is the knowledge of God - keeping His commandments. Why not an inquisitive understanding of the essence of God, not a search for the supernatural, not an imagination of the invisible? They know Mine, and Mine know Me (John 10:14). It is enough for you to know that the Shepherd is good, that he laid down his life for the sheep. This is the limit of knowledge of God! How great is God? What is the measure of Him? What is He really like? – Such questions are dangerous for the questioner and difficult for the person being asked. The best way to deal with them is silence. “My sheep obey My voice,” He said, and do not argue about it, that is, do not remain disobedient, do not enter into competitions. Have you heard the Son? do not go into subtleties about the manner of birth, do not subsume the cause of that which is not determined by the cause, do not delimit the united by your cross-section. Therefore, the Evangelist has previously protected you; and before you heard, and you hear, of course: in the beginning was the Word (John 1:1). So that you do not consider the Son to be a human creation, originating from something that does not exist, the Evangelist said to you: Word, meaning dispassion; said: it was, meaning that it was not in time; said: in the beginning, in order to unite the one born with the Father. You see how a submissive sheep listens to the Master’s voice. In the beginning, and there was, and the Word. Don't tell me how it was? And if it was, it was not born; and if it was born, then it was not. Whoever says this is no longer a sheep: the skin of a sheep, but from within the wolf speaks. Let the slanderers know! My sheep obey My voice. Have you heard the Son? understand His likeness to the Father, I say: likeness, - by the weakness of the strongest, but by the truth itself (I am not afraid to approach the truth, I am not inclined to slander), I understand identity, preserving the personal properties of the Son and the Father. In the Hypostasis of the Son, represent the Father's image; just observe the exact concept of image, just understand Godly: I am in the Father, and the Father in Me (John 14:10), imagining not the merging of essences, but the identity of distinctive features (1). You might be interested in: