The Essential Traits of Knowing God in Father Stăniloae’s Thinking and Their Importance for the Salvation of Man
The Essential Traits of Knowing God in Father Stăniloae’s Thinking and Their Importance for the Salvation of Man

Summary/Abstract: Knowing God is a fundamental calling in the Christian life, because, according to the words of our Saviour Jesus Christ, salvation and the attainment of eternal life are not possible without it (cf. John 17, 3). In order to know God, He came out to meet man, through His self-discovery, or in other words, through divine Revelation. Without it, man would be a prisoner of his own illusions about the existence of God and His work in the world. Creation itself is a kind of mirror that reflects the wisdom, omnipotence, love, and goodness of God. Therefore, man can know God through His creation, having a cataphatic, intellectual or rational knowledge of God. But this knowledge is not complete and certain; there is another kind of God’s knowledge, the apophatic one, which man experiences the attributes of God through. This kind of knowledge is an existential, deep and bright one, man entering a kind of dynamic of knowing God, based on divine Revelation, but also on his ascetic effort, by freeing himself from the passions that limit and close him in a closed horizon of matter. Therefore, man progresses continuously through this last kind of knowledge of God, close to Him, progress that will never cease.

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