Uncreated Energy: A Journey into the Authentic Sources of Christian Faith

By George A. Maloney

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• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0916349209
• ISBN13: 9780916349202
• Release Date: January 1987
• Publisher: Element Books Ltd
• Length: 128 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Grace: Why Union with God exists

This slim volume is one of my favorites from Father Maloney, as it succinctly describes the theological rationale behind the Greek Fathers' theology of grace, which for them (and the Eastern Orthodox tradition) is the means by which humanity is united to divinity. Before you discount this as hokey pop-spirituality/transcendental meditation from the drug-laced 1960s, consider that for the Christian East the whole concept of salvation has always had at its root this sharing in the life of the Holy Trinity owing to the Incarnation, resurrection and sending of the Holy Spirit. This is what all dogma is fundamentally about: salvation as union with God in Christ (and the key to St. Paul's soteriology by the way). At a time when so many people are looking to eastern religions to fill the gap of spirituality that is missing in their lives, the rediscovery on a wider scale of the Orthodox tradition is sorely needed. The author masterfully traces the theology of grace that has at its heart the incarnation and resurrection. Based upon this historical reality, the patristic notion of the unknowability of God is discussed as a revealed unknowing, not a mere agnostic acquiescence to a logical conundrum. Why this unknowing? Because God reveals Himself as unknowable. Yet by the very grace of God, the uncreated energies of God, we are able to participate in the Divine life, not as new members of the Trinity, but as humans redeemed in Christ, who deifies our nature as a new creation. The implications of this doctrine of grace extend into a renewed ecological awareness as well, placing humans as the bridge between God and the created world with a vocation of care and responsibility. This book is not light reading, but it is the single best introduction to the Orthodox teaching of grace as participation in the life of God. For a more detailed study, please see Vladimir Lossky's monumental The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church.