Gnomes i.e. Thoughts – Metropolitan of Strumica Naum
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The Son of God, during the incarnation – from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, took on Himself all human nature; He took a body, a rational and intelligent soul, as well as their properties … He took everything except sin, more precisely, except the susceptibility to sin.
In the God-Man Christ there are no gnomes, i.e. opinions. The Divine Hypostasis (union of Christ’s humanity and divinity in one hypostasis, or Personal existence /entity) cannot think, in the sense of wavering and hesitating between good and evil; and the Hypostasis of the Son is the only free bearer of the will and energy of the God-Man, i.e. It is the sole subject of decision-making.
The Persona of Christ, i.e. Hypostasis, never manifested gnomic action, i.e. the fallen will, there is no admixture of sin in It (Him).
Gnomes (thoughts, opinions) exist and are related to the created hypostasis, i.e. to the human person. This term denotes the free, fallen will of the created hypostasis – which, hesitates between good and evil, often inclines towards the latter one, it chooses evil. The hypostasis, i.e. the persona of the man, is the one who chooses.
According to Saint Maximus the Confessor, the union and cooperation of the two wills, God’s and man’s, is hypostatically and perfectly accomplished in the incarnated Son of God – Jesus Christ, therefore man’s free and conscious acceptance of this cooperation, in the Church, is the only condition for his salvation and deification .
We see that the path towards the deification of man implies the cooperation and harmony of the two wills and, of course, the two energies – human energy and God’s energy and above all, the essential rethinking of our fallen gnomic will in God’s (Divine) will.
How can we recognise the will of God? This is a question that has plagued every Christian for centuries. It depends on the level of the spiritual development or mental illness you are at – sometimes you cannot recognise It (God’s will) by yourself, and sometimes you can.
If you are in any of the stages of mental illness: demon-possessed, religious sociopath or religious neurotic; and if you are at the first level of the spiritual development: purification of the heart from the passions, then you have nothing to recognise or interpret, because you are not able to do so. You are obligated to ask your spiritual father (ultimately that is the Bishop of the local Church) and he will tell you. Naturally, if you are not already very delusional – you will obey.
If you are at the second level of spiritual development or the third level of spiritual development, i.e. if you have attained enlightenment of the mind – with the gift of the ascetic prayer of the mind in the heart, or, if you have attained deification – with the gift of the incessant prayer, i.e. the graceful prayer of the mind in the heart, then you have sufficient enlightenment of the mind, that is, you have the ability to recognise God’s will yourself, as well as the power to fulfil His will.
Most-Holy Birth-Giver-of-God, save us!
Metropolitan of Strumica, Naum
(03.02.2021 14:52)
Photo by: Fr. Gavril Galev
