Why did God send His Son?
He sent His Son to open the path to Paradise and to help us in our individual struggle to gain our personal salvation. The Doctrine of the Salvation is the central doctrine of the Orthodox Christian Church. The Lord Jesus Christ is the redeemer and savior of the human race. Christ took upon Himself the sins of the entire world. He received in Himself the guilt of all men. He is the Lamb slaughtered for the world.
This is the foundation of all of the instruction of the Apostles.
They write:
† Christ saved us.
† You are redeemed from the curse of the law.
† Christ justified us.
† You are bought at a dear price.
† Christ has covered our sins.
† He is a propitiation for our sins.
† By Him we have been reconciled with God.
† He is the sole Chief Priest.
† He has torn up the handwriting against us and nailed it to the Cross.
† He was made a curse for us.
† We have peace with God by the death of His Son.
† We have been sanctified by His blood.
† We have been resurrected together with Christ.
"God is a sea of being, immeasurable and limitless." -Saint Gregory the Theologian
In this chapter we address the question, How do you know God? We will start by explaining why you can’t know God in His totality as He is “unknowable.” But, we will show you how you can know God by experience, your own and that which is recorded in the Holy Scriptures. We will caution you to beware of relying on your own mind to give you the truth about God and thinking that you know too much about God. We will address how you avoid self-delusion.
What can we learn from Scriptures? We can learn some of the attributes of God. We will point out how Scripture tells us that God is Spirit, Eternal, Good, Omniscient, All-Righteous, Omnipresent, Unchangeable and Unity.
One of the important doctrines of Christianity is the Holy Trinity. What is this doctrine and how did the early Church Fathers explain it? We will give you some of their answers. You must remember that you cannot define God because He is infinite. Therefore, a doctrine like the Holy Trinity is not within our total rational comprehension. It is a way to set boundaries that keep us from making an error about the nature of God. In the early Church it was formulated to counteract heresies where the teaching of the Apostles was being distorted. This was done through the Church Councils, which have served to keep the truth about God pure and unchanged from the time of the Apostles.
But, what are the practical uses of the Doctrine of the Trinity in our everyday lives? We will discuss how it can help you learn about your human relationships and your relationship to God.
Finally, we will give you a brief introduction to one of the controversies that was involved in the split of the Church between East and West about 1,000 years ago - the “filioque”.