Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Our Call to Holiness - 4

To put this truth in other words, the inscrutable love of God produces two interacting effects within the soul: (1) Transforming it in himself by participation, God (2) purges the soul of the slightest vestige of immaturity. So perfect is this loving union that the soul can be said "to have become God" - "deified," "divinized "7 - "by participant transformation," yet always in such a way as to enhance the soul's individuality and to achieve the maximum potential of its personality.

This theology explicates the insight of St. Paul grappling with the mystery of the resurrection. "That God may be all in all" (1 Co 15:28), and that Christ may "fill all in all" (Ep 1:23).

The process of transforming purging love begins with the act of individual existence and reaches its apex in one's personal death resurrection: "Though this outer man of ours is falling into decay, the inner person is renewed day by day" (2 Co 4:16).

In common parlance this process is termed "call to holiness," or simply "sanctification."

Nemeck & Coombs
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7 Expression used by Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Hippolytus, Basil and Athanasius

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