glorycloud's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- the life of God in man "It is appropriate for us to speak of different types of life in human beings in a way that we cannot speak of God's life since it is unified life (we can only make logical, not substantial, distinctions about it). The following is a description of what may be called the life of God in man. When a person has been delivered from the state of ignorance, error, and vanity and has been made a participant of the divine light and glory, he endeavors to do the following: to contemplate and understand God in all the glory and perfection of His nature, to judge God and His ways rightly, to love God and the truth, to long for communion with God, to seek the glory of God with all his mind, to give himself over affectionately to the practice of every virtue, to separate himself from carnal and perishable things, to join himself to God as closely as possible, and to receive with joy and consolation the influence of His light and grace. Angels and men in the primal state of their nature were capable of participating in this active life of God and deserved to be called "sons of God" (Job 38:7; Luke 3:38). And, indeed, those persons in whom by divine grace this life has been restored are called "partakers of the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4). No title more august or magnificent can possibly be given to a human being. Therefore, this spiritual and reasonable life is the true image, ectype, and copy of the very life and vitality of God; and from the life of the copy one may glimpse the original, the very nature of the divine life. There would be no spiritual life in the world if there did not exist the more perfect Rationality, the archetype and original of that life." 2:07 p.m. - 2020-12-25 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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