Page 17 - Orthodoxy Zizioulas

T H E G R E AT N E S S O F O R T H O D O X Y
tensely to Christianize the ancient Greco-Roman world. From
the very moment that the ancient Greek spirit encountered
the proclamation of the Gospel, profound spiritual processes
began to unfold. With the creative minds of the Greek Fathers
at their center, a new historical reality was being formed—one
in which logos, the gift of Hellenism, learned to coexist with
love, the gift of the incarnate God; and the Greek passion for
truth came to dwell together with the Christian faith in that
which transcends reason.
All these great and wondrous realities became the inheri-
tance of the whole inhabited world through the Ecumenical
Councils of the first eight centuries of the undivided Church.
Enlightened by the Holy Spirit, they handed down to history
the revelation of the mystery of the one God, who hyposta-
sizes His being as a Trinitarian existence of persons, insepara-
bly united in one common nature and energy, in a commu-
nion of unchanging love—a love that “goes out of itself,” offer-
ing its grace to the world, which it creates and saves, calling it
to partake in the very life and blessedness of the Triune God.
This majestic and sublime revelation is brought into the
world by Christ, who unites in the person of the Son and
Word of God—one of the Persons of the Trinity—the uncre-
ated with the created, God with man, creation with its Creator.
In this union, the human being—and together with him all
creation—is exalted to the highest degree, is deified, and is
magnified.
What more, indeed, could the human being desire or seek?
The Vision of God and the Destiny of Creation
Embodying this majestic vision of the destiny of the human
being and of the world, the Orthodox Church shaped her wor-
ship of God in a eucharistic and doxological manner, carrying
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