Essence (of God)

“God is beyond our human conceptions and we cannot describe Him thoroughly with human language. But the Church Fathers go even further: God is unknowable in His essence. That is to say, we cannot know God in any way similar to how He knows Himself. The word essence is derived from Latin esse or “to be.” This is a translation of the Greek participle for being, ousia. This is an apt description for how we describe God in Himself because the Hebrew name Yahweh revealed to Moses in Exodus means “I was / I am / I will be / I do / I make.” The divine name was later translated into Greek in the Septuagint as “O Ōn” or “He Who Is”…When we speak of God’s essence, we are referring to the manner in which He exists rather than a substance He is made of. In order to know how God exists, we would ourselves have to be divine by nature, which is impossible.” (Fr. Joseph Lucas)

“Only God is self-existing. Everything else not only depends on Him for its existence and continuation but is moment-by-moment sustained only by the will and goodness of God. As such, the world itself is a manifestation of the “divine energies” (the actions and working of God). Those actions and working of God are not something done “at a distance,” for His actions and works are themselves God. He is both essence and energies. And though the effects of His actions and works are not themselves God (the tree that He sustains is not Him), nevertheless, the effects cannot exist apart from Him (“in Him, we live and move and have our being” – Acts 17:28). Cessationism would be non-existence. Miracles not only continue, everything we see is a constant abiding miracle (including ourselves). There is only miracle.” (Father Stephen Freeman)

“When Jesus tells God the Father that He has revealed God’s name to the disciples (John 17:6), He isn’t talking about telling the disciples what God’s name was. They could read their Old Testament and see that in thousands of places (e.g., Exod 3:1–14). Revealing God’s name to them meant showing them who God was and what He was like. He did that by living among them as a man. Jesus was God among them He was the incarnation of God’s essence (Heb 1:3).” (Michael S. Heiser)

“God, from the depth of His being, is love. This love is not limited to a one-time action, nor bound by a conditional timeframe. God’s love flows out of His essence.” (Dynamis 4/28/2020)

“Sin is the most tragic reality in human life and in the whole universe. The fall of our ancestors Adam and Eve had cosmic implications that will last until the end of time. This is felt in everybody’s life and in the world around us as the destruction of the harmony that God put into the nature of people and things. The Greek word “cosmos” (“κόσμος”) means harmony. The Apostle Paul wrote: ‘For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God’ (Rom. 8:19). The Holy Fathers call Christ the New Adam, because, being sinless, He repeated all of humanity in His human essence, renewing and restoring the original harmony. The essence of Christ is the seed from which the leaven of the human race rises. All who unite with Christ can rise above sin, thereby restoring harmony lost through sin” (Metropolitan Serafim Joanta)

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