The Pillar and Ground of the Truth: An Essay in Orthodox Theodicy in Twelve Letters

Various Christian traditions may argue over orthodox or heterodox ways of understanding this, but there is clear and authoritative testimony based on living the Christian mysteries that if we are going to speak of what a human being is, we have not said enough until we speak of God.

All his writings are imbued by a quintessentially ‘Greek’ optimism regarding the dignity and divine destiny of the human being.

If the God is absolute beauty and goodness, how should he encompass the fullness of life, which is beautiful and hateful, good and evil, laughable and serious, human and inhuman? How can man live in the womb of the God if the Godhead himself attends only to one-half of him?131

Pseudo-Dionysius described God as “beguiled by beauty.”19 Divine goodness fell in love with creation and so was compelled to bring it into being. The zeal and eros of God for creation is manifest in the beauty of beings, which are themselves expressions of the divine beauty. Beauty, sadly overlooked in our modern times, is a link between the human