But John speaks of things to come — what is born of God is eternal, cannot die and has therefore, no past tense. It exists in the way God exists.

As for the question of whether matter can attain the substance of God, the empty tomb of Joseph of Arimathea speaks volumes.

I never picked up on that before — thanks for pointing this out.

Amen and Amen and Thank you!

Thank you for your post. You wrote

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Indeed, that is very true. It is amazing how one can understand something like this “rationally” but without having the experience inside the Church will never be able to truly appreciate this very important point. But while to eventually approach this mystery it needs to also speak in our heart, that other centre of man, in certain ways, one can perhaps somewhat see this through photographs of saints vs. their respective icons.

To me, this ages-old “fact” truly “rung home” when I first saw the icon of the spiritual father of Elder Paisios the Hagiorite, St. Arsenios the Cappadocian. Having been used to seeing various photographs of the Saint,in various publications (of the Monastery of Souroti etc.), it was a pleasant surprise (that brought all these feelings that I cannot really describe) to see his icon. Truly an image of the New Man; and somehow it really is him at the same time, just as he should be. It was not until this event that the mystery of the icons and the importance of the theological art of iconography became more apparent to me and I stand in awe in front of it to this day.