DHK said:
Both Mike and I are very good at looking up information from encyclopedias, dictionaries, and websites. We know quite well what theotokos means. We are quite able to read from your own websites not only the meaning, but all of the inferences that come with it.
Thus we can see why you would want to avoid answering Mike's simple question.
Do you deny that this (hymn) is idolatry and Goddess worship?
Grace and Peace DHK,
Brother to begin to understand why this is not 'idolatry nor Goddess worship' you and the others would have to understand the 'Eastern Orthodox' distinction between God's Essense and His Energies.
To indicate the two "poles" of God's relationship to us (i.e unknown yet well-known, hidden yet revealed) the Orthodox tradition draws a distinction between the essense, nature or inner being of God, on the one hand, and His energies, operations or acts of power, on the other.
"He is outside all things according to His essense," writes Athanasius, "but He is in all things through his acts of power."
"We know the essense through the energy," Basil affirms, "No one has ever seen the essense of God, but we believe in the esense because we experience the energy." By the essense of God is meant His otherness, by the energies His nearness. Because God is a mystery beyond our understanding, we shall never know His essense or inner being, either in this life or in the Age to come. If we knew the divine essense, it would follow that we knew God in the same way as He knows Himself; and this we cannot ever do, since He is Creator and we are created. But, while God's inner essense is for ever beyond our comprehension, his energies, graces, life and power fill the whole universe, and are directly accessible to us.
The essense, then, signifies the radical transcendence of God; the energies, his immanence and omnipresence. When Orthodox speak of the divine energies, they do not mean by this an emanation from God, an "intermediary" between God and man, or a "thing" or "gift" to be possessed as an attribute that God bestows. One the contrary, the energies are God Himself in His activity and self-manifestation. When a man knows or participates in the divine energies, he truly knows or participates in God Himself, so far as this is possible for a created being. But God is God, and we are human; and so, while He possesses us, we cannot in the same way possess Him.
Just as it would be wrong to think of the energies as a "thing" bestowed on us by God, so it would be equally misleading to regard the energies as a "part" of God. The Godhead is simple and indivisible, and has no parts. The essense signifies the whole God as He is in Himself; the energies signify the whole God as He is in action. God in His entirety is completely present in each of his divine energies. Thus the essense/energies distinction is a way of stating simultaneously that the whole God is inaccessible, and that the whole God in His outgoing love has rendered Himself accessible to man.
By virtue of this distinction between the divine essense and the divine energies, we are able to affirm the possibility of a direct or mystical union between man and God (i.e. what the Greek Fathers term the theosis of man, his "deification") but at the same time we exclude any pantheistic identification between the two: for man participates in the energies of God, not in the essense. There is union, but not fusion or confusion as the case maybe. Although "oned" with the divine, man still remains man; he is not swallowed up or annihilated, but between him and God there continues always to exist an "I-Thou" relationship fo person to person.
Such, then, is our God: unknowable in His essense, yet known in His energies; beyond and above all that we can think or express, yet closer to us than our own heart. Through the apophatic way we smash in pieces all the idols or mental images that we form of Him, for we know that all are unworthy of His surpassing greatness. Yet at the same time, through our prayer and through our active services in the world, we discover at every moment His divine energies, His immediate presence in each person and each thing. Daily, hourly we touch Him. WE are, as Francis Thompson said, "in no strange land." All around us is the "many-splendoured thing", Jacob's ladder is "pitched betwixt haven and Charing Cross":
O world invisible, we view thee,
O world intangible, we touch thee,
O world unknowable, we know thee,
Inapprehensible, we clutch thee.
In the words of John Scotus Eriugena, "Every visible or invisible creature is a theophany or appearance of God." The Christian is the one who, wherever he looks, sees God everywhere and rejoices in Him. Not without reason did the early Christians attribute to Christ this saying: "Lift the stone and you will find me; cut the wood in two and there am I."
I know that the Immovable comes down;
I know that the Invisible appears to me;
I know that He who is far outside the whole of creation
Takes me within Himself and hindes me in His arms,
And then I find myself outside the whole of the World.
I, a frail, small mortal in the world,
Behold the Creator of the world, all of him, within myself;
And I know that I shall not die, for I am within the Life,
I have the whole of Life springing up as a fountain within me.
He is in my heart, He is in heaven:
Buth there and here He shows Himself to me with equal glory.
~ Symeon the New Theologian
Some of the earliest Church Fathers recognized in the Saints the 'fullest' participation in the divine energies of God yet distinct from and in Him.
It is from this understanding that the titles given to Mary, no longer a frail, small mortal in the world, but a full participant in the divine energies of Almighty God in heaven are not idolatrous nor Goddess worship. It is known in whose energies she full participates (For in him we live, and move, and have our being). She is not the source nor are these energies her possession but the generous outpouring of a loving God to His creature.
Be well.
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