I haven’t read it sorry. “The Orthodox Church” by Bishop Kallistos Ware is a good introduction but there a good number of books available now and I have lost touch with what is there. Try looking at Light & Life (www.light-n-life.com) for a wide range of books online.

By the way – I’m planning on reading Light from the Christian East by John Payton. Do you (or does anyone else reading this) have any opinion on this book as a general introduction to the Orthodox Church?

The participation in the Transfiguration did not necessarily mean the disciples had reached perfection but that they were the best able to be there. It also doesn’t mean that Peter couldn’t later fall; even some great ascetic warriors perfect in virtues fell during or at the end of their struggles. Nevertheless, the answer I gave presupposed the Orthodox understanding that man lives in the life to come now. It is not something only for later but it begins here; it is the first resurrection. We reign with Christ from our baptism, even though still in the flesh and with much growth needed. Theosis is possible to us before death but this occurs with only a very few. For most it is something to be experienced in the second Resurrection.

I believe the passage as such reflects what happens in theosis. It is largely directed to the life to come but it does not exclude fulfilment by a few even before their souls’ separation from their bodies and later reunion in the final resurrection.

I agree that most of our minds and hearts are still clouded by sin – but I find it interesting that you except Peter, James, and John during the Transfiguration. Do the Orthodox hold that these three were granted the opportunity to witness the Transfiguration because they were not clouded by sin at that time? That seems a remarkable way to look at Peter, especially!

I’m afraid that I’m not sure if I see an answer to my question in your reply – please bear with me. (On the other hand, perhaps my question wasn’t clear!) I see 1 Cor. 13:12 as looking forward to Heaven as when we will know as we are known (see also 1 Cor. 8:3; Gal. 4:9). Do the Orthodox see this passage as referring to theosis and fully participating in the divine nature?

Even though we meet Him fully in the Liturgy, because He is fully present in the Eucharist, it is still in a Mystery. Very few people are yet ready to see Him as He is, although some have, such as Sts Peter, John and James on the mountain during the Transfiguration. This is a mercy to us because most of our minds and hearts are still clouded by sin.

I think the inestimable Dom Gregory Dix should be drummed up here, for he addresses your question specifically:

We know now, too, that the Apostolic paradosis of practice, like the Apostolic paradosis of doctrine, is something which actually ante-dates the writing of the New Testament documents themselves by some two or three decades. It is presupposed by those documents and referred to more than once as authoritative in them. This paradosis of practice continued to develop in complete freedom from any control by those documents for a century after they were written, before they were collected into a New Testament ‘Canon’ and recognised for the first time as authoritative ‘Scripture’ beside and above the Jewish ‘Scriptures’ of the Old Testament, which alone formed the ‘Bible’ of the Apostolic Church. Now that the history of the Canonisation of the New Testament is better understood, we can begin to shake ourselves free from the sixteenth century — or rather the mediaeval — delusion that primitive Christian Worship and Church Order must have been framed in conscious deference to the precedents of a New Testament which as such did not yet exist. The purely occasional documents now found in it do not contain, and were never intended by their authors to contain, anything like the Old Testament codes of prescriptions for the rites of worship. That was governed by the authoritative ‘Apostolic Tradition’ of practice, to which it is plain that the scattered Gentile Churches adhered pretty rigidly throughout the second century. I am not for a moment seeking to question the authoritative weight of the New Testament Scriptures for us as a written doctrinal standard. I am only trying to point out that there is available another source of information on the original and authentic Apostolic interpretation of Christianity, which the Scriptures presuppose and which must be used in the interpretation of the Scriptures. I do not deny that in time the recognition of this fact will be bound to lead to some considerable readjustment of ideas for more than one set of people. But tonight all I would say is that the liturgical tradition can be shewn to be older in some of its main elements than the New Testament Scriptures, and that down to the end of the second century, at least, it was regarded as having an ‘Apostolic’ authority of its own independently of them. We cannot look, therefore, for any attempt in this period to conform the practice of worship to them artificially. Nevertheless, the two do illustrate one another in a remarkable way.

From The Theology Of Confirmation In Relation To Baptism

Peace!