Catechumens: I was asked, recently, to summarize what is meant by the Economy. It is not possible for me to give it even a full outline, here or anywhere else, and certainly not to explore all its implications here. But I will attempt to speak of it with as much brevity as truth and substance may permit. I will try to do it some modicum of justice.
God is unknowable. Man can neither reach Him nor speak of Him. His divine Essence cannot be compared to any essence, has no analogy, and cannot be contained in created human concepts. Man can know God only in a dim way by revelation – the revealing of God’s uncreated Energies by the divine Persons. The unfolding of the divine economy, God’s activity toward his creation, has culminated in a total and all-encompassing event, a personal event, a Person, to make possible true knowledge through true communion. We speak of Christ, who is God incarnate. God has become man, so that man might genuinely know God in the only way possible, in that man and God become one, while remaining at the once utterly distinct. Christ, the God-man, one person who is two natures, God and man, makes possible union with God, having accomplished and become the union of the two natures for all. He summed up in His own person all of man and all of God, all of nature and the divine, all creation and the Creator, deifying all things. Now, in Christ, union of man and God is possible for each individual person, and so knowledge of the unknowable God – never knowledge of God’s essence, but personal knowledge and full knowledge, available only in communion with Him. Through theosis (deification) in Christ, man and indeed all creation is restored to God the Creator. This requires for each person, participation at that personal level, a synergy of God and man. The fullness of union is not possible without the will of each person. If the inviolate will of each person were overcome, the image of God in him would be destroyed. But now, the union of each person’s will with God’s will, the union of his flesh with that of the Incarnate God, makes possible the fullness of union of each person, while preserving both God and man — not the swallowing up of an individual in God, but perfect union and distinction. In this way, man may know God without being destroyed, may be consumed without being lost or indistinct. So salvation – this theosis – was accomplished first by the initial work of God toward man, and is accomplished now by the joint work of man and God in uniting individual persons to Christ. It is not ‘personal salvation’, such that God is a god in general, subject to whatever fancies the individual mind may invent, nor is it a ‘salvation in general’, such that individual activity is irrelevant. It is salvation through union and distinction, the beyond-transcendent God and mortal man made immortal by grace. — Catechetical Letter 1/25/2005