Here is a big quote from ‘Jesus, Humanity and the Trinity’, which I have been thoroughly enjoying.
“Creation as non-divine also cannot even receive at once all that God wants to give in this way. God’s gifts come to it in the course of time in what God intends to be an unending expansion of its ability to receive created gifts from the Father’s hands of Son and Spirit. In keeping with this understanding of the limitations of creaturely finitude, Irenaeus talks of the creature’s growth into gifts of God in so far as it remains open or plastic to God’s influence: ‘Thus, man receives advancement and increase towards God. For as God is always the same, so also man, when found in God, shall always go on towards God. For neither does God at any time cease to confer benefits on, and to enrich man; nor does man ever cease from receiving the benefits and being enriched by God.’ Out of the same recognition of creaturely finitude, Gregory of Nyssa puts forward his notion of epectasis, the creatures constant forward motion or journey beyond itself into the boundlessneess of Gods fullness at the creature’s capacities are stretched by what it receives: ‘participation in the divine good is such that… it makes the participant ever greater and more spacious than before… everything that flows in produces an increase in capacity.’”
Scott Kirkland
