Articles of Monasticism, Eldership & Hesychasm

joasia · Post by **joasia** » Wed 16 November 2005 9:04 am

Kollyvas,

There's a portion missing at the end of the article.

Joanna

Kollyvas · Post by **Kollyvas** » Wed 16 November 2005 1:16 pm

http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/axismundi/2 ... _part2.php

...It is important to note that these periods of renewal all began within the Eastern Church's monastic institutions; a fact which illustrates the prominent place which monasticism has in the East. During times when Eastern Christendom was faced pressure to reject its roots - as was the case in fourteenth-century Byzantium and under the westernising rule of Tsar Peter the Great in Russia - monks within the East's monastic institutions consistently endeavoured to remind the Church of its rich patristic past. Therefore, it is no surprise that the great renewals of hesychastic spirituality which have occurred since the fourteenth century were accompanied by a corresponding proliferation of patristic writings which were made more readily available to the Church at large. Such was the case under St. Nicodemos of the Holy Mountain and Paisii Velichkovskii's renewal of hesychasm, which was accompanied by the compilation and translation of The Philokalia. In both of these cases, great stress was placed on the necessity of returning to the essential roots of Eastern Christianity by reading the Fathers, and by pursuing theosis as was taught within this patristic literature.

Therefore, the most important role which hesychasm has played throughout the history of Orthodoxy, especially since the fourteenth century, has been as a renewal movement which has consistently called Eastern Christianity to respect and give heed to its tradition. While the renewals of hesychasm were centred within the monasteries, the renewal which occurred within these monastic walls spilled out to create a renewal within the Church-at-large. Consequently, the existential spirituality of hesychasm - a spirituality which stressed the importance of experiencing the divine - became widespread throughout Eastern Christendom among monk and layperson alike. It is interesting to observe that the various renewals of hesychasm which have occurred since the fourteenth century, have occurred during times that witnessed to the increase of philosophical ideas most alien to Eastern Christianity. For instance, the eighteenth century renaissance of hesychasm occurred at the same time as European Enlightenment thinking spread onto Orthodox soil. When faced with these threatening forces, the hesychastic movement has consistently compelled Eastern Christianity to maintain its faithfulness to tradition, and it has continued to emphasise an existential theology over and against a theological rationalism. Interestingly, the existential spirituality of hesychasm has met with great acceptance by Christians in the West, both Orthodox and non-Orthodox, who have found within this spirituality a means of seeking after union with God within a society which has become increasingly unfavourable to institutionalised religion. As such, hesychasm continues to be a vital source of spiritual renewal which continues to foster and strengthen Eastern Christianity's ties to its patristic and existential past.

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ISSN: 1496-2798
© Axis Mundi

Kollyvas · Post by **Kollyvas** » Wed 16 November 2005 3:54 pm

http://paradosis.blogspot.com/2003_12_0 ... chive.html

Stories that trapped me

Christ is Born!
Glorify Him!

Within the life of the Church we have lots of wonderful stories. Last night I spent sometime talking about such stories with a good friend and his wife; stories like that of St. Ignatios of Antioch who is said to be the little child used as an example by our Lord after pulling him onto His lap in the Gospels and telling his disciples to become like "this little child", or that of the thief who is said to have prevented the "mugging" of the Holy Family as they made their way to Eygpt and would later ask Jesus to remember him as they died together. And there are many many others which accent and expound upon the experience of Holy Scripture. Another wonderful part of that great liturgical dance which is bound to "Life in Christ" as the Orthodox understand it.

Also there are those wonderful stories kept alive primarily by our monastic brothers and sisters that direct us in the way of deified life. This one came to me from Elder Ephraim via the collection of his letters and homilies entitled Counsels from the Holy Mountain

There once was a monk who happened to slip and sin by himself continually, yet he would always arise at once and do his prayer rule. The demon that kept throwing him into sin lost his patience seeing the courage and hopefulness of this brother. So he visibly appeared to him and said to him with vexation:

"Don't you fear God, you defiled wretch? You have just sinned, so with what face can you now stand before God? Aren't you afraid that God will burn you?"

But since this brother had a valiant soul, he said to the demon:

"This cell is a forge: you hit and get hit. As God is my witness, Who came to save the world, I will not stop fighting you, falling and getting up, beating and being beaten, until my final breath - and let's see who will win: you or Christ!"

When the demon heard this unexpected reply, he said:

"I won't fight you any more, because if I do, I'll make you win crowns."

Thenceforth, this brother was delivered from the warfare, and he sat in his cell weeping for his sins.

It is the richness of these stories and the life (or Paradosis) lived from which they are born and kept alive that so enraptured me about Orthodoxy. I could not sit on the outside and appreciate them...I felt lured into the river of that life. To me it was the difference between sneaking crumbs from the floor and hopping into one of the empty seats at the table. The emotion expressed by St. Peter (while getting his feet washed) is not all that different to my desire to enter fully into the Orthodoxy Way:

Simon Peter said to Him, "Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head!"

Spring the trap, I'm happy to be caught.

...offered by JamesoftheNorthwest, a sinner and extremist at 6:55 AM [+]
+++

Kollyvas · Post by **Kollyvas** » Fri 18 November 2005 1:21 am

http://sgpm.goarch.org/Monastery/index.php?p=45

“Abba Poemen also said this about Abba Isidore that whenever he addressed the brothers in church he said only one thing, "Forgive your brother, so that you also may be forgiven.”

The Desert Fathers
Strife & Reconciliation
IT HAS NOW been sufficiently shown what a deadly vice strife is - the man who carries spite in his breast is rearing a poisonous snake in his bosom. You know, kind readers, from your own experience, how heavy your soul is when you have quarreled with someone. It is as if a mountain weighs you down; you cannot breathe lightly and freely. You feel like a captive and even worse than that, because for the captive the body is bound but the spirit is free. For you, the spirit is bound with the chains of satanic strife, and the body also feels weakened because of this. The man who quarrels with his neighbor is a slave of the devil. Are there any happy slaves? If the bird, confined in a cage is happy, then the wretched captives of sin can also be happy. No! No happiness can bloom among the weeds of sin, and even less among the thorns and thistles of hatred and strife. While you are feuding with your brother, peace cannot rise in your heart!

On the other hand, how light your soul feels when you are reconciled with your enemy! You want, like a bird freed from a cage, to fly up to the skies with joy. You rejoice more at reconciliation than at the discovery of a treasure. Indeed, you have found something more precious than riches; you have found love, won over your enemy, and have turned him from a foe into a brother. Simple folk express it very well: “Strife is a work of the devil.” This is why it brings such darkness into the soul, oppresses it, and torments it as if it were already in hell. The grace of God which brings peace and joy to the heart flees from the spiteful. If strife is a work of the devil,” reconciliation is the work of God. Peace is one of the most precious of God’s gifts. With the arrival of reconciliation, darkness disappears from the souls of those who until then have been filled with spite; and the peace of God, the light of God, and the joy of God settle there. God’s grace descends on the reconciled, and they feel as if they were in Paradise.

Here are two examples from life in Russia.

In a village there served a priest who was constantly quarreling with the church reader. The reader had not finished seminary and thus he could not become a priest, so his dream was at least to be made a deacon. Unfortunately, he could not count on the support of the priest whom he hated and with whom he rudely quarreled. Once during service the priest and the reader quarreled over something; the priest raised his voice, the reader did not yield and answered with insulting words. The priest was enraged and tried to hit the reader with the incense burner. The latter threw several heavy books at the priest, until in the end they literally began fighting, to the great chagrin and temptation of the people. The rumor of the fight of the priest and the reader in God’s temple spread all over the village, and the case was reported to the bishop in the city as well. This bishop was a very wise man. He called the priest and the reader to himself to question them and find out who was to blame. He called the priest first and asked him:

“Tell me how it all happened. Honestly confess the truth!”
“I, holy Bishop, was serving in the church,” the scared priest began to justify himself, “and I told the reader to read more slowly, but he attacked me with insults, began to throw the church books at me, and even hit me with his fists. I grabbed the incense-burner to defend myself, but I did not do anything to him.”
“So he is to blame?” asked the prelate.
“Yes, holy Bishop, he is to blame!”
“So he started the fight?”
“Yes, Bishop, he started the fight.”
“Then you are a martyr,” continued the prelate. “You poor man, how long you have put up with this spiteful reader, and you have never complained! This is what I have thought of to reward you with a compensation: tomorrow I will elevate you to the rank of archpriest. Do you hear, child, even tomorrow! Get ready!”

The priest was moved by the unexpected rum of the matter and said: “But, Bishop, I am not worthy to be an archpriest. I am guilty of the quarrels too, and, it seems, my guilt is greater than the reader’s. I started the quarrels!”

“So, there is a conscience in you? Praise God, praise God!” rejoiced the prelate. “Then you fully deserve the rank of archpriest.

The priest, repenting, began to cry.

Then the bishop sent for the reader. The reader came in worried and saw that the priest was crying and that the prelate . did not stand grim and stern, but was smiling in a fatherly way.

“What do you say? Who started the fight?” asked the prelate.
“It was not me, but the priest!” said the frightened reader to justify himself.
“The priest said the same, that he is to blame. That means that you are innocent. Because you endured innocently, like a martyr, the insults of the priest for such a long rime, I have decided to ordain you as a deacon tomorrow! Are you ready?”

The reader expected a punishment, but now he was being offered the deaconship that he had dreamed of for so long! Yet his soul was so disturbed! He felt so unprepared because of his quarrel with the priest. Suddenly, he fell at the feet of the bishop and said through his tears: “Holy Bishop, I am not worthy to be a deacon. I am more to blame than the priest.”

The bishop lifted him up from the ground and, embracing him, said: “It is today that you are most worthy, because you repent, just as the priest repented. That is why I will certainly make him an archpriest and you, a deacon. Make peace!”

The two recent enemies embraced and forgave each other with deep contrition. On the next day, during the Divine Service, the bishop rewarded both of them with clerical ranks and sent them to their village in peace.
They returned reconciled and joyful, to the wonder of the whole village. From that day they lived like true brothers and never quarreled again.

Here is another example-again from Russia.

The priest and the deacon in one church hated each other immensely and constantly quarreled. It must not surprise you, brothers and sisters, that the clergy too may quarrel sometimes. They defend the spiritual fortress-the Church-and so the devil attacks them most. The priest and the deacon lived in strife for a long time, and, in the end, their hostility reached such a level that they could not even stand to look at each other. Their life was poisoned. At last, the priest could not endure living in this way any longer and went to a hermitic saint for advice. He told the hermit everything: how he and the deacon fought over the smallest things; how their hatred grew with each day; how the deacon, even though he was of lower rank, did not honor the priest; how he, the priest, could not stand him any longer and had decided to leave the parish. “What is your advice?” asked the priest in the end.

The holy hermit gave him the best and the hardest prescription: “Hold your tongue and have patience! Endure forever, and God will help you to turn your enemy around and win him over.” The priest decided to try this as a last resort.

When he went back, it happened that he had to perform a service with the deacon. During the rite, he asked the deacon gently:

“Hand me the cross.”
“Take it yourself.” answered the deacon crossly. “I am not your servant.”

The priest, without saying a word, went and took the cross. The deacon was surprised that the usual abuse and insults did not follow. The next time when the two had to serve together, the deacon scolded the priest for some reason, but the latter meekly endured and put up with everything. This went on for quite a while. The priest always endured quietly, until at last the deacon began to recover his senses and was ashamed of his behavior.

“How bad I am!” he thought. “I am a deacon, and I bully the priest. He is greater than I, but he does not scold me and puts up with me! I will go to him and ask for his forgiveness!”

How surprised and moved the patient priest was when he saw the deacon coming to him in his house, bowing down to the ground before him, and asking for forgiveness with tears in his eyes. They embraced and forgave; and as much as they hated each other before, they loved each other afterwards. Such are the marvelous fruits of mutual forgiveness!

Kollyvas · Post by **Kollyvas** » Fri 18 November 2005 1:27 am

http://www.monachos.net/monasticism/ath ... thos.shtml

Encountering the Holy Mountain
A pilgrim's diary
The following is the account of an anonymous pilgrim's first visit to the Holy Mountain, made at the beginning of the year 2000. For those who have themselves been to Mount Athos, it is hoped that this recollection will serve as a reminder of the impact the place can have upon one who encounters it for the first time. For those who have not been to Athos, perhaps it will convey a small amount of the ferver which the Holy Mountain instills in its visitors.

Monday, 27 March 2000 — Ouranoupolis, Greece.

The ferry was to leave at 9.45 a.m. the next morning. This was to be the hour when, should God grant it actually to occur, I would set foot on ‘the ship’ –as it is known from a small sign outside the Athos Pilgrim’s Office– that would deposit me, at last, on the Holy Mountain. I recall quite clearly that, as I lay my head down on the hotel pillow for a final night’s sleep before the journey, I did not believe I would actually see Athos the next morning. Too often I had dreamt about it, and now the great sanctuary of heavenly asceticism loomed somewhere off in the mist, just at bay, around the point. I had my papers, I had money for the boat, I had my bags packed and my alarm set for the morning. Yet somehow it did not seem real, did not seem possible, that in but a few hours I would touch that soil. It was the same soil upon which had trod the feet of so many great men: St Gregory Palamas, St Symeon, St Nikodemos, St Athanasius – all of whom had always seemed so distant in my studies, as if from another world, only marginally connected to my own. Now, as I contemplated my arrival on the Holy Mountain, these two worlds were about to come together. The same sights that had been seen by these great men, the same shores upon which they composed what have long since become many of the most enduring theological texts of Christian history, were now about to be beheld by someone who knew of these men as almost mythical ‘giants’ of the Christian tradition.

To say that I would be seeing the same sights as these ancient personalities is, in fact, a surprisingly accurate statement. For Athos, like few places in the modern world, has marvellously escaped the renovationist tendencies of human society. Where all around it ancient cities are being modernised and landscapes transformed by the ever evolving urban creature known casually as ‘society’, Athos has passed through the centuries with a surprisingly small amount of physical change. The newest of the monasteries are hundreds of years old, and even some of the one-room hermitages that dot the countryside have histories far older than those of the New World nations of the West. While America was but a dream in the minds of her founding fathers, monks were praying and working in the same cells that their spiritual descendants inhabit to this day.

Even the more modern changes to Athos –the introduction of roads connecting the northernmost monasteries, the arrival of electricity and modern plumbing, and the advent of the fax machine and library computer in the monastery enclaves– have changed relatively little of the visible landscape. In a world where the physical matter of creation –the ground, the buildings, the countryside– are understood to have been sanctified by the holy lives of those who have lived on them for the past millennia, there is little motivation to alter what does not absolutely need altering. There is a preservationist sense on Athos that is motivated not simply by a desire to preserve an ancient ‘other-world’ still in use, but to do so because the very components of that world are understood to be holy and grace-filled, from the great monasteries themselves to the smallest ports and pathways. And so the past is guarded, and the modern-day visitor is able to behold the same sights seen by monks and pilgrims for an almost incomprehensibly long period of history.

I lay on my bed, pondering such thoughts. Perhaps most poignant was the knowledge that I would tomorrow behold the same landscape that had 700 years ago been seen and loved by St Gregory Palamas, the subject of much of my recent research. His thought has shown forth as among the most influential in the Orthodox spiritual tradition, and his works on prayer had given motivation to the whole focus of my studies. Tomorrow, I would visit the community he called home. It simply did not seem real.

I fell asleep praying for the journey ahead.

Tuesday, 28 March 2000.

My alarm sounded at 7.50 a.m., and perhaps I have never had so easy a time getting out of bed. I had, the night before, laid out the clothes I would wear for the day, and had packed everything else into my two bags. I had only to get dressed and wash up, and I was ready to go.

It took so little time (I had been more efficient than I’d predicted, knowing my own morning habits) that I found myself with nearly half an hour to fill before the Pilgrim’s Office opened. I had a ‘breakfast’ of some of the bread I’d bought the night before, along with a bottle of water, and decided to walk to the point near the old tower of Ouranoupolis, the ‘Gate of Heaven’, to watch the mist roll off the ocean as morning sprang fully to life. I remember standing there, leaning on the top rail of an old wooden fence that separated the grass from the beach, looking out towards the Mountain. It was hidden in the mist, and of it I could see absolutely nothing. So amusing, I thought. Mt Athos had for years seemed to elude me: each time I thought I had the opportunity to visit, something arose that prevented the journey. Every time I seemed to come closer, it seemed to draw further away – as if it were insisting that I come all the way to its shores if I were ever to know it at all. I laughed as I leaned against the wooden railing at the edge of heaven, and said aloud, ‘So, dear Athos, you hide yourself even now, until I actually place my feet upon your soil.’

As the doors of the Pilgrim’s Office opened at 9.00 a.m., I was the first to walk through them. It took only moments for my paper from Thessaloniki to be examined and replaced with a formal diamonitirion. 4,000 drachmas to receive it (I received the educational price). Only £7 to fulfil a long dream. I looked at the diamonitirion as it was handed to me: a standard sheet of paper, slightly brown, with my details printed legibly. A colourful seal of the community was in the upper right-hand corner, and a blue stamp of the Mother of God formed a sort of letterhead.

Like so much else in this journey, this small notice seemed unreal, slightly outside the realm of the actual. Surely I could not be holding this paper. Surely I could not be about to board the boat. Surely I could not be about to visit Athos.

Less than an hour later, I boarded the boat. At shortly before noon, this same ferry reached the port of Daphne. At 12.03 p.m. –I remember the time precisely– I planted my feet on the Holy Mountain.

There was confusion at Daphne. Amidst the strong, surreal atmosphere that seemed to pervade this little port village, there was a great deal of motion – a lot of ... noise? The ferry unloaded, people scrambled about. There were cars, shops, workers, even a café. New arrivals on the mountain scuttled about to their destinations, while another group hustled for the boat, headed back into the world.

I remember being startled by the commotion. It was not what I had expected, having long ago framed in my mind a picture of Athos the Silent, Athos the Somber, Athos the Noble Hesychast. Here things were far from silent. Apart from its smaller size, there was little about Daphne that was too visibly or audibly different from Ouranoupolis. Suddenly I had a great and terrifying fear: it seemed that my worries of not actually making it to the Holy Mountain were over, but might I now be faced with something far, far worse - that having arrived on the Mountain, I would find it overrun with secularisation, not so holy as I had long envisioned it to be?

The thought made me shudder, then made me angry. This was not how I should be thinking. I had been on Athos for all of five minutes; who was I to be pouring out judgements upon her? ‘Shame on you’, was all I could say to myself.

It was then time to do something I had long planned to do. Disappearing around a corner, behind one of the port buildings, I did what so many have done before me and kissed the ground of the Holy Mountain. God had granted me to come this far, and even should the world have crumbled to dust at that very moment, I would still have set foot on Athos. I venerated the earth, and thanked God for the blessing.

Confusion was next to come. Somehow, I had to get to the holy monastery of Simonopetra, where a friend had already informed the fathers that I would be arriving that day. Yet one thing that hadn’t registered with me before the ferry trip was now becoming quite clear: the sheer size and severity of the Holy Mountain. What looked on my map like a short jaunt between Daphne and Simonopetra was, in actuality, at least a two-hour hike over exceptionally steep terrain. Moreover I had my bag, and the sun shone hot through a heavy, wet, ocean air.

I had thought –or rather I had been told– that there would be a car travelling to the monastery. Later I would learn that this was actually the case; but at this point, amidst the bustle of the new landing and my generally overwhelmed, confused state, I could not discover it. Few people spoke English, and those who did seemed never to have heard of such a car. Suddenly the bus for Karyes and a small fleet of automobiles departed up a winding road, and Daphne was relatively quiet. I realised that I had no idea what to do next.

A kind monk, who looked to be of about middle age, was walking the shoreline road in front of the shops, weaving small crosses from coloured twine. I approached him for assistance, to learn quite swiftly that he spoke no English whatsoever. But he did have a warm smile, an evidently warm heart, and worked with me through the Greek (hand-motions were here, and elsewhere, to play a great part in my communications on the Holy Mountain) until I understood that a smaller ferry, the ‘Aghia Anna’, would soon leave to make the rounds of the southern monasteries of which Simonopetra was one. I thanked the father as best as I could with my poor Greek accent (a faint echo of Erasmus, for I had not yet learned modern Greek pronunciation), and walked to the boat.

The St Anne was, indeed, exactly where I needed to be. At around 12.30 the ferry pulled away from the port at Daphne and turned south. A kind English-speaking pilgrim informed me that Simonopetra would be our first stop, and that there I should depart. I thanked him and moved outside to the front of the boat. It would be only minutes before we arrived.

It was then that I saw Simonopetra with my own eyes for the first time. From the water it sits towering high above, clinging to the top of a rock, draping itself over the sides as over a sheer cliff. High on the hill, it is surrounded on both sides by deep valleys, which only add to its majestic presence as it seems to float in mid-air. My breath stopped at the sight of this holy place of which I had seen so many pictures and heard so many stories, now actually here before my own eyes, so far above the level of the sea that I had to crane my next back entirely to look upon it. I was overwhelmed.

The view, however, was short lived. The St Anne soon rounded a small point, and as quickly as it had come into view, Simonopetra was gone. It was replaced by the vision of a small port straight ahead, toward which our boat fast approached. Only a few moments later would my rising anticipation of an impending entrance into the monastery gates be subdued by the realisation that this port was not in fact that of Simonopetra, but of its neighbouring monastery, Greghoriou. The two ports themselves are rather close by one another, with only a single jetting peninsula separating the shore between them into two small bays. But for all their closeness, a stop at the latter meant a journey of an additional hour to make it to the first monastery; and as inviting as the cloister of Greghoriou now looked, only a short ten-minute walk from the landing upon which I and my bags had been deposited, I knew that it was to Simonopetra that I must make my way, for it was there that I was expected.

And then the next great realisation of the morning: I hadn’t the faintest idea how to get from the port of Greghoriou to the holy monastery of Simonopetra. I hadn’t purchased a map of Athos in Ouranoupolis (still having been under the innocent delusion that its short distances weren’t interrupted by massive mountains and ravines, and far-off sights would be easy to spot), and I knew only the general direction toward which the monastery must lie. But all that stood before me as I faced in that direction was a horrifyingly steep wall of shrubs and small trees, not so much a hillside as a cliff face, forming a more than a bit intimidating obstacle.

It would turn out to be a young Russian monk, whose name I would never learn, who would help me out of my predicament. The Aghia Anna had deposited him at the same landing upon which I, looking quite confused, currently stood, and he made use of some rudimentary hand gestures to inform me that he lived in a small skete, or collection of hermitages, in the valley between Greghoriou and Simonopetra. I managed to convey that it was to this latter monastery that I wished to walk, and he agreed to lead me as far as he could before having to turn off on his own. Without a further word, I picked up my bag, slung it over a jacketed shoulder, and began to follow my nameless benefactor.

What I saw along that journey can hardly be described. There is something about the landscape of the Holy Mountain that injects wonder into the mind and heart of whosoever sets foot upon it. One is captivated, almost drawn in by the beauty of the land on which he walks. Cacti grew almost as tall as the trees, towering amidst bright gold and purple flowers whose scents were as poignant as those of a perfumerie. These cast shadows upon our cobble-stoned walk, perfected in its form by a thousand years of loving maintenance at the hands of generations of monks. We walked in total silence, the young monk no less overwhelmed by the sight than I, hearing only the harmonious commixture of birdsong and waves gently breaking against the rough, Athonite coast which, as we walked, loomed ever further below us. Having heard symphonies and operas, musicals and concerts my whole life through, I can honestly say that the silence of that walk was one of the most beautiful sounds I had ever heard. God spoke loudly in the stillness and quietness of that footpath.

Few places in the world can produce the silence of Mt Athos. It is not just the technological solitude of the place that gives it such resonance (south of Simonopetra, where I currently walked, there are no roads, and hence no cars); it is the knowledge that one stands in the silence of over a thousand men – a population whose size would, almost anywhere else in the world, produce a fair amount of noise. But even as one walks through a desert ‘neighbourhood’ that houses hundreds, the loudest sound one hears is the crunch of the earth beneath his feet. It is when one realises this fact that he is reminded of the truth that a life of genuine communion with God and man does not necessitate a heavily laden arsenal of words and discussion, but a true connection of the heart and person with Him to Whom they speak and commune. The silence of such communion, when experienced for the first time, is entirely overwhelming.

I continued on with the nameless monk, shuffling a prayer rope through the fingers of my left hand as I used the right to steady the large bag I had hoisted over my shoulder. I could have done better than to have worn a jacket for this walk: the sun beat down with a squelching heat, made only more intense by the wetness of the ocean air and the speed with which my guide led me along. The path from Greghoriou is not one that would qualify for an ‘easy ambler’ rating anywhere in the world; the same kind of curt practicality that has been the trademark of monastic theology for centuries seems to have influenced monastic trailblazing as well. When one stands at the bottom of a hill and sees his destination at the top, what better route to follow than a straight line between them? So up the mountainous slope we went.

The steepness of the trail, as well as its length, inspired us to take several breaks on our journey, to sit on a stone or log and catch our breath before continuing on. It was during one of these breaks that the monk communicated to me –again through a form of sign language invented as we went along– that he must here depart and head inland, up the narrow valley at whose mouth we currently sat, to his hermitage. I should continue on, he said, and turn uphill whenever the opportunity arose. I was about two-thirds of the way to Simonopetra.

The monk and I exchanged the best farewells we could, and I asked his blessing before he headed off into the woods. He was the first monk I had met on the Holy Mountain, and though I still do not know his name, he has since remained a poignant symbol of Athonite spirituality alive in the human individual. To someone he had never met, about whom he knew nothing at all, with whom he could not even speak, this young man –perhaps only a few years older than I– exemplified the notions of hospitality, Christian love, and true devotion to his calling. May I have his blessing.

I continued on without my guide, doing as he had said and taking the high road whenever the increasingly narrow path divided along its course. It was perhaps 40 minutes after we had parted ways that I rounded a hairpin corner at the top of a small peak and beheld, for the first time since the ferry ride, the form of Simonopetra. It now loomed deceptively near: the sheer size and daunting shape of the monastery made it seem far closer than the three-quarters of a mile between us would allow. I looked up, no longer having to crane my next as steeply as I’d done aboard the Aghia Anna, and marvelled at the sight of such a structure.

Apart from all else, the monastery of Simonopetra is a remarkable piece of architecture. It is said to have been built in the mid-13th century upon the precipice of a finger-like stone that rises out of a deep valley, several hundred feet into the air. The actual peak of the stone monument, upon which the katholikos, the monastery church, now stands, does not provide much in the way of level surface area upon which to build. So to accommodate this landscaping challenge Simonopetra is built not so much on top of, but around the top of this massive stone pedestal. The result is a structure that quite literally droops over the sides of sheer cliffs, with row upon row of wooden balconies protruding several feet further out over the ravine below than does the building itself. And the same architecture which allows the monastery to sit so uniquely upon its perch also gives Simonopetra the illusion of being far bigger than it actually is; for when one beholds the exterior of the monastery, he sees an enormous complex which looks to be a remarkable 15 stories tall and cover the space of a solid city block. It is only when one enters through the gates that the truth is revealed: the centre of the monastery is actually quite small, most of the space being taken up by the great rock upon which it is perched. The massive edifice visible from the outside wraps around a core of stolid stone, not creating an exceptional amount of interior space.

This knowledge, though, does not alter the impact received upon seeing Simonopetra for the first time, especially from below. The old folktale of the three trees, in which the third desired nothing more than to grow tall and point to God, could easily have been modelled upon the desire of the workers hired by St Simon the Myrrh-Bearer, patron saint of the monastery, for the structure seems to point –even to reach up and come into contact with– heaven itself. As I stood at the top of a small ridge, still quite a distance below the great house, I somehow felt that much nearer the divine.

I would learn later –once I had come to know a few of the community– of the tradition surrounding the foundation of Simonopetra. On my second day at the monastery I spent a few hours visiting with one of the fathers, then the ekklesiastikos, or church-warden, also studying to become the community’s dentist. A friend in London had arranged our meeting, himself quite familiar with the monastery and its residents. My friend had chosen this pairing with the knowledge that this father, unlike many of the monks, speaks fluent English. He is, in fact, originally from America - Chicago, to be most precise. But having lived on the Holy Mountain for many years his identity is truly Athonite, and one senses in speaking to this man that he is encountering a true representative of the lifestyle of Athos.

After some time spent in introductions and personal histories, this dear father led me a short distance from the monastery’s main entrance, into a small structure built into the side of a rock face. There were two icons on the interior: one of the Nativity of Christ and the other of a solemn ascetic with whom I was not familiar, though the Greek inscription revealed him to be one ‘Simon the Myrrh-Bearer.’ Once we had venerated the icons and said a short prayer, the father lit a candle from the lamps in front of the icons and led me upwards through what appeared to be nothing more than a crack in the rock. The passageway through which we travelled was small, so much so that both of us needed to crouch to pass through, and after a few winding steps it opened into a small cave. The entire ‘room’ formed by this cave could have been no more than six feet by four, with the ceiling so low that, while seated, I still had to rest my chin on my chest to prevent hitting it on the rock above. It was here, in the shimmering candlelight of this small earthen space, that I was told the story of Simonopetra [1].

St Simon, sometime in the thirteenth century, had moved out of his residence in one of the larger Athonite monasteries in order to seek a more definitive solitude in one of the Holy Mountain’s many caves. That in which we now sat was the cave that had most met with his approval, and here he had spent the entirety of three years in prayer and contemplation, being disturbed only every few weeks by his spiritual father, who would bring him bread and water.

‘St Simon lived in this cave for three years,’ stressed my dear father, ‘three years in this little cave, where we can’t even sit up straight. Imagine that!’

I could not. I had long read of ascetics who endured such conditions for the mortification of their passions and the taming of their bodies and minds for prayer; but actually to sit in the cave, to feel the dark, to hear the silence, to know the solitude... I could not imagine such a discipline.

‘At the end of three years,’ the father continued, ‘Simon heard a voice telling him to come out of his cave and look atop the nearby rock. But Simon thought this was the voice of the devil, attempting to draw him away from his prayer, and he ignored it. Yet the voice came day after day, and eventually he discerned that it must be from God, and he obeyed.’

What Simon saw when he came out of his cave, I then learned, was a glowing star resting above the surface of the nearby stone massif; and the voice of Mary came to him and said, ‘Build here a house, and call it New Bethlehem, for in it shall be born many soldiers for Christ.’ And by these signs St Simon knew he was to construct a monastery on the impossible peak near the mouth of his cave. This he attempted to do by recruiting the hands of some worker laymen visiting on Athos, yet seeing the task before them, they instructed what they believed to be an ageing and perhaps senile old monk that such a feat was impossible on such terrain. But Simon insisted, and after some time and what must have been some impassioned pleading, he secured their assistance.

Sometime later, while the monastery that would become Simonopetra was in the midst of its construction, these same workers were resting on the top of its foundations with St Simon and an assistant. The latter was bringing water to refresh the workers, who grumbled on about how ridiculous and dangerous the project was, insistently informing their patron that someone was bound to get hurt if work continued. And, as if on cue, Simon’s assistant tripped on the construction equipment and, water pitchers in hand, toppled off the side of the building and fell down the cliff to the bottom of the deep ravine below.

‘The workers were furious!’ recounted the father sitting next to me in the cave, as if all this had happened yesterday and he had been there personally to witness their rage. ‘"We told you this would happen!" they cried, and announced that they would no longer have anything to do with Simon’s project. But,’ he added, ‘they felt they ought to hike down to the ravine and find whatever was left of the assistant’s body, to give him a proper burial.’

So the troop of men, followed by Simon himself, made the sombre hike down the slope to retrieve the body of their fallen comrade. But when they arrived at the bottom of the ravine, they were greeted by the youthful assistant, still carrying his pitchers of water. Amazed, they asked him what had happened. ‘It was as if an angel caught me and carried me down to the ground,’ he said.

‘At that moment,’ the Simonopetrite father continued, ‘the workers not only told St Simon that they would complete the construction of his monastery, but that they desired to become its first monks. And that is how Simonopetra was born’.

And it was to this very building that I now approached: one divinely inspired from its foundation, divinely used since its consecration, still divinely serving God through the devotion and humility of its inhabitants. The connection of so much history, united through the holy ties of sanctified lives that have blessed its walls and hallowed its floors, makes Simonopetra a place of amazing wonder and true holiness. To see it from afar in books and histories had intrigued me. To hear of it in personal stories had captivated me. To see it from the shore on the bow of an Athonite ferry had enthralled me. And now, as I arrived at its gates, it was time for Simonopetra to change me.

NOTES:

[1] I am certain that I here retell the story that follows with many errors, for my memory is not detailed enough to recall all the facts, dates and events with the precision in which they were told to me. The errors in this account should be understood as wholly my own, and not those of the father with whom I was speaking.

Kollyvas · Post by **Kollyvas** » Mon 21 November 2005 4:21 pm

http://www.holytrinitymission.org/books ... oc27729593

The Byzantine

Ascetic and Spiritual Fathers

Fr. Georges Florovsky

Emeritus Professor of Eastern Church History Harvard University

Content:

Author's Preface (1978).

The Ascetic Ideal and the New Testament.

Reflections on the Critique of the Theology of the Reformation. The Significance of The Desert. The Gospel of St. Matthew. The Inadequacy of the Critique by Anders Nygren. Perfection, Almsgiving, Prayer, Fasting, and Chastity. Poverty and Humility. The Writings by St. Paul and the Interpretation of the Reformation. Romans. I and II Corinthians. Galatians. Ephesians. Philippians. Colossians. I and II Thessalonians. I and II Timothy. Hebrews. I and II Peter. The Epistles of St. John. The Epistle of St. James and Luther's Evaluation. The Life of the Early Church.

Opposition to Asceticism and Monasticism.

Jovinian. Vigilantius. Helvidius. Aerius of Sebaste. Martin Luther. John Calvin.

St. Antony and Anchoritic Monasticism.

The Spiritual Essence of the Monastic Ideal. St. Antony and the Anchoritic Life. Negative Evaluations of the Vita Antonii. The Writings of St. Antony. The Influence of Egyptian Monasticism through St. Athanasius.

St. Pachomius and Cenobitic Monasticism.
The Spread of Monasticism.
St. Basil and St. Gregory of Nyssa.

St. Basil the Great. St. Gregory of Nyssa.

The Spiritual Homilies.

The Sources and the Problems with the Manuscripts. The Claim of Messalianism in The Spiritual Homilies. The Theology of the Spiritual Homilies.

Evagrius Ponticus.

Life. The Condemnation of Evagrius. The Writings of Evagrius. The Theological Thought of Evagrius.

Nilus, Mark the Hermit, and Shenoute of Atripe.

St. Nilus of Ancyra. Mark the Hermit. Shenoute of Atripe.

Isidore of Pelusium and Diadochus of Photice.

Isidore of Pelusium. Diadochus of Photice.

Minor Ascetic Writers.
Corpus Areopagiticum.

The Nature of the Corpus. The Historical Influence of the Corpus Areopagiticum. In Quest of the Author.

The Theological Vision.

The Ways to Knowledge of God. The Structure and Order of the World. The Liturgy.

St. Isaac the Syrian.
St. John Climacus.

The Paucity of Facts of his Life. The Heavenly Ladder and its Historical Influence. Anders Nygren's Negative Evaluation of the Heavenly Ladder.

Author's Preface (1978).

These four volumes on the Eastern Fathers of the fourth century and the Byzantine fathers from the fifth to eighth centuries were originally published in 1931 and 1933 in Russian. They contained my lectures given at the Institute of Orthodox Theology in Paris from 1928 to 1931 and were originally published in Russian more or less in the form in which they were originally delivered. They therefore lacked exact references and appropriate footnotes. Another reason for the omission of reference material in the 1931 and 1933 publications is that the books were originally published at my own expense and strict economy was therefore necessary. In fact, their publication was only the result of the generous cooperation and help of personal friends. These English publications must be dedicated to their memory. The initiative of the original publication was taken by Mrs. Elizabeth Skobtsov, who became an Orthodox nun and was later known under her monastic name of Mother Maria. It was she who typed the original manuscripts and she who was able to persuade Mr. Iliia Fondaminsky, at that time one of the editors of the renowned Russian review, Sovremennye Zapiski [Annales Contemporaries], to assume financial responsibility. Both these friends perished tragically in German concentration camps. They had been inspired by the conviction that books in Russian on the Fathers of the Church were badly needed, not only by theological students, but also by a much wider circle of those concerned with doctrinal and spiritual vistas and issues of Eastern Orthodox Tradition. Their expectation was fully justified: the volumes in Russian rapidly sold out and were warmly appreciated in the general press.

When I began teaching at the Paris Institute, as Professor of Patrology, I had to face a preliminary methodological problem. The question of the scope and manner of Patristic studies had been vigorously debated by scholars for a long time. (There is an excellent book by Fr. J. de Ghellinck, S.J., Patristique et Moyen Age, Volume II, 1947, pp. 1-180). The prevailing tendency was to treat Patrology as a history of Ancient Christian Literature, and the best modern manuals of Patrology in the West were written precisely in this manner: Bardenhewer, Cayre, Tixeront, Quasten, adherents to this school of thought, made only sporadic reference to certain points of doctrine but their approach was no doubt legitimate and useful. However, another cognate discipline came into existence during the last century, Dogmengeschichte, or the school of the history of doctrine. Here scholars were concerned not so much with individual writers or thinkers but rather with what can be defined as the "internal dialectics" of the Christian "mind" and with types and trends of Christian thought.

In my opinion, these two approaches to the same material must be combined and correlated. I have tried to do precisely this with the revision of some of the material for the English publications. I have written some new material on the external history and especially on the ecumenical councils. But in essence Patrology must be more than a kind of literary history. It must be treated rather as a history of Christian doctrine, although the Fathers were first of all testes veritatis, witnesses of truth, of the faith. "Theology" is wider and more comprehensive than "doctrine." It is a kind of Christian Philosophy. Indeed, there is an obvious analogy between the study of Patristics and the study of the history of Philosophy. Historians of Philosophy are as primarily concerned with individual thinkers as they are interested ultimately in the dialectics of ideas. The "essence" of philosophy is exhibited in particular systems. Unity of the historical process is assured because of the identity of themes and problems to which both philosophers and theologians are committed. I would not claim originality for my method, for it has been used occasionally by others. But I would underline the theological character of Patrology.

These books were written many years ago. At certain points they needed revision or extension. To some extent, this has been done. Recent decades have seen the rapid progress of Patristic studies in many directions. We now have better editions of primary sources than we had forty or even thirty years ago. We now have some new texts of prime importance: for example, the Chapters of Evagrius or the new Sermons of St. John Chrysostom. Many excellent monograph studies have been published in recent years. But in spite of this progress I do not think that these books, even without the revisions and additions, have been made obsolete. Based on an independent study of primary sources, these works may still be useful to both students and scholars.

Georges Florovsky September, 1978

The Ascetic Ideal and the New Testament.

Reflections on the Critique of the Theology of the Reformation.

If the monastic ideal is union with God through prayer, through humility, through obedience, through constant recognition of one's sins, voluntary or involuntary, through a renunciation of the values of this world, through poverty, through chastity, through love for mankind and love for God, then is such an ideal Christian? For some the very raising of such a question may appear strange and foreign. But the history of Christianity, especially the new theological attitude that obtained as a result of the Reformation, forces such a question and demands a serious answer. If the monastic ideal is to attain a creative spiritual freedom, if the monastic ideal realizes that freedom is attainable only in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, and if the monastic ideal asserts that to become a slave to God is ontologically and existentially the path to becoming free, the path in which humanity fully becomes human precisely because the created existence of humanity is contingent upon God, is by itself bordered on both sides by non-existence, then is such an ideal Christian? Is such an ideal Biblical — New Testamental? Or is this monastic ideal, as its opponents have claimed, a distortion of authentic Christianity, a slavery to mechanical "monkish" "works righteousness"?

The Significance of The Desert.

When our Lord was about to begin his ministry, he went into the desert — els' την έρημον. Our Lord had options but he selected — or rather, "was lead by the Spirit," into the desert. It is obviously not a meaningless action, not a selection of type of place without significance. And there — in the desert — our Lord engages in spiritual combat, for he "fasted forty days and forty nights” — νηστεύσας ήμερας τεσσαράκοντα και νύκτας· τεσσαρακοστά ύστερον έπείνασεν. The Gospel of St. Mark adds that our Lord “was with tins wild beasts” — και ην μετά των θηρίων. Our Lord, the God-Man, was truly God and truly man. Exclusive of our Lord's redemptive work, unique to our Lord alone, he calls us to follow him — και άκολονθείτω μοι. “Following” our Lord is not exclusionary; it is not selecting certain psychologically pleasing aspects of our Lord's life and teachings to follow. Rather it is all-embracing. We are to follow our Lord in every way possible. "To go into the desert" is "to follow" our Lord. It is interesting that our Lord returns to the desert after the death of St. John the Baptist. There is an obvious reason for this. "And hearing [of John the Baptist's death] Jesus departed from there in a ship to a desert place privately” — άνεχώρησεν εκείθεν εν πλοίω εις έρημον τόπον και ιδίαν. When St. Antony goes to the desert, he is "following" the example of our Lord — indeed, he is "following" our Lord. This in no way diminishes the unique, salvific work of our Lord, this in no way makes of our Lord God, the God-Man, a mere example. But in addition to his redemptive work, which could be accomplished only by our Lord, our Lord taught and set examples. And by "following" our Lord into the desert, St. Antony was entering a terrain already targeted and stamped by our Lord as a specific place for spiritual warfare. There is both specificity and "type" in the "desert." In those geographical regions where there are no deserts, there are places which are similar to or approach that type of place symbolized by the "desert," It is that type of place which allows the human heart solace, isolation. It is the type of place which puts the human heart in a state of aloneness, a state in which to meditate, to pray, to fast, to reflect upon one's inner existence and one's relationship to ultimate reality — God. And more. It is a place where spiritual reality is intensified, a place where spiritual life can intensify and simultaneously where the opposing forces to spiritual life can become more dominant. It is the terrain of a battlefield but a spiritual one. And it is our Lord, not St. Antony, who has set the precedent. Our Lord says that "as for what is sown among thorns, this is he who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the deceit of riches choke(s) the word, and it becomes unfruitful” — ό δε εις τας άκανθας σπαρείς, ουτος εστίν ό τον λόγον άκονων, και ή μέριμνα τον αίώνος· και ή απάτη τον πλουτου συμπνίγει τον λόγον, και άκαρπος γίνεται. The desert, or a place similar, precisely cuts off the cares or anxieties of the world and the deception, the deceit of earthly riches. It cuts one off precisely from "this-worldliness" and precisely as such it contains within itself a powerful spiritual reason for existing within the spiritual paths of the Church. Not as the only path, not as the path for everyone, but as one, fully authentic path of Christian life.

The Gospel of St. Matthew.

In the Gospel of St. Matthew (5:16) it is our Lord who uses the terminology of "good works." " Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and may glorify your Father who is in heaven” — όυτως λαμψάτω το φως υμών έμπροσθεν των ανθρώπων, οπως ιδωσιν υμών τα καλά έργα καί δοξάσωσιν τον πατέρα υμών τον εν τοις ουρανοίς. Contextually these “good works” are defined in the preceding text of the Beatitudes. “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth” — μακάριοι oι πραείς, δη αυτοί κληρονομησουσιν την γην. “Blessed are they who are hungering and are thirsting for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied” — μακάριοι οι πεινώντες καί διψώντες την δικαιοσυνην, ότι αυτοί χορτασθήσοντα. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” — μακάριοι οι καθαροί τη καρδία, δη αυτοί τον θεον οψονται. Is it not an integral part of the monastic goal to become meek, to hunger and thirst for righteousness, and to become pure in heart? This, of course, must be the goal of all Christians but monasticism, which makes it an integral part of its ascetical life, can in no way be excluded. Are not the Beatitudes more than just rhetorical expressions? Are not the Beatitudes a part of the commandments of our Lord? In the Gospel of St. Matthew (5:19) our Lord expresses a deeply meaningful thought — rather a warning. "Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven” — ος εάν oυν λύση μίαν των εντολών τούτων των ελαχίστων καί διδάξη ουτως τους άνθρωπους, ελάχιστος κληθήσεται εν τη βασιλεία των ουρανών. And it is in this context that our Lord continues to deepen the meaning of the old law with a new, spiritual significance, a penetrating interiorization of the "law." He does not nullify or abrogate the law but rather extends it to its most logical and ontological limit, for he drives the spiritual meaning of the law into the very depth of the inner existence of mankind.

"You heard that it was said to those of old... but I say to you” — ήκούσατε οτι έρρέθη τοις αρχαίοις... εγώ δε λέγω υμιν. Now, with the deepening of the spiritual dimension of the law, the old remains, it is the base, but its spiritual reality is pointed to its source. “You shall not kill” becomes inextricably connected to “anger.” “But I say to you that everyone being angry with his brother shall be liable to the judgment” — εγώ δε λέγω ύμιν οτι πας ό οργιζόμενος τω άδελφω αυτού ένοχος εσται τη κρίσει No longer is the external act the only focal point. Rather the source, the intent, the motive is now to be considered as the soil from which the external act springs forth. Mankind must now guard, protect, control, and purify the inner emotion or attitude of "anger" and, in so doing, consider it in the same light as the external act of killing or murder. Our Lord has reached into the innermost depth of the human heart and has targeted the source of the external act. "You shall not commit adultery. But I say to you that everyone who is seeing a woman lustfully, has already committed adultery with her in his heart” — ου μοιχεύσεις. εγώ δε λέγω νμίν οτι πας ό βλέπων γυναίκα προς το έπιθυμήσαι αυτήν ήδη έμοίχευσεν αυτήν εν τη καρδία αυτόν. From a spiritual perspective the person who does not act externally but lusts within is equally liable to the reality of "adultery." "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and you shall hate your enemy'. But I say to you: Love your enemies and pray for those persecuting you so that you may become sons of your Father in heaven” — ήκουσατε ότι έρρέθη, αγαπήσεις τον πλησίον σου και μισήσεις τον έχθρόν σον. εγώ δε λέγω υμιν, αγαπάτε τους έχθρόυς υμών και προσευχεσθε υπέρ των διωκόντων υμάς.

The Inadequacy of the Critique by Anders Nygren.

The Christian idea of love is indeed something new. But it is not something so radically odd that the human soul cannot understand it. It is not such a "transvaluation of all ancient values," as Anders Nygren has claimed in his lengthy study Agape and Eros (originally published in Swedish in 1947 as Den kristna karlekstanken genom tiderna, Eros och Agape; published in two volumes in 1938 and 1939; two volumes published in one paperback edition by Harper and Row in 1969). Although there are certain aspects of truth in some of Nygren's statements, his very premise is incorrect. Nygren reads back into the New Testament and the early Church the basic position of Luther rather than dealing with early Christian thought from within its own milieu. Such an approach bears little ultimate fruit and often, as in the case of his position in Agape and Eros, distorts the original sources with presuppositions that entered the history of Christian thought 1500 years after our Lord altered the very nature of humanity by entering human existence as God and Man. There is much in Luther that is interesting, perceptive, and true. However, there is also much that does not speak the same language as early Christianity. And herein lies the great divide in the ecumenical dialogue. For the ecumenical dialogue to bear fruit, the very controversies that separate the churches must not be hushed up. Rather they must be brought into the open and discussed frankly, respectfully, and thoroughly. There is much in Luther with which Eastern Orthodox theologians especially can relate. Monasticism, however, is one area in which there is profound disagreement. Even Luther at first did not reject monasticism. Luther's Reformation was the result of his understanding of the New Testament, an understanding which Luther himself calls "new." His theological position had already been formed before the issue of indulgences and his posting of his Ninety-Five Theses. Nygren, loyal to Luther's theological vision, has a theological reason for his position in Agape and Eros. Nygren identifies his interpretation of Agape with the monoenergistic concept of God, a concept of God that would be correct in and of itself, for God is the source of everything. But once we confront the mystery of creation, the mystery of that "other" existence, that created existence which includes mankind, we face a totally different situation. The existential and ontological meaning of man's created existence is precisely that God did not have to create, that it was a free act of Divine freedom. But — and here is the great difficulty created by an unbalanced western Christianity on the doctrine of grace and freedom — in freely creating man God willed to give man an inner spiritual freedom. In no sense is this a Pelagian or Semi-Pelagian position. The balanced synergistic doctrine of the early and Eastern Church, a doctrine misunderstood and undermined by Latin Christianity in general from St. Augustine on — although there was always opposition to this in the Latin Church — always understood that God initiates, accompanies, and completes everything in the process of salvation. What it always rejected — both spontaneously and intellectually — is the idea of irresistible grace, the idea that man has no participating role in his salvation. Nygren identifies any participation of man in his salvation, any movement of human will and soul toward God, as a pagan distortion of Agape, as "Eros." And this attitude, this theological perspective will in essence be the determining point for the rejection of monasticism and other forms of asceticism and spirituality so familiar to the Christian Church from its inception.

If Nygren's position on Agape is correct, then the words of our Lord, quoted above, would have had no basis in the hearts of the listeners for understanding. Moreover, our Lord, in using the verbal form of Agape — αγαπάτε — uses the “old” commandment as the basis for the giving of the new, inner dimension of the spiritual extension of that commandment of agape, of love. If Nygren is correct, the "old" context of agape would have been meaningless, especially as the foundation upon which our Lord builds the new spiritual and ontological character of agape. Nygren's point is that "the Commandment of Love" occurs in the Old Testament and that it is "introduced in the Gospels, not as something new, but as quotations from the Old Testament." He is both correct and wrong. Correct in that it is a reference taken from the Old Testament. Where else was our Lord to turn in addressing "his people"? He is wrong in claiming that it is nothing but a quotation from the Old Testament, precisely because our Lord uses the Old Testament reference as a basis upon which to build. Hence, the foundation had to be secure else the building would have been flawed and the teaching erroneous. Indeed, Nygren himself claims that "Agape can never be 'self-evident'." In making such a claim, Nygren has undercut any possibility for the hearers of our Lord to understand any discourse in which our Lord uses the term "Agape." And yet Nygren writes that "it can be shown that the Agape motif forms the principal theme of a whole series of Parables." What is meant by this statement is that Nygren's specific interpretation of Agape forms the principal theme of a whole series of Parables. If this is the case, then those hearing the parables could not have understood them, for they certainly did not comprehend Agape in the specificity defined by Nygren, and hence the parables — according to the inner logic of Nygren's position — were meaningless to the contemporaries of our Lord, to his hearers.

To be filled by the love of and for God is the monastic ideal. In the Gospel of St. Matthew (22:34-40) our Lord is asked which is the greatest commandment. "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind [understanding]. This the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. In these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets” — αγαπήσεις κύριον τον θεόν σου εν ολη τη καρδία σου και εν ολη τη ψυχή σον και εν ολη τη διάνοια σον. αυτη εστίν ή μεγάλη και πρώτη εντολή, δευτέρα δε όμοια αύτη, αγαπήσεις τον πλησίον σον ώς σεαντόν. εν ταύταις ταις δυσίν έντολαις ολος ό νόμος κρέμαται και οι προφήται. The monastic and ascetic ideal is to cultivate the love of the heart, the soul, and the mind for God. Anders Nygren's commentary on this text in his Agape and Eros is characteristic of his general position. "It has long been recognized that the idea of Agape represents a distinctive and original feature of Christianity. But in what precisely does its originality and distinctiveness consist? This question has often been answered by reference to the Commandment of Love. The double commandment, ‘Thou shall love the Lord thy God with all they heart’ and ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,’ has been taken as the natural starting-point for the exposition of the meaning of Christian love. Yet the fact is that if we start with the commandment, with Agape as something demanded, we bar our own way to the understanding of the idea of Agape... If the Commandment of Love can be said to be specifically Christian, as undoubtedly it can, the reason is to be found, not in the commandment as such, but in the quite new meaning that Christianity has given it... To reach an understanding of the Christian idea of love simply by reference to the Commandment of Love is therefore impossible; to attempt it is to move in a circle. We could never discover the nature of Agape, love in the Christian sense, if we had nothing to guide us but the double command... It is not the commandment that explains the idea of Agape, but insight into the Christian conception of Agape that enables us to grasp the Christian meaning of the commandment. We must therefore seek another starting-point" (pp. 61-63). This is indeed an odd position for one who comes from the tradition of sola Scriptura, for the essence of his position is not sola Scriptura but precisely that Scripture must be interpreted — and here the interpretation comes not from within the matrix of early Christianity but from afar, from an interpretation that to a great extent depends on an interpretation of Christianity that came into the history of Christian thought approximately 1500 years after the beginning of Christian teaching, and that is with the assumption that Nygren is following the general position of Luther. In his analysis of certain interpretations of what constitutes the uniqueness of Christian love and in his rejection of these interpretations as that which determines the uniqueness of Christian love Nygren is in part correct. "This, in fact, is the root-fault of all the interpretations we have so far considered; they fail to recognize that Christian love rests on a quite definite, positive basis of its own. What, then, is this basis?" Nygren approaches the essence of the issue but neglects the important aspect of human ontology, a human ontology created by God. "The answer to this question may be found in the text... 'Love your enemies'. It is true that love for one's enemies is at variance with our immediate natural feelings, and may therefore seem to display the negative character suggested above; but if we consider the motive underlying it we shall see that it is entirely positive. The Christian is commanded to love his enemies, not because the other side teaches hatred of them, but because there is a basis and motive for such love in the concrete, positive fact of God's own love for evil men. 'He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and the good'. That is why we are told: 'Love your enemies... that ye may be children of your Father which is in heaven'." What Nygren writes here is accurate. But it neglects the significance of human ontology; that is, that we are commanded to love our enemies because there is a spiritual value within the very fabric of human nature created by God, even fallen nature, and that that spiritual value is to be found in each and every man, however dimly we may perceive it. If we begin to love our enemy, we will begin to perceive in that enemy characteristics, aspects that were veiled, that were dimmed by the blindness of our hatred. We are commanded to love our enemy not only because God loves mankind, not only because God "maketh his sun to rise on the evil and the good" but God loves mankind because there is a value in mankind. Nygren writes (p.79) that "the suggestion that man is by nature possessed of such an inalienable value easily gives rise to the thought that it is this matchless value on which God's love is set." It is perhaps inaccurate to assert that Nygren misses the central issue that that which is of value in man is God-created, God-given. It is more accurate to assert that Nygren rejects completely the issue, and he does so because of his theological doctrine of God and man. This again is part of that great divide which separates certain churches within the ecumenical dialogue. There is a basic and fundamental difference of vision on the nature of God and man. One view claims its position is consistent with apostolic Christianity, consistent with the apostolic deposit, and consistent with the teaching and life of the early Church and of the Church in all ages. Another view begins with the Reformation. Both views claim the support of the New Testament. Luther's writings on the Divine nature of love are not only interesting but valuable, not only penetrating but in one emphasis accurate. Indeed, if one considers Luther's doctrine of Divine love by itself, exclusive of his other doctrines, especially those on the nature of man, the nature of salvation, the nature of justification, the doctrine of predestination and grace, one encounters a view not dissimilar from that of ancient Orthodox Christianity. At times Luther can even appear to be somewhat mystically inclined. Luther's well-known description of Christian love as "eine quellende Liebe" [a welling or ever-flowing love] is by itself an Orthodox view. For Luther, as for the Fathers of the Church, this love has no need of anything, it is not caused, it does not come into existence because of a desired object, it is not aroused by desirable qualities of an object. It is the nature of God. But, at the same time, it is God who created mankind and hence the love of God for mankind, though in need of nothing and attracted by nothing, loves mankind not because of a value in man but because there is value in man because man is created by God. Herein lies the difference and it is indeed a great divide when one considers the differing views on the other subjects closely related to the nature of Divine love.

Perfection, Almsgiving, Prayer, Fasting, and Chastity.

In monastic and ascetical literature from the earliest Christian times the word and idea of "perfect" are often confronted. The monk seeks perfection, the monk wants to begin to become established on the path that may lead to perfection. But is this the result of monasticism? Is it the monastic and ascetical tendencies in early Christianity which bring forth the idea of perfection, which bring forth the idea of spiritual struggle and striving? It is our Lord, not the monks, who injects the goal of perfection into the very fabric of early Christian thought. In the Gospel of St. Matthew (5:48) our Lord commands: "Be ye therefore perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” — έσεσθε oυν ύμεις τέλειοι ως ό πατήρ υμών ό ουράνιος τέλειος εστίν.

Traditional monastic and ascetical life has included among its activities almsgiving, prayer, and fasting. Were these practices imposed upon an authentic Christianity by monasticism or were they incorporated into monastic and ascetical life from original Christianity? In the Gospel of St. Matthew it is once again our Lord and Redeemer who has initiated almsgiving, prayer, and fasting. Our Lord could very easily have abolished such practices. But rather than abolish them, our Lord purifies them, gives them their correct status within the spiritual life which is to do them but to attach no show, no hypocrisy, no glory to the doing of them. It is proper spiritual perspective that our Lord commands. “Take heed that you do not your righteousness before men in order to be seen by them; for then you will have no reward with your Father in heaven” — προσέχετε δε την δικαιοσύνην υμών μη ποιειν έμπροσθεν των ανθρώπων προς το θεαθήναι αυτοις: ει δε μήγε, μισθόν ουκ έχετε παρά τω πατρί υμών τω εν τοις ουρανοις(6:1). “Therefore, when you do alms, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be glorified by men. Truly, I say to you, they have their reward. But when you are doing alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be in secret; and your Father who is seeing in secret will reward you” — οταν oυv ποιης έλεημοσύνην, μη σαλπίσης έμπροσθεν σον, ώσπερ οι υποκριται ποιουσιν εν ταις σνναγωγαις και εν ταις ρυμαις, οπως δοξασθωσιν υπό των ανθρώπων, αμήν λέγω ύμιν, άπέχουσιν τoν μισθόν αυτών, σου δε ποιουντος έλεημοσυνην μη γνώτω ή αριστερά σον τί ποιεί ή δεξιά σου, οπως ή σου ή ελεημοσύνη εν τω κρύπτω, και ό πατήρ σου ό βλέπων εν τω κρυπτω αυτός απόδωσει σοι (6:2-4). And prayer is commanded to be done in a similar manner to ensure its spiritual nature. At this juncture our Lord instructs his followers to use the “Lord's Prayer,” a prayer that is so simple yet so profound, a prayer that contains within it the glorification of the name of God, a prayer that contains within it the invoking of the coming of the kingdom of God, a prayer that acknowledges that the will of God initiates everything and that without the will of God man is lost — γενηθήτω το θέλημα σου. It is a prayer of humility in that it asks for nothing beyond daily sustenance. It is a prayer of human solidarity in forgiveness, for it asks God to forgive us only as we forgive others, and in this a profound reality of spiritual life is portrayed, a life that unites man with God only as man is also united with other persons, with mankind, in forgiveness. And then there is the prayer to be protected from temptation and, if one falls into temptation, the prayer to be delivered from it. So short, so simple, yet so profound both personally and cosmically. Is monasticism a distortion of authentic Christianity because the monks recite the Lord's Prayer at the instruction of and command of our Lord? If monasticism used free, spontaneous prayer, then it could be faulted for not having "followed" our Lord's command. But that is not the case. Is monasticism a deviation because of the frequent use of the Lord's Prayer? Our Lord was specific: when praying, pray this. It does not preclude other prayers but prominence and priority is to be given to the Lord's Prayer. Indeed, it is certainly foreign to our Lord to restrict the frequency of prayer. The "vain repetitions," or more accurately in the Greek, the prohibition of “do not utter empty words as the gentiles, for they think that in their much speaking they will be heard” — this is in essence different than our Lord's intention — μη βατταλογήσητε ώσπερ οι εθνικοί, δοκουσιν γαρ οτι εν τη πολυλογίω αυτών είσακουσθήσονται. And our Lord says more on this subject, a subject considered of importance to him. In the Gospel of St. Matthew (9:15) our Lord makes the point that when he is taken away, then his disciples will fast — teal τότε νηστεύσονσινΛτι. In the Gospel of St. Matthew (17:21) our Lord explains to his disciples that they were unable to cast out the devil because “this kind goes out only by prayer and fasting” — τούτο δε το γένος ουκ εκπορεύεται ει μη εν προσευχή και νηστεία. This verse, it is true, is not in all the ancient manuscripts. It is, however, in sufficient ancient manuscripts and, moreover, it is contained in the Gospel of St. Mark (9:29). It is obvious that our Lord assigns a special spiritual efficacy to prayer and fasting.

Chastity is a monastic and ascetic goal. Not only an external celibacy but an inner chastity of thought. Is this too something imposed upon authentic, original Christianity by a Hellenistic type of thinking or is it contained within the original deposit of apostolic and Biblical Christianity? Again it is our Lord who lays down the path of celibacy and chastity. In the Gospel of St. Matthew (19:10-12) the disciples ask our Lord whether it is expedient to marry. "Not all men can receive this saying but those to whom it has been given. For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. He who is able to grasp it, let him grasp it” — ου παντες χωρουσιν τον λόγον τούτον, αλλ' οις δεδοται. είσίν γαρ ευνούχοι οιτινες εκ κοιλίας μητρός έγεννήθησαν ούτως, και είσίν ευνούχοι οιτινες εύνουχίσθησαν υπό των ανθρώπων, και είσίν ευνούχοι οιτινες ευνούχισαν εαυτούς δια την βασιλείαν των ουρανών, ό δυνάμενος χωρειν χωρείτω. The monastic and ascetical goal merely “follows” the teaching of our Lord. Original Christianity never imposed celibacy. It was, precisely as our Lord has stated, only for those to whom it was given, only to those who might be able to accept such a path. But the path was an authentically Christian path of spirituality laid down by our Lord. In early Christianity not even priests and bishops were required to be celibate. It was a matter of choice. Later the Church thought it wise to require celibacy of the bishops. But in Eastern Christianity celibacy has never been required of one becoming a priest. The choice to marry or to remain celibate had to be made before ordination. If one married before ordination, then one was required to remain married, albeit the ancient Church witnessed exceptions to this. If one was not married when one was ordained, then one was required to remain celibate. The Roman Church, not the Eastern Orthodox Church, extended the requirement of celibacy to priests and had a very difficult time attempting to enforce it throughout the ages. One can never force forms of spirituality upon a person and expect a spiritually fruitful result. The words of our Lord resound with wisdom — to those to whom it is given, to those who can live in this form of spirituality.

Poverty and Humility.

Poverty is not the goal but the beginning point of monastic and ascetical life in early Christianity. Was this a precedent established by St. Antony, a new notion and movement never before contained within Christian thought? Again it is our Lord who establishes the spiritual value of poverty. In the Gospel of St. Matthew (19:21) our Lord commands the rich man who has claimed he has kept all the commandments: “If you will to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor... and come follow me” — ει θέλεις τέλειος είναι, υπάγε πώλησαν σου τα υπάρχοντα και δός τοις — πτωχοις; και εξεις θησαυρόν εν ούρανοις; καί δευρο ακολουθεί μοι. It was not St. Antony who established the precedent. Rather it was St. Antony who heard the word of our Lord and put it into action, who “did the word of the Lord.” It is Christ, the God-Man who has put forth the ideal of perfection, who has commanded us to be perfect (see also 5:48), who has put forth the ideal of poverty as a starting-point for a certain form of spiritual life. Elsewhere in the Gospel of St. Matthew (13:44) Christ makes a similar point, asserting that one sells everything in exchange for the kingdom of heaven. "The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field” — όμοια εστίν ή βασιλεία των ουρανών θησαυρώ κεκρυμμένω εν τω άγρω, υν εύρων άνθρωπος έκρυφεν, και από της χαράς αυτού υπάγει καί πωλεί πάντα όσα έχει καί αγοράζει τον άγρόν εκείνον.

All Christianity exalts humility. It should therefore not be a surprise if monastic and ascetical spirituality focus on humility. In the Gospel of St. Matthew (18:4) our Lord proclaims that "he who therefore will humble himself as this little child, he is greatest in the kingdom of heaven” — όστις oυv ταπεινώσει έαντόν ως το παιδίον τούτο, ούτος εστίν ό μείζων εν τη βασιλεία των ουρανών. Elsewhere (23:12) our Lord says that “whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted” — όστις δε υψώσει έαυτόν ταπεινωθήσεται, και όστις ταπεινώσει έαντόν υφωθήσεται. The emphasis on humility may appear self-evident. Behind it, however, lies a reality of the nature of God to which few pay much attention. In the Incarnation two very core elements of any spirituality are clearly evidenced — the love and humility of God. The idea that humility is rooted in God may appear astonishing. The humility of God cannot, of course, be considered in the same light as ascetical humility, or any human form of humility. However, the human forms of humility are derived from the very nature of God, just as the commandment to love is rooted in God's love for mankind. God's humility is precisely that being God he desires, he wills to be in communion with everything and everything is inferior to God. This has great theological significance, for it reveals the value of all created things, a value willed by God. There is even a parallel here with the saints who loved animals and flowers. And from this idea, an idea intrinsically derived from the Incarnation and kenosis of God the Son, one can clearly see the real Divine origin in action of Christ's teaching about "others." In the very notion of a vertical spirituality a concern for others is presupposed. And while one is ascending to God — an abomination for Nygren — his fellow man must be included in the dimensions of spirituality. Through the Incarnation all forms of human existence are sanctified. Through the Incarnation both the love and the humility of God are made known. And man is to love God and fellow mankind because love contains absolute, positive value, a value derived because love is the very nature of God. And man is to experience humility, to become inflamed by humility precisely because humility belongs also to God and hence its value is derived from God. But to become filled innerly with love and humility is not easy. It demands not a mere acknowledgement of the fact that God is love and humility is Divine. Rather, it demands the complete purification of our inner nature by God. And this is the struggle, the spiritual warfare that must be waged to enter and maintain the reality of love and humility. The path of monasticism and asceticism is an authentic path, a path also ordained by our Lord.

The Writings by St. Paul and the Interpretation of the Reformation.

The writings by or attributed to St. Paul form a critical point in the entire great divide between the churches of the Reformation and the Orthodox and Roman Catholic Church. The Epistle to the Romans is one of the most important references of this controversy. This epistle and the Epistle to the Galatians formed the base from which Luther developed his doctrine of faith and justification, a doctrine that he himself characterized in his preface to his Latin writings as a totally new understanding of Scripture. These two works continue to be the main reference points for contemporary theologians from the tradition of the Reformation. It was from this new understanding of the Scriptures that the rejection of monasticism obtained in the Reformation. In general it is not an exaggeration to claim that this thought considers St. Paul as the only one who understood the Christian message. Moreover, it is not St. Paul by himself nor St. Paul from the entire corpus of his works, but rather Luther's understanding of St. Paul. From this perspective the authentic interpreters of our Lord's teaching and redemptive work are St. Paul, as understood by Luther; then Marcion, then St. Augustine, and then Luther. Marcion was condemned by the entire early Church. St. Augustine indeed does anticipate Luther in certain views but not at all on the doctrine of justification and Luther's specific understanding of faith. It is more St. Augustine's doctrine of predestination, irresistible grace, and his doctrine of the total depravity of man contained in his "novel" — to quote St. Vincent of Lerins — doctrine of original sin that influenced Luther, who himself was an Augustinian monk.

The rejection of monasticism ultimately followed from the emphasis placed upon salvation as a free gift of God. Such a position is completely accurate but its specific understanding was entirely contrary to that of the early Church. That salvation was the free gift of God and that man was justified by faith was never a problem for early Christianity. But from Luther's perspective and emphasis any type of "works," especially that of the monks in their ascetical struggle, was considered to contradict the free nature of grace and the free gift of salvation. If one was indeed justified by faith, then — so went the line of Luther's thought — man is not justified by "works." For Luther "justification by faith" meant an extrinsic justification, a justification totally independent from any inner change within the depths of the spiritual life of a person. For Luther “to justify” — δικαιουν — meant to declare one righteous or just, not “to make” righteous or just — it is an appeal to an extrinsic justice which in reality is a spiritual fiction. Luther has created a legalism far more serious than the legalism he detected in the Roman Catholic thought and practice of his time. Morever, Luther's legalistic doctrine of extrinsic justification is spiritually serious, for it is a legal transaction which in reality does not and can not exist. Nowhere was the emphasis on "works" so strong, thought Luther, as in monasticism. Hence, monasticism had to be rejected and rejected it was. But Luther read too much into St. Paul's emphasis on faith, on justification by faith, and on the free gift of the grace of salvation. St. Paul is directly in controversy with Judaism, especially in his Epistle to the Romans. It is the "works of the law," the law as defined by and interpreted by and practiced by Judaism in the time of St. Paul. Our Lord has the same reaction to the externalization and mechanical understanding of the "law." Indeed, the very text of the Epistle to the Romans reveals in every passage that St. Paul is comparing the external law of Judaism with the newness of the spiritual understanding of the law, with the newness of the revelation of God in Jesus Christ through the Incarnation, Death, and Resurrection of our Lord. God has become Man. God has entered human history and indeed the newness is radical. But to misunderstand St. Paul's critique of "works," to think that St. Paul is speaking of the "works" commanded by our Lord rather than the Judaic understanding of the works of the "law" is a misreading of a fundamental nature. It is true, however, that Luther had a point in considering the specific direction in which the Roman Catholic merit-system had gone as a reference point similar to the Judaic legal system. As a result of Luther's background, as a result of his theological milieu, whenever he read anything in St. Paul about "works," he immediately thought of his own experience as a monk and the system of merit and indulgences in which he had been raised.

It must be strongly emphasized that Luther does indeed protect one aspect of salvation, the very cause and source of redemption and grace. But he neglects the other side, the aspect of man's participation in this free gift of Divine initiative and grace. Luther fears any resurgence of the Roman Catholic system of merit and indulgences, he fears any tendency which will constitute a truly Pelagian attitude, any tendency that will allow man to believe that he — man — is the cause, the source, or the main spring of salvation. And here Luther is correct. Nygren's Agape-Eros distinction is correct in this context, for any spirituality that omits Agape and concentrates only on Eros, on man's striving to win God's influence, is fundamentally non-Christian. But the issue is not that simple. Both extremes are false. God has freely willed a synergistic path of redemption in which man must spiritually participate. God is the actor, the cause, the initiator, the one who completes all redemptive activity. But man is the one who must spiritually respond to the free gift of grace. And in this response there is an authentic place for the spiritually of monasticism and asceticism, one which has absolutely nothing to do his the "works of the law," or with the system of merit and indulgences.

Romans.

In his Epistle to the Romans St. Paul writes in the very introduction (1:4-5) that through Jesus Christ "we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name” — δι ου έλάβομεν χάριν και αποστολήν ύπακοήν πίστεως... υπέρ του ονόματος αυτόυ. The notion of “obedience of faith” has a meaning for St. Paul. It is much more than a simple acknowledgement or recognition of a faith placed within one by God. Rather, it is a richly spiritual notion, one that contains within it a full spirituality of activity on the part of man — not that the activity will win the grace of God but precisely that the spiritual activity is the response to the grace of God, performed with the grace of God, in order to be filled by the grace of God. And it will be an on-going spiritual "work," one which can never be slackened, and one totally foreign from the "works" of the Judaic law.

St. Paul writes (2:6) that God “will render to each according to his works” — ος αποδώσει έκάστω κατά τα έργα αυτού. If St. Paul was so concerned about the word “works,” if he feared that the Christian readers of his letter might interpret “works” in some totally different way from what he intended, he certainly could have been more cautious. But St. Paul clearly distinguishes between the "works" of the Judaic law and the "works" of the Holy Spirit required of all Christians. Hence, it is difficult to confuse these two perspectives and it is significant that the early Church never confused them, for they understood what St. Paul wrote. If anything — despite the lucidity of St. Paul's thought — there were tendencies at times to fall not into Luther's one-sided interpretation but rather to fall somewhat spontaneously into an Eros-type of striving.

It is the “doers of the law” who will be justified” — οι ποιηται νόμου δικαιωθήσονται (2:13). The notion of “doers” implies action, activity. Elsewhere in the same epistle (5:2) St. Paul writes that through our Lord Jesus Christ “we have had access [by faith] into this grace in which we stand” — την προσαγωγήν έσχήκαμεν (τη πίστει) εις την χάριν ταύτην εν η έστήκαμεν. The very idea of “access into grace” — προσαγωγήν εις την χάριν — is dynamic and implies spiritual activity on the part of mankind.

After the lengthy proclamation of the grace of God, the impotence of the "works of the law" in comparison with the "works" of the new reality of the Spirit, St. Paul resorts to the traditional spiritual exhortation (6:12f). “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body in order to obey its lusts. Nor yield your members to sin as weapons of unrighteousness” — μη ουν βασιλευέτω ή αμαρτία εν τω θνητω υμών σώματι εις το υπακούειν ταις επιθυμίας αυτού, μηδέ παριστάυετε τα μέλη υμών οπλα αδικίας τη αμαρτία. The exhortation presupposes that man has some type of spiritual activity and control over his inner existence. The very use of the word “weapon” invokes the idea of battle, of spiritual warfare, the very nature of the monastic "ordeal."

In the same chapter (6:17) St. Paul writes: “But grace to God that you who were slaves of sin obeyed out of the heart a form of teaching which was delivered to you” — χαρις δε τω θεώ οτι ήτε δούλοι της αμαρτίας υπηκούσατε δε εκ καρδίας εις ον παρεδόθητε τύπον διδαχής. In the second chapter of the Epistle to the Romans (2:15) St. Paul writes about the universal aspect of the "law" that is "written in the hearts" of mankind, a thought with profound theological implications — οιτινες ενδείκνυνται το έργον του νόμου γραπτόν εν ταις καρδίαις αυτών. In using the image of the “heart,” St. Paul is emphasizing the deepest aspect of the interior life of mankind, for such was the use of the image of the “heart” among Hebrews. When he writes that they obeyed "out of the heart," St. Paul is attributing some type of spiritual activity to the "obedience" which springs from the "heart." And to what have they become obedient? To a form or standard of teaching or doctrine delivered to them — this is precisely the apostolic deposit, the body of early Christian teaching to which they have responded and have become obedient. And in so doing, they have become "enslaved to righteousness," the righteousness of the new law, of the life of the Spirit — έλευθερωθέντες δε από της αμαρτίας έδουλωθητε τη δικαιοσύνη (6:18). And the “fruit” of becoming “enslaved to God” is precisely sanctification which leads to life eternal — δουλωθέντες δε τω θεώ, έχετε τον καρπόν υμών εις άγιασμόν, το δε τέλος ζωήν αίωνιον (6:22). Throughout is a process, throughout is a dynamic spiritual activity on the part of man. St. Paul becomes more explicit about the distinction between the old and the new law (7:6). “But now we are discharged from the law, having died in that which held us captive, so as to serve in in newness of spirit and not in oldness of letter” — νυνί δε κατηργήθημεν από του νόμου, άποθανόντες εν ω κατειχόμεθα, ώστε δουλεύειν εν καινότητι πνεύματος και ου παλαιότητι γράμματος.

St. Paul writes that we "are children of God, and if children, also heirs, heirs on the one hand of God, co-heirs on the other hand, of Christ" (8:17). But all this has a condition, has a proviso, for there is the all important “if indeed” — ειπερ. “If we co-suffer in order that we may be glorified” — έσμέν τέκνα θεού. ει δε τέκνα, και κληρονόμοι, κληρονόμοι μεν θεού, συγκληρονόμοι δε Χρίστου, ειπερ συμπάσχομεν ίνα και συνδοξασθώμεν. Our glorification, according to St. Paul, is contingent upon a mighty "if and that "if leads us to the spiritual reality, the spiritual reality of “co-suffering.” The very use of the word “co-suffer” — συμπάσχομεν — presupposes the reality of the idea of “co-suffering” and both presuppose an active, dynamic spiritual action or activity on the part of the one who co-suffers, else there is no meaning to the "co."

In the Epistle to the Romans (12:1) St. Paul uses language that would be meaningless if man were merely a passive object in the redemptive process, if justification by faith was an action that took place only on the Divine level. "I appeal to you therefore, brethren, through the compassions of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy and well-pleasing to God, which is your reasonable service” — παρακαλώ ουν υμάς, αδελφοί, δια των οίκτιρμών τον θεού, παραστήσαι τα σώματα υμών θυσίαν ζώσαν άγιαν ευαρεστον τω θεώ, την λογικήν λατρείαν υμών. St. Paul is asking the Christian to present, a reality which presupposes and requires human activity. But not only "to present" but "to present" the body as a living sacrifice, as holy, and as acceptable or well-pleasing to God. And this St. Paul considers our "reasonable service" or our "spiritual worship." The language and the idea speak for themselves. Using the imperative, St. Paul commands us: "Be not conformed to this age but be transformed by the renewing of the mind in order to prove [that you may prove] what [is] that good and well-pleasing and perfect will of God” — και μη συσχηματίζεσθε τω αιώνι τούτω, άλλα μεταμορφουσθε τη ανακοινώσει του νοός, εις το δοκιμάζειν υμάς τι το θέλημα του θεού, το αγαθόν και εύάρεστον και τέλειον. Taken by itself and out of context this language could be misinterpreted as Pelagian, for here it is man who is transforming the mind, man who is commanded to activate the spiritual life. Such an interpretation is, of course, incorrect but it reveals what one can do to the totality of the theological thought of St. Paul if one does not understand the balance, if one does not understand that his view is profoundly synergistic. Synergism does not mean that two energies are equal. Rather it means that there are two wills — one, the will of God which precedes, accompanies, and completes all that is good, positive, spiritual and redemptive, one that has willed that man have a spiritual will, a spiritual participation in the redemptive process; the other is the will of man which must respond, cooperate, “co-suffer.” In 12:9 St. Paul exhorts us to “cleave to the good” — κολλώμενοι τω άγαθω — and in 12:12 he exhorts us “to be steadfastly continuing in prayer — τη προσευχη προσκαρτερουντες. Such a position certainly does not exclude monastic and ascetical spirituality but rather presupposes it.

I and II Corinthians.

Celibacy is a part of the monastic life and it too has its source in the teachings of the New Testament. In I Corinthians 7:1-11 St. Paul encourages both marriage and celibacy — both are forms of Christian spirituality, and St. Paul has much to say about marriage in his other epistles. But his point is that celibacy is a form of spirituality for some, and it therefore cannot be excluded from the forms of spirituality within the Church. In verse 7 St. Paul writes that he would like all to be like him — θέλω δε πάντας ανθρώπους ειναι ώς και έμαντόν. But he realizes that each person has his own gift from God — αλλά έκαστος ίδιον έχει χάρισμα εκ θεου, ό μεν ουτως, ό δε όυτως. “I say therefore to the unmarried men and to the widows, it is good for them if they remain as I. But if they do not exercise self-control, let them marry” — λέγω δε τοις — άγαμοις και ταις χήραις, καλόν αυτοίς εάν μείνωσιν ώς κάγώ, ει δε ουκ έγκρατεύονται, γαμησάτωσαν. In verses 37-38 St. Paul summarizes: "the one who has decided in his own heart to keep himself virgin, he will do well. So, therefore, both the one marrying his betrothed [virgin], does well, and the one not marrying will do better” — και τούτο κέκρικεν εν τη ιδία καρδία, τηρειν την εαυτόν παρθένον, καλώς ποιήσει, ώστε και ό γαμίζων την εαυτόν παρθένον καλώς ποιεί, και ό μη γαμιζων κρεισσον ποιήσει. The monastic practice of celibacy is precisely not excluded by the New Testament. Rather, it is even encouraged both by our Lord and by St. Paul — and without jeopardy to the married state. The decision cannot be forced. Rather, it must come from the heart. And, indeed, it is not for everyone.

The comparison of the spiritual life to that of running a race and to that of warfare is throughout the New Testament. Without diminishing his basis of theological vision — that it is God who initiates everything — St. Paul writes in I Corinthians 9:24-27 in a manner, which, if taken by itself, would indeed appear Pelagian, would indeed appear as though all the essence of salvation depends upon man. But in the total context of his theology there is no contradiction, for there are always two wills in the process of redemption — the Divine, which initiates; and the human, which responds and is, in the very response active in that grace which it has received. "Do you not know that the ones running in a race all run indeed. But one receives the prize? So run in order that you may obtain. And everyone struggling exercises self-control in all things. Indeed, those do so therefore in order that they may receive a corruptible crown, but we an incorruptible one. I, therefore, so run as not unclearly. Thus I box not as one beating the air. But I treat severely my body and lead it as a slave, lest having proclaimed to others, I myself may become disqualified." In this text we encounter the race — the spiritual race — and the prize; we encounter the grammatical and the thought structure of "in order that you may obtain," a structure which implies contingency and not certainty. We encounter the race as a spiritual struggle in which "self-control in everything" must be exercised. And then St. Paul describes his own spiritual battle — he treats his body severely, leads it as though it were a slave, and to what end? So that he will not become disapproved. The entire passage is very monastic and ascetic in its content. Despite St. Paul's certainty of the objective reality of redemption which has come through Christ as a Divine gift, he does not consider his own spiritual destiny to be included in that objective redemption which is now here unless he participates in it — and until the end of the race. In 10:12 he warns us: “Let the one who thinks he stands, let him look lest he falls” — ώστε ό δοκών έστάναι βλεπέτω μη πέση. In 11:28 he writes: “Let a man prove or examine himself...” — δοκιμαζέτω δε άνθρωπος έαντόν. In the latter context the “proving” or “examining” is in the most serious of contexts, for it is spoken in connection with the Holy Eucharist, which is spoken of so objectively that if one "eats this bread" or "drinks this cup" "of the Lord" "unworthily," that person "shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord" and shall "bring damnation to himself — for that reason, continues St. Paul, some are weak, sickly, and some have died. But our focus here is on self-examination, on those who think they stand. This again is an integral aspect of the monastic and ascetical life; that is, a constant examination of one's spiritual life. In II Corinthians 13:5 St. Paul again stresses self-examination: “Examine yourselves, if you are in the faith. Prove yourselves” — εαυτούς πειράζετε ει έστέ εν τη πίστει, εαυτούς δοκιμάστε.

In 15:1-2 St. Paul introduces a significant "if and "also." "I make known to you, brothers, the Gospel which I preached to you, which you also received, in which you also stand, through which you also are saved, “you hold fast to that which I preached to you” — γνωρίζω δε ύμιν, αδελφοί, το εύαγγέλιον ο εύηγγελισάμην ύμιν, ο και παραλάβετε, εν ω και έστήκατε, δι ου και σώζεσθε, τίνι λόγω εύηγγελισάμην ύμιν ει κατέχετε.

In I Corinthians 14:15 St. Paul speaks of praying with both spirit and mind, a thought that weaves its way through monastic and ascetical literature. The use of the mind in prayer finds its fullest expression in the controversial use of the "mind" in the thought of Evagrius Ponticus. The text, even within its general context in the chapter, is clear. "I will pray with the spirit, and I will pray also with..

Kollyvas · Post by **Kollyvas** » Mon 21 November 2005 4:27 pm

http://incommunion.org/articles/confere ... -or-friend

[published in In Communion 17 / Fall 1999]

Orthodox Peace Fellowship retreat in Vézelay, April 1999 / second lecture by Bishop Kallistos
Consider the word “wonder.” We have come to a place full of wonder, this ancient pilgrimage town of Vezelay. I can recall very vividly my first visit here when I was a student at university. It was in the year 1954. I was traveling with a party of fellow students in a lorry. It was from the back of that lorry that I had my first view of Vezelay — a city set on a hill — and at the heart of the summit of the city, a great church. Each time I saw Vezelay, as I happened again last night when I came up from the railway station, my spirits rise, and so does my sense of wonder. I have been back ten or twelve times since 1954. Then on entering the basilica, standing in the narthex, you are faced with the marvelous sculpture of Christ in glory, which surely awakens wonder in the many pilgrims who come here.

I don’t know about you but a sense of wonder has always been very important in my reading of literature. From the age of 16, there was one genre of Christian literature that particularly attracted me and that was works of fantasy — for example, the stories of George McDonald. I have always enjoyed the works of fantasy by C.S. Lewis — Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, the Narnia books, and above all his retelling of the Psyche myth, Till we Have Faces. Along with Lewis, I have always liked the supernatural thrillers written by his friend Charles Williams — War in Heaven and the rest. And there is of course Tolkien. Such stories reveal the thinness of this world, the nearness of the invisible world.

Once, when a friend of the Anglican writer Evelyn Underhill was going to Iona, her gardener said to her, “Iona is a very thin place.” And she asked, “What do you mean?” The gardener, a Scotsman, said, “There is not much between Iona and the Lord.” Vezelay is another thin place.

We need to be sensitive to the closeness of the invisible world. We need a sense of wonder. “The beginning of the truth is to wonder at things,” said Plato. That’s not just Plato — it is good Christianity as well.

Have you noticed how the theme of wonder runs through scripture? For example, in Psalm 76 we read, “Who is so great a God as our God … Thou art the God who doest wonders.” Or take the prophesy of the Incarnation in Isaiah: “For unto us a child is born and his name shall be called wonderful.” Throughout the Gospels we notice that the reaction of those who hear Christ’s words and witness His miracles is a sense of wonder. Those who first heard the Sermon on the Mount, it is noted, “were astonished at his speech.” When Jesus rebukes the storm, we read they marveled, saying, “Who can this be?” People met Christ with a sense of wonder. Those who heard him teaching at the synagogue in Nazareth “were astonished.” The account of the resurrection in Mark’s Gospel reports that when the women found no body within the tomb, “they trembled and were amazed.” The Greek text says they were “seized by trauma and were ecstatic” — they were taken out of themselves with wonder. At Pentecost, when language is no longer a barrier between peoples, we find them “speaking of the wonderful works of God.” A sense of wonder is a golden thread that runs all the way through holy scripture. If we are to continue as faithful disciples of Christ, we need to unceasingly renew our sense of wonder.

Last night our theme was unity. Jerusalem, we are told, “is built as a city at unity with itself.” We, each one of us, must be a city at unity with ourselves. If we are to be peacemakers, we need to rediscover our inner unity. The great principle about peacemaking is from within outwards. You can’t expect peace to be imposed by governments. It’s got to come from the human heart. From within, outwards — and we might also add from heaven, earthwards.

Our human vocation is to be microcosmos, microtheos — to be a mediator, to unify creation. This was the vocation given to the first Adam in paradise. Failing to fulfill it, in his fall he brought about division rather than unity. But this vocation of mediation is restored to the human race by the second Adam, Christ.

I cannot unify unless I am inwardly at one. As St. Isaac of Syria said, “Be with peace in your own self, then heaven and earth will be at peace with you.”

Now let me put before you a symbol of human unity, this complex unity of spirit soul and body: the symbol of the heart. What do we mean by the heart?

When the late Duchess of Windsor published her memoirs, she drew its title from a quotation by Paschal — “the heart has its reasons, which reason does not understand.” I confess I have not read the Duchess of Windsor’s memoirs from cover to cover, but a brief consultation of that work brought home to me that by the heart, she meant the emotions and affections, perhaps somewhat disordered and wayward emotions. But that was not what Paschal meant, nor is it what Christians mean by the heart.

If we look at scripture, we do not find in the Old or New Testament any contrast between head and heart. In the Bible, we don’t just feel with our hearts — we also think with our hearts. The heart is the place of intelligence and wisdom. In scripture, feeling and thinking are held together. In the Bible, the heart is the conscience — the moral spiritual center of the total person. Evil thought comes from the heart but equally the heart is where the Holy Spirit cries out, “Abba, Father.”

The heart is a unifying concept in another way. Not only does it hold together feeling and thinking, but it transcends the soul-body contrast. The heart is the spiritual organ, the center of our bodily structure, but the heart also symbolizes our spiritual understanding. It’s a point of convergence and interaction for the human person as a whole.

Here is St. Macarius of Egypt writing about the heart: “The heart governs and reigns over the whole bodily organism. And when grace possesses the pastures of the heart, it rules over all the members and the thoughts, for there in the heart is the intellect, and all thoughts of the soul and its expectations. In this way grace penetrates also to the members of the body.”

The heart is the center of the physical organism — when it stops beating, we are dead. But it is also the place where the intellect dwells, the center of spiritual understanding. It is through the heart that we experience grace, and through the heart grace passes to all members of the body. The heart contains, say the Macarian homilies, “unfathomable depths,” including what is meant today by the unconscious. There are reception rooms and bed chambers in it, doors and porches, and many offices and passages. In the heart are the works of righteousness and wickedness. In it is life; in it is death.

The heart, then, has a central and controlling role. The heart is open on one side to the unfathomable depths of the unconscious, open on the other side to the abyss of God’s glory. When the Orthodox tradition speaks of the Prayer of the Heart, that doesn’t mean prayer just of the feelings and emotions, it doesn’t just mean what in western Roman Catholic spirituality is termed affective prayer. Prayer of the heart means prayer of the total person, prayer in which the body also participates. In the hesychast tradition, entering the heart means the total re-integration of the human person in God.

My spiritual father, Father George, once told me to read Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s The Little Prince. He particularly liked the words of the fox. “Now here is my secret,” said the fox, “a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” This is the meaning of the heart in scripture and in the Orthodox spiritual tradition.

Now let’s extend the idea of our human unity. We have said our unity as persons includes the body. But what about the passions?

In the account of the Egyptian desert given by Paladius, we read that when he went there as a young man in the fourth century, he was placed under elder Dorotheos, who led a life of severe asceticism. He used to carry stones from one place to the other. Young Paladius thought this was excessive. “Why do you torture your body this way?” “It kills me, I kill it,” Dorotheos responded. But was he right? Rather than kill the body, would it not be better to transfigure the body? Another Desert Father corrected Dorotheos, saying, “We have been taught not to kill the body, but to kill the passions.” But should we kill the passions? Or should we transfigure them? I feel that the English poet of the seventeenth century, John Donne, comes nearer to the truth when he says, “Let our affections kill us not, nor die.” I would agree with the seventeenth century moralist, Sir Robert Le Strange: “It is with our passions as with fire and water. They are good servants but bad masters.”

Let’s explore this a little more deeply. Unfortunately there isn’t a satisfactory translation in English for the Greek word pathos. Pathos is normally translated as passion, sometimes as emotion or affection, or it could be translated simply as suffering — the passion of Christ. There is no single English word that will convey all these different senses. It is linked to the Greek word pascha, which means to suffer. So pathos is fundamentally a passive state. It can be regarded as something that happens to a person or object. The Greek Fathers talk about sleep and death as being pathos and Gregory the Theologian describes the phases of the moon as passions. But often pathos actually acquires a positive sense — it’s not some thing merely passive, it can also be something active. And so when we come across this word pathos, or passion, in Greek, we need to look carefully at the context, to see how it is used.

Now behind the Greek Fathers we might look at passion as it is used in Greek philosophy, especially in Aristotle.

When we read the Stoics, we find pathos employed in a negative sense. It means disordered impulses of the soul, an impulse that has got out of hand, that has become disobedient to reason and so is contrary to nature. As with some later Christian theologians, the passions are seen as diseases; the victim of passion is mentally deranged. For the Stoics, passions are pathological disturbances of the personality. The wise man aims at apatheia — dispassion, the elimination of the passions. But alongside this negative view of passion, there is in Greek philosophy, a more positive view. For Aristotle, the passions in themselves are neither virtues nor vices; they are neither good nor evil. We are not commended or blamed because of them. They are neutral. Everything depends on the use that we make of our passions. He includes among the passions, not only such things as desire and anger, but also things such as friendship, courage and joy. So in Aristotle’s view our aim shouldn’t be to eliminate the passions, but we should try to have a moderate and reasonable employment of them.

Plato has a similar view. He uses the famous analogy of a charioteer with a two-horse carriage. The charioteer represents reason, which should be in control. One of the two horses pulling the chariot is of noble breed, the other is unruly and rebellious. And for Plato the fine horse denotes the noble emotions of the spirited part of the soul — courage, etcetera — while the disorderly horse represents the baser passions of the desiring part of the soul. The implications of the analogy are clear: if the charioteer has no horses at all, the chariot is never going to get moving, it is no use simply calculating with reason; if your carriage is to get moving, you need to have a proper relationship with the other aspects of your personhood. But the analogy goes further than that. If you have a two-horse carriage and only one horse yoked to it, you won’t get very far. The chariot will go askew immediately. In order for your chariot to move straight and far, you must have both horses properly harnessed, and you have to come to terms with both your horses.

So Plato’s analogy is holistic — that we’ve all got to come to terms with all the different impulses in our nature if we are to live a fully human life. We cannot simply repress or ignore certain aspects of our personhood because we don’t like them very much. We’ve got to learn how to use them.

Now with this twofold classical background to consider, what do we find in Christian tradition? The word pathos is used only three times in the New Testament: in each instance by Paul and each case in an unfavorable sense. Coming on to the Fathers, many of them take a Stoic view of the passions. Clement of Alexandria, in the early third century, regards passion as an excessive impulse disobedient to reason, contrary to nature. Passions are diseases of the soul, says Clement, and truly good persons have no passions. In the 4th century Evagrius of Pontus, disciple of the Cappadocians but also a Desert Father living the last eighteen years of his life in the Egyptian wilderness, associates the passions with demons. For Evagrius, our aim is to expel the passions. The aim is apatheia, though Evagrius gives dispassion a positive sense, linking it with love, agape.

Gregory of Nyssa takes a similar view. He says that passions were not originally part of our nature, but came as a result of the Fall. For him, the passions, have an animal character. They render us akin to irrational animals. They express our humanity in its fallen condition.

But this is not the only view of passion in the Greek Fathers. Because it’s much less well known, I would like to mention the approach of other writers who come closer to the Aristotelian view. In particular I want to look at Abba Isaiah, who lived in Egypt and then in Palestine during the fifth century. You will find a short extract from his writings in the first volume of the Philokalia. There is a full French translation of his writing, but it hasn’t yet been translated into English. Abba Isaiah takes the view that desire — epyhthemeia — along with envy or jealousy, anger, hatred and pride — are all fundamentally in accordance with nature. They are not sinful, fallen distortions, but parts of our human nature as created by God.

Let me read what Abba Isaiah said: “There is in the intellect, a desire that is in accordance with nature, and without desire, there is no love for God.” This is also the view of John Climacus. Though he takes the negative, stoic view of passion, when he discusses eros, he takes a more positive view. He says that the erotic impulse, though it may take a sexual form and can often be distorted, can also be directed towards God. Eros is not to be eliminated but redirected, transformed. Without desire, epyhthemeia, without eros, there is no proper love for God. This is why, remarks Abba Isaiah, Daniel was called “man of desire.” “But the enemy has changed this desire into something shameful, so that we desire all kinds of impurities.”

Then Abba Isaiah comes to jealousy — zelos in Greek, a word that can also mean zeal. We lack an English word that conveys both senses together. There is for Abba Isaiah a zeal, a jealousy, “which is in accordance with nature and without which there is no progress toward God. Thus the Apostle Paul says tells us to ’strive jealously for the good gifts’.” (I Cor 12:31) He might have added that, in the Old Testament, God Himself is described as a jealous God. “But if jealousy directed toward God has been changed within us into a jealousy contrary to nature, so that we are jealous of one another, we envy and deceive one another.”

Then he comes to anger: “There is, in the intellect, an anger that is in accordance with nature. Without anger there is no purity within a person. One must feel anger against all those seeds sown within us by the enemy.” Again and again, in confession I hear people telling me they have been angry, either inwardly or outwardly. I always say to them you shouldn’t simply repress your anger. If you sit on it, sooner or later it will explode. What you have to do is to use your anger in a creative way. The energy in your anger is something good, or something that can certainly be put to good use. When anger takes a negative, destructive form, it is the misuse of something which in itself is implanted in us by God. There is ample evidence in scripture that Christ, on various occasions, felt and showed anger. But this anger, says Abba Isaiah, “has been changed within us so that we are angry with our neighbor over all sorts of futile and useless things.”

Then he comes to hatred: “There is, in the intellect, a hatred that is in accordance with nature. Without hatred against that which is hostile, nothing of value is revealed within the soul.” We are not to be like the oyster hiding quietly in its shell. My spiritual father used to say, “Even the oyster has his enemies.” You needn’t imagine you will win people’s support by doing nothing. “But this hatred has been changed within us into that which is contrary to nature, so we hate our neighbor and loath him, a hatred which expels all virtue.”

Then Abba Isaiah comes to pride. I wondered how can he find a good use for pride, but he does. He says: “There is, in the intellect, a pride that is accordance with nature, that we feel in the face of enemies. When Job found this pride, he reviled his enemies, calling them dishonorable men of no repute, lacking everything good, unfit to dwell with the dogs guarding his flocks. But this pride in the face of our enemies has been changed within us; we have humiliated ourselves before our enemies, and grown proud against each other.” What Abba Isaiah is saying here is that pride, properly understood, is a sense of our own value and meaning, and can be used as weapon against self-pity and despair, against a sense of helplessness and uselessness. But you are not useless. A sense of uselessness is not humility, but a temptation of the devil. Humility is to know that I am made in the image of God; therefore God hopes many things from me. I have a unique vocation. Humility is to say all that I have is a gift.

In the parable of the talents, the master didn’t say to the servant who buried his talent and made no use of it, “Well done, you humble and modest servant. You have done much better than your proud companions who used their gift.” On the contrary, the servant is rebuked who wouldn’t use his gift because he thought he was no good. So, humility is not to say I am useless, but is to say everything that I have is a gift. And pride, understood as the sense of our value and meaning in God, of our high vocation as an icon of the Holy Trinity that can be put to good use, to be used against the temptations of the devil, who says, “You are hopeless.” There is a good self love, as St. Augustine emphasizes. When we love our true self, we can be proud of our true self. And we can be proud of our true self because our true self is in the image of the living God.

So all these things like anger and pride, which a writer in the Evagrian tradition would regard as demons, are considered by Abba Isaiah as a natural part of our personhood, created by God. Desire or anger is not in itself sinful. What matters is the way in which it is used. Our ascetic strategy is not to mortify but redirect, not eradicate but educate, not eliminate but transfigure.

It is not only Abba Isaiah who tells us that the passions can be put to good use but the later Greek Fathers. For example Maximus the Confessor talks about the “blessed passions” Gregory Palmas refers to “the divine and blessed passions.” He writes that the aim of the Christian life is not the containment of the passions but their transposition or redirection.

Again, I would commend to you the approach of John Donne: “Let our affections kill us not, nor die.” If we can learn to use our passions in the right way, then we should be, each of us, a true peacemaker.

Bishop Kallistos is Spalding Lecturer in Eastern Orthodox Studies at the University of Oxford and leads the Greek parish in the same city...

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