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On the Saints of the Old Testament

Fr. John A. Peck — Sat, 11 Dec 2010 13:42:08 +0000

by St. Gregory Palamas

David indicates that our Lord Jesus Christ has no genealogy with regard to His divinity (Ps. 110:4), Isaiah says the same (Isa. 53:8), and later so does the apostle (Heb. 7:3). How can the descent be traced of Him

“who is in the beginning, and is with God, and is God, and is the Word and Son of God” (cf. Jn. 1:1-2, 18)?

He does not have a Father who was before Him, and shares with His Father

“a name which is above every name” and all speech (Phil. 2:9).

For the most part, genealogies are traced back through different surnames; but there is no surname for God (cf. Gen. 32:29), and whatever may be said of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, they are one and do not differ in any respect.

Impossible to recount is Christ’s descent according to His divinity, but His ancestry according to His human nature can be traced, since He who deigned to become Son of Man in order to save mankind was the offspring of men. And it is this genealogy of His that two of the evangelists, Matthew and Luke, recorded. But although Matthew, in the passage from his Gospel read today, begins with those born first, he makes no mention of anyone born before Abraham He traces the line down from Abraham until he reaches Joseph to whom, by divine dispensation, the Virgin Mother of God was betrothed (Matt. 1:1-16), being of the same tribe and homeland as him, that her own stock may be shown from this to be in no way inferior.

Luke, by contrast, begins not with the earliest forebears but the most recent, and working his way back from Joseph the Betrothed, does not stop at Abraham, nor, having included Abraham’s predecessors, does he end with Adam, but lists God among Christ’s human forebears (Lk. 3:23-38); wishing to show, in my opinion, that from the beginning man was not just a creation of God, but also a son in the Spirit, which was given to him at the same time as his soul, through God’s quickening breath (Gen. 2:7). It was granted to him as a pledge that, if, waiting patiently for it, he kept the commandment, he would be able to share through the same Spirit in a more perfect union with God, by which he would live forever with Him and obtain immortality.

By heeding the evil counsel of the pernicious angel, man transgressed the divine commandments, was shown to be unworthy, forfeited the pledge, and interrupted God’s plan. God’s grace, however, is unalterable and His purpose cannot prove false, so some of man’s offspring were chosen, that, from among many, a suitable receptacle for this divine adoption and grace might be found, who would serve God’s will perfectly, and would be revealed as a vessel worthy to unite divine and human nature in one person, not just exalting our nature, but restoring the human race.

The holy Maid and Virgin Mother of God was this vessel, so she was proclaimed by the Archangel Gabriel as full of grace (Lk. 1:28), being the chosen one among the chosen, blameless, undefiled and worthy to contain the person of the God-Man and to collaborate with Him. Therefore God pre-ordained her before all ages, chose her from among all that had ever lived, and deemed her worthy of more grace than anyone else, making her the holiest of saints, even before her mysterious childbearing. For that reason, He graciously willed that she should make her home in the Holy of Holies, and accepted her as His companion to share His dwelling from her childhood. He did not simply choose her from the masses, but from the elect of all time, who were admired and renowned for their piety and wisdom, and for their character, words and deeds, which pleased God and brought benefit to all.

Note where this choice began. The excellent Seth was chosen from among Adam’s children, because by his well-ordered conduct, his control over his senses and his glorious virtues he showed himself to be a living heaven and so came to be one of the elect, from whom the Virgin would spring forth, that truly heavenly and divinely appropriate chariot of the supercelestial God, and through whom He would call men back to eternal sonship. Therefore all Seth’s stock were called

“sons of God” (Gen 6:2),

because it was from the race that the Son of God was to become the Son of Man. That is why the name Seth can be interpreted to mean “resurrection“, or rather “a raising up from“, which really refers to the Lord, who promises and gives eternal life to those who believe in Him.

And how worthy a type of Christ is Seth?

“Seth was born to Eve”, as she herself says, “instead of Abel” (Gen. 4:25),

whom Cain envied and murdered, whereas the Virgin’s son, Christ, was born to the human race instead of Adam, whom the prince and father of evil killed out of envy. Seth, however, did not raise up Abel, as he was merely a prefiguration of the resurrection, whereas our Lord Jesus Christ resurrected Adam, for He is the true life and resurrection of mankind (cf. Jn. 11:25), through whom Seth’s descendants were deemed worthy, in hope, of divine adoption, being called sons of God. That they were referred to as God’s sons on account of this hope, is demonstrated by the first person to be so called and to inherit God’s election. This was Seth’s son Enos who, as Moses wrote,

“was the first to hope to be called by the Lord’s name” (Gen. 4:26 LXX).

Do you see clearly that it was through hope that he came to be called? If the Seventy [translators of the Septuagint] say,

“He was the first to hope to be called by the Lord’s name”,

they are not at all in disagreement with the others; because Enos lived in a way that pleased God more than anyone else in his day, and was the first to receive this hope from God. He called upon this hope and was called after it. Seth was chosen from God from among Adam’s sons, and so Luke, in preparing his genealogy, traces back to him the whole race from which Christ was born according to the flesh. Then Enos was chosen in preference to Seth’s other children, as we have said. From his descendants Enoch was chosen, who proved through what happened to him that virtue does not go unrewarded, and that this fleeting world is not worthy of those who are well-pleasing to God, for he was translated because he pleased God (Gen. 5:24; Heb. 11:5).

Lamech was chosen and preferred to Enoch’s other descendants, and after him his son, Noah, attained to God’s election and became the only father of everyone in the world after the flood. Only he and his entire family were found to live chastely at that time when the sons of God took wives from among the daughters of men, as Moses tells us (Gen. 6:1-2). This means that among the offspring of Seth, the forefather of the Mother of God, those who were rejected as unworthy were swept out of the Virgin Mother’s family and completely deprived of the divine Spirit. Later this Spirit came upon the Virgin, according to the angel’s words to her:

“The Holy Spirit shall come upon you, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow you” (Lk. 1:35).

The Spirit also arranged beforehand for the Virgin to come into being, choosing from the beginning, and cleansing, the line of her descent, accepting those who were worthy, or were to become fathers of eminent men, but utterly casting out the unworthy.

This is why the Lord God said on that occasion of those rejected ones,

“My Spirit shall not abide with these men, for they are flesh” (Gen. 6:3 LXX).

Although the Virgin, of whom Christ was born according to the flesh, came from Adam’s flesh and seed, yet, because this flesh had been cleansed in many different ways by the Holy Spirit from the start, she was descended from those who had been chosen from every generation for their excellence. Noah, too, “a just man and perfect in his generation”, as the Scriptures say of him (Gen. 6:9), was found worthy of this election.

Observe also that the Holy Spirit makes it clear to such as have understanding that the whole of divinely inspired Scripture was written because of the Virgin Mother of God. It relates in detail the entire line of her ancestry, which begins with Adam, then passes through Seth, Noah and Abraham, as well as David and Zerubbabel, those in between them and their successors, and goes up to the time of the Virgin Mother of God. By contrast, Scripture does not touch upon some races at all, and in the case of others, it makes a start at tracing their descent, then soon abandons them, leaving them in the depths of oblivion. Above all, it commemorates those of the Mother of God’s forebears who, in their own lives and the deeds wrought by them, prefigured Christ, who was to be born of the Virgin.

See how Noah clearly foreshadows Him who was later to be born of the Virgin, for whose sake the election was made. For Noah was shown to be the savior, not of all the race of men in general, but of his own household, all of whom were saved through him. In the same way Christ, too, is the Savior of the race of men, not of all men in general, but of all His own household, that is of His Church; not, however, of the disobedient. Furthermore, the name Noah can be translated to mean “rest” (Gen. 5:29). But who is true “rest” except the Virgin’s Son, who says,

“Come unto me through repentance, all you that labor and are heavy laden with sin, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28),

bestowing freedom, ease and eternal life upon you.

Lamech, who gave Noah this name, because he saw in him Christ, who was later to come from their stock, and would be the comfort of all God-fearing people down through the ages, clearly prophesied through this name concerning Christ.

“He called his name Noah”,

says the Scripture,

“saying, ‘This name shall bring us rest from our works, and from the toils of our hands, and from the earth, which the Lord our God has cursed’” (Gen. 5:29 LXX).

These words are not about the flood which came to pass, for Lamech’s death preceded the flood, yet he says that Noah will “bring us rest”, including himself as a partaker in the comfort he foretold. In those days it had not yet come about that in each man

“every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Gen. 6:5)

throughout his life, which was why universal destruction of everyone on earth came upon the earth from God. So to whom do his words refer when he says, “He will bring us rest”? He also says,

“He shall bring us rest from the earth except Him who opened heaven, raised our nature thither and taught us, through words and deeds, the way up to heaven, calling us towards it? But if the flood too prefigured this rest, it did so by cutting off sins and laying them to rest, not by bringing comfort and ease to sinners.

In this way and for these reasons, Noah attained to God’s election. Of his children, Shem was accepted among those chosen to be the blessed family of the Mother of God. That is why, although Japheth also appears to have been well-pleasing to his father, only Shem heard from his father,

“Blessed be the Lord God of Shem” (Gen. 9:26),

as his progeny was to be divine. For it was from him that Abraham was descended, who was preferred according to God’s election above all Shem’s offspring and was called to be part of the lineage of the Virgin Mother. He was given a new name by God, and received that great promise that all the families of the earth would be blessed in his seed (Gen. 17:5; 12:3). According to Paul, Christ our God, who was born of the Virgin, is his seed according to the flesh (Gal. 3:16).

And who could describe the divine visions that Abraham experienced, or the signs and promises from God which foreshadowed and prophesied concerning the ever-virgin Mother of God and her ineffable childbearing? Let us, however, quickly pass over what happened next, as time does not permit us to speak at length. From among Abraham’s children Isaac was chosen, then Jacob from among his sons, and the tribe of Judah from Jacob’s offspring. From this tribe the root of Jesse was selected, and for those who sprang from this root, David the psalmist and prophet and king, of whom God says,

“Thy seed shall endure forever, and His throne as the sun before Me; and as the moon that is established forever, and the witness in heaven is faithful” (Ps. 89:36-37 LXX).

Who is this witness? Obviously He who sits upon the heavenly throne, of whom it says elsewhere:

“His name shall be continued as long as the sun: and all the families of the earth shall be blessed in Him” (Ps. 72:17 LXX).

From this the lineage of the Mother of God and Joseph, to whom she was betrothed, seems somehow double, for both were of the same tribe and descent according to the law. Thus the family’s ancestral line is twofold, made up both of natural children and children according to the law, often converging into one, but sometimes divided into two, so that the same child, strange as it may seem, might be the son of two fathers who are brothers, of the one from a legal point of view, as not having been begotten of him physically, and of the other, according to nature, as having been raised up as seed for his brother (Matt. 22:24; Deut. 25:5; Gen. 38:8); inasmuch as the child traces his ancestry back to David through both his fathers. It is possible to see the dual nature of this lineage in another respect, because the royal line was united on many occasions and in numerous ways with the priestly one.

Thus in the holy ancestral line of the Mother of God, Zerubbabel traces his lineage back to David through the descendants of Nathan, who was counted among the priests, as well as through those of Solomon, who inherited the kingdom. For this reason the Lord’s genealogy according to the flesh is drawn up differently by the evangelists Luke and Matthew, because one takes into account natural fathers, the other, fathers according to the law, and one mentions only those of royal descent, whereas Luke brings in those of the Levitical race and those of the royal house, who were bound together by priesthood or marriage.

As for Zerubbabel, because he was also favored among the Mother of God’s forbears, he too prefigured Christ and was honored with great titles and authority. Born in captivity, he was admired by Cyrus, king of the Medes and Persians, for his virtue and misunderstanding. He taught both Hebrews and foreigners the power of the truth, set his race free from servitude, and restored God’s Temple (1 Esd. 4:33-63; Ezra 3:1-13).

Later Christ did something similar, not renewing the inanimate Temple, but that living, rational temple, our nature, and redeeming it, not from perceptible and temporary, but spiritual and primeval captivity. Nor did He move His followers from one country to another, but transferred them from earth to heaven. Zerubbabel was the forefather of both the Virgin and Joseph to whom she was betrothed, but whereas she was the Virgin’s forbear by nature alone, he was Joseph’s according to nature and the law. For Joseph had two fathers, Heli according to Luke (Lk. 3:23), and Jacob according to Matthew (Matt. 1:16). Heli and Jacob were brothers descended from Zerubbabel, and when Heli died without children, Jacob fathered a child, Joseph, by his brother’s wife, who according to the law belongs to Heli.

Now these things are examples and types of greater mysteries, since it was necessary that the royal line be united in many ways, with the priestly race, which would bring forth the family of Christ according to the flesh; because in many ways Christ is truly the eternal King and High Priest. And the fact that adopted sons are counted as sons, that the law approves of adoptive fathers no less and sometimes more than natural fathers, and that the same, appropriately, applies to other kinds of kinship, was a clear example and type of our adoption by Christ, our kinship with Him and our calling according to the Spirit and the law of grace. For the Lord Himself says in the Gospels,

“Whosoever shall do the will of My Father which is in heaven, the same is My brother, and sister, and mother” (Matt. 12:50).

Do you see that the family and kin of Christ are not engendered according to nature, but according to grace and the law that comes from grace? This law is so far superior to the law given through Moses that, whereas those called sons according to the law of Moses are neither born of God nor do they transcend human nature, those styled sons by the law of grace are born of God, brought to perfection above nature and made sons of Abraham through Christ, more closely associated with Him than sons according to blood. All who have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ, according to Paul (Gal. 3:27), and although they are other people’s children according to nature, they are born supernaturally of Christ, who in this way conquers nature. For as He became incarnate without seed of the Holy Spirit and the ever-virgin Mary, so He grants potential and power to those that believe in His name to become children of God. For “as many as received Him”, says the evangelist,

“to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name: which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God” (Jn. 1:12-13).

Why, when he says, “which were born of God”, does he not say “and became sons of God”, but “received power to become” sons? Because he was looking towards the end and universal restoration, the perfection of the age to come. The same evangelist says in his Epistles,

“It does not yet appear what we shall be: but when He shall appear, we shall be like Him” (1Jn. 3:2).

Then we shall be children of God, seeing and experiencing God’s radiance, with the rays of Christ’s glory shining around us and shining ourselves, as Moses and Elijah proved to us when they appeared with Him in glory on Mount Tabor (Matt. 17:3; Lk. 9:30).

” The righteous”, it says, “shall shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father” (Matt. 13:43).

We receive power for this purpose now through the grace of divine baptism. Just as a newborn infant has received potential from his parents to become a man and heir to their house and fortune, but does not yet possess that inheritance because he is a minor, nor will he receive it if he dies coming of age, so a person born again in the Spirit through Christian baptism has received power to become a son and heir of God, a joint-heir with Christ (Rom. 8:17), and in the age to come he will, with all certainty, receive the divine and immortal adoption as a son, which will not be taken from him, unless he has forfeited this by spiritual death. Sin is spiritual death, and whereas physical death is annulled when the future age arrives, spiritual death is confirmed for those who bring it with them from here.

Everyone who has been baptized, if he is to obtain the eternal blessedness and salvation for which he hopes, should live free from all sin. Peter and Paul, the leaders of the highest company of the holy apostles made this clear. Paul said of Christ,

“In that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he lives, he lives unto God”, (Rom. 6:10-11),

whereas Peter wrote,

“Forasmuch as Christ has died for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind: that you no longer should live the rest of your time by the lusts of men, but by the will of God” (1 Pet. 4:1-2).

If it was for our sake that the Lord lived His time on earth, to leave us an example, and He passed His life without sin, we too must live without sin, in imitation of Him. Since He said even to Abraham’s descendants according to the flesh,

“If you were Abraham’s children, you would do the works of Abraham” (Jn. 8:39),

how much more will He say to us who have no physical kinship with Him, “If you were My children, you would do My works”? It is therefore consistent and just that anyone who, after divine baptism, after the covenants he made then to God and the grace he received from it, does not follow Christ’s way of life step by step, but transgresses and offends against the benefactor, should be utterly deprived of divine adoption and the eternal inheritance.

But, O Christ our King, who can worthily extol the greatness of Your love for mankind? What was unnecessary for Him and what He did not do, namely, repentance (for He never needed to repent, being sinless, cf. Heb. 4:15), He granted to us a mediator for when we sin even after receiving grace. Repentance means returning once again to Him and to a life according to His will out of remorse. Even if someone commits a deadly sin, if he turns away from it with all his soul, abstains from it and turns back to the Lord in deed and truth, he should take courage and be of good hope, for he shall not lose eternal life and salvation. When a child according to the flesh meets his death, he is not brought back to life by his father, but someone born of Christ, even though he fall into deadly sins, if he turns again and runs to the Father who raises the dead, is made alive once more, obtains divine adoption, and is not cast out from the company of the just.

May we all attain to this, to the glory of Christ and of His Father without beginning and of the life-giving Spirit, now and forever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

On The Homilies of St. Gregory Palamas

Fr. John A. Peck — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 15:50:25 +0000

by Metrpolitan Hierotheos Vlachos

His Eminence Metropolitan Hierotheos (Vlachos) of Nafpaktos serves the Metropolis of Nafpaktos in the Church of Greece. His study of the patristic texts and particularly those of the hesychast Fathers of the Philokalia, many years of studying St. Gregory Palamas, association with the monks of the Holy Mountain (Mount Athos), and many years of pastoral experience, all brought him to the realization that Orthodox theology is a science of the healing of man and that the neptic fathers can help the modern restless man who is disturbed by many internal and existential problems. In his books, he conveys the Orthodox spirit of the Philokalia to the restless and disturbed man of our time. This is why they have aroused so much interest.

This is an excerpt from his book “St. Gregory Palamas as a Hagiorite.”

Apart from the polemical writings which have survived, there are also homilies by St. Gregory which show that he expresses the hesychastic life of the Holy Mountain. Some of these were addressed to the monks on the Holy Mountain on various feast days, and the rest were spoken to his Flock in Thessaloniki. It is characteristic that in speaking to his Christians, he teaches noetic prayer and thus shows that there is not a great contrast between monastic life and married life. From the abundance of passages which St. Gregory interprets hesychastically I would like to select four in particular.

The first refers to the interpretation of the Parable of the Publican and the Pharisee, and chiefly to the analysis of the prayer of the Publican, which he presents as a type of hesychastic prayer. In this parable the Lord, introducing the Publican, said:

“But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said: ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner’” (Lk. 18, 13).

St. Gregory says: “Do you see the amount of humility, and faith and self-reproach: Do you see the extreme contraction of his reason and senses, and at the same time the brokenness of heart mingled with the prayer of this publican?”.

The words “at a distance” manifest humility and self-reproach. That he “stood” indicates “the long continuation of his standing… as well as the persistence of his entreaty”. That “he would not even look up to heaven” is “both standing and submission, the portrayal not only of a lowly servant, but also that of one condemned”. This way of praying and the position of his body shows “right condemnation and self-reproach”.

That “he beat his breast” manifests his great contrition and deep mourning.

“God have mercy on me, a sinner”

shows the value of the prayer of a single phrase. Pleading nothing else, thinking of nothing else, he was paying attention only to himself and God, rotating and multiplying this prayer of a single phrase, which is the most effective kind of prayer”.

The second passage is about the meaning of the parable of the Prodigal Son. Here too St. Gregory interprets the parable hesychastically. St. Luke the Evangelist presents Christ’s parable, in which we read:

“Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living” (Lk. 15, 13).

St. Gregory does not analyse the parable in terms of morals, but theologically. He sets forth its true dimensions. Having the mind of Christ, experiencing the mystery of the spirit, he grasps its true meaning.

Belonging organically, as he does, to the Orthodox Tradition, he realises that the fall of man, the so-called ancestral sin, is in reality a darkening, obscuring and deadening of the nous, whereas the resurrection of man is the vitalisation of the dead nous. It is in this light that he also interprets the parable of the prodigal son.

The nous is man’s real wealth. “Above all else the nous is our innate essence and wealth”. As long as we remain on the ways of salvation “we have our nous gathered in itself and in the first and highest nous, God”. Our salvation is that we have our nous in God.

But when we open a door to the passions, then our nous “is immediately scattered, wandering all the time around things that are carnal and worldly, around the manifold pleasures and passionate thoughts about them”. Then a man’s nous becomes prodigal, and in general he is called prodigal. The wealth of the nous is prudence, and it distinguishes good from evil as long as we continue to keep Christ’s commandments. But when the nous withdraws from God, then prudence too is scattered into prostitution and imprudence.

Man’s soul has not only a rational aspect but also appetitive and incensive aspects. In its natural condition man’s nous “directs desire towards the one and truly existing God, the only good one, the only judge, the only one who provides pleasure unmixed with any pain. “But when the nous is in the unnatural state, when it departs from God and is darkened, then desire is dispersed into many self-indulgent appetites: “drawn on the one hand towards a desire for foods that are not needed, secondly towards the desire for unnecessary things, and thirdly towards the desire for vain and inglorious glory”.

This comes about through desire. But when the nous is being deadened, the incensive power too is similarly taken captive. When the nous is in its natural state, when, that is to say, it is united with God, then it rouses the incensive power only against the devil and utilises the soul’s courage against the devil and the passions. But when it disregards the divine commandments, then “one fights against one’s neighbour, rages against those of the same race, is infuriated with those who do not assent to one’s irrational appetites, and alas, one becomes a homicidal man…”.

The third passage is from the analysis which he gives of the Panagia’s sojourn in the Holy of Holies. It is true that her entry into the Holy of Holies is not described in the Scriptures, but it is an organic part of Orthodox Tradition. The Church has established this whole teaching about the entry of the Panagia into the Temple, and in fact it has a feast day for it. St. Gregory Palamas accepts this teaching of the Church and analyses it theologically.

In the Temple the Theotokos lived in Paradise. “She lived her life without equipment, unworried, carefree, without grief, having no part in base passions, above the pleasure that is not without pain, living only for God, seen only by God, nourished by God, guarded only by God, who was to dwell among us through her, she looking only at God, making God her delight, constantly devoted to God”.

Since the Theotokos had been freed of any material tie and had even thrown off the relationship of sympathy towards her body, “she attached her nous to turning towards itself in both attention and unceasing divine prayer. And as she had come completely to herself through this and had overcome the multiform rabble of thoughts, she discerned a new and ineffable way to heaven, which I would call intelligible silence.And fixing the attention of her nous on this, she soared above all created things and saw God’s glory better than Moses and kept an eye on divine grace…”.In the holy of holies the Theotokos busied herself with noetic prayer and in this way attained intelligible silence. In this way she saw the glory of God better than Moses did. In other words, she attained the vision of God. And since this vision of God is union with God, therefore even before she conceived Christ, the Theotokos was united with the Trinitarian God.

St. Gregory also takes this opportunity to give an account of the method of acquiring true theology.

First he says that speaking about God and meeting God Himself are two different things. In order to speak about God one needs to have speech, perhaps also art. Reasoning too is needed, and earthly examples offered by the senses. That is a way in which even many wise people of the world can speak about God, even men who have not undergone purification.

But it is impossible to unite with God through reasonings and examples afforded by the bodily senses. One does not attain communion with God “unless in addition to purification we go beyond, or rather above ourselves, leaving everything perceived by the senses, as well as sensation, rising high above thoughts and reasonings and all knowledge, and thought itself, wholly surrendered to the energy of noetic sensation, which Solomon forenamed a sense of the divine”. When a person rises above thoughts and reason itself, then he can be united with God.

The Theotokos chose this way to attain communion with God. She followed the way of hesychia. Noetic hesychia is nothing other than the standing still of the nous and the world. “Seeking holy stillness the virgin found a guide: stillness of the nous, the world standing still, things below forgotten, sharing the secrets above, laying aside conceptual images for what is better”. This stillness is the entrance to the true vision of God, which “is the only example of a truly healthy soul”.

Virtue is a medicine for the ills of the soul and for the passions, while the vision of God is a fruit of the healthy soul. It is through the vision of God that a man is deified. He is deified not through conjectural analogy… but through a hesychastic way of life”. The Theotokos achieved hesychia and the vision of God in the Temple and she attained communion with the Triune God. And anyone who wants to achieve this vision of God, which is man’s salvation, must follow the way of life of the Theotokos. The only way is the way of hesychia.

Finally, a fourth example of hesychastic teaching is the meaning in a passage of the Old Testament. There it says:

“On the seventh day He rested from all His work. And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it He rested from all the work of creating that He had done” (Gen. 2:2-3).

Interpreting this the saint writes that there are works of God “which He neither began to do nor ceased doing”. He did not begin to act because He is without beginning, since, as Christ Himself said,

“My Father is always at His work to this very day, and I am working” (John 5, 17).

God’s work without beginning is the knowledge of beings and the foreknowledge of things which are to be. Also God’s work without beginning and without ceasing is judgement and providence. In order to be created, beings need judgement and providence, but after creation they need judgement and providence as well, “so that they may not disappear unseasonably: or some may change with time for the benefit of themselves or of the whole, and others may remain unchangeable”. In other words, God, with His uncreated energy, which is called providence, continues to direct the whole creation for the fulfilment of His purpose.

God directs creation by His providence. Another of God’s works without beginning is “the return to Himself, for He moved without beginning in self-contemplation, the vision of Himself”.

Since God “neither began to do nor ceased doing”, what then is God’s rest? Why does Moses say that God rested after his labours? Rest is the way back “from the things below to those things that are greater and supracosmic”. In His creation in six days God was “outside Himself through His extreme goodness” – He condescended in His love for mankind.

On the seventh day, after the creation of the whole world of the senses, he returned, as befits Him, to his own height, which He had never left. And God blessed this rest in order to show us that we should value the knowledge of the beings of nature more highly than the things of the senses; also to indicate to us, to teach us and ask us to enter as far as we can into that rest ourselves, “which is our noetic vision of God, and through it the movement upwards towards God”.

This is the framework in which these things are interpreted by St. Gregory and the Apostolic words:

“There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God. For anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from His. Let us therefore make every effort to enter that rest…” (Heb. 4, 9-11).

In reality our own rest is hesychasm, noetic stillness, which is rest from the world and the return of the nous to the heart. In analysing this rest, the saint says that we first pay heed to the teaching of the Spirit, since we are ridding ourselves of the lower ceaseless and toilsome cares and laying aside the works connected with them. Then we prefer these words of the Holy Spirit to every passionate and worldly thought and we ponder them in our nous, which is to say our heart.

After that, if we remove every thought, even if it be a good one, from our nous, and through constant attention and unceasing prayer the nous returns to itself, then we enter the divine rest, which is the vision of God.

All this noetic hesychia, as described by the holy Fathers, who are basically hesychasts, is the way which leads to the divine rest – to the vision of God. And we believe that the hesychastic way of life is what makes a person Orthodox. It is the basis of the dogmas and all the truths of the faith. Apart from this there is no true theology.

After all this it is clear that St. Gregory Palamas is one who expresses the hesychastic life of the Holy Mountain. His stay on the Holy Mountain, his obedience to the discerning spiritual Fathers and the experience which he acquired, made him a true theologian, a great Father of the Church.

In all his works, whether polemics or homilies, his hesychastic life is seen. He lived the life of the Holy Mountain and became a Hagiorite.

And this of course is identical with being “Orthodox”.

Palamas: The Dispute With Barlaam

Fr. John A. Peck — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 18:00:01 +0000

by Metrpolitan Hierotheos Vlachos

This is an excerpt from his book “St. Gregory Palamas as a Hagiorite.”

His “dispute” with Barlaam

It was with difficulty that the saint began this “dispute”, because he did not wish to abandon the stillness of his life on the Holy Mountain. But when he was asked by his spiritual brothers, and when he himself realised that the faith was in danger of being altered, which would also have resulted in altering the means of man’s cure, of losing the way of salvation, then he began his struggle.

At first he did it with great humility and discretion. He finished one of his letters to Barlaam by saying that in spite of the reproach that he felt against Barlaam for his erroneous ideas on serious theological questions, he still maintained the same love for him. He called him a very wise man, the best of those who loved and were loved, and he emphasised that in spite of the dispute, the state of peace would be maintained. At the same time he expressed the desire that they should meet to embrace with a holy kiss.

All these things imply a soul that has peace and stillness. Because of this hesychastic life he could criticise the erroneous belief and at the same time keep peace and love.

But also on the matters which were in dispute with Barlaam we can see the hesychastic life of St. Gregory Palamas. He expresses the whole Tradition of the Orthodox Church. At this point we would like to look at several characteristic views taken from the first triad of his well known work “On the holy hesychasts”. Three topics are raised. The first one is the relationship between the two wisdoms, worldly and godly. The second is about noetic prayer, the return of the nous to abide in the heart, and the third is about vision of the uncreated Light.

In the first part he opposes Barlaam’s view that human knowledge is a gift of God, and indeed of equal or higher value than the knowledge of the Apostles and the Prophets. This was why Barlaam had come to wrong conclusions. One of these was that the monks should pursue human education and human knowledge in order to be perfected.

In answer to this view, St. Gregory maintains that man’s aim is to progress from the image to the likeness of God. In his fall man lost his direction toward the likeness, and the image was darkened. Therefore he must now purify the image. But this does not come about through “carnal wisdom”. Since the darkening of the image happens through sin, this means that when sin is removed, when man attains inner prayer, when his life is harmonised with Christ’s commandments, and when he attains vision of God, then he is in fact in the image of God. Therefore the philosophers’ teaching is different from that of the Christians.

St. Gregory emphasises particularly that man purifies the image through Christ’s commandments and the power of the Cross of Christ. He refers to the cases of St. John the Forerunner and of Christ Himself. The Forerunner, he who is greater than the Prophets, lived from his early years in the desert, where, he points out, there was no education nor any of what Barlaam called saving philosophy.

There were no books there, and no teachers of worldly wisdom.

And we find the same thing in the life of Christ.

When a young man asked what he should do to attain salvation and eternal life, he did not say: “If you want to be perfect, take up outward education, hasten to assimilate the sciences, acquire for yourself the science of beings”, but he said:

“Sell your possessions and give to the poor, take up the cross and be willing to follow me”.

Therefore in order to shame the outwardly wise the Lord took on uneducated fishermen.

At this point St. Gregory refers to passages from the epistles of the Apostle Paul, mainly from the first letter to the Corinthians, where it says that Christ took unlettered men “in order to shame the outwardly wise”, that God made foolish the wisdom of the world, that “the world through its wisdom did not know God” and that “through the foolishness of what was preached He was pleased to save those who believe”.

Then, taking passages from Basil the Great and St. Gregory of Nyssa, he makes the distinction between demonic human knowledge and knowledge from the Holy Spirit, and naturally he prevents the monks from acquiring that worldly wisdom and knowledge. He ends his first section by saying that outward wisdom, meaning philosophy, “appeared futile and contemptible to our holy Fathers and especially to those who had had experience of it”.

In the second part he refers to the vast subject of prayer, and especially to what is called noetic prayer, where the nous is centred in the heart. Barlaam and his followers had said that it was not right to take our nous into the body, particularly into the heart. They said that the right thing was to take the nous out of the body.

In reply to this view, which presupposes Plato’s philosophical conceptions that the body is the prison of the soul and man’s salvation is the soul’s liberation from the body, he first uses the Apostle Paul’s three passages:

“Through Holy Baptism the body became the temple of the Holy Spirit in us”;

the body is the

“house of God”,

and finally God gave his promise

“I will live with them and walk with them, and I will be their God”.

He emphasises that the body is not evil, but it is the carnal attitude that is evil. When a person purifies his body through self-control, and the irascible and appetitive parts of the soul with self-control and love, and when he further makes his intelligence secure with prayer, then he sees divine Grace in his heart.

In what follows he makes excellent anthropological analyses. He analyses just what man’s nous is, that the heart is the place of the rational faculty, the first rational organ of the body, that the nous is in the bodily organ of the heart, not as in a receptacle, but as in an organ which directs the entire body. Thus we must struggle to bring the nous back into the heart, where its natural place is. Being a great and holy hesychast the saint brings into the soul that which also exists in God. Just as God has essence and energy, so also the soul has essence and energy. The soul’s energy which finds itself in the rational part and is flowing out through the senses towards creation must return to the heart. Beginners in the spiritual life can succeed in this by controlling their breathing.

When Barlaam and those who agreed with him scoffed at this method used by beginners, St. Gregory made very correct and very theological observations. The circular motion of the nous, that is to say its return from the outside world to the heart and its ascent from there to God, is the unerring method and the only way for man to acquire pure knowledge of God. But St. Gregory also made orthodox observations about the body’s participation in prayer, as well as in the path to sanctity.

The circularity of the body too is essential for the return of the nous to the heart. He says all these things because the Barlaamites mock the hesychasts, who at the beginning of their spiritual life also make use of the circular pattern of the body (omphalopsychoi). The saint cites the case of the Prophet Elijah, who used the circularity of his body to bring his nous back into his heart and thus relieved the drought.

In the third part he refers to the fruits of prayer, which are the uncreated Light and divine Knowledge. Barlaam maintained that any light which is accessible to the senses is created and therefore is lower than thought, man’s rational faculty. So, with his view that all external light is created and symbolic, he went so far as to consider the philosophers superior to the Prophets and Apostles, who saw the uncreated Light.

This part touches on many other topics as well that relate to this and other accusations by the Barlaamites. First he cites various patristic passages according to which at the beginning of the spiritual life the study of Holy Scripture is reduced, not in disparagement of it, but because we must first be purified through prayer, and then we will understand the spirit of the Scriptures.

He cites other patristic passages as well, in order to show how the body participates in noetic prayer, because often the heart itself leaps with joy at the coming of Grace, and frequently a pleasant taste is created in the mouths of those who pray and sing, and this is the energy of divine Grace.

Then he makes the distinction between the light of natural knowledge and the Light of the uncreated energies of the Holy Spirit. He concludes that natural knowledge is not the light of the soul. Thus when the saints see the uncreated Light, they see the garment of deification. He cites many patristic passages -and he surely interprets them within his own spiritual experience, which is the same as that of the holy Fathers- that say that man can attain vision of the uncreated Light.

This Light is not symbolic and created, but the shining of hypostatic light; it is divinity itself. The light on Mt. Tabor is not a third hidden nature in Christ, but divinity itself. And towards the end of the third section he refers to the great difference between the theologian and one who has seen God. A theologian can also be said to be one who speaks about God without even having his own personal experience, but a ‘theoptis’ is one who sees God. Theology differs from the vision of God in the same way as the knowledge of a thing differs from the possession of it.

There are other places as well in the teaching of St. Gregory Palamas where he refers to the great subject of the knowledge of God. He affirms that vision of the uncreated Light is union with God. Union is communion, and this communion offers knowledge of God.

True knowledge of God is superior to human created knowledge.

And the saint demonstrates that in the Orthodox Church we teach that the Prophets are incomparably higher than the philosophers, for the Prophets of both the Old and New Testaments attained the vision of God, while the philosophers were making conjectures about God.

In this analysis of the first triad of St. Gregory’s work “On the holy hesychasts” he is clearly shown to be a hesychast father, expressing the genuine hesychasm which is experienced on the Holy Mountain.

Theosis: Union with God

Fr. John A. Peck — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 08:16:35 +0000

by Metropolitan Hierotheos Vlachos

This is an excerpt from his book “St. Gregory Palamas as a Hagiorite.”

However, in saying that St. Gregory is one who expresses the hesychastic life of the Holy Mountain, we must examine just what hesychia is according to the orthodox teaching.

Hesychia, stillness, is essential for man’s purification and perfection, which means his salvation. St. Gregory the Theologian says epigrammatically:

“One must be still in order to have clear converse with God and to bring the nous a little away from those wandering in error”

Through hesychia a man purifies his heart and nous from passions and thus attains communion and union with God. This communion with God, precisely because it is man’s union with God, also constitutes man’s salvation.

Hesychia is nothing other than “keeping one’s heart away from giving and taking and pleasing people, and the other activities”. When a person frees his heart from thoughts and passions, when all the powers of his soul are transformed and turned away from earthly things and towards God, then he is experiencing orthodox hesychia. St. John of the Ladder writes that stillness of soul is “the accurate knowledge of one’s thoughts and is an unassailable mind”. Therefore hesychia is an inner state; it is “dwelling in God”.

Of course the holy Fathers distinguish between external and internal stillness. External stillness is liberation of the senses and the body from sights, and particularly from the bondage which the world imposes, while inner stillness is liberation of the heart from images, fantasies and worries. Hesychia of the body is usually the hesychastic position and the person’s attempt to limit as far as possible external representations, the images which our sensations receive and offer to the soul. Hesychia of the soul implies that the nous is able not to accept any temptations to stray. In this way man’s nous escapes from the outer world and enters his heart, which is where it really belongs. Thus a person acquires peace in his heart, and there God Himself is revealed.

As we have seen, St. Gregory Palamas lived this orthodox hesychia. At first he looked for a secluded spot on the Holy Mountain and prayed to God night and day. Then he attained inner hesychia as well. Within this spiritual hesychastic atmosphere he acquired the knowledge of God, at the time when the heresy appeared which sought to unsettle the fundamental aspects of the Church’s teaching. It was just then, since he had experience of this life, that he expressed it.

It is only in this light that we must look at the life of St. Gregory. He was not just a student of the holy Fathers, but one who had the same life, and therefore also the same teaching as they.

In all his teaching we see the Hagiorite hesychast father who knows what hesychasm is, but above all, lives it. We can see this more analytically at two main points. First, in his dispute with Barlaam, and secondly in his homilies to the Flock of Thessaloniki, when he was made Archbishop of Thessaloniki, as well as in other related homilies.

Knowledge of God according to Palamas

Fr. John A. Peck — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 19:29:43 +0000

by Metropolitan Hierotheos Vlachos

This is an excerpt from his book “Orthodox Psychotherapy.”

We must pray fervently for God to grant us to reach this knowledge of God. The exhortation is clear:

Come, let us ascend into the mountain of the Lord, even to the house of our God, and behold the glory of His transfiguration, glory of the Only-begotten of the Father. Let us receive light from His light, and with uplifted spirits let us for ever sing the praises of the consubstantial Trinity.

When a person rises from bodily knowledge to the soul’s knowledge and from that to spiritual knowledge, then he sees God and possesses knowledge of God, which is his salvation. Knowledge of God, as will be explained further on, is not intellectual, but existential. That is, one’s whole being is filled with this knowledge of God. But in order to attain it, one’s heart must have been purified, that is, the soul, nous (intellect) and heart must have been healed.

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matt.5,8).

Let us look at things more analytically.

As I have indicated, Barlaam insisted that knowledge of God depends not on vision of God but on one’s understanding. He said that we can acquire knowledge of God through philosophy, and therefore he considered the prophets and apostles who saw the uncreated light, to be below the philosophers. He called the uncreated light sensory, created, and “inferior to our understanding”.

However, St. Gregory Palamas, a bearer of the Tradition and a man of revelation, supported the opposite view. In his theology he presented the teaching of the Church that uncreated light, that is, the vision of God, is not simply a symbolic vision, nor sensory and created, nor inferior to understanding, but it is deification. Through deification man is deemed worthy of seeing God. And this deification is not an abstract state, but a union of man with God. That is to say, the man who beholds the uncreated light sees it because he is united with God. He sees it with his inner eyes, and also with his bodily eyes, which, however, have been altered by God’s action.

Consequently theoria (vision of God) is union with God. And this union is knowledge of God.

At this time one is granted knowledge of God, which is above human knowledge and above the senses.

St. Gregory explains this whole theology in places throughout his writings. But since it is not our intention in this chapter to make a systematic exposition of his whole teaching about the knowledge of God, we shall limit ourselves to analyzing the central point in it as it is presented in his basic work “On the Holy Hesychasts,” known as the Triads. Again we must add that we shall not present the whole teaching as it is set out in that book, but only the central points. After each quotation we shall give the reference.

Here is a characteristic passage in which he briefly presents this teaching:

“One who has cleared his soul of all connection with things of this world, who has detached himself from everything by keeping the commandments and by the dispassion that this brings, and who has passed beyond all cognitive activity through continuous, sincere and immaterial prayer, and who has been abundantly illuminated by the inaccessible light in an inconceivable union, he alone, becoming light, contemplating by the light and beholding the light, in the vision and enjoyment of this light recognizes truly that God is transcendently radiant and beyond comprehension; he glorifies God not only beyond his nous’s human power of understanding, for many created things are beyond that, but even beyond that marvelous union which is the only means by which the nous is united with what is beyond intelligible things, imitating divinely the supra-celestial minds” (2,3,57).

We find the central teaching of St. Gregory in this passage. In order to attain vision of the uncreated light, a person must cut off every connection between the soul and what is below, detach himself from everything by keeping Christ’s commandments and through the dispassion which comes from that, he must transcend all cognitive activity

“through continuous and sincere and immaterial prayer”.

Therefore he must have been healed already, through keeping Christ’s commandments and through freeing his soul from all sinful connection with created things. He is illuminated by the inaccessible light “abundantly through an inconceivable union”. He sees God through union. Thus he becomes light and sees by the light. Seeing the uncreated light, he recognizes God and acquires knowledge of Him, because now “he recognizes truly that God is above nature and beyond comprehension”.

St. Gregory also develops this teaching at other places in the Triads.

The vision of God, theoria of the uncreated light, is not a sensory vision but a deification of man. Speaking of Moses’ vision of God “face-to-face and not in enigmas”, he recalls the passage in St. Maximus the Confessor that says:

“Deification is an en-hypostatic and direct illumination which has no beginning but appears in those worthy as something exceeding their comprehension. It is indeed a mystical union with God, beyond nous and reason in the age when creatures will no longer know corruption” (3,1,28;CWS p.84).

So the vision of the uncreated light is man’s deification. He sees God through deification and not through cultivating intelligence. The vision of uncreated light is called a deifying gift. It is not a gift of created human nature, but of the Holy Spirit.

“Thus the deifying gift of the Spirit is a mysterious light which transforms into light those who receive its wealth. He not only fills them with eternal light but also grants them knowledge and life appropriate to God” (3,1,35;CWS p.90).

Thus the vision of God is not external but comes through deification (2,3,25).

This deification is union and communion with God. According to St. Gregory,

“Vision of the uncreated light is not simply abstraction and negation, it is a union and a divinisation which occurs mystically and ineffably by the grace of God, after the stripping away of everything from here below which imprints itself on the nous, or rather after the cessation of all noetic activity; it is something which goes beyond abstraction” (1,3,17;CWS p.34f).

The contemplation of uncreated light is

“by the divinising communion of the Spirit” (1,3,5;CWS p.33).

“So the contemplation of this light is a union, even though it does not endure in the imperfect: but is the union with this light other than a vision?” (2,3,36;CWS p.65)

St. Gregory speaks of ecstasy.

But this ecstasy, in patristic teaching, has nothing to do with the ecstasy of Pythia and the other religions. Ecstasy comes when, in prayer, the nous abandons every connection with created things: first

“with everything evil and bad, then with neutral things” (2,3,35;CWS p.65).

Ecstasy is mainly withdrawal from the opinion of the world and the flesh. With sincere prayer the nous

“abandons all created things” (2,3,35;CWS p.65).

This ecstasy is higher than abstract theology, that is, than rational theology, and it belongs only to those who have attained dispassion. But it is not yet union. That is to say, the ecstasy which is unceasing prayer of the nous, in which one’s nous has continuous remembrance of God and has no relation with the `world of sin’ is not yet union with God. This union comes about when the Paraclete

“illuminates from on high the man who attains in prayer the stage which is superior to the highest natural possibilities and who is awaiting the promise of the Father, and by His revelation ravishes him to the contemplation of the light” (2,3,35;CWS p.65).

Illumination by God is what shows His union with man.

Vision, deification and union with God are the things which offer man existential knowledge of God. Then man possesses real knowledge of God. The deifying gift of the Holy Spirit, which is a mysterious light, transforms into divine light those who have attained it and not only fills them with eternal light,

“but also grants them a knowledge and a life appropriate to God” (3,1,35;CWS p.89).

In this state a person possesses knowledge of God. In reply to Barlaam’s teaching that God is known by the greatest contemplators, the philosophers, and that knowledge of God transmitted “by noetic illumination…is by no means true” (2,3,78), St. Gregory Palamas declares:

“God makes Himself known not only through all that is but also through what is not, through transcendence, that is, through uncreated things, and also through an eternal light that transcends all beings”

This knowledge, he says, is offered today as a kind of pledge to those who are worthy of it and which

“illuminates them unendingly in the unending age”.

That is just why the saints’ vision of God is true,

“and he who calls it false has strayed from the divine knowledge of God” (2,3,78).

Thus anyone who ignores and disregards the vision of God, which offers true knowledge, is in reality ignorant of God.

These things show that the vision of God, deification, union and knowledge of God are closely bound together. They cannot be understood apart from one another. Breaking this unity takes man further away from knowledge of God. The basis of Orthodox epistemology is illumination and God’s revelation within the purified heart of man.

As we have seen, knowledge of God is beyond human knowledge. Vision of the uncreated light surpasses all epistemological activity and is “beyond sight and knowledge” (2,3,50). Since vision of the uncreated light is offered to the hearts of the faithful and perfect, that is why

“it is superior to the light of knowledge” (2,3,18;CWS p.63).

And not only is it superior to the light of human knowledge “from Hellenic studies”, but also the light of this theoria differs from “the light that comes from the Holy Scriptures”, since the light of the Scriptures may be compared to

“a lamp that shines in an obscure place, whereas vision of the uncreated light resembles the morning star which shines in the day, that is to say, the sun” (2,3,18;CWS p.63).

The grace of deification thus transcends nature, virtue and human knowledge (3,1,27).

The vision of the uncreated light and the knowledge that comes from this are not an unfolding of the rational power, they are not perfection of rational nature, as Barlaam asserted, but they are superior to reason. They are knowledge offered by God to the pure in heart. Anyone who asserts that the deifying gift is a development of the rational nature puts himself in opposition to Christ’s Gospel. If contemplation were a natural gift, then all people should be gods, one less and another more. But

“the deified saints transcend nature”, they are engendered by God, God gave them power to become “children of God” (3,1,30;CWS p.85).

The vision of the uncreated light, which offers knowledge of God to man, is sensory and suprasensory. The bodily eyes are reshaped, so they see the uncreated light,

“this mysterious light, inaccessible, immaterial, uncreated, deifying, eternal”, this “radiance of the Divine Nature, this glory of the divinity, this beauty of the heavenly kingdom” (3,1,22;CWS p.80).

Palamas asks:

“Do you see that light is inaccessible to senses which are not transformed by the Spirit?” (2,3,22).

St. Maximus, whose teaching is cited by St. Gregory, says that the Apostles saw the uncreated Light

“by a transformation of the activity of their senses, produced in them by the Spirit” (2.3.22).

Vision of the uncreated Light and the knowledge which comes from it transcend not only nature and human knowledge, but virtue as well.

Virtue and the imitation of God prepare us for the divine union, but the mysterious union itself is effected by grace (3,1,27;CWS p.83).

Thus deification, which is the goal of the spiritual life, is a manifestation of God to the pure heart of man. This vision of the uncreated Light is what creates spiritual delight in the soul. For, according to St. Gregory, evidence of that light is that the soul ceases to give itself over to wrong pleasures and passions, and that it acquires peace and stillness of thoughts, and rest and spiritual joy, contempt for human glory, humility joined with secret rejoicing, hatred of the world, love of heavenly things, or rather love of the God of Heaven alone, and a vision of uncreated light even if one’s eyes should be covered or plucked out (3,1,36;CWS p.90).

From what has been said it is clear that the end of man’s cure is vision of the uncreated light. But since in this chapter we are speaking about theoria, we may also look at Palamas’ teaching that there are many degrees of theoria.

He says that this theoria has a beginning, and the things that follow on from this beginning differ in degrees of darkness or clarity, but there is never an end, for its progress, like that of the rapture in revelation, is infinite. Illumination is one thing and continuous vision of light is another, and still another is the vision of things in that light whereby even things far off are accessible to the eyes, and the future is shown as already existing (2,3,35;CWS p.65).

So there are degrees of theoria, and with it, degrees of knowledge.

At this point we may also look at the teaching of St. Peter of Damascus about the eight stages of theoria (Philokalia 3,108).

The first seven belong to this age, while the eighth belongs to the age to come.

The first theoria is knowledge of the trials and tribulations of this life.

The second is “knowledge of our own faults and of God’s bounty”.

The third is knowledge of the terrible things before and after death.

The fourth is deep understanding of the life led by our Lord Jesus in this world and of His disciples and the other saints, that is to say, the words and actions of the martyrs and the holy Fathers.

The fifth is knowledge of the nature and flux of things.

The sixth is theoria of created beings, or knowledge and understanding of God’s visible creation.

The seventh is understanding of God’s spiritual creation, that is to say, of the angels.

The eighth is knowledge concerning God, or what we call `theology’.

Consequently theoria has many stages and degrees, and many must come before vision of the uncreated light, which is “the beauty of the age to come”, “the food of the heavens”. Among the degrees of theoria are remembrance of death, which is a gift from God, unceasing prayer, the inspiration to keep Christ’s commandments fully, knowledge of our spiritual poverty, that is to say, understanding of our sins and passions, and the repentance following it.

All these things come about through the operation of divine grace. Certainly perfect theoria is vision of the uncreated light, which itself is differentiated into vision and continuous vision, as Palamas says (3,1,30).

So the purification which takes place by the grace of God creates the necessary preconditions for attaining that theoria which is communion with God, deification of man, and knowledge of God. The ascetic method of the Church leads to this point. It is not based on human criteria and it does not aim to make the person `nice and good’, but to heal him perfectly and for him to achieve communion with God. As long as a man is far from communion and union with God, he has not yet attained his salvation. The spiritually trained person who sees the uncreated light is said, in the language of the Fathers, to be ‘deified’.

This expression is used by St. Dionysios the Areopagite, St. John of Damascus, and repeatedly, as we have seen, by St. Gregory Palamas (3,1,30;CWS p.85f).

The healing of the soul, nous and heart leads a person to the vision of God and makes him know the divine life. This knowledge is man’s salvation.

And,

You were transfigured upon the mountain, O Christ our God, showing to Your disciples Your glory as much as they could bear. Do also in us, sinners though we be, shine Your everlasting light, at the intercession of the Theotokos, O Giver of light. Glory to You.

Gregory Palamas: Knowledge, Prayer & Vision

Fr. John A. Peck — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 07:01:57 +0000

by M.C. Steenberg

A deacon of the Russian Orthodox Church in Great Britain (Diocese of Sourozh), Dr. Steenberg is a patristics scholar, and formerly a Fellow in Theology at Greyfriars, Oxford. He is currently chair of the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at Leeds Trinity & All Saints. He serves in the parish of St Nicholas the Wonderworker, Oxford, and is to be heard in the weekly ‘A Word From the Holy Fathers’ broadcasts of Ancient Faith Radio and Monachos.net.

Three foundational aspects of the Theology of St Gregory Palamas

The theology of St Gregory Palamas, as expressed during the Palamite Controversy of the mid-14^th century, is far too extensive to be addressed in its full breadth in a paper such as this. Rather than attempt a manifestly impossible task, then, we will limit the focus of this essay to three central points in that theology: first, the idea of knowledge as expressed in the conflict between Gregory and Barlaam; second, the matter of prayer and the body; and third, the notion of the divine vision, which will lead naturally into a discussion of the energies and the essence of God.

A Knowledge Beyond Knowing: Barlaam’s Objection to Apodictic Theology

One of the first objections raised against St Gregory Palamas’ theology was brought forth by Barlaam of Calabria, and dealt specifically with the issue of knowledge. Two fundamentally different views on knowledge were involved in this dispute: first was that which Barlaam and others held, and which might broadly be termed, following Meyendorff, as the Dialectic Method of knowing God.¹ This was a largely philosophical view, based upon the position that knowledge of God might be gained by the use of discursive reason, dialectic, and rational investigation. As this very fact would suggest, the dialectic approach involved a strong element of kataphaticism. Yet, following the course of the great philosophers, it also readily admitted of the incapability of affirmative theology to truly apprehend the divine truths of God; and thus there was a strong, if not consuming trend towards apophatic theology present in this view.

Barlaam himself seems to have based his own severe apophaticism on the model and example of Pseudo-Dionysius, with which he was quite familiar; yet his understanding of that writer was incomplete: where Dionysius was to stress certain positive elements of his apophatic reasoning (such as the positive experience of the divine darkness), Barlaam’s model seems to have been almost wholly negative—to the point of bordering on a certain agnosticism. God is transcendent, he taught, and thus to ascend to purer knowledge we must espouse negative theology and transcend our own perceptive reason; yet ultimately the Transcendent cannot be truly known, even with apophaticism used to its utmost. At the heart of Barlaam’s teaching is the significant idea that God cannot truly be perceived by man; that God the Transcendent can never be wholly known by man the created and finite.

Gregory, on the other hand, taught something quite different. This second conception of knowledge of God brought it out of the realm of mere dialectic—whether positive or negative, kataphatic or apophatic—and into the arena of demonstration; what Meyendorff terms Apodictic Knowledge of God.² Natural knowledge, believed Gregory, is one aspect of man’s relationship to his Creator; and yet it is quite a different thing to know about God, than it is to actually know Him. The great divergence between this view and that of Barlaam, was that Gregory believed the latter aspect to be not only a hypothetical possibility (which Barlaam would have denied), but a fully attainable reality. It was not a question of whether or not man could know God by direct, immediate knowledge, but whether or not he would, given the life he was leading.

Gregory’s view should not be seen to undermine a positive view of philosophical thought as a whole, which was a continual accusation made by Barlaam. Taken as a tool for the progression of the human person towards a state receptive to divine grace, Gregory saw philosophy and discursive knowledge as a perfectly reasonable set of aids for the Christian. It was only when philosophy, whose created end is the furtherance of knowledge of God,³ was misused by the philosophers and turned, in effect, into God, that Gregory raised his voice in ardent opposition.

This was the ‘fallen’ state of knowledge, which did not betray an evil inherent in knowledge itself, but simply the misuse made of it by certain philosophical schools. Gregory understood natural knowledge within the metaphor of the natural world revealing aspects of God; to which revelation God Himself would add the grace to know Him intimately. He writes:

There is a knowledge about God and His doctrines. (…) The use and activity of the natural powers of the soul and of the body do shape the rational image of man, but that is not the same as the perfect beauty of the noble state which comes from above; that is by no means the supernatural union with the more than resplendent light, which is the sole source of sure theology.⁴

Thus Gregory viewed natural knowledge, in all its philosophical forms, as a tool leading to something greater, yet every bit as real as that very knowledge: the divine grace which brings about union, the true source of contemplative knowing.

But this conception clashed harshly with that of Barlaam, who seems firmly to have espoused the neo-Platonic tradition as he interpreted it from Dionysius, and could not find common ground between his own rationalist views and those of Gregory. Much of the earlier arguments in the Palamite conflict centred in this very issue of knowledge, and apart from being an interesting debate in its own right, this dispute led Gregory into the formative stages of the theological conceptions he would bring forth later in the controversy. The relationship of apophaticism to human knowledge, and that to God’s nature as transcendent Being, would come into play with great importance a short time later, and, as we shall see, would have direct bearing on Gregory’s famous argument for the distinction of energies and essence.

Prayer and the Body: Objections to the Hesychast Method of Prayer

An objection which would soon follow the above, involved the method of prayer practised by the hesychast monks. As we discussed in our previous paper on the historical background of the Palamite controversy, Barlaam learned of this practise only a short time after beginning his discussions with Gregory, and soon added this item to those in dispute.

Once more we find the presence of two general views which clashed in this debate. The first, again, is that of Barlaam, and might be termed the Platonic, or Evagrian conception of the human person. We will not spend a great deal of time discussing this view here, as its basis is essentially that of the neo-Platonic, dualist understanding of humanity, which has been addressed in previous papers. Yet it should be noted that Barlaam shared Evagrios’ spritualizing tendencies, which in the Calabrian’s case edged the conception of human spirituality into the realm of that which brought the soul into sanctification by means of overcoming the body. While we might not see Barlaam as quite so daringly dualist as Evagrios, and certainly not Plotinus, we still find in him the central tenets of a dualistic theology.

In opposition to this view was Gregory, who took a more biblical stance in his understanding of the human person. Maintaining the Old Testament conception of the human person as an integral whole, whose character and essence is seated in the heart (kardi/a)—a view which, while not always in the majority, has certainly never been absent in the patristic tradition—Gregory could not take a share in the philosophical dualism of Barlaam and his contemporaries. Meyendorff writes, ‘It is above all against a dualistic conception of man that Palamas raises his voice’,⁵ and indeed it was largely for polemical reasons that Palamas raised the issue at all. Yet it was one of fundamental importance to his understanding of humanity as the creation of God, and one which he saw as not only theologically necessary, but empirically verifiable:

What pain or joy or movement of the body is there, which is not shared by soul and body?⁶

Gregory could thus not support the view that soul and body were distinct and separate in the greater scheme of human life. Still less could he accept the notion that the soul was good and the body evil, for ‘only the Messalian heretics say that the body is evil in itself.’⁷ In Gregory’s conception, matter in itself, whether the matter of the human body or that of any other form, could not be evil by essence, for it was the creation of God. ‘Apart from sin, nothing is wrong in itself in the present life, not even death, but everything can lead to evil.’⁸

Here we find a key element in Palamas’ theology that began to be directly expressed in his conflicts with Barlaam over the nature of the human person: the idea that it is only the misuse of the elements of created nature, whether mind or matter, soul or body, that cause them to become ‘evil’ and far from God. In their ‘natural’ state, all elements of creation have the ability to bring about knowledge of and union with the Creator. Again, we find that Gregory is here far from innovative, as this notion had been expressed in the writings of the Fathers for centuries (quite notably in the fourth chapter of Pseudo-Dionysius’ On the Divine Names); yet it was Gregory’s special gift to take this long-standing and essential element of patristic theology, and weave it so artfully into his greater conception of the sanctification of the human person. In speaking again of the connection of soul and body, and this time relating it to the activity of both in the spiritual life of the individual, he writes:

There are blessed passions, activities common to soul and body, which do not attach the spirit to the flesh (sa/rc), but draw up the flesh to a dignity near to that of the spirit, and make it to turn towards the heights. (…) In the same way as the Divinity of the Word Incarnate is common to soul and body … so, in spiritual men, is the grace of the Spirit transmitted to the body by the soul as intermediary, and this gives it to experience of divine things, and allows it to feel the same passion as the soul.⁹

It is interesting to note that Gregory did indeed advocate the use of a ‘psycho-somatic technique’ in the hesychast method of prayer; yet he did so not out of a conviction that this was an essential necessity (rather, he saw it principally as in aid for beginners),¹⁰ but rather out of a conviction that refusing to admit the validity of a type of prayer involving the body would be to negate the reality of the intimate and foundational unity of the human person. This unity, when properly attuned, may not only serve as the source of wholeness in personal sanctification, but allows the whole person to take an active part in the progression toward a sanctified state.

Unnatural Participation: Objections to the Divine Vision, and the Distinction of Energies and Essence

A third major objection raised against Palamas’ teachings was that centring on his defence of the divine vision—of his support of the reports of those hesychasts who claimed to have seen the Divine Light with their own eyes. Both Barlaam and Akindynos, and to some degree Gregoras, would object to this notion, for to their minds it sounded too reminiscent of the heresy of the Messalians. That the hesychasts would claim to see God, using much the same language as St Symeon the New Theologian had used three centuries earlier, seemed to echo the Messalian concept of beholding the divine nature with bodily eyes—a notion that had been refuted at the Sixth Oecumenical Council and elsewhere. Yet Gregory Palamas would ardently defend the monks’ claims, and to that defence we will now turn.

We do not have time here to delve too deeply into the reports of experiences of the divine light, for such could easily consume a paper of its own (if not several). Our principal interest is to relate how Gregory’s understanding of these experiences—of the individual’s own apprehension of the Divine Being in personal, visible form—related to the overall theological ‘picture’ which he produced in his writings as the result of the Palamite controversy as a whole.

In this we will discover his defence of the vision of the light, and his distinction between the essence and the energies of God, to be manifest extensions of the theological points we have already discussed.

First we must return to that point most recently addressed: that of prayer. Gregory and the Athonite hesychasts did not understand the divine vision, generally, as a randomly accorded charismatic gift, but rather the fruit of true and inspired prayer. In our above quotation from his second Triad, Palamas wrote that the passions, when properly focused and directed (i.e., through prayer), possess the ability to

‘draw up the flesh to a dignity near to that of the spirit,’ and that in this state the Spirit ‘gives [the body] to experience of divine things.’

This is the goal toward which the practise of hesychasm—which Palamas did not see as the end of spirituality, but a chief among its tools—is aimed: the purification and sanctification of the person, so that the divine transfiguration wrought of the Spirit might take place.

This transfiguration of the body so that it might ‘experience divine things’ was not understood by Gregory in a merely metaphorical sense; it was not simply a symbol for increased knowledge of God that led to improved understanding, but a real and true change in the human person, such that the manner of his knowing the Divine Creator might indeed be transformed. To fully understand this concept, we must now return to the first theological point discussed in this paper: that of Gregory’s ‘apodictic’ conception of divine knowledge.

We have already addressed Barlaam’s contention that the limitations of man’s knowledge keep him from ever coming to a real knowledge of the Divinity, who utterly transcends all human thought—and the fact that this led him to espouse a severe apophaticism, leading almost to agnosticism in its final analysis. Gregory, too, found place for the apophatic approach, but for a different—and important—reason: he did not see it so much as the limitations of man’s knowledge that kept him from knowing God by personal experience, but the fact that God, by nature,is unknowable. It is not simply a lack of proper perception—through which we must work apophatically—that keeps humanity distant from a personal knowledge of God’s nature, but the fact that God Himself is entirely unknowable in that nature to His creation, as a property of His being.

This would at first seem to be in line with the very claims that Barlaam made in opposition to Gregory, but that similarity is lost when one considers that, while Palamas understood God’s nature to be unknowable, he believed that God Himself is nonetheless directly known. Here he developed his famous distinction between two aspects of the Divine Being: the essence, which is the nature discussed above, and which has as a ‘property’ its absolute transcendence and ‘unknowability’ to the human mind; and the energies, which are the workings of that essence in the universe, and which are given to the experience of those who are in a state of grace ready to behold them.

The energies of God, as distinct from His essence, nonetheless relate to this essence. They are not foreign to the nature of God, but inherent products of it. Moreover, they are not mere ‘side-effects’ of God’s presence, but His actual immanence. Meyendorff writes,

The Trinity itself is totally present in the divine energies, and there is no question of the emanations of Plotinus or of beings distinct from God. On every suitable occasion Palamas stresses the fact that the energies have neither hypostasis nor existence of their own, but result from the divine hypostasis.¹¹

This is an essential point in Gregory’s theology, for it stresses the union of differing characteristics of God’s being: essence and energy are two aspects of His nature, yet they are not wholly disparate or foreign to one another. But neither are they the same—and here, again, Gregory stresses the supreme transcendence of the divine essence, as related to the immanent presence and experience of the energies. The latter are those uncreated indications of God that ‘manifest [Him] outside of his unkowable essence,’¹² yet they are not to be seen either as the essence itself, nor as composite ‘parts’ which together make up that essence.

Neither the uncreated goodness, nor the eternal glory, nor the life and all such things are simply the superessential essence of God, for God, as Cause, transcends them; nevertheless we say that He is Life, Goodness and other such things.¹³

They do not compose the being of God (…) It is He who gives them their existence, without taking his existence from them; indeed it is not the realities which surround God which are the essence of God, but he is their essence.¹⁴

Thus we see Gregory’s insistence upon the firm distinction between essence and energy, which defines them as unique and separate aspects of God’s being, yet each a real and whole manifestation of God Himself. In a powerful and revealing phrase, he writes ‘God complete is present in each of the divine energies.’¹⁵

Within this context of God as existent in His essence and manifest in His energies, we can see with improved clarity Gregory’s conception of the divine vision in hesychast prayer. This is not direct encounter with God’s transcendent nature, which both Barlaam and Gregory agreed was impossible; nor was it a ‘materialisation’ of God’s being such that human eyes might behold it, which would be the heresy of the Messalians.

Rather it is the personal encounter of the transfigured person with the manifest energies of the living God, in which the Transcendent One is eminently (‘apodictically’) known and experienced, without losing His transcendence of being. ‘When the Saints receive the vision,’ writes Meyendorff, ‘they enter into direct contact with God Himself, who remains totally transcendent though revealing himself to them.’¹⁶

The opposition to the hesychast experience of the divine vision was, then, met by Gregory with a detailed and intricate theological response that both preserved the sacred and ineffable ‘otherness’ of God, while nonetheless insisting upon the reality of experience and personal knowledge of the same.

Concluding Thoughts

There is much to Gregory’s theology which has not been discussed in this short paper, as time restraints dictated that only a few of the major issues be addressed. Yet the above three concepts are of central importance to his entire theological outlook, and have been of great influence in contemporary discussion, ever since the rediscovery of his works in this century.

Once can see in Palamas’ theology a holistic view of man and a dynamic conception of faith, which are intimately bound up in a spirituality of sanctification and transfiguration that is wholly in line with the patristic tradition in which the saint lived and thought. It is fitting, perhaps, that we should close our patristic survey with this author who, 1,400 years after the earthly life of Christ, so dynamically presented what had been taught and exposited about Him in the centuries previous.

Points for further discussion

1. There are no dogmas in physiology. Palamas was supportive of scientific investigation into the workings of human physiology, and did not believe that this study and its discoveries did not conflict with divine truth.

2. The Mystical Doctrine of the Incarnation. A point of vital importance in Palamite theology: that the Incarnation of Christ wrought a ‘radical change’ (Meyendorff, p. 149) in the relationship of man with God, and this change is passed along to all humanity through the mystical participation of prayer and the sacraments.

3. The notion of return to one’s self, for Christ is in us.

4. The central significance of baptism and the Eucharist as the means by which the sanctification of the body is joined together with that of the soul/mind through prayer.

5. Christian Materialism: the extension of Gregory’s views on the Incarnation and the redemption of matter, to the extent that all of matter may itself be ‘deified’ to some degree.

6. The significance of Grace as the spur by which all salvific and sanctifying activity occurs, and its relation to the soul and body (connected with point #4, above).

Notes:

1. Meyendorff, p. 117 ff. [back]

2. ibid.

3. Cf. Triads, I.1.12, 18.

4. Triads, I.3.15 (emphasis mine).

5. Meyendorff, p. 143.

6. Triads, II.2.12.

7. Triads, I.2.1.

8. Homily 16, col. 213^C.

9. Triads, II.2.12.

10. Cf. Triads, I.2.7; cf. also Meyendorff, pp. 145-146.

11. Meyendorff, p. 216.

12. ibid.

13. Triads, II.2.7; cf. also III.3.6.

14. Triads, III.2.25.

15. Triads, II.2.7.

16. Meyendorff, p. 208.

The Three Powers of the Nous

Fr. John A. Peck — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 20:01:01 +0000

by St. Gregory Palamas

Our father among the saints Gregory Palamas (1296-1359), Archbishop of Thessalonica, was a monk of Mount Athos in Greece (at Vatopedi and Esphigmenou Monasteries), and later became Archbishop of Thessalonica. His feast days in the Church are Nov. 14 and the 2nd Sunday of Great Lent. In anticipation of the second Sunday of Lent (coming this Sunday), we offer some of the writings of St. Gregory for your homiletic preparations. This excerpt is from his work, “The Triads.”

1.The three powers of the nous

The Evil One, who is always looking for ways of wickedly turning us aside from what is higher, forms fatal attractions in our psyches, then interlaces them almost inescapably with the ties that are most dear to men of vanity. To some he suggests vistas of deep and diverse knowledge, while to others he suggests wealth, or false fame, or carnal pleasures. His purpose is that we spend our whole lives seeking these things, and never have enough strength left to set our hand firmly to the education which purifies the psyche.

The cause’ of this education ‘is the fear of God.’ This brings to birth unceasing prayer to God in compunction, accompanied by obedience to the gospel commandments.

Once reconciliation with God is re-established through prayer and the fulfilment of the commandments, the fear becomes love. Then the sorrows of prayer, transformed into joy, lead to the appearance of the flower of illumination. Like a perfume from this flower, knowledge of the mysteries of God is then given to those who can retain it. This is education and true knowledge. A man addicted to the love of vain philosophy, who is wrapped up in its figures and its theories, never sees even the beginning of this, which is the Fear of God.

How can it enter into the psyche? Even if it could do so, how would it be able to live in a psyche that is surrounded, bewitched, and enclosed by varied and conflicting arguments, at least until it will say goodbye to all these things and give itself entirely to the School of God and at last gives itself wholly to a love of following the commandment.

This is why it is good that the Fear of God is the beginning of wisdom and divine contemplation. This fear will not live in the psyche alongside other feelings. It drives them all out. Then it polishes the psyche by prayer, making it like a tablet ready to be impressed by the grace of the Spirit.”

2. The spiritual practices of the Hesychasts.

This is how we turn against this ‘law of sin.’ We expel it from the ‘body’ when we introduce supervision by the nous there.

Through this authority, we determine what is appropriate for each power of the psyche, and for each member of the body which is able to accept it.

For the senses, we determine the object and the limits of their actions. This work of the law is called ‘self-control.’

For the passionate part of the psyche we achieve the best state of being, which bears the name ‘love.’

We also improve the intellectual part by eliminating all that prevents the thoughts from turning towards God. That part of the law we name ‘watchfulness.’

Someone who has purified his body by self-control, who by divine love has made of his wilfulness and his desires an opportunity for virtue, who has presented to God a nous purified by prayer, acquires and sees in himself the grace promised to those whose hearts are pure. He can then say with Paul:

‘For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the person of Jesus Christ.’ (2 Corinthians 4:6.)

But, he says,

‘we carry this treasure in earthen vessels.’ (2 Corinthians 4:7.)

In consequence, in order to know the glory of the Holy Spirit, we carry the light of the Father, in the person of Jesus Christ, in earthen vessels, that is to say, in our bodies. So will we fail to achieve nobility of nous if we keep our own nous in the interior of our body?

Even without divine grace, what man who has a human nous – I won’t even say what spiritually awake man – could say this?”

3.The links between patristic theology and personal experience.

For myself, I think that knowledge, which these people say is the only noetic illumination, is called light only to the measure to which it is communicated by the divine light. According to the words of the great Paul:

‘For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God…’ (2 Corinthians 4:6.)

In his turn, the great Dionysius too said: ‘The presence of the noetic light unifies those it illumines, and reintegrates them with the one true knowledge.’ Do you see? The light of knowledge is communicated by the presence of the light of grace, and liberates us from the ignorance which fragments us. This Father called this light ‘noetic,’ while the great Macarius, clearly concerned with those who assimilate the light of grace in the form of knowledge, names it ‘perceptible to the nous’ ‘By its effects,’ he says, ‘you will see if the noetic light which has shone in your psyche comes from God or Satan.’

Elsewhere, after having called the glory which had appeared on the face of Moses ‘immortality,’ (although it illumined a mortal face), and showing how it appears in the psyche as soon as we truly love God, he said: ‘As the visible eyes see the visible sun, so it is that with the eyes of their psyche these men see the noetic light which reveals itself and will shine from their bodies at the moment of Resurrection, to make them also resplendent with eternal light.’

As for the light of knowledge, we may never say that it is ‘noetic.’ On the one hand that light sometimes acts like a ‘noetic’ light. At those times the nous ‘sees’ it as an intelligible ‘light’ through its ‘noetic’ sense. When it enters reasoning psyches, it liberates them from the ignorance which has bound them to their state, restoring to them the multiple points of view of unified knowledge. This is why the cantor of the divine Names, as he sings of the luminous names of the Good, teaches us to say that ‘the Good is named the noetic light because it fills all the nous above the heavens with noetic light, and because it drives out all ignorance and all identification from every psyche it enters.’

So the knowledge which comes after ignorance has been driven out is one thing, while the noetic light which makes this knowledge appear is another. This is why the noetic light is manifestly present in the ‘nous above the heavens,’ that is to say, in what is above it.

How can we describe the light which is above the heavens and above the nous as ‘knowledge,’ (gnosis) except in metaphor? To put it another way, only the reasoning psyche could purify itself of the ignorance due to its state, which that great doctor described as ‘ignorance’ and ‘identification.’

Sermon On The Entry Of The Theotokos

Fr. John A. Peck — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 10:25:51 +0000

Discourse on the Feast of the Entry of Our Most Pure Lady The Theotokos into the Holy Of Holies

by St. Gregory Palamas

A week from today we celebrate this great feast of our Christian faith. Our father among the saints Gregory Palamas (1296-1359), Archbishop of Thessalonica, was a monk of Mount Athos in Greece (at Vatopedi and Esphigmenou Monasteries), and later became Archbishop of Thessalonica. His feast days in the Church are Nov. 14 and the 2nd Sunday of Great Lent.

If a tree is known by its fruit, and a good tree bears good fruit (Mt. 7:17; Lk. 6:44), then is not the Mother of Goodness Itself, She who bore the Eternal Beauty, incomparably more excellent than every good, whether in this world or the world above? Therefore, the coeternal and identical Image of goodness, Pre-eternal, transcending all being, He Who is the preexisting and good Word of the Father, moved by His unutterable love for mankind and compassion for us, put on our image, that He might reclaim for Himself our nature which had been dragged down to uttermost Hades, so as to renew this corrupted nature and raise it to the heights of Heaven. For this purpose, He had to assume a flesh that was both new and ours, that He might refashion us from out of ourselves. Now He finds a Handmaiden perfectly suited to these needs, the supplier of Her own unsullied nature, the Ever-Virgin now hymned by us, and Whose miraculous Entrance into the Temple, into the Holy of Holies, we now celebrate. God predestined Her before the ages for the salvation and reclaiming of our kind. She was chosen, not just from the crowd, but from the ranks of the chosen of all ages, renowned for piety and understanding, and for their God-pleasing words and deeds.

In the beginning, there was one who rose up against us: the author of evil, the serpent, who dragged us into the abyss. Many reasons impelled him to rise up against us, and there are many ways by which he enslaved our nature: envy, rivalry, hatred, injustice, treachery, slyness, etc. In addition to all this, he also has within him the power of bringing death, which he himself engendered, being the first to fall away from true life.

The author of evil was jealous of Adam, when he saw him being led from earth to Heaven, from which he was justly cast down. Filled with envy, he pounced upon Adam with a terrible ferocity, and even wished to clothe him with the garb of death. Envy is not only the begetter of hatred, but also of murder, which this truly man-hating serpent brought about in us. For he wanted to be master over the earth-born for the ruin of that which was created in the image and likeness of God. Since he was not bold enough to make a face to face attack, he resorted to cunning and deceit. This truly terrible and malicious plotter pretended to be a friend and useful adviser by assuming the physical form of a serpent, and stealthily took their position. By his God-opposing advice, he instills in man his own death-bearing power, like a venomous poison.

If Adam had been sufficiently strong to keep the divine commandment, then he would have shown himself the vanquisher of his enemy, and withstood his deathly attack. But since he voluntarily gave in to sin, he was defeated and was made a sinner. Since he is the root of our race, he has produced us as death-bearing shoots. So, it was necessary for us, if he were to fight back against his defeat and to claim victory, to rid himself of the death-bearing venomous poison in his soul and body, and to absorb life, eternal and indestructible life.

It was necessary for us to have a new root for our race, a new Adam, not just one Who would be sinless and invincible, but one Who also would be able to forgive sins and set free from punishment those subject to it. And not only would He have life in Himself, but also the capacity to restore to life, so that He could grant to those who cleave to Him and are related to Him by race both life and the forgiveness of their sins, restoring to life not only those who came after Him, but also those who already had died before Him. Therefore, St. Paul, that great trumpet of the Holy Spirit, exclaims, “the first man Adam was made a living soul, the last Adam was made a quickening spirit” (1 Cor. 15:45).

Except for God, there is no one who is without sin, or life-creating, or able to remit sin. Therefore, the new Adam must be not only Man, but also God. He is at the same time life, wisdom, truth, love, and mercy, and every other good thing, so that He might renew the old Adam and restore him to life through mercy, wisdom and righteousness. These are the opposites of the things which the author of evil used to bring about our aging and death.

As the slayer of mankind raised himself against us with envy and hatred, so the Source of life was lifted up [on the Cross] because of His immeasurable goodness and love for mankind. He intensely desired the salvation of His creature, i.e., that His creature would be restored by Himself. In contrast to this, the author of evil wanted to bring God’s creature to ruin, and thereby put mankind under his own power, and tyrannically to afflict us. And just as he achieved the conquest and the fall of mankind by means of injustice and cunning, by deceit and his trickery, so has the Liberator brought about the defeat of the author of evil, and the restoration of His own creature with truth, justice and wisdom.

It was a deed of perfect justice that our nature, which was voluntarily enslaved and struck down, should again enter the struggle for victory and cast off its voluntary enslavement. Therefore, God deigned to receive our nature from us, hypostatically uniting with it in a marvellous way. But it was impossible to unite that Most High Nature,Whose purity is incomprehensible for human reason, to a sinful nature before it had been purified. Therefore, for the conception and birth of the Bestower of purity, a perfectly spotless and Most Pure Virgin was required.

Today we celebrate the memory of those things that contributed, if only once, to the Incarnation. He Who is God by nature, the Co-unoriginate and Coeternal Word and Son of the Transcendent Father, becomes the Son of Man, the Son of the Ever-Virgin. “Jesus Christ the same yesterday and today, and forever” (Heb. 13:8), immutable in His divinity and blameless in His humanity, He alone, as the Prophet Isaiah prophesied, “practiced no iniquity, nor deceit with His lips” (Is. 53: 9). He alone was not brought forth in iniquity, nor was He conceived in sin, in contrast to what the Prophet David says concerning himself and every other man (Ps. 50/51: 5). Even in what He assumes, He is perfectly pure and has no need to be cleansed Himself. But for our sake, He accepted purification, suffering, death and resurrection, that He might transmit them to us.

God is born of the spotless and Holy Virgin, or better to say, of the Most Pure and All-Holy Virgin. She is above every fleshly defilement, and even above every impure thought. Her conceiving resulted not from fleshly lust, but by the overshadowing of the Most Holy Spirit. Such desire being utterly alien to Her, it is through prayer and spiritual readiness that She declared to the angel: “Behold the handmaiden of the Lord; be it unto Me according to thy word” (Lk. 1:38), and that She conceived and gave birth. So, in order to render the Virgin worthy of this sublime purpose, God marked this ever-virgin Daughter now praised by us, from before the ages, and from eternity, choosing Her from out of His elect.

Turn your attention then, to where this choice began. From the sons of Adam God chose the wondrous Seth, who showed himself a living heaven through his becoming behavior, and through the beauty of his virtues. That is why he was chosen, and from whom the Virgin would blossom as the divinely fitting chariot of God. She was needed to give birth and to summon the earth-born to heavenly Sonship. For this reason also all the lineage of Seth were called “sons of God,” because from this lineage a son of man would be born the Son of God. The name Seth signifies a rising or resurrection, or more specifically, it signifies the Lord, Who promises and gives immortal life to all who believe in Him.

And how precisely exact is this parallel Seth was born of Eve, as she herself said, in place of Abel, whom Cain killed through jealousy (Gen. 4:25); and Christ, the Son of the Virgin, was born for us in place of Adam, whom the author of evil also killed through jealousy. But Seth did not resurrect Abel, since he was only a fore-type of the resurrection. But our Lord Jesus Christ resurrected Adam, since He is the very Life and the Resurrection of the earth-born, for whose sake the descendants of Seth are granted divine adoption through hope, and are called the children of God. It was because of this hope that they were called sons of God, as is evident from the one who was first called so, the successor in the choice.This was Enos, the son of Seth, who as Moses wrote, first hoped to call on the Name of the Lord (Gen. 4:26).

In this manner, the choice of the future Mother of God, beginning with the very sons of Adam and proceeding through all the generations of time, through the Providence of God, passes to the Prophet-king David and the successors of his kingdom and lineage. When the chosen time had come, then from the house and posterity of David, Joachim and Anna are chosen by God. Though they were childless, they were by their virtuous life and good disposition the finest of all those descended from the line of David. And when in prayer they besought God to deliver them from their childlessness, and promised to dedicate their child to God from its infancy. By God Himself, the Mother of God was proclaimed and given to them as a child, so that from such virtuous parents the all-virtuous child would be raised. So in this manner, chastity joined with prayer came to fruition by producing the Mother of virginity, giving birth in the flesh to Him Who was born of God the Father before the ages.

Now, when Righteous Joachim and Anna saw that they had been granted their wish, and that the divine promise to them was realized in fact, then they on their part, as true lovers of God, hastened to fulfill their vow given to God as soon as the child had been weaned from milk. They have now led this truly sanctified child of God, now the Mother of God, this Virgin into the Temple of God. And She, being filled with Divine gifts even at such a tender age, … She, rather than others, determined what was being done over Her. In Her manner She showed that She was not so much presented into the Temple, but that She Herself entered into the service of God of her own accord, as if she had wings, striving towards this sacred and divine love. She considered it desirable and fitting that she should enter into the Temple and dwell in the Holy of Holies.

Therefore, the High Priest, seeing that this child, more than anyone else, had divine grace within Her, wished to set Her within the Holy of Holies. He convinced everyone present to welcome this, since God had advanced it and approved it. Through His angel, God assisted the Virgin and sent Her mystical food, with which She was strengthened in nature, while in body She was brought to maturity and was made purer and more exalted than the angels, having the Heavenly spirits as servants. She was led into the Holy of Holies not just once, but was accepted by God to dwell there with Him during Her youth, so that through Her, the Heavenly Abodes might be opened and given for an eternal habitation to those who believe in Her miraculous birthgiving.

So it is, and this is why She, from the beginning of time, was chosen from among the chosen. She Who is manifest as the Holy of Holies, Who has a body even purer than the spirits purified by virtue, is capable of receiving … the Hypostatic Word of the Unoriginate Father. Today the Ever-Virgin Mary, like a Treasure of God, is stored in the Holy of Holies, so that in due time, (as it later came to pass) She would serve for the enrichment of, and an ornament for, all the world. Therefore, Christ God also glorifies His Mother, both before birth, and also after birth.

We who understand the salvation begun for our sake through the Most Holy Virgin, give Her thanks and praise according to our ability. And truly, if the grateful woman (of whom the Gospel tells us), after hearing the saving words of the Lord, blessed and thanked His Mother, raising her voice above the din of the crowd and saying to Christ, “Blessed is the womb that bore Thee, and the paps Thou hast sucked” (Lk. 11:27), then we who have the words of eternal life written out for us, and not only the words, but also the miracles and the Passion, and the raising of our nature from death, and its ascent from earth to Heaven, and the promise of immortal life and unfailing salvation, then how shall we not unceasingly hymn and bless the Mother of the Author of our Salvation and the Giver of Life, celebrating Her conception and birth, and now Her Entry into the Holy of Holies?

Now, brethren, let us remove ourselves from earthly to celestial things. Let us change our path from the flesh to the spirit. Let us change our desire from temporal things to those that endure. Let us scorn fleshly delights, which serve as allurements for the soul and soon pass away. Let us desire spiritual gifts, which remain undiminished. Let us turn our reason and our attention from earthly concerns and raise them to the inaccessible places of Heaven, to the Holy of Holies, where the Mother of God now resides.

Therefore, in such manner our songs and prayers to Her will gain entry, and thus through her mediation, we shall be heirs of the everlasting blessings to come, through the grace and love for mankind of Him Who was born of Her for our sake, our Lord Jesus Christ, to Whom be glory, honor and worship, together with His Unoriginate Father and His Coeternal and Life-Creating Spirit, now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.

The Homilist

Fr. John A. Peck — Sat, 16 May 2009 02:28:48 +0000

Homiletics in theology the application of the general principles of rhetoric to the specific work of public preaching.

The one who practices or studies homiletics is called a homilist.

Homiletics (Greek homiletikos, from homilos, to assemble together), is one of those disciplines which is easy to do, but difficult to do well. The terms homily and sermon are often used interchangeably (see the glossary for an exacting definition). The art of homiletics is not to be undertaken lightly or casually, but with much prayer, and not a little fasting.

The crafting of the homily is a lot like writing a song. There are millions of songs out there, and more being written every day, but few being sung. Few touch a chord within the listener. Few get inside, so to speak. The turn of the phrase is not extemporaneous, but exacting. The measure of language, inflection, delivery and even diction should be prayerfully considered. It is an awesome and fearful thing to stand in the fire.

How much more to deliver it?

For the sake of integrity, with few exceptions, the homilist for the sake of improving his own homilies, should immediately cease from preaching someone else’s sermon. In reality, this should be a matter of integrity. I feel that this commitment to the art and craft of homiletics itself is not only as an important intellectual bridge to cross; it is an important bridge to burn.

The commitment to preparing and preaching one’s own sermons should assure the homilist of the conviction to complete the creation of the sermon; for the preaching of the Gospel in the context of the Gospel reading, the festal occasion, or the particular congregation or audience. Biblical preaching then often takes on a genuine pastoral and apologetic quality.

Concerning not preaching someone else’s homilies, notable exceptions would be;

The Paschal Homily of St. John Chrysostom (as delivered on Pascha)
The Festal Encyclicals of the Diocesan Hierarch (as provided and instructed),
Occasional festal homilies, (On the Nativity of Christ by St. Leo the Great, On the Dormition of the Theotokos by St. Gregory Palamas, etc.)
Occasional accounts of the lives of saints.

The lives of saints often provide the most profound experience of how to live the Gospel, and should not be discounted as an excellent, though infrequent, instructional tool.

In every other circumstance, the prayerful reflection on the Gospel, organization and composition of a defined message to the listener(s) on a particular day or occasion should bring a clearer mind, a sharper eye and a more visceral response to the commandment of the Lord, which it is the duty of the homilist to heed:

“Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people.”

Isaiah 40:1

As stated at the beginning of this article, homiletics is one of those disciplines which is easy to do, but difficult to do well.

It is incumbent upon the Orthodox homilist to commit himself with humility and painstaking effort to original homiletic compositions for the sake of his listeners, and his own soul. The expression of the Gospel is a discipline which requires diligence and study, and the willingness to receive correction and guidance. This is the purpose of the Preachers Institute as well, that the Orthodox homilist may find help, aid, inspiration, guidance, and constructive critique of his most important oral and intellectual work. The practice of homiletic creation becomes itself an exercise in regular interior self-examination.

This is an excellent practice, and, after all, practice doesn’t make perfect.

Practice makes permanent.