The Validity and Distinctness of the Orthodox Mystical Approach in Philosophy and Theology and Its Opposition to Esse ipsum subsistens (original) (raw)
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GORGIAS PRESS, 2019
In early Christianity the term mystikos referred to three dimensions, namely biblical, liturgical and spiritual or contemplative. At times these dimensions intertwined. The biblical aspect refers to “hidden meanings” of Scriptures, those that had to be interpreted allegorically. The liturgical dimension refers to the mystery of the Eucharist, the presence of Christ at the consecrated bread. The third aspect is the contemplative or experiential knowledge of God. The link between mystical theology and the vision of the Divine was introduced by the early Church Fathers, who used the term as an adjective, as in “mystical theology” and “mystical contemplation.” Early Christian thought inherited this tradition from the classical culture, especially from Plato and Plotinus. Hence, the term “Mystical Theology,” in its most general application designates a direct and immediate experience of the sacred, or the knowledge derived from such an experience. In Christianity this experience usually takes the form of a vision of, or sense of union with, God. Mystical Theology is usually accompanied by meditation, prayer, and ascetic discipline. It uncovers an understanding of the inner integrity of mystical consciousness and highlights the difference between knowledge through direct experience and theological expression.
The Heythrop Journal, 2008
The book began as lectures in the faculty of theology at Oxford University, and has the advantages of that format: each chapter stands alone as an introduction to its topic, making an excellent accompaniment to a course of study (for which I use it regularly), or as a pithy survey of the subject for the general reader. The chapters are mostly given to single figures, Plato, Philo, Plotinus, Origen, Augustine, Denys the Areopagite, and as a postscript, John of the Cross. Bridging chapters on 'Nicene Orthodoxy' (Athanasius and Gregory of Nyssa) and 'The Monastic Contribution' (Evagrius of Pontus, the Macarian Homilies, and Diadochus of Photicē) complete the picture, with a concluding chapter entitled 'The Mystical Life and the Mystical Body'. The first edition was applauded for its contribution to our understanding of the Platonic influence on patristic mysticism. The thesis rights the famous dictum of A.-J. Festugie`re, that 'When the Fathers 'think' their mysticism they platonize. There is nothing original in the edifice.' Louth shows convincingly that while the first statement is correct, the second is not. Christian mystical theology belongs to a distinctive development which definitively broke from Platonism with the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo in the Nicene Fathers. Christian mystical transformation draws heavily on Platonism, but begins a new trajectory centred on the incarnation, scripture, the liturgical community, and the graced relationship of God with creation. In the new Afterword, Louth expresses doubts about his understanding of 'the Christian mystical tradition' at the time that he wrote the book and therefore of the whole project of tracing 'origins'. Where he had defined mysticism before as 'a search for an experience of immediacy with God' (p. xiii), he now points out that 'mysticism' and 'mystical' are heavily freighted terms reaching us through layers of history which have changed their meaning beyond recognition. For the patristic writers, mysterion and mystikos referred more to strategies of thought and interpretation than to a set of 'facts': their mysticism 'is not esoteric but exemplary. .. not about special 'experiences' of God but about a radical opening of ourselves to God' (p. 201). The 'origins' in question may thus have no connection to what readers today think is being sought. But Louth's polemic risks throwing the baby out with the bathwater. While the notion of mysticism is undeveloped, the book gives us a crucial layer in the history of mysticism, even if its context is alien to modern thought. The best way to challenge modern notions of mysticism is precisely with this detailed historical-contextual study of the ideas. Louth securely traces the themes of the soul and its transformation, of knowledge, contemplation and theology, showing the intimate links in the patristic writers-as contrasted with our own period-between dogma and mysticism, theory and practice, and the individual and communal.
During the Transfiguration, the apostles on Tabor, “indeed saw the same grace of the Spirit which would later dwell in them”. The light of grace “illuminates from outside (ἔξωθεν) on those who worthily approached it and sent the illumination to the soul through the sensitive eyes; but today, because it is confounded with us (ἀνακραθὲν ἡμῖν) and exists in us, it illuminates the soul from inward (ἔνδωθεν)”. The opposition between knowledge, which comes from outside (ἔξωθεν) - a human and purely symbolic knowledge - and “intellectual” knowledge, which comes from within (ἔνδωθεν), Meyendorff says what it already exists at Pseudo-Dionysius: “For it is not from without that God stirs them toward the divine. Rather he does so via the intellect and from within and he willingly enlightens them with a ray that is pure and immaterial”. The assertions of the Calabrian philosopher about an “unique knowledge”, common both to the Christians and the Hellenes and pursuing the same goal, the hesychast theologian opposes the reality of the two knowledge, having two distinct purposes and based on two different instruments of perception: “Palamas admitted the authenticity of natural knowledge, however the latter is opposed to the revealed wisdom, that is why it does not provide, by itself, salvation”. Therefore, in the purified human intellect begins to shine of the Trinity light. Purity also depends on the return of the intellect (its proper energy) to itself. In this way, we see how the true knowledge of God is an internal meeting or “inner retrieval” of the whole being of man. As well as in the Syrian mystic, on several occasions we have to make the distinction between the contemplative ways of knowledge: intellection illuminated by grace and spiritual vision without any conceptual or symbolic meaning. For example, Robert Beulay shows that, “The term of ‘intellection’ first of all, is employed by John of Dalyatha to be applied to operations caused by grace”.
2011
This research dwells on a comparative analysis of the various forms of Eastern and Western Christian mysticism. It focuses mainly on the influence of Saint Dionysus the Areopagite’s mystical theology on the Renaissance cardinal Nicolaus Cusanus’ theological-philosophical thought. This influence was first and foremost of Neo-platonic origin and it constituted an answer to the intemperance of the logical-dogmatic thought of medieval theology, the plenary expression of a type of Neo-Aristotelianism that often proved to be an incomplete knowledge pattern
THE MYSTICAL TRADITION OF THE CHURCH
GORGIA PRESS, 2019
This volume presents the work of contemporary Orthodox thinkers who attempt to integrate the theological and the mystical. Exciting and provocative chapters treat a wide variety of mysticism, including early Church accounts, patristics (including the seemingly ever-popular subject of deification), liturgy, iconography, spiritual practice, and contemporary efforts to find mystical sense in cyber-technologies and post-humanism. Table of Contents (v) Preface and Acknowledgements (vii) Abbreviations (ix) Introduction: Mysticism and its Historical Manifestations (1) Sergey Trostyanskiy and Jess Gilbert I. MYSTICAL THEOLOGY AND CHURCH MOTHERS AND FATHERS (9) I.1. The Relation Between the Incomprehensibility of God and the Naming of God in the Theology of Pseudo-Dionysius (11) Theodore Damian I.2. Toward an Understanding of Maximus the Confessor’s Mystical Theology of Deification: The Spiritual Sabbath / Eighth Day Sequence in Two Hundred Chapters on Theology (27) Jess Gilbert I.3. Mystical Theology in the Writings of Gregory of Nyssa and Dionysius Areopagite (51) Eirini Artemi and Christos Terezis I.4. Analogy in the Mystical Theology of Gregory of Nyssa: Transcending Negation and Affirmation (69) Robert F. Fortuin I.5. Recapitulative Reversal and the Restoration of Humanity in St. Irenaeus (85) Don Springer I.6. Kindling Divine Fire: The Mystical Sayings of St. Syncletica (99) V.K. McCarty II. LITURGY, SACRAMENTS, AND ICONS (115) II.1. The Kingdom of the Holy Trinity and the Movement of a Community in the Sacrificial Spirit of Christ: The importance of Father Dumitru Stăniloae’s Mystical and Ascetic Vision of the Holy Liturgy (117) Ciprian Streza II.2. The Sacraments of the Church: Basis of Spirituality, Building Blocks of the Kingdom (145) Philip Zymaris II.3. The Mystery of Representation: Theodore the Studite on Seeing the Invisible (169) Sergey Trostyanskiy III. CONTEMPORARY PRACTICE AND APPLICATIONS (191) III.1 Understanding My Avatar: Cyberbeing, Bio-Digital Personhood, and Fictional Transcendences from an Orthodox Perspective (193) Inti Yanes-Fernandez III.2. A Theory of Practice: A Meditation on Practice Itself (217) Mark W. Flory III.3. The Prayer of the Heart as Method of cognitive-behavioural Psychotherapy (237) Cameron McCabe III.4. Orthopraxis and Theosis: The Role of Ritual in the Training of the Mind (249) Anthony Perkins
Modern Theology, 2003
There is, however, one contemporary Orthodox theologian who has not joined the consensus of his colleagues in affirming the centrality of the concept of "energies" for the Orthodox understanding of deification. For John Zizioulas theosis is not about participating in the "energies" of God but in the hypostasis of Christ. While the notion of "energies" is useful and necessary in understanding a more general relationship between God and creation, salvation in Christ, i.e., deification, can only be expressed in terms of the category hypostasis, or "person"-or so says Zizioulas.
Southeast Regional ETS Conference, 2021
In the theological tradition of the Western Church, and more specifically the Protestant tradition, the doctrine of God hardly touches the essence-energies distinction of the Eastern Church. Yet, due to various reasons, the significance of the essence-energies distinction in Eastern Trinitarianism is slowly gaining exposure, momentum, and a place in Protestant theology. A quick acceptance of the current Eastern doctrine of God's "divine energies" into the Protestant theological matrix, may offer some advantages, but it also carries behind it wagons of immensely problematic ideas and applications. In its current Eastern Orthodox presentation, the distinction between essence and energies is not a point of convergence in the doctrine of God, between Eastern Orthodoxy and Protestantism. Based on Eastern Orthodox precise descriptions of the divine energies, this paper will demonstrate the various and immense complications presented by this doctrine. This paper will present the inconsistencies of the Eastern distinction of essence/energies with the doctrine of God's simplicity, the inextricable linking of the doctrine with abstract mystical practices such as hesychasm, the risky apophatic angles of the doctrine, and the dangers of shifting the knowledge and communion with the Triune God into an ontological domain. Accepting and incorporating the current Eastern essence-energies distinction as a legitimate part of the doctrine of God, will in time cause a significant theological shift and open the gateway to mystical implications. The considerations outlined in this paper, are there to set the stage for a prolonged meticulous discussion, rather than a quick adopting of such a paradigm.
Orthodox Mysticism and Asceticism
Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2020
The scholarly contributions gathered together in this volume discuss themes related to the cultural, social and ethical dimension of St Gregory Palamas’ works. They relate his mystical philosophy and theology to contemporary debates in metaphysics, philosophy of language, ethics, philosophy of culture, political philosophy, epistemology, and philosophy of religion and theology, among others. The book considers a variety of topics of special interest to Christian theologians, philosophers and art historians including church and state relations, similarities and differences between Palamas, contemporary phenomenologists and philosophers of language, and hesychast influences on late Byzantine iconography.