Modes of knowing among Coptic monks of Western Thebes (original) (raw)
"To join our song not only with the communion of saints and angels, but with all of creation. We are reminded of the chorus singing long before humans joined in: "Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?"--The Wisdom of Creation Today Quest for Holiness Western scholars have mostly focused on the quest for holiness by the early Christian monks known as the desert fathers, and mothers. Yet until now, little attention has been given to their contemporaries practical mysticism, spiritual tradition, and application in every day life that remained the central core of their surviving practice. They still practice the unceasing prayer; in its original monastic way of the 'arrow prayer, of biblical origin in Jesus parable of the publican; Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me, Lord Jesus Christ help me, Lord Jesus Christ, I glorify Thee. A Wave of Mystical Fascination In the last century, the devoted scholarship of O. Meinardus, P. VanDoorn, and J. Watson with many others, produced various hagiographic studies on the status of present piety, with analysis of daily life, monastic tradition and hagiography. From the cradle of monasticism, the example of holy men; Abba Sarap-Amon, the veiled, Abba Abraam the Almoner, Bishop of Fay'um (Arsenoe), Abba Justus, and many others, crowned by the thematurge (wonder worker): Papa Abba Kyrillos (Coptic Patriarch 1959-71), revived the interest of reporters from S. Leeder to Dr. E. Wakin, and W. Dalrymple. Revival of Monastic Spirituality "Journey Back to Eden," written as a journal, recounts Mark Gruber's year of spiritual discovery among the austere desert monasteries of Egypt, in a journey that began as part of his research for a doctoral dissertation in Anthropology. However, this is by far more than a story of just his life. It is a story of grace, faith, and coming to know God more through our world. Through all of his experiences in Egypt, Father Gruber's faith was strengthened. The Copts, contemplating God and loving him wholeheartedly, taught Father Gruber not only about their customs and theology but also showed him a living example of true faith in God." From St. Macarius Monastery, Fr. Robert Taft, SJ, a renowned Byzantine peritus, writes in "Praise in the desert: the Coptic monastic office, yesterday and Today": "Monastic life has been lived in lower Egypt without interruption since the first half of the fourth century." Jill Kamil mentions in her book; "Christianity in the land of the Pharaohs," alleging that, "Until today there are solitary recluses, some of whom make their way to the top of the religious hierarchy." She recounts the story of the recent patriarch, Papa Abba Kyrillos, devout to unceasing prayer, impacting the spiritual conscience of Copts. A Life of Prayer A life of prayer is what preserved Christian life, Christianity is a way of abundant living given to us by our only teacher and role model, Jesus the Christ. Throughout his ministry, our Lord gave us an example of praying on every occasion, and before all decisions; early (Mark 1:35), all night (Luke 6:12), into a mountain (Mark 6:46), in desert places (Luke 5:16), and exhorted us to pray always and not to loose heart. The desert fathers took this commandment of earnest fellowship in prayer seriously. Fr. Matta's own mentor, Abba Menas, abbot of St. Samuel the confessor monastery, was an example of unceasing prayer life, even after his election to the Coptic Patriarchate. Abba Justus and Abba Kyrillos Rev. Dr. John Watson, the ecumenical Anglican Coptologist, may have written the most insightful study of present day Coptic mystics that even a Copt could hardly explain, in his fascinating book; "Among the Copts". Chapter three, "In the state of Angels, has the book's peak experience, describing a contemporary monk, "Abba Justus who remained faithful to his monastic vocation for the next thirty-five years. He was not ordained as a priest. He did not leave the monastery. (St. Anthony, on the Red sea). He held no Hierarchy or ecclesiastic position, establishing a reputation as an ascetic, healer, and clairvoyant." Before the foundation of the world "On our way back to the Syrian Monastery (SM), I asked our tutor Bishop Johannes, a great church historian, how is it possible for someone to declare he has received the Eucharist before the foundation of the world? Our tutor, then, Fr. Shenouda, Maccarian replied that the claimant, Abba Philemon, is a mystic, who feigns folly, while he could have had a hidden meaning (allegorical), hard for us now to grasp !" The eminent Nottingham Patristic, and director of Cambridge Orthodox Studies Inst. resumed; "Days passed by, and returning back to Abba Tigi Coptic Seminary, in Abba Ruwais, Cairo, I joined in liturgical service with Abba Kyrillos, thematurge. The holy wonder worker asked me, unexpectedly, about Fr. Philemon in particular. I could not keep anything from my blessed spiritual mentor, asking him of the mystic's parable, he smiled graciously and answered, "Did Abba Philemon say that? Surely he completed his elementary education!" Becoming even more puzzled with his reply, I asked him, insistently about what did he mean? Plugging into Grace Abba Kyrillos (Coptic Papa Cyril, VI) was an admirable teacher, who instructed in the Desert Fathers tradition. He walked to his Patriarchal cell, and I just followed silently, while he asked me to plug in his reading light, an ailing lamp that did not even have a switch, and in unquestioning obedience I did. He smiled in an assuring mode and asked me, 'George, my son, now, have you got it?' "No, Abba I do not have a clue!" The holy mystic said, "My dear son, electric energy like Divine grace is always available, and all we need to do is to plug into the mains to get the light." The haunting puzzle 'of Abba Philemon, almost fifty years old; receiving the Eucharist before the foundation of the world was clueless, and my confusion was evident and was showing on my face. Abba Kyrillos comforted me saying , "In due time, you will understand, only be assured that everything has its origin in the eternal will (salvific economy) of the Holy Trinity. Next visit to St. Macarius monastery, the Coptic seminarian asked Abba Philemon; "What do you mean by receiving communion before the world was established? The mystic replied; "Didn't St. Paul write on our being chosen in Christ Jesus before the foundation of the Universe? The roots of our existence has been in the Divine will. As we live our own life, in time, our eternally created origin unfolds in front of us. All grace we receive through Christ has its origin in the Godhead. Our union with Christ has its obvious eternal goal, and its very origin is in eternity. Communion of the Mystics Abba Philemon stunned me by referring to what Abba Kyrillos (then Abbot of St. Samuel the confessor) explained to me, many years before I ever met the Macarian Solitary, on mystical communion. "If you, uttered in the heart of your thought, while sitting all alone in your cell filled with longing for Jesus saying; 'Lord, I yearn to receive you in communion, do you have any doubt of him not responding? Believe me, you will receive the Lord who will grant you your heart's desire (Ps 20:4)." I looked thus at Abba Philemon and said; 'Why do we then pray the Liturgy?' He replied, "As Papa Kyrillos has explained to you earlier, receiving according to our heart's desire, we discover that the Eucharist has its origin in the economy of the Father. The liturgy reminds us of what is in God's thought, and of his eternal pleasure. Believe me brother, the time will come when you receive communion of your heart's desire, according to the eternal will of Christ." --George Bebawi, Ph.D., Cantab Faith Adoring the Mystery Reading the Bible With St. Ephraem the Syrian; "When grace is abundant in man, then the fear of death is despised on account of the love of righteousness. He finds many arguments in his soul (proving) that it is becoming to bear troubles for the sake of the fear of God. And those things which are supposed to injure the body, and to repel nature unjustly, which consequently are of a nature to cause suffering, are reckoned in his eye as nothing in comparison with what is expected to be. And his mind convinces him firmly of the fact that it is not possible to recognize truth without gaining experience of the affections, and that God bestows great care upon man, and that he is not abandoned to chance. Especially those who are trained in praying unto Him and who bear suffering for His sake, see (these truths) clearly (as if painted) in colors. But when little faith takes root in our heart, then all these things are felt as contrary, not as serving for testing us."-- St. Isaac the Syrian, Mystic Treatises.
ACU Grant Project: Modes of Knowing and the Ordering of Knowledge in Early Christianity
We aim to study ‘modes of knowing’ constructed by Greek, Latin and Syriac Christians 100-700 CE in relation to (i) contemporary theological, philosophical, medical and rhetorical discourses; (ii) institutional structures (of empire, education and catechesis, liturgy, church, holy experts); (iii) and the materiality and embodied social practices of early Christianity (relics, sacred texts, asceticism, pilgrimage, liturgies). We then ask how this construction of Christian epistemologies through cultural and intellectual appropriations might inform modern theological reflection on Christian traditions engaging with modernity. The project thus aims to advance a novel account of early Christian epistemology, intellectual culture and social practice, and provide resources for interactions between faith and culture today.
Ascetic Knowledge and Anagogical Knowing in Maximus the Confessor
Studia Patristica, 2021
In the post-Justinian era of the Byzantine Empire, Maximus the Confessor (580-662 CE), a Christian ascetic and theologian, sketched out his conception of Christian ascent. This article examines Maximus’ vision of Christian ascent with special attention to his under- standing of knowledge and theological epistemology to demonstrate how his engage- ment with Origenist and Neoplatonic cosmologies led him to explore the nature of knowledge, union, and the intelligible function of the Logos. The intersection of these three areas defines not only what is knowable concerning God and creation but also what kind of knowledge is possible in each case. Entailed in his description is a rich set of terms that describe the phenomenological and psychological processes of human knowledge and deification. Correlative to Maximus’ conception of ascent is an ordered portrayal of the cosmos and the wisdom available from it. While accessible to all and commencing from various vantage points, ascent is nevertheless an ordered progression of one’s attention through kinds of knowledge and unknowing that governs the ascetic’s ability to understand Scripture, creation, liturgical acts, and God. This attention is not merely a pursuit of knowledge but rather a process that engenders a specific disposition toward God and creation which illuminates a proper understanding and engagement with all things. Consequently, knowledge is not the end goal to ascent but a necessary stage on the way to union. While there are limits to these processes, Maximus explains a means of transcending them as far as is possible.
Modes and manners of religious and theological knowing
2012
Following a brief introduction, an extended analogy invites the reader to experience vicariously ‘walking in the mountains’ as opposed to the ‘view from the 110th floor’ to allow her to appreciate at first hand the distinctions and interactions between two key modes of (religious and secular) knowing and attending: one, the ‘pre-reflexive’, which is direct, lived, affect laden and ‘participatory’, the other, the ‘reflexive’ or ‘re-presentational’, which is more indirect, detached, dispassionate and analytic. The two modes and their interaction are further examined and illuminated using the scientific and cultural work of polymath Iain McGilchrist, and the spiritual poetic recollections of the English Romantic poet William Wordsworth. The modes are then briefly deployed to elucidate key theological distinctions, such as the arguably false dichotomy between the subjective and objective, and to question the apparent wholesale rejection of representational modes of thought by followers ...
Two brief Late Antique religious texts, respectively by the monk Theophanis and by Monoimus the Arab, present an interesting problem of whether they embody the authors' experience, or whether they are merely literary constructs. Rather than approaching this issue through the lens of theory, the article shows how phenomenological analysis and studies of living subjectivity can be engaged with the text in order to clarify the contents of introspective experience and the genesis of its religious connotations. The analysis uncovers a previously unnoticed form of embodied introspective religious experience which is structured as a ladder with a distinct internal structure with the high degree of synchronic and diachronic stability. This approach also helps one identify the specific introspective techniques in the canonical and non-canonical literature of early Christian tradition, as related to the concepts of " theosis " and " kenosys " , as well as to suggest some neurological correspondents of religious cognition. In this paper, we will explore two brief Late Antique religious texts, respectively by the monk Theophanis and by Monoimus the Arab. These texts present an interesting problem of whether they embody the authors' experience, or whether they are merely literary constructs. Rather than theorizing around this issue, I shall show how phenomenological analysis and studies of living subjectivity can be engaged with the text in order to clarify the contents of introspective experience and the genesis of its religious connotations1. This approach also helps one identify the specific introspective techniques in the canonical and non-canonical literature of early Christian tradition, as well as to suggest some neurological correspondents of religious cognition. To illustrate the problem, here I cite a quotation from Theophanis's poem in the Philokalia, a compilation of Patristic sources written in Greek during the period from the 4 th to 15 th century. Philokalia was put together by St. Nikodemos of the Holy Mountain (1749-1809) and St. Makarios of Corinth (1731-1805)2 as a reference manual for Orthodox monastics. The poem entitled " The Ladder of Divine Graces which experience has made known to those inspired by God " begins as follows:
Learning the 'Science of Feelings': Religious Training in Eastern Christian Monasticism
Ethnos, 2012
In Eastern Christianity novitiate is a period of learning to experience the presence of God in one's life and the world. Novices follow the hesychast prayer, a mystical tradition that leads them to an experiential knowledge of God. In this paper, I argue that novitiate should be regarded as a complex learning process involving specific assemblages of contextual, cognitive, body-sensory and emotional aspects. By educating their attention and emotion novices learn to see beyond and within reality and thus discover the potentiality of people and things ‘in the likeness of God’. Religious transmission happens not only through embodied practice and the active acquisition of religious knowledge but, more importantly, through the work of the imagination. Novices' orientation towards the transcendent requires an expansion of the imaginative capacities beyond their ‘routine’ functioning. Imagination could be thus seen as a key cognitive capacity through which they learn to experience God.
At the Coptic Congress of 1996, Professor Raffaella Cribiore made the observation that “the writings of some Coptic authors betray much familiarity with the style of the Second Sophistic movement and the rules of rhetorical composition well known to the golden age of Patristic literature.” She observed further: “Later on, at the time of the patriarch Damianus, and even after the Arab conquest, a group of writers revived such rhetorical style in their Coptic literary production. It is likely that all these writers became well-acquainted with the Patristic literature and with a rhetorical education that apparently only the Greek schools could offer.”1 In a footnote she mentioned John of Shmun and the panegyric of Macarius of Tkow attributed to Dioscorus. To this group of authors should be added Constantine of Assiut, Stephen of Hnes and now Rufus of Shotep, whose homilies had not yet been published in 1996
Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies, 2011
During the fifth and sixth centuries, the church in Palestine experienced considerable turmoil over christological divisions. In the midst of this controversy monks sometimes came into conflict with the established hierarchy of the church. As a source of spiritual authority distinct from ecclesiastical power circles, ascetics could support or undermine the work of a bishop. Drawing upon the works of John Rufus, Zachariah Scholasticus, and Barsanuphius and John of Gaza, this article explores the various models used to reconcile ecclesiastic and ascetic sources of spiritual authority. It examines these authors’ perceptions of interactions between monks and bishops as they established and maintained their spiritual authority. [1] In the fifth and sixth centuries, Christians in Palestine faced considerable concern about the proper locus of spiritual authority in the context of ongoing christological controversy. Inhabitants of the province were divided over the christological settlement...
The Ecology of Religious Knowledges
Religions, 2022
Different religious traditions, beliefs, and experiences claim to have epistemic contact with the ultimate source of reality. However, this epistemic claim has encountered one of its most significant obstacles in the initial incompatibility of its multiple accounts. I argue that from the ecology of knowledges, the idea that intentions, body, and physical and social environments are constitutive elements of our experience and knowledge, we can understand both the veridical, as embodied and extended, and pluralistic, as essentially limited, nature of religious experiences and knowledges. I characterize the mystical religious experience as a state of consciousness that (allegedly) allows direct epistemic contact with the supreme reality, articulating its essentially non-ordinary nature on the basis of the radical otherness of the sacred realm, namely, its character of being eternal, infinite, and with supreme ontological, ethical, and aesthetic value. According to this proposal, the different religious perspectives are understood as different epistemic approaches dealing with these numinous features in a gradual continuum from their most impersonal to their most personal specifications. I conclude that the cognitive relevance of any religious knowledge implies explanations and interventions that, although compatible with, go beyond those of both other religious knowledges and the knowledges of the non-sacred domains.
Monastic ED 2021: Conference Proceedings. 8-11 June 2021, Collegio Sant' Anselmo, Roma , 2023
By the end of the 1960s, more and more people believed that Mount Athos would become a monumental landscape that would only be visited by tourists, as the number of monks it attracted was systematically reduced. But by the end of the 1970s this situation had reversed. The special role of a team of abbots who led this renewal, is the subject of our presentation. Indeed, their theological studies has a particular interest! Where they had study and for how long theology. The leading team was abbot Efraim (1956) of Vatopaidi Monastery, abbot Alexios (1939) of Xenofontos Monastery, abbot Aimilianos (19342019) of Simonos Petra Monastery and former abbot Vassileios (Gontikakis, 1936) of Iviron Monastery. All four had theological studies and learned academic theology without remaining alone in it. Their work inspired and inspired thousands of people. Their theological studies influenced them, but they did not stay only in this. This particular relationship (theology and ascetism) as recorded through their public, oral and written speech is the subject of our study.
Wisdom on the Move: Late Antique Traditions in Multicultural Conversation, 2020
The textual transmission of the Apophthegmata Patrum (AP) is very complex, not only in Greek, Latin or Coptic, but also in Arabic where various collections of apophthegmata were often combined with other monastic texts.1 Alongside the Bible, material from the Arabic version of the AP has served as one of the guidelines for monks and nuns in Coptic monasteries, and it remains a popular reading and source of inspiration for modern people, both monastic and lay. Sayings of the Desert Fathers (and Mothers) still form an integral part of the process of spiritual guidance in monastic circles.2 Today, pious readers can use a printed version of the apophthegmata, the Bustān al-Ruhbān (The Garden of the Monks), published by the Coptic Orthodox Church,3 that deals with different themes of monastic and spiritual life based on the lives and teachings of the Desert Fathers. The preface to this book states that since the spirit of strong faith is lacking in the present, one has to turn to the Desert Fathers who showed exemplary strength of asceticism and faith. The manuscript tradition shows that already in the oldest Arabic collections stories and sayings of the Desert fathers were combined with other texts of an educational nature. We can assume that these miscellanies (multiple-text manuscripts)4 were compiled for pedagogical purposes. One of the oldest Arabic manuscripts containing material from the AP dates from the end of the 9th
An Alternative Form of Theological Knowing
Tradition and Discovery: The Polanyi Society Periodical, 1993
How did human beings come to feel that some of the movements they make with their bodies could comment upon others, forgetting that the movements 'commented upon' ('meant,' 'referred to,' 'represented,' 'stood for,' 'designated,' and so on) are just that, movements themselves? David Sudnow Talk's Body, 56 Polanyi's conception of knowledge as personal-that the knower participates in all acts of knowing, and that the knower passionately contributes to what is being known-has radical implications both for the content of knowledge (what is known) and, more importantly, for the forms of knowledge (how the knower is dwelling in the world). What and how we know are deeply intertwined. One's personal dwelling place, where one is in the world, such as an apprentice in the presence of a master, shapes and forms what one comes explicitly to know. My essay relates Polanyi's approach directly to theology. An alternative form of theological knowing implies that the primary forms of knowing often weighted in theology have failed to absorb Polanyi's post-critical philosophy. While Polanyi's philosophy has apparently been absorbed, its implications are only superficially acknowledged. Few theologians today would want to defend objectivism. Certainly the recent emphasis on knowledge as "social construction"-whether the focus is race, gender, or culture-assumes that objectivism is no longer viable. And yet, the current rush toward social, racial, gender, etc. analysis indicates a disturbing academic desperation. I mean by this that theology (and religious studies) is losing, if not already has lost, a sense of place. While objectivism as a form of theological knowing is decried, an alternative that accounts for how we come to know, how we personally participate in theological knowing, has yet to be offered. If anything,
Human Knowledge according to Saint Maximus the Confessor Nevena Dimitrova
is book is devoted to the synergetic process of divine-human communion in the humanly possible knowledge of God according to St Maximus the Confessor. Various types of knowledge play an important, but hitherto unexplored, role in Maximus the Confessor's thought, which, in many respects, is both a synthesis and the culmination of the Greek patristic tradition, as well as a successor of pre-Christian thinking and an antecedent of Christian philosophy. Human knowledge lies at the center of Maximus's works: it consists of an experience of divine presence which reveals the reason and telos of everything that exists and makes humankind's future growth possible. Ex¬tension of the limits of created nature and transcendence beyond the given are two of the great tasks that lie before human beings who strive to achieve reunion with their creator. e capacity that human beings have to let God enter their universe points to the major aspects of Maximus's anthropology. ese include the soul-body relationship and a detailed examination of the soul's cognitive capacities, which involve sense perception, rational activity, and the operation of the mind. ese different, but interrelated, parts of the human ascent to knowl¬edge are constitutive of the movement of the trichotomously structured soul, which begins with practical philosophy and is followed by natural contemplation and theology. e two modes of knowledge—positive (cata-phatic) and negative (apophatic)—demonstrate the rational and beyond-rational levels of discourse that are operative in human knowledge of God. Among the greatest features of Maximus's inventive thought and one of the emphases of this book is his understanding of hexis ((ξι) and gnomi (γνώώη), which are two of the human preconditions for opening the door to the divine-human communion that occurs as human beings attain knowledge of God. God as Goodness and God as Truth provide the telos, or end, of our practical and theoretical activities. Beyond that lies the mystical experience and real life in Christ that is promised to humankind from beginning to end. " rough her meticulous reading of St. Maximus the Confessor, Dimitrova demonstrates convincingly how his understanding of human knowledge is central to his thinking about familiar aspects of his theology—Christology, ascetical life, virtues, and eschatology..Her analysis of this understudied aspect of the thought of St. Maximus extends our own knowledge of one of the greatest minds in Eastern and Western Christian thought..She makes an important contribution to the growing scholarship on St. Maximus. " ARISTOTLE "TELLY" PAPANIKOLAOU Professor of eology, Archbishop Demetrios Chair in Orthodox eology and Culture; Co-founding Director, Orthodox Christian Studies Center " Nevena Dimitrova's book focuses on interesting questions. Who are we as knowing beings? How do we know things about God, the world, and ourselves? Returning to St. Maximus the Confessor, she explores the relationship between the divine and human communication, practical and contemplative knowing, and most of all, the process of the restoration of that human nature which, in Christ, embraces the journey of goodness and truth. "
1. Christian Monasticism. -- The Origin of Christian Asceticism
Lectures CM407 - Christian Monasticism Lecturer: Rev. Prof. Ugo-Maria Er. Dio Blackfriars The history of monasticism is one of the strangest problems in the history of the world. For monasticism ranks among the most powerful influences which have shaped the destinies of Christendom and of civilisation; and the attempt to analyse it is more than usually difficult, because the good and the evil in it, are blended together almost inextricably. To those who contemplate it from a distance, wrapped in a romantic haze of glory, it may appear a sublime and heroic effort after superhuman excellence. To others, approaching it more closely and examining it more dispassionately, it seems essentially faulty in principle, though accidentally productive of good results at certain times and under certain conditions. They regard the blemishes, which from the first marred the beauty of its heavenward aspirations, as well as the more glaring vices of its later phases, as inseparable from its very being. To them it is not so much a thing excellent in itself, though sometimes perverted, as a radical mistake from the first, though provoked into existence by circumstances; not an aiming too high, but an aiming in the wrong direction. By declaring “war against nature,” to use the phrase of one of its panegyrists, it is, in their eyes, virtually “fighting against God.” In their judgment it degrades man into a machine. In their estimation the monk shunning the conflict with the world is not simply deserting his post, but courting temptations of another kind quite as perilous to his well-being. In brief, far from being an integral and essential part of Christianity, it is in their estimation a morbid excrescence. What proportion of truth is in each of these conflicting theories, a careful study of the facts, so far as they can be ascertained from history, may help to determine.
Asceticism of the Mind - book's Introduction
PIMS, 2018
Asceticism is founded on the possibility that human beings can profoundly transform themselves through training and discipline. In particular, asceticism in the Eastern monastic tradition is based on the assumption that individuals are not slaves to the habitual and automatic but can be improved by ascetic practice and, with the cooperation of divine grace, transform their entire character and cultivate special powers and skills. Asceticism of the Mind explores the strategies that enabled Christian ascetics in the Egyptian, Gazan, and Sinaitic monastic traditions of late antiquity to cultivate a new form of existence. At the book's center is a particular model of ascetic discipline that involves a systematic effort to train the mind and purify attention. Drawing on contemporary cognitive and neuro-scientific research, this study underscores the beneficial potential and self-formative role of the monastic system of mental training, thereby confuting older views that emphasized the negative and repressive aspects of asceticism. At the same time, it sheds new light on the challenges that Christian ascetics encountered in their attempts to transform themselves, thereby lending insight into aspects of their daily lives that would otherwise remain inaccessible. Asceticism of the Mind brings rigorously historical and cognitive perspectives into conjunction across a range of themes, and in so doing opens up new ways of exploring ascet-icism and Christian monasticism. By working across the traditional divide between the humanities and the cognitive sciences, it offers new possibilities for a constructive dialogue across these fields.