Hesychasm, a Prerequisite for Expressing Theology. Defending Romanides.

INTRODUCTION

Among those who claim to be Orthodox but do not fully understand the Orthodox phronima or hesychastic life, some parts of Orthodox theology may continue to be quite challenging for them. In recent times, this has been most especially true for some Orthodox Christians grappling with the works of Fr. John Romanides. Everything Fr. John Romanides wrote concerning theology was informed from his intimate participation in neptic hesychia. Those who find pleasure engaging in intellectual discourse regarding Orthodox theology will eventually run into problems when trying to digest the theology of the Church expressed by Fr. John.

All that really needs said to these, whom I shall keep nameless, is summed up in this quote by St. Gregory Palamas:

"My own God-bearing Father, Isaac the Syrian, writes not to receive the teaching of a philosopher on the subject of Hesychasm."

By philosopher, we do not only include those with degrees in philosophy from the universities. From the patristic testimony, a philosopher can be anyone who speaks using their imagination (wittingly or unwittingly) to create rational arguments for informing theology (in our case) instead of a hesychast using revelation of God to their nous to create rational arguments for expressing theology. The utilization of patristic quotes is irrelevant in this regard.

There are many scholars, intellectuals, philosophers, bloggers and arm-chair theologians who claim to have insight into theology and therefore are able to correct a hesychast. The Orthodox who do this are closer to followers of the Papacy and scholasticism i.e. Barlaamites rather than the Faith confessed by St. Gregory Palamas. They have been formed by Western culture, society, education, and values. Western culture being built on scholasticism, it is no surprise at the struggle for the Orthodox Christian raised in the West to break free of these things.

For the undiscerning, these folks can be very difficult to identify. They may write plenty about scholasticism either in favor of it or how it was hurtful to the West and foreign to the Orthodox Faith. They may have an accurate and well-informed understanding of scholasticism. However, once you get underneath the surface it can be shown that they use all the assumptions, methods, and the same phronima as the Scholastics (regardless whether they claim to favor or reject scholasticism). In a sense, they are using scholasticism to criticize scholasticism. In this sense, scholasticism is the same as a philosopher identified above. One who couples his rational mind with his imagination (wittingly or unwittingly) to inform the Faith, either for himself or for others. How can one know it is done unwittingly? It contradicts the Faith as expressed by hesychasts. Now a single hesychast is not infallible, of course. But they are in a much more appropriate position to express theology than anyone who is not a hesychast. And while a hesychast is in a state of theosis, he is experiencing infallible theology.

Coming back to Romanides, many seem to quickly target his activities in school and in the Ecumenical movement. There is no substance to the Ecumenical movement argument seeing that the Orthodox had problems with it only after it turned into something other than the original stated objectives. In regard to his schooling and seeming attraction to authors such as Barth, and possibly others, his accusers never look at his family life and especially the life of his mother, Gerontissa Evlampia Romanides. He did not have a typical Western upbringing, while living in the West. Just a quick browsing of his home-life, his attachment to heychastic monastics would reveal how this impacted him while he tried to impact Orthodox circles that were lacking this needful influence. Knowing these aspects of his life would immediately raise suspicion at some of these accusations thrown at Fr. John.

So what are some of the specific accusations given to this hesychast scholar that the non-hesychasts philosophers seek to point out?

ACCUSATION SET 1:

• He was blindly prejudice against Augustine and the West. Instead of trying to understand this tradition he attacked it with vitriol. His scholarship had this agenda and lacked any intellectual curiosity and Christian charity. This was primarily seen by his mischaracterization of the West with Augustine's understanding of original sin and denying its reality contrary to the Council of Carthage in 418 A.D.
• His scholarship was a product of the West and relied on Barth in some places, thereby forsaking the Orthodox Tradition.

(How can these both be true?)

ACCUSATION SET 2:

• He was committed to Greece's radical right wing party.
• He was a Marxist leftist.

(How can these also both be true?)


ACCUSATION SET 3:

• Rejects the use of analogy in Orthodox theology.
• He rejected not only Thomistic and Platonic analogy but the use of all analogy in Orthodox expression.
• It is argued he takes an extreme stance on the axiom that between the uncreated and created there is no similarity.
• He is accused of basically rejecting cataphatic theology.

ACCUSATION SET 4:

• He was an modernist and ecumenist.
• Believed the Monophysites were Orthodox
• Participated in the World Council of Churches (WCC)
• He accepted modernism over biblical traditions (eg. science overrides biblical claims and higher criticism informs us on the inspiration of biblical books) and doubted Scriptural inspiration.

ACCUSATION SET 5:

• Concerning the logoi:
• He denies they have any existence in the Mind of God.
• He denies they are archetypal ideas.
• He denies they even exist since he takes an extreme stance on the point there is no similarity between uncreated and created.

Fr. John's students are not even immune from criticism.

• While they accept his notion of no difference between the created and uncreated, they value his writings.
• They use intellectual definitions of hesychasm as a cloak to defend his writings and can not rely on their own experience to validate his words.
• They are not serious scholars following a very bad scholar.

A number of people have written at length on these accusations using many patristic quotations to validate their opinion. But I reiterate the main point I want to stress by St. Gregory Palamas:

"My own God-bearing Father, Isaac the Syrian, writes not to receive the teaching of a philosopher on the subject of Hesychasm."

One needs to understand the man, Fr. John Romanides, to realized these accusations are weak and totally misguided. One needs to understand his life, his attachments, and his vision. His accusers are extracting pieces of his writing to position themselves as better informed theologically than Fr. John the hesychast. Many of his quotes are taken out of the context of his audience, historical circumstance, and real purpose for writing. If this was not bad enough, I find his accusers are taking quotes out of context without even realizing what the rest of his sentence states (they even quote the whole sentence but the words do not even penetrate their blindness to posture themselves in a more exalted stature).

REBUTTAL FOR SET 1:

Fr. John Romanides as a man was from a Cappadocian family that retained its culture and he was grateful all his life for this kind of upbringing and formation. Although living in America they family was engaged in American life but Cappadocian at home. I, again, invite people to read the life of Fr. John's mother, here. After his whole childhood in this ancient culture, he later became very active in prestigious schools but never forsake his family's heritage. He viewed his education and performed all his academic contributions were executed through a Cappadocian lens. Fr. John is making a unique contribution to scholarship for us. He is starting with the Orthodox Faith and trying to build a bridge for the scholarly world to see things more like the Romaic understanding for the Western world. The scholarly world then sees Fr. John's bridge and can properly understand Orthodox Fathers, Orthodox Culture, Orthodox Politics, Orthodox Worldviews, etc. etc. We see him acting as this bridge himself in many situations; this includes little things like advising the President of the United States on the situation in Serbia, to large things like participation in "ecumenical" dialogues. Because he acted in this way, he was persecuted all his life for either being a sell out for Westernism or being a backwards and primitive Orthodox Christian. Those worked with him closely say neither of those is an accurate portrayal of him and his work. Therefore, his accusers who do not know him are speaking out of bias and ignorance when they say such things.

Regarding his denial of original sin and the Council of Carthage (410 A.D.), this is simply a strawman. Those who put his argument forward do not have an idea on what Fr. John is communicating. Many of his other writings can be used to simply reply that "This is not what Fr. John taught or believed." Fr. John used the more proper translation of Ancestral Sin (as opposed to original sin) to distinguish between the growth of different understandings that occurred with this in the East and the West. The East is more therapeutic in understanding. The West is more legalistic in understanding, focusing on a guilt complex. Anyone who denies the West viewed original sin as a type of guilt does not know Western history or theology.

Now some see his writings to have a fiery attribute. Many do not see this. It is interesting that some of the claims actually trigger many who see this in his writings. My question is, what upsets them so much? It is curious that some, who read his works without any honesty towards Fr. John's points, get furious and seek to attack the man. Again, these do not even know anything about him except the few of his words in front of them. Fr. John Romanides' whole life was a great task to explain Orthodoxy to the West after such a long period of (centuries of) Western influences on Orthodoxy and no contribution from Orthodoxy to the West. It is not enough for his accusers to reject his contributions they must attack the man. It is a sad thing.

REBUTTAL FOR SET 2:

The politics of Fr. John are probably the most humorous of the accusations hurled at him. Fr. John at one point expresses that it might be better if there were more leftist Marxists in Greece.

"I believe that it is a great tragedy — not an Aeschylean one, but a shameful one — that there are no powerful intellectual Marxists in Greece."
-- "Orthodoxy and Religion" from Patristic Theology by Fr. John Romanides

When accused as a Communist, it was dismissed as a false accusation and he gained his position at the University of Thessaloniki where he eventually received his pension.

At the same time he ran for office in the right-wing anti-junta royalist party. To approach Fr. John from a right-wing royalist and left-wing marxist perspective means one, again, does not really understand the man and in addition has only a superficial grasp on his writings and work. This accusation was fully addressed here.

Fr. John held a Romaic political view all his life. He believed there should be royalty, but that the royalty should be elected (in the way Romans came to power) and not hereditary (in the way Franks held on to power). He was truly held an ancient political philosophy and criticized or praised any modern political theory from this perspective.

REBUTTAL FOR SET 3:

One of the most complex accusations would be the use of analogy by Fr. John, or rather, his insistence on the disuse of it. To be sure, the Fathers, especially the Cappadocian Fathers, made a point on the proper use of analogy when utilizing it for theologizing about God.

"There is a similarity of names between things human and things divine, revealing nevertheless underneath this sameness a wide difference of meanings."
-- Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium (NPNF V). p. 93.

"The ultimate division of all that exists is made by the line between ‘created’ and ‘uncreated,’ the one being regarded as a cause of what has come into being, the other as coming into being thereby. Now the created nature and the Divine essence being thus divided, and admitting no intermixture in respect of their distinguishing properties, we must by no means conceive both by means of similar terms, nor seek in the idea of their nature for the same distinguishing marks in things that are thus separated."
-- Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium (NPNF V). p. 209.

“...the word to know has many meanings. We say that we know the greatness of God, His power, His wisdom, His goodness, His providence over us, and the justness of His judgment; but not His very essence. The question is, therefore, only put for the sake of dispute. For he who denies that he knows the essence does not confess himself to be ignorant of God, because our idea of God is gathered from all the attributes which I have enumerated.”
-- St. Basil, Letter 234

St. Gregory Palamas even used analogy. It is very easy to take Fr. John's emphasis on the axiom "between the created and uncreated there is no similarity whatsoever" and use it to make the point the Fr. John rejects all use of analogy. It is rather ridiculous carry it this far. With all things Orthodox, there is a certain line you do not cross because it become the realm of heresy. It seems silly to have to point out that there was a certain line in the thought of Fr. John where his insistence to not use analogy did not cross. It would be interesting to see his homilies from his time as a parish priest at Newport, New Hampshire and Arlington and Haverhill, Massachusetts. To say he rejected all analogy, even the analogy the Fathers used is as consistent as saying he was a hypocrite because he wrote books about God. We enter into the realm of the absurd when claiming Fr. John rejects all analogical tools. So what was Fr. John really doing and seeing that his accusers do not realize?

Fr. John was doing two things. One, he is being consistent with the Church in rejecting Platonism; two, he is reasserting the proper Orthodox approach to both cataphatic and apophatic theology. Again, this is one of the many ways which he continually was trying to build a bridge to have Orthodox contribute authentically to the West and also allow scholarship to interact with Orthodoxy as expressed in its own terms and characteristics.

Concerning the first, the explicitly analyzing the tool of analogy in the ancient and medieval world, this was almost entirely worked in the Platonic framework. If analogy was being used in theology or philosophy, you were talking about Platonism. One was hardly ever separated from the other. This is not explicit in a number of works from the times but on careful observation it becomes self-evident in almost all manuscripts. The exception was when the Orthodox Fathers refuted Plato or analogy. They said "yes, we use analogy but to explain the energies of God that are formless" They used the language of the Neoplatonists in a way where the philosophers understood the Christians were rejecting Platonism. Fr. John stuck with tradition. He did not approach this question from a Papal/Protestant point of view where he can say whatever he wants because he is outside a tradition. No, in the tradition of the Church, analogy was seen as a philosophical tool of the Neoplatonists and apophatic theology was the main instrument of the Church, which was made clear in many discussions and councils between the Church and the post-schism West during the time of St. Gregory Palamas and St. Mark of Ephesus.

This brings us to number two, Fr. John was admirably taking upon himself of taking not only the theology of the Church from out of Western influences but its methods. Western influences in Orthodox theology not only affected doctrinal points but how one approaches theology. I.e. an increased use of scholasticism and that which followed it. Fr. John was pressing intensely and extremely hard the use of apophatic theology as the natural and common theology of the Church. To put it one way. The synthesis was cataphatic theology, it is what everyone used as common theology. Fr. John made (in some cases) and extreme form (but not erroneous) of apophatic theology. The desired outcome would be theology that favored or leaned towards apophaticism rather than cataphaticism. While it may be unsettling for Fr. John to say things like "God is not a personal God. In fact, God is not even God", one has to not play the popular "Gotcha" game and see what he is trying to accomplish here. It appears he is attacking the idea of modern personalism, about which probably all of his accusers remain clueless. Also, he is stressing his hesychastic experiences to make the point that the Orthodox need to return to the viewpoint of apophatic theology. This quotation of his in particular is profound and no one should listen to anyone's commentary on this who are outside the experience of hesychia.

Fr. John points out Western scholars such as William Ockham or Barth that follow his line of thinking and thinks this is to these scholars merit. The accusers use this to point out his lack of Orthodoxy. But again, it is ridiculous, he was raised a Cappadocian by a godly mother. He is influenced by and repeats the thoughts of St. Paul and St. John Chrysostom when he rejects analogy or says the words of the Bible are useful to a point. St. Paul and St. John Chrysostom are his influences and Fr. John elaborates. When he comes across Ockham or Barth who almost understand this, he mentions them favorably because he is not a radical.

REBUTTAL FOR SET 4:

This brings us to the point that Fr. John was not a modernist or ecumenist.

Fr. John's perspective with the Monophysites was an evolving one. If one behaves carelessly (which all who give this accusation do) and does not look at his positions in a chronological manner, then one can jump to the conclusion that he thought the Monophysites were Orthodox. Fr. John, like many even today, believed that the Coptics were using words in a way which could be interpreted as Orthodox, but their tradition insisted on non-Chalcedonian vocabulary. As he engaged in dialogue with the Monophysite leaders and representatives and understood their positions better. After the ecumenical discussions, he soon realized it was more hopeless than he initially thought. He learned that their was a much larger chasm between our traditions and the Monophysites had a significant amount of conversion to be had before communion with the Church of the True Faith. To be specific, a few of his early articles were published in the '80s and '90s on his initial thoughts on union with the non-Chalcedonians which were episodes from the year 1959 though 1964. Those can be found here and here. Yet, in the middle of all the madness, Fr. John Romanides was actually the only remaining Orthodox Christian in the room standing opposed to the ecumenical machinations and disdain for the true Faith. This occurred in the years 1970 though 1971. You can read about his valiant steadfastness here.

While Fr. John participated in the WCC, those who hold it against him clearly know nothing about his views on it and dishonor his contribution by calling him an ecumenist. The dialogues between the Church's was a tiring of such gruesome conflict and often bloody for centuries between the factions in "Christendom" and the Orthodox Church. Again, Fr. John's goal was to provide the invaluable contribution of the Orthodox Church to these discussions. The ecumenical meetings were a result of Christian institutions getting exhausted from all the conflict and seeking better relationships. The first ecumenical meetings were simply discussions. When the WCC got in the picture things deteriorated. Romanides told his co-workers that the WCC is a protestant gathering trying to control everyone. You can read a little bit about it that Fr. John put into writing here. In no way would Fr. John still advocate participation. The Protestants in the organization were not really interested in the truth of the Orthodox Faith but rather control of the Orthodox Church, among others. With these realizations, Fr. John believed that the Orthodox had not business remaining in the WCC and should withdraw from the discussions.

Many do not understand Fr. John's approach to science and the Bible. Some dismiss his approach as modernist but his accusers do not fully understand his position. He is accused of accepting the belief that Genesis is a Babylonian myth. Some also are offended when Fr. John teaches on the limits of Scripture in the life of communion with God. Concerning Genesis and Babylonian cosmology, Fr. John never once teaches that Genesis is simply Babylonian myths. Fr. John does say Genesis uses a Babylonian cosmology (or a Babylonian way of understanding the cosmos), which it does. Readers of his works do not actually read him. They carelessly skip words and argue from half-sentences. In this example, his accusers have in front of them this: "The cosmology of the Old Testament, as regards expression and formulation, is influenced by the Babylonian cosmology of that age." But they somehow read it as this: "The cosmology of the Old Testament, as regards expression and formulation, is influenced by the Babylonian [myths] of that age." Read the actual words folks. This is not liberal biblical hermeneutics. This is just proper contextualization.

Concerning the limits of Scripture, this has to do with the use of created words. This understanding has always been known in the Church, was first expressed by St. Paul the Apostle, and elaborated by the saints (notably St. John Chrysostom).

"How that he was caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter" (II Corinthians 12:4 KJV).

and...

"It were indeed meet for us not at all to require the aid of the written Word, but to exhibit a life so pure, that the grace of the Spirit should be instead of books to our souls, and that as these are inscribed with ink, even so should our hearts be with the Spirit. But, since we have utterly put away from us this grace, come, let us at any rate embrace the second best course.

"For that the former was better, God hath made manifest,both by His words, and by His doings. Since unto Noah, and unto Abraham, and unto his offspring, and unto Job, and unto Moses too, He discoursed not by writings, but Himself by Himself, finding their mind pure. But after the whole people of the Hebrews had fallen into the very pit of wickedness, then and thereafter was a written word, and tables, and the admonition which is given by these.

"And this one may perceive was the case, not of the saints in the Old Testament only, but also of those in the New. For neither to the apostles did God give anything in writing, but instead of written words He promised that He would give them the grace of the Spirit: for 'He,' saith our Lord, 'shall bring all things to your remembrance.' And that thou mayest learn that this was far better, hear what He saith by the Prophet: 'I will make a new covenant with you, putting my laws into their mind, and in their heart I will write them,' and, 'they shall be all taught of God.' And Paul too, pointing out the same superiority, said, that they had received a law “not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart.'

"But since in process of time they made shipwreck, some with regard to doctrines, others as to life and manners, there was again need that they should be put in remembrance by the written word."

-- St. John Chrysostom's First Homily on the Gospel according to St. Matthew, 1 

St. Paul the Apostle and St. John Chrysostom made Romanides' claims about Scripture long before anything similar to the claims made by Barth who was less influence on him than the two formerly mentioned saints. To idolize words seems the only position Orthodox Christians know how to operate when they do not really understand hesychasm from either experience relationships with those who do experience it. To doubt that Fr. John believed in the inspiration of Scripture is nonsensical. However, the Orthodox Church see this differently than other traditions and this is what he sought to explain. He did deny the inspiration of Scripture as the West understood it, but he understood it in an Orthodox manner. He wrote on this topic specifically.

REBUTTAL FOR SET 5

For the first time, I recently saw an attack on how Fr. John understand the logoi. This is a very strange attack because Fr. John saw the uncreated logoi since he was a hesychast and the accuser from which this came is a recent convert (therefore it is very likely he is initiated in hesychia if at all). It is such a ridiculous accusation I did not think to give it another thought. However, the visceral and triggering that has curiously been prompted in the accuser is damaging the reputation of Fr. John Romanides among others who do not know better.

Again, the key to this accusation is Fr. John's attempt to emphasize apophatic theology again as the natural position for the Orthodox over the new emphasis in cataphatic theology that has occurred since the Church's Western captivity. With that let's address these accusations: (1) Fr. John is condemned for denying the logoi have any existence in the Mind of God. (2) He denies they are archetypal ideas. (3) He denies they even exist since he takes an extreme stance on the point there is no similarity between uncreated and created.

The position that the Fr. John (let alone the whole Orthodox Church) denies that the logoi have existence in the Mind of God is not unusual, the accusation is unusual. It is a purely Platonic position. Not just the vocabulary of Platonism, but the position itself. The Orthodox do not speak of the "mind of God" in its theology. This is Gnosticism. The Ecumenical Councils speak of essence, energy, hypostasis, and will.

Fr. John does deny the archetypal ideas in the Platonic sense. But not in the sense of St. Maximos. When talking about archetypes, there is such important nuance one has to understand relating to what words are actually being used (English translations make this difficult) and the context which is being used. Look at the above quotes from the Cappadocian Fathers. They are making the point that they start with a dissimilarity between the uncreated and created then go on to make a new analogy of how best to speak of unspeakable things. Those who think the Platonic archetypes is an Orthodox belief are gravely mistaken. These accusers do not know the subject matter of what they read. When the Fathers are addressing philosophy they reject Platonic ideas. If they talk about a Platonic idea, such as goodness, then they make a point to distinguish Orthodox Christian theology and experience from philosophy by mentioning that they are "formless" (denying the philosophical assumptions) or from is an energy of God, or radiating from His essence (as opposed to speaking of the "mind" of God). The followers of Fr. John make up much of the voice in the Church for the closer attention and performance of the service of the Synodikon on the Sunday of Orthodoxy. Fr. John knew the Synodikon well so rejected the Platonic archetypal ideas. From the Synodikon:

"To them who of themselves refashion creation by means of mythical fabrications and accept the Platonic ideas as veritable, saying that matter, being self-subsistent, is given form by these ideas, and who thereby clearly calumniate the free will of the Creator Who brought all things into being out of non-being and Who, as Maker, established the beginning and end of all things by His authority and sovereignty,

 "Anathema (3)"

Many in the ancient world tried to fit the newly proclaimed Christian message to platonic thought. That is, they tried to take the preaching of the truth and conform it to the worldview in which they were raised. This was the problem of the heretics and other philosophers that had to eventually be condemned (especially Origen). The accusers do not pay attention to the subjects of the Father's writings. Are we talking about a false platonic god, or the true God of Orthodox theology; within which framework are we operating? That is a question if asked Fr. John's accusers would not have considered when reading the Fathers. The Fathers do occasionally give a proper understanding of analogy or cataphatic theology. St. Maximos is a saint highly esteemed who writes in the Platonic language. However, the key difference between his writings and the writings of others is he starts with revelation and adapts Platonic vocabulary to fit his experience of theoria. Philosophers do not do this. St. Dionysius mentions how we understand analogy and the use of words to describe God. But it is in the context of his main theme. Making this point using St. Dionysios is to ignore the entire corpus of the rest of his writings. That God dwells behind a divine darkness. St. Dionysios is also starting with revelation.

Some accusers also say that Fr. John would really have to admit that the logoi does not exist since he takes an extreme stance on the axiom of no similarity between the uncreated and created. The mistake that this accusation makes is to see the logoi as a type of analogy instead of that deposit of energy which comes from God and leads the creature back to God. I can not stress enough that this is not how the logoi are properly understood in Orthodox fashion. The accusers do not go so far to say that the logoi is not energy but it is incumbent upon them to deny that the logoi is an uncreated energy of God. This truth that the logoi is an uncreated energy is only given lip service. The accusation only looks at this truth as a means of analogy to satisfy the pleasure of their opinions and not to see the movement the soul makes by the vehicle of the logoi. Fr. John is right when he says there is no similarity between the logoi and created ideas, because this is what the experience of the hesychats reveals to them. Words fall short of the experience. Again, it comes down to this, while cataphatic theology is used and analogy is used even with the logoi, Fr. John is trying to shift the Orthodox emphasis back to apophatic theology. This is one of his main objectives and he remained insistent and steadfast on that position.

To get the proper context on Fr. John's teaching concerning the uncreated creative and sustaining energy, see here and here.

CONCLUSION

These accusations simply come down to a careless evaluation of Fr. John Romanides works and an irrational attachment to philosophy. If one would simply study the life of Fr. John, examine the whole of his works, the order in which they were produced, and read what he is actually saying, then you will see a tapestry of the most patristic scholar of the 20th century pushing the Church as much as he can towards an Orthodox theology that is unapologetically expressed on its own terms. This goal was for the normalization of the Church's language and as a precious gift for the West.

Fr. John was a persecuted man. He was persecuted all his life and only after death did people realize what he was trying to do. However, his accusers are still out there. However, among his accusers will be no saints. Among his supporters are a number of saints. This is because the hesychasts recognize the experience which Fr. John gives to his readers. The hesychats realize the shortcoming of words and analogy.

To quote this passage of St. Gregory Palamas one more time is important. It is a diagnosis of a wider problem which the accusations against Fr. John are only a symptom. In this quote philosopher means anyone using their rational mind (logos) not under the discipline of hesychasm to receive knowledge from the nous in the heart and instead draw upon their imagination to theologize. St. Gregory says:

"My own God-bearing Father, Isaac the Syrian, writes not to receive the teaching of a philosopher on the subject of Hesychasm."

Glory to God for all things. 

Gnosticism and the West

Gnosticism is widespread in the West. I would assert that any honest Westerner, who tries to evaluate the worldview with which he received from his upbringing, would have a serious encounter or life-long struggle probing into what degree Gnosticism shaped it, with the realization the Gnosticism has certainly shaped it. Gnosticism made its way into Western culture through two avenues. One avenue through the Cathars which had a role in forming Protestantism. The other through alchemists which influenced the Papal theology.

Gnosticism is a heresy for the Orthodox Christian. Gnosticism (a form of Satanism) is the same religion with which Simon Magus (Acts 8:9–24) was involved. A prominent feature is that Gnosticism always takes different forms as it passes through time and therefore is repeatedly condemned by the Church. Adherents who embrace Gnosticism say it persists because it must be an eternal truth. It is not an eternal truth and to properly understand it we must remember the Didache. There is a way of Light, from God and a way of Darkness, from the demons. Gnosticism is this way of darkness. Orthodox revelation and our neptic-hesychastic tradition is the way of light.

Gnosticism's influence on the modern mind should not be underestimated. It may surprise some the William Tyndale quoted approvingly some Bogomil texts. Tyndale is the precursor to the foundation for Scriptural translation into English, i.e. the King James Bible. Our physics rests on the foundation of Isaac Newton who is a well-practiced alchemist. Many of our Founding Fathers and the philosophers that influenced them (Montesquieu and Locke) were Freemasons (more on this below). Sigmund Freud, father of modern pyschology was also a Freemason. Spycraft (John Dee and J. Edgar Hoover) are intimately related to this esoteric culture as well.

Below is a lineage of Gnostic sects that infiltrated Christianity and how they appeared from the ancient world to today. It should also be noted that many smaller groups sometimes co-exist with these. The first lineage is the avenue Gnosticism took into the Papacy (via the Alchemists which is a specific practice inside a Gnostic framework). The second lineage is the avenue which influenced powers revolting against the Papacy via the Cathars. Christos Yannaras and James L. Kelly are indispensable scholars that provided the bulk of this historic understanding (I quote them extensively below).

The key here is that this is the continuation of a way of thinking. Gnostics are do not always try to preserve a body of believers or even preserve ancient teachings necessarily. Again, a Gnostic worldview, or a Gnostic way of understanding the physical and metaphysical universe, continues on through their persistent existence and simply influencing their surroundings without stealing believers from another religious/political body.

Gnosticism’s historical lineage via Alchemists (influencing Papists):

• Augustine imported some of his Manichean and Neoplatonic thoughts such as using the Monad or divine essence as a starting point of theology instead of the incarnate Christ, not distinguishing the nous from the rational mind, and the energy of God as created intermediaries instead of uncreated power. See previous post “On Augustine”.
• Franks based their dogmatic theology on Augustine and at the Council of Frankfurt (794 A.D.). This was began the entry of Gnostic mentality (already in the thought of the Franks) as part of the dogmatic framework for the West within which the Franks philosophized their theology. Examples in this Council are the began ocular piety (rejecting 7th Ecumenical Council and taking a Gnostic approach to emblems or images, i.e. through the eyes it enters the mind) and the filioque (Understanding the Trinity from a Pythagorean or Neo-platonic Monad and as it extends itself arriving at the persons of the Trinity).
• This allowed for the preconditions for Gnostic thought to flourish with the illiterate Franks as they attempted to adopt a Frankish metaphysics for their feudal politics and the Churches under their influence (see here). Alchemy began to co-exist very closely and peaceably with the Papist Church. Frankish esoteric practices are well documented along with the fact that at the height of Papal power the alchemy was a widespread practice.

 

Gnosticism’s historical lineage via the Cathars (influenceing Protestants):

• Marcionites and Messalians
• Paulicians
• Manichees
• Bogomils
• Cathars

The Cathars were in the region of Languedoc. Here a number of Templars came to dwell. It was a religiously tolerant region and the exchange of ideas was quite common. There were even schools devoted to the Kaballah which were popular. We thus see a location with a syncretic people adhering to the ancient line of Gnostics (via the Cathars), the Knights Templar, and Jewish Kabbalah.

With the Albigensian Crusade (1209–1229) initiated by Pope Innocent III, Gnosticism became less geographically based and was a belief whose adherents were in a diaspora where it blended with proto-Protestant trends throughout Europe.

British Freemasonry (supported Kings), French Freemasonry (opposed Kings, included USA’s Founding Fathers), Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Puritans, Quakers, Anabaptists/Baptists, etc.

Again, this is a way of thinking (phronima) that changes its language over time. First with Plato’s Forms, then as Aeons, and as universals (due to Aristotle’s popularity in the West. Christians believe in the uncreated energy as part of God. The contrary thinking found in heresies, especially Gnosticism was that the Forms/Aeons/Ideals (Universals) are something created from God’s essence in which we can directly relate or possess. Two popular manifestations of Gnosticism are in the areas of Human Rights and the view of the flesh or the world in many areas of Western Christianity.

 

Concerning rights, Locke tried to link the origin of human rights to natural law. Jefferson tried to link human rights to moral law from nature. John Locke was a Freemason. The evidence the Jefferson was a Freemason is inconclusive but it is known his closest associates were Freemasons and the fraternity like Jefferson’s beliefs. These foundational thinkers that established the belief and framework that our government is based on natural law posit that our rights come from natural law or moral law. This is Gnosticism. There is no observation of the essence of a natural law, or a moral law. One may argue we see the effects, but this misses my point. This is a totally different worldview I am exposing in contrast to the Orthodox Christian (therefore Apostolic) worldview. We cannot go somewhere and interact with the natural law of liberty, for example. Natural or moral law is an ideal, a universal, that claims is part of God’s Creation, or creative workings. This is the key here, it is an ideal, a universal. This is Gnostic thinking. We should reject this as reality and find out the true Christian teaching in our relationship with others, with governments, and/or with God.

Concerning dualism, in my experience in many circles of Protestantism, one thing the congregational leaders often knew but seemed to always fail to communicate to the less-educated or ill-informed Christian is about the resurrection of the flesh. It is almost always absent from a Protestant funeral. In the minds of the less knowledgeable Christians, they understand the flesh can bring about sin and they simply see death as a release from this to go be with Christ. It is simple but flawed reasoning. My body and the world cause me to sin, When I get to heaven there will be no sin because I have no body. Therefore I am glad to lose my body and I would not want it back. This is common erroneous thinking and many know better but it is a strong strain of thought in so many Protestant groups that pastors do not address. Unfortunately, it is sometimes alluded or enforced by their music which never goes through a theological filter ("This Old House" being one that immediately comes to mind). Where did this thinking come from? It came from the abundance of material in the arts and many local community groups that were Gnostic in their worldview.

My friend Trif makes this insightful comment: “Gnosticism is a constant temptation. It seems like it’s the temptation to slide back into paganism. You could say it is ‘natural’ to believe. But I mean ‘natural’ in the sense that it is normal in the world corrupt as it is. Pagan religions all seem to view material as something that needs to be escaped. The soul is ‘imprisoned’ in the body and needs to be freed. For us though, the soul and body form a whole, and are supposed to be unified, not divided. You see this dualism of soul vs body in Hinduism, I am pretty sure. It seems to be a feature of many religions, and it is always condemned by the Orthodox. For some reason through all these centuries human beings have not outgrown this. Just goes to show progress is a myth and people of all times suffer from the same passions.”

Lastly, I will add two long quotes from two excellent books that touch on this topic. First is from Against Religion by Christos Yannaras. The second is from Anatomyzing Divinity by James L. Kelley. My friend Simeon mentions, “In ancient times these were the two forms of Gnosticism, those that thought that since the body of was an evil prison for the soul (a spark of Sophia, the fallen female goddess) and felt that they could do whatever they wanted (sin was perfectly acceptable). The other branch felt that since the body was an evil prison, they had to punish it through extreme asceticism.” This seems to be common (as he says) in the ancient world and Kelley makes this point too. However, Yannaras does not say this an implies the opposite; yet, one must realize Yannaras is taking a much larger historical perspective. From what I can tell, as time went on, the former type of Gnosticism began to vanish.

Chapter 4, Section 5 of: Against Religion
by: Christos Yannaras

Pietism

Historically we use the word pietism within the context of religious traditions to refer to organized movements, or sim ply trends, that constitute perhaps the clearest expression of humanity’s instinctive need for religion.

Pietism bypasses or relativizes “dogma” (the intellect’s claim to investigate metaphysical enigmas) with a view to attaining the chief goal of religiosity: the securing of psychological certainty with regard to individual salvation. It aims at winning salvation through emotional exaltation, mystical experiences, or objectively measurable achievements of virtue, of practical fidelity to religious precepts—through practical reverence for the sacred, which is piety.

As a phenomenon of the religious life, pietism certainly preceded the ecclesial event. In the early years of the Church’s appearance, the chief pietistic trend was that of gnosticism. Gnosticism derived its name from the fact that what it chiefly promised was unmediated knowledge (epopteia) of transcendent reality, a knowledge, however, only attainable by applying oneself as an individual to practical forms of piety.

These pietistic practices, like the theoretical teachings of the various groups or traditions that together made up gnosticism, were a typical product of religious syncretism —an amalgam of elements from the ancient Greek world, Judaism, and the religions of the Near East. With the appearance of the Christian Church, there immediately also arose (from as early as the days of the apostles themselves) “Christian” expressions of gnosticism. The most notable were the gnostic groups of Saturnilus (around AD 130) in Syria, Basilides (in the same period) in Alexandria, Valentinus (after 160) in Rome and Cyprus, Marcion (around 150) in Sinope of Pontus and in Rome (with organized groups of Marcionites spreading throughout the Middle East), and Mani (around 240), a Persian whose teaching (Manichaeism) spread with astonishing success, reaching as far as China in the East and Spain in the West.

All these trends or manifestations of gnosticism had a number of points in com m on. The most characteristic of them may be summarized as follows.

The first point was ontological dualism. This is the belief that there are two causal principles for existent things: an evil God, who is pure matter and the manipulator of matter, who is the creator of the visible world and the author of evil in the world; and a good God, who is pure spirit, without any relation at all to the creation of the material world, and who has as his work the liberation of humanity from the bonds of matter, that is, of evil.

The second point was docetism. This is the belief that the good God sent his son, Jesus Christ, into the world with an apparent body (a body kata dokesin) to suffer an apparent death on the cross in order to save humanity by his teaching and the salvific energy of his cross.

The third point, closely connected with the first two, was an abhorrence of matter, of the body, of any pleasure, and especially of the pleasure of sexuality, along with the rejection of images, holy relics, and the honor paid to the human persons of the saints. The gnostics believed that by a systematic practice of asceticism and by an intellectualist rationality they became capable of liberation from the demands of matter and attained likeness to God.

The Church fought against gnosticism from the first steps of its historical journey—most of the information we have about it derives from Christian writings produced to com bat its opinions. Yet it survived historically in the Christian world with astonishing tenacity through the centuries. What survived were its basic points and the tendencies, views, and outlooks related to it, in collective forms, with different names at different times but with the same experiential identity.

It is worth noting in brief outline the main stages of this historical development.

The communities of Marcionites (the followers of Marcion) flourished until the time of Constantine the Great (fourth century) and remained active historically until the seventh century. They were then assimilated by the Paulicians in the East and by the Manichees in the West.

The Paulicians emerged from the Marcionites and also from the Messalian s (or Massalians or Euchites), another branch of gnosticism that had appeared in the fourth century, mainly within the world of monasticism, and represented extreme tendencies of asceticism and enthusiasm. The Messalians survived at least until the seventh century in Syria and Asia Minor. They rejected or were contemptuous of the Church’s sacraments and rites. They aimed at atomic union with God through atomic asceticism and atomic prayer or through dancing that led to the ecstasy of the atomic individual.

From the seventh century onward, the movement that continued the tradition of gnosticism in Asia Minor, Syria, Mesopotamia, and Thrace was now the Paulicians. They derived their name from the special honor they gave to the Apostle Paul and his teaching. They accepted Marcion’s ontological dualism and Christ’s docetic human presence, and rejected the Hebrew tradition and the Old Testament, together with the ecclesiastical rites, the clergy, the churches, the icons, and the veneration of the saints. The only people they called “Christians” were themselves; those who belonged to the Church were sim ply called “Romans,” bereft of grace and salvation. These are features that clearly point to the religious denial of the ecclesial event and its institutional expressions, and to its replacement by a pietistic individualism —the route of atomic access to salvation.

In the tenth century this gnostic-Manichaean pietism was transplanted by the Paulicians into Bulgaria, under the form of groups or com m unities that called themselves Bogomils (which in Bulgarian means “lovers of God”). They preserved all the doctrines of the Paulicians, developing in addition an extreme asceticism. They abhorred marriage, loathed sexuality, abstained from meat, and celebrated baptism without submersion in water, only by the laying on of hands. Within three centuries, from the tenth to the thirteenth, the Bogomils had developed into a powerful movement with an impressive expansion both toward the East (where they were usually called Neomanichees) and toward the West (where in the first half of the twelfth century they were given the name Cathars, or “pure ones”).

The Cathar heresy, with all the above marks of a Manichaeistic pietism, presented not only a religious but also a serious social challenge to the peoples of the West in the Middle Ages—a real scourge. The heresy’s aggressive opposition to the Church’s institutions echoed the unhappiness of a large number of people about the worldly, authoritarian character of these institutions, the taxes that were imposed on the laity, the different life of the clergy and their provocative opulence. These anticlerical and antipapal tendencies favored the demand for an objectively assured and measurable “purity,” which was easily identified with an aversion to sexuality and ended up as a fanatical dissemination of the rejection of marriage. Such facts created the feeling that the powerful Cathar trend threatened the cohesion and even the biological survival of the communities where they predominated.

Roman Catholicism, the prevailing authority in the West, reacted forcefully against the heresy of the Cathars, at first with banishment, confiscation of property, and excommunication; later with imprisonment and torture; and finally with death at the stake, inflicted on the heretics by the Holy Inquisition, an institution founded by Pope Gregory IX in April 1233.

The gnosticism of the early Christian centuries (and chiefly Manichaeism) was continued and spread historically by the Marcionites and Messalians. From the latter came the Paulicians, from the Paulicians the Bogomils, and from the Bogomils the Cathars. The historical succession is continuous, without gaps. There are historians who regard the Cathars as forerunners of Protestantism and see in the great religious trends generated by the Reformation, in puritanism and pietism, the continuation and survival of a Manichaeistic pietism up to our own days.70

Puritanism is not confined to groups of English Reformed Protestants in the sixteenth century who wanted their Calvinism to be kept “pure,” uncontaminated by any residue from Roman Catholicism —nor is Puritanism sim ply a verbal echo of the Cathar heresy.71 It is the real continuation of their outlook and practice, manifest in a host of “confessional” groups and movements in the Protestant world to this day. Puritanism is the matrix that has formed the distinguishing identity of Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Anabaptists, Quakers, Baptists, and so on.

By an unyielding historical dynamic, pietism too, transplanted originally from Anglo-Saxon Puritanism to Holland and Germany, rapidly succeeded in crossing the boundaries of traditions and “confessions.”72 Today pietism appears to have imposed a Manichaeistic dualism and a moralistic individualism as a definitive element of Christian life in every corner of the world.

It is not by chance that Manichaeism was a syncretistic amalgam of elements of deriving from several religious traditions (Babylonian-Chaldaic, Zoroastrian, and Jewish). These are elements that primarily satisfied the demands of natural, instinctive religiosity: a war between light and darkness, between good and evil, between spirit and matter, and the participation of the individual in this war with the aim of acquiring purity, righteousness, and salvation as an atomic individual—the eternal perpetuation of atomic life.

This observation largely responds to the question: Why did Manichaeism, in its various forms and under various names but always with the character of individualistic pietism, constantly shadow the historical development of the Church? The answer is clearly that this parallel development embodies in historical terms the constant temptation of religionization that manifestly battles against the ecclesial event. The temptation is that of an objectified individualistic pietism ever present as an alternative proposal that substitutes religion for the Church.

Notes:

70. See Vasileios Stephanidis, Ekkiesiastike Historia, 3rd ed. (Athens: Astir, 1970), 571, 575; Vlasios Pheidas, Ekkiesiastike Historia, vol. 2 (Athens, 1994), 452, 458ff.; Steven Runciman, The Medieval Manichee: A Study of the Christian Dualist Heresy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1947); E. Voegelin, “Religionsersatz. Die gnostischen Massenbewegungen unserer Zeit,” Wort und Wahrheit 15 (1960): 7; S. Lorenz and W. Schroder, “Manichaismus II,” in the Historisches Wbrterbuch der Philosophie, ed. Ritter, Griinder, and Gabriel, 5:715-16. But before the historians, Pascal had stated unequivocally, “Les Manicheens etaient les Lutheriens de leur temps, comme les Lutheriens sont les ManicWens du notre” (Ecrits sur la Grace, in vol. 11 of Oeuvres completes de Blaise Pascal, ed. L. Brunschvicg [Paris: Hachette, 1914], 282).

71. Puritanismus, from the Latin purus, which means “clean.”

72. On the dominant influence of Protestant pietism today on the life of the Orthodox churches in particular, see my Freedom of Morality (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1984), 119-36; and Orthodoxy and the West (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2006), 217-50.
Books by Christos Yannaras here.

Chapter Two of: Anatomyzing Divinity

by: James L. Kelley

Anthropos, Cosmos, and Theos According to the Orthodox Catholic Tradition and the Alchemico-Hermetic Tradition: Two Divergent Triadologies.

According to the Orthodox Fathers of the Church, theology’s proper beginning point is not any concept of God, however intellectually satisfying or emotionally compelling such an idea may be. Rather, the Orthodox begin with the reality of the Incarnation of Christ, the Son of God. “God became man that man may become as God.”11 The Son is the perfect image of God the Father. We know that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are three divine Hypostases or Persons because those masters of the spiritual life who have become united to the Holy Trinity in this life all report the same thing: They have become united to the Holy Trinity through a sharing in the divine resplendence or glory (Gr. doxa), which, though being from Three, is also One.

However, Orthodox spiritual life has nothing in common with individualism or pietism, for no one can baptize himself, and no one can be perfected apart from the communal life of the Divine Liturgy. One begins as a hearer, as a babe who must begin with milk before he can have solid food. The milk is the opening stages of ascesis in the form of 1) obedience to a spiritual father who is a doer, one who teaches from experience of God, and 2) participation in the Holy Sacraments of the Church, the Sacrament par excellence being the Holy Eucharist, where the communicant receives the Body and Blood of God into his body. The higher stage that constitutes “solid food” is direct experience of the uncreated glory of God, though the friend of God never rises above the need for repentance and the Sacraments, but rather lives out these aspects of Orthodox life more fully. Such a communion, far from being magical, is in actuality the only Way (Heb. Torah) that delivers man from idolatry: “There are two ways, one of life and one of death.” “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”12

So, if man does not come to know God through concepts, then how does man ever know God at all? Man is created in the image of God, which means that his life is meant to be an eternal journey toward the divine. This journey is possible because man’s center is his God-created nous, or inner man (eso anthropon).13 The nous is never equated with the brain or the rational mind(dianoia) by the Orthodox Fathers; it is precisely this confusion of the noetic with the merely rational that characterizes the Augustino-Platonic tradition of the Christian West. The nous is also designated as the heart (kardia) by the Orthodox Fathers.14 This spiritual heart is man’s unique organ of communion with the uncreated energies of God. These energein of God are not a part of God, nor are they an intermediary between man and God. Neither are God’s energies anything other than the very Life, Light, and Love of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. These energies are God’s going out of Himself toward creation in an act of love (kenosis, self-emptying) to save creation from corruption through communion with His incorrupt life. The recipient of God’s energies does not receive a part of God, because God is not composite, but rather man receives the body of Christ, which is a mystico-noetic—and for that very reason eminently realistic—communication of the life of the Holy Trinity.15 Nor are the divine energies anhypostatic, but rather are the true resplendence of God, distinguished from the divine essence but not separate from it.

The suffusion of the divine energies throughout all of creation is the overflowing of divine love. This descent of the Hand of God into the heart of man is the new thing under the sun for which St. Solomon, the prophets, and all of the sages of every era have pined. God divides Himself undividedly to enter the heart of each and every man who will co-operate with Him to perfect selfless love therein. Accordingly, the true significance of man being “in the image of God” is that man has been created already conformed to God in such a way that he can—with the aid and sustenance of divine grace, that is, synergistically and ascetically—love in the exact way that God loves His creation, that is, freely and selflessly (the only difference being that man is not uncreated by nature, as is the Holy Trinity, but rather man becomes uncreated by grace or energy).16

Strictly speaking, only Christ is the Image of God; man is the image of the Image. There is a dual aspect of the image of God in man: Man was created in the image and likeness of God. The image of God in man, considered by itself, is a given, for Christ, the Second Adam, through His Incarnation reconstituted the human nature shared by every man. However, the “likeness of God” is not a given, but rather is a task, a Way to be followed, to be lived within. Man transcends himself non-dialectically by emptying himself of all self-concern and eudaemonia [well-being] through a co-working with God’s uncreated grace, a grace that is not opposed to creation. It bears repeating: God’s uncreated glory does not coerce creation into acting as a God-serving automaton, but rather ceaselessly calls man (the little cosmos) and all of creation (the big cosmos) into a deeper and deeper union with Him, “from glory to glory.”17

Because the teachings of the Church Fathers are not conditioned by the dubious logic of the “dialectic of oppositions,” they can, without any inconsistency, proclaim that God’s Hand (his energies) can come down to the heart of man without any resultant development or division in the Godhead. The experience of the Orthodox Fathers of the Church is identical to that of the friends of God of the Old Testament. For example, the Three Holy Children—St. Shadrach, St. Mechach, and St. Abednego—were seen in the fiery furnace with a fourth Person, the Lord of Glory (Christ) who suffered there with them, sustaining them through His grace. Likewise, St. Solomon, standing in the Holy of Holies of the newly-consecrated Temple, marveled that God could at the same time be both beyond and above all of creation, and also come and dwell between the cherubim atop the Ark of the Covenant.18

Unlike the Hellenistic/hermetic tradition, which posits an analogy between the life processes of creation and a supposed principle of dialectical development in the essence of God, the Orthodox tradition holds that salvation is deliverance from the dialectical meanderings of fallen creation. To state things starkly, the Orthodox view of man begins with God and views man as an icon of the Godman without any rationalistic analogy being allowed. Orthodox anthropology is thus Hebraic rather than Hellenistic.19

In keeping with its Hellenistic basis, the Gnostic anthropology of hermeticism takes man as its starting point: An intuitive feeling—”the call”—provides the Gnostic with an unquestionable certitude that he or she is actually a part of God, albeit a lower emanation of Him.20 Starting from his human fear of extinction and his desire for self-fulfillment and immortality, the Gnostic projects his eudaemonistic passions into the divine sphere: Man ceases to be a willing subject distinct from other persons and becomes himself a theo-cosmological process which allows God to know Himself.21 Put succinctly, there are three levels in the Gnoseo-hermetic scheme: 1) Anthropos (Man), 2)Cosmos (World), and 3) Theos (God). All three of these levels are God, though the first two are lower emanations or manifestations of the divine essence.22

The foregoing discussion of the Orthodox and hermetic anthropologies is shown to have a great relevance for alchemy if we refocus our attention on the Orthodox and hermetic attitudes toward matter. For the Orthodox, God created the world “very good,” and He also created the world in such a way that its material sphere—its matter—is conformable to the incorruption of the noetic realm, the realm of God’s uncreated glory. Most importantly, matter is made to be imbued with God’s life, not as something foreign to it, but as its own true telos; in this sense, to speak of the alchemical process of changing matter into spirit is inhuman and docetistic,23 involving the obliteration of creation rather than its deification. With the creation of man, matter and nous/spirit were shown for what they truly are: perfective, non-opposed creations of God which, forever entwined, are intended to ascend from non-defective goodness to greater and greater levels of perfection in God’s energies, which energies are His very life.24 To safeguard the path to union with God and to avoid idolatry and blasphemy, the Orthodox Fathers of the Church distinguished three categories that apply both to the uncreated and to the created:

1) Essence (Gr. ousia), which answers the question, “What is it?”
2) Person (Gr. hypostasis), which answer the query, “Who is it?”
3) Operation or energy (Gr. energeia), which answers the question, “What does it do?”25

These categories do not stand as analogies of being between God and creation, but instead serve to set the correct boundary between the divine and the created.

By contrast, the Gnoseo-hermetic view holds that the created world is a pale imitation of a truly real realm of Forms. These “ideas” are incorporeal, unchanging and rational. Since an ideal/real oppositional dialectic is presupposed, two superficially distinct cosmological attitudes result: Some gnoseo-hermetic texts denigrate matter as an evil cesspool ruled by demons, while others hold the world to be good. However, even the seemingly positive Gnostic assessment of the world is just another form of matter-hatred (docetism26), since what is held to be “good” in the world is what is hidden within or behind matter. In other words, matter is a husk, an unreal shadow that contains (or hides) “good” reality.27 The cellophane wrapper is good because one can see through it to the candy it contains. We all know what happens to the wrapper afterwards.

Hopefully the underlying dialectic of oppositions is recognized here, in that motion, matter and unreality is here being opposed to stasis, form and reality. The dualism of this gnoseo-hermetic view of matter complements the “process dualism” (my term) which lies behind the alchemical trinity. The latter is the yin-yang dualism of “two contrary principles” of which Tenney L. Davis writes, and to which we above alluded. In the following section our examination of alchemical trinitarian imagery will attempt to illustrate how these two dualisms interact in medieval textual illustrations.

Notes:
11. St. Athanasius the Great, De Incamatione 54.

12. “There are two ways”: The Didache, in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, 10 vols., A. Roberts and J. Donaldson, eds. (New York, 1926 [1885-1887]), 1.148.” Thou shalt have no other gods before me”: Exodus 20.3.

13. For an excellent introduction to the Orthodox teachings on the nous, see John Chryssavgis, Ascent To Heaven: The Theology of the Human Person According to Saint John of the Ladder (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1989), 70-124.

14. For the identification of the nous and the heart in Orthodox spirituality, see John McGuckin, Standing in Cod’s Holy Fire: The Byzantine Tradition (London: Dar-ton, Longman and Todd, 2001), 56ff.

15. See Kelley, Realism of Glory, 40-42.

16. The Orthodox teaching about man being created “in” or “according to” the image of God contrasts with the Western Christian view which followed Blessed Augustine’s formulation that man is the image of God, a created reflection of God’s essence. For a sophisticated discussion of Orthodox and Augustinian “imago Dei” theology see M. Aghiorgoussis (now Met. Maximos of Pittsburgh), “Applications of the Theme ‘EIKON THEOU’ (Image of God) according to Saint Basil the Great,” Greek Orthodox Theological Review 21.3 (Fall 1976): 265-288.

17. “But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord” (2 Corinthians 3:18). Even though the Orthodox spiritual life is concerned preeminently with experience of God, and even though the Orthodox do not mistake words such as prayers and sacred writings for communion with God in His glory, words are nonetheless central to spiritual life as images or symbols that call the worshipper to communion with God (Gr. symbollon: “bringing unlike things together”). It must be stipulated, however, that though the Orthodox proclaim the realism, or reality of God’s glory in the heart of His holy ones, they never reify the uncreated, ineffable Light. The danger is that terms like “glory” and”energy,”the more they are handled and circumscribed in our reasoning and through our lips, begin to represent God’s love as a concept, as something already “known about.”

18. Daniel 3.25: “He answered and said, Lo, I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt; and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God”; I Kings 8.27: “But will God indeed dwell on the earth? behold, the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain thee; how much less this house that I have builded?”

19. For a discussion of the Hebraic/Hellenistic anthropology from an existentialist viewpoint see William Barrett, Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy (1958; rpt, New York: Anchor Books, 1990), 61 -119.

20. On “the call” in Gnosticism see Werner Foerster, Gnosis: A Selection of Gnostic Texts, 2 vols., trans, and ed. R. McL Wilson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972): “The central factor in Gnosis, the’call,’ reaches man neither in rational thought nor in an experience which eliminates thought. Man has a special manner of reception in is ‘I.’ He feels himself’addressed’and answers the call. He feels that he is encountered by something that already lies within him, although admittedly entombed. It is nothing new, but rather the old which only needs to be called to mind it is like a note sounded at a distance, which strikes an echoing chord in his heart” (1.2).

21. John S. Romanides, The Ancestral Sin, trans, with an introduction by George S. Gabriel (Ridgewood: Zephyr, 2002). See especially chapter one, entitled “Creation, the Fall, and Salvation in Greek Philosophy in General” (41-49), where Fr. John analyzes the happiness-centeredness of the Hellenistic mind: “The immutable and inactive One of Greek philosophy is rather a projection of the human thirst for a secure understanding of the meaning of existence itself and for eudaemonia. It is the object of man’s intellectual desire for an entirely natural certainty of salvation but without a real revelation and the gradual saving energy of God in the world. It is also a self-centered principle imaginatively constructed according to the desires of man” (47).

22. For a stimulating discussion of this tripartite gnoseology in the context of the writings of Paracelsus see Elizabeth Ann Ambrose, “Cosmos, Anthropos,and Theos: Dimensions of the Paracelsian Universe,” Cauda Pavonis 11.1 (1992): 1-7. For an engaging (but ultimately unconvincing) discussion of gnoseo-hermetic cosmology which strives to contrast a supposedly positive hermetic attitude toward the world with a negative Gnostic view, see R. van den Broek,” Gnosticism and Hermetism in Antiquity: Two Roads to Salvation,” in Gnosis and Hermeticism from Antiquity to Modern Times, ed. R. van den Broek and Wouter J. Hanegraaff (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1998), 1-20, esp. 9-11.

23. See note 27, pg. 58.

24. Here “nous/spirit” refers not to the uncreated energies of God, but rather to the created “spirit of man” which is not a divine “spark” or “piece of God” as the Gnostics would have it.

25. Farrell, God, History and Dialectic, 28.

26. Joseph P. Farrell, in an unpublished typescript in the author’s possession entitled “Partial Listing of Christologies of Classical Heresies and Gnostics,” notes that docetists ”begi[n] with the assertion that matter is crude and evil; and so conclud[e] that Christ was pure spirit; the physical appearance was an optical illusion and mere semblance (dokesis); Christ was merely God masquerading as man”(4; unnumbered pages).

27. Section two will make apparent why, from a certain point of view, alchemico-hermetic texts seem to praise matter. To anticipate my later argument, matter is “honored” by alchemists because it is believed to have been divided, developed, and “scissioned” from the “aither,” the materia prima, which is uncreated and which contains every divine attribute. See the Introduction for background on the slightly different context and meaning of “aither” as it was used in Greco-Egyptian alchemy. Titus Burckhardt gives us a sense of the ambiguous, because literally otherworldly, attitude toward matter found in alchemy specifically and Hermeticism generally: “In this view, matter remains an aspect or function of God. It is not something separated from spirit, but its necessary complement. In itself it is no more than the potentiality of taking on form, and all perceptible objects in it bear the stamp of its active counterpart, the Spirit or Word of God.

“It is only for modern man that matter has become a thing and no longer the completely passive mirror of the Spirit’ (Alchemy: Science of the Cosmos, Science of the Soul, tr. William Stoddart [Louisville, KY: Fons Vitae, 1997], 58-59, emphasis added). Here “ousia” or nature is spirit; matter is reduced to a different ontological category, namely, “function/will/energeia,” which lacks a sentient, thelemic existence since everything it does is done by someone above who has a nature, that is, who exists and subsists. This ambiguity toward matter seen as the husk containing divine light is reflected in the later American version of hermeticism—American “nature religion”—which denies the reality of the concrete world in order to serve “the world” (Albanese, Republic of Mind, 25).

Books by James L. Kelley: here.