In my most recent upload to YouTube, I give a wee, rough introduction to Syriac. Enjoy!
Books I talk about:
Ancient
Hymns on Paradise by St Ephrem the Syrian, trans. Sebastian Brock
The Syriac Fathers on Prayer and the Spiritual Life, trans. Sebastian Brock
Modern
Robert Murray, Symbols of Church and Kingdom
Sebastian Brock, The Luminous Eye: The Spiritual World Vision of St Ephrem the Syrian
A friend of mine likes to occasionally post religious questions on Facebook to inspire conversation. Today, I saw:
Before his Resurrection, did Jesus know that the Earth orbits the Sun?
My short answer, ‘Yes.’ I don’t actually know if it’s right, mind you.
One other answer troubles me not by its conclusion (‘No.’) but by the premisses the commenter alluded to:
I would say that he didn’t know. To provide an adequate rationale to my postulation will take me far too long. I think a start is to unpack how much western thought about God and systematics we have unappropriately projected onto Jesus while he was on earth. (Not that I am against western thought or systematics but we ought to understand Jesus within context first)
I am not entirely sure where this author is going, frankly. But it hints at things that concern me. Somehow, this person believes that understanding Jesus within context will cause us to reject an understanding of Jesus that would allow him to maintain divine knowledge whilst incarnate on earth.
First, I imagine (perhaps falsely) this person holds a dichotomous position between ‘Hebraic’ and ‘Greek’ thought. This is the sort of position that sometimes leads people to reject theological concepts about God such as His eternity (as classically understood), His Trinitarian ousia, his omniscience (as classically understood), impassibility as well as the creatio ex nihilo.
These ideas and others are often thought to be ‘Hellenistic’ importations, falsely grafted onto the pure ‘Hebraic’ gospel. This is not true. They are, in fact, Christian doctrines developed through prayerful reading of Scripture and resistance to ‘Hellenistic’ philosophy. For example, it is in resisting Plato in their reading of Scripture that Christians posit creatio ex nihilo and divine eternity as classically understood.
Let’s talk, then, about the hypostatic union, since that’s really what’s in question.
The hypostatic union is the theologically incomprehensible complete union of the divine and human in the single person (hypostasis) of Jesus Christ such that he is 100% God and 100% human. He has the properties of divinity and of humanity. But he is not two persons. He is one person. Some of us articulate this as Jesus existing in two natures, some think that divides him too far and makes him into a pantomime horse.
This immediately grabs you as a fine piece of Hellenistic philosophy, doesn’t it?
Except, of course, that no one knows how it works, and most people who try to explain it realise they can’t and choose, instead, to stand in awe before the mystery of God.
And, really, what resemblence does this owe to Jesus ‘within context’?
First, what is Jesus’ context? Hellenistic Judaism in the Greco-Roman world? The apostles composed their works in Greek and cited a Hellenistic Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures. St Paul even quoted a Greek poet. John’s Gospel begins with its beautiful prologue on the divine Word.
Furthermore, throughout the Gospel of Mark, Jesus performs many miracles with no divine aid, no magic spells, and no invocation of any god. This sets him apart his contemporary miracle men, the Hebrew prophets, and the Apostles. He also rises from the dead in an unprecedented manner — no prophet or holy man is used as God’s instrument in the Resurrection, unlike when the prophets and Apostles do it. Jesus also seems to think he can forgive people’s sins. And when his earthly ministry is over, he ascends into heaven.
And that’s just from the Gospels, without turning to the earlier Christian writings of St Paul, who says some pretty heavy stuff about Jesus that points to him being God.
Jesus is God. He is also fully man.
How it works, of course, we cannot fully say. Hypostatic union.
But if we realise that Jesus is, in fact, fully man and fully God, how we determine divine knowledge during the incarnation is not merely some sort of question of Greek vs Hebrew, which is a false dichotomy.
But, frankly, no one reads or even tries to comprehend the Fathers anymore. If we understood them in their context, besides Jesus in his, we might find out that they are speaking the same theological language.
One Parthian shot. If ‘western’ is the problem, I present you with Ephrem the Syrian, one of the last exponents of Semitic, Syriac Christianity before it was ‘hellenised’. From his Hymns on the Incarnation:
From Hymn 8
Blessed is the Messenger who came bearing
a great peace. By the mercy of His Father,
He lowered Himself to us. Our own debts
He did not take up to Him. He reconciled
[His] Lordship with His chattels.Refrain: Glory to Your Dawn, divine and human.
Glorious is the Wise One Who allied and joined
Divinity with humanity,
one from the height and the other from the depth.
He mingled the natures like pigments
and an image came into being: the God-man.
O Zealous One who saw Adam
who became dust and the accursed serpent
eating him. Reality dwelt
in what had lost its flavor. He made him salt
by which the cursed serpent would be blinded.
Blessed is the Compassionate One Who saw, next to paradise,
the lance that barred the way
to the Tree of Life. He came to take up
the body that would be struck so that by the opening in His side
He might break through the way into paradise.From Hymn 12
Who indeed has seen the Babe Who is more ancient
than His bearer? The Ancient One entered
and became young in her. He emerged an infant
and grew by her milk. He entered and became small in her;
He emerged and grew through her—a great wonder!
The Eucharistic Prayer of Addai and Mari, ll. 14-18:
Thy majesty, O my Lord, a thousand thousand heavenly beings and myriad myriads of angels adore and the hosts of spiritual beings, the ministers of fire and of spirit, glorifying thy name with the cherubim and the holy seraphim, ceaselessly crying out and glorifying and calling to one another and saying: Holy, holy, holy … (Trans. A. Gelston)
The prayer whence comes this quotation is a mediaeval East Syrian (ie. ‘Nestorian’) Eucharistic prayer, still recited to this day in Syriac in the Assyrian Orthodox Church and not much changed from its reconstructed fifth-century predecessor. This Eucharistic prayer is interesting to me because it has an unequivocal statement of God becoming incarnate and suffering and dying — the sort of thing one would expect from my Monophysite friends of the Syrian Orthodox Church. It serves as a reminder that to box in the living Church according to the disputes and anathemas of centuries past can make one lose sight of the true faith of the people involved.
Of course, the reason I draw your attention to this prayer is the passage quoted above. It is beautiful. It is a beautiful, lyrical passage, clearly stemming from the same people whence Ephraim the Syrian sprang. This brief moment from the East Syrian liturgy stirs my heart to worship the Almighty God — and much more so than the worship song the radio plays right now that has been repeating the line, “I’m so deep in love,” about ten times before getting around to, “with you.” (With whom? I was too focussed on myself and forgot.)
Noting the incongruity, I am now playing Striggio’s Missa “Ecco Si Beata Giorno” — the Mass in 40 Parts.
I’m not actually here to rag on the contemporary worship music scene. I trust God enough to know that He does great work through it and receives due glory from those who worship with it. However, I am here to draw attention to the magnificent beauty of the ancient, Mediaeval, and Renaissance liturgies — their hymns, their prayers, their music.
“When through the woods and forest glades I wander / And hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees, When I look down from lofty mountain grandeur, / And hear the brook and feel the gentle breeze,” not only does my soul want to sing, “How great Thou art,” unto the wondrous Creator God, it also wants to sing, “How beautiful thou art!’
God has created a wondrous, beautiful world, and it is only fitting that our worship of him be beautiful as well. This is part of the fabric of the Eucharistic Prayer of Addai and Mari. This is what drove men like Striggio to compose wondrous things like a mass in 40 (40!!) parts. Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised!
Plunging into the tradition, rediscovering the riches of things like the Gelasian Sacramentary (as I currently am) is as important as rediscovering the ancient and mediaeval theologians. Often when we look upon the offerings from Patristic blogs or at the upcoming Oxford Patristics Conference or anywhere interested in the Fathers, we find a lot of thoughts about the theology and doctrine of the Fathers, maybe some information about Church History in the Patristic Age, but less about the worship of the Fathers.
Now, I realise that part of this is because of how complicated the liturgical legacy of the Fathers is. If you take any of the Eastern divine liturgies, such as the one quoted above, or those attributed to Sts. John Chrysostom and Basil the Great, you find the words and order for worship of something that has been in constant use since the fourth or fifth century (with roots stretching earlier than that).
How can we disentangle Chrysostom from the later Byzantine worshippers? It is a task scholars spend entire careers doing. However, we still have many individual prayers from the Patristic age as well as other poems and songs, such as:
St. Ambrose’s hymns (remember this from before?), St. Ephraim the Syrian’s hymns (such as those on the Nativity), St. Romanos the Melodist’s hymns (as here), and the hymns and poetry of Prudentius (as here) would probably be good places to start. They are allusive and beautiful, tuning and turning our thoughts upwards towards God Almighty and the worship of him alone.
I have previously posted about the fourfold sense of Scripture here and here. Among the spiritual senses, we find typology. Typology, as you may recall, is when we see events, items, and persons in the Old Testament as prefigurations of New Testament theology. It is distinguished from allegory as allegory is when we see parallels in events in the Old Testament not only of the New Testament but also of our own spiritual journey. Thus, an allegorical reading of Genesis 3, while not denying the real Fall of humanity, will say that this is the story of Everyman.
Typology, on other hand, sees a moment as a single flash of the greatness of the fulfillment of the promises in Christ and the Church — Melchizedek is a type of Christ; the flashing sword in Eden is a type of Mary; the crossing of the Red Sea is a type of Baptism, Jerusalem is a type of the heavenly city, and so forth. I have already posted on Noah’s Ark as a type of Mary.
This approach to Scripture is never meant to entirely supplant the literal or historical meaning, something even its most famous proponent, Origen, acknowledges. Yet it seeks to see with spiritual eyes a new, different layer of meaning. Since the purpose of Scripture is to reveal to us the things of God and empower us to lead godly lives, I see no difficulty in this way of reading Scripture.
Indeed, many see this way of reading the Bible as a way forward for western biblical interpretation. Sebastian Brock writes:
the typological approach to the Bible as found in the Syriac (and of course other) Fathers is essentially a fluid one, refusing to be contained by dogmatic statements on the one hand, or considerations of modern biblical scholarship and its findings on the other. Indeed, one wonders whether this approach does not offer the openings of a via tertia for twentieth-century western Christianity in its dilemma when faced with the liberal critical approach to the Bible that to many seems purely destructive, on the one side, and a distastefully fundamentalist approach on the other. (p. 188)*
Now, one may argue that there already exists middle ground between liberal criticism and fundamentalism, but the idea of typology as being part of that middle ground is not a bad idea. With typology, we are able to say, “Indeed, the points of the liberal’s modernist critique may be valid, and the doctrinal concerns of the fundamentalist are also worthy of consideration, and with typology I am able to honour both.”
Suddenly, Scripture is not limited to a single, literal meaning at every turn of the page. Through prayerful consideration and the reading of other spiritual books, the Holy Spirit can guide us to spiritual truths about ourselves and the Gospels that perhaps we would never have thought of if shackled to the liberal/fundamentalist approach.
Typology can be beautiful and can stir the thoughts of the reader, as we see in Brock on Ephrem the Syrian:
Ephrem’s highly allusive poetry, shifting almost relentlessly from one set of symbols to another, makes considerable demands on the reader who, above all, if he is to appreciate Ephrem to the full, must know his Bible as well as Ephrem did. Much of this typological exegesis will appear to modern readers as forced, or it may even be described as ‘wrong’, but I think it is misleading to speak of this kind of exegesis in absolute terms of ‘correct’ and ‘incorrect’. The very fact that quite often one finds side by side two pieces of typological exegesis which are logically incompatible when taken together, seems to be an indication that what is being offered was never meant to be the ‘correct exegesis’, such as modern biblical scholarship likes to impose, but possible models which are held up, and whose purpose is to make meaningful, and give insight into, some aspects of a mystery that cannot be fully explained. (185-186)
If we remind ourselves that our doctrine of the Trinity is smaller than the Trinity, that our Christology is a feeble attempt to encapsulate in words the wonders of God Incarnate, if we keep in mind the smallness of ourselves and our doctrines about God in the Face of God Himself, then typology and its difficulties make a certain sense — God is ultimately incomprehensible and a great mystery. Ought not His self-revelation to the world to be filled with wonder and beauty?
Now, most of us probably aren’t reading to do our own typologies, for it is a way of thinking that is foreign to us. Here are some places to begin:
Typology in Action
The Orthodox Study Bible. The NT of this study Bible has been out for a long time, and a couple of years ago they released the entire Bible, Septuagint and NT. Its footnotes provide us with a primarily typological reading of the OT, so it can stand alongside most Protestant study Bibles that give us the literal account and thus bring us deeper into the spiritual world of the Word.
The Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture. This series of commentaries gathers together selections from the Fathers on the entirety of Scripture. A great many, though not all, patristic passages herein provide a typological understanding of the Scriptural passage at hand.
Ephrem the Syrian, referenced by Brock in the second passage above, has a number of works translated at the CCEL; there is also a volume in the Classics of Western Spirituality Series from Paulist Press and another of the Hymns on Paradise in the Popular Patristics Series from SVS Press. His hymns on the incarnation are especially beautiful, as I’ve noted on this blog before; he takes your mind in worship to places it has likely never gone before.
Gregory of Nyssa’s Life of Moses, mentioned here before, is worth a read, combining both the allegorical and typological readings of Scripture after giving the straight historical reading of the text. The same translation exists in the Classics of Western Spirituality series as well as in the HarperCollins Spiritual Classics; the latter has a less extensive introduction but is also cheaper.
Origen of Alexandria is the most famous of the exegetes who apply “spiritual” methods to Scripture. His Commentary on the Gospel of John provides an introduction to his method of reading Scripture. I’m still working on Origen, myself, so I do not know what else of his to recommend.
About Typology
Hall, Christopher A. Reading Scripture with the Church Fathers. This book deals with the Four Doctors of the Western and the Four Doctors of the Eastern Church and how they read Scripture, including space devoted to Origen and Diodore of Tarsus. Space is thus given to the more spiritual readings of Scripture that lead us to typological understandings. This is a popular level book, geared towards pastors and students.
de Lubac, Henri. Medieval Exegesis: The Fourfold Sense of Scripture. This monumental work, a product of the Ressourcement that began in the 1950s (not ’20s, sorry), taking up three volumes in English, will give you all you want to know about Patristic and western Mediaeval approaches to the reading and interpretation of Scripture. This is a work of scholarship, but the rewards are no doubt hefty for those who persevere to the end (I have yet to do so).
*S. Brock, “Mary in the Syriac Tradition,” in Mary’s Place in Christian Dialogue, ed. Alberic Stacpoole. Pp. 182-191.
Of the various patristic holy men you’ll encounter in readings of hagiography, few grab the imagination quite so much as St. Simeon the Stylite (c. 385-459) — not even his younger contemporary and imitator, St. Daniel the Stylite (saint of the week here).
Years ago, I read the Life of Simeon by his (alleged?) disciple Antony (not that Antony) when I was just getting into Patristics, monasticism, and hagiography. Last week, I read Theodoret of Cyrrhus’ Historia Religiosa (trans. by EM Price for Cistercian as A History of the Monks of Syria), and one of the longer of his 30 biographical sketches was that of this famous Syrian ascetic. (I am soon to read the Syriac Life and make it a whole set, don’t worry.)
When Simeon came along, Christian Syrian asceticism already had a long and venerable history stretching to generations before Antony took refuge in the Egyptian desert. Ancient Syrian Christianity always had an ascetic streak, calling people to become “Sons and Daughters of the Covenant”, calling the faithful to live together in celibate marriages, calling believers to go into the Desert in “anachoresis” from the secular world, calling Christians to rise up and become the Perfect on the narrow road to the city of Christ (recall the Liber Graduum from this post).
By Simeon’s day, Syrian Christianity was becoming more and more Greco-Latinised, and asceticism was already looking to fourth-century Egypt for its roots, examples, and golden years. Syrian asceticism delighted in the intense. Sure, Egyptians would go off into tombs for a while and wrestle with demons as Antony did, or found monasteries of thousands of people, as Shenoute did.
Syrian ascetics would live in the wild with nothing to protect them from the elements. Some were called “grazers”, and they lived off the wild plants that grew in the Syrian wilderness. Others would wear iron tunics, only removing them when their bishop came along and enforced obedience. Still others refused to sit or lie down, sleeping in an upright position, suspended from the ceiling with ropes. What, as ER Dodds asked in Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety, was the cause of all this madness?
A madness for Christ — a burning zeal to know Him and suffer for Him and suffer for one’s sins and be made holy through askesis and abandon the world and all its allures. As Theodoret says in De Caritate, appended to the end of the Historia Religiosa, it was love for God that drove the monks to perform the feats he records.
Enter, then, Simeon.
He entered the monastic life at a monastery in Teleda. During his time in this monastery, he decided that it would be a good idea to wrap a rope around his waist beneath his tunic. He tied the rope really tight and never washed it or removed it. Eventually, he started to stink, and someone stuck his hand up the tunic and the jig was up.
Simeon ultimately decided that he was more suited to the solitary life, but the abbot would not release him. However, due to some of Simeon’s antisocial ascetic practices, he was eventually free to go. So he moved into a nearby well. Soon, the abbot thought better of it, and the monks brought him back from the well.
He later escaped the monastery in Teleda.
He settled in an enclosure atop a hill near Telanissus. After several years of asceticism in this location, he built himself a pillar (Gr. stylos, hence “Stylite”) and lived atop it and two successively higher ones for the next 36 years.
Holy men and women were not unheard of in the Syrian world, as we saw above, and they had various social functions to play, arbitrating in disputes, praying for rain, cursing infidels, diverting marauding bands of Saracens — that sort of thing. The sort of thing you need someone who is removed from society to do, the sort of thing an outsider can do, the sort of thing someone who is close to the Divine can do.
So people heard that there was this guy living on a pillar. And if you live on a pillar, you must be, mad, holy, or both. And if you’re holy, you can probably arbitrate in disputes, dispense wisdom, intercede for the faithful, etc. So people started flocking to Simeon on his pillar and getting all of the above.
Amongst those who flocked to Simeon were his disciples, who built a whole monastic complex at the base of the pillar (as also happened with Daniel). They helped regulate and organise the various pilgrims and suppliants who came to Simeon’s pillar.
Simeon, when not dealing with the masses below, would pray continually. He would pray, alternately standing up straight and bending over double. This bending over eventually caused him back problems, while the constant standing caused him foot problems.
This, in short, is the long career of Simeon the Stylite up on his pillar. He was a living symbol for the entire monastic movement, a man positioned between earth and heaven, a man ceaseless in prayer, a man who cared naught for this world around him.
More on Ancient Syrian Asceticism:
Primary Sources
Theodoret of Cyrrhus, A History of the Monks of Syria. Trans. EM Price, Cistercian Publications.
The Book of Steps: The Syriac Liber Graduum. Trans. R.A. Kitchen, Cistercian Publications.
The Lives of Simeon Stylites. Trans. Robert Doran, Cistercian Publications.
The Syriac Fathers on Prayer. Trans. Sebastian Brock.
Secondary Sources
Brown, Peter. “The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity,” Journal of Roman Studies 61 (1971): 80-101, reprinted, with additional notes, in Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 103-52. Classic introduction to the holy man — however, be aware of its 25th anniversary sequel:
—. “The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity, 1971-1997.” Journal of Early Christian Studies 6 (1998): 353-376.
Burton-Christie, Douglas. The Word in the Desert: Scripture and the Quest for Holiness in Early Christian Monasticism. This work focusses primarily on Egypt, yet its story of the origins of Christian monasticism is interesting and discusses aspects of the Desert Fathers of Syria.
Harvey, Susan Ashbrook. Asceticism and Society in Crisis: John of Ephesus and the Lives of the Eastern Saints. The Introduction, pp. 1-27, gives a good introduction to ancient Syrian Christianity and asceticism as found in Syria, Mesopotamia, Palestine, and Persia.
You were probably quite thrilled to see the saints return this week. And then you probably cocked your head to one side and said, “Monophysites? Aren’t they heretics?”
Well. No. Not really.
Or, if they are heretics, it is for being schismatics, as under Jacob Baradaeus who consecrated John of Ephesus Bp of Ephesus which already had its own bishop. That must have been awkward. John claims Jacob maintained the canons of Nicaea, but this does not sit with the fact that he created bishops for places that already had bishops.
But Monophysites are not the heretics you think they are.
Chances are, if you’ve heard of the Monophysites, you thought of them as people who believed that Jesus had one nature, and that nature was divine. Or that in Jesus’ single nature the divine was so powerful it completely subsumed his human nature, rendering it useless. Or that Jesus’ divine and human natures were confused with each other. Or that Jesus had a glorified body through his whole life on earth and, as a result, never suffered.
Each of those statements is a heresy, and each of them is a Monophysite heresy. But none of them is mainstream Monophysism as represented by Severus of Antioch, Philoxenus of Mabbug, Empress Theodora, John of Ephesus, et al.
Mainstream Monophysism is a highly conservative reading of Cyril of Alexandria that refuses to affirm the Council of Chalcedon on the grounds that its Christological formula “in two natures” divides the person of Christ and you effectively have two sons and two Christs, which is Nestorianism.
The rallying cry of the Monophysites is the statement of Cyril: mia physis tou theou logou sesarkmomene — one incarnate nature of God the Word. Since Chalcedon affirmed two natures, it was a posthumous betrayal of St. Cyril, according to the Monophysites.
If someone came along trying to interpret Chalcedon so that it could jive with the Cyrilline rallying cry, the Monophysites would pull out more Cyril, and say, “Nature = person = hypostasis. If Christ has two natures, he has two hypostaseis/persons.”
Monophysites such as Severus of Antioch believed that Christ was fully God and fully man, possessing all of the attributes of Godhead and manhood within the single theandric (God-mannish) union. This union was a complete union within his person, or hypostasis — thus, hypostatic union.
Now, people don’t fight about nothing. Well, sometimes they do, but usually they don’t. There was a real, substantial difference between them and the original Chalcedonians. The sad reality for the Monophysites, though, is that by the Second Council of Constantinople in 553, called by Emperor Justinian, the Chalcedonians had so interpreted and reinterpreted Chalcedon such that it could by understood by a highly Cyrillian thinker — so-called “Neo-Chalcedonianism”.
But it was too late. The seeds of schism were sown. And to this day, the “Syrian” Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox, Coptic Orthodox, and Ethiopian Orthodox are out of communion with us, despite joint statements on Christology. This is a sad reality, and one that should be remedied. Would that we had the grace to sit down together and work out the centuries of trouble!
If any of this makes no sense, let me know and I’ll try to de-jargonise it! 😉
In John of Ephesus’ Lives of Eastern Saints ch 12*, we learn of two interesting sixth-century ascetic sisters from amongst the Syrian Mesopotamian Monophysites recounted by John.
Mary, the elder of the two, lived the celibate life in Thella (Constantina). She was overcome by the desire to see the Holy City of Jerusalem and so she went on pilgrimage there. While in Jerusalem at the Church of the Resurrection (or Anastasis), she was overcome. She wanted to do nothing but stand there.
So she did.
And while she stood there, Mary was enraptured and had an ecstatic experience. She was drawn into the experience of the love of the great God of grace who rules all. Inevitably, some of the people who helped take care of this church thought her mad and tried shooing her out.
So Mary spent time in the street. And then would move back into the Church of the Resurrection.
Eventually, she was persuaded by some of the following that had developed around her that maybe should go home. So she went back to Armenia IV and lived as an ascetic in Thella, returning to Jerusalem every once in a while to pray to the God who had so enraptured her soul.
Of note: Mary gathered a following, and they were edified by her spiritual experiences. True mysticism always benefits the community.
Mary’s sister was Euphemia. Euphemia, unlike Mary, married and had a daughter. However, when her husband died, she was overcome by the desire to live a holy life. So she and her daughter, Mary like her aunt, learned the psalms and prayed the hours. They worked from the home, carding wool for the wealthy.
This work made them a denarius a day. Half of the denarius provided for their daily needs. The other half provided for the daily needs of anyone Euphemia could find.
Euphemia seems to have been a fiery sort of character, going about the city of Amida on the banks of the Tigris and finding poor people to do good to. And when there was a crisis, she would turn to the wealthy Christians of the city and berate them thus:
Is it well that you thus sit yourself while slaves stand and wait upon you, and enjoy a variety of tastes in dainty foods and in wines, and of pure bread and splendid rugs, while God is knocked down in the street and swarms with lice and faints from his hunger, and you do not fear him? and how will you call upon him and he answer you, when you treat him with such contempt? Or how will you ask forgiveness from him? Or how can you expect him to deliver you from hell? (Trans. E.W. Brooks)
In the West, we often make a distinction between the “active” life and the “contemplative” life. Despite Met. Kallistos Ware’s attempts to do away with these distinctions (cf. The Orthodox Way), they are often played out in reality, as in the case of these two Syrian sisters.
Both of these lifestyles are appropriate choices for the person totally surrendered to Christ. The latter, Euphemia, fits better with our conception of a good Christian. Indeed, I cannot help but say that her approach fits better with what we find in the Gospels.
Nonetheless, I think we have room — need, even? — for mystic visionaries of the contemplative life such as Mary. They are the ones who ground us in Christ. Sometimes feeding the poor becomes feeding the poor — not feeding Christ. Sometimes seeking righteousness becomes political lobbying — not seeking Christ. The contemplatives see Christ and live for him a radical way, often in bizarre, radical ways (cf. our friend Daniel the Stylite).
If we of the “active life” gather around the contemplatives, our own mission is given fuel, and it is easier to see Christ in the faces of the poor surrounding us.
Let us be encouraged by Euphemia to do good for poor, and by Mary that Christ is calling out to draw us into his warm, divine embrace.
*This chapter is in Patrologia Orientalis 17. The entire work is in fascicles from PO 17, 18, 19 if you’re interested…
This Week’s Saints Brought to You by Thomas Merton, Kallistos Ware, and the Chalcedonian Schism.
A lot of mystical literature, from the Neo-Platonists to today, includes imagery of ascent. The fourth-century Syriac Liber Graduum is no exception. In 19 we read:
1. Give me now your full attention, O one who wishes to become a solitary and is anxious to travel quickly to the city of our Lord Jesus. I will show you how you may go directly to the city of our King, if you have the strength to journey as I will show you. Because the steps are difficult to climb, I will guide you [how] to climb. Since, however, there are also numerous paths that deviate from the straight road — on which many mountains loom about you, and day after day you are blocked until the day of your death comes — it will find you on [one of] the paths that turn off from one side or the [other], seeing that you do not know how to go directly on the road to that city. If during your life you do not investigate about that road, traveling diligently in order to reach that city, you will not be able to go to it when you have departed from this world, for the end of your road is Perfect and its beginning is when you begin to uproot from yourself all faults. (Trans. Kitchen & Parmentier, pp. 183-184)
Memra 19 goes on to discuss the ascent to the city of Jesus, discussing various commandments that one must follow in order to make the climb. There are two paths — the path of the Perfect that takes you straight up, and that of those less-so, that will not get you there ultimately, but will perfect you and mature you and make you strong enough to climb the narrow, treacherous path of the Perfect.
Alongside the ascetic labours (Memra 20: … there is no other ascent to this step … except by this ascent … much watching and fasting, lowliness, and powerful crying out with many tears, much supplication and with the sweat of afflictions [p. 217]), there is always prayer. It is very useful in the ascent of the Perfect and the fight against sin.
Fourth-century Syriac authors were not the only Christians in history to believe in Perfection. While his conception differs on some key points — the Liber Graduum‘s Perfect are celibate ascetics who have renounced all attachment to the world — John Wesley is very famous for his teaching on Christian Perfection.
This Lent, in fact, I read Wesley’s Plain Account of Christian Perfection.
We may disagree with what Wesley calls “Perfection”, but I believe that by the grace of God (as Wesley says), it is attainable. Christian Perfection is having your heart filled with naught but love — love of God and love of neighbour. These are the two commandments on which hang all the Law and the Prophets, after all. The Perfect in Wesley’s view may still commit sin involuntarily or through ignorance, but will not willfully sin.
Now, the question of sinlessness aside, can we fault Wesley’s answer to how we are to wait for this change?
Not in careless indifference, or indolent inactivity; but in vigorous, universal obedience, in a zealous keeping of all the commandments, in watchfulness and painfulness, in denying ourselves, and taking up our cross daily; as well as in earnest prayer and fasting, and a close attendance on all the ordinances of God. (Ch. 19)
Like the Liber Graduum, Wesley also calls us to prayer:
All that a Christian does, even in eating and sleeping, is prayer, when it is done in simplicity, according to the order of God, without either adding to or diminishing from it by his own choice.
Prayer continues in the desire of the heart, though the understanding be employed in outward things.
In souls filled with love, the desire to please God is a continual prayer. (Ch. 25, Q. 38, §5)
Wesley was a reader of the Fathers, with a special love of Chrysostom’s homilies and Ephraim the Syrian’s poetry. It is clear to me from reading A Plain Account that the Greek Fathers have influenced Wesley’s thinking about humanity. He believes that God is actually powerful enough to take the peccator that I am and make me really and truly justus.
Indeed, Wesley’s call to piety, like that of the other famous Anglican Patrist of that age, William Law, is an application of the ascetic, mystical writings of the Fathers to a modern layperson’s situation. The wisdom of texts such as the Liber Graduum is adapted for a new audience — much like how Cassian adapted the wisdom of the Desert Fathers and Mothers for a Gallic audience.
Besides having a more optimistic anthropology than the Lutherans or the Reformed, Wesley and the ancient ascetics call us forth to a holiness that is beyond virtue. I know that sounds silly, but it is true. We tend to think that we are “good” by being nice to people, even rude people and jerks, and by giving to the poor. Maybe we are “good” because we evangelise. Maybe it’s because we go to protests and write letters to MP’s. Maybe it’s because we don’t look at porn.
Wesley and the Fathers would applaud these things. And then they would tell us to go further.
They would tell us to live lives saturated with prayer, to do everything out of love, to fast, to study the Scriptures assiduously, and to seek out opportunities to do good whenever we can. By doing so, we will put to death “the flesh” and rise nearer to the likeness of God, healing the wounded image within.
I think we can do it. And I think most of us western Christians don’t even try out of sheer laziness.
Shame on me for being lazy rather than righteous.
“Kill the flesh, in order to acquire a body.” -Sergei Bulgakov
Ephrem the Syrian (recommended reading from John Wesley, of all people; d. 373) wrote the following hymns on the Incarnation:
From Hymn 8
Blessed is the Messenger who came bearing
a great peace. By the mercy of His Father,
He lowered Himself to us. Our own debts
He did not take up to Him. He reconciled
[His] Lordship with His chattels.
Refrain: Glory to Your Dawn, divine and human.
Glorious is the Wise One Who allied and joined
Divinity with humanity,
one from the height and the other from the depth.
He mingled the natures like pigments
and an image came into being: the God-man.
O Zealous One who saw Adam
who became dust and the accursed serpent
eating him. Reality dwelt
in what had lost its flavor. He made him salt
by which the cursed serpent would be blinded.
Blessed is the Compassionate One Who saw, next to paradise,
the lance that barred the way
to the Tree of Life. He came to take up
the body that would be struck so that by the opening in His side
He might break through the way into paradise.
From Hymn 12
Who indeed has seen the Babe Who is more ancient
than His bearer? The Ancient One entered
and became young in her. He emerged an infant
and grew by her milk. He entered and became small in her;
He emerged and grew through her—a great wonder!
While I was house-sitting for my parents this summer, I read Princess Ileana’s Meditations on the Nicene Creed (yes, this is what I do with my spare time). Throughout the course of this most delightful and invigorating little book, she frequently quoted from the Exposition of the Orthodox Faith by St. John of Damascus (some say “John Damascene”). I wrote none of the quotations down, however, thinking to nab a copy from a library when I wanted to reread any.
I’ve never read Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, but the portions I encountered were quite good. St. John of Damascus was one of those men with an unafraid mind. He lived from 676-749, born into a Syrian Christian* family of high-ranking officials under the Byzantine Emperors and then, during his lifetime, the Arab Caliphate, for which he himself was an official. Indeed, since most of the population of the Near East would have been Christian at this time, the Caliphate employed many Christians in the civil service. This is also common practice of most ancient empires — so long as you get your tribute from them and they leave your soldiers alone, the conquered can do business as usual.
Business for usual for John included more than being an official for the new aristocracy, however. He is most famous for his defense of icons, which is where I first discovered him. He argues that in Deuteronomy, when YHWH makes the prohibition on images, the argument made by God is that no one had ever seen Him. However, when Christ became incarnate, suddenly people were able to see the Second Person of the Trinity. Therefore, icons are an affirmation of the Incarnation, and the Incarnation is essential to salvation.
One other thing I learned in my reading of his thoughts on icons was the incorporation of the senses into worship. In most of contemporary Western Christianity, especially certain branches of Protestantism, the only physical sense we incorporate is the sense of hearing. We worship with our minds. However, John of Damascus points to the incorporation of all the senses. We not only hear the hymns and the sermon, but we smell the incense, taste and feel the Eucharist, and behold the icons. Through these physical media, our giving glory to the Holy Trinity becomes an act of the whole person.
St. John of Damascus wrote in defense of icons because at the time the Eastern Church was going through the Iconoclastic Controversy (726-843). The Controversy was started by Emperor Leo III who removed all images from Constantinople and sought to impose his will in this matter over the whole Empire. 843 is called the “Triumph of Orthodoxy” by the Eastern Orthodox, and I believe that the Iconoclastic Controversy is the reason why images are more important to Eastern Orthodox worship than Roman Catholic worship — once you have fought for something, you have a greater attachment to it.
Anyway, since St. John was living in Damascus, and Damascus had been conquered by the Muslim Arabs, he was beyond the reach of the iconoclastic emperor. Therefore, he was able to write in favour of images with impunity. Although Muslims disapprove of images in their own worship, it seems they did not impose this prohibition upon the dhimmi, which worked in the favour of iconodules such as St. John of Damascus. Thus he produced his treatises On Holy Images, and they have become central to the Orthodox theology of worship (you can buy modern English translations from Saint Vladimir’s Seminary Press here).
St. John of Damascus is also notable because of his dealings with Islam. To the modern Protestant, with rock-star worship styles and auditorium-like worship spaces, the worship practices of Muslims are strange and foreign. They pray five times a day. They bow in a certain way. They pray specific prayers at specific times. They go on pilgrimage. They fast. However, all of these things are part of the worship of Christians in the Middle East.
So when Damascus was conquered and the Arabs rode in on their horses, built a mosque, and prayed toward Mecca, John didn’t look at them and say, “Oh, a new religion.” Instead, he said, “Oh, another heresy.” He did not see Muslims as being something totally other from Christians but simply heretics, and Mohammed as another heresiarch like Arius, Apollonarius, or Emperor Leo III.
I haven’t read On Heresies thought I would like to. However, one aspect of Islamic theology he found especially unsettling is the denial of the divine and most Holy Trinity. The treatise includes this as it closes:
But, if you are curious about God, first tell me of yourself and the things that pertain to you. How does your soul have existence? How is your mind set in motion? How do you produce your mental concepts? How is it that you are both mortal and immortal? But, if you are ignorant of these things which are within you, then why do you not shudder at the thought of investigating the sublime things of heaven?
Think of the Father as a spring of life begetting the Son like a river and the Holy Ghost like a sea, for the spring and the river and sea are all one nature.
Think of the Father as a root, and of the Son as a branch, and the Spirit as a fruit, for the substance in these three is one.
The Father is a sun with the Son as rays and the Holy Ghost as heat.
The Holy Trinity transcends by far every similitude and figure. So, when you hear of an offspring of the Father, do not think of a corporeal offspring. And when you hear that there is a Word, do not suppose Him to be a corporeal word. And when you hear of the Spirit of God, do not think of wind and breath. Rather, hold you persuasion with a simple faith alone. For the concept of the Creator is arrived at by analogy from His creatures.
Be persuaded, moreover, that the incarnate dispensation of the Son of God was begotten ineffably without seed of the blessed Virgin, believing Him to be without confusion and without change both God and man, who for your sake worked all the dispensation. And to Him by good works give worship and adoration, and venerate and revere the most holy Mother of God and ever-virgin Mary as true Mother of God, and all the saints as His attendants.
Doing thus, you will be a right worshiper of the holy and undivided Trinity, Father and Son and Holy Ghost, of the one Godhead, to whom be glory and honor and adoration forever and ever. Amen (taken from this webpage)
In the above quotation he takes into account many of the Islamic problems with the Trinity and the Incarnation. No doubt there are arguments against St. John of Damascus from the Islamic position, for no argument in theology or philosophy is completely unassailable (this also covers many in the natural sciences). However, in those early days of Islam, we see something important between the Muslims and Christians when they encounter one another.
It is not jihad or Crusade.
It is not an attempt to ignore differences.
It is not a whitewashing of how their theologies are almost completely incompatible.
It is, rather, respectful dialogue and debate.
When someone disagrees with your theology or religion, you produce an argument against him. You do not take him to court. You do not fine him large sums of money. You do not bomb his place of worship. You do not silence him by force.
Silence him with reason and love.
This is a lesson for both Christians and Muslims today.
As a Prayerbook Anglican, I don’t dig invocations of Saints. However, let’s at least read these words of an Orthodox hymn as we close:
Champion of Orthodoxy, teacher of purity and of true worship,
the enlightener of the universe and the adornment of hierarchs:
all-wise father John, your teachings have gleamed with light upon all things.
Intercede before Christ God to save our souls.
*Wikipedia says “Arab”, but I disagree. They cite Peter Brown, so they may well be right; I’ll have to check The Rise of Western Christendom myself to be satisfied. I think he was probably of local Syrian descent, Syriac and Aramaic (the local languages) being Semitic languages like Arabic, and ancient Syrian culture would have had many cultural similarities to the conquering Arabs — so a Syriac-speaking Syrian could be mistaken for an Arab, especially if Arabs give him an Arabic name that’s almost exactly the same as his Syriac one. Most people of the Middle/Near East were not and are not ethnic Arabs, although they have similar culture and today speak the language.
A Personal Journal of Imagination - Anthony G. Cirilla, Ph.D
Because we’re all recovering from something.
By Sandra Js Photography - Make the rest of your life the best of your life.
An Alternative Cultural Daybook
Orthodox Christianity
ancient, medieval, byzantine, anglican
Blog for poet and singer-songwriter Malcolm Guite
The blog of Dayspring MacLeod
classics digests, reflections and reviews
Thoughts about Theology & the Fantastical
From Sunrise County to the Universe
© P. Robinson 2004-2022
What is home - and where can we find it?
Meditations on the person in the Byzantine and Patristic tradition
Daily Prayer Practices and Soul Care for Writers
"...May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. ..." (NLT) Ephesians 3:16-21
Exploring history, faith, and academic life.
Classically Christian 