The Distinction Between Essence and Energies and its Importance for Theology (C. Yannaras)

The article by Father Juan-Miguel Garrigues, L'énergie divine et la grâce chez Maxime le Confesseur (published in the journal Istina, vol. 19, no. 3 [1974] pp. 272-296), is an interesting occasion for one to prove how critically important the truth regarding the distinction between essence and energies continues to be in the realm of theology. The acceptance or rejection of this distinction will determine either the abstract or the real character of theological knowledge, the attribution of theological truths to either rational certainty or existential experience.

Fr. Garrigues' study presents the traditional Roman Catholic arguments, somewhat refurbished. He rejects the distinction between essence and energies. At the same time he attempts to draw support for his position from the realm of Christology and particularly from the teaching which St. Maximus the Confessor developed to combat the heresy of monoenergism. Fr. Garrigues' presentation follows a kind of literary-historical analysis on the basis of the texts drawn mainly from St. Maximus. I say a kind of analysis because in Fr. Garrigues' attempt one cannot readily discern a consistent adherence to the literary-historical method. His systematic conclusions are not drawn from the historical and literary analysis, but, on the contrary, the use of the sources is a posteriori, to defend a given system of argumentation.

An extensive study would be needed to prove the hermeneutic omissions and the intellectual leaps created by Fr. Garrigues' a posteriori use of the sources in drawing his conclusions. I shall mention, very briefly, several characteristic examples:

(1) An attempt is made to defend the Thomistic view on energetic (i.e. active) divine essence by referring to the doctrinal definition of the Sixth Ecumenical Council. Fr. Garrigues observes that this council's definition nowhere implies that the two energies of Christ — the divine and the human — are really or formally distinguished from the corresponding natures. For this reason he regards as consistent with the spirit of the council's definition the Thomistic expression: the divine nature does not have one energy, but is active (energetic) (pp. 272-273).

(2) Referring to a passage of St. Maximus (Amb. 26, PG 91: 1265CD) in which the names of the hypostaseis are defined as expressions of the existential fact of personal relationship, i.e. the mode of existence (τρόπος ὑπάρξεως) of the nature which is the hypostatic otherness, Fr. Garrigues attributes to St. Maximus the scholastic understanding of the hypostaseis as internal relations of the essence (p. 277). With similar arbitrary interpretations, St. Maximus is made a proponent of the view of divine energy as an act of creative causality (acte de causalité créatrice, p. 277) and of divine grace as a causal presupposition of the intentional habitus (causalité de la grâce, habitus intentionnel de la grâce, p. 286f).

(3) To St. Gregory Palamas is attributed the definition of the divine energies as accidentals (Palamas s'enferme dans une definition des énergies divines comme accidents, p. 278), while the passage of Palamas which is quoted (Physical and Theological Chapters 135, PG 150: 1216CD) has precisely the opposite meaning.

(4) The saintly author of the Areopagitic writings is in principle rejected as a Neoplatonist; to the Cappadocian Fathers is attributed a kind of Eunomianism (p. 281); etc.

Concern over these arbitrary interpretations could develop into a strictly academic critique of the scientific soundness of the study in question, but this is not the purpose of this paper. The concern here is over the systematic presuppositions of Fr. Garrigues, which he attempts to defend with this fragmentary and a posteriori use of the sources. I believe that one could summarize these systematic presuppositions in the following statements:

(1) The divine essence does not have energies, whether uncreated or created, but is active.

(2) There are two possibilities of participation in God: participation in the existential cause (participation dans la causalité de l'acte d'être) and participation in God by intention (participation intentionnelle).

(3) The divine grace is neither created nor uncreated, but rather is the causal presupposition for the efficacy of divine salvation (la causalité de grâce est l'efficacité salvifique), i.e., the presupposition for the creation in man of a habitus, a tendency or state that coordinates man with the divine will.

(4) Consequently, the deification of man is merely a union of will or intention (union intentionnelle).

These systematic positions, which are also the presuppositions and the conclusions of Fr. Garrigues' problematics, do not, of course, exhibit the rationalistic formulations of the traditional anti-Palamite arguments. But neither do they abandon the classic Thomistic problematic, which is a problematic of essence in itself, of essence as being, and in which every relation with this ontic essence can only be merely external, a relation or experience according to the law of cause and effect.

This problematic of essence in itself implies a definite status of man over and against the truth about God: The first foundation of the truth of God is not achieved through the experience of the Church, which is an experience of personal relationship with the person of the Incarnate Logos, a relationship which is realized in the Holy Spirit and which reveals the Logos as witnessing to the Father. Rather, this first foundation is entirely anthropocentric, with an intellectual leap seeking to understand the divine essence in itself, its attributes and its objective relationships. And this rationalistic conception of essence not only obliges one to an ontic understanding of essence which overlooks the mode of being of the essence, but also leads by logical necessity either to the identification of essence and energy or to the essential separation of nature from the energies. The problematic of energy is reduced to a procedure of logical proof which refers the mystery of divine existence to the syllogistically necessary idea of a creating and moving cause of creation or a causal grace (causalité de Grâce) which contributes to the moral improvement of man.

St. Gregory Palamas

In Orthodox theology, on the other hand, the problem of the energies is put exclusively in terms of existential experience. The experience of the Church is the knowledge of God as an event of personal relationship, and the question raised is one of witness to and defense of that event, the question of how we come to know God, who is neither intelligible nor sensible, nor at all a being among the other beings.¹ The knowledge of God as an event of personal relationship reveals the priority of the truth of the person in the realm of theological knowledge. There is no room for bypassing the reality of the person by means of an intellectual leap directly to the essence: Truth for us is in realities, not in names.² The person recapitulates the mode of existence of nature; we know the essence or nature only as the content of the person. This unique possibility of knowing nature presupposes its ecstatic recapitulation in terms of a personal reference, i.e. the possibility for nature to stand outside of itself, to become accessible and communicable not as an idea, but as personal uniqueness and dissimilarity. The ecstasis of nature, however, cannot be identified with nature itself, since the experience of relation is itself an experience of non-identification: the ecstasy is the mode, the manner by which nature becomes accessible and known in terms of personal otherness; it is the energy of nature which is identified neither with its bearer nor with its result: The energy is neither the active cause nor the resultant effect.³

It is not possible, of course, to know the energy except through the one who acts; and, again, only through the natural energy can one know the one who acts as personal otherness as well as nature and essence. The will, for example, is an energy of nature. However it is accessible to us only through its personal bearer; we refer to the what of the will only because we know the how of its personal expression.⁴ The what of the will reveals to us the nature which has the possibility to will, while the how of the will reveals the personal otherness of its bearer.⁵ The will itself, however, is not identified either with the nature which has the possibility to will or with the person who wills, always in a unique, dissimilar and unrepeatable manner. For this reason we recognize in the will an energy of nature, ontologically (but not ontically) distinguishable from the nature as well as from the person.

Even though we distinguish the energy from the nature and the nature from the persons, we do not attribute any synthetic character to nature itself; we do not divide and we do not fragment the nature into persons and energies: the persons and the energies are neither parts nor components nor passions nor accidents of nature, but the mode of being of nature. The personal expression of each energy recapitulates impartially and wholely the entire nature; it is the existence of nature. The how of the energy of will (or the energy of creativity or of love or whatever other energy) recapitulates the what of the natural energy of will; the possibility of nature to will exists and is expressed only through the otherness of the personal will. Painting, music, sculpture are creative energies of the human nature, but they do not exist except as expressions of personal otherness: as music of Mozart, as painting of Van Gogh, as sculpture of Rodin. Nor is there any other manner of expressing and defining essence or nature outside its active ecstasis in terms of personal otherness. The only way we can name nature is in the personally expressed energy of nature; energy signifies nature: Essence and energy can both receive the same name (λόγος).⁶

The energies, however, are not the exclusive and only manner of naming nature, for indicating the actor through his activities. The natural energy which is expressed personally represents that possibility of empirical knowledge which comes from a personal participation and communion in the essence or nature — without this communion becoming an identification with nature or with a part of nature. According to the Fathers of the Orthodox East, personal communion makes possible a fulness of knowledge and has no relationship whatsoever with Fr. Garrigues' rational categories of participation entitative, participation intentionnelle, participation dans la causalité de l'acte d'être.

St. Maximus the Confessor uses as an image and an example of such communion the human voice, which being one is participated in by many, and is not swallowed up by the multitude.⁷ If by taking this example we can arbitrarily consider human reason as essence, then we can say that the voice represents the energy of the essence of reason, the possibility for us to participate in the essence of reason as the voice reveals and communicates it, to participate, all of us who hear the same voice, in the same essence of the one reason — without this communion becoming our identification with the essence of reason, and without the fragmentation of the essence in as many parts as there are participants in the reason through the voice. Reason, expressed personally, remains unified and indivisible, while at the same time, it is singularly participated by all.

If we should insist on this example of the voice and reason we could clarify one more observation relative to the possibilities of participating in the essence through the energies. The voice certainly represents a revelation of the energy of reason homogenous to the essence of reason and makes possible a direct participation in reason, but a revelation of the energy of reason can also take place from within essences heterogenous to reason: it is possible to formulate into reason other essences such as writing, color, music and marble.

This example indicates that we can speak (together with St. Maximus) about two forms of energy of the same essence or nature: one form which is, as we called it, homogenous to the nature of the one who causes the energy (an ecstatic self-offering of nature in terms of personal otherness); and the other form which reveals itself out of essences heterogenous to the nature of the one who causes the energy, an energy that is effective on things external, according to which the actor acts on objects outside of himself and heterogenous, and obtains a result, which is made up of preexisting matter and is foreign to his own substance.⁸

Accordingly, God's homogenous energy (to use St. Maximus' distinction) is revealed in the Church's experience of divine grace, which is uncreated (heterogenous to creatures and homogenous to God) and through which God is wholly participated in⁹ and participated singularly by all,¹⁰ remaining simple and indivisible, offering to the communicant that which He (God) possesses by nature except essential identity¹¹ and elevating man to the rank of communicant of the divine nature, according to the word of Scripture (II Peter 1:4). On the other hand, the revelation of God's energy in essences heterogenous to God is seen in the character of beings as creatures, created by divine energy. The personal logos of these creatures (a logos of power, wisdom and art),¹² even though it is characteristic to each one of these creatures, in terms of the infinite variety of essences, reveals the singular wholeness of the one divine energy and witnesses to the one, simple and indivisible God.¹³

As for man, we can probably say that the concept of homogenous energy is applicable to the power of love and to the erotic ecstasy of self-giving in terms of which the existential truth about man is made known. This is the mystery of the human nature and of the human person as singular otherness — when man totally belongs to the loved one and is willingly embraced by him entirely.¹⁴ This homogenous energy, however, interprets also the reality of the human body in terms of the singular otherness of each person: the body is par excellence the personal differentiation of the physical energies,¹⁵ the possibility of a meeting and a communion between the created energy of the human essence and the uncreated energy of the Grace of God.¹⁶ As for the revelation of the energy of man through the heterogenous essences of man, it concerns the variety of human creations, in the works of human art, wisdom, and power.¹⁷

The fundamental fact observed and verified in the distinction of St. Maximus between the homogenous energy of an essence or nature and its heterogenous appearance is that both of these forms of expressing the energy reveal the nature or essence as the singular and unified content of the person. The personal differentiation of the physical energies (the uniqueness and dissimilarity of each human body, as well as the absolute otherness of each erotic event and the differentiation of creative expressions, for example, the music of Bach from the music of Mozart or the painting of Van Gogh from that of Goya) distinguishes the nature without dividing it, it reveals the manner by which nature is — and this manner is its personal singularity and otherness. The energies or distinctions disclose and reveal the catholicity of nature, as content of the person.

In the distinction of nature and energies Orthodox theology sees the very presupposition for a knowledge of God, as well as of man and of the world. If we reject this distinction and if we accept, with the Roman Catholics, the intellectual leap to the essence itself — an active divine essence — then the only possible relation of the world to God is the rational connection between cause and effect, a connection that leaves unexplained the ontological reality of the world, the formation of matter and its essential character.

For Orthodox theology matter is not a reality that simply has its cause in God. Matter is the substantiation of the will of God, the result of the personal energy of God; and it remains active as the revelatory reason of divine energy. St. Gregory of Nyssa says that all things were not reshaped from some subsisting matter into phenomena, but the divine will became the matter and the essence of creation.¹⁸ The will of God is an act, and the act of God is His word, for in God the act is word.¹⁹ The word of God which expresses His will is substantiated directly as a substance and a formulation of creation.²⁰

Matter, therefore, constitutes the substantiation of the divine will. The logoi of matter, that is to say, its types or forms, reflect the creative logoi of the divine conceptions and volitions.²¹ In its own organic content, matter is the result of the union of rational qualities whose convergence and union defines the substance of sensory things.²² The rational formulation of matter refutes from the start the ontic autonomous character of things; matter is not the what of physical reality, the material which receives shape and form to reveal the essence, but the convergence of the rational qualities, their coordination into the how of a unique harmony which constitutes the type or the form of things. The whole cosmic reality, the innumerable variety of kinds of essences are not the what of objective observation and rational conception; they are not the abstract effect of a rationally conceived active cause, but the how of the personal harmony of rational qualities, a musical harmony constituting a controlled and sublime hymn to the power which controls the universe.²³

This continuously active personal harmony of the world reveals the direct and energetic presence of God in the world as personal will and energy (and not as essence). It is an endlessly active invitation to a personal relationship with the personal God-Logos through the logoi of things. This active invitation is not essentially identified with the one who invites nor with the energy of the caller; the reason and the will of God is not identified with the created things themselves, just as the will of the artist is not identified with the product of his art, with the result of his personal creative energy. But the work of art is the substantiation and incarnation of the personal reason and will of the artist; it is the active call and possibility of a personal relationship with the creator through the logos of his creations. The work of art is in essence and in energy different from the artist (the art in the artistic is one thing, and quite another is the art in the person who undertakes it, as St. Basil points out).²⁴ Therefore, the work of art represents and reveals the unique, the dissimilar and unrepeatable personal logos of the artist. Without personal relation, without a personal acceptance of the logos embodied in the work of art, the latter remains a neutral and uninterpreted object: the logos of the artist remains inaccessible, the truth of the thing uninterpreted, the experience of the personal presence, the personal uniqueness and dissimilarity of the artist unattainable.

It is clear that the inference from the personal harmony and beauty of creation to the personal presence of the creator God-Logos is neither self-evident nor automatic nor simply rational; it is a moral-dynamic movement of participation in the benevolent personal divine energy, an acceptance of the invitation which substantiates the beauty of nature — a moral movement of catharsis, a gradual and dynamic illumination of the mind, to be surprised and to understand ... to be lifted up from knowledge to knowledge, and from vision to vision, and from understanding to understanding.²⁵ The end (always endless) of this dynamic vision of the world is a revelation, through beauty, of the triune character of divine energy, beautifying creation triunely.²⁶ The beauty of creation is not the single-dimensional logos of a creative cause, but the revelation of the unified and at the same time triune mode of the divine energy which reflects the mystery of the singular and triune mode of existence of the divine life.²⁷

The problem of the knowledge of God, but also of man and the world — of knowledge as direct personal relationship and existential experience or knowledge as abstract intellectual approximation — depends on the acceptance or the rejection of the distinction between essence and energies. The acceptance and rejection of this distinction represents two fundamentally different visions of truth, two noncoinciding ontologies. This does not mean simply two different theoretical views or interpretations, but two diametrically opposite ways of life, with concrete spiritual, historical and cultural consequences.

The acceptance of this distinction between essence and energies means an understanding of truth as personal relationship, i.e. as an experience of life, and of knowledge as participation in the truth and not as an understanding of meanings that result from intellectual abstraction. It involves the priority of the reality of the person to every rational definition. In the infinite terms of this priority, God is known and communicable through His incomprehensible uncreated energies, remaining in essence unknown and incommunicable. That is to say, God is known only as a personal revelation (and not as an idea of active essence), only as a triune communion of persons, as an ecstatic self-offering of loving goodness. The world also is the result of the personal energies of God, a creation revealing the person of the Logos, witnessing to the Father through the grace of the Spirit, the substantiated invitation of God to relation and communion, an invitation which is personal and therefore substantiated heteroessentially.

On the contrary, the rejection of the distinction between essence and energy means exclusion of catholic-personal experience and priority of the intellect as the way of knowledge, reducing truth to a coincidence of thought with the object of thought (adaequatio rei et intellectus),²⁸ an understanding of nature and person as definitions resulting from rational abstraction: the persons have the character of relations within the essence, relations which do not characterize the persons but are identified with the persons in order to serve the logical necessity of the simplicity of the essence. Thus, finally, God is accessible only as essence, i.e. only as an object of rational search, as the necessary first mover who is unmoved, that is pure energy, and whose existence must be identified with the self-realization of the essence. The world is the result of the first mover, even as the grace of God is the result of divine essence. The only relation of the world with God is the connection of cause and effect, a connection that organically disengages God from the world: the world is made autonomous and subjected to intellectual objectification and to (useful) expediency.

The problem of the distinction between essence and energies determined definitely and finally the differentiation of the Latin West from the Orthodox East. The West rejected the distinction, desiring to protect the idea of simplicity in the divine essence, since rational thought cannot accept the antinomy of a simultaneous existential identity and otherness, a distinction that does not mean division and fragmentation. For the western mind (expressed either with the directness of Thomistic rationalism or with the subordination of the patristic texts to a priori interpretations, as in the case of Fr. Garrigues) God is defined only in terms of His essence; whatever is not essence does not belong to God; it is a creature of God, the result of divine essence. Consequently, the energies of God are either identified with the essence, which is active (actus purus), or else any external manifestation of theirs is regarded as necessarily heteroessential, i.e. a created result of the divine cause.²⁹

This means that, in the final analysis, the theosis of man, his participation in the divine life,³⁰ is impossible, since even grace, the sanctifier of the saints, is itself an effect, a result of the divine essence. It is created, even though supernatural, as western theologians have rather arbitrarily defined it since the ninth century.³¹

It is characteristic that Fr. Garrigues avoids defining divine grace as created, but insists on the effective character of grace (on the causalité de grâce) that brings about the state (habitus) of virtue. In the text of Fr. Garrigues, the state of grace is deprived of any semblance of personal participation in the personally active divine grace. The state is simply the effect of the causal character of grace and is realized as an objective change of the human intention.³² The realism of theosis for Fr. Garrigues is only a realism of intention;³³ it is understood in terms of moralistic categories,³⁴ a rationalistic improvement of the human character that has Christological content only as a pattern of the obedience of Christ.

The notion of divine energy as a causal-creative act (acte de causalité créatrice) as well as the notion of divine grace as a causal presupposition of the habit of intention (causalité de la grâce — habitus intentionnel de la grâce) exhaust, in Fr. Garrigues study, the relation of God with the world and of God with man in an entirely external and only rationally conceived aitiological connection. Out of these objectified and deterministic relations there appears for the Orthodox Christian the nightmarish danger of an impersonal acceptance of God, an ontically absolute and active essence that moves the mechanism of a deterministic philanthropy, which destroys the truth of the person.

After reading Garrigues' study, one remains with one simple question: How is it possible, especially today, for a Roman Catholic scholar to ignore the historical consequences for western Christendom of the rejection of the distinction between essence and energies? How is it possible to discover new arguments for the defense of a theological position for which the West has paid such a tragically heavy price? It is not my desire to refer to historical events, such as the drama of the Middle Ages in the West, centered upon the desacralization of the world by means of Thomistic theology, the tragic opposition on the part of a multitude of mystical and underground heresies that sought hopelessly somehow to rediscover sanctity in the created world, the austere and consistent process that led from Thomism to Descartes and from Descartes to the contemporary technological rape of physical and historical reality. The transference of the knowledge of God from the realm of direct personal manifestation through the natural energies to the level of intellectual and rational approximation of an active divine essence, had as unavoidable results the sharpest antithetical separation between the transcendent and the immanent, the banishment of God into the realm of the empirically inaccessible, the schizophrenic divorce of faith from knowledge, the successive waves of rebellion in western man against the theological presuppositions of his own civilization, the rapid fading away of religion in the West and the appearance of nihilism and irrationalism as fundamental existential categories of western man.

But the whole of this historical drama — which would require lengthy studies to be analyzed systematically and which had been foreseen by the Orthodox theologians of the East in the fourteenth century with astonishing lucidity — is being lived today by the Roman Catholic Church in its own body. During these last decades, all of us have been following with pain the tremendous weakening and disintegration of the Roman Catholic Church: its internal fragmentation, the loss of its authority, its theological disorientation. The crisis engulfs millions of people in total confusion over their personal life: without goals and without an existential hope, without a spiritual community which could serve as a psychological balance to the loneliness of the great cities, and without a vision of personal life as something other than biological survival and economic well-being.

With these given facts, one would expect Roman Catholic theologians to turn their attention to those means and to those criteria that could reveal a solution to this nightmarish crisis. If they did so, they might discover, particularly in the theology of St. Gregory Palamas and in the councils of the fourteenth century, not only the interpretation but also the solution of the drama that torments them. Instead of this, studies such as that of Fr. Garrigues show Roman Catholic theologians to be fettered to a new kind of sterile scholasticism that threatens Orthodox theologians of the so-called Neo-Palamite school with the anathemas of the Sixth Ecumenical Council (see p. 296 of Fr. Garrigues study).

Personally, I like to believe that this defensive return to scholasticism is merely an exception. The greatest asset of our theological generation is awareness that one cannot do theology on the level of abstract categories. We now know well that the crisis of our civilization is a crisis in the theological presuppositions upon which this civilization has been founded; we know that our theological views have direct and practical consequences for either the ruin, or the salvation of man. And this awareness, no matter how costly it might be, is, indeed, a great lesson.

Athens, February, 1975 (Translated from the Greek by Rev. Peter Chamberas)

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Notes

1. Dion. Areop., On Divine Names, III, P.G. 3, 869C.
2. Maximus the Confessor, Theological and Polemical Chapters, P.G. 91, 32BC.
3. Basil the Great, quoted by St. Gregory Palamas, Physical and Theological Chapters, P.G. 150, 1220D.
4. To want and how to want is not the same; nor is to see and how to see the same. For to want and to see belong to nature, and it is a qualification of all who have the same nature and belong to the same species. But how to want and how to see ... are manners by which the reality of wanting or seeing is used; it is a qualification that belongs only to the subject who wants and sees and distinguishes him from others according to the commonly accepted category of difference. Maximus the Confessor, Dialogue with Pyrrhus, P.G. 91, 292D.
5. The will of all can be demonstrated to be one in reference to nature; but the manner of movement is different. Maximus the Confessor, Theological and Polemical Chapters, P.G. 91, 25A.
6. Basil the Great, Letters, 189, P.G. 32, 696B; see also St. Maximus: While energy belongs to the one who acts, nature belongs to the one who exists, Theological Chapters, P.G. 91, 200D.
7. Scholia on On Divine Names, P.G. 4, 332CD.
8. Maximus the Confessor, Ambigua, P.G. 91, 1268AB.
9. ... (God) who is wholly participated by all the worthy in a beneficent manner. Maximus the Confessor, Ambigua, P.G. 91, 1076C.
10. Dionysius, On Divine Names, 9, P.G. 3, 825A.
11. The person deified by grace is all that God is, except the essential identity. Maximus the Confessor, To Thalassios 22, P.G. 90, 320A.
12. The created things are indicative of power and wisdom and art, but not of essence itself. Basil the Great, Against Eunomius 2, 32, P.G. 29, 648A.
13. See Maximus the Confessor, Ambigua, P.G. 91, 1257AB.
14. Maximus the Confessor, Theological Chapters 5, P.G. 90, 1377 AB.
15. See Gregory of Nyssa, On the Creation of Man, VI, P.G. 44, 140.
16. See Gregory of Nyssa, Catechetical Oration VI, P.G. 45, 27D-28A.
17. See Gregory of Nyssa, Against Eunomius I, P.G. 45, 381B.
18. Homily on I Corinthians 15, 28, P.G. 44, 1312A.
19. Gregory of Nyssa, On the Hexaemeron, P.G. 44, 73A.
20. Basil the Great, Against Eunomius, P.G. 29, 736C.
21. St. Gregory of Nyssa, On the Hexaemeron, P.G. 44, 73C: For some reason the effective power of each product is made into energy.
22. See Gregory of Nyssa, On the Hexaemeron, 7, P.G. 44, 69C and On the Soul and Resurrection, P.G. 46, 124C.
23. Gregory of Nyssa, On the Inscriptions of the Psalms, P.G. 44, 441B.
24. On the Holy Spirit, P.G. 32, 180C.
25. Isaac the Syrian, Ascetical Writings, Letter 4 (ed. Spanos), p. 384
26. Didymus the Blind, On the Holy Trinity 2, 1, P.G. 39, 452A.
27. Maximus the Confessor, To Thalassios, P.G. 90, 296BC.
28. See Thomas de Aquino, Quaest. disp. de veritate, qu. I, art. 1.
29. See Thomas de Aquino, Summa Theologica I, 25, 1; Summa contra Gentiles II, 9.
30. See the text of the Encyclical Mystici Corporis Christi of Pope Pius XII (in the publication La Foi Catholique–Textes doctrinaux du Magistère de l' Église, Paris, 1961, p. 364): Ce qu' il faut rejeter: tout mode d'union mystique par lequel les fidèles, de quelque faÕon que ce soit, dépasseraient l'ordre du créé et s'arrogeraient le divin au point que même un seul des attributs du Dieu éternel puisse leur être attribué en propre. Cf. also the eastern view recorded by Gregory of Nyssa, On the Beatitudes VII, P.G. 44, 1280C.D.: Man escapes from his own nature, becoming an immortal from a mortal that he is, and from one who has a price on his head to a priceless one, and from a temporal creature to an eternal one, being man becoming wholly god ... For if that which God is by nature, His property, is given by grace to man, then what else but a certain equality of honor is professed by virtue of the relation?
31. See M.-D. Chenu, La Théologie au douzième siècle, Paris (ed. Vrin), 1966, p. 294. See also La Foi Catholique, p. 321: La grâce est gratuite et surnaturelle, where the relative reference to the dogmatic sources of the Roman Catholic Church are cited. Also, J.-H. Nicolas, Dieu connu comme inconnu, Paris, 1966, p. 218f.
32. Op. cit., p. 289.
33. See p. 294: ...le réalisme de la divinisation: l'être intentionel n'est pas moins réel que l'être entitatif.
34. See p. 291: A partir de l'habitus de la grâce, la charité informe de l'intérieur toute la vie vertueuse de l'homme qui manifeste ainsi la ressemblance divine.

Vladimir Solovyev Critique of Absolute Dualism (Jonathan Sutton)

In the field of religious perception and of accounts of Divine-human relations Solovyov mounted a sustained attack upon what he regarded as 'absolute dualism'. His targets were Islam and Zoroastrianism, Platonism and the major faiths of the Indian spiritual Tradition, namely Buddhism and Hinduism.

HIS CRITIQUE OF ABSOLUTE DUALISM

1. Solovyov specifically objected to the Islamic interpretation of the world order (and to the similarly dualistic Zoroastrian viewpoint) on the grounds that these conceived of God's transcendence exclusively, stressing the separation between God and His creatures. Although reflection upon the transcendent aspect of God may be very salutary for the believer's spiritual life (instilling in him a due sense of awe and veneration), if the believer has·very little hope of redemption from his 'creaturely' condition, then the motivation to adhere to spiritual precepts is much diminished. Solovyov held that, as it lacked the doctrine of 'Godmanhood' (bogochelovechestvo), Islam could not offer believers in that religion such assurances of salvation as Christianity can offer.15 Because of the Incarnation of the God-man, Jesus Christ, among men, Christianity is not obliged to assert a rigid and extreme separation of the sacred and the mundane, nor of the Divine Creator and creaturely beings.

2. While Solovyov appreciated many aspects of Platonic thought, in the final analysis he criticised Plato's idealist philosophy on account of a too rigid separation of the ideal and the phenomenal spheres.

3. In Solovyov's view, the major spiritual teachings originating in India, Buddhism and Hinduism, served men well in that they expressed in very clear and powerful terms the essentially unsatisfying quality of natural, earthly existence. 16 They stressed man's susceptibility to disease, sorrow, death, the pain of being parted from pleasurable but transient experiences, and so forth. To this extent, argues Solovyov, they showed a penetrating understanding of the human condition, and the teachers of the various Indian faiths were correct in their premise that awareness of the undesirability of earthly existence could give a powerful impetus to men to make progress in the spiritual life. It is Solovyov' s thesis that this was as far as the Indians' positive, beneficial insights went. He conceded that they diagnosed men's ills and that they offered a variety of ascetic or other disciplines to assist men in overcoming suffering. However, Solovyov judged that the 'remedies' offered by the Indian spiritual philosophies, and the disciplines founded on them, yielded only pantheistic contemplation, or concentration on the Void or on 'non-being', 17 and that ultimately they entailed an irresponsible and non-compassionate, selfish renunciation of one's responsibilities towards 'the world'. This was, in his view, another form of absolute dualism, an undue separation of the spheres of 'the spiritual' and 'the secular'. As Solovyov perceived the matter, men who took up these philosophies were electing to pursue their own personal salvation and giving up the opportunity to transform and qualitatively improve secular society.

Orthodox and Roman Catholic Mysticism (N. Berdyaev)

There is an official ecclesiastical mysticism of the East and the West, an Orthodox mysticism and a Catholic mysticism. And the difference between the paths taken in the world by the Eastern Orthodox and the Catholic West can be explained by that which distinguishes them on the level of the mystical experience. There is a profound difference in the original bond in relation to God and Christ. For the Catholic West, Christ is an object, he is outside the human soul, as an instrument of inspiration and object of love and exaltation. That is why Catholic experience draws man up to God. The Catholic soul is Gothic. The cold unite in it with passion. The concrete, evangelical image of the Christ, the Passion of Christ are intimately close to the Catholic soul. The Catholic soul is passionately in love with Christ; Trembling with love for him, they receives stigmata on their own body. The Catholic mystic is penetrated with sensuality, languishes and dispel, for there is no other path than that to where his sensitive imagination takes him. The anthropological current reaches here its highest tension. The Catholic soul cries out: "Jesus, my Jesus, my neighbor, my beloved." The soul rushes toward him, but God does not enter into it: for this reason the Catholic soul is cold, as it is cold also in his temple. God does not descend to this or that. Instead, the soul, passionately, voluptuously, ascends in its search, tends toward its object and towards the target of its love. The Catholic mystique is romantic and full of romantic languor. It is a hungry mystique, which ignores satiety; he does not know marriage but only voluptuously. Now, this conception of God as an object, as the term of an aspiration, is precisely that which creates the external dynamism of Catholics. The Catholic experience created a culture marked strongly by that burning desire of God. Catholic energy spread through all the paths of history, and this was because, instead of apprehending God in the human heart, it was this human heart that threw itself towards God and sought it through the paths of a wordly dynamic. Catholic experience was born of spiritual hunger and from the unsatisfied religious passion, beauty.

For the Orthodox East, Christ is a subject, he is immanent to the human soul; The soul apprehends the Christ within itself, in the depth of the heart. The loving desire of Christ and his waiting are, therefore, impossible in the orthodox mysticism. He does not tend to God but dissolves in Him. The orthodox temple, like the soul, is the opposite of the Gothic: there is neither cold nor passion in it. In orthodoxy, there is a warm temperature, until it is warm. The evangelical and concrete image of the Christ does not appear there so close. Orthodoxy regards sensuality as a "sortilege" and rejects the imagination as a chimerical way. No Orthodox shouts, "My Jesus, my neighbor, my beloved." But in the temple and in the orthodox soul, the Christ penetrates and warm them. And there is no languish passion there. Orthodoxy is not romantic, but realistic and sober. Temperance is the mystical path of orthodoxy. Orthodoxy is satiated, filled spiritually, and its experience is a marriage and not a love relationship. God understood as subject, conceived in the depth of the human heart, the absosolutely inner spirituality of that bond does not create an outward dynamism, it is turned exclusively towards an inner union. This experience of orthodox mysticism is therefore not welcoming to culture, it does not create beauty. It seems to be mute to the outside world. The orthodox energy will not be scattered, then, by the historical paths, it will not create in the external. This difference of paths taken by religious experience has a deep secret, and both paths are authentically Christian.

There is an official orthodox mysticism and an official catholic mysticism, but the very nature of mysticism is supra-confessional. The mystique lies at a deeper level than the confessional ecclesiastical dispersions and antinomies. In any case, the different types of mystical experience can also engender different ecclesiastical types. The deepening the mysticism it can renew the life of the Church, combat its obvious necrosis. The living roots of ecclesiastical life are in mysticism. The effective priesthood remains on the surface, on the periphery; the Church on the physical plane of history is always peripheric. And the mystics have not only to leave this peripheral region to revive the religious life but to explore everything that involves the mysticism [...]. For there is a mystical experience that tends to return to nothingness and the initial repose, within the divinity, which renounces movement, the creative dynamism, that is, the very meaning of divine and worldly development. [...]

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Existe una mística eclesiástica oficial del Oriente y del Occidente, una mística ortodoxa y una mística católica. Y la diferencia entre los caminos tomados en el mundo por el Oriente ortodoxo y el Occidente católico se pueden explicar por aquello que los distingue en el plano de la experiencia mística. Hay una diferencia profunda en el vínculo original respecto de Dios y del Cristo. Para el Occidente católico, el Cristo es objeto, está fuera del alma humana, en calidad de instrumento de la inspiración y objeto de amor y de exaltación. Por eso la experiencia católica arrastra al hombre hacia la altura, hacia Dios. El alma católica es gótica. El frío se une en ella con la pasión. La imagen concreta, evangélica, del Cristo, la Pasión del Cristo están íntimamente próximas al alma católica. El alma católica está apasionadamente enamorada del Cristo; tiembla de amor por Él, recibe sobre su propio cuerpo los estigmas. La mística católica está penetrada de sensualidad, languidece y se desvanece, para ella no existe otro camino que aquél hacia donde la lleva su imaginación sensible. La corriente antropológica llega allí a su tensión más elevada. El alma católica clama: "Jesús, Jesús mío, mi prójimo, mi amado". Se lanza hacia él, pero Dios no penetra en ella: por ello el alma católica tiene frío, como hace frío también en su templo. Dios no desciende ni a éste ni a aquélla. En cambio, el alma, apasionadamente, voluptuosamente, sube en su busca, tiende hacia su objeto y hacia el blanco de su amor. La mística católica es romántica y está llena de romántica languidez. Es una mística hambrienta, que ignora la saciedad; no conoce el matrimonio sino sólo la voluptuosidad. Ahora bien, esta concepción de Dios como objeto, en tanto término de una aspiración, es precisamente la que crea el dinamismo exterior del cato-licismo. La experiencia católica creó una cultura mar-cada fuertemente por ese candente deseo de Dios. La energía católica se esparció por todos los caminos de la historia, y ello fue porque, en lugar de aprehender a Dios en el corazón humano, fue este corazón humano el que se lanzaba hacia Dios y lo buscaba por los cami-nos de una dinámica mundanal. La experiencia católica hizo nacer del hambre espiritual y de la pasión religiosa insatisfecha, la belleza.

Para el Oriente pravoeslavo, el Cristo es un sujeto, es inmanente al alma humana; el alma aprehende al Cristo en el interior de ella misma, en la profundidad del cora-zón. El deseo amoroso del Cristo y su espera son, pues, imposibles en la mística pravoeslava. No tiende a Dios sino que se disuelve en él. El templo ortodoxo, como el alma, es todo lo contrario del gótico: no hay en él ni frío ni pasión. En la ortodoxia, hay una temperatura tibia, hasta hace calor. La imagen evangélica y concreta del Cristo no aparece allí tan próxima. La ortodoxia con-sidera la sensualidad como un "sortilegio" y rechaza la imaginación como una vía quimérica. Ningún ortodoxo grita: "Jesús mío, mi prójimo, mi bien amado". Pero en el templo y en el alma pravoeslavas, el Cristo pe-netra y los caldea. Y no existe allí ninguna pasión lán-guideciente. La ortodoxia no es romántica, sino realista y sobria. La temperancia es el camino místico de la orto-doxia. La ortodoxia está saciada, colmada espiritualmen-te, y su experiencia es un matrimonio y no una relación de amor. Entendido Dios, como sujeto, concebido en la profundidad del corazón humano, la espiritualidad ab-solutamente interior de ese vinculo no crea un dinamis-mo exterior, está vuelta exclusivamente hacia una unión interna. Esta experiencia de la mística ortodoxa no es, pues, acogedora para la cultura, no crea la belleza. Parecería estar muda para el mundo exterior. La energía ortodoxa no se esparcerá, pues, por los caminos históri-cos, no creará en lo externo. Esta diferencia de las sendas tomadas por la experiencia religiosa encierra un secreto profundo, y ambos caminos son auténticamente cris-tianos.

Hay una mística oficial pravoeslava y una mística oficial católica, pero la naturaleza misma de la mística es supraconfesional. La mística se encuentra en un nivel más profundo que las dispersiones y las antinomias ecle-siásticas confesionales. De todas maneras, los distintos tipos de la experiencia mística pueden engendrar tam-bién tipos eclesiásticos diferentes. La profundización de la mística puede renovar la vida de la Iglesia, combatir su necrosis evidente. Las raíces vivientes de la vida eclesiástica están en la mística. El sacerdocio efectivo se queda en la superficie, en la periferia: la Iglesia encar-nada en el plano físico de la historia es siempre peri-férica. Y los místicos tienen no sólo que salir de esta región periférica para revivificar la vida religiosa sino para explorar todo lo que implica la mística y que quizá tenga que ser rechazado. Porque existe una experiencia mística que tiende a retornar hacia la nada y el reposo inicial, al seno de la divinidad, que renuncia al movi-miento, a la dinámica creadora, es decir, a la significa-ción misma del desarrollo divino y mundanal. Es que, hasta el presente, la mística había nacido al azar de los individualismos particulares, había permanecido secreta, clandestina. En la actualidad han llegado los tiempos de una mística universal, objetiva y plenamente reve-lada. La revelación de la mística es característica de nuestra época, y la época implica la necesidad de reco-nocer qué mística puede ser dirigida hacia un devenir creador.

from the book The Meaning of the Creative Act

Aleksey F. Losev on Palamite disputes

"Essays on Ancient Symbolism and Mythology" is a lengthy book consisting of more than 900 pages. It ends with a chapter dedicated to the discussion of theological issues, including the criticism of Barlaam's point of view and the praise of the teaching of St. Gregory Palamas. The Russian philosopher stresses several important points concerning the fundamental differences between the Byzantine theologians. The first of all is Platonism. According to Losev, Barlaam, who studied the works of Aristotle in the West (and in Latin translations that were made under the influence of Neo-Platonism), inherited the principles of Western tradition and sought to combine Christianity with Platonic philosophy. For Losev, such strategy is absolutely unacceptable because: "Platonism in its theory of intelligent ascent does not concern matters of intimate confession, repentance, and of a struggle, i.e., the struggle with sinful thoughts." (Losev, 1993, p.871). The abstract mode of thought prevailed into the philosophical practice of ancient thinkers; there was no fire of the passions and inherent contradictions in one's personality. "Hesychasm recognizes the possibility of ascent", - Losev says, - "only under these conditions (confession and repentance till to the innermost intimacy and depth etc.), for Plato and Plotinus this is not required" (Losev, 1993, p. 871). The philosophical doctrine of Platonism, according to Losev, asserts "a gaze which sees only the body in being, and actually does not feel the fullness of internal life and living participation in the life and fate of personality" (Losev, 1993, p. 870). The Platonic abstract concept of body doesn't allow us to understand the integrity of human personality. Losev proposes a paradoxical formula: "Platonism is a-physiological, because it is corporeal; mystical Orthodoxy is cordial, because it is personal" (Losev, 1993, p. 871). In this sense, only one idea is absent in the philosophy of Plato — the idea of Salvation.

The second point of disagreement between followers of Barlaam and Palamas is that Barlaam visited Renaissance Italy and incorporated the ideas of Western thinkers into his theory. He rejected the practice of mental prayer because he did not believe in any real possibility of communication with God. The Russian philosopher reminds that in Barlaam's understanding "the God as an independent being and essence remained per se as an absolute unknown, and Energies, because of their intelligibility had to be completely separated from God, and had to be considered as created" (Losev, 1993, p. 872). On the one hand it was agnosticism in relation to God; on the other, it was a real dualism in the way that we are to understand Divine Energy. In Losev's opinion, this kind of interpretation was an ill-fated perspective arising out of the development of Western metaphysics. In this regard, the Russian scholar notes that "under the amplification of modem Rationalism, the Dualism of Barlaamism is turned into a Cartesianism and Occasionalism; under the amplification of Subjectivity is turned into a Kantianism; under the condition of weakening of the sense of Transcendence is turned into a Positivism, and so on" (Losev, 1993, p. 873). From this point of view, the confrontation between Palamism and Barlaamism can be seen as developing in opposite directions relative to the development of European culture. In Losev's words: "In Palamism, i.e., in strict Byzantinism, the God is an absolutely unfathomable abyss, who symbolically manifested Himself in certain energy and a name; in Barlaamism, i.e., in the Renaissance philosophy of the West, the God is essentially an abstract concept: in fact there is no God; there are only godless creatures" (Losev, 1993, p. 874).

It should be stressed that Losev discusses other dogmatic and ecclesiastical issues and religious differences among two directions in Christianity. In his interpretation, Catholicism, based on Aristotelian philosophy, combined idealism and corporeality, and thus, is subordinated to the creation that is characteristically reflected in the sculptures of Christ within the Medieval Gothic churches. Within the Orthodox tradition the transformation of the world came by music, eloquence and fine arts, and its attributes are the ringing of church bells and the prayerful contemplation with the use of icons. Furthermore, Losev could not accept the peculiar erotomania of the Medieval Catholic nuns' mystical visions. He believed that these revelations were initiated by sinful temptations; in this regard, he paid attention to the "sacred silence" of the Orthodox mysticism of Hesychasm.

In general, the Russian philosopher emphasised the difference between the ontologism of the East and the psychologism of the West that was shaped and determined by the writings of St. Augustine. If (according to Losev) in the Western ascetic Revelation there is a search for the path to truth with different inner feelings and personal attitudes, for the Orthodox monk it is always a concrete fact and a with certainty adoption of truth. Thus, it is very important that in the conditions of persecution by the Soviet state Losev turned to Palamism, to the Orthodox concept of Divine Energy, while his starting point was the syncretism of Russian religious philosophy and Solovyev's conception of Pan-unity; and he had done this before the publication of the pro-Palamism famous works of Russian theologians in emigration. "Ascetic and Theological Teaching of St. Gregory Palamas" of Hieromonk Vasiliy (Krivoshein) was published in 1936 and "The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church" by Vladimir Lossky appeared in 1944. Losev finished his studies of Palamite disputes very simply: he published the Acts of Constantinople Council (1351) against Barlaam and Akindynos in his own Russian translation.

Triune God: Incomprehensible But Knowable-The Philosophical and Theological Significance of St Gregory Palamas for Contemporary Philosophy and Theology -  Constantinos Athanasopoulos

Rene Guénon and Nikolai Berdyaev (Robin Waterfield)

It is quite striking how Guenon and Berdyaev complement one another. Guenon is detached, objective, and wholeheartedly concerned with the Principial Truth, which alone can give reality and meaning to the phenomenal world; Berdyaev, emotional as only a Slav can be, is subjective and passionately concerned with individual man's search for meaning in concrete terms, personal and inescapably related to his situation as the centerpiece of the Great Triad. In the symbolism of ancient Rome, they represent the two faces of Janus, the oldest of the gods and the holiest and most exalted, who faced both ways, towards and away from man, and so eminently represented man's special status vis-a-vis the eternal world. This twofold stance reminds us that, as Berdyaev said,

Knowledge of the divine life is not attainable by means of abstract philosophical thought ... but only by means of a con-crete myth which conceives the divine life as a passionate destiny of concrete and active persons, the divine Hypostases.

This at first sight seems very far from Guenon's impersonal insistence on shedding all personal emotional elements, of which one must be stripped if one is to achieve that 'pure intellectual intuition' which he sees as the sole way of attainment. But this very stripping and detachment is itself an entirely personal undertaking and one which demands a total personal commitment. If by Berdyaev's 'concrete myth' we understand, as I think we are entitled to, Guenon's understanding of the function of all dogmatic formulations and religious doctrines, we an understand the necessity of anthropomorphic language and the symbolic representation of Principial Thoth by means of rites and ceremonies, which are, as it were, its local dress and language. Moreover, the entire contents of the phe-nomenal world are a reflection of pan of the contents of the all in all, the Pleroma. Their manifestation can by symbolically described as the drama enacted between God and Himself, the Son of Man is also the Son of God.

 But as Berdyaev says, all 'this is in the sphere of mythology: an attempt to express the inexpressible, for no words are adequate here. However, provided we remain aware that words can be no more than an approximation, at least we do the best we an, and, provided we constantly recall their true nature as clothes, not the body clothed, then in them we possess a valid and authentic key to the mystery of the metaphysics of history.

Guenon and Berdyaev, who came from widely different back-grounds, were both, to borrow a phrase from Nietzsche 'aristocratic radical', aristocratic not by birth or lineage but through being men of are intellectual and spiritual quality who naturally felt themselves to be members of a human elite. We are aristocrats in the inner man, as Eckhart says, by virtue of that true self, the Funkelein or Scintilla, the Divine Spark, that which 'I' hear and heed, as in Psalm as: Audiam qui Ioquiter in me, dominus Deus (I hear who speaks within me, the Lord God).

Both Guenon and Berdyaev possessed an all-embracing concern for the fate of humanity and a humble perseverance in sharing their insights. Both left far behind the cultural and religious environments in which they were raised and fearlessly followed the search for truth wherever it led them. Both were frequently misunderstood by those whom they had left behind, but nevertheless never became resentful or arrogant. They were in Paris at the same time but I have found no evidence that they ever met, though they must have been aware of one another's writings. Guenon, who was not noticeably lenient towards Christian thought in its degenerate state, neverthe-less believed that the Eastern Church had retained somewhat more of the authentic tradition than the West. A comparative study of their work would surely prove fruitful.

Both believed that it was possible for man here and now to encounter God or Principial Truth, and Guenon would surely have agreed with Berdyaev when he wrote,

What is needed is not so much to set certain ends before one and to realize them in the practical world making use of evil means in doing so. as to display, express and radiate a creative energy of one's own, in knowledge, in love, in a sense of community, in freedom and in beauty. and to be self-determined in the strength of one's awareness of the end

All this is, for this student at least, implicit in the whole of Guenon's writings, the study of which remains sterile and mere intellectual trilling unless it motivates us to search for the Ultimate Reality and live it as we search for it. This will involve above all the recognition that while, as Guenon always maintained, it is absolutely necessary to be an active participant in one of the great traditional religions, nevertheless all systems, dogmas, doctrinal and credal formulations are of secondary importance in that they are only different ways of viewing the Ultimate Truth. By their very nature they can only be landmarks or boundary fences defining one's position, rather than infallible and total enunciation of the truth.

The search for deliverance alone can give meaning to the history of the individual, and so, collectively to the history of a nation or a civilization. Deliverance, not from the fatigues and constraints of our earthly life, but from illusion and falsehood: the attainment of what in Hindu terminology is called moksha and in the Christian tradition Beatific Vision, defined by Karl Rahner as

the full and definitive experience of the direct self-communication of God himself to the individual human being when by free grace, God's will has become absolute and attained its full realixation.


From "René Guénon and the Future of the West: The Life and Writings of a 20th-Century Metaphysician" by Robin Waterfield

Byzantine Esotericism vs Western Esotericism

Byzantium

1. Why should a student of Western esotericism pay attention to Byzantium? 

2. What does “esoteric” mean in Byzantium? 

3. Byzantine Esotericism versus Western Esotericism
4. Hellenic Esotericism in Byzantium
5. Orthodox Christian Esotericism in Byzantium

Byzantium has been defined by Western scholars in many different ways, by many different criteria and for many specific purposes. The later Byzantines themselves, however, found their world easy to define. Its irreducible cultural center consisted of two things: the doctrines and practices of the Orthodox Church, on the one hand; and on the other, the Greek language. It was a Byzantine’s mastery of the Greek language that distinguished him from the barbarian; it was his adherence to the Orthodox Church that distinguished him from the schismatic, the heretic, the pagan, and other such kinds of people. 

But this was only the center of Byzantium, for Greek texts had also been translated into “barbarian” tongues. Thus Byzantium, more loosely defined, also encompassed other Christian peoples who were Orthodox in their doctrine and practice, but who had long celebrated the liturgy and read the Bible in languages other than Greek (notably, in Old Georgian and Old Slavonic). Moreover, in every culture there are always dissidents, and so Byzantium also contained individuals or groups of people who were not Orthodox, and others who were not even Christian.

Byzantium, so defined, first began to take shape during the fourth century CE on the territory of the Eastern Roman Empire. In the fifth century two major schisms divided the supra-national, multilingual Christian world into three disjunct communions: the non-Ephesian Church in Persia, the several non-Chalcedonian Churches in various lands of the East, and the combined Orthodox and Catholic Churches of Byzantium and Rome. In the seventh and later centuries Islam conquered large parts of the Byzantine Empire, as well as most of the lands where the non-Ephesian and non-Chalcedonian Churches were at home. In the eleventh century another schism broke the communion that had hitherto prevailed between the Orthodox Churches and the Roman Catholic Church, and the sack of Constantinople in 1204 by the Fourth Crusade widened this breach into a nearly unbridgeable chasm. Taken together, these developments massively reduced the linguistic and cultural variety of Byzantium, cutting it off from most of the Christian peoples that had long used Old Syriac, Old Armenian, Coptic, Old Ethiopic and Latin as their languages of liturgy and culture. On the other hand, Byzantium was able to extend its boundaries northwards, with the Christianization of Bulgaria in the ninth century, of Russia toward the end of the tenth century, and of other South Slavic realms in later centuries. In 1453, however, the last fortress of the Eastern Roman Empire, Constantinople itself, fell to an Islamic army, and the last Christian Emperor of Rome died fighting on its walls. Yet even after 1453 Byzantium continued to exist, albeit in attenuation, as a subjugated culture in Greek-speaking lands and as a transplanted culture in Orthodox Slavic lands.

1. Why should a Student of Western Esotericism Pay any Attention to Byzantium?

There are at least three answers to this question, each more compelling than the previous one. Firstly, most of the oldest foundation texts of Western esotericism – the dialogues and letters of Plato, the works of the Neoplatonic philosophers [→Neoplatonism] and theurgists (above all, Iamblichus’s treatise On the Mysteries of the Egyptians), the Chaldaean Oracles, the manuals of the Hellenic astrologers [→ Astrology] and alchemists [→ Alchemy], the Corpus Hermeticum [→ Hermetic Literature], the writings of pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, various Gnostic texts, and so on – were not only composed in Greek, but also have come down to us almost entirely through Byzantine channels of transmission, whether they are still extant in the original Greek or have now survived only in the form of old translations from lost Greek originals. Secondly, Byzantium never experienced – and never needed to experience – the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Counter- Reformation, or the Enlightenment. It is these four successive cultural movements that gave Western esotericism all of its present defining characteristics (as specified by Faivre 1994, 10-15), but the specified characteristics cannot serve to define Byzantine Esotericism.Thirdly, over many centuries profound and subtle differences in doctrine and practice developed between Christianity in Byzantium and Christianity in Western Europe. In consequence, esoteric doctrines and practices came to occupy a different position and to play a different role in the Orthodox Churches of Byzantium than they did in the Catholic Church of Western Europe.

Because of these differences, one might legitimately ask whether Byzantine esotericism even exists. It does. Indeed, it is convenient to speak of two distinct Byzantine esotericisms. One of them may be termed Orthodox Christian esotericism. For over 1500 years this esotericism has been widely cultivated throughout the Byzantine world, especially in the great monasteries of the Orthodox Church such as those of Mt. Athos and Mt. Sinai. The other may be termed Hellenic esotericism. It has always drawn its inspiration directly from the pagan texts and traditions of Neoplatonic philosophy and theurgy. Therefore it has always been more or less problematic in Christian Byzantium. After the mandatory Christianization of all Byzantines in the sixth century, Hellenic esotericism seems to have been cultivated only sporadically, by a mere handful of highly educated Byzantines. Each of these two Byzantine esotericisms shares some important features with Western esotericism, although neither possesses all of the significant defining features of the latter (always here referring to Faivre’s definition). 

These differences between esotericism in Byzantium and esotericism in Western Europe enable a sensitive scholar to arrive at a deeper understanding of the latter by contrasting it with the former: light from the East often throws into very sharp relief, indeed, what could otherwise be only dimly seen in the West. Yet for this to occur, one must first become familiar with each kind of Byzantine esotericism on its own terms, not viewing it solely in terms of Western categories and theories. One must also be careful to distinguish genuine Byzantine esotericism from various esoteric currents that have claimed to be Byzantine, but in fact have other historical roots. The most wide-spread of all these pseudo-Byzantine esotericisms are the ones pertaining to Sophia, the Wisdom of God. Though they are usually presented as genuine old esoteric traditions of the Orthodox Church, in point of historical fact they derive directly or indirectly from the work of the eccentric Russian lay theologian, Vladimir Sergeevich Solov’ëv (1853-1900), who combined Orthodox Christian esotericism with elements of two other traditions. One of these other traditions was Western-European Sophiology (cf. → Jacob Boehme or → Gottfried Arnold), which came to Russia through Freemasonic [→ Freemasonry] and Rosicrucian [→ Rosi- crucianism] channels during the eighteenth century and had an enormous impact on Russian spirituality. The other tradition was Late Antique → Gnosticism, insofar as it had been recovered by nineteenth-century scholarship. Solov’ëv’s synthesis of these three disparate traditions was presented with such skill and power, and satisfied the needs of its era so well, that it was believed to represent an authentic Byzantine esoteric teaching by many well-educated Orthodox laymen, and even by a few influential clerical theologians of the Orthodox Church.

2. What does “Esoteric” Mean in Byzantium?

To understand Byzantine esotericism in its own terms, we must begin with the word esoteric itself. In ancient Greek, the opposed adjectives §svterikOw (esoteric) and §jvterikOw (exoteric) were relatively uncommon. The adjective §jvterikOw seems to have been the older of the two, originally meaning “exterior” or “foreign”. It was derived from the adjective §j≈terow (outer), which was opposed to §s≈terow (inner); and those words in turn were derived from the twin adverbs ¶jv (outer) and ¶sv (inner). The adjective §svterikOw seems to have been coined from §jvterikOw in order to create a pair of technical terms in philosophy. In philosophy, the use of these terms was originally limited to two contexts. They were used, first of all, to label the two orders into which the philosopher-magician Pythagoras (according to several later sources) appears to have divided his disciples: his exoteric disciples were those who might hear the master’s teaching only in silence, never actually seeing him as he spoke from behind a curtain, whereas his esoteric disciples, tested by five years of silence, were privileged to go behind the curtain, to see Pythagoras himself and to speak with him (Hippolytus of Rome, Refutatio omnium haeresium I.2; Origen, Contra Celsum I.7; Iamblichus, De vita Pythagorica 17, 31, 32). Somewhat later, the writings of the philosopher Aristotle were said to have been divided into two classes: his exoteric writings were available for all to read, whereas his esoteric writings were restricted to members of his school (Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis V.9, cf. Lucian, Vitarum auctio 26, Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae XX.5; as it happens, Aristotle’s exoteric writings survive only as fragments; it is his esoteric treatises that have come down to us). In each case, whether applied to pupils or to treatises, the two terms express an opposition between the outer, common world of the general public and the inner, restricted world of favored or accepted students. Even later, Galen termed certain Stoic teachings esoteric (De Hippocratis et Platonis placitis III.4). 

Under the influence of Christianity the opposition between §svterikOw and §jvterikOw was subtly altered. Although neither word occurs anywhere in the Greek Bible – neither in the Septuagint Old Testament nor in the Greek New Testament –, St. Paul (II Cor. 4:16) speaks of ı ¶sv enyrvpow (the inward man) and ı ¶jv enyrvpow (the outward man), opposing the spiritual to the mundane; later, some pagans came to use the same phrases with similar meanings. Henceforth esoteric people in the original sense of the term – privileged students – are implicitly also distinguished by their deeper spirituality, and esoteric writings – treatises restricted to such students – are implicitly also writings that convey deeper spiritual truths; the exoteric, in contrast, are common and mundane. The Neoplatonists, too, used the terms in this broader sense, e.g. Iamblichus in his Protrepticus (1, 4, 21), as does Origen with reference to Christian doctrines in his Contra Celsum (III.37). Moreover, in another of his works Iamblichus divides doctrines into exoteric and esoteric, that is, into =hta (effable) and erE=hta (ineffable) (De communi mathematica scientia 18). This idea that the deepest spiritual truths are not only esoteric, but also ineffable, that is, they are inherently beyond the power of any language to express, colors all subsequent use of the term esoteric in Byzantium.

3 . Byzantine Esotericism Versus Western Esotericism

In Western Europe, too, there were texts and people, doctrines and practices that a Byzantine

observer might have labeled esoteric. Even so, the borrowed words esotericus and exotericus seem to have been hardly ever used in Ancient and Medieval Latin. When they were used before and during the Renaissance, they seem to be have been used almost exactly as their Greek equivalents were in Byzantium, although perhaps sometimes without the Neoplatonic association between the esoteric and the ineffable.

Beginning with the Renaissance, however, the term esotericus came to be used more commonly in the West. Yet as its use grew, it acquired a new connotation, which the corresponding Greek word lacked: henceforth whatever was esoteric was necessarily opposed in one way or another to the prevailing judgement of the generally recognized experts. Thus in the West esotericists became proponents of rejected or forgotten knowledge (wrongly rejected or forgotten, they would claim), and Western esotericism eventually became to lapse into contemporary jargon for a moment – a radical challenge to the “dominant paradigm” of its age, a form of “counter-culture.

In the Byzantine world, by contrast, Orthodox Christian Esotericism always remained a fully integrated part of the “dominant paradigm”, and never formed the nucleus of any Byzantine “counter-culture”. This contrast arose largely because of developments in Western Europe, not in Byzantium. During the final centuries of the Middle Ages, Aristotelian modes of knowledge and investigation came to dominate all the great universities and to shape the programs of education for all the learned professions. As a consequence of this, Platonic and esoteric modes of knowledge and investigation were widely rejected by these same universities and professions, and could be cultivated only outside of these institutions. Although the Renaissance challenged the dominance of Aristotle in the schools and professions, its challenge was only partly successful (chiefly in the liberal arts). Soon the Reformation and Counter-Reformation developed their own competing Protestant and Catholic forms of Aristotelian scholasticism. Also, from the late Middle Ages onward, the recovery of Roman law encouraged the development of powerful judicial institutions designed to investigate and repress all forms of deviance and dissidence. Individual or uncommon kinds of spirituality or → mysticism that had long been unchallenged now came to be severely repressed by the newly codified Protestant and Catholic orthodoxies, and this repression continued until the Enlightenment, which had its own radical views on the separation between Church and State. Despite its strong anti-ecclesiastical tendencies, the Enlightenment continued to reject Platonic modes of knowledge – along with → magic, occult philosophy [→ occult / occultism] and esoteric studies – as inconsistent with its own Cartesian principles, severely criticizing such things as works of deceit, delusion and folly. From this time onward, Western esotericism could only be cultivated as a radical challenge to the schools and professions, as a kind of counter-epistemology.

In Byzantium, however, everything was on a much smaller scale, especially during the latter centuries of its independence. Its schools and professions were less developed as institutions, Aristotle was never strongly privileged over Plato, and the line between Church and State was never as sharply drawn as it had long been in the West. Only among the very few Byzantine intellectuals who studied Hellenic esotericism after the sixth century does there seem to have been anything remotely like the Western impulse toward a counter-culture. It is because of this likeness that we shall examine Hellenic esotericism first.

4 . Hellenic Esotericism in Byzantium

Hellenic esotericism drew its inspiration from the same Greek authors, texts and practices that originally nourished Western esoteric studies: from Plato, the pre-Byzantine Neoplatonists such as Plotinus, Porphyry and Iamblichus, the Chaldaean Oracles, the Corpus Hermeticum and the other writings ascribed to → Hermes Trismegistus, astrologers such as Ptolemy, and alchemists such as Theosebia and →Zosimos of Panopolis. In another key, it also used manuals of divination [→ Divinatory Arts], books of omens, treatises on the construction of →amulets and talismans, the recipes of the Kyranides, and even a few texts of demonic ritual magic such as Solomon’s Magical Treatise (’ApotelesmatikO pragmate.a Salom≈ntow) a Greek work related to the Western Clavicula Salomonis), and the Testament of Solomon.

From the late fourth through the sixth century, of course, many highly educated Greeks not only remained pagan, but also studied the above-mentioned texts (and other texts of the same sort that have now been lost). Among these men and women were Maximus of Ephesus and his disciple the Emperor Julian, Plutarch the Neoplatonist and his daughter Asclepiogeneia, and finally Proclus (cf. Marinus, Vita Procli 28). During those few centuries it was still lawful to be pagan in Byzantium, and pagans still could and did cultivate Hellenic esotericism, or even practice theurgy, without having to worry overmuch about the Church’s censure.

Even after the sixth century, of course, some of these traditions survived in attenuated form, generally among less well educated Byzantines, who did not always know which notions and ideas about demons had been accepted by the Orthodox Church, and which had been rejected; or which exorcisms and small rites were permitted, which forbidden. Thus there arose what Richard Greenfield has termed ‘alternative traditions of belief and practice’ about demons, in contrast to the well-defined ‘standard tradition’ of the Orthodox Church; there are also alternative traditions for other rites and rituals. These alternative traditions, of course, were not clearly distinguished from the standard tradition by the masses, but what may surprise is the extent (as Greenfield has shown) to which even educated Byzantines combined the standard and alternative traditions during the last centuries of Byzantine independence. However, this was simply a matter of ignorance or confusion, not a deliberate foray into forbidden territory. Deliberate forays into forbidden territory remained rare, even in the late Byzantine period. 

No more than a handful of named Byzantines are known to have made a serious study of Hellenic esotericism after the final repression of paganism in the 6th century. The best known are Michael Psellus in the eleventh century and Georgios Gemistos Plethon in the 15th. However, there must have been others whose names have not come down to us, but for whom the various extant manuscripts of the relevant Greek texts were copied during the last centuries of Byzantine independence.

Michael Psellus (1018-1081) was one of the greatest polymaths in all Byzantine history, even serving for a time as a sort of philosopher-in-residence to the Imperial court. His surviving works treat history, law, rhetoric, logic, Platonic philosophy, theology – and include not quite a dozen short theoretical tracts on demonology, the Corpus Hermeticum, the Chaldaean Oracles and theurgy! His principal sources seem to have been various works (some now lost) by Porphyry, Iamblichus and Proclus on these subjects. Indeed, Iamblichus’s long work On the Mysteries of the Egyptians may owe its survival to Psellus’s efforts, for he appears to have read it, and all extant manuscripts appear to descend from a single manuscript (now lost) that had been copied during or not long after his lifetime and also contained some of his treatises on esoteric themes. Yet despite his esoteric interests, Psellus remained thoroughly Christian in his own eyes, and in some of his writings justified such studies from a Christian perspective.

Georgios Gemistos Plethon (ca. 1360-1452) had many of the same esoteric interests as Psellus, but pursued them to a much more radical conclusion, for in his old age he went so far as to argue in favor of restoring Neoplatonic paganism and theurgy in place of Christianity. The work in which he made his strongest arguments for this, On Laws, was burned shortly after his death by order of Patriarch Gennadius II Scholarius, but significant fragments of it have survived (thanks in part to extracts made during Plethon’s lifetime by several interested friends and students). Here and in other writings Plethon displays considerable interest in the Chaldaean Oracles, but the only source that he has for them is one of Psellus’s commentaries on them. By the 15th century almost every earlier source – not only the complete Chaldaean Oracles themselves, but also various Neoplatonic commentaries on them – seems to have been lost.

When Plethon was almost 80 years old, he attended the great ecclesiastical council that met at Ferrara and Florence in 1438-1439. Although his impact on the council’s proceedings was relatively slight, he was able to meet a number of Florentine scholars and statesmen, and to impress them greatly with his passion for Plato and the Neoplatonists. Cosimo de’ Medici’s Platonic Academy owes something to Plethon’s inspiration, as does the program of Latin translations from the Greek that Cosimo de’ Medici commissioned from → Marsilio Ficino. Ficino’s translations, it should be noted, included the works of Plato and Plotinus, the Corpus Hermeticum, Iamblichus’s On the Mysteries of the Egyptians (to which were appended translations of several short works by Porphyry, Proclus and Michael Psellus), and two of the works of pseudo- Dionysius the Areopagite (The Divine Names and The Mystical Theology) – in short, many of the most important Greek foundation texts of Western esotericism.

5. Orthodox Christian Esotericism in Byzantium

Although Hellenic esotericism developed somewhat in opposition to the prevailing norms of Byzantine culture, Orthodox Christian esotericism developed very much in agreement with these same norms, in sharp contrast to Western esotericism since the Renaissance. As noted above, this contrast owes much to specific developments in the cultural history of Western Europe. Yet the ease with which Orthodox Christian esotericism accommodated itself to the norms of Byzantine culture has a lot to do with certain characteristic features of the Orthodox Church, in particular, with some specific patterns of Byzantine liturgy and worship, with the privileged position that apophatic theology is given over cataphatic theology, and with the doctrine of theosis, or deification. We must consider these three points as we seek to present

Orthodox Christian esotericism in its own terms.

One of the most significant characteristics of the Orthodox Church, for our purposes, is that a priest does not celebrate the eucharist by or for himself alone, apart from any congregation. This is a point of eucharistic theology and canon law. However, it is also a matter of simple necessity, for the worship of the Orthodox Church in all its complex fullness is the cooperative work of several different classes of people, lay as well as ordained – priests, deacons, rectors, singers, laity, and so forth – and the prescribed texts are scattered among a considerable number of liturgical books, several of which must be used together during any service. In the course of an entire year’s worship, most of the texts in these various books must be woven together in a very complicated pattern. This pattern, moreover, changes somewhat from year to year according to the date of Easter, which moves back and forth along a range of thirty-five consecutive days according to a complex cycle that lasts 532 years from start to finish.

Instead of liturgical work, what the Orthodox Christian – whether a priest or not – does in solitude is to pray. Even though a near-by church may happen to be unlocked and empty, the traditional place for private prayers remains one’s home, one’s room or one’s monastic cell. Even a parish priest – who is a married man – will use his home for this purpose, and a priest-monk will use his cell (in the Orthodox Churches most monks are not priests).

There is nothing, therefore, anywhere in the traditional practice of the Orthodox Church that corresponds very well to a Catholic priest as he celebrates a Low Mass by himself from a Missal, or as he reads his daily office from a Breviary in private, or as he offers up his personal prayers before a consecrated altar in solitude. This Catholic pattern has greatly influenced Western esoteric practices, which as often as not employs a consecrated altar before which initiates work their esoteric rituals in private and in a somewhat priestly manner. In Orthodox Christian esotericism, however, this priestly pattern played no role: rather, the dominant pattern was that of a solitary monk at prayer in his unadorned cell. In principle, therefore, Orthodox Christian esotericism does not need either ceremonies or ceremonial objects as foci for its practice. Additionally, it is an esotericism of solitude that one ideally practices by oneself, not in a group. It operates, therefore, without temples or lodges, and its practitioners are not quasi-priests, much less members of some esoteric priesthood or consecrated order that answers to a higher authority than any institutional church. Indeed, such a person is not part of any secret institution or organization at all, but just a simple Christian man or woman who seeks in solitude and silence to attain the most esoteric mysteries (mustAria) of all, which are also Divine.

However, these mysteries are ineffable (erE=hta), that is, they lie far beyond the power of any language to express. Indeed, they are incomprehensible, that is, they lie far beyond ‘all things that can be perceived and understood (a.syhta ka‹ nohta), that are not or that are’ (pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, Mystica theologia I.1), and must therefore be experienced by other means than words, concepts or even ordinary percepts. To express these other means, the same author says that they are to be attained ‘in the hyper-luminous darkness of a hidden silence’ (ibidem). Indeed, he even says that they are ‘beyond all being (ous.a) and knowledge (gn≪siw)’, a matter of yeosof.a (theosophy) as well as of yeolog.a (theology) (ibidem).

This kind of theology, which leads the reader upward by means of denials rather than affirmations, is called apophatic (from Greek epOfasiw, denial), in contrast to the other kind, cataphatic theology (from Greek katafasiw, affirmation). The two kinds loosely correspond to what in the West are usually called negative and positive theology, but the correspondence is not exact. If the Catholic Church (especially since Thomas Aquinas) has favored an Aristotelian sort of positive theology, and has used negative theology mostly to supplement positive results, it it otherwise in the East. The Orthodox Church, much less wedded to Aristotelian modes of knowledge, has long delighted in apophatic theology. In this one point it favors the Neoplatonists, although it otherwise diverges enormously from them in matters of doctrine and practice.

The best way into this ‘brilliant darkness of a hidden silence’ is precisely specified in several works by Gregory of Sinai (ca. 1265-1346) and especially in an anonymous treatise of unknown age sometimes titled The Three Methods of Prayer (the latter treatise is attributed to Simeon the New Theologian, but is not by him). The tradition of practice expounded in these works is at least as old as the 4th century. In the 14th century it became, for a few decades, a subject of great controversy, which called forth the brilliant writings of Gregory Palamas (ca. 1296–1359) on the theory behind the practices. The tradition later came to be called hesychasm, derived from Greek ≤sux.a, tranquility, quietness and ≤suxazein, to practice hesychia (despite the similarity in their names, there is no close relation betwen hesychasm and Western quietism).

The first of pseudo-Simeon’s three methods of prayer demands the careful cultivation of what some esotericists now call the imaginal world. The second demands an equally careful withdrawal from this same imaginal world and from the senses and the mental processes that nourish it. These two methods are emphatically not recommended. On the one hand, the careful cultivation of the imaginal indeed results in sensible visions, but sensible visions are always delusions, simply because they are sensible (afisyhta). This method is sure to produce a visionary whose desires have been inflamed and whose heart is exalted, and very often it will derange him in the end. On the other hand, a careful withdrawal from the sensible and imaginal worlds produces false impressions of the opposite character, for which there is no good name in English: let us call them “certainties” for lack of a better term. These “certainties”, in contrast to visions, derive their form and content from understanding (nohsiw) rather than from sense-perception (e.syhsiw). Just as visions are delusions simply because they are sensible, so “certainties” are delusions simply because they are understandable (nohta). Sense-perception (e.syhsiw) and understanding (nOhsiw) are equally dangerous, are equally productive of delusions, and equally need to be transcended (cf. pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, as quoted above).

The third of these methods, and the only one which is free from the dangers of these two kinds of delusion, requires neither that one cultivate the imaginal world in one’s heart nor that one uproot it. Instead, one fills one’s heart with attentiveness and constant prayer, which soon crowd out the imaginal entirely. If at first this constant prayer may be verbal, with repetition it becomes automatic and then it soon ceases to need words or images at all. It is this absence of words and images alone that prepares the heart for the ineffable mysteries that lie ‘in the hyperluminous darkness of a hidden silence’, and that constitute the theosophy ‘beyond all being and knowledge’, to use the words of pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (in this tradition of practice, as in the Old Testament, the heart is the site of human knowledge and understanding, the place where words, concepts and percepts operate).

If this sounds easy to do in principle, it is extremely hard in practice, and usually requires the assistance of an experienced guide. One should not undertake it at all until one has first learned how to be free of every anxiety and care, how to keep one’s conscience wholly pure, and how to take no thought for anything worldly, not even one’s own bodily comforts and discomforts. Having learned how to do these three things, one can begin one’s practice of attentiveness and constant prayer, aided by a simple specified stable posture and method of regulated breathing. At first one experiences delusions of sense-perception and understanding. When these delusions have all finally been dispelled, one next experiences empty, heavy darkness (which, perhaps, may be regarded as the last delusion). Persevering in one’s practice, this darkness is replaced at last by an experience beyond all understanding and sense-perception, beyond all words and images, beyond all concepts and percepts, beyond all previous experience of the body and mind. It is said to be an experience of something that may be called f≪w, light, but even that word is greatly inadequate to convey what is experienced: pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite has coined the word Ip°rfvtow, hyperluminous, to refer to it (Mysica theologia I.1).

This experience transforms one completely, in a way that is precisely specified by the Orthodox Church. One undergoes a process that is called theosis (y°vsiw) in Greek, a word which means becoming God, but may conveniently – yet somewhat misleadingly! – be rendered as deification. According to the blunt words of Athanasius the Great, the Word of God ‘became man that we might become God’ (Athanasius of Alexandria, De incarnatione Verbi 54; cf. Irenaeus of Lyon, Adversus haereses IV.38-39, V.praef.). This is the ultimate goal of human life, which every member of the Orthodox Church is allowed to pursue from birth to death: an esotericism that is wholly integrated into Byzantine culture.

It is these ineffable mysteries, this hyperluminous realm that lies ‘beyond all being and knowledge’, it is this precisely specified, difficult method of practice that opens the way into these mysteries and that realm, and finally it is this possibility of becoming God, that constitutes the open secret of Orthodox Christian esotericism – an esotericism that is freely offered to every inquirer. Despite the brevity and simplicity of the present summary, it is an extremely rich and subtle tradition of doctrine and practice, which cannot easily be rendered in any other language than its original Greek. It is also Byzantium’s single most interesting contribution to the esoteric currents and traditions of the world.

From Dictionary of Gnosis & Western Esotericism by Wouter Hanegraaff