Theological views of St. Theophan the Recluse on the nature of angels and the human soul

Annotation. The article examines the key provisions of the theological views of St. Theophan the Recluse on the nature of angels and souls in comparison with the views of St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov) on the nature of spiritual beings. The concepts of “ultimate spirituality” and ethereality are comprehended in relation to the essence of angels and the human soul. The final part of this article is devoted to a brief comparative analysis of the judgments of St. Theophan the Recluse and Ignatius (Brianchaninov) about the relationship of spiritual beings to earthly existence and the possibility of determining the specific location of angels and souls in physical space. Abstract. The article deals with the key provisions of the theological views of St. Theophanes the Recluse on the nature of angels and the soul in comparison with the views of St. Ignatius (Bryanchaninov) on the nature of spiritual beings. The concepts of “ultimate spirituality” and ethereality are comprehended in relation to the essence of angels and the human soul. The final part of this article is devoted to a brief comparative analysis of the judgments of St. Theophan the Recluse and St. Ignatius (Bryanchaninov) on the relation of spiritual beings to earthly existence and the possibility of determining the specific location of angels and souls in physical space. As is known, angelology, that is, church teaching about the spiritual world and its inhabitants, as well as anthropology, within the framework of which the Orthodox teaching about man and his nature is revealed, traditionally belong to theological sections, mainly included in the field of Orthodox dogmatics. Meanwhile, St. Theophan the Recluse was not a dogmatist in the strict sense of the word, like, for example, his famous contemporary Metropolitan. Macarius (Bulgakov), and the rich spiritual heritage of Bishop Theophan mainly consists of such creations that are not so much dogmatic as spiritual-ascetic, moral, instructive and exegetical in nature. Standing apart from the background of the above-mentioned works is a small work of theological and polemical content with the telling title “The Soul and the Angel – Not the Body, but the Spirit.” Thus, the mentioned work, along with just a few individual letters from the epistolary heritage of the saint, is, in fact, the only work in which Rev. Theophan makes a deep analysis of the dogmatic teaching of the Church about the nature of disembodied spirits and the human soul. What suddenly prompted Bishop Theophan the Recluse in the most detailed manner, relying on the Holy Scriptures and the patristic tradition of the Orthodox Church, to expound his theological views on the nature of the angelic nature and the human soul? The fact is that in 1863, another outstanding ascetic of the 19th century, the spiritual friend of Bishop Theophan, St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov) published his famous work “The Lay of Death”, and a year later its continuation was published - the Addendum to the “Tale of Death”. In the “Tale on Death” and especially in the “Addition” to it, St. Ignatius developed the theological teaching that the very nature of disembodied angels, just like the nature of the human soul, is not purely spiritual, but consists of the finest matter, which Bishop Ignatius called ether. “Fathers,” noted Rev. Ignatius in the Addendum to the “Tale on Death”, - they did not recognize spirits as clothed in a body, but their very being was recognized as a subtle body" [1, p. 543]. Developing this central position of his theological views, St. Ignatius emphasizes that spirituality is an unlimited property that only one God can possess, since He is infinite in essence and is not encompassed by any space-time characteristics. To attribute the property of pure spirituality to the nature of limited creatures, that is, to angels and the human soul, according to St. Ignatius, is completely impossible, because in this case the creation will be put on a par with the Creator Himself, the absolute and unlimited Spirit [1, p. 540–541]. The spirituality or incorporeality of the nature of angels and souls is recognized by the saint as relative, since spiritual beings are called incorporeal only in relation to a person who has a gross body, in relation to objects of the earthly world, but not in relation to God, the pure Spirit, in comparison with Whom everything turns out to be rough and material, as St. John of Damascus. The second key point of the theological views of St. Ignatius (Brianchaninova) concerns the appearance of ultra-thin angels and the human soul. Disembodied spirits, the archpastor notes, have a humanoid appearance and when they appear to people they appear before them precisely in their real image, as they are by their relatively ethereal nature. Holy Scripture, notes St. Ignatius, characterizing the angels and their actions, “mentions their face, chest, arms, legs, clothing - he says that they walk, fly, sit, speak, hear what is said to them. Scripture attributes to them the senses that a person has: sight, hearing, smell, touch” [1, p. 563]. Angels are similar in appearance to the human soul, writes Bishop Ignatius, since they, having members of the body inherent in humans, represent a complete likeness of a visible person in his body. Angels move from place to place in the same way as all other bodies, only much faster, because due to the lightness of their nature, they are less “constrained” by the conditions of time and space, but in the same way as other earthly objects, they depend on these characteristics. In the Addendum to the “Tale of Death” by St. Ignatius, based on a natural scientific approach, builds the following logical chain of conclusions in relation to the nature of angels and human souls. “For movement (angels and souls) need space. Having movement is certainly in a certain relationship to space, that is, it occupies a certain place in space. Occupying a certain place in space must certainly have its own appearance, its own shape. The one who changes places must certainly have movement. Recognition of movement is recognition of dependence on space, there is recognition of materiality” [1, p. 543–544]. So, any subject, concludes Rev. Ignatius, who depends on space, according to scientific laws, is necessarily limited, and therefore certainly has a certain degree of subtlety, that is, he has an involvement in matter. These, briefly presented, are the key aspects of the theological views of St. Ignatius of the Caucasus on the nature of angels and souls, the appearance of which became the main reason that forced St. Theophan the Recluse, in a polemical form, based on the theological and dogmatic teaching of the Church, outlines his views on the nature of disembodied spirits and the human soul. One of the first very cautious assessments regarding the judgments of St. Ignatius of Caucasus on the nature of spiritual creatures can be seen in a letter addressed to St. Theophan the Recluse to his elder and highly respected contemporary in May 1865. In this letter to St. Theophan briefly and accurately expressed the essence of his critical view of the opinion about the corporeality of the nature of created spirits and the human soul, revealed in the most detailed manner in the essay “The Soul and the Angel are not a Body, but a Spirit” (1867), and subsequently repeatedly confirmed by the saint in separate letters to different persons. Recognizing the general spiritual benefit and undoubted edification of the “Sermon on Death,” having carefully re-read the “Addition to the “Sermon on Death,” St. Theophan expresses in a letter to St. Ignatius disagrees with the opinion that the very nature of the soul and created angels can be considered ethereal or subtly corporeal. A similar judgment, notes St. Theophan, does not find confirmation for himself in the Orthodox doctrine, even contains danger from a spiritual point of view. The saint, explaining his critical arguments, writes: “The soul is ethereal. Who is it that thinks among us, prays to God, longs for heavenly things, and for this sake renounces everything earthly and material? With matter, no matter how you refine it, spiritual phenomena do not fit in at all, and nowhere have I heard such a teaching...” [2, p. 158–159]. Proposing possible ways of theological understanding of the question of the nature of disembodied angels and human souls, Bishop Theophan allows for two acceptable options. According to the first option, created spirits and the human soul can be thought of as purely spiritual in nature, light, even devoid of any outer shell, and according to the second option, which is somewhat closer to the views of St. Ignatius of the Caucasus, angels and souls can be recognized as spiritual in nature, but also having, in addition, a thin, if you like, ethereal light shell, in which they are clothed like some kind of clothing. The brilliance of these light shells was noticed in the angels when they appeared to people, and were seen by the purified spiritual eyes of the reverend fathers in human souls after their separation from their bodies. St. Theophanes emphasized that the essence, that is, the very nature of the angel and the soul, must always be distinguished from that subtle ethereal shell in which spiritual creatures are clothed or are capable of forming for themselves during phenomena. It is important never to confuse the nature of angels and souls with their external “clothing”, never to merge them into a single whole [3]. In one of the letters, later included in the famous book entitled “What is spiritual life and how to tune in to it?”, Rev. Theophanes writes that the ether is recognized as a certain superfine element, subtler than light, the last facet of material existence, in which spirits, ethereal by nature, live. The holy bishop notes on this occasion: “The soul itself is spirit, immaterial, but its shell is made of this subtle immaterial element. Our body is rough, but that shell of the soul is the subtlest and serves as a mediator between soul and body” [4, p. 63]. The Vyshensky Recluse also emphasizes that intelligent angelic forces and human souls were initially created by God as intelligent beings, with whom, moreover, many phenomena of a purely spiritual order occur. The disembodied creatures of God also possess spiritual abilities: fear of God, consciousness, freedom and other similar qualities. For this reason, St. Theophan the Recluse did not consider it possible to allow the above spiritual qualities to be attributed to the fact that St. Ignatius of the Caucasus defined it as a “subtle ethereal body,” because such functions and actions cannot belong to any matter, even the most subtle and incomparably different from gross, visible, earthly matter. During the creation itself, God endowed spiritual creatures with many god-like qualities, for example, immortality, rationality, free will, power and other properties in which incorporeal beings are much superior to humans. By the grace of God, the indicated qualities became actually inherent to a limited extent in the very nature of the heavenly powers. In connection with this, St. Theophan the Recluse asks the question on what basis does the Addendum to the “Tale on Death” deny the possibility of God imparting to the angelic nature the property of limited spirituality, as one of those grace-filled qualities by which finite spirits are likened to the Creator? If God is Spirit, then, according to St. Theophan, it is quite acceptable to recognize angels as beings possessing the property of spirituality, at least to a limited extent, since angels are, in the words of the holy fathers, “second lights” [5, p. 24]. Reflecting on the appearances of angels, St. Theophan the Recluse never transferred the humanoid form assumed by angels, in which they appear to people, to the real, incomprehensible to anyone except God, spiritual image of the angelic being itself. Referring to the evidence of the already mentioned St. John of Damascus, Bishop Theophan persistently emphasized that all humanoid “attributes,” that is, members of the body that angels temporarily acquire for themselves when appearing to people, do not constitute the real nature of heavenly spirits and do not reflect what angels actually are by their incorporeal nature [5, p. 27]. Finally, an extremely interesting aspect of the theological views of St. Theophan the Recluse on the nature of angels and souls is the question of the relationship of these spiritual creatures to the space of earthly existence. The Archpastor repeatedly focuses on the fact that angels and souls do not have the three-dimensional characteristics familiar to earthly bodies, that is, length, width and height, that they live in an approximate reality comprehended only by the mind. In this regard, incorporeal beings are not only less “constrained” by space compared to other material objects, but depend on it in a completely different way [5, p. 170]. Saint Theophan, having analyzed the patristic teaching on the relationship of angels to space, notes that the Church Fathers expressed themselves rather abstractly about the location of angels at a specific point in space, if you try to determine such a location for an intelligent entity from the conditions of our earthly world. The vagueness of the careful formulations used by the Fathers in their writings seems to reflect the impossibility of realizing an exact spatial location for one who, as a spiritual being, resides “in mental places,” that is, in a special relationship to space. It must be borne in mind, Bishop Feofan emphasizes, that all earthly bodies with length, width, height are located in the space of the three-dimensional universe precisely by their nature, and on the basis of this their location can be accurately determined, even designated by the corresponding numerical coordinates. However, from the conditions of our world it is impossible to determine the specific location of such an entity, which, by its immediate nature, does not have a triple dimension and all other physical parameters inherent in earthly bodies, which, by its spiritual nature, resides in a completely different (only intelligible) reality. An angel, as St. Feofan, only “shows his visible presence where he acts” [5, p. 170], but his real disembodied essence remains unmanifested. Therefore, to insist that an angel, by its very nature, is located exactly where it visibly manifested itself in physical space, for St. Feofana is unacceptable. Thus, according to the theological views of Rev. Feofan, it would be incorrect to correlate intelligent spiritual entities within our three-dimensional existence with any specific “place”, by analogy with all other earthly bodies. To summarize the above, it should be noted that the theological views of St. Theophan the Recluse touch upon the most interesting and truly inexhaustible dogmatic issues. Questions related to the nature of angels and the human soul, raised during the theological polemics of St. Ignatius of the Caucasus and Theophan the Recluse, even to this day remain unresolved, and therefore continue to attract the active attention of many church writers and researchers, which indicates the unconditional relevance of those deep-seated issues that were touched upon by our great Russian saints almost two centuries ago. 1. Ignatius (Brianchaninov), St. Complete collection of works in 5 volumes. Ascetic experiences. T. II. M., 2014. 704 p. 2. Ignatius (Brianchaninov), St. Complete collection of letters in 3 vols. T. 1. M., 2011. 544 p. 3. Theophan the Recluse, St. Collected letters, vol. 1–8, letter 205. Regarding the anniversary of the Kyiv Theological Academy. About the book “Soul and Angel” [Electronic resource]. URL: https:// azbyka.ru/otechnik/Feofan_Zatvornik/pisma/2 (access date: 02/20/2023). 4. Theophan the Recluse, St. What is spiritual life and how to tune in to it? M., 2014. 352 p. 5. Theophan the Recluse, St. The soul and angel are not the body, but the spirit. M., 1999.