Triads in defense of the sacred silent ones

“Triads in Defense of the Sacred and Silent” was written by St. Gregory Palamas in 1338-1340. This is one of the most significant works of St. Gregory, in which he expounds and defends the Orthodox doctrine of the deification of man and the possibility of personal, mystical experience of communion with God. The work was written in response to the attacks of Barlaam of Calabria, who criticized the spiritual practice of the Athonite hesychasts (silent monks). The work includes 3 triads, each of which is divided into 3 parts (treatise). The treatises of the first triad (1338, Thessalonica) are compiled in the form of question answers. They are devoted to pagan philosophy and the dangers it brings (1st), the method of mental prayer and the defense of hesychast practice (2nd), the possibility and methods of knowledge of God (3rd). Saint Gregory shows that true knowledge of God is achieved through Divine grace, received through “mental feeling.” Knowledge of God is achieved through Revelation revealed in Christ. By partaking of Divine grace already in earthly life, a person receives a guarantee of deification, which will be fully granted to him in the next century. In the second triad (1339) St. Gregory Palamas rejects Varlaam's idea that philosophical knowledge can lead a person to salvation. The treatises of this triad are also devoted to the refutation of pagan philosophy (1st), exposition of the essence of the hesychast prayer (2nd) and discussion of the question of true knowledge of God (3rd). The saint emphasizes that true communion with God is possible not through created means, but exclusively through Divine grace and through living participation in the life of Christ. The third triad (1340) was written by St. Gregory Palamas as an excuse from the accusations of Messalianism brought by Varlaam against the hesychasts. The 1st treatise contains a presentation of the Orthodox teaching about deification and the Light of Tabor as the uncreated energy of God. 2nd – the saint’s teaching about the difference between the essence and energies of God. It also talks about the difference between the Messalians (or Bogomils) and the Orthodox in their understanding of participation in the Divine. Man does not partake of the essence of God (this leads to pantheism), but partakes of the natural energy and grace of God. The 3rd treatise speaks of the heretical essence of the teachings of Barlaam and provides new arguments in favor of the doctrine of the necessary difference between the essence and energies of God. Having heard from some people that monks should also seek external wisdom, since without it it is impossible to get rid of ignorance and false opinions, and even having achieved the highest dispassion, a person will not come to perfection and holiness unless he gains knowledge from everywhere, especially from Hellenic science; that this science, like the revelation of the prophets and apostles, is also a gift from God, from it knowledge of existence arises in the soul, it sharpens the cognitive ability, supposedly the highest power of the soul, and delivers the soul from all evil, since any passion grows and takes root also from ignorance; that science even leads a person to the knowledge of God, since it is impossible to know God except through His Creations - having heard this, I, however, did not really believe it, because my little experience of monastic life had shown me quite the opposite, but I could not object to them, because they say something very lofty: “We are not just curious about the secrets of nature, we measure the circle of the heavens, we study the ordered movements of the luminaries, their convergence, divergence and ascending, we grasp the consequences arising from this and are proud of it - no, but since the laws of existence are contained in the divine, first and creative mind, and the images of these laws are in our soul, we strive to achieve their knowledge in order to, through the methods of discrimination, inference and decomposition, get rid of the seal of ignorance and in this way, during life, as after death, to preserve in ourselves the likeness of the Creator" 2. Since then I was afraid that I would not be able to answer correctly, and kept silent in front of them, I now ask you, father, to teach me words in defense of the truth, so that we would be ready, according to the apostle, to “give... an account of the hope that we have” (1 Peter 3:15). 3 1st part of the TRIAD I. Why and to what extent it is useful to engage in verbal reasoning and science. 1. Brother! “It is good to strengthen hearts by grace,” according to the Apostle (Heb. 13:9), but how can we express in words the Good that is beyond words? 4 Therefore, all that remains is to thank God for the fact that He gives grace, which will not even occur to people who imagine that they know everything in their great wisdom. Even if you cannot yet object to them, although you know that they have not found the truth, there is no need to be upset: you are convinced by deeds, you will always be firm and unshakable in everything, carrying within yourself a strong statement of the truth, and those who rely on verbal evidence will certainly be refuted, even if not now, by your arguments; after all, “every word fights with a word,” that is, it means that another word also fights with it, and it is impossible to invent a word that is completely victorious and does not know defeat, which the followers of the Hellenes and those whom they consider wise men proved by constantly refuting each other with seemingly stronger verbal evidence and constantly being refuted by each other. 2. Having said this to people who have been doing this all their lives, hunting for knowledge with the help of external learning and praising it so exorbitantly, you, I think, will worthily and appropriately let them understand that “you, dear ones, gain for yourself by this no more knowledge than ignorance”: after all, just as those who seek human glory and do everything for its sake receive more dishonor than glory, because you cannot please everyone, so those who seek knowledge from external sages according to their own words 5 reap ignorance rather than knowledge. Scientific opinions differ from each other and are excluded from each other; for each there are always more contrary ones than consonant ones. Is it not too unreasonable to hope that in some of them the laws of the creative mind will be guessed? “Who has known the mind of the Lord?” - says the apostle (Rom. 11:34). But if these laws cannot be cognized, then their images in the soul also cannot be comprehended by external wisdom, and the knowledge of the divine image in the human soul captured by it will be false knowledge. A soul possessing such wisdom will not only not become like self-truth through it, but will not even come close to simple truth. The highly intelligent boast in vain of their knowledge. Let them listen to the Apostle Paul, who calls external wisdom carnal and puffed up knowledge - carnal mind (1 Cor. 1:12; Col. 2:18; 1 Cor. 8:1). Will carnal wisdom really give the soul godlikeness? “Look,” says Paul, “who we are who are called: not many... wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble” (1 Cor. 1:26) 6. Just as carnal nobility and strength will not strengthen and ennoble the soul, so carnal wisdom will not make the mind wise. And the true “beginning of wisdom... is to know wisdom” (Prov. 1:7), in order to learn to share and prefer wisdom to creeping, earthly and fruitless, multi-useful, heavenly, spiritual, coming from God and to God and making its acquirers godlike. 3. However, if, as they themselves say, we have images of the laws of the creative mind, then what completely distorted these images? Isn’t it sin and either ignorance of what is due or neglect of it? Why don’t we notice them without learning if they are imprinted on us? Is it because the passionate part of the soul, rebelling in evil, perverted them, confused the insight of the soul and led it far from the beauty of the prototype? But then, wanting to maintain likeness to God and gain knowledge of the truth, we must be most concerned about abandoning sin, actually fulfilling the law of the commandments, adhering to all the virtues and ascending to God through prayer and true contemplation. Because even if you study natural philosophy from Adam to the very end, without purity you will be no less, if not more, a fool than a wise man; on the contrary, even without philosophy, having purified yourself and rid your soul of bad morals and teachings, you will acquire God’s world-conquering wisdom and in joy you will forever join the “Only Wise God” (Rom. 14:26). Let your teachings be the teachings of faith, and not knowledge about the size and movement of the sky and celestial bodies and everything that comes from them, not knowledge about the earth, the metals and gems hidden in it, and about what happens in the air from extreme evaporation. To devote all your strength and effort to the knowledge of such things is a Hellenic heresy; It is not without reason that all the Stoics consider science to be the goal of contemplation. 4. And now, you say, some people, considering the goal facing Christians to be of little importance, the untold blessings promised to us in the next century, have exchanged the knowledge of God for worldly wisdom and want to introduce it into the council of those who philosophize in Christ. In fact, they declare everyone who has not studied science to be unclean and imperfect; therefore, everyone must resolutely take up the Hellenic sciences, despise the Gospel commandments - of course, because through them you can’t get rid of ignorance of what these people call sciences - and walk away with mockery from the one who said: “Be perfect” and “If anyone is perfect in Christ ...” and “We preach among the perfect” 7, since he is completely unskilled in worldly sciences. I did not mean to get rid of their ignorance when I called purity saving, because there is both innocent ignorance and shameful knowledge, not from their ignorance, I say, having gotten rid of, but from ignorance of God and divine teachings, to the extent that this is condemned by our theologians, having improved all your customs in accordance with their instructions, you will be filled with divine wisdom, you will truly become the image and likeness of God, achieving perfect consecration through one observance gospel commandments, as the interpreter of the church hierarchy Dionysius clearly said in his book about it: “Likeness to God and unity with Him, the Divine Scripture teaches, is achieved only by love for the venerable commandments and their holy fulfillment” 8 . If this is not so and a person can find and know his own godlikeness with the help of external science, which supposedly rebuilds a person for the better and expels the darkness of ignorance from the soul, then the Hellenic sages will turn out to be more godlike and better seers of God than the fathers who lived before the Law and after the Law, the majority of whom were called to divine dignity from the simplest life. Didn’t John, the crown of prophecy, spend the rest of his life in the desert from his youth? Shouldn’t he, as a model, be imitated as much as he can by everyone who renounces the world? Certainly! But where in the desert is the teaching of vain, and according to these people, saving philosophy? Where are the thick books, where are the people who pore over them all their lives and persuade others to do the same? On the other hand, where in these books are the rules of a hermit and virgin life, where is the story of struggles and exploits that would encourage readers to imitate? 5. But even if we leave this “highest among those born of women” (Matthew 11:11; Luke 7:28), who rose to such a height, not at all caring about the supposedly leading to God of learning, because he did not even read the sacred books 9, even if, I say, we leave him, why is the age that exists before all, who appeared after John and for this reason came into the world to testify to the truth, to renew the divine image in man and raise him to a heavenly prototype, why did He not show the path of ascension through the techniques and methods of external philosophy? Why didn’t He say, “If you want to be perfect, take up external philosophy, try to study the sciences, accumulate knowledge of things in yourself,” but said: “Sell your property, give it to the poor, take up the cross, decide to follow Me”? Why didn’t He explain to us analogies, figures, quantities, inconsistent distances and alignments of the planets and solve the mysteries of nature in order to drive out the darkness of ignorance of all this from our souls? Why did He call fishermen, illiterate, simple villagers as disciples, and not wise men, and even in order “to put to shame the external wise men,” as Paul says? Why does He shame those who, if they listen to others, come to Him? Why did He even “turn their wisdom into foolishness”? Why did he “deign to save the believers through the madness of preaching”? Is it because “the world did not know God through its wisdom”? So why are the scientists you are talking about, when the Word of God had already come in the flesh, having become for us “wisdom from God” 10, when the Light arose, “enlightening every man who comes into the world,” when, according to the head of the apostles, “the day dawned and the morning star rose in our hearts” (2 Pet. 1:19), the hearts of believers, why do they themselves still need man-made light, external science Philosophers who would lead them to the knowledge of God, and others who decide to purify themselves in silence through the mastery of thoughts and through unceasing prayer to cleave to God, are inclined to grow old in vain, sitting in front of a smoke lamp? 11 6. Has it never occurred to them that by rushing to the tree of knowledge and eating from it, we have fallen away from the divine place of sweetness? Not wanting to “cultivate... and keep it” according to the commandment (Gen. 2:15), we yielded to the evil adviser, who crept in by deception and deceived us with the beauty of the knowledge of good and evil. Apparently, even today, for those who do not want to cultivate and preserve their hearts under the guidance of their fathers, it promises accurate knowledge of the multi-moving and mutually balanced heavenly spheres with their properties - knowledge of good and evil, because good is not in the very nature of this knowledge, but in human intentions, along with which knowledge is inclined in any direction. For the same reason, I would call together good and evil skills and talent in multilingual dialects, the power of eloquence, knowledge of history, the discovery of the secrets of nature, complex methods of logical constructions, arduous reasonings of the science of counting, diverse measurements of immaterial figures - not only because all this fluctuates depending on opinions and is easily changed in accordance with the goals of people, but also because at least these activities are good for exercising mental acuity ok, but persisting in them until old age is bad. It is good if, having practiced in moderation, a person directs his efforts to the greatest and most enduring objects; then, even for neglecting verbal studies and sciences, he receives considerable reward from God. The second theologian 12 therefore says about Athanasius the Great that the only benefit he gained from external verbal sciences was that he understood “what is not worth understanding,” and this theologian himself, as he says, tasted of them only in order to despise them and in order to have something to prefer to Christ 13 . 7. But the evil one, always seeking to cunningly distract us from good, weaves a spell for our souls and almost inextricably binds them with fetters desired by fools, inspiring us to see in this knowledge great depth and vastness, as wealth or inglorious fame and carnal pleasures seem to others, so that, having spent our whole lives in pursuit of them, we could not firmly cleave to the soul-cleansing science, the beginning of which is the fear of God, which gives birth to unceasing, tender prayer to God and observance of the Gospel commandments, after which comes reconciliation with God, when fear is transformed into love and the torment of prayer, turning into sweetness, grows the flower of enlightenment, from which, like a fragrance spilling over the bearer of this flower, comes the knowledge of God's mysteries. This is true science and knowledge; and even the beginning of it, that is, the fear of God, cannot be contained by any of the passionate lovers of vain philosophy, entangled and dizzy with its whirlings and speculations. Because how can the fear of God enter the soul at all, and having entered remain in it, since it is already occupied in advance, bewitched and, as it were, narrowed by all kinds of diverse reasoning, unless, having said goodbye to them all, it devotes itself to God and is not filled with love for Him according to the commandment? It is not without reason that the beginning of God’s wisdom and contemplation is the fear of God: not getting along with other gods, having delivered the soul from all filth and, as if smoothing it out with prayer, he makes it like a writing tablet suitable for imprinting the gifts of the Spirit. 8. Basil the Great, citing the words of Pharaoh to Israel, that “you are idle, idle; So you say: let’s go, let’s make a sacrifice to the Lord” (Ex. 5:17), continues: “This is good idleness and useful for the one celebrating, but bad idleness is the idleness of the Athenians, who knew no better leisure than listening to some news (Acts 17:21); Such idleness, pleasing to the wicked demons, is now imitated by others in the pursuits of their entire lives” 14 . So that no one says that Basil the Great meant here only rhetorical vanity, let us add what he says elsewhere, analyzing the Solomon covenant “to know wisdom and teaching and understand the words of reason.” “Some,” he says, “already, studying the geometry invented by the Egyptians, or astrology valued by the Chaldeans, or generally revolving among figures, symbols and all sorts of lofty objects, have neglected the study of the divine scriptures; and since many, delving into this emptiness, have grown old in such labors, recognition of teachings is necessary in order to choose what is useful and discard what is meaningless and harmful” 15. Do you see? He calls external learning, mathematical sciences and the knowledge they obtain empty, harmful, meaningless - the very thing that, you say, some people now declare to be the ultimate goal of contemplation and the root of salvation! In a letter to Eustathius of Sebastia, Basil grieves about the years that he himself spent in the study of these sciences: “Having spent many years on vanity and wasting almost all my youth in the vain labors that I undertook, trying to learn the teachings of wisdom meaningless by God, one day, as if rising from a deep sleep, I saw the worthlessness of the wisdom of the “abolished authorities of this world” (1 Cor. 1:22, 2:6), shed many tears over my miserable life and prayed for some guidance to be given to me” 16. Have you heard the name of science and knowledge, which those people are now trying in vain to exalt? Their names are vanity, vain labors, meaningless wisdom, abolished wisdom, the wisdom of this age and its authorities, wisdom destructive for a godly life. It is not for nothing that the lover of true wisdom repented so much that he lost time in studying worldly sciences, not finding in them any guidance to true knowledge. 9 . And now, as you say, there are people who with incredible shamelessness declare that studying Hellenic science all their lives is not at all an obstacle to the perfection of life, and who do not hear the words of the Lord addressed directly to them: “Hypocrites! You know how to notice heavenly signs, but why don’t you notice the time of the Kingdom of God?” When the time has come for the eternal Kingdom and the coming of the God who bestows it has already arrived, why do they, if they really strive for the renewal of the mind, do not go to Him in prayer in order to accept the original dignity of freedom, but run to those powerless even to free themselves, although the brother of the Lord clearly proclaimed: “If anyone... lacks wisdom, let him ask God, the giver of it, and he will receive” (James 1:5). And will the knowledge found by external wisdom really drive out all the evil generated in the soul by supposed ignorance, when simple knowledge of even the Gospel instructions cannot do this? After all, Paul warns that “it is not those who know the law who will be saved, but those who do it”; he who knows the will of God and does not fulfill it “will be beaten much,” says the Lord, moreover, than he who does not know it (Rom. 2:13; Luke 12:47–48). Do you see that there is no benefit from simple knowledge? What knowledge about our responsibilities, about the visible world or the invisible world! Even the knowledge of the God who created all this cannot in itself bring any benefit to anyone, because, says the Chrysostomed theologian John, “What is the use of Scripture where there is no God-loving life, which the Lord came to plant on earth?” 17 Moreover, from simple knowledge not only there is no benefit, but also the greatest harm, and the very people from whom you heard the speeches you conveyed became its victims. In fact: he who came “not in the majesty of the word,” “lest the mystery of the cross be exhausted,” preaching “not in the plausible words of human wisdom,” knowing “only the Lord Jesus, crucified” (1 Cor. 1:17, 2:1–4)—what does he write to the Corinthians? “Knowledge puffs up.” Do you see? The crown of evil, the main sin of the devil - pride - arises from knowledge! How then does every evil passion come from ignorance? And how does this knowledge cleanse the soul? “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up” (1 Cor. 8:1). Here! It happens, then, that it is not a purifying knowledge at all, but a soul-cleansing knowledge without love - love, the top, root and middle of all virtue. Since knowledge does not create any good, because love creates, how, I say, will such knowledge transform a person into the image of the Good? Moreover, this type of knowledge, about which the apostle says that he puffs up, refers not to nature, but to faith; even if such knowledge puffs up, all the more puffs up the one we are talking about: “for it is generally natural 18 and inherent in the old man” (Eph. 4:22; Col. 3:9). It is this knowledge that external learning contributes to; and spiritual knowledge will never happen if, thanks to faith, knowledge is not combined with love for God, or rather, if it is not reborn through love and the grace that follows it and does not become completely different, new and God-like, “pure, peaceful, humble, obedient, filled with words of edification and good fruits.” This knowledge is called “wisdom... from above" and "by the wisdom of God" (James 3:15–17); in some way spiritual, because subordinate to the wisdom of the Spirit, such wisdom recognizes and accepts spiritual gifts. The other wisdom is “lower, spiritual, demonic,” as the apostle and brother of the Lord says, which is why it does not accept anything spiritual, according to Scripture: “The natural man does not comprehend what is of the Spirit,” but considers it stupidity, error and fiction (1 Cor. 2:14), for the most part it tries to completely refute and in an open struggle to distort and dispute as best it can, and some of it slyly accepts, using approximately the same way as poisoner - sweet foods. 10. So, the knowledge obtained by external learning is not only not similar, but also opposite to the true and spiritual, although some themselves, apparently lost in the pursuit of it and trying to confuse the disciples, here talk about the same knowledge, declaring it the goal of contemplation. I will reveal to you the monstrous depth of the cunning of external philosophers. The evil one and those who learned from him to philosophize craftily have stolen one of our most useful commandments and present it as some kind of crafty bait thanks to the similarity of the expressions “Listen to yourself” and “Know yourself” 19 . But if you figure out what the meaning of this commandment is for them, you will discover the abyss of evil teaching: professing the transmigration of souls, they believe that a person will achieve self-knowledge and fulfill this commandment if he finds out what body he was connected with before, where he lived, what he did and what he studied; he will find out this, obediently surrendering to the insidious whisperings of the evil spirit. And so, while they teach such things through "Know Thyself", people who are unable to see the deception think that something is being said here that agrees with our fathers! It was not for nothing that Paul and Barnabas, who were not ignorant of the thoughts of the evil one and his secret places, did not at all accept the woman who said about them: “These people are the servants of the Most High God,” 20 although, it would seem, what could be more pious than these words? But the apostles recognized “one who disguises himself as an angel of light” and his servants pretending to be “ministers of righteousness” (2 Cor. 11:14–15), and rejected the true word as out of place on lying lips. 11. Likewise, when we hear pious speeches from the Hellenes, we neither consider them pious nor classify them as teachers, because even though we know that they took all this from us, it was not for nothing that one of them said about Plato: “Who is Plato if not the Attic Moses?” 21, - although we, I say, know that if they have something good, then they picked it up from us by hearsay, however, having looked closely, we guess that they did not understand everything in the same sense. And even if one of the fathers says the same thing as external philosophers, the coincidence is only in words, but in the meaning the difference is great: some, according to Paul, have “the mind of Christ” (1 Cor. 2:16), while others speak from human reason, if not worse. “As far as the heavens are from the earth, so far is My thought from your thoughts,” says the Lord (Is. 55:9). Yes, even if these philosophers coincided in some way with Moses, Solomon and those who are faithful to them, then what would they gain? Which of us, having a sound mind, will say that they learned this from God, when no one will even call the heretics who were tempted after Christ disciples of God because they did not distort all the truth learned from the Church? “Every gift that comes down from above from the Father of lights is... perfect,” said the disciple of Light (James 1:17); and if the saint accepts these living gifts not ugly, will he really make them so himself? However, even a living freak is still alive; and a god who creates not from nothing, who did not exist before our souls and before what they call ugly matter, or even, more accurately, matter, which from its internal vibrations acquires an image, although not ordered - what kind of god is he? 22. I will say, adding a little to the words of the prophet: “The gods who did not create heaven and earth out of nothing will perish” (Jer. 10:11), and with them the theologians who invented them. What can we say about people who claim that these theologians are unanimous with our theologians, or even our teachers, and think that the main theological expressions were adopted from them? Unless we ask the “Light that enlightens every person who comes into the world” to save them from the terrible darkness of ignorance and enlighten them to understand that we also benefit from snakes, but we just need to kill them, cut them, prepare a potion from them, and then use them wisely against their own bites. Likewise, the inventions of external wisdom are useful to us in order to use them against themselves, throwing down, as if with his own sword, this Goliath, who was indignant and rebelled against us and “reproaching the army of the living God” (1 Samuel 17:26, 36), who learned divine knowledge from fishermen and from the illiterate. 12. Therefore, we would not hinder those who wish to study external science from those who have not chosen the monastic life, but we in no way advise anyone to study it all their lives, and we completely prohibit expecting from it any accurate knowledge of divine objects, because from it one cannot learn anything reliable about God 23 . After all, “God made it meaningless” without making it so Himself - how can the light darken? - and having exposed her constant stupidity, and not in comparison with His wisdom, not at all - after all, if you say this, then it means that the law given by Moses was abolished and made meaningless with the appearance of the law of grace. But if the law of Moses was not meaningless because it is from God, then, of course, the wisdom of the Hellenes was meaningless insofar as it was not from God: everything that is not from God has no existence, therefore the wisdom of the Hellenes is falsely called wisdom. Its inventor is the mind, since the mind is from God, but it itself, having fallen away from the proper goal of knowledge of God, is more justly called not wisdom, but the fall of wisdom or meaningless wisdom, that is, turned into stupidity and madness. So the apostle called her meaningless not in comparison, but because she seeks the truths of this age, not knowing and not wanting to know the eternal God; after all, having said: “Where is the seeker of this age?”, the apostle immediately added that “God has made the wisdom of this world meaningless” (1 Cor. 1:20), that is, he exposed it, showing that it has fallen away from true knowledge and is not real wisdom, but only so called. If it were wisdom, would it really turn into stupidity, especially from God and His Wisdom that appeared on earth? According to the great Dionysius, “good is good - more is not opposite to less” 24, and I would say that intelligible things do not even outshine each other, but on the contrary, each increases in its beauty when another, higher one appears, especially with the appearance of the divine power itself, creating all beauty! No one will say that the second lights, I mean the supermundane natures 25, fade in the radiance of the first Light; even much inferior to them, but still light, I mean our rational and mental light, did not become darkness when God’s Light shone, which after all came in order to “enlighten every person coming into the world.” And only His opponent, be it an angel or a man, having freely deprived himself of light, was abandoned by the Light and turned out to be darkness. 13. So external wisdom, opposing itself to the wisdom of God, became stupidity. Serve the comprehension and proclamation of God's wisdom, poured out in creation, be it a revelation of the implicit, a weapon of truth, a destroyer of ignorance, become by communion that which is proclaimed [i.e. e. God's wisdom] is in its essence - would it really be meaningless, and even by Him Who Himself put this wisdom into creation? Wouldn't the damage then be done to the very wisdom of God, which permeates the universe? Wouldn’t the Peacemaker and Creator of harmony between the whole and each individual thing then find himself in obvious contradiction with Himself, through the wisdom He introduced into His creation, bestowing wisdom on people, and through His own coming making meaningless of this wisdom He bestowed on those who received it? It should not become meaningless, but should flourish, like the old law, about which Paul exclaims: “Shall we abolish the law? Let it not be so! No, we affirm it” (Rom. 3:31) and which the Lord instructs us to explore as the treasury of “eternal life,” also saying that “if you believed Moses, you would believe Me also” (John 5:39, 46). Do you see the perfect harmony of law and grace? It is not for nothing that the law became even more beautiful when the true Light appeared, because its hidden beauty was revealed, but Hellenic wisdom did not, but, hiding stupidity behind a certain grace, euphony and verbal persuasiveness, after exposing its shame, it turned out to be even more shameful and rightly earned the nickname of madness - not sublime, which only seems “madness” from inconceivability and serves as one of the names of God’s ineffable wisdom ( 1 Cor. 2:14), but flawed in its understanding of the truth and truly insane, because it deviated from the purpose of human wisdom, wandered in a completely opposite direction, accepting a lie as truth, trying to slander the truth as a lie and restoring creation to the Creator. So now her concern is to restore the scripture of the Spirit on the spirit, spiritual affairs and spiritual men. 14. No, the meaningless philosophy of external sages does not serve to comprehend and proclaim divine wisdom, and how to serve it, since through it the world “did not know God” (1 Cor. 1:21). If in another place Paul says that “having known God, they did not glorify Him as God,” then it is not in a war with themselves that the disciple of the world and the heir of the one Christ of the eternal consent given to us, but he only wants to say that although they came to the concept of God, but not to the one that befits God: they did not glorify Him either as the All-Performer, nor as the Almighty, nor as the All-Seeing, nor as the One Without Beginning and the Uncreated. Therefore, having been abandoned by God from the very times that these sages consider blessed 26, they, as Paul showed, were “given over to a perverted mind,” “serving the creature instead of the Creator” and groveling in the mud of shameful and vile passions; Moreover, they established laws and wrote books - alas, what abysses of fall and deception! – flattering demons and indulging passions (Rom. 1:21–32). Isn’t it clear that the philosophy of worldly philosophers initially and in itself carries madness, and does not appear so by comparison? In a word, Who once cast her down from heaven as having fallen away from the truth, He now, having come to earth, rightly made her meaningless as an opponent of the simplicity of the Gospel preaching; and if someone again clings to her with his mind, hoping under her guidance to come to the knowledge of God or achieve spiritual purity, then he suffers the same fate and turns into a fool, while remaining a sage. The undoubted general and first sign of such a fall is when they do not accept with faith the traditions that we have simply learned from the holy fathers, realizing that they are better and wiser than human questioning and thoughts and that they are revealed by deeds and not proven by words, to which everyone can testify, because they can not only follow them, but actually benefit from them and see from their own experience that “God’s foolishness is wiser than men” ( 1 Corinthians 1:25). 15. However, this is only the first and general of the obvious signs of mad wisdom. The second and main thing is when, with the power of a foolish and meaningless word, they fight against men who accepted these traditions in the simplicity of their hearts; when, following the example of those who neglected them and restored the creation to the Creator, they distort spiritual Scripture and, under its cover, attack the mysterious energies and actions of the Spirit, which are stronger than words and meaning in men living according to the Spirit 27 . The third and most indubitable sign is when they say that those wise men were wise from God like the prophets, although Plato himself, extolling those who are considered the most remarkable among them, puts at the head of his praise the proof of their capacity for fury; “if anyone,” he says, “begins to speak poetically without the inspiration of demons, then neither he nor his poetry will have success, and the creations of the prudent will be eclipsed by the creations of the mad” 28, and Plato himself, going to philosophize in Timaeus about the nature of the universe, prays not to say anything displeasing to the gods 29, but can a philosophy pleasing to demons be God’s or from Given by God? Socrates had a demon, who, of course, initiated him into its secrets; Apparently, he also testified that Socrates surpasses everyone in wisdom 30. Homer also calls on the goddess to sing through him the homicidal wrath of Achilles, 31 allowing this demon to use himself as an instrument and tracing the source of his wisdom and eloquence to the same goddess. And it seemed to Hesiod that it was not enough, since he was composing the “Theogony,” to be possessed by only one demon, so he, either from Pieria or from Helicon, brings upon himself nine at once, and not in vain, because when “he herded pigs under the mountain and ate the Heliconian laurel,” he was “filled with all wisdom” given by them 32. One of the gods “saturated the other with his power” 33. Another testifies about himself: “I was taught everything by the divinely wise muse” 34. And another one calls on a whole dance of muses, alas! to dance in one’s own soul in order to learn from the seven-path Pierian Pleiades the seven celestial zones and seven wandering stars with their properties, from Zeus’s Urania - all other astrology, from the rest of the deities that oversee the lower world - all earthly affairs 35. 16. So what? Can we really say that people who openly say such things about themselves have divine wisdom? In no way, as long as we are in our right mind and serve true wisdom, which does not enter the soul that is evil and pleasing to demons, and even if it does enter, it will fly away when it changes for the worse. According to Solomon, who was generously endowed with God's wisdom and wrote about it in his book, “The spirit of holy teaching will turn away from foolish speculations” (Wisdom 1:5). And what is more unreasonable than those who are proud of their initiation into the secrets of demons and their guidance over their own wisdom? We are not talking now about any philosophy in itself, but only about the philosophy of such people. If, according to Paul, no one can “drink the cup of the Lord or the cup of demons” (1 Cor. 10:21), then how can one have the wisdom of God and be inspired by demons? This doesn't happen, it doesn't happen. So when Paul says that “in the wisdom of God the world... did not know God” (1 Cor. 1:21), he is not calling the wisdom of God that which is possessed by foolish wise men, not at all! but the one that the Creator introduced into His creations. Whoever knew her as an angel, the messenger of God, knew the God she proclaimed, has true knowledge of things and, knowing God's wisdom, has divine wisdom in another sense of the word. “True philosophers,” says the great Dionysius, “necessarily had to rise through the knowledge of existence to the Author of existence” 36 . 17. This means that if a true philosopher ascends to the Creator, then the one who does not ascend is not true, does not possess wisdom, but some kind of deceptive ghost of true wisdom: not wisdom, but the denial of wisdom, and how can one call the denial of wisdom divine wisdom? However, even the mind of a demon, since it is a mind, is good, but since it is used badly - evil 37, although he knows better than us the laws of the cosmos, the circles of convergence and the positions of moving bodies, however, using knowledge not lovingly of God, he is a mad and darkened mind. In the same way, worldly wisdom, which, forgetting that nothing can ever arise from nothing, tries to prove through the divine wisdom embedded in creation, which makes the death of one thing the emergence of another, that God is not the Lord of the universe and not the Creator of the universe 38; which thus rejected the veneration of the true God and, according to the same great Dionysius, “impiously used God’s against God’s” 39 , thereby becoming meaningless—what kind of God’s wisdom is it? That is why the apostle says, showing that there are two types of wisdom: “In the wisdom of God, through its wisdom the world did not know God.” Do you see that he has one wisdom of God, and another - wisdom simply, the reason for ignorance of God? This is the one that the Hellenes invented: it is not the same as the divine, which is expressed by the double meaning of the word “wisdom.” In fact, what does the wise apostle say a little later? "But we preach the wisdom of God." Are the Hellenic philosophers unanimous with the apostle, or is he with them? Not at all: it is not for nothing that he, himself denying this, says: “We preach the wisdom of God among the perfect, but the wisdom is not of this age and not of the abolished powers of this age,” wisdom “which none of the authorities of this age knew” (1 Cor. 2:6-8). We have this wisdom thanks to Jesus Christ, “who became wisdom from God for us” (1 Cor. 1:30). 18. The pagans did not have it, it was in the creation they studied; Having studied his laws all their lives, they came to some kind of idea of ​​\u200b\u200bGod, since nature and creation provide considerable reasons for this, but demons with demonic intent did not interfere with this - after all, would they be revered as gods if no idea of ​​God had penetrated into the human head? - in a word, exploring the nature of sensually comprehended things, they came to an idea of ​​God, but unworthy of God and not corresponding to His blessed nature, because “their foolish heart was darkened” (Rom. 1:21) from the malicious suggestions of crafty demons - after all, on the other hand, would they continue to honor these demons as gods, would they believe in them, teachers of polytheism, if it appeared in the human head a worthy idea of God? Therefore, the captives of senseless and insane wisdom and ignorant knowledge slandered God and nature, elevating it to a position of dominance. He, as far as it depended on them, was reduced from the position of dominance and ascribed to the demons the name of the gods. At the same time, they turned out to be so far from acquiring such an important and desired knowledge of existence that they called the inanimate animate, and even having received a soul higher than ours, and the unreasonable - rational, because it is capable of containing the human soul; they believed that demons were higher than us and supposedly - oh, wickedness! – our creators; that coeternal with God, uncreated and without beginning, is not only matter, the so-called world soul among them, and that in the intelligible that has no corporeal volume, but also our souls themselves 40 . So what? Shall we really say that people who philosophized in this way and about such things possessed God's wisdom? Or at least just human wisdom? Yes, none of us will fall into such recklessness. “A good tree cannot bear bad fruit,” according to the word of the Lord, and I, reasoning with myself, do not consider this wisdom even truly human, since it contradicts itself so much that it calls the same thing animate and inanimate, rational and irrational, and attributes the ability to contain our souls to things that by nature cannot feel and generally do not have an organ for such an ability. And if the Apostle Paul sometimes calls it “human wisdom” - “my preaching,” he says, “is not in the plausible words of human wisdom” or again: “we do not preach in words learned from human wisdom” (1 Cor. 2:4, 13), - however, he honors the owners of such wisdom with the names “wise according to the flesh,” “foolish wise men,” “seekers of this world,” and their wisdom itself with similar names, saying, that this wisdom has become meaningless, that it is “wisdom abolished,” “empty deception,” “the wisdom of this age” and “the abolished powers of this age.” 19. I remember the saying of one of the fathers: “Alas for the body when food is not brought to it from outside, and alas for the soul when it does not accept grace from above.” Fair. For the body will then perish, becoming one of the inanimate objects, and the soul, having turned away from the proper path, will be carried away by demonic ways of life and thought. If someone says, referring to the naturalness of philosophy, that it was given by God, he is speaking the truth, he does not contradict us, and he does not absolve the bad users who degrade it to serving unnatural purposes: they are all the more condemned because they did not lovingly use what is from God. Just as the demonic mind, being created from God, also has a natural understanding, but we do not say that its action [energy] is from God, although even the very ability to act it takes from God and its understanding should rightly be called a misunderstanding 41, so the mind of external philosophers is also a gift of God and sound wisdom is also innate to it, but, perverted by the suggestions of the evil one, it made its wisdom, which invented such teachings, absurd, evil and truly crazy. If someone again says that even the desire and knowledge of demons [demons] is not always completely evil, since they strive to exist, live and think 42, then, firstly, with all the more reason we will answer that it is unfounded to be annoyed if we, together with the brother of the Lord, call “demonic” (James 3:15) the wisdom accepted among the Hellenes, teeming with contradictions and incorporating almost every bad thing teaching, as having moved away from the true goal, the knowledge of God: which means that it will already be involved in good in a distant and vague reflection. And secondly, we believe, the theologian also meant that all evil is evil not because it exists, but because it has fallen away from the corresponding and proper action and from the purpose of this action. 20. What is the work and purpose of researchers of God’s wisdom embedded in the creations? Isn't it the acquisition of truth and the glorification of the Creator? Without a doubt. But the science of external philosophers fell away from both. Is there anything useful in it for us? Even very; after all, the poison extracted from the bodies of snakes contains a lot of effective and healing properties, and experts in the art of medicine consider the potion made from it to be the best and most useful, just as for the preparation of secret poisons they take just the sweetest of foods that can hide the added potion; in a word, in worldly wisdom there is usefulness, and a lot, like in honey mixed with poison, but there is also a lot of danger that those who separate the honey from this mixture will not notice the deadly sediment drawn along with it. If you look carefully, you will see that all or most of the terrible heresies originate from the same place where our iconognosts [“knowers of the image of God”] come from, saying that a person acquires God’s image through knowledge and through knowledge the soul is divinely transformed. Truly, as it was said to Cain: “If you brought it righteously, but did not share it righteously...” 43 . But few can truly righteously divide, and only those who have sharpened the senses of their soul to distinguish between good and evil. Why needlessly expose yourself to danger when you can not only safely, but with great benefit for the soul, see the wisdom of God in His creations? Life, freed from anxiety by hope in God, naturally moves the soul to comprehend God's creations; surrendering to such comprehension and delving into it, the soul is amazed and constantly glorifies the Creator, and this amazement leads it to something greater, because, according to Saint Isaac, it “finds treasures inexpressible with language” 44, and, using prayer as a kind of key, thanks to it penetrates into secrets that “the eye has not seen, the ear has not heard, that have not come to the heart.” man" (1 Cor. 2:9), because, as Paul says, they are worthy only through the mediation of the Spirit. 21. Do you see the shortest, most useful and safe path leading to the supernatural and heavenly treasures themselves? In external wisdom, one must first kill the serpent, that is, destroy the arrogance that comes from it - how difficult it is! after all, as they say, “philosophical arrogance is not akin to humility” - but, one way or another, destroy it; then we must cut off and discard as unconditional and extreme evil the head and tail of the serpent, that is, an obviously false opinion about the mind, God and the first principles and fables about creation; and the middle part, that is, reasoning about nature, you must, with the help of the searching and contemplative ability of the soul, separate from harmful speculations, just as the manufacturers of medicinal potions cleanse the flesh of a snake with fire and water, boiling it down. However, if you do everything and use the well-separated part well, how much work and how much legibility is required for this! - all the same, I say, even if you make good use of a well-separated part of external wisdom, it, of course, will no longer be evil, especially since it was created by nature as an instrument for good, but even then you cannot call it God’s and a spiritual gift in the proper sense of the word, since it is natural and not sent down from above. It is not for nothing that the first sage in divine wisdom, the Apostle Paul, calls it “carnal,” saying: “Look who we are who are called: there are not many wise according to the flesh.” It would seem, who can use this wisdom better than the wise men whom Paul calls external? But nevertheless he calls them, in regard to this wisdom, carnal wise men; fair. 22. Just as no one would call the pleasure associated with childbirth in legal marriages a divine gift, because it is a carnal and natural gift, and not a gift of grace, although nature was also created by God, so the knowledge of external science, even applied for good, is not a gift of grace, but a natural one, given to everyone through nature from God and increased by labor, and this - namely, that without labor and effort it never comes to anyone - is also clear evidence of it naturalness, not spirituality. In the proper sense, our divine wisdom is a divine, not a natural gift; descending from above, it even makes fishermen, according to Gregory the Theologian, sons of thunder, 45 whose word spreads to the extreme limits of the universe, and even publicans - acquirers of people, and even persecutors boiling with rage transforms and turns from Sauls into Pauls, ascending from the earth “to the third heaven” and hearing the unspeakable (2 Cor. 12: 2-6). Through this godly wisdom, it is possible for us to become and after death be like God, and Adam also had no less natural wisdom than any people after him, but he was the first and did not preserve his likeness to God. In addition, philosophy, serving external wisdom, existed before the coming of the One who restored the soul to its original beauty; why were we not renewed through that philosophy to Christ, but needed, both the sages and everyone in general, not a teacher of philosophy - an art that passes along with this age, and therefore is called “the art of this age” - but in the One who removes sin from the world and gives true and eternal wisdom, even if for temporary and doomed sages it is stupidity, wisdom is not only not imaginary, but by its very absence turns into fools all who do not strive for her mind (1 Cor. 1:18, 2:6)? Isn’t it completely clear that it is not the knowledge of external science that saves and purifies the cognitive part of the soul, likening it to the divine prototype? Then I will bring my discussion about it to its proper end. If someone returns to observing the Mosaic laws, hoping to be cleansed through them, Christ is not his help, although these laws were once given undoubtedly from God; but studying external sciences will not help him either. Moreover, if someone again turns to the rejected philosophy of external sages, hoping through it to purify the soul, Christ will not help him in any way. Paul, the mouth of Christ, speaks of the first and testifies with us of the second. 23. Tell all this, brother, to those who extol external wisdom more than necessary. And besides, show them through the sayings written below how vain and contemptible it was considered by our holy fathers, especially by those who knew it from experience. Gregory of Nyssa, from “Contemplation of the bodily dispensation”: “This is the law of spiritual sheep: not to need any voice from outside the Church and, as the Lord says, not to listen to someone else’s voice” (John 10:16)” 46. He, from the “Epistle to Eupatrius”: “Your efforts for external wisdom have proven to us that you have no concern for the divine sciences” 47. Basil the Great, from the Discourse on the seventh Psalm: “We have discovered two meanings denoted by the word truth. One is the comprehension of what leads to a blissful life, the other is correct knowledge regarding any of the things of this world. The truth that promotes salvation lives in the pure heart of a perfect husband, who ingenuously conveys it to his neighbor; and if we do not know the truth about the earth and the sea, about the stars and their movement and speed, then this will not in the least prevent us from receiving the promised bliss” 48. Dionysius the Great, from the first book of the “Church Hierarchy”: “Likeness to God and unity with Him, as the Divine Scripture teaches, is achieved only by love for the venerable commandments and their holy fulfillment” 49. John Chrysostom, from the “Interpretation of the Holy Gospel according to Matthew”: “What external wise men could never see in a dream, fishermen and simpletons declare to us with complete certainty; Leaving the earth, they talk about heavenly things, bringing us another life and another existence, another freedom, another service and another world and changing everything in general - not like Plato, or Zeno, or some other compiler of laws, because all of them directly showed that their souls were inspired by an evil spirit, some fierce demon hostile to our nature. And these fishermen with faith philosophize about God something that none of them could ever even imagine, so the philosophizing of those philosophers was lost and perished, and rightfully so: after all, all this was inspired by demons. So, it has disappeared and is despised as the most insignificant of webs, or rather as something ridiculous, disorderly, fraught with great darkness and obscenity; but this is not our philosophy” 50. Saint Gregory the Theologian: “The first wisdom is a life praiseworthy and purified by God or purified by Him, the Most Pure and Most Illustrious, who requires from us only the sacrifice of purification. The first wisdom is to despise wisdom that is in verbal reasoning, in twists of speech, in ambiguous and unnecessary oppositions. I praise that wisdom and that thirst with which the fishermen caught the universe in the nets of the Gospel, defeating the abolished wisdom with their perfect and direct word” 51. St. Cyril, from the “Interpretation of the Ninth Psalm”: “The supporters of this worldly, demonic and spiritual wisdom become arrogant through it and inflame the poor with their minds, that is, they make them sons of Gehenna, defending lies, embellishing deception with the smoothness of the tongue and leading many in this way into wandering: they are caught in lustful intentions, as if caught in a snare: after all, what they plan becomes for less cunning snares and snares" (Ps. 9) 52. Gregory of Nyssa, from the “Commentary on Ecclesiastes”: “Here is the conclusive proof of Ecclesiastes: much wisdom follows much knowledge, and the addition of knowledge is accompanied as a consequence by an increase in sorrows” (Eccl. 1:16–18). So from the study of many and useless external sciences, from human wisdom and much knowledge acquired through insomnia and labor, those who are too concerned about this not only do not add anything necessary, useful and leading to eternal life, but on the contrary, their sorrow increases. Having said goodbye to all this, we must stay awake in chants, prayers and supplications to our Creator, God and Lord, persist in them, engage in them, raise our hearts and minds in this way to the incomprehensible heights of the greatness of God, look at the beauty of the Sun of Glory, be enlightened by communion and participation in the Heavenly Kingdom both in our inner and outer man, revel in the ineffable glory in our strength contemplation and vision of it and be filled with truly unspeakable and divine joy, so as not to be immediately condemned for useless pursuits of empty things" 53 . You did well, father, to bring at the same time the words of the saints about my concern. Seeing how you resolved my doubts, I was amazed at the obviousness of the truth and was a little afraid that if, as you yourself say, every word fights with word 54, then wouldn’t there be some kind of refutation of your words; but I stopped being afraid of this when I heard that only the testimony of good deeds is unshakable, and I realized that the saints say the same thing as you, but how can someone who does not trust them count on trust? Doesn’t such a person reject the God of the saints, Who said to the apostles, and the apostles through them to the subsequent saints, that “he who rejects you rejects Me” (Luke 10:16), rejects the Truth itself? Can seekers of truth agree with its opponent? Then I ask you, father, listen to the enumeration of other things that I have heard from those who have been engaged in Hellenic science all their lives; say what you think about all this, and again add the judgment of the saints. So, these people say that we are doing a bad job by trying to bring our mind inside the body; If you listen to them, then you must, on the contrary, use all your might to expel it beyond the boundaries of everything corporeal. Therefore, they mock some of our monks, condemning them for allegedly telling beginners to look at themselves, with sighs to send their own mind inside themselves, and at the same time consider that the mind is not separate from the soul; if the mind is not separated from the soul, but is connected with it, then, these scoffers say, how can you bring it inside again? They also assure us that they teach us to infuse ourselves with God’s grace through the nostrils 55 . However, knowing for sure that here they are slandering, because I have never heard such a thing from our people, I guess that in everything else they also have treachery and deception: after all, whoever invents what is not, will also distort what is. Just explain to me, father, why we try with all our might to bring the mind inside and do not consider it bad to imprison it in the body. 2nd part of the TRIAD I. That, while striving to listen to oneself in hesychia, it is not useless to keep the mind inside the body 1. Don’t you remember, brother, the words of the Apostle that “our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit living in us” and that “we are the house of God,” just as the Lord says that “I will dwell... and walk /in them/ and will be their God” (1 Cor. 6:19; Heb. 3:6; 2 Cor. 6:16)? And in what by nature is capable of becoming God’s house, does anyone who has a mind disdain to infuse his mind? And why did God initially infuse the mind into this body? Didn't he do something bad too? Such things are appropriate for heretics to say, who call the body evil and the image of the evil one, but we consider evil only the presence of the mind in bodily thoughts, while in the body it is not evil at all, since the body itself is not evil. It is not for nothing that everyone who has dedicated their life to God exclaims to God together with David: “My soul has thirsted for You, how much more has my flesh” and “My heart and my flesh have rejoiced in the living God” (Ps. 62:2, 83:3) - and together with Isaiah: “My belly... He will cry out like a harp, and my insides are like a wall of brass, which You have renewed,” and: “For Thy fear, O Lord, in the womb did I conceive the Spirit of Thy salvation” (Is. 16:11, 26:18), daring in this, we will not fall, but those who speak from the earth and falsely interpret heavenly sayings and ways of life into earthly ones will fall. If the apostle calls the body death, “who,” he says, “will deliver me from this body of death?” (Rom.7:24) - then he understands the body as a mundane and bodily thought, occurring only in bodily images, which is why, comparing it with the spiritual and divine, he rightly calls it “body”, and not just “body”, but “the death of the body.” A little higher, he shows even more clearly that it is not the flesh that is condemned, but the sinful desire that comes from crime: “I am,” he says, “sold to sin,” but I am not sold by nature; and again: “I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my flesh.” Do you see? He does not call the flesh evil, but what lives in it. The fact that not the mind [spirit], but “the law which is in our members... and warring against the law of the mind... the law” lives in our body (Rom. 7:14-24), this is evil. 2. Therefore, we, opposing the “law of sin” (Rom. 8:2), expel it from the body, install the mind as a ruler in the bodily house and with its help establish the proper law for every faculty of the soul and for every bodily organ: we command the senses what and how much to perceive, the action of this law is called “temperance”; We give the passionate part of the soul the best state, which is called “love”; We also improve the reasoning ability of the soul, driving out everything that prevents the thought from striving for God, and we call this section of the mental law “sobriety.” Whoever through abstinence cleanses his body, by the power of God’s love makes his will and his desire the support of virtues, 56 and gives his mind to God in enlightened prayer, he will receive and see in himself the grace promised to all who are pure in heart. Then he will be able to say with the Apostle Paul: “God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, has shined in our hearts to enlighten /us/ with the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” “We carry this treasure,” says the apostle, “in scanty vessels” (2 Cor. 4:6–7). Even if we carry the light of the Father in the face of Jesus Christ, for the knowledge of the glory of the Holy Spirit, as in meager vessels, in bodies, then will we really act unworthy of the nobility of the mind if we restrain our own mind inside the body? Who would say such a thing, not to mention those who are spiritual, but who at least possess a human mind, albeit one devoid of God’s grace? 3. If our soul is a single multi-capable force that uses the body that receives life from it as an instrument, then using what parts of the body as instruments does that ability that we call mind operate? Of course, no one has ever imagined that the seat of thought is neither nails, nor eyelashes, nor nostrils, nor lips; everyone considers it to be located inside us, but theologians disagree on the question of which of the internal organs thought uses first of all, because some place it, as in a kind of acropolis, in the brain, while others assign its seat to the deepest center of the heart, cleansed of the spiritual spirit. If we ourselves definitely know that our faculty of thought is located not inside us as in some kind of vessel, since it is incorporeal, and not outside of us, since it is associated with us, but is located in the heart as its instrument, then we learned this not from people, but from the Creator of people himself, who, after the words “What does not enter into the mouth... but what comes out through them defiles a person” says: “From the heart come... thoughts” (Matthew 15:11, 19). That is why Macarius the Great says: “The heart rules the entire composition of a person, and if grace takes possession of the pastures of the heart, it reigns over all thoughts and bodily members; after all, all the thoughts of the soul are in the heart” 57: so the heart is the treasury of the rational ability of the soul and the main bodily instrument of reasoning. Trying in strict sobriety to observe and direct this ability of ours, what should we do if not to gather the mind scattered through external sensations and bring it to the inner focus, to the heart, the repository of thoughts? It is not for nothing that the worthy Macarius 58 immediately after the words just quoted adds: “So, here we must look to see whether the laws of the Spirit are inscribed by grace” 59 . Where is "here"? In the main bodily organ, on the throne of grace, where the mind and all spiritual thoughts are: in the heart. Do you see that those who decide to listen to themselves in hesychia must return and enclose the mind in the body, and especially in that inner body of the body, which we call the heart? 4. If, according to the psalmist, “all the glory of the daughter of the King is within” (Ps. 44:14), then why would we look for her somewhere outside? If, according to the apostle, “God has given His Spirit, crying out in our hearts, “Abba, Father!” (Gal. 4:6), then shouldn’t we pray together with the Spirit in our hearts? If, according to the Lord of the prophets and apostles, “The kingdom of heaven is within us” (Luke 17:21), then won’t the one who tries with all his might to bring his own mind out of himself will remain outside the kingdom of heaven? “A right heart,” says Solomon, “seeks feelings” (Prov. 27:21), which he in another place called intelligent and Godly 60 and encouraging everyone to do so, the fathers say that “an intelligent spirit is always clothed in an intelligent feeling, and whether it is within us or outside of us, may we never cease to seek it” 61 Isn’t it clear that if a person wants to resist sin, acquire virtue and receive the reward of the winner in. virtuous struggle, or rather, the key to the reward for virtue, intelligent feeling, then he needs to bring the body and mind inside? And to derive the mind not from bodily thoughts, but from the body itself, outside of which it supposedly receives mental contemplations, is the most evil Hellenic seduction, the root and source of all evil teaching, a demonic invention, a science that gives rise to madness and is generated by bewilderment 62. It is no coincidence that those who broadcast at the suggestion of demons are in a frenzy from within themselves, not understanding what they are saying 63 . We, on the contrary, introduce the mind not only inside the body and heart, but even inside the heart itself 64. 5. Let these people gossip about how they can still introduce the mind, which is not separated from the soul, but connected with it. Apparently, they do not know that the essence of the mind is one thing, and its energy is another; or, perhaps, they know, but deliberately pose as confused, sophistically hiding behind the namesake of different concepts 65: after all, “whoever does not accept the simplicity of spiritual teaching, being sophisticated in dialectical contradictions,” he, in the words of Basil the Great, “perverts the power of truth with the plausibility of sophisms, using the antitheses of false knowledge” 66. Those who are not spiritual themselves, but consider themselves worthy to judge and teach about spiritual things, cannot do otherwise. They cannot help but remember that the mind is not like sight, which sees all other visible things, but does not see itself. He acts in everything else, considering what he needs - Dionysius the Areopagite calls this the direct movement of the mind - and returns to himself and acts on himself, contemplating himself, which Dionysius calls the circular movement of the mind 67. The second is the best and most characteristic action [energy] of the mind, through which it sometimes surpasses itself, uniting with God. Basil the Great says that “a mind that is not scattered externally...” - therefore, it can go outside! and when leaving, he, of course, needs to return, which is why Vasily continues: “... returns to himself, and through himself ascends to God” 68 as if in some reliable way. After all, the circular movement of the mind, says the undeluded contemplator of the intelligible sky, Dionysius, is impossible to fall into any kind of wandering 69. 6. And so the father of error, who always tries to seduce a person from God’s path and turn him onto the path of wandering, until now, as far as we know, has not found an assistant who would try to lure him onto such a path with good words, but now, apparently, he has found his accomplices, if indeed, as you say, there are people who are beginning to convince the crowd and are already writing books, teaching that the one who prays is even the one who has accepted life with joy sublimely detached and silent - must keep his mind outside the body. These people do not recognize the definitive judgment of John, the builder of the verbal staircase leading to heaven, that “a hesychast is one who tries to enclose the incorporeal in his body” 70 . This is what our spiritual fathers taught us. And rightly so: after all, if you do not enclose it inside the body, then how else can you contain the mind, which clothes itself in the body and, likening itself to the natural appearance of the body, is located throughout its entire formed matter? The externality and separateness of this matter cannot contain the essence of the mind unless this matter lives, and in a way of life that corresponds to the fusion of mind and body 71 . 7. Do you notice, brother, that even if you analyze the matter not spiritually, but simply humanly, it still turns out that for those who want to belong to themselves and become truly “monks” [“one”] according to the inner man, it is necessary to bring the mind inside the body and restrain it there? It is especially appropriate to teach beginners to look into themselves and bring their own mind inside through breathing. Therefore, no reasonable person would advise against using any methods to concentrate the mind within himself to a monk who does not yet know how to see himself. Precisely, since for those who have just begun the struggle, even the concentrated mind constantly jumps and they constantly have to return it again, but it eludes the inexperienced, who do not yet know that there is nothing more elusive and volatile than their own mind, then some advise carefully monitoring the inhalation and exhalation and holding back the breath a little 72, in observing it, as if holding the breath and the mind, until, having reached the highest stages with God and making your mind non-wandering and unmixed, teetotalers will not learn to strictly concentrate it in a “uniform enfoldment” 73 . You can see that this happens naturally with intense attention: with any concentrated thinking, especially in people who are calm in body and mind, the breath comes out and comes in quietly. By subsisting spiritually and, to the extent possible, restraining their own bodily actions, hesychasts stop all comparative, enumerative and various other cognitive work of mental forces, all sensory perception and, in general, all voluntary bodily action, and they limit anything that is not completely voluntary, such as breathing, to the extent that it depends on us. 8. For those who have advanced in hesychia, all such things are achieved without labor and effort: with the perfect concentration of the soul within itself, the rest gradually comes on its own and without effort. On the contrary, you will never see what we are talking about happen without effort from beginners. Patience comes from love, because “love... endures all things” (1 Cor. 13:7), but we still learn to achieve patience through effort, so that with its help we can come to love; so here they are. Why talk about it a lot? Everyone who has spiritual experience only laughs at people who derive opposite rules not from experience, but from their own understanding; After all, in such matters, the teacher is not reason, but labor and experience gained through labor, which brings useful fruit, making the reasoning of all kinds of disputants and accusers empty and fruitless. And if, as one of the great teachers says, after the fall it is natural for the inner man to become like external forms, 74 then is it really not useful for a monk who is trying to return his mind within himself and wants it to move not in a straight line, but in a circular and non-wandering motion, to not wander his gaze here and there, but as if at some point to stop it on his chest or navel? 75 Curling outwardly, as far as possible, as if into a circle, that is, becoming similar to the desired internal movement of the mind, he will also bring the power of the mind pouring out from the eyes, thanks to this form of the body, inside the heart. And then, if the power of the mental beast is on the umbilical cord of the belly, because here the law of sin has its power and feeds the beast, then why don’t we establish here the law of the mind armed with prayer that opposes it (Rom. 7:23), so that the evil spirit expelled by the “bath of regeneration” (Tit. 3:5), returning with seven other and most evil spirits, does not move in again and “the last does not become worse than the first” ( Luke 11:26)? 9 . “Pay attention to yourself,” says Moses, that is, to everything in yourself, and not to something yes, to something no. Whereby? Of course, through the mind, because it is impossible to listen to everything else. Place this guard over the soul and body; with it you can easily get rid of bad bodily and mental passions. Subdue yourself, command yourself, test yourself, or rather, submit, obey and test everything; so you will subjugate the unbridled flesh to the spirit and “there will never be a secret word in your heart” (Deut. 15:9). “If the spirit of the ruler” - that is, we must understand, the spirit of wickedness and passions - “comes upon you,” says Ecclesiastes, “do not leave your place” (Eccl. 10:4), that is, do not leave a single part of the soul, not a single bodily member unattended; so you will rise above the spirits threatening from below and boldly stand before “the one who searches hearts and bellies,” not being subject to testing, since you yourself have already put everything to the test, because “if we judged ourselves, we would not be judged,” says Paul (1 Cor. 11:31). Having experienced the blessed Davidic feeling 76, you, too, will tell God that “the darkness will not darken you, and the night will shine like day for me... for you have taken possession of my inward parts” (Ps. 139:12-13). You not only, says the prophet here, appropriated to Yourself all the capacity of desire in my soul, but also every spark of this desire in the body, returning to its source, rose through it to You, united with You and clung to You. Because just as in those who are obsessed with sensual, perishing pleasures, the power of spiritual desire is completely emptied into the flesh, because of which they completely become flesh, and God’s Spirit, according to Scripture, cannot live in them (Gen. 6:4), so in those who ascend to God and are attached with their soul to God’s love, even the flesh, having been transformed, also rises and also tastes communion with God, itself becoming God’s possession and residence and no longer having any hidden enmity towards God, nor a desire contrary to His Spirit. 10. And then, which place is more convenient for an evil spirit attacking us from below, the flesh or the mind? Is it not the flesh, about which the apostle said that until the law of life is infused, no good lives in it (Rom. 7:18)? This means that it should never be ignored. How will it submit to us, how can we not lose it, how can we repel the spirit of evil approaching it, especially when we do not yet know how to spiritually repel the spiritual forces of evil, if we do not learn to be attentive to our external form? What can we say about beginners, if even perfect men, not only after Christ, but also before His coming to us, gave their bodies such a form during prayer and were heard by God. The most perfect seer of God, Elijah, resolved a long-term drought with prayer, leaning his head on his knees and thus diligently introducing his mind inside himself and into God (1 Kings 18:42). And the people from whom you have heard enough, brother, are probably suffering from the Pharisaical disease, which is why they do not want to observe and cleanse the inside of the cup, that is, their heart. Not following the tradition of their fathers, they rush to sit over everyone as new teachers of the law; So they reject the physical form of the prayer of the publican, justified by the Lord, and they also encourage other praying people not to adhere to it. Because what does the Lord say in the Gospels? “The publican... did not even dare to lift his eyes to heaven” (Luke 18:13). Those who, when praying, direct their gaze to themselves, strive for this external form. 11. People who called them omphalopsychics with the obvious purpose of slandering the accused - because did any of the prayer books ever say that the soul is in the navel? - not only exposed the slanderous intention of their attacks, but also showed about themselves that they defile the virtuous, and do not correct the erring, and write not for the sake of hesychia and truth, but out of vanity, and not to encourage sobriety, but to distract from sobriety 77 . And they try in every possible way to humiliate this very work and the men who have diligently taken up it, just for one external action that corresponds to it. Those who said that “Your law is in the midst of my belly” (Ps. 39:9), and who prophesied to God that “my belly... will cry like a harp, and my insides are like a wall of copper, which You have renewed” (Is. 16:11), can easily be called kiliopsychos, 78 and in general pervert all those who imprint, name, and seek out intelligent ones in bodily symbols, divine and spiritual things 79 . Of course, by doing this they will not cause any harm to the saints; on the contrary, they will become a reason for new blessings for them and an even greater increase in heavenly crowns, while they themselves will remain outside the sacred veils, not being able to look even at the shadows of truth 80. And there is a great danger that people who not only moved away from the saints, but also went against them in their speeches, will pay for this with eternal punishment. 12. You have read the “Life” of Simeon the New Theologian, 81 almost whose entire life, glorified by God with supernatural signs, was a miracle, so that if anyone called his creations manuscripts of grace, he would not have sinned against the truth; You also know Nicephorus, a holy man, who, having spent many years in solitude and hesychia, and then settling in the most desolate place of the Holy Mountain and delving into his studies, conveyed to us the experience of sobriety drawn from all the writings of the holy fathers 82 . They clearly advise beginners exactly what you say some people object to. Is it only the old saints? Men who testified a short time before us, and were distinguished by the power of the Holy Spirit, gave us the same message from their own lips. I am talking about the theologian - truly theologian and the most reliable contemplator of the truth of God's mysteries - about the 83 venerable Theoliptus, who became famous with us, the primate of the Philadelphian Church, or rather the lamp that illuminated the universe from it; about Athanasius, who adorned the patriarchal throne for many years and whose relics the Lord honored; about Nile, who came to us from Italy, a rival of the great Saint Nile; about Celiota and Elijah, who are in no way inferior to him; about Gabriel and his friend Athanasius, who were awarded the prophetic gift 84. You know that all of them and many of their other predecessors, contemporaries and followers approve of this tradition and exhort them to adhere to it, while the newly-minted teachers of hesychia, who have not seen the shadow of hesychia, who edify not from experience, but from grandiosity, are trying to refute, distort and humiliate this very tradition, which is not at all for the benefit of those who listen to them. We personally communicated with some of the listed holy men, listening to their teachings. So, will we really neglect them, rich in both experience and grace, and prefer others who began to teach out of arrogance and passion for word disputes? It won't happen, it won't. And therefore, turn away from such people, wisely saying to yourself instead of David: “Bless the Lord, my soul, and all that is within me, His holy name” (Ps. 102:1) - and, entrusting yourself to your fathers, listen to how they admonish you to always bring your mind inward 85. Now, father, I see quite clearly that the accusers of the hesychasts are not only deprived of the understanding that comes from good deeds, and do not have the solid and irrefutable support of life experience, but are also completely deaf to the teachings of the fathers. “Being vainly puffed up,” according to the apostle, “and intruding... with their carnal... mind into things they did not see” (Col. 2:18), they deviated so much from the straight path that, clearly slandering the prayer books, they contradict even themselves in everything. It is not for nothing that when they begin to talk about enlightenment, they reject as a deception any sensory-perceived enlightenment - and then they claim that God’s enlightenment is perceived by the senses: after all, they call symbolic the insights that the Jews and their prophets had in the Old Law before the coming of Christ, but undoubtedly sensual - the Favorian light of the Transfiguration of the Savior, the light during the descent of the Holy Spirit and any light of this kind. They consider only knowledge to be supersensible enlightenment, which is why they place it above light as the goal of all contemplation. And what they allegedly heard from someone, I’ll tell you briefly now. I ask you to believe me that, having never heard anything like this from the hesychasts, I cannot bring myself to assume that such a thing could have been heard from any of our monks. But our accusers nevertheless say that they pretended to be students, but of little ability, and therefore insisted and asked for permission to write down what their mentors told them 86 . And so they write that their mentors ordered them to abandon all Holy Scripture as worthless and engage only in prayer, with it to drive out evil spirits that supposedly belong to the essence of man, to sensually inflame themselves, to jump, to enjoy, without waiting for the conversion of the soul, and to contemplate the sensual lights visible in such a state, considering brilliant whiteness to be a sign of God’s lights, and fiery and yellowishness as a sign of unclean lights. They write that all this was told to them by their mentors personally and that they themselves consider it demonic; and if you object to anything they say, they immediately see in it a sign of passionate obsession, which they again consider evidence of seduction. In general, from many examples one can be convinced that they misinterpret their accused and perfectly imitate in their writings the twists and cunning of snakes, twisting in all sorts of twists and weaving various intricacies, each time interpreting their own words differently and in the opposite sense. Lacking a solid foundation and the simplicity of truth, they easily rush into opposites and, ashamed of the reproaches of their own conscience, like the old Adam, they try to hide behind diversity, mystery and ambiguity, taking advantage of the difference in verbal meanings. I ask you, father, to clarify the relationship of our teaching to what these people say. 3rd part of the TRIAD I. About light, God's enlightenment, sacred beatitude and perfection in Christ. 1. Truly, not only vices cling to virtues, but also wicked reasonings turn out to be so close to pious ones that with the slightest addition or subtraction they easily turn one into the other and the meaning of words changes to the opposite; That’s why any false teaching wears the guise of truth for people who are unable to notice this small deletion or addition. Here is a cunning trick of the evil one with his great art of deception. After all, a lie, not far from the truth, creates a double delusion: since the tiny difference eludes the majority, either the lie is taken for the truth, or the truth, in its close proximity to the lie, is taken for a lie, in both cases completely falling away from the truth. Supporters of Arius, initiated into this art, set up their creed in the city of Nice against the Nicene, undermining the “direct word of truth” 87. Having used a similar deception, Arius himself would have begun to partake and serve the liturgy a little longer together with those who denounced him before the Church, if the Archbishop Alexander of Constantinople, who was able to notice the trick, although he could not clearly refute it, did not turn to the Lord with prayer and by its power did not betray this wicked and truly demoniac to a dishonorable death 88 . 2. In my opinion, this, brother, is constantly used by the people you talk about. Indeed, Saint Diadochos, and the great prayer book Philemon, and Neilos, who is highly experienced in God’s affairs, and John Climacus, and many of the living fathers 89 advise giving up reading a lot and devoting yourself to monosyllabic prayer until you acquire the ability to constantly keep it in mind, even if the body is occupied with something else. that it is useless or worthless: by adding “worthless,” the slanderers made the good commandments worthless. Again, we know that almost all the saints showed in action and taught in word that prayer drives out evil spirits and bad passions; every right-thinking person thinks the same and teaches the same, but no one thinks or teaches that they supposedly belong to our essence; He who adds this on his own suggests not to drive away the evil one, but to flee from him 90. That the heart jumps, as if jumping from the delight of love for good, said Basil the Great 91, and Athanasius the Great also considers this a sign of grace; that a person comes out of prayer as if inflamed if he turns to God with a non-vain mind and in action, Climacus clearly teaches 92, calling prayer without this, without the appearance of light and without the onset of peace in the soul, bodily, or Jewish; that an expression of pleasure appears on the face of the person praying both from prayer and from reasonable psalmody, many others directly write about this, including Saint Isaac 93 . But only the beginning of everything is the improvement of the rational soul; having rejected it, the slanderers of whom you speak have made what is praiseworthy reprehensible: separating from the sacred and Divine enlightenment everything else that serves as its false signs, and adding from themselves something small, but giving rise to accusations, they are trying to inspire the inexperienced that alas! the divine can be demonic. Most importantly, they are confident that “he who is kept in chains of eternal darkness” (2 Pet. 2:4, 17; Jude 1:6, 13) shines, at least deceptively, and the most luminous Beginning of light, God, who fills with intelligent light every rational nature disposed to receive the light within its capabilities, cannot, in their opinion, intelligently shine. 3. But for me, that knowledge, in which alone, as you say, they recognize intelligible enlightenment, is itself called light only because it is given by heavenly light, as Paul says about it: “God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, has shined in our hearts, enlightening /us/ with the knowledge of God’s glory” (2 Cor. 4:6). In agreement with this, the great theologian Dionysius says that “the presence of intelligible light will unite everything illuminated by it, collecting it into integral and true knowledge” 94 . Do you see? The light of knowledge, that is, that which frees us from the fragmentation of ignorance, is given by the presence of the light of grace. Dionysius calls this light intelligible; Macarius the Great, speaking as if directly to those who imagine the blessed light in the form of knowledge, calls it smart: “By its actions,” he says, “you will recognize the smart light that has illuminated your soul, whether it comes from God or from Satan” 95. In another place, calling the glory on the face of Moses immortality, although it shone then on a mortal face, and showing that perfect light is now revealed in the souls of people who truly loved God, he says: “As the eyes of sensual vision see the sensual sun, so the righteous with the eyes of the soul see the intelligent light, which, shining and spreading at the moment of resurrection on their bodies, will also reveal their bodies in the beauty of eternal light” 96. Of course, no one would call the light of knowledge intelligent and spiritual, 97 but the divine light is both intelligent when it acts and intelligible when it is contemplated by our mind through intelligent feeling; and he, entering rational souls, frees them from random ignorance 98, leading them from many probabilities to a single and integral knowledge. It is not without reason that the singer of God’s names, wanting to sing the illustrious name of the Good, finds it necessary to say that “the Good is called intelligible light, because He fills the entire heavenly mind with intelligible light and drives out all ignorance and delusion from any soul into which they penetrate” 99 . Therefore, it is one thing - knowledge, which comes when ignorance is expelled, and another - the intelligible light by which knowledge is given; That is why it is said that intelligible light fills the “heavenly” mind, that is, the mind that has surpassed itself. How can one not understand that Dionysius calls the heavenly and super-intelligent light knowledge only in a figurative sense? And cleansing from random ignorance, which the great theologian called ignorance and error, can only be accomplished in a rational soul. 4. But not only the angelic, but also the human mind surpasses itself when it becomes like the angels in dispassion 100; This means that he, too, can touch God’s light and be rewarded with a supernatural theophany, not seeing the essence of God, of course, but seeing God in His divine manifestation, commensurate with the human ability to see. And not negatively [apophathically], because he sees, but beyond negation, because God is above not only knowledge, but also unknowability 101, just as His manifestation is truly also hidden. The most divine is at the same time the most unusual. Divine manifestations, even if they are symbolic, are unattainably unknowable: they are revealed in some other order, other in relation to both divine and human nature - so to speak, in us above us - so that there is no name that can accurately express them. This is shown by the words of the angel, in response to Manoah’s question “What is your name?” who answered: “And it is wonderful” (Judges 13:13–18); that is, it is as if his vision is also wonderful, being not only incomprehensible, but also nameless. However, if the vision is higher than negation, then the word interpreting this vision remains below the negative ascent, moving through comparisons and analogies, and it is no coincidence that names and names are often accompanied here by the particle “how,” conveying the meaning of likening, since the vision is inexpressible and unnameable. 5. When holy men see this divine light in themselves - and they see it when, during an ineffable visit to perfecting insights, they receive the deifying communion of the Spirit - they see the garments of their deification, because the grace of the Word fills their mind with the glory and radiance of the highest beauty, just as at Tabor the Divinity of the Word glorified the body united with Him with divine light 102 . After all, “the glory that the Father gave Him,” He gave to the obedient, according to the gospel word, and “desired that they should be with Him and see His glory” (John 17:22–24). But how can this happen bodily if after His ascension to heaven He no longer remains bodily? It is clear that now only intelligent insight is possible. It occurs when the mind, having become heavenly and taking as a companion the One who ascended into heaven for us, clearly and mysteriously unites there with God and receives supernatural and ineffable contemplations, the fullness of immaterial knowledge, being filled with the highest light - not as a spectator of sensual sacred symbols and not as a cognizer of the variegated diversity of Holy Scripture, but as adorned with the original creative beauty and illuminated By God's radiance 103. In the same way, the highest ranks of supramundane minds, in accordance with their dignity, as the explainer of heaven and the interpreter of the hierarchy reigning in them says, are filled not only with primordial knowledge and science, but - since they take a sacred beginning from the highest principle of all sanctification, the Holy Trinity - also with the first light, becoming partakers and contemplators not only of the Trinity glory, but also of the light of Jesus, which was once revealed to the disciples on Favore 104. Those worthy of this contemplation are initiated into the idolizing light of Christ, truly approaching Him and directly communing with His deifying lights, which is why the venerable Macarius calls the light of grace the food of the heavenly inhabitants 105, and another theologian says: “The entire intelligent, intangibly nourished order of supramundane beings represents the most obvious evidence of the love of mankind of the Word” 106. And the Apostle Paul, before receiving invisible and heavenly contemplations, “was caught up into heaven” (2 Cor. 12:2) without his mind having to ascend spatially to heaven, although the rapture undoubtedly betrays some other secret, which is known only to those who have experienced it, and it is not necessary to talk about which what the fathers who knew this from experience taught us now, so as not to make this also the prey of wickedness. Even from what has already been said, we will without any difficulty prove to anyone who is not yet convinced that there is intellectual enlightenment, visible in pure hearts, completely different from knowledge and being its source. 6. These people claim, as you say, that the enlightenments of the ancient law are symbolic. But this is precisely what they prove that there is a holy enlightenment, the symbols of which were the Old Testament. That most Old Testament symbols were symbols of such enlightenment, we also hear from St. Nila: “When the mind,” he says, “having put off the old man, is clothed in a man created from grace, then during prayer he will see his dispensation illuminated with sapphire, or heavenly color, which in Scripture is called the place of God (Ex. 24:2), seen by the elders under Mount Sinai” 107. Saint Isaac says the same thing: “During prayer, the mind visited by grace sees its own purity, like a heavenly color; it was called by the elders of Israel the place of God when it was revealed to them on the mountain" 108 . Do you see? Old Testament symbols are symbols of the sacraments that are now performed in pure hearts. John, golden both in language and in mind, explaining the apostolic word that “God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, has shone in our hearts” (2 Cor. 4:6), says: “It shows that the glory of Moses shines with increase in us: just as the face of Moses once, so now it has illuminated our hearts,” and a little later: “At the beginning of creation God spoke, and there was light; now he did not say, but He Himself became a light for us” 109. So, if the light at the beginning of Creation or on the face of Moses was some kind of moderate knowledge, then the radiance in our hearts would have to be the highest knowledge, since it increased. Since it was not knowledge, but a radiance that appeared on the face, then the illumination in us is not knowledge, but the light of the soul, appearing to the pure mind. The radiance perceived by sensual eyes would have to be called sensual, just as the present one is intelligible, since it is perceived by the eyes of the mind and acts within us. 7. But that radiance was not simply sensual, although it appeared visibly on the face of the prophet, since the glory of the light of the face of Moses, according to Saint Macarius, is now accepted in the soul 110. Macarius also calls the same glory “the glory of Christ,” and although it appeared sensually, he considers it supersensible, citing with small additions the apostolic words: ““We all with an open face consider the glory of the Lord” - that is, His intelligent light, - “transformed into the same image from glory to glory,” - that is, we must understand, thanks to the abundance of radiance in us, ever more brightly shed by God’s light.” 111. And what does Saint Diadochos say? “There should be no doubt that when the mind begins to experience the constant action of God’s light, it becomes completely transparent, so that it itself clearly sees its light: after all, it all becomes light when the power of the soul takes possession of the passions” 112. And Saint Maximus? What, finally, does the famous Nile say together with Basil the Great? “The Pillar of Truth, Basil of Cappadocia writes that human knowledge is achieved through labor and exercise, and knowledge coming from God’s grace is achieved through righteousness and tenderness; and the first knowledge can be acquired even by people immersed in passions, while the second is accessible only to the dispassionate, who, during prayer, see how their own radiance of their mind illuminates them” 114. Do you understand, brother, that when a mind freed from passions sees itself, as it were, with light, it is illuminated by God’s light? And now listen again with an attentive ear to the truly blessed Macarius, whom the godly Nile called the chosen vessel 115. As he says in the chapters translated by Metaphrastus, “Perfect spiritual illumination is not just some revelation of thoughts, but a reliable and constant shining in the souls of the hypostatic light; the words “He who commanded the light to shine out of darkness has illuminated our hearts” and “Enlighten my eyes, so that I do not sleep into death” (Ps. 12:4) and “Send Your light and Your truth, let them guide me... upon Thy holy mountain" (Ps. 42:3) and "The light of Thy countenance is imprinted on us" (Ps. 4:7) and all other similar words prove the same thing" 116. By calling the light hypostatic, Macarius, as it were, refutes in advance people who consider only knowledge to be enlightenment and confuse many, and above all themselves, by interpreting into knowledge everything that is said about God’s light. On the contrary, as I said above, I am sure that even the very name of light received knowledge secondarily from that first light. 8. It is no coincidence that no one has ever called the awareness that comes from sensations light, although in a certain sense it is also knowledge, even the most reliable. Only knowledge that comes from the mind and is rational is called light. And we do not know anything meaningfully intelligent that is not light. Indeed, angels, this seemingly immaterial and incorporeal fire - what are they if not intelligent light? The mind, seeing itself, sees, as it were, light - what is the mind, if not intelligent light, contemplating itself? God Himself, beyond all intelligent light and supernaturally superior to all essence, Whom the holy theologians call fire, on the one hand, in accordance with fire, this weak likeness of Himself in the sensory world, is hidden and invisible in Himself when there is no substance capable of containing God’s appearance, but when He embraces a substance worthy of Him and unfenced, and such is every purified intelligent nature that does not wear a veil. sin, then He is also seen as intelligent light 117, which we have already shown and will continue to show with the help of the saints who have experienced and seen the radiance of God. 9 . Just as fire, covered with an opaque substance, can heat it, but not enlighten it, so the mind, when a dull veil of evil passions lies on it, can produce knowledge, but not light. Since the mind is not only the intelligible light, and even not only the highest of the lights visible in this way, but also the contemplating light, like the eye of the soul - “the mind fused with the soul is its vision” according to Basil the Great 118 - then just as sensory vision cannot act without light shining on it from the outside, so the mind, as the owner of an intelligent sense, could not see and act in itself if it were not illuminated by God’s light. And just as vision, beginning to act, itself becomes light and arises simultaneously with the light and sees first of all this same light, spread over all visible things, in the same way the mind, when it reaches the fullness of mental feeling, is itself entirely like light and arises simultaneously with the light and with the help of light clearly sees the light, rising not only above the bodily senses, but also above everything cognizable and generally above everything that exists. The pure in heart see God, according to the untrue commandment of beatitudes given from the Lord, who, being light, according to the word of the wise John, the son of thunder (1 John 1:5), dwells in us and reveals Himself to those who love Him and are beloved by Him, as He promised (John 14:21, 23). He reveals Himself to the purified mind as if in a mirror, remaining invisible in itself, because this is the property of the mirror image: it is both obvious and invisible, because it is impossible to simultaneously look into the mirror and see what casts its image into it. 10. Thus, those who have been purified by love for God see Him now, and in the Kingdom of God they see Him “face to face” (1 Cor. 13:12). People who, having not experienced God and not seen Him, do not believe that He can be contemplated as some kind of radiant light, and think that He is accessible only to rational speculation, are like the blind who, feeling only the warmth of the sun, do not believe the sighted that the sun also shines. If the blind begin to dissuade the sighted, saying that the sun, the brightest of all sensual things, is not light, they will become a laughing stock for the sensually sighted. And for people who behave in the same way in relation to the “Sun of Truth” (Mal. 4:2) erected over the universe, not only those who are intelligently sighted should cry, but also those who simply believe them, and not only because, not understanding how, in the abundance of His mercy towards us, God emerges with His inalienable supernatural power from the beyond, incomprehensibility and mystery, becoming involved in the mind and invisibly visible, such people remain loveless before this all-seeing and all-understanding love, but also because, not wanting to follow the saints, who, out of love for mankind, compiled verbal guides to this light, they themselves rush to the edge of the abyss and try to drag gullible listeners with them - probably in order to have accomplices when, according to Gregory the Theologian, “He appears to them by fire, Whom they did not recognize as light” 119 and in Whom They didn’t believe it. Again, take this fire: “it is full of darkness, or rather, identical to the darkness that has enveloped the light; This, according to the word of the Lord, “is prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:41). It turns out that the darkness of hell is not just sensual, since it is prepared for evil angels who are not involved in feeling; and on the other hand, it is not just ignorance, because those who have now trusted in the heirs of darkness will then know God not only no worse, but even better, for all flesh will confess that “Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:11), amen. In this case, God’s light is also not in the proper sense sensual and not in the proper sense knowledge, since its opposite, darkness, is neither sensual darkness nor ignorance. But if God’s light is in no way knowledge, but something more, the source of the hidden and ineffable knowledge of God’s mysteries, then the guarantee of this light (2 Cor. 1:22, 5:5; Eph. 1:14), now visible with pure hearts, is also not just knowledge, but the giver of knowledge corresponding to it, is itself intelligible and intelligent, or rather spiritual light, intangibly coming and visible, inaccessibly lifted above all knowledge and all virtue, the only giver of heavenly perfection to Christians, arising not from imitation or understanding, but in the revelation and grace of the Spirit. 11. It is not for nothing that the great Macarius, to whom the interpreter Simeon co-testifies and echoes with his sweet speech, says: “God’s Apostle Paul showed in the most precise and clear way that for every soul the perfect sacrament of Christianity is the shining of heavenly light in revelation and the power of the Spirit, so that no one would think that the enlightenment of the Spirit lies only in the knowledge of thoughts, and would not, due to ignorance and negligence, be in danger of passing by the perfect sacraments of grace. For this purpose, Paul offered everyone a well-known example of spiritual glory shining around the face of Moses: “If what passes away is glorious,” he says, “much more glorious is what remains.” He speaks of the transitory because glory then clothed the mortal body of Moses, but here he shows that the immortal glory of spiritual revelation now illuminates the immortal face of the inner man among the worthy with an everlasting light. In fact, he says: “We all”—that is, all born of the Spirit in perfect faith—“behold with open face the glory of the Lord, being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.” “With an open face” - that is, with the face of the soul, because when someone turns to the Lord, “the veil is removed; and the Lord is spirit” (2 Cor. 3:7–18). The Apostle clearly showed here that a veil of darkness fell over the soul, which was allowed to penetrate into humanity from the crime of Adam, and that now, through the illumination of the Spirit, the veil is removed from the faithful and truly worthy souls, for which the coming of Christ took place” 120. 12. Do you see, brother, that the sensory enlightenment of the Old Testament foreshadowed the spiritual enlightenment that takes place in the souls of believers in Christ in fact and in truth? Those who call them sensual and symbolic should come through them to believe in this enlightenment and to seek it, but they, on the contrary, try with all their might to persuade even believers to disbelieve in it, and moreover, if possible, even those who are clearly endowed with grace and have unforgettable grace-filled knowledge. They begin to boldly and unreasonably retrain men who have learned the unspeakable mysteries from God and through His mysterious appearance and action, and they are not convinced even by the holy Apostle Paul, who says that “he who is spiritual judges all things, but no one can judge him,” because he “has the mind of Christ”; and “Whoever knows the mind of the Lord, who can number him?” (1 Cor. 2:15-16), - that is, who, measuring with his thoughts, will take possession of spiritual things? After all, whoever trusts his own reflections and rational considerations, hoping to find the whole truth through distinctions, inferences and dissections, he cannot at all understand a spiritual person, nor believe him - he is so spiritual, and “a spiritual person,” says the apostle, “does not contain what is of the Spirit” (1 Cor. 2:14), and cannot contain it, but if he himself does not know and does not believe, then how, even after calculating everything, will force understand and trust others? Whoever, without hesychia, that is, without intellectual sobriety and without the experience of spiritual and mysterious accomplishments achieved in it, teaches about sobriety, following his own reflections and trying to rationally deduce the super-rational good, he has clearly fallen into extreme madness and his wisdom has truly become stupidity (Rom. 1:22; 1 Cor. 1:20), because he foolishly decided to discern the supernatural with natural knowledge, with natural reason and the methods of the flesh. philosophy to explore and measure “the depths of God, knowable only by the Spirit,” and spiritual gifts, knowable only “to those who are spiritual and have the mind of Christ” (1 Cor. 2:10, 16). In addition to madness, he will also be a fighter against God, mistaking Veliarovo for, alas! the action and grace of the good Spirit and fighting against “those who have received the Spirit from God, that through Him we might know the things freely given to us by God” (1 Cor. 2:12). But he will only be the heir to grief for the harm caused to gullible listeners; because, as the prophet says, “Woe to you, who feeds your brother with muddy corruption” (Hab. 2:15). 13. When those who are able to examine everything, that is, the spiritual ones - because “the spiritual one judges everything”, according to the Apostle - when, I say, those who do not understand them would have to subordinate themselves to them, in order with the help of their reason to unmistakably know themselves, they try to judge and correct those who are not judged, to the destruction of both themselves and the gullible - because “about spiritual things”, according to the same Apostle, “no one can judge” ( 1 Cor. 2:15). They say that no one can become familiar with perfection and holiness without discovering true opinions about existence, and it is supposedly impossible to discover them without distinctions, conclusions and divisions. They think in this way that anyone who wants to achieve perfection and holiness must necessarily learn from external science these methods of discrimination, inference and dissection and master them perfectly; With such arguments they try to again prove the reality of the abolished wisdom. But if, having humbly come to those who are able to judge everything, they wanted to learn the truth from them, they would hear that this is a Hellenic belief, the teaching [heresy] of the Stoics or Pythagoreans, who consider the goal of contemplation to be precisely knowledge acquired through the assimilation of sciences; on the contrary, we call true view not knowledge obtained by reasoning and inferences, but knowledge revealed by deeds and life, the only one that is not just true, but strong and unshakable: after all, as they say, every word fights with word 121, but which one fights with life? And of course, we do not think that a person is able to know himself through the methods of discrimination, inference and dissection, unless through difficult repentance and intense struggle he first expels pride and guile from his own mind. Because whoever does not lead his mind in this way and to such a structure will not even see his ignorance, but only from this does successful self-knowledge begin. 14. Moreover, a prudent person will not condemn all ignorance, just as we do not bless all knowledge. In all our practice, must we look upon knowledge as the last goal? There are two types of truth, says Basil the Great: one truth is extremely necessary to have oneself and communicate to others as helping salvation; and if we do not know the true truth about the earth and the ocean, about the sky and celestial bodies, this will not be any hindrance to the promised bliss. The final goal facing us is the future blessings promised by God, sonship with God, deification, the revelation of heavenly treasures, their acquisition and enjoyment of them; and the knowledge of external science, as we know, is tied to this age. “If sensory reasoning represented the truth of things in the next age, then the Sages of this age would become heirs of the Heavenly Kingdom; but if a pure soul sees it, worldly sages will be far from knowing God,” according to the words of the true lover of wisdom, Maximus 122. Why do we need knowledge that does not bring us closer to God? And how can one say that without such knowledge it is impossible to achieve perfection and holiness? 15. Without speaking about other mistakes of people who think a lot about themselves, but have gone astray to the point that, reinterpreting the scripture of the Spirit, they apply it against spiritual affairs and spiritual men, I will give what relates to the essence of our conversation. They say that God is invisible and unthinkable, because “no one has ever seen God; The only begotten Son of God, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has revealed” (John 1:18). So, they ask, wouldn’t it be a clear mistake to try to see God in ourselves? If you object to them with the words of the Only Begotten Son of God that “the pure in heart will see God” and that “I will appear to them, having dwelt in them along with the Father” (John 14:21–23), they immediately call this vision knowledge, not noticing that they contradict themselves: after all, just as God is invisible, so he is unthinkable. Since, because of the invisibility of God, they consider the intelligent contemplation of God in the light to be a false phantom and a demonic obsession, then, because of His unthinkability, they should humiliate knowledge in the same way. With all this, with regard to knowledge, we are not going to object to them at all: they speak here in agreement with us, although they themselves do not understand what they are saying: because, of course, there is knowledge about God, knowledge of the teachings about Him and speculation, which we call theology, and the use and movement of mental forces and bodily members in accordance with nature restores in man his rational prototype. But this is not the perfect beauty of the superiority sent to us from above, this is not the supernatural unity with the most luminous light, from which alone comes both the reliability of theology and the conformity with nature in the order and movements of our mental and physical powers. Whoever rejects this unity rejects at the same time all virtue and truth. 16. Regarding the fact that the vision of God, as they say, is supposedly no higher and no more mysterious than knowledge and that there is no vision of God at all due to the invisibility of God, we ask, taught by those who have had the experience of true contemplation: do you think the Holy Spirit also does not see God? No, of course: he “searches also the depths of God” (1 Cor. 2:10). Now, if anyone were to say that His unalloyed light can be seen apart from the Holy Spirit, you would rightly object: “How can one see the Invisible One?” But if anyone, having put aside the spirit of this world - which the fathers call mental darkness, lying on unpurified hearts - if anyone, I say, has put aside the spirit of the world, cleansed himself from all self-will, retreated from all human teaching, which, according to Basil the Great 123, even under a plausible shell in the slightest admixture already weakens due zeal, having collected, if possible, all spiritual strength and putting sobriety supervise thought, will first spend his life in the natural reflections of the mind pleasing to God, and then, surpassing himself, will receive into himself the “Spirit from God”, who “knows God,... just as the human spirit knows what is in man,” and will thereby receive, as the great Apostle Paul proclaims, the ability to “know what is mysteriously given to him by God,” which “no eye has seen, nor ear heard, and which has not come to the human heart” (1 Cor. 2:9-12), then will he not see God’s invisible light through the medium of the Spirit? And won’t this light, even if seen, still remain invisible, inaudible and unthinkable? After all, those who look contemplate “what the eye has not seen and the ear has not heard, and what has not entered the heart of man”! They receive spiritual eyes and “name the mind of Christ” (1 Cor. 2:16), thanks to which they see the invisible and understand the unthinkable: after all, God is not invisible in Himself, but only for those who think and look with created and natural eyes and thoughts; But to those in whom God has placed Himself as a leader and head, will He not allow His grace to be clearly seen? 17. And will He really not honor them with what is spoken of in the theology of the “Song of Songs” - He, praising there the spiritual power with which their eyes were filled, with the words “Oh, you are beautiful, your eyes are like doves,” to which they themselves, also feeling with these eyes the beauty of the intelligible Bridegroom, give Him abundant words of praise? It is not hidden from the initiates who this dove is, with which in her gaze, the bride herself openly looks for the first time at the beauty of God, her Groom, and can tell the faithful listeners around her in more detail about His generous and creative beauty. Just as the bright ray of the eye, uniting with the rays of the sun, becomes perfect light and thus begins to see sensory things, so the mind, having become “one spirit with the Lord” (1 Cor. 6:17), thanks to this clearly sees spiritual things. Of course, here too - only in some other way, not in the way that people imagine in their creeping reasoning, trying to resist spiritual men - the Lord still remains invisible, because no one has ever contemplated the full greatness of His beauty. According to Gregory of Nyssa, “no eye can see Him completely, even if it looks forever” 124; after all, he does not see the full measure of God’s beauty, but only to the extent to which he himself has made himself capable of perceiving the power of God’s Spirit. In addition to this incomprehensibility, even with the comprehension that seers have, they possess an incomprehensible image 125, which is more divine and extraordinary than anything else 126: due to the incomprehensibility of the Spirit who gives vision, contemplatives do not know how they see all this, how they hear, through which they are initiated into the knowledge of the unprecedented or into the understanding of the eternally existing, because, as the great theologian Dionysius says, “the unity of the deified with the highest light begins with the calming of all activity of the mind” 127, it is accomplished not for some reason or analogy 128, as long as this relates to the activity of the mind, but through the abandonment of everything that exists, itself, however, not being simply abandonment: after all, if there were a simple abandonment, then it would depend on us - and this is the teaching of the Messalians - “to ascend to the hidden mysteries of God if we wish,” as Saint Isaac speaks of the Messalians. So vision is not just abandonment and denial, but also unity and deification, mysteriously and inexpressibly accomplished in the grace of God after the abandonment of everything that impresses the mind from below, or rather, after tranquility, which is higher than abandonment, because abandonment of what exists is only a distant semblance of tranquility of the mind. It is not for nothing that every believer must separate God from His countless creations, and the calmness of all the activities of the mind and then unity with the highest light, being a perfect state and the fullness of God’s activity, is given only to those whose hearts have been purified and filled with grace. However, what am I saying - unity, when brief contemplation was required by the once chosen disciples of Christ, who reached a frenzy from all mental and sensory perception, through a complete renunciation of vision, accepted true vision, and through enduring ignorance 129 embraced the feeling of supernatural things? As our reasoning with God moves forward, we will show, however, that they did see, and they did not see with feeling or mind in the proper sense of the word. 18. So do you understand now that the seers of God are involved in the incomprehensible Spirit, which replaces their mind, eyes, and ears, and thanks to which they see, hear and understand? After all, since every action of the mind calms down for them, then how do angels and people “equal to angels” (Luke 20:36) see God, if not by the power of the Spirit? Their vision is not sensation, since they do not perceive light through the organs of sensation, and it is not thinking, since they find it not through reasoning and rational knowledge, but through the abandonment of all mental action; therefore, it is in no way a dreamy image, a thought, an idea, or a conclusion from an inference. And the mind does not receive it in a simple apophatic ascent. Of course, every commandment of God and every sacred law, according to the word of the fathers, has a limit to purity of heart; every method and type of prayer ends in pure prayer; every reasoning that ascends from below to God, who has ascended above the universe and is detached from everything, stops at the abandonment of existing things. But this does not mean that behind God’s commandments there is nothing else other than purity of heart - there is also something very great: the pledge of promised blessings given in this century and the treasures of the future century, through this pledge visible and tasted; in the same way, behind prayer there is ineffable contemplation and ecstasy in that contemplation and hidden mysteries; and behind the abandonment of things, or rather, the calming of the mind, which takes place in us not only in word, but also in deed - and behind it, even if ignorance, is higher than knowledge, and if darkness, then blinding, and in that blinding darkness, according to the great Dionysius, God's gifts are given to the saints 130. So the most perfect contemplation of God and everything of God is not simply abandonment, but beyond abandonment there is communication with God and rather the giving and acceptance of the gift 131 than abandonment and denial. Those acceptances and gifts are indescribable; it is not for nothing that they talk about them, but with examples and likenesses - not because they also see them in examples and in similarities, but because it is impossible to show what they saw otherwise. And so people, hearing an exemplary and comparable story about such things without a pious understanding of their ineffability, begin to consider wise knowledge foolish and, trampling this intelligent pearl with reproaches (Matthew 7:6), torment with verbal disputes those who showed it to them to the best of their ability. 19. Out of love for humanity and to the best of their ability, as I said, they still talk about the hidden, overcoming the misconceptions of the uninitiated, to whom it seems that after leaving the existing there comes complete inaction, and not such inaction that is higher than any action [of energies]. But again, the innermost continues to remain in its nature. Therefore, the great Dionysius says that behind the abandonment of existence is not the word, but wordlessness and that “after the highest ascent we will unite with the inexpressible” 132, but this inexpressibility does not mean that the mind will touch what is higher than the mind through negation alone; Of course, negative ascent is also a kind of understanding of what God is not, and it also carries within itself the image [icon] of an unimaginable vision and contemplative fullness of the mind, but it is not the essence of the vision. Through the abandonment of everything in the world, those who angelically merged with it sing of the heavenly light, because the mysterious unity taught them that this light supernaturally rises above everything in the world. All who have been honored with grateful, faithful hearing to receive this sacrament from them, can themselves, through the abandonment of everything in the world, glorify God’s inconceivable light, but they cannot unite with it and see it until, having purified themselves by observing the commandments and preparing the mind with unalloyed and immaterial prayer, they have absorbed the supernatural power of vision. 20. What should we call it, knowing that it is neither a feeling nor a thought? Of course, just as Solomon called him, who surpassed in wisdom all the people who lived before him: Godly and intelligent feeling 133. By the combination of these two words, he forces us not to consider the vision of God’s light to be either one or the other, neither a sensation nor an intelligibility: after all, neither intellect is never a sensation, nor a sensation is an intelligibility, and that means an intelligent feeling is something different from both. Vision, therefore, must be called either that or, as the great theologian Dionysius, “unity,” but not “knowledge.” “We must understand,” says Dionysius, “that our mind is given both the power of understanding, thanks to which it considers intelligible things, and a unity that exceeds the nature of the mind, thanks to which it merges with the transcendental” 134, and also: “Along with sensations, mental powers are also superfluous, when the soul, having become god-like thanks to an incomprehensible unity, in a selfless impulse is plunged into the rays of an unapproachable light.” 135. In this unity, according to the wise Maximus, “seeing the light of the hidden and unspeakable glory, the saints, together with the higher powers, themselves become capable of containing that blessed purity” 136. 21. And let no one think that the great theologians are talking here about an apophatic ascent: it is available to everyone and does not transform souls into angelic dignity, it frees the concept of God from everything else, but in itself cannot bring unity with the beyond. Only the purity of the passionate part of the soul, through dispassion, effectively separating the mind from everything in the world, through prayer, unites it with spiritual grace, in which it begins to taste God’s insights, becoming angelic and godlike from them. It is not for nothing that the later fathers of Dionysius called unity a spiritual feeling, which also corresponds to the mysterious and ineffable contemplation, in some sense expressing it even better: truly a person then sees with the spirit, and not with the mind and not with the body; By some kind of supernatural knowledge, he knows for sure that he sees a light that is higher than light, but what he sees it with, he then does not know, and he cannot find out the nature of his vision due to the unsearchability of the spirit with which he sees. This is what Paul spoke about when he heard the unspeakable and saw the invisible: “Whether I saw in the body, I do not know; whether outside the body, I do not know” (2 Cor. 12:2), that is, he did not know whether his mind or body was the seeing organ. The apostle sees, sees not with feeling, but with the same clarity with which feeling senses the sensory, and even more clearly. He sees himself, in a frenzy from the indescribable sweetness of the spectacle, delighted not only above every thing and every material idea, but also above himself. In this frenzy, he will even forget to pray to God, as Saint Isaac spoke about, having the great and divine Gregory as a co-witness: “Prayer will also be purity of mind, which alone comes with amazement from the light of the Holy Trinity,” and again: “Above purity of mind during prayer, the light of the Holy Trinity flashes and the mind then rises above prayer: this should no longer be called prayer, but the birth of pure prayer sent by the Spirit, and the mind then prays not as a prayer, but in a frenzy is transported into an incomprehensible reality, where ignorance is higher than knowledge” 137. That sweet sight, which enraptured the mind, made it frenzy from everything and turned entirely to itself, the saint sees as a light sending a revelation, but not a revelation of sensually perceived bodies, and not limited either upward, or downward, or in width; he does not see at all the limits of the light that he sees and illuminates him, but as if there was some kind of sun, infinitely brighter and more enormous than everything in the world, and in the middle he himself stood, completely turned into vision - that’s what it looks like. 22. It is not for nothing that Macarius the Great calls spiritual light infinite and heavenly 138. Another of the most perfect holy men 139 saw that everything that exists in the world was, as it were, embraced by one ray of this intelligible sun, although he also saw it not in all its being and greatness, but to the extent that he made himself capable of its perception, learning from this vision and the unity that transcends the mind with the light not that he is by nature, but that he truly is 140 that he supernatural and super-essential and different from everything that exists in the world - simply being in its own sense, mysteriously absorbing all being. To always see this infinity is not given to any one person, nor to all people together. But without seeing it, a person understands that he himself is powerless to see it, because he has not come into full agreement with the Spirit through perfect purity, and not that what he has seen has ceased. And when the vision comes, by the dispassionate joy, mental peace and new flame of love for God spreading within it, the seer knows for sure that this is the divine light, even if he sees it unclearly. Always striving forward and experiencing an increasingly brighter vision as he works in a manner pleasing to God, abstaining from all external things, prayerful efforts and the ascent of the soul to God, he still only understands even more clearly the infinity of the visible, that it is infinity, and sees no limits to its radiance, and sees the poverty of his own suitability for receiving light more and more clearly. 23. But he does not at all consider what he was privileged to see to be directly the nature of God. Just as life is born from the soul in an animate body and we call this life also soul 141, although we know that the soul living in us and giving life is something different from the life of the body, so in the God-bearing soul light is born from God who has dwelt in it, although the unity of the almighty God with those worthy is still higher than this light, because in his supernatural power God simultaneously and entirely dwells in Himself and lives entirely in us, thus conveying to us not His nature, and His glory and radiance. This is divine light, and the saints rightly call it divinity: for it deifies; and if so, then he is not just divinity, but deification in itself 142, that is, the beginning of divinity. This seems to be a division and complication of the one God 143, but God is equally the First God 144, and the Supergod 145, and the Superprimordial 146; He is one in His one Divinity, and He is the First God, and the Supergod, and the Superprimordial because in Him is the basis of this divinity of deification, as according to the great Areopagite Dionysius, the teachers of the Church defined the deifying gift emanating from God as divinity. Dionysius himself, answering in a letter to Gaius the question of how to understand that God is above the beginning of divinity, says: “If you understand divinity as that adoring gift through which we are deified, and if this gift becomes the beginning of deification, then God, who is above every beginning, will be beyond the boundaries of so understood divinity.” 147 Thus, the fathers deify God’s grace of supersensible light, but this is not directly God in his nature, who can not only enlighten and deify the mind, but also create any mental entity out of nothing. 24. Now you understand that even when they see, the saints honor God as more invisible than the experts in external wisdom believe. In fact, those who have risen to this height of vision know that they see light with their mental sense and that this light is God, in unity, secretly illuminating His chosen ones with grace; but if you ask them how you can see the Invisible, they will answer you - “not with the taught words of human wisdom, but with the words of the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor. 2:13), because they do not beg and do not need human wisdom, having the teaching of the Spirit and, together with the apostle, boasting that “in the simplicity and sincerity of God’s grace, and not in carnal wisdom, they were converted in the world” (2 Cor. 1:12), - they, I say, they will humbly answer you that God’s powers, man, cannot be covered by our knowledge and much that is unknown to us has divine causes; but by comparing, according to the same apostle, “spiritual with spiritual” (1 Cor. 2:13), through the Old Testament we will be confirmed in the grace of the New - and the apostle therefore called the proof from the Old Testament a comparison, because the gifts of grace are not only confirmed through the Old Testament, but also turn out to be greater than the gifts of the law - so, those who live and see in the Spirit will answer the question of how one can see invisible light: just as Elijah the seer of God saw; after all, what he saw not sensually is shown by the mantle thrown over his face; and that, covering his sensual eyes with a mantle, he saw God, evidence and truthful news of this is his generally accepted nickname: everyone calls him a God-seer and even the highest God-seer 148 . 25. Again, if someone says to such men: “What are you talking about, that prayer mysteriously resonates in your insides, and what, together with prayer, excites your heart?” – then they will present the earthquake of the same Elijah, which was the beginning of the mental theophany (1 Kings 19:12), and the proclaiming interior of Isaiah (Isaiah 16:11). If someone then asks: “What is the heat that arises from prayer?”, they will point to fire, which Elijah again considers a sign of God, until He has appeared, but must still be transformed into a quiet breeze, since this fire, which has received God’s ray, is called to show the invisible God to the one looking at it (1 Kings 19:12); they will also remember how Elijah himself was and seemed like fire, bodily ascending a chariot of fire (2 Kings 2:11); They will also point out how another prophet’s heart burns as if from fire (Jer. 20:9), and it’s as if the word of God became fire in him. And if you begin to find out what else is secretly active in them, they, comparing with similar spiritual things, as we have already said, will point you to prototypes of mental contemplation from the Old Testament and will answer all together: “Don’t you know that man ate the bread of angels” (Ps. 77:25)? Have you not heard the words of the Lord that He will “give the Holy Spirit” to those who ask him “day and night” (Luke 11:13, 18:7)? What is this angel bread? Isn’t it God’s and heavenly light, with which the minds unite either in inspiration or in acceptance, according to the great Dionysius? 149 Forty years sending manna from above. God gave a prototype of the shining of this light in man, and Christ realized it in full, sending to those who firmly believe in Him and who showed their faith in practice the enlightenment of the Spirit, offering His luminous body as food; and this is the guarantee of future mysterious communication with Jesus. If in the Old Testament there are types of other things also given to us by Christ, this is not surprising. But isn’t it at least clear that those symbolic enlightenments speak of some kind of mental enlightenment and other sacraments other than simple knowledge? 26. Since, as you said, people who reject God’s light of grace call the light revealed at Tabor sensual, we will ask them first whether they consider this light, which then shone upon the chosen disciples at Tabor, to be something divine. If they do not consider him divine, they will be refuted by Peter, who was awake on that mountain, according to the Evangelist Mark, and saw the glory of Christ (Mark 9:2-8), and in his Second Epistle he wrote that “he was an eyewitness of His greatness” when “he was with Him on the holy mountain” (2 Peter 1:16, 18). They will be perfectly refuted by the one who explains the Gospel sermon in golden language: “In unprecedented splendor,” he says, “the Lord was revealed, and His body remained in the same image, but the Divinity showed its rays” 150. The great Dionysius will make them completely silent, literally calling the Tabor light theophany and revelation of God 151; behind him is Gregory the Theologian, calling light “the Divinity who showed Himself to the disciples on the mountain” 152; and, with many others, Simeon, who adorned the lives of almost all the saints with beautiful language and wrote that the theologian especially beloved by Christ saw how on the mountain “the very Divinity of the Word was laid bare” 153. And if, in accordance with the truth and the interpreters of the truth, the opponents of the hesychasts call the light seen there divine and God’s light, then they will definitely have to admit that the most perfect vision of God is revealed as light; It was not for nothing that Moses saw Him this way and almost all the prophets, especially those who saw Him in reality and not in a dream. However, even if all these sacred visions of theirs were symbolic and in general such as our accusers would like, still the spectacle that revealed itself to the apostles on Tabor was not a symbolic light that appears and disappears: after all, this light carries within itself the dignity of the future second coming of Christ and it is this light that will continually illuminate the worthy for endless centuries, as the divine Dionysius says 154. That is why Basil the Great called it the anticipation of the second coming 155, and the Lord calls it in the Gospels the Kingdom of God 156. 27. Why reproach those who say that the saints see God as an ineffable light, if His vision is light not only now, but also in the next century? Maybe because they call this light not sensual, but intelligent, as Solomon also calls the Holy Spirit (Wis. 7:22)? However, the slanderers themselves accuse them of contemplating sensual light during prayer, while condemning everyone who calls any of God’s gifts sensual; Is it possible to forget oneself so much that one can now condemn the same men for not recognizing God’s light as sensual? Do you see the instability and confusion of false witnesses? They are probably very skilled in slander, and not in understanding anything beautiful and true. One way or another, let these meticulous researchers of light phenomena in the Old and New Testaments say: if some dumb living creature had been on the mountain at that time, would it have felt that radiance, brighter than the sun? Don't think; after all, when the Lord’s glory shone upon the shepherds at the birth of Christ, Scripture also does not say that it was felt by the flocks. How can light be sensual, which remained invisible to the sensual vision of dumb creatures, although it shone before their open eyes? Therefore, if sensual human eyes saw him, they saw him due to the way in which they differ from the vision of dumb creatures. What is this? What else but what looks through human vision, the mind! But if the light was not seen by a sentient force, since then, of course, dumb creatures would have seen it, but by a mental force that perceived through sensation, or rather not even by it, because then every eye, especially those close by, would have seen a light that shone brighter than the sun - if, I say, the apostles saw this light not even by a rational force in itself, then it means that it was not sensory in the proper sense. And, besides, nothing sensible is eternal, but the light of Tabor, which is often called God’s glory, is both pre-eternal and infinite; therefore, he is not sensual. 28. If not sensual, then this means that at least the apostles were honored to perceive it with their eyes, but by some other, non-sensual force. It is no coincidence that all theologians call the radiance of the face of Jesus inexpressible and unapproachable and timeless as something mysteriously ineffable, and not actually sensual, just like the light that becomes the place of the saints after their departure from the world according to their lot in heaven; and there is the light that is still given on earth as a guarantee to the saints and the anticipation of which was the Tabor radiance. Although all this is called light and seems to be amenable to sensory perception, such things surpass the mind and their names do not reach the truth. How can one say that they are sensual in the proper sense of the word? And one more thing: when making holy prayers for the departed, we diligently sing to God’s original goodness: “Settle their souls in a place of light.” So, what need do souls have for sensory light? And what sorrow do they have from the opposite, from equally sensual darkness? Isn’t it clear that both are not sensual in the proper sense? And we showed above that the contemplation of light is not just ignorance or just knowledge, when we mentioned the dark fire prepared for the demonic tribe 157. This means that it was necessary to express not shaky human judgments and deceptive guesses about the unspeakable holy appearance of Jesus on Tabor, but to begin with trust in the fatherly words and in purity of heart to wait for the exact knowledge that is given by experience. The experience of sacred unity with God's light secretly teaches those who receive it that this light is not something from existence, because it is higher than everything in the world. Is that which is above all things sensual? And what of the sensible can be uncreated? How can the radiance of God be created? Therefore, it is not sensual in the proper sense. 29. “When a soul,” says Macarius the Great, “with fear, love and shame, like the prodigal son, turns to its Master and Father God, He accepts it without listing its falls and gives it the robe of glory (Sir. 6:32, 50:31), the light of Christ” 158. What other glory and light of Christ are there if not those that the awake Peter saw, “being with Him on the holy mountain”? Could light become the clothing of the soul if it were sensual? In another place the same theologian calls this light heavenly, 159 and what of the sensible can be heavenly? In another place he says: “The composition of human nature, accepted by the Lord, “sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens” (Heb. 1:3), being filled with glory, no longer in one person, like Moses, but in the whole body.” 160 Does this glory shine there in vain, because no one perceives its light? But in vain, if the light is sensual. Is it not truly the food of spirits, angels and the righteous? It is not without reason that, when praying for the departed, we ask Christ to “settle their souls where the light of His face visits.” How will souls taste the light that shines sensually, how will they be able to inhabit it? Basil the Great says that during the physical appearance of the Lord, the pure in heart will continuously see the power shining from the worshiped Body. But is the light visible through the purity of the heart sensual? “Christ came to the mountain in an immeasurable radiance of appearance,” says God’s hymnist Cosmas 161. How – in the immeasurable, if sensual? 30. Stephen, the first martyr for Christ after Christ, looked up and saw the open heavens and in them the glory of God and Christ standing at the right hand of God (Acts 7:55–56). Could the sensual power of vision reach the heavenly level? From below from the earth, Stephen saw, most importantly, not only Christ, but also His Father, because how could he see that the Son was on the right hand if he did not see the Father too? Isn’t it clear that those who are pure in heart see the invisible, but not sensually, not intelligibly, not by denying and abandoning what exists, but by some mysterious force? After all, the unattainable height and glory of the Father in no way allows for sensory perception. Only the mutual position was symbolic here, and not the vision itself: although this position on the right hand is a symbol of the strength, immutability and eternal affirmation of God’s nature. Stephen also mysteriously saw that this position exists in itself and directly: after all, the only begotten Son did not depict His position on the right hand in order to point them to something else, but, standing eternally at the right hand of the Father, He wished to reveal His glory to man still in the flesh and giving his soul for His glory. Negatively, through the abandonment of things it is impossible to see or think anything, but Stephen saw the glory of God. If his vision was mental, deduced from reasons and analogies, then we, for that matter, also see no worse than him, because we also analogically deduce that the position of majesty and the throne of the incarnate God in heaven is at the right hand of the Father. And why shouldn’t a disciple of the Gospel think like this before and always, and suddenly think about it only at that moment? “Behold,” he says, “I see the heavens open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” Why, finally, would he need to look at the sky, and open himself to the heavens, if his vision were simply knowledge that arose in the mind? It is clear that the first martyr saw not with his mind or feeling, and not through denial and not through a causal and analogical inference about God. Then how? I will boldly tell you: spiritually, that is, like those men who, as I said, see unalloyed light in revelation. Many of the fathers said so. This is what God’s Apostle Luke himself taught us, who said: “Full of faith in the Holy Spirit, Stephen looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God.” And you, too, if you are full of faith in the Holy Spirit, will spiritually see things invisible to the mind; and if you are completely empty and devoid of faith, then you will not believe even those who testify to what you have truly seen. Because, having even a little faith, you will respectfully listen to men who speak from their experience, to the best of their ability, about the hidden, without reducing it to either sensation or knowledge, although these names are used here by the same name, without thus fighting against the truth as against error and without rejecting the secret grace of God given to us. 31. Such is the mystery—the vision called “exclusively true” by the fathers, and the heartfelt action of prayer, and the spiritual warmth and sweetness that comes from it, and blessed, joyful tears. The essence of all this is comprehended by the actual intelligent feeling. I say “feeling” because of the clarity, evidence, complete reliability and dreaminess of comprehension, and also because the body also somehow joins the mental action of grace, is rebuilt in accordance with it, itself is filled with some kind of sympathy for the innermost mysteries of the soul and allows even those looking from the outside to somehow feel that at this time it is acting in those who have received grace. So the face of Moses shone when the inner light of the mind shone onto the body, and shone so much that those who looked at him sensually could not bear the unprecedented shine (Ex. 34:29-35). So Stephen’s sensual face seemed like the face of an angel (Acts 6:15), because his mind, angelically and angelically united by influx or acceptance in a mysterious communion with the supermundane Light, also became like an angel. So Mary of Egypt, or rather the heavenly one, during prayer, tangibly and spatially rose in her body, because along with the elevation of her mind, the body also rose and, falling behind the ground, seemed airy. 32. Thus, when the soul is frantic and, as it were, shaken by uncontrollable love for the one Desired, the heart is excited along with it, with a spiritual dance, betraying communication with grace and as if rushing from here to the promised bodily meeting with the Lord in the clouds (Matthew 24:30; Mark 13:26; Luke 21:27; 1 Thessalonians 4:17). So in intense prayer, when it flares up an insensible fire, an intelligible lamp is lit and the languor of the mind flares up with the airy flame of spiritual vision, the body also becomes strangely lighter and warms up to the point that, according to the words of the depictor of spiritual ascents, 162 when looking at it, it seems as if it had emerged from the heat of a sensual furnace. For me, the very sweat of Christ during His prayer (Luke 22:44) already indicates that from persistent prayer to God a tangible heat arises in the body. What will those who claim that the heat from prayer be demonic say to this? Will they really still teach prayer without struggle, without tension, if only the body does not somehow discover, in proportion to the struggle taking place in the soul, the heat they condemn? But then they will become teachers of prayer, which does not lead either to God or to the imitation of God and does not rebuild a person for the better. No, we know that, having rejected sensual pleasure in the voluntary sorrow of abstinence, to which, alas! we are addicted, against the commandment, in prayer with a mental feeling we will feel divine pleasure untouched by sorrow. Whoever has experienced how the body is also miraculously rebuilt in that pleasure, filled with pure God's love, he exclaims to God: “Sweet are your words to my throat, sweeter than honey to my lips” and “My soul is satisfied with fat and fat, and my lips will praise You with the tongue of joy” (Ps. 119:103, 62:6); and the ascents 163 that he places in his heart joyfully partake of “God’s bliss and the bright angelic passion as the idolizing visits of God’s lights,” as Dionysius the Great said 164 . 33. If cleansing repentance before God is not limited only to the tormented soul, but passes from it to the body and bodily feeling, a clear evidence of which is the bitter tears of those grieving over their sins, then wouldn’t it be pious to admit that signs of spiritual divine sweetness are also imprinted on the bodily feelings of people who are able to accommodate it? Doesn’t the Lord call those who cry blessed because they will be comforted, that is, the fruit of the Spirit in them will be joy? But the body also participates in such consolation in many ways. Only those who have experienced it know about something here, but something else is obvious to those looking from the outside: “affectionate disposition, sweet tears, kind attention to your interlocutors according to the words of the Song of Songs: “Honeycomb flows from your lips, bride” (Song. 4:11). The pledge of future benefits is received not only by the soul, but also by the body, which together with it strives towards them along the gospel path. He who denies this also denies the resurrection of the body in the next age. But since then the body will also join in the ineffable divine good, then of course now it must, to the extent available to it, join in with the grace of God given to the mind. That is why we say that God’s gifts are comprehensible by sense, although we add “smart”, because they are higher than natural sense, because the mind perceives them first of all, and because our mind rushes to the First Mind, divinely communing with which to the extent of its gifts, it itself, and through it and the body associated with it, approaches God, showing and anticipating the absorption of the flesh by the spirit in the next century. Not the eyes of the body, but the eyes of the soul perceive the power of the Spirit, seeing God's gifts; That’s why we call her smart, although she is beyond intelligence. 34. In doing so, we would keep those who listen to us from understanding the spiritual and mysterious actions [energies] in the form of material and bodily ones. This is precisely what suffers from people who, with rude, unclean ears and minds, unable to believe and follow the words of their fathers, impiously understood the revelations of pious men, trampled them and tore them apart with the verbal disputes of the narrators, not believing Macarius the Great, and perhaps not knowing what he said: “Those who had no experience did not touch the spiritual; the communication of the Holy Spirit is comprehended by a pure and faithful soul, and heavenly intellectual treasures appear only to those who have received them through experience, but it is completely impossible for the uninitiated to even imagine them” 165. The saint truly speaks piously about heavenly good; listen to him until you yourself are rewarded with grace for your faith, and then through real experience with the eyes of your soul you will see what treasures and secrets Christian souls can already partake of here. Just don’t think, when they tell you that heavenly treasures are experienced through the eyes of the soul, that everything happens in one thought. Thought equally transforms everything sensual and everything intelligent into rationality. But just as, when you reason about a city that you have not seen, you will not yet see it in experience through this reasoning, so you will not see God and divine things in experience through mere reasoning and theology. And just as without acquiring gold sensually, without holding it tangibly in your hands and without feeling it with your eyes, even if you imagine it mentally a thousand times, you still don’t have it, you don’t see it, and you haven’t acquired it, so even if you think about God’s treasures a thousand times, and you don’t experience God’s presence and don’t see it with an intelligent and superior vision, you don’t see, don’t have, and haven’t truly acquired any of God’s gifts. I said “smart vision” because it is infused with the power of the Spirit, which makes it possible to see those gifts, although the all-holy contemplation of God and the most luminous light exceeds even smart vision 166 . 35. It is not without reason that the Lord called not all, but only selected disciples for the inexpressible things that happened on Tabor and for the sensory ability of invisible spiritual contemplation. Because although Dionysius the Great of the Areopagus says that in the next century we “as disciples at the Transfiguration” will be illuminated by “the visible theophany of Christ, and with a dispassionate and unearthly mind we will join the intelligible gift of light, and in divine imitation we will achieve a super-rational unity with the heavenly minds” 167, however, we are the radiance sparkling from the worshiped Body We perceive sensually not in the sense that only bodily feelings will act, not supported by the power of the rational soul: after all, only it is capable of containing the Spirit, with which we see the light of grace. But what is not felt through the bodily senses can no longer be called sensual in the proper sense of the word. The holy theologian himself showed this to anyone with intelligence in the same words just cited - because, he says, God's light will illuminate us “in the age to come,” that is, when there is no longer any need for sunlight, or air, or any other of the things of this world. We learn the same thing from the inspired scriptures: “Then... God will be all in all” according to the apostle (1 Cor. 15:28), and that means we will not need sensory light, because if God is everything to us, the light will also be God’s; therefore, he will not be sensual in the literal sense of the word. Moreover, the words “in divine imitation of angels,” which can be understood in all three ways, show that angels also perceive heavenly light; How is this possible if he is sensual? Again, if it is sensual, it will need to be seen through the air, and that means everyone will see it brighter or darker not to the extent of their virtue and their purity, but to the measure of the purity of the air, and since “the righteous will shine like the sun” (Matthew 13:43), then accordingly each of them will also appear brighter or darker not according to their good deeds, but according to the purity of the surrounding air! Again, with sensual eyes, now and in the future, the treasures of the future century will be perceived, which not only “the eye has not seen and the ear has not heard,” but that even “has not entered the heart of man,” who intrudes into the incomprehensible through the paths of his thoughts. Why, finally, will sinners not be able to see this light if it is sensual? Or, perhaps, in the next century, there will also still be obstacles, shadows, cones, eclipsing the convergences and diverse rotations of the stars, so that for a blissful life in endless centuries, the laborious bustle of astrologers will again be required? 36. But how will the bodily sense perceive light that is not sensory in the proper sense of the word? Through that almighty power of the spirit, through which the chosen apostles saw him on Tabor, when he shone not only from the flesh, carrying the Son, but also from the cloud, carrying the Father of Christ. Yes, by the way, the body will then be spiritual, and not natural, according to the Apostle: “A spiritual body is sown, a spiritual body is raised” (1 Cor. 15:44); if it is spiritual, then the seeing mind will perceive God’s brilliance with spiritual vision as well. Just as it is now difficult to see that we have an intelligent soul capable of existing on its own, because of this dense, mortal and unyielding flesh, which darkens and burdens the soul, and most importantly makes us imagine it in the form of a body or in other dreamy images, why we do not know spiritual feeling, so in the blessed life of the next century among the “sons of the resurrection”, according to the Gospel of Christ, transformed into angelic dignity ( Matthew 22:30; Mark 12:25; Luke 20:36), on the contrary, the body will disappear: it will become thinner so that it will no longer seem like a substance at all and will no longer resist mental energies, because the mind will take over. Therefore, the righteous will also taste God’s light there with their bodily senses. 37. What am I saying about the affinity of the future body with intelligent nature? After all, the soul, according to Saint Maximus, “through the communion of God’s grace itself becomes God, ceasing in itself all thought and sensation and at the same time ceasing the natural actions of the body, which is deified along with it to the extent of the communion with the Divine available to it, so that both soul and body then reveal only God and the abundance of glory overpowers their natural properties” 168. So, if, as I said at the beginning, God is invisible to creation, but not invisible to Himself, and in the next century He Himself will be looking not only through our soul, but also - lo and behold! – through our body, then we will then clearly see God’s unapproachable light also through our bodily senses. Christ mysteriously showed the pledge and beginning of this great gift of God awaiting us to the apostles on Tabor. The Ray of Divinity, which surpasses every word and every vision—how can it be sensual? Do you understand that the light that shone upon the apostles on Tabor was not sensual in the proper sense of the word? 38. However, if God's light, which surpasses all sense, was nevertheless visible with sensual eyes - as it, of course, was visible, and the opponents of spiritual men here are right and unanimous with them and with us - if, I say, God's light was seen with bodily eyes, why could not the eyes of the mind also see it? Is the soul really something bad, incompatible with good and insensitive to it, which the most daring evil-doers have never said? Or maybe she's good, but her body is better? In fact, isn’t the soul worse than the body, since the body is able to communicate with God’s light and perceive it, but the soul is not? And doesn’t the material and mortal body turn out to be more akin, more devoted and closer to God than the soul, if the soul looks at the light of the Divine through the body, and not the body through it? If the Lord’s Transfiguration on Tabor is an anticipation of God’s future visible appearance in glory, and the apostles were honored to perceive it with their bodily eyes, then why cannot the pure in heart now perceive this anticipation, this guarantee of His mental theophany, with the eyes of their souls? And if the Son of God not only united with our nature - oh the immensity of love for mankind! – His Divine essence and, having accepted an animate body and a rational soul, “appeared on earth and walked among people” (Bar.3:38), but – oh the abundance of the miracle! - mixing Himself through the communion of His holy body with each of the believers, He unites with human existences themselves, becoming one body with us and making us the church of the entire Divinity - because in the body of Christ “all the fullness of the Godhead lives bodily” (Col. 2:9), then will He not enlighten and illumine the souls of worthy partakers with the divine brilliance of His body in us, as He illuminated the bodies of the disciples on Favor? Then the Lord’s body, which had not yet mixed with our bodies and carried within itself a source of blessed light, outwardly illuminated the worthy disciples around him and introduced enlightenment into their souls through sensual eyes; now, having mixed with us and living in us, it should all the more illuminate the soul from within. 39. What then? Isn’t it “face to face,” according to Scripture (1 Cor. 13:12), that we will see the invisible in the next century? But if so, then it means that even now, accepting his pledge and anticipation, the pure in heart see his intelligent and invisible image in themselves. After all, the mind, this immaterial nature and light, akin, one might say, to that first highest light, from which everything is and which is above everything, completely striving towards that existential light, in immaterial, persistent and sincere prayer, recklessly rushing towards God, transformed in this impulse even to angelic dignity and like an angel, illuminated by the First Light 169, reveals by communion that that its prototype is essentially 170, reveals by itself the radiance, the radiant and unapproachable brilliance of that hidden beauty, sensing which within himself with an intelligent feeling, God's singer David exultantly proclaimed to the faithful about this great and mysterious deed: “The radiance of our God is upon us” (Ps. 89:17). And having not experienced and seen God’s radiance in oneself, still searching for it through divisions, conclusions and divisions, and not believing the fathers in the simplicity of the heart, who would want to hear that the glory of God shone on one of the people? John revealed a beautiful truth to us in “Revelation”: “On the white stone that the winner will receive from God, no one can read except the one who accepted” (Rev. 2:17): not that one who does not have the stone cannot read it, but if a person does not listen with faith to the initiates, he will not see anything at all in this inscription and true contemplative existence will be considered blindness, not in the sense that it surpasses feeling and knowledge like a kind of sacred darkness, but in the sense that it is completely devoid of all being. And when, in addition to ignorance and unbelief, such a person is also very skilled in dirty tricks, is filled with fussy thoughts, is ready for anything and is disrespectful to the most holy thing, then he not only rejects it as not existing in reality, but also, alas! recognizes divine fusion as demonic imagination. This, brother, is what the people you talked about are suffering now. 40. Their final argument is that God is invisible, and the demon pretends to be an “angel of light” (2 Cor. 11:14). They cannot even comprehend that truth comes before pretense, and if a demon, vividly depicting the real truth, pretends to be an angel of light, then it means that an angel of light, a good angel, truly exists; and whose light does the angel of light announce, if not the light of God, whose angel [messenger] he is? God, whose angel of light is God's angel, is therefore also light; after all, the apostle did not say “pretending to be a bright angel,” but “pretending to be an angel of light.” Now, if the angel of evil pretended only to be knowledge or virtue, one could conclude that the enlightenment that comes into us from God also gives us only science and virtue; but since the demon shows a dreamy light, which differs from virtue and knowledge, then, therefore, the intelligent, truly divine light is also different from science and virtue. Just as a dreamy imaginary light is the most evil one, which, being darkness, pretends to be light, so the light of angels and angelic people illuminating the truth is God Himself, Who, being a truly mysterious light, is seen as light and transforms pure hearts into light, which is why it is called light not only as a persecutor of the darkness of ignorance, but also as the radiance of souls, according to Saint Maximus 171 and Gregory the Theologian 172 . That this radiance is not just knowledge or virtue, but beyond all human virtue and knowledge, you will learn from St. Nila: “The mind,” he says, “concentrating in itself, no longer sees something sensual or rational, but naked mental meanings and divine radiances, flowing with peace and joy” 173. Do you see that contemplation rises above all action, lifestyle and reflection? Do you hear how the Holy Father, who said earlier 174 that “the mind contemplates itself, illuminated by heavenly color,” now clearly shows you that the mind is illuminated by the ray of the Divine? Believe also his instructions about the path leading to this blessed state of contemplation: “Prayer who strives to listen to himself,” he says, “will find a way of prayer in which he must soberly persist” 175 - because the truly praying one, whose mind has merged with God’s prayer, is enlightened by the divine radiance. Do you also want to ask the divine Maxim? “He who has achieved purity of heart,” he says, “can not only cognize the essence of things lower and dependent on God, but also contemplates God Himself” 176. 41. What will people say to this who preach knowledge of existence and ascent to God through external and maddened wisdom? “Having visited a pure heart,” says Maximus, “God deigns, through the Spirit, to inscribe His writings in it as on the tablets of Moses” 177 . What will people say to this who consider our inner heart incapable of accepting God - and this is when Paul says that the law of grace is imprinted first of all “not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of flesh of the heart” (2 Cor. 3:3), according to which the great Macarius testifies that “the heart rules the entire composition of man, and if grace takes possession of the pastures of the heart, it reigns over all thoughts and bodily members; after all, the mind and all the thoughts of the soul are in the heart, and here we must look to see whether the laws of the Spirit are inscribed by grace” 178 . Let us again listen to Maxim, thanks to the purity of the heart, enlightened in knowledge and higher knowledge: “A pure heart,” he says, “provides to God a mind unburdened by material images, ready to be marked within itself only by images through which He tends to visibly appear” 179 . What will people say to this who assure that God is known only through the knowledge of existence, and do not know or recognize the appearances of God that occur during union with Him? Meanwhile, God, through one of the God-bearers, says: “Learn not from man, not from manuscripts, but from the radiance and illumination that takes place within us” 180 . Is it really that the mind, not burdened with material images, marked within itself by God’s images, is powerless to rise above the knowledge of existence? 42. But even the ascent of the intellect to God through negation is much lower than the imprinting of the mind with God's mysterious images, and theology is just as inferior to this vision of God in the light and is as far from communication with God as knowledge differs from possession 181 . Talking about God and meeting God are not the same thing. For the first, we need a word, and, of course, a spoken one, as well as verbal art, if we want not only to store knowledge, but also to use it and teach it; then we need a variety of reasoning, evidentiary grounds and comparisons using the example of worldly things; all of this or most of it can be gradually accumulated by observing and listening, all of this is quite accessible to people moving in this world and, of course, is comprehended by the sages of this age, even those who are unclean in life and soul. On the contrary, to find God within ourselves, to cleave to Him in purity and to merge with His most unmerged light, as far as is possible for human nature, is impossible unless, in addition to purification through virtue, we become outside, or rather above, ourselves, leaving everything sensual along with sensation, rising above thoughts, reasoning and rational knowledge, completely surrendering ourselves in prayer to immaterial spiritual actions [energies], having received the ignorance that above knowledge, and being filled with the bright radiance of the Spirit, so that we will invisibly see the rewards of eternal peace. Do you understand how much lower than this is everything that relates to noisy verbal philosophy, the beginning of which is sensory comprehension, and the final goal in all varieties is knowledge that is not obtained in purity and does not purify one from passions? The beginning of spiritual contemplation is good, purchased by the purity of life, and knowledge of existence, true and truly true for those who have it, because it is revealed not by study, but by purity of heart, and one is able to discern what is truly beautiful and useful, and what is not; and its last goal is the guarantee of the future age, ignorance that is higher than knowledge, and knowledge that is higher than understanding, intimate participation in the hidden and inexpressible vision, secret and ineffable contemplation and tasting of eternal light. 43. Listening intelligently, you will understand that this is the light of the future century and that the same light that shone upon the disciples at the Transfiguration of Christ now also illuminates the mind, purified by virtue and prayer. In fact, Dionysius the Areopagite clearly states that the light of Christ revealed at Tabor adorns and illuminates the bodies of saints in the next century 182. And Macarius the Great says that “the soul, united with the light of the heavenly image, even now in its hypostasis [in its being] is initiated into the knowledge of secrets, and on the great day of the Resurrection its body will be illuminated by the same heavenly image of glory” 183 - “in the hypostasis,” he adds, so that no one would think that illumination is limited to knowledge and reasoning; This is especially true for the spiritual person, who hypostasis consists of three parts: the grace of the heavenly spirit, the rational soul and the earthly body. Listen to him again: “The God-like spiritual image, as if now imprinted inside, will then make the outer body God-like and heavenly” 184; and again: “God, reconciled with humanity, restores the truly believing soul, when it is still in the flesh, to taste the heavenly lights, and again, through God’s light of grace, makes its intellectual feelings visible, and then its very body will clothe itself in glory” 185 ; and again: “What treasures and secrets Christian souls can unite here becomes clear only to those who experience this with spiritual eyes; but in the Resurrection the body itself will be given the power to receive them, to see them and, as it were, to take possession of them, since it too will become a spirit” 186 . Isn’t it clear that the same thing is God’s light, seen by the apostles on Tabor and now seen by pure souls, and the hypostasis of future eternal blessings? It is not for nothing that the great theologian Basil called the light that shone on Tabor at the Transfiguration of the Lord an anticipation of the glory of the second coming of Christ 187, and in another place he clearly said that then “it was as if some divine light illuminated through transparent barriers, that is, through the human flesh of the Lord - his divine power, illuminating those whose eyes are pure in the heart” 188. Wasn’t this light, which flashed with such brilliance on Tabor that even the bodily eyes perceived it as He wished, wasn’t it then seen by all the pure in heart, when it shone terribly from the worshiped body as from the sun, illuminating their hearts? “Oh that we too were among them, with open faces... beholding the glory of the Lord!” (2 Cor. 3:18). It is good for us, believers, to pray together with the great saint who prays about this. 44. But then the pure ones saw the appearance of the great Light that appeared to us in the flesh, in this flesh; how they see him now and how we can see him, you will find out, if you want, from those who can see. Learning from them, I, too, according to the words of David, “believed, therefore also I spoke” (Ps. 116:1), to which we must also add from the Apostle: “And we believe, therefore we speak” (2 Cor. 4:13). A person who, for the sake of the gospel life, refused to acquire riches, human glory and bodily pleasures and reinforced this refusal through submission to those who “have come to the measure ... of the stature of Christ” (Eph. 4:13), sees how dispassionate, holy divine love flares up in him more and more, and he is drawn in a wonderful impulse to God and to a transcendental unity with Him. Having captured the entire being, this love forces him to disassemble and examine all bodily actions and mental powers, to see if there is anything among them that will help communicate with God. And so he discovers or learns by questioning experienced people that much of this is completely alien to reason, some actions, although reasonable, have risen little above sensuality, and opinion and reflection, being rational abilities, are nevertheless associated, as he guesses, with the repository of feelings, that is, with the imagination, and, in addition, are performed by the organ of the spiritual spirit, about which the Apostle said that “the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit” ( 1 Cor. 2:14). Then he looks for an intelligent life that rises above all this and is not mixed with lower abilities, remembering the words of the wise theologian Neil: “Even if the mind has risen above bodily contemplation, it has not yet completely seen the place of God; after all, he can still engage in the knowledge of his thoughts and remain with their fluid diversity” 189, and also: “A mind engaged in empty thoughts is far from God” 190. 45. And knowing from the great Dionysius and the glorious Maximus that our mind is given, on the one hand, the power of thinking, thanks to which it considers intelligible things, and on the other, a unity that surpasses the nature of thought, thanks to which the mind is combined with the transcendental 191, he seeks this highest of all in us, the only perfect, whole and not fragmented being; like an image of images 192, it outlines and brings together the coiling and developing - quite like crawling animals - movement of our thought, on which all lasting knowledge stands. Although the mind descends to thoughts and through them to the complex diversity of life, spreading energy [to all its actions], it has, of course, some other, higher energy when it acts on its own, since it is capable of existing on its own, detached from the diversity and diversity of the earthly way of life, just as a rider has some incomparably higher energy than the action of controlling a horse, and has it not only when he dismounts, but also on the horse and in the chariot can act with this energy on its own, if, of his own free will, he does not devote himself entirely to the care of management. If the mind did not turn entirely and always to the lower, it, too, could rise to the action inherent in itself and establish itself in it, although of course with much more difficulty than the horseman, because it is by nature connected with the body and mixed with bodily perceptions and various extremely affectionate states of the body that come from earthly life. But having achieved this action characteristic of itself - and this is turning to oneself and observing oneself - and having surpassed itself in it, the mind can also unite with God. 46. Therefore, whoever strives in love to unite with God avoids all dependent life, chooses a monastic and solitary life and, having removed himself from all attachment, tries to dwell without fuss and care in the impregnable sanctuary of Hesychia. There, having freed the soul as soon as possible from all material fetters, he connects his mind with unceasing prayer to God, and through it returning himself entirely to himself, he finds a new and mysterious path to heaven, as if the intangible darkness of dedicatory mysterious silence, and inseparably clinging to it with his mind, with inexpressible pleasure in the simplest, all-perfect and sweet peace and truly in hesychia, that is silence, soars above all created things 193. Having thus become completely out of himself and completely belonging to God, he sees God's glory and contemplates God's light, completely inaccessible to sensory perception as such - a gracious and holy gift of unsullied souls and minds, without which the mind, although it has an intelligent sense, would not be able to see God and unite with that which is higher than it, just as the bodily eye would not see anything without sensory light. 47. If our mind goes beyond its limits and in this way unites with God, but only by rising above itself, then God also emerges outside of Himself, uniting with our mind, but only by descending, “as if enchanted by attraction and love and from an excess of kindness, inseparably emanating from Himself and His unapproachable height” 194, He unites with us in a state that transcends reason. unity 195. That God unites with us and with the heavenly angels in the descent, we are taught again by Saint Macarius, who says that “thanks to His infinite goodness, the great and all-essential one diminishes Himself in order to unite with His intelligent creations, that is, with the souls of saints and with angels, so that they too can join through His divinity to immortal life” 196. So will He, who descended to the flesh, to the “body of death” (Rom. 7:24), and “death on the cross” (Phil. 2:8), not condescend so much as to remove the veil of darkness that fell on the soul after Adam’s crime (2 Cor. 3:13-16) and give it His light, as the same saint said in the chapter mentioned at the beginning? 48. So tremble, you unbelievers and those who push others to unbelief, you who are blind and who undertake to lead the blind, who have fallen far from God and lead others away from Him, who do not see Him and therefore suggest that God is not light - you who not only avert your eyes from the light and are drawn to the darkness, but also call the light darkness, making God’s descent fruitless when it wants to reach you. You would not have sunk so low if you believed the words of the fathers, because whoever listens to the saints begins to treat with heartfelt piety, not to mention the supernatural gifts themselves, but even what is controversial in them, because, as St. Mark says, “there is a grace unknown to infants, which can neither be anathematized for the sake of its possible truth, nor accepted for the sake of its possible error” 197 . Do you see? There is true grace, which differs from the truth of dogma, because is there anything controversial in the truth of dogma? There is clearly a grace operating above knowledge, for the sake of which it is not pious to call something that has not yet been experienced error; It is not for nothing that the divine Nile advises asking God for clarification of such things: “At such a time,” he says, “pray persistently that God will enlighten you, if the vision is from Him, and if not, then that He will quickly drive out error from you.” The fathers did not hide from us what are the signs of error and truth. “Deception, even though it feigns the guise of goodness, even though it dresses itself in bright visions, cannot produce any good effect: neither hatred of the world, nor contempt for worldly glory, nor attraction to heavenly things, nor order of thoughts, nor spiritual peace, nor joy, nor peace, nor humility, nor the cessation of pleasures and passions, nor a noble disposition; because all these are acts of grace, to which the fruits of error are opposed.” Some, based on their long experience, have already listed the signs of intellectual contemplation in order to verify it by its actions - as it is said: “From its actions you will recognize the intellectual light that has shone in your soul, whether it is God’s or satanic” 198 - so that neither the persecutor of errors is considered a deceiver, nor error the truth. 49. But the unchanging grace of reliable light is not given in this age; “Whoever says this,” said one saint, “is one of the wolves.” Let them consider how far from the truth those who, because of some human imperfections, call men of grace erring, forget the words of the Climacus, that it is not given to man, but only to an angel, not to fall into sin, 199 and also that “some humble themselves from their vices, making their own falls the reason for the approach of grace.” Therefore, in people we must look not for angelic, but for human dispassion, “the presence of which you recognize in yourself without deception,” according to the same saint, “by the fullness of the mysterious light and the indescribable attraction to prayer,” and also: “Having completely freed itself from sensory dependence, the soul can only see God’s light, and the knowledge of the Divine Scriptures - in how many people it is combined with sensuality!”, and again: “Weak souls learn from others that God visits them, perfect - from the presence of the Spirit,” and again: “For beginners, confirmation that they are following the Lord is an increase in humility; for those who have passed halfway, it is removal from disputes; for those who are perfect, it is an increase and abundance of divine light” 200 . 50. By the way, if this light is not spiritual and gives knowledge, as the fathers say, but simply knowledge, and its abundance, as we just heard, is a sign of godly perfection, then Solomon’s life will be more perfect and more godly than that of all the saints from the beginning of the world; the same will have to be said about the Hellenes, who amazed the world with the abundance of their wisdom. But wanting to show that the heavenly light also shines for some beginners, even if dimly, and an increase in humility also occurs among the perfect, although of a different type than among beginners, Climacus adds: “The small things among the perfect are not small, and the great things among the small ones are not entirely perfect.”201 That God’s grace, however, also appears to be small, humanely, you will learn by listening to the amazing Diadochos: “Usually at the beginning,” he says, “grace very tangibly illuminates the soul with its light; but in the midst of struggles, for the most part, it acts unconsciously” 202. “The Holy Spirit,” according to Nile, who speaks in the fullness of the spirit, “compassionate our powerlessness, visits us even the unclean, and if he finds even only the mind truthfully praying to Him, enters it and disperses all the surrounding army of thoughts and philosophies” 203 . And Saint Macarius says: “God, who is good, in His extreme love for mankind, gives to those who ask what they ask for; and so, whoever works in prayer, even if he does not show similar zeal in other virtues, is sometimes visited by God’s grace and, to the extent of his search for God, gives him the gift of joyful prayer, although he remains deprived of all other benefits; they, of course, should not be belittled because of this, but through experience and exercise one must make the rebellious heart obedient and pliable for God, trying to acquire all the virtues, because then the grace given from God will increase, bringing with it in turn true humility, unfalse love and the whole family of virtues that a person tried to find” 204. 51. Isn't the meaning of the fatherly instructions clear? The saint continues his house-building; he does not blow up the foundations because the walls have not yet been erected, and he does not destroy the walls because the roof has not yet been put on them. After all, he knows, having understood from experience, that the Kingdom of Heaven is sown in us like a mustard seed, which is smaller than all seeds, but in the end it grows so much that it surpasses all the powers of the soul and becomes the favorite home of the birds of the air (Matthew 13:31-32). And those whom you are talking about, starting to judge out of recklessness, reject out of inexperience what the brothers have that can bring benefit, out of shamelessness arrogating to themselves the right of God's judgment and one who seems to them, declaring worthy of grace, there is no other - when only the Lord can judge whom to honor with His grace, and if He has accepted a person, then “who are you, judging another man’s servant?” says the apostle (Rom.14:4). However, by returning to where we started and adding a little more to what has been said, we will interrupt our very protracted speech. 52. Whoever does not believe in this great mystery of new grace and does not expect deification with hope, cannot despise carnal pleasures, money, property and human glory, and even if he can, he is immediately seized by the pride of having already achieved perfection, and he slides into the crowd of the unclean. On the contrary, he who expects grace, even having achieved every virtue, has before his eyes an all-perfect and inaccessible perfection, considers himself to have achieved nothing at all (Phil. 3:13) and thereby adds to his humility. Thinking now about the superiority of the former saints, now about the abundance of God's love for mankind, he grieves and cries in the words of Isaiah: “Woe is me!... I, an unclean man with an unclean tongue, have seen with my own eyes... the Lord of Hosts” (Is. 6:5). But this grief itself increases the purity of the soul and the Lord of grace generously sends it consolation and light, which is why John, teaching from his own experience, says: “The abyss of grief saw consolation, and purity of heart received light” 205. Yes, only purity of heart can accept this light; and everything that people say and learn about God can be accommodated by an unclean heart. It is clear that such light is higher than words and knowledge, and even if someone calls it knowledge and understanding, since the Spirit gives it to the mental faculty of the soul, then another type of understanding is meant here, spiritual and inaccessible even to believing hearts if they have not yet been purified by works. It is not for nothing that the One who gives us to see and Himself is seen, the Light of a pure heart, God, says: “Blessed are the pure in heart, because they will see God.” What special bliss would they have if vision were the knowledge that we, the unclean, also have? The saint, illuminated by God's light, perfectly defined that His light is not knowledge, but “an ineffable action, the visible is invisible,” because it is not sensual, and “the imaginable is unknowable,” because it is not rational 206. Much more could be added; I'm only afraid that even this I attributed in vain. According to the same saint, “whoever wants to explain in words the feeling and action of God’s light to people who have not seen it, is like a person who would like to convey in words the sweetness of honey to those who have not eaten it.” However, we told you all this so that “you would know exactly the truth about our fidelity to the fatherly sayings, the rest of which read below 207. Analysis and refutation of the works of the philosopher Varlaam against the sacredly silent. What is the truly saving knowledge that true monks should strive for, or against those who think that the knowledge of external sciences is truly saving? 1. There is nothing more terrible than a lie, there is nothing heavier than the burden of perjury - but only for slanderers, not for those suffering from slander; these are often made even more perfect by it, receiving heavenly rewards for patience, and “all who speak lies... the Lord will destroy” (Ps. 5:7). However, when the robber screams as if he had been robbed, and the slanderer, as if slandered, cries and complains about the victim and the innocent, is it conceivable to go further in evil and what condemnation is he not worthy of? Even if it does not befall him now, he still “stores up wrath against himself on the day of the righteous judgment and revelation of God” (Rom. 2:5). So I feel sad, thinking about the philosopher who came from Sicily, the preacher of external sciences. Seeing him in monastic attire, I was overjoyed, thinking to myself that he would act wisely, becoming close to our best monks, who, having said goodbye to everything else, in hesychia, devote their lives to God: he will become for us, I reasoned, that scribe who is like a treasure that reveals, according to the Lord’s word, old and new. But everything turned out the other way around, and for whom I rejoiced in good hope, I now grieve for him in my soul 208 . He became friends with some of our monks, moreover, the simplest ones, pretending to be a student, and then he recoiled from them, declaring his condemnation, and began to write essays against them, where he scolded them at length and unrestrainedly. With these writings, he took it upon himself to speak not in front of them, but in front of the youths listening to him and making noise around him, convincing those who were ready to abandon their fatherly way of thinking, and monks who had no experience of a silent life. Rumors began to spread that the hesychasts held intolerant beliefs; he gave them the most base name, calling them omphalopsyches, and their so-called heresy - omphalopsychia 209. By not singling out any of those condemned by name and at the same time claiming that he had met with the strongest of us, he made it clear that he was casting doubt on everyone. 2. Then I began to look for these writings of his myself. But he tried so hard not to let any of us see them, that he did not give them to those who communicated with us at least a little and were at least once with us, without first taking an oath not to show them to any of the hesychasts. Yet in the end his word, wandering in darkness and fleeing from the light of frankness, did not escape our hands. Having received these writings, I partially looked through them and saw that there was not a single true word in them, but everything was lies and sophisticated slander. In fact, he said there that the hesychasts he condemned taught him about the complete uselessness of divine scripture, that the knowledge of existence is evil. God's essence is sensually visible and some other sensory observations, actions and activities lead to this vision. For some reason, calling all this omphalopsychia, declaring, as it occurred to him, demonicism and establishing himself as the only true mentor, he then expanded on mental prayer and sacred light, established the stages of spiritual ascent and the standard of contemplation and knowledge of God, and argued that perfection here comes mostly from external science and its study, because it is a gift of God, similar to the gifts of the prophets and apostles. 3. Such were his writings, and he was planning and preparing much worse ones, when, having learned about our objections 210, he suddenly became so frightened that he agreed before the Church not to disseminate his writings, to abandon and completely destroy them as a cause of temptation. But since he was subject to fair condemnation for his speeches, and he read some of our books with objections against him and noticed that it was impossible to evade our refutations, then, unable to bear the shame and sitting down at the table again, he crosses out some things in his writings, changes some things, completely throws out the name of omphalopsyches - an empty exposed name, devoid of content and not applicable to any subject, like “goat-deer”, “horse-man” and similar inventions - and what he previously declared to be demonic, he now calls natural, again it is unknown why. In our writings he skips some things that he does not dare to argue with, as if he had not read them at all, and speaks out against others, slanderously distorting the thought, while complaining himself as if he had been allegedly slandered. Now he no longer trusts his writings, even among his own friends, not to everyone, but only to a few closest ones. One of them considered it necessary to convey these writings to me, noticing the deception and asking me to intervene, object in order to all the strongholds of lies and, to the best of my ability, restore the radiance of truth, which false teachings cannot eclipse. Considering that we must obey the pious request and once again devote all our energies to defending the truth, I will begin now, as before, with the philosopher’s reasoning about science and verbal learning. 4. This is where it comes from. “As with health, the same is true with philosophy: it is equally given directly from God and achieved through our labors. And just as the health that is given from God is not something different, but the same as that which comes from treatment, so is wisdom: the Lord gave it to the prophets and apostles - He also gave us the Scriptures of God-inspired men and philosophical sciences, with the help of which we, in turn, seek this wisdom and find it.” There is nothing particularly terrible here, although he equates things that could not be more different: after all, God heals even the incurable, He also raises the dead from the grave, and the wisdom given to the prophets and apostles is the very Father’s Word, the eternal Sophia, as the Apostle Paul says: “He became for us Wisdom from God” (1 Cor. 1:30); the wisdom of external sciences, like the healing art of doctors, differs from it no less than the prophets differ from the Hellenes, and the disciples of Christ differ from Galen and Hippocrates, or, if you want, Christ himself, who for our sake took the name Jesus. In my opinion, equating such things is like calling a firefly similar to the sun, since they both glow in the air. 5. No, he says, “divinely inspired Scripture with its wisdom and the philosophy of external sciences are aimed at one goal and achieve one thing: the discovery of truth, because the truth is one in everything, both directly given initially from God to the apostles, and obtained by us through labor; Philosophical sciences also lead to the truth given from God to the apostles, helping to accurately trace the greatest sacred symbols to their immaterial prototypes.” What sane person, who knows the full extent of the difference between these things, would not be indignant when he hears that the idolizing wisdom of the Spirit is completely compatible with the philosophy of external sciences - moreover, when he hears from people who apparently hold the same convictions as us and reproach us for the fact that our objections are supposedly directed against like-minded people? Aren’t the words of the interpreter of divine mysteries Gregory of Nyssa true that one truth is “childless and barren”, does not give any fruits after long labor pains, does not lead to the light of knowledge of God, while the spiritual is abundant and prolific, does not produce children in twos and threes, like the most prolific living beings, but at once revives whole thousands, from the terrible darkness leading them to the wonderful light of God, like do we learn from the apostolic acts (Acts 4:4)? 211. Isn’t the truth of external science doubtful and mixed with lies, why is it always sooner or later refuted, which its supporters themselves must admit, while no one can resist the other truth, according to the divine word of the Gospel (Luke 21:15), because it proclaims the most obvious truth, in no way mixed with untruth? Is not the truth of the wisdom of divine Scripture obligatory, useful and salvific for us, while the truth of external wisdom is neither obligatory nor salvific? One way or another, it turns out that there are two types of truth: one truth is the goal of divinely inspired teaching, the other, not obligatory and not saving, is sought and never found by external philosophy. How can we say that by these two different paths we arrive at the same truth? 6. Having transferred the methods of research adopted in the philosophy of external sciences to the search for vital things and having in some way taken advantage of philosophical teaching in interpreting the word of God, we will quickly go astray if we lose the only key to the sacred books, the grace of the Spirit, and are not guided by this divinely inspired word itself. After all, it is absolutely clear that only this is the first time that transforms and transforms philosophical knowledge into useful knowledge. Spiritual wisdom in itself does not need anything, and its true good makes good and untrue good; A distant similarity to this is the nature of fire and light, which makes everything around it fire-like and light-like. How can one say that the holy teaching of the faith and the Hellenic sciences instill in us wisdom of the same kind, and even coinciding with the apostolic wisdom, which once briefly shone forth and embraced the extreme limits of the universe, exposing the foolishness of the external sages, leaving their simplicity to the simpletons and leading both from godless wandering to piety? Is the truth really the same both here and there? Anyone will clearly see the absurdity of such judgments if, having defined external sciences according to the holy fathers, he then tries to compare them with the teaching of the Spirit and rank them among God’s spiritual gifts: God gave us divinely inspired teaching and laborious vanity, so that through them we would acquire prophetic and apostolic wisdom. What does inspired teaching have in common with vanity? What does god-creating wisdom care about the whole truth about the stars? But the philosopher placed next to the spiritual and truly God's gifts not even this truth, but the philosophical sciences, that is, so to speak, the useless foreskin of evil teachings. 7. Of course, it will not be completely false to say that external philosophy in itself leads to the knowledge of existence; in a sense it is true. But this is not the knowledge of things and not the wisdom that God directly gave to the prophets and apostles: that is the Holy Spirit, and we have not yet heard anything about the participation of the Egyptians, Chaldeans and Hellenes in the Holy Spirit. “The Holy Spirit of teaching” is far from sinful deeds and thoughts, “according to scripture, it will not enter an evil soul... and will not dwell in a body enslaved to sin” (Wis. 1:4-5). Philosophical learning was best achieved by the soul of Aristotle, whom theologians called the evil one. 212 Indeed, what trait of even just bodily purity can be found in him? Knowledge of the philosophical sciences settles even in the body of Plotinus, who cohabited with one mother and her two daughters 213. If someone has studied the prophetic and apostolic writings with labor and diligence, he is still as far from possessing apostolic wisdom as an eye that catches the rays of the sun and moon is still far from becoming the sun or the moon itself; Having studied the prophets, we ourselves do not yet become prophets. Apostolic wisdom, through the few men who reached it, in a short time caught the universe in gospel nets and lifted it to heaven; and even if all the sages, how many of them there are, gathered together, applied all their strength and all their perseverance, they would not be able to snatch even a small part of the world from the abyss of wickedness. 8. But even the knowledge we receive from Scripture, although it is infinitely far from the wisdom of those who wrote, is in no way identical to the knowledge obtained by external sciences. It is not for nothing that we differ from external wisdom in judgments about the origin and composition, decay and transformation of things, about the inherent dignity of each existing thing, and, with a few exceptions, about everything else in general. God's wisdom first of all strives to know what God's will is, “good, perfect and acceptable” (Rom. 12:2), and to seek this is as alien to external philosophical sciences as it is for pigs who are always buried in the ground to consider the beautiful order of the heavenly bodies. He who strives to investigate the will of God, who knows about every thing, for the sake of which it was produced by the Creator of the universe, and treats it according to this Divine will - this is he who knows the causes and foundations of existence, this is who has knowledge of everything in the world, this is who is the true philosopher and perfect man according to Solomon’s word: “Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole man” (Eccl. 12:13). Such a person has no doubtful wisdom, because his life testifies to his intelligence, which cannot be refuted and which itself bears “the testimony of conscience” (2 Cor. 1:12); and besides, a voice was given for him from above in the mysterious coming and manifestation of the Spirit. 9 . On the contrary, whoever gains convictions from external wisdom, although he is involved in some truth, however, presenting his evidence only in words and always against another word, because the word always fights against something, he becomes an expert in shaky wisdom. He sometimes contradicts himself, moreover, he is proud and exalted when he manages to prove the opposite about the same thing; Thus, he himself has and gives to others knowledge that is unstable and changeable, so confusing the mobile and dismembering ability of the thinking soul that the owner of such wisdom can no longer be called in the exact sense even rational, not to mention spiritual. Can a person, relying on such wisdom, see immaterial prototypes of the divine symbols of the Church of Christ, as this knight of Hellenic sciences proposes? And the true philosopher who studies and fulfills God’s will, whose thought is effective and whose action is meaningful, through the deeds themselves shows the solidity of the mobile ability of his thought and, having achieved the fullness of reason, can already ascend from the dismemberment of sacred symbols to the single integrity of prototypes, raising these symbols to their sacred fullness and being sanctified by them. Then through spiritual prayer he sometimes receives all-perfect vision and ascension. 10. Can we still say that through external sciences we obtain that very knowledge of existence that God Himself directly bestowed on the prophets and apostles? If the best in us is the knowledge of things, and philosophy and its sciences lead to it, and if the Holy Scripture offers only symbols of this knowledge, and, as the philosopher believes, again philosophical teachings raise us to their immaterial prototypes, then they will be the highest knowledge in us, which is as much higher than the divine Scripture as the truth of the prototypes is higher than the truth of symbols, if not higher than Scripture, then in any case not lower, since the best in us is truth, and what can a word do more than lead and lead to it? Consequently, God-inspired Scripture must give us something that is incomparably higher than the knowledge of existence and because of which its divine word is incomparably higher than that philosophy, because philosophical sciences by themselves do not bring us closer or raise us to a good that is higher than knowledge. And how can one say that the art of medicine and God give the same health 214, except in the most distant sense? The philosopher failed to even notice that divine healing, that is, wisdom, mostly affects the soul, while human inventions, having provided insignificant help to the body, become useless when death destroys the very matter that the doctor treated. 11. But declaring that he knows the truth here, the philosopher continues: “There are people who contradict us; some say that reading Scripture only confuses, while others do not believe at all that philosophical sciences and verbal studies are given by God.” This is how insinuating slander is revealed; after all, the first thing he says is against the hesychasts, and the second thing is against our writings 215. No, among our hesychasts we do not remember a single one who, having learned to read and write, did not diligently read the sacred books, and some of the illiterate, like living books, also fluently read by heart most of the Scriptures 216 . Since this is undoubtedly so, the philosopher, one must think, is aiming at the holy fathers; after all, one of them says: “Works, not letters,” 217 another: “The heart of one who immerses himself in empty reading becomes empty,” the third: “A monk who reads for the sake of knowledge, and not for the sake of heartfelt contrition, acquires suspiciousness.” However, whether against hesychasts or against saints, the words of the philosopher are obvious slander, for such things are said not at all to belittle the Holy Scriptures; Knowing that works save, not knowledge, and learning the words of the Apostle that it is not those who know the law, but those who do it who will be saved (Rom. 2:13), the fathers instruct the disciples with the same words. 12. I remember well, after the words that we must “cut off and discard” everything fabulous and evil in external wisdom, I continued that the knowledge obtained by external sciences “cannot therefore be called a spiritual gift, but only a natural one, which is given to us through nature from God and increases through work, and this - that is, that without effort it is not given to anyone at all - is obvious evidence of the naturalness, and not the spirituality, of this gift; but a divine gift in the true sense, bestowed by the Holy Spirit, and not by nature, is our divine wisdom, which, descending from above, makes even fishermen sons of thunder” 218. In fact, just as “the earth is the Lord’s... and all who live on it” (Ps. 23:1), but there are few of God’s people, even though all are God’s creatures, so knowledge is given to man by God, but few have acquired spiritual wisdom, even though everyone from Him is by nature intelligent and capable of mastering science. So is it not clearly slanderous for someone who ascribes to someone who speaks about the naturalness of a gift the assertion that it is not God’s gift at all? Whose gift is nature? Isn't it God's? How can we not consider as given from God what, according to our own words, was given from God through nature? 13. No, he later tries to prove, or rather, he unfoundedly assures that he himself is unanimous with Saint Dionysius, but we are not. And here again is slander, proving for him something that he could not prove on his own: “You,” he says, “disagree with the divine Dionysius because you claim that philosophy arose from demons and leads to demonism.” Following this, as if having forgotten himself, he writes: “About this philosophy that we preach, you said the same words as we do.” How can you detect self-contradiction even more clearly? However, where did you get the idea that I claim that philosophy arose from demons and leads to demonism? “Where you cite the most famous Hellenes, who clearly call the inspiration of demons [demons] the source of their knowledge” 219. So what follows from this? If you want, we will quote our words again: “Shall we really say that people who say similar things about themselves possess God’s wisdom? In no way, as long as we are in our right mind and serve true Wisdom, which does not enter an evil soul that pleases demons, and even if it does enter, it will fly away when this soul changes for the worse. According to Solomon, endowed with divine wisdom and writing about it in his book, “the spirit of holy teaching will turn away from foolish speculations” (Wis. 1:5), and what is more foolish than those who are proud of their initiation into the secrets of demons and their authority over their own wisdom? All this is now being said not about any philosophy in itself, but only about the philosophy of such people. In fact, since, according to Paul, no one can “drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons” (1 Cor. 10:21), then how can one have God’s wisdom and be inspired by demons?” 220. What are we talking about here? For this very reason we call those who derive their wisdom from demons “demonic” sages. The condemnation they brought upon themselves you attribute to us. I’m afraid that some insidious demon is also using your tongue to slander. Of course, we call the wisdom of the wicked demonic for the evil teachings it contains, but Gregory, a true Theologian, called the evil teachers creatures of the evil one 221 - so did he believe that their very origin was from the evil one? Not at all; With this name he brands only their evil teaching. It is also clear, even clearer, that we reject only the bad use of philosophy, and not philosophy itself. 14. To this he adds another slander, as if I call astronomical science demonic, since for the same reasons I condemn philosophers and astronomers for the same thing. Having praised astronomy in every possible way, he then greets with grave resentment the name of iconography 222 , as if he himself were not the first to slander the most faithful part of the Church as heretics with an unheard-of and monstrous nickname 223 . But the matter became small, and now, having changed, he already says that as a disciple of Christ, remembering the commandment not to repay equals for an insult, it was not fitting for him to be angry at such an insult - this is for him, who responds verbosely to any reproach and unrestrainedly slandering us! Meanwhile, the first part of what we wrote 224 is not directed at all against him, but against the rumors flying around everywhere, and I speak there with word against word, and not against the speaker, in complete contrast to him, so refraining from distorting the interpretation of his words that I even omit the worst of what he said. The main thing is that I write not for myself, but for the simpler offended brothers, having undertaken to bear their burden according to the apostolic commandment (Gal. 6, 2); he, on the contrary, writes for himself, aims directly at me and, condemning some of my words, reveals a great passion for perversion and great hostility. The worst thing is that, having started an insult and taking revenge for fair reproaches, he still justifies himself as allegedly not having started anything and not taking revenge on anyone, a disciple of Christ, who, “being slandered, did not slander each other, and while suffering did not threaten, but handed it over to the righteous Judge” (1 Pet. 2:23). 15. As if descending the steps of evil, the philosopher finally reaches the worst and speaks out against the saints, now shamelessly objecting to them, now reproaching them for contradicting themselves and each other, and sometimes outright distorting and thereby rejecting their sayings. The wise theologian Gregory of Nyssa says that in the next century, the life of one who has passed all the virtues, on the one hand, and has not yet participated in earthly life, on the other, will not be the same, since the baby goes there, torn from earthly life before its time: “One, in the fullness of consciousness and varied learning, came to know God and pleased Him, the other left life without exercising or using his mind” 225 . Our sage decided that this idea about the benefits of learning and science came across to him as a rich find against Basil the Great and against me. Indeed, I call Basil the Great as a witness, speaking about the vanity of geometry and geometric studies invented by the Egyptians, as well as diagrams, drawings and observations of celestial bodies valued by the Chaldeans 226 - and now the philosopher contrasts his brother 227 with him as allegedly holding different convictions and contradicting both Saint Basil and me. One could object to him: My dear! He who has gone through all the virtues has also benefited from vanity, as Gregory the Theologian says that in Athens he benefited from the spectacle of superstitious veneration of demons, because he “laughed at demons where demons are honored” 228 . Therefore, if someone calls the superstitious veneration of demons harmful, will you say that he contradicts the great saint? There is no way you can do this unless you want to become a demon worshiper. Likewise, calling geometry and other sciences vain and harmful does not mean denying that they can be beneficial for those who have achieved all virtue. Even evil contributes to goodness with good will, just as the flesh of a snake becomes healing food, but only after it has been killed and prepared using the techniques of skilled medical science 229 . Both the Egyptians, the inventors of geometry, and the Chaldeans, admirers of astronomy, did not invent and worship them for the purpose of knowledge of God; no, they erected in them, as it were, a monstrous wall between God and people; proud of their sciences, they directed to the stars the veneration that people owe to God, and, snatching from God, they attributed to the stars the cause of all that exists and arises. 16. Isn’t it clear that these sciences turned out to be a mental serpent for them, deceiving man and alienating him from God? If a person who has achieved the fullness of virtue even receives benefit from them - which I am writing about and which you deliberately do not want to notice - then only by first refuting and dismantling them, and then restoring them anew and using them wisely, and, in addition, not spending his whole life until old age in vain searches, but understanding, like Athanasius the Great, what must be neglected 230, choosing “useful science” and renouncing “meaningless and harmful,” as the great Basil says 231 - Basil, who for his own benefit acquired “Egyptian wealth” in his youth, that is, external learning, and then, upon reaching age, renounced and wrote that he was ashamed to be called her disciple, that is, the son of a barren wife 232, in agreement with what his brother said about Moses: “If,” he writes, “the barren and childless daughter of Pharaoh, in his own meaning, in my opinion, external philosophy, having appropriated the baby to itself, arranged it so as to be called his mother, then reason allows you not to reject the kinship of this false mother until you still see in yourself the imperfection of age; but whoever has reached the heights, as we know about Moses, considers it shameful to be called the son of a barren woman, because external learning is truly barren, always suffering in childbirth and never actually giving birth. What fruit of long torment has philosophy brought? Are not all of its offspring skinny, premature, born prematurely and die without coming to the light of the knowledge of God? And they could probably have matured if they hadn’t been hiding all the time in the bosom of sterile wisdom” 233. Therefore, you need to be carried away by it only enough so as not to be deprived of what is important in it. 17. So the saints hold the same convictions, and we confidently follow them. Are we really going to take you as their interpreter when you are clearly distorting your father’s words? Gregory of Nyssa does not even honor the Hellenic philosophers with the name of husbands, doubting that they could ever grow up, and all because they have been engaged in this philosophy all their lives; he says that he who has become fully familiar with this earthly life “knew, studied, mastered geometry, astronomy and every science, and above all, the philosophy of divinely inspired Scripture, which gives the soul perfect purification” 234, using the singular confirming that perfect purity is given only by divinely inspired Scripture. And so the philosopher, having separated this sentence from the previous ones, changing the singular to the plural, that is, instead of “giving” he wrote “give”, adding “all of them” and deliberately transforming the previous accusative cases into nominatives, presents the holy father as allegedly a supporter of the fact that geometric and astronomical knowledge is the perfect purity of the soul: “Listen,” he says, “also what the divine Gregory of Nyssa says about the sciences: “Geometry, astronomy and comprehension through numbers, and above all the philosophy of the inspired Scripture, all of them give the soul complete purification.” What impudence of hand, tongue, and thought! When the theologian called only the philosophy of divine Scripture divinely inspired, wanting to show that everything else belongs to the sensory realm and its benefits for piety and that Holy Scripture is as different from worldly sciences as the divine is different from human, our accuser not only could not, or rather did not want to understand this in simplicity, but he did the same thing that he himself did at the beginning of his reasoning, when he insidiously connected the Hellenic sciences with the divine Scripture and declared their goal to be common, he now deceptively attributes to the saint, despite the fact that Gregory here calls purification not the knowledge of what exists, but - through the knowledge of what exists - the comprehension of that which, due to its exaltation above the world, can no longer be considered simply existing. 18. If someone, without rotting himself among books and without growing old in their study, came to know God so much that, leaving everything behind, he strives for Him in purity, then how much purer will he be than a person who sorts everything into categories, imagines that he understands everything, but continues to drag himself after this world, exhausts all or almost all the affection of his soul on it and does not love the Almighty God with all his soul and heart! However, of course, if the Hellenes and pagans found the truth of existence, then you are doing a great job, claiming after them that you will find this truth with the help of their sciences; However, since they, having begun to build high structures of knowledge against God, divided into languages ​​even more than those who built the tower in Khalna 235, so that they no longer just contradict each other, but also contradict each other, then to which of the contradictors will you entrust the construction of the truth, so that by following him through this truth of his we can find the source of universal truth? We know that only the one who speaks from God proclaims the truth, only the one who has the “mind of Christ” (1 Cor. 2:16) and preaches the “wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 2:7). When we follow him and his followers in due faith, they lead us to the acquisition of God's saving wisdom; but the Lord did not consider it necessary to explain to us the laws of the created world, to teach and enrich us with the methods of distinctions, divisions, conclusions and definitions. Why? Because “if we do not know the truth about created things, this will in no way prevent us from coming to the promised bliss,” according to the great Basil, 236 with whom you openly argue, calling ignorance of the truth in all these things darkness, impurity and imperfection, and you do not want to repent, retreat and be silent, but you stand for lies and defend evil, assuring that God’s commandments, without external sciences, cannot make a person pure and perfect. But for me, even if Hellenic learning had undeniably known the exact truth, it would still not deserve particularly careful study, since true bliss is achievable even without possessing this part of the truth. Since, however, even this particle of truth in Hellenic science is always in question, how can we agree with you that worldly wisdom leads to the same truth and the same goal as God-given wisdom, truly true, truly saving, not disintegrating along with this age? 19. Having arrogantly denounced us for contradicting these previously distorted statements of the holy fathers, he raises his voice against the verbal heavens themselves, that is, against the apostles. In fact, although the brother of God clearly says that there are two wisdoms, one from above, the other from below, the first is pure and good, the second is spiritual and demonic (James 3:13-17), and Paul makes one guess about the same two types of wisdom in his words that in “God’s wisdom the world did not know God by its wisdom” (1 Cor. 1:21), our accuser openly attacks any opinion that there are two wisdoms and moreover, and explains the reason: no one has ever defined wisdom as the knowledge of such and such an individual person. No, the philosopher, the brother of God, just called the knowledge of a person who actually shows the goodness of his life, pure, heavenly wisdom, and the knowledge of one who lives an unkind life, spiritual, demonic and earthly wisdom, and rightly so: changing along with the lifestyle of those who acquire it, knowledge deposits wisdom of the opposite kind in different souls 237 . And besides, if philosophy, you say, is not the science of any individual person, then there are no philosophers anywhere, and you yourself, a philosopher or I don’t know what to call you now, have ruined yourself with your own words, since philosophy is not tied to any individual soul and no person can be called by its name at all. 20. And when the theologian writes that “the first wisdom is to despise the wisdom that is in words and in deceptive and superfluous oppositions,” when does he sing of this first wisdom and welcome it because it “conquered the abolished wisdom”? 238 Doesn’t he show here that there are different types of wisdom? One - the first and victorious - must, he says, be praised and welcomed, while the other, abolished and defeated, he believes deserves contempt, because its antitheses are unnecessary and thereby deceptive. We do not find it possible to call such God’s wisdom, and if it still tends towards evil teachings, we do not hesitate to call it bad; Such is Plato’s wisdom, which, in addition to the uncreatedness of matter, the independence of ideas and the creation of the world by subordinate demons, also inspires the triumph of good and bad, holy and unholy, in general, in its excess, it vainly contradicts itself and, starting to talk about everything in the world, never comes to anything reasonable - just like the demons revered by the pagans, who, according to the saint from infancy Samuel, “will achieve nothing” ( 1 Samuel 12:21). And if you, having decided to fight against men who live peacefully and have discarded unnecessary oppositions, “offer pretexts for sin” (Ps. 141:4), inventing new dogmas and definitions that serve your love of enmity and discord, then will we really obediently follow you, abandoning the generally accepted opinions and positions absorbed from childhood? It won't happen, it won't. Because which of the people, present and former, if they were alive, would want to listen to how you prove that a perfect, wise and pure person is one who knows everything, and you want to deduce from this that one must diligently learn from every expert in any science, be he pious or not, and that anyone who has not learned geometry from Euclid, arithmetic from someone else, logic from you, music and astronomy - having become acquainted with Ptolemy through writings about him, and dialectics and the doctrine of being - having studied Aristotelian reasoning? 239 Which of the people who now live or have lived in the past, having reason, does not know that only God knows all this? 21. Leaving aside other newly-minted teachings for now and returning to the course of the conversation, I will ask: who does not know that one philosophy is theoretical, the other practical, in each there are many more diverse divisions, and everywhere wisdom is found, crazy and not, carnal and spiritual, refutable and irrefutable, temporary and eternal, and one is completely different from the other? “No,” he says, “I mean first of all wisdom itself, the idea of ​​true knowledge, which is one.” But, my dear friend, if the first wisdom itself can probably be called one, then simply wisdom or philosophy cannot be called one. When, starting your speech in defense of philosophy, you said that “we have been given from God the Scripture of divinely inspired men and philosophical sciences,” you yourself in no way subordinated the Scripture to this philosophy; You couldn’t even say that if you didn’t separate philosophy from the word of God. So what did you call philosophy there—the philosophy of the Hellenes or the idea of ​​true knowledge that you are talking about here? If it is the philosophy of the Hellenes, then that means you are praising it; True, at the same time you contradict yourself, immediately saying the opposite: “We, who call ourselves philosophers, do not sing under the name of philosophy what so-and-so thought, wrote or taught, and this is not philosophy for us, but the very idea of ​​knowledge” - you contradict, by the way, also because you affirm the uniqueness of philosophy, its ideas and suddenly immediately start talking about another philosophy, Hellenic. If you called philosophy not Hellenic wisdom, but the idea of knowledge, that is, something that embraces all knowledge in general, then God-inspired Scripture, clearly separated in your phrase from such knowledge, thereby remains outside all knowledge, turns out to be unrelated to any knowledge and, being completely divorced from knowledge, is mentioned next to philosophy, apparently, only for the sake of averting one’s eyes: in fact, what is the obligatory necessity in it, if the philosophical sciences themselves lead and build to the knowledge of existence, which, as you say more than once in the future, is the goal of “the entire hierarchy,” that is, all of God’s economy and action [energy]? Finally, if the wisdom of individual people is not wisdom in itself, then why are you angry with us when, together with Paul, we call Hellenic wisdom abolished and maddened? 22. Let's just see what kind of wisdom you are preaching here in itself. Is it not the one that has its existence among the so-called philosophers in their writings? However, you yourself say that neither the knowledge of philosophers nor the writings of such and such a philosopher will be called philosophy, but only something they have, and this is not philosophy, but its fruits. You were forced to say this to confirm that your “idea of ​​knowledge” is one and many philosophies do not exist. If nothing among individual philosophers is philosophy, then it is not among them that what you call wisdom in itself has its existence; in fact, those in whom she exists should then be called by her name, just as we are all called people according to the general form that has its existence in us. But if, therefore, this “wisdom of yours in itself” is not here, then where does it exist? In God? Again, however, you yourself further say that the philosophy you have chosen is madness with God, and that means the so-called “wisdom in itself” is not the wisdom ineffably existing in Him; on the other hand, it is not the wisdom embedded in His creatures, because such a thing would not be called philosophy, and you are talking about philosophy. It turns out that since your wisdom exists neither in God nor in men, but still exists as the “idea of ​​knowledge,” then it exists on its own basis - and so Plato is immediately reborn among us along with all his evil chatter. 23. The truth about the philosophy of external sciences should be simply and briefly expressed as follows: the philosophical content found in the writings or reasonings of individual philosophers can be called private philosophy; what is observed by all philosophers is common; a philosophy that has fallen away from the proper goal of all wisdom, knowledge of God, has gone mad. Philosophy to which this has not happened is not turned into madness; and why would she go mad if she achieves her natural goal, that is, turns to the giver of nature, God? Such is the wisdom of our righteous and chosen men, who truly courageously rejected what was harmful, selected what was useful, supported God’s Church and came into perfect harmony with spiritual wisdom. I think the truth is here. But the defender of external and maddened philosophy, not knowing Paul’s words about God turning the wisdom of this world into madness, still assures that “it turns into madness only in comparison with divine wisdom, like any human virtue and rationality”; and when, not agreeing with this, I prove the truth in detail and clearly, he, having nothing to object to, falls into sophistry. Let then the answer remain to him what I say in my first word about useful philosophy 240, since nothing written there has yet been shaken or refuted. 24. I would ask this man, who believes that the wisdom he preaches turns into madness only in comparison: why is it not written anywhere that God turned every human virtue into defilement and every understanding into foolishness, as He did with the wisdom of this world? Where from the apostolic words is it clear that we are talking about comparison? After all, just as the expressions “God hardened the hearts of the Jews” (John 12:40) and “hardened the heart of Pharaoh” (Exodus 7:3) and “gave the Hellenic wise men over to unworthiness of mind” (Rom. 1:28) speak not of comparison, but of abandonment by God, so also this “turned into madness” - if the words “God put the wise men to shame” have any meaning at all, “he abolished”, “rejected” (1 Cor. 1:27–28) and this very thing “gave them over to worthlessness of mind.” Is it possible that the apostle here also speaks of everything comparatively? What sane person would agree with this? Moreover, who of those who know how to follow the apostolic words will cease to understand them without reference, as the apostle taught, and will believe your comparisons? “God chose the foolishness of the world to confound the wise” (1 Cor. 1:27). What happens: in comparison with God's wisdom, human wisdom turns into shame and madness, and madness, on the contrary, dares and becomes wiser? Or do you, as you please, take one thing in a comparative sense, and leave the other, when you see that it will not help your constructions, as irrelevant? Who will listen to you except those misled by you and awaiting salvation from external science? 25. Since what he says immediately after this contains a refutation of its own falsity, I will skip it. But, as if deciding that false statements are not enough and it is necessary to slander others, he again slides into slander, and when I say that of the gifts of God, some are natural and given to everyone in general before the law, in the law and after the law, while others are supernatural, spiritual and mysterious in a distinctive way, and I place the latter above the first, that is, I raise the chosen ones of spiritual wisdom above the entire Hellenic crowd, and among the natural gifts of God I name philosophy and sciences invented by the human mind, he conveys my words as follows: “Only that which is unsearchable for human thought should be considered given from God, and everything else is unworthy of such honor.” I have no talk about either one or the other. I know that much in nature is unsearchable for human thought, but I honor everything at its true worth: one thing is spiritual gifts, supernatural and directly sent by the Spirit only to those who have distinguished themselves by virtue; the other is natural, which is far from spiritual grace and which is given from God to everyone in general through nature. 26. Having supported his arguments with this slander, he shows off, spreads, scolds those who do not consider Hellenic wisdom to be God's spiritual gift and cites many statements of the divine Basil that all art is given to man by God, 241 with which no one argues. Then, through long paths, he approaches his own view, builds a conclusion, draws a conclusion and declares it like this: “Both the principles of science, and prophecy, and every revelation have this common property that, until they are given, they surpass human thought, and when they are given, the soul receives the ability to understand them,” so that either nothing, or in general everything is equally a gift from God, something God-given. Here you can ask him: therefore, you, who consider yourself an exceptional chosen one of Hellenic grace for your knowledge, are as favored by God as a saint who received an abundance of revelations, and the first inventors of science, the Egyptians, are equal in honor to the prophets and apostles? After all, how can they not be equally honest if they have partaken of equally bestowed and equally cognizable gifts? 27. “Having created the soul,” he says, “God filled it with general ideas and abilities of definition, discrimination and inference, on which the sciences are built; therefore, science is God’s gift.” But what justification is there for those who use science incorrectly or maliciously and want to perfect the Gospel of Christ according to science? The guilt of the depraved and intemperate is not absolved due to the fact that, having once created and animated the body, God invested in it the ability to generate and feed. This is what we warn against in our writings: against the incorrect and evil use of sciences and against immoderate veneration of them; and if you want to listen intelligently, you will understand, agree, and, believing us and Basil the Great, you will change your mind about growing old in the study of external sciences; you will not call them saving, initiatory, purifying and enlightening the depths of the soul. 28. And then: if what you are talking about was originally given to the soul from God, innate to all people in general and naturally transmitted from forefathers to posterity, then why was it necessary to give something else supernaturally through the Spirit of God only to the righteous, and among the righteous only to the perfect and chosen? After all, “to the soul,” you say, “everything is in the same relationship, because the spiritual also does not surpass the human mind, since it has already been granted.” Truly, you clearly revealed here the absence of any experience of spiritual gifts and exposed yourself, making it obvious that - this is even worse than lack of spirituality - you do not believe the stories of the saints about spiritual experience and that - this is the worst thing - you practice eloquence against them, remaining, apparently, still completely spiritual. “We,” says the chosen vessel of spiritual gifts, the Apostle Paul, “have not received the spirit of the world, but the Spirit from God, so that we might see what has been freely given to us from God, which we also proclaim not... words taught by human wisdom, and words taught by the Holy Spirit, comparing spiritual with spiritual; but the natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit: it is foolishness to him, and he cannot understand” (1 Cor. 2:12-14), while he intrudes into the incomprehensible by the paths of his reason and hopes to find and study the whole truth with the help of distinctions, inferences and divisions. Not by reflection, but by the presence of His Spirit in us, we come to know “the things given to us from God,” which “eye has not seen, ear has not heard, and has not entered into the heart of man,... but God has revealed to us through His Spirit, because the Spirit searches even the deep things of God” (1 Cor. 2:9-10). 29. The measure of the truth of what is being said can also be yours, philosopher, inconsistency. In fact, hearing and constantly hearing how in writings, books, testimonies, instructions you are told from experience about the light that exceeds not only sensation, but also all understanding, to which the mind touches and which the mind becomes, having stepped out of itself to a higher principle, surpassing itself and uniting with God, you, unable to get rid of material ideas, then belittle these witnesses as supposedly talking about sensory light, then suddenly from denial, you move not to the mean and the truth, but to exaggeration and error and throw yourself off another cliff, claiming that they consider this light to be the essence of God and God’s essence to be visible. You would contradict yourself less if you recognized the incomprehensibility of the Divine by human reasoning, piously accepted faith as the only opportunity to perceive God and began to actively seek more perfect knowledge, that is, you would build experience over faith, this roof of grace and the shelter of God's love, living in true contemplation; Then you would understand that spiritual gifts, even after they are bestowed, exceed human thought. After all, you, as you yourself will probably say, have mastered the sciences to the point of subtlety almost without any training, but even after training you will barely understand spiritual actions [energems], and it cannot be otherwise: it is not for nothing that “the true word of the Lord,... abiding forever and ever” (Ps. 19:10), revealed to John that the righteous is given “a white stone... which no one can understand except the one who receives” (Rev. 2:17); and what he who has received can do, we learned from Paul. 30. Having equated supernatural gifts with natural ones, the philosopher verbosely takes up the apostolic commandment on prayer, assuring that it is impossible to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17), if this is not understood as he himself interprets it; and he interprets this in the sense that the apostle is speaking here not about doing prayer, but about the state of prayer, “the state of prayer is the impossibility of doing, thinking and doing anything without God’s will; he who is in this state is the one who prays unceasingly.” If such is unceasing prayer, the philosopher can keep his head down from the Hellenic books and pray unceasingly. What can one say to such a constantly praying and never-praying philosopher? What is said elsewhere by the apostle: “Pray in the Spirit at all times, and be diligent about this” (Eph. 6:18). What, is it talking about “state” here, as you interpret it, or is it still about doing? But “continuously” and “at all times” are the same thing. Since the apostle exhorts to be diligent in prayer, it is quite clear that he enjoins continuance of work. And the Lord, according to the Evangelist Luke, also spoke a parable to the disciples “to the point that we must always pray and not lose heart” (Luke 18:1). Perhaps He here also encouraged a “state”? No, the parable itself does not speak about the “state”, but about the persistence of the petition; and the words that we should not lose heart, that is, weaken our perseverance out of cowardice, show that we are advised not to remain in a “state,” especially the one about which the philosopher teaches, but to do prayer itself, that is, supplication, and this is also clear from the final words of the Lord in the parable: “God will give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him... day and night” (Luke 18:7, 11:13), that is, to those who pray unceasingly. We need this constant prayer not in order to convince God, because He gives consolation according to His will, and not in order to attract Him, because He is everywhere, but in order to raise ourselves with our own call and turn to Him in an effort to partake of His grace-filled gifts. Because, according to the great Dionysius, “we are with God when we call on Him in pure prayers and with a non-vain mind” 242. We call upon Him unceasingly in order to ourselves unceasingly be with Him. 31. And that unceasing prayer in the form of a state, which the philosopher now first invented, is probably not alien to the devil, even though he never prays: “in fact, he also knew that if the Lord of all things does not allow, he is powerless against pigs” (Luke 8:32–33), he will not be able to approach Peter (Luke 22:31–32), and even before them, he will not be able to achieve anything against Job with any tricks ( Job 1:12). This is how far from the certainty that the Lord is the God of all, from not only constant, but even temporary prayer! All incorporeal intelligent beings know the Lord, although not all pray, because the enemy of God will also be the enemy of prayer, and whoever runs from His beauty also runs from prayer to God. On the contrary, the bodily beings of the God of the universe do not know everything, but everyone prays in accordance with their concept of God. For those who know the one and true God, this idea includes the impossibility of doing anything without Him; and which of such believers God’s love has raised to true unity with the Lord of the universe, those, remaining in prayer without food or breath, according to paternal instruction, bring their minds inward and through this attunement to divine unity are rewarded with the mysterious, ineffable spiritual gift of prayer, which incessantly remains with them, then by itself drawing the mind of its chosen one to the innermost unity and exuding holy joy, then mysteriously responding and echoing the prayer of a mind directed towards God, like music for a singer composing his chant on it 243. For those who have become involved in this way in ever-moving and inexhaustible grace, prayer takes root and works relentlessly in the soul according to the word of Scripture: “I sleep, but my heart is awake” (Song. 5:2). Whoever wants to receive this gift of true and truly unceasing prayer from - let’s say together with the prophetess - “He who gives prayer to those who pray” (1 Samuel 2:9), follow the divine Nile 244 and Gregory the Theologian in order to “live without being attached to anything human, except for what is absolutely necessary,” and among human needs, to the best of your ability, do not deviate from the memory of God and try, according to Basil the Great 245, to carry in the soul the thought of God as an indelible seal. To the fullest extent of our strength, we must perform unceasing prayer in deed, word, and thought until we receive this gift, because, says the theologian, “if you have not yet accepted the blessed gift of prayer, persist and accept it.” We worship and pray through the spirit, and “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24). 32. After the teachings on prayer and the state of prayer, already knowing the words of Gregory the Theologian that I cited earlier, where he says that all the benefit of the verbal sciences came down to the fact that he abandoned them for the sake of Christ and thus had something to prefer to the Lord 246, the philosopher contrasts this with other words of the same theologian: “I left everything according to the commandment; I only care about the word and never, as far as it depends on me, will I be careless towards it” 247. In this way he proves the complete inconsistency of the saint. What can we say in defense of the wise theologian? What else, if not that by the verbal sciences, abandoned for the sake of Christ, he understood Hellenic wisdom, and by the word, about which all his concern was, something far from this wisdom and associated with the sacred and divine sciences? So, an immoderate debater, we interpret. The description of the fruits of such a word leads me to this: “It,” says St. Gregory, “makes me faint with the weak and rejoice with the strong” - this is literally the apostolic covenant! – “it separates the worlds for me and takes me away from one and ties me to another” – where will you find this in Hellenic science? - “it arranges everything with the right weapon of righteousness and wisely accompanies everything on the left, giving unshameable hope and elevating the present to the future” 248. Here, even verbatim, everything follows the apostolic expressions 249. If anyone does not agree with this understanding, explain in a different way why the words of the Theologian are in agreement with each other; but I will never believe that he contradicts himself. 33. Regarding this, as it seems to the philosopher, having called us “ignorant and ignoramuses” 250, he without hesitation equates me with Julian and calls me worthy of just hatred, “because I deprive the monks of verbal science, just as he deprived it of Christians living in the world” 251. It’s as if someone, having heard the words of the psalmist, “The madman said... there is no God” (Ps. 13:1), considers it necessary to equate with this madman the theologian Areopagite, who says about God that “He was not, is not, and will not be” 252 - and he himself turns out to be the craziest madman, not noticing the immensity of the difference, since the saint knows and confesses God, Who is above all things, and the heart of a madman does not recognizes and does not value the One truly existing. So we know in the same way that monastic citizenship is higher than scientific pursuits. The apostate banned scientific studies for Christianity because he considered it meaningless. Not being able to understand this, the omniscient philosopher in his own eyes condemns equally those who place the Christian good above all honor, and those who dishonor him most, considering it fair to hate the most pious on an equal basis with the most wicked because they declare the main goal of all concerns to be a prayerful approach to God! 34. “If the Lord,” says the philosopher, “did not command in the Gospels to engage in science, then he did not prohibit it.” But then why does He say: “Be wise as serpents and simple as doves”? Doesn’t the Lord distinguish and select here in external wisdom what is useful and combine it with gospel simplicity, as we said in our first word 253, for which you now insult us? Again, why does He say: “I will give you a word and wisdom that no one can... resist” (Luke 21:15)? Does not the Lord here declare a wisdom more divine than that which is always possible to refute and which you, its defender, extol to the utmost? What did those who loved God's wisdom do before they achieved it in purity? Perhaps they wandered around the world, looking to see if anyone taught any sciences, whether he was a Hellenic, an Egyptian or a Chaldean, in order to learn from him, gathering opinions from everywhere, which you advise us literally in the following words: “It is not from keeping the commandments, not from dispassion alone, that knowledge of things comes” and: “It is impossible to be a saint without acquiring knowledge of things and without being cleansed from ignorance"? So, I ask, did they wander, gaining wisdom everywhere, according to your advice or according to the scripture “they were constantly in the sanctuary, persistent in prayer and supplication” (Acts 1:14), giving thereby both a prototype and a practical holy outline of a truly excellent and all-holy monastic life? In it, according to our vows, we rise above the average priestly way of life, move away from all divisions in life and imagination, through the unity-giving commandments of truly monks [as one], we ascend to the one God-wisdom, which is above all philosophy, and are sacredly consecrated into the most holy Unity. Truly, we are transformed into one through the supreme and completely unified, inconceivably trinitarian Unit through prayer for us (John 17:23) through the ineffable manifestation and assistance to us of the One who for our sake was combined with our duality, mysteriously remaining in His inalienable unity in accordance with His supernatural inalienable power 254. 35. Tell me, incomparable lover of the sciences, what absurd thing are we saying if, in accordance with these vows, we place the desire for a uniform coagulation of the mind 255 and abandonment of concern for the diverse sciences above the always partial and changeable scientific ideas, sensory comparisons and knowledge, the root of which is in sensory sensation? Can an external person become a monk and correspond to the highest unifying life if he does not rise above the created world and all human opinions, in monastic individuality strongly striving towards the one God, which is symbolically indicated by the very cutting of the beauty of the hair 256 on the head? Apparently, the rule of not ascending to God's altar by steps and building it only from rough stones, not processed by any tools (Ex. 20:25-26), was also a hint that the house of prayer should be the naked nature of the mind, untouched by any tricks of human sciences. Didn't God explicitly prohibit scientific pursuits? But He did not prohibit marriage, meat-eating, or living in family homes 257. Therefore, if we demand that the monks avoid all this, we will be condemned, saying after you, writhing with all the twists and turns of words, that with equal right one can adhere to this, since it is not forbidden, and abstain from it, since it is not prescribed? No one will say that if he himself does not want a fair condemnation: much that is done without prohibition among Christian people is in no way allowed to monks because of the peculiarities of their residence. Some fathers even forbid being treated with a bath and do not advise patients to use the help of doctors, relying entirely on God, completely depending on Him and unwaveringly expecting the desired help from Him. Of course, although God has reinforced the correctness of the fatherly opinions with repeated extraordinary miracles, the saints also do not reject people who have not yet reached such a degree of faith; they are paternally condescending to our weakness; So sometimes they also care and talk about science. How did you, monk and philosopher, dare to equate with a monster and apostate someone who cares and speaks about the same things as the fathers? The apostate tried to deprive Christians of science as unworthy of it, but I do not try to deprive monks of it - after all, before entering a monastery, enough time passes for a good assimilation of science by everyone who is not lazy - I, I say, do not deprive the monks of verbal scientific knowledge, but call them to a good that exceeds the word, because they have vowed to strive for it. It is not because of deficiency, but because of abundance, that blessed novitiate abandons the pursuit of verbal science, because persistent prayer to God is infinitely superior to scientific exercises. 36. Yes, we say that you contradict the fathers and the entire Church of God, because how can one remain silent about the truth in such things? Your beliefs are the opposite of those of your fathers - not because you deliberately selected the sayings of the holy fathers, but because, in your opinion, the Gospel commandments are insufficient for the purification of a faithful soul, dispassion does not give initiatory and saving knowledge to the dispassionate, it is impossible to free oneself from ignorance and false opinions without science and scientific studies, perfection and holiness are unthinkable without such liberation, Hellenic learning is God's gift Along with the grace given through revelation to the prophets and apostles, revelation even after its giving is also comprehended by human thought, like scientific knowledge, and omniscience, which we attribute to God alone, is the goal facing the perfect man. And although, by mixing the Holy Scripture into your writings, you present yourself as its great champion, you also consider it incapable of bringing complete cleansing to the soul, because otherwise you would not have written that the seeker of purity should seek knowledge from every teacher, even an impious one. Apparently, in your defense of external sciences, you speak about Scripture out of cunning, for the sake of deceiving the simpletons. Since you clearly argue with those who claim that the divine commandments must be observed in order to achieve dispassion and saving purification, and among the commandments is the study of Scripture, then demanding observance of the commandments necessarily means demanding constant reading of Scripture, while you believe that it also does not give the soul purification. To combine divine Scripture and philosophical sciences together is a deception, but to say that studying both lead to the same goal is no longer just a deception, but a direct contradiction of the sacred and divine Scripture. In the long labor pains, philosophy did not produce any fruit, its offspring are thin and premature, they do not reach the light of knowledge of God 258, although they really drive out with the light of science that darkness of the soul that you consider the most evil, namely, accidental ignorance 259. Why, as should follow from your words, the saints are not darkened and imperfect - all those who had no education at all, and among those who knew the Hellenic sciences - those who stretch out the cosmos like a tent, establish the sky like a vault, raise the sun from the northern parts of the earth, consider the firmament to be hollow for receiving waters and, themselves full of all this random ignorance, that is, as you say, the worst darkness of the soul, also try to instill it to others? 260 37. So that no one thinks that we are giving our own interpretation of this man’s teachings, we will quote his own words, and next to them the words of one or two saints, which he clearly contradicts. It is well known to those who are right-thinking that all saints are of one mouth, moved by one spirit; one way or another, we will present sayings that will find obvious confirmation among others. So, this monk and philosopher says literally the following: “Through observance of the commandments one can hardly achieve well, if only dispassion; but cleansing from passions alone is not enough to discern the truth, because dispassion does not rid the soul of accidental ignorance. For the discernment of intelligible things, dispassion is hardly useful to the soul if this random ignorance, which represents the greatest spiritual darkness, remains with it; so a philosopher must try throughout his life to cleanse his soul both from passions and from false opinions, and, calling on help from above to achieve both cleanses, he himself must do everything leading to this goal. Then he will want to study and communicate throughout his life with everyone who teaches any sciences; it will not matter to him who the teacher is, as long as he helps to acquire knowledge, because the perfection due to a person is achieved by the one whose mind, in strong unity, has come into agreement with the universal truth.” You find this and even worse things every now and then in the philosopher’s writings on human perfection and the acquisition of wisdom. 38. So, we need, he says, a double cleansing of the soul - from passions and from casual ignorance, and by observing God’s commandments only cleansing from passions is given, and even then, in his words, “barely”, and cleansing from ignorance, if you believe him, is given by “science”, and, apparently, not by the science of Divine Scripture, because its study is included in keeping the commandments. If the philosopher had meant by “science” the study of Scripture, nothing bad would have happened. Maximus the Confessor similarly distinguishes the practice of virtue, distinguishing it from the study of divine dogmas, 261 and we also sometimes say that through the divine commandments the soul is cleansed of passions, and in pure prayer, through the abundance of insight, it leaves behind all knowledge: such things stand out in a primary sense from everything else, in much the same way as the Angel of the Resurrection said to the myrrh-bearers: “Tell His disciples and Peter that He goes before you in Galilee" (Mark 16:7) - just as Peter, although he also belongs to the number of disciples, is singled out from them, being named preferentially before others, so prayer and reading the Holy Scriptures relate to God's commandments, although in a primary sense they stand out among them. This, of course, cannot be said about the assimilation of philosophical sciences, especially - what an absurdity! - in a predominantly sense. 39. However, he precisely means that complete purification of the soul is achieved by studying not the Divine Scripture, but the Hellenic sciences, and therefore adds that he who wants to purify himself must learn from any mentor, whether he is pious or not. To show that Hellenic science saves and purifies and initiates into mysteries, he calls every person who does not have knowledge of things unclean and imperfect. I think it is clear to every sensible person that to say this means to think contrary to the fathers and the God of the fathers; and let the theologian Dionysius of the Areopagus stand before us as a witness for all, with complete unanimity with whom this philosopher, who has outgrown the divine commandments, constantly boasts. So, in the first chapter of “Church Hierarchy,” Dionysius says: “Likeness to God and unity with Him, as the Divine Scripture teaches, is achieved only by love for the venerable commandments and their holy fulfillment” 262 - and is it possible to find anything more perfect than likeness to God? Nothing like this can even be said or thought; so that this all-perfect sage agrees with us here, let us remind him of the beginning of his own essay “On the Perfection of Man”: he says there that “a perfect man is one who, as far as is possible for a man, has made his soul god-like.” 40. If, in this way, perfection is likeness to God and is achieved only by the holy loving fulfillment of the divine commandments, then where is the purification and perfection from knowledge, sciences, from the desire to study all your life and the desire to communicate with all the mentors of any learning who help the growth of your knowledge, be they Egyptians, Scythians or Hellenes? Doesn’t he who seeks purification from them clearly contradict the divine Scripture and the fathers who confessed it? Is it possible to say that by keeping the commandments one achieves, and even then “barely”, only dispassion, which does not cleanse from ignorance and does not illuminate the truth of existence, and that such ignorance is the greatest darkness of the soul, from which it is not God’s commandments that purify, but only external wisdom? Doesn’t saying this mean considering the Hellenes, the Egyptians, or in general any inventors of verbal sciences as the lights and saviors of our soul in the same, if not more, way? less than Jesus? Already from the few words spoken here about him, the disease that has infected the thinking ability of the soul of this lover of knowledge is clearly revealed; and if his mind is sick, it’s not a bad idea to think about what it is and where it comes from. Let us therefore try to understand and name the cause of the disease, and with God’s help, create a medicine that can lead to recovery, if the philosopher agrees to take it. Because who would not suffer in soul, thinking about how a wonderful member of the Church leaves her? At first I myself was so amazed and it was so hard for me to write that it was impossible to say; and I then told my relatives that I took up the matter not so much to protect the brothers who devoted themselves to hesychia, but for the sake of the very person with whom I was arguing 263 . If only during our personal meetings and conversations he had somehow agreed not to insist on his convictions and not to attack the simplest of the brethren, long essays would have been unnecessary. I don’t know how all this will end now, I just pray to God and hope for the best. 41. It is unnecessary, in my opinion, to talk about the initial and distant causes of the disease, but the most immediate reason, which is visible from the reasoning of the patient himself, was that the essence and name of a truth that surpasses our reason with incredible force rivets an inquisitive person and gives birth to an impossible desire in souls too greedy for knowledge. This is the same desire that instilled in the first Adam the desire to become equal to God. In fact, our philosopher also began to consider the only source of salvation and perfection to be precisely bringing the cognitive ability of the soul into agreement and lasting unity with the truth, which embraces all of God’s creations. Seeing that the divine Scripture and commandments did not allow this to be fully achieved, he turned to the Hellenes, who want to seem to be the discoverers of the laws of creation, and bowed before the Hellenic sciences as giving the soul the perfection of initiation; he did not want to think that perfect knowledge of things is useless and unattainable for the soul in the present age, because “like the formation of bones in the womb of a fruit-bearing woman,” says Solomon, “so you cannot know all the works of God that He will produce” (Eccl. 11:5). Maybe you won’t know what He will do, but at least you will know what He has done? No, the same Solomon says: “Man will not be able to comprehend the work done under the sun, no matter how much he labors to comprehend it; and whatever the wise man says he knows, he will not be able to comprehend /it/” (Eccl. 8:17). It is not for nothing that the reasonings of the external sages about creation are different; some of them have even created a science that proves that all these arguments are untrue, while none of the sciences can prove or even even suggest that any one of the differing opinions is true. Therefore, whoever does not recognize that the non-dual truth lives only in the testimonies of divinely inspired men who spoke for our benefit, who does not see from God’s words to Job (Job 1:38–41) that God’s created wisdom is incomprehensible, but hopes to thoroughly find out the truth of everything in the world with the help of external wisdom, he does not notice that he is building the structure of his knowledge on the sand, or rather on the agitated swell, entrusting such an important matter to the verbal weaving of sciences, which can always be refuted by other weaving. Such a wise man will become like a fool, and one has to be very afraid lest a great fall befall him according to the Lord’s parable (Matthew 7:25–26). - So, the cause of error, if I guessed the truth, was this particle of truth. Now all that remains is to prepare a cleansing drink. 42. Taking care, however, that it does not cause suffering to the sick, we are ready to allow those absurdities that we spoke about above. We, therefore, are ready to admit that with the help of external sciences it is indeed possible to find the true laws of existence; Let us also consider that these laws are consistent with the truths revealed to us in the divine Scripture 264, and we will demand only one thing - faith in the one healer of spirits, Christ, the God of spirits (Num. 16:22), and that likeness to Him, that is, health of the soul and perfection, is achieved only by love for Him and keeping His commandments. After we agreed with our opponents in this way, conceding to them even more than we should have, and demanding from them to admit only what they could not deny in any case, let’s see where such an agreement led us. Yes, however, where else if not to recognize the following: whether in knowledge or in dogmas, saving perfection is given when our convictions coincide with the way the prophets, apostles, fathers, and all the witnesses of the Holy Spirit, who announced about God and His creations, thought; and everything that the Spirit has omitted and that others have invented, even if true, is useless for the salvation of the soul, because the teaching of the Spirit cannot omit anything useful. It is no coincidence that we do not condemn differences of opinion on unimportant issues, nor do we praise if someone knows more about them than others. 43. Leading us to the perfection of saving knowledge, Christ said that “if you had believed Moses, you would have believed Me” (John 5:46), and He commanded us to search the Holy Scriptures because we will find in them “eternal life” (John 5:39). This knowledge, perfect and given freely, does not require constant work or much torment! Therefore, says the Chrysostomed theologian John, the Lord rarely discussed the scriptures, because this matter does not require work, but he spoke often, or rather always, about life; after all, he says, the law and the prophets are that what we want from other people, we ourselves do the same to them 265. Since there is another knowledge, a practical discernment of how to act, which we need in life, and every godlike and perfect person must also acquire it, the Lord, leading us to this knowledge, commanded: “Become wise as serpents and innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16), demanding gentleness and reasonableness of character; He called wise virgins worthy of a bridegroom because they did not separate the work of love from abstinence (Matthew 25:1-13). But this knowledge alone without deeds will not save anyone, because “those who act according to it have good understanding” (Proverbs 1:7), which is why the Lord calls blessed that servant “whom... when he comes, he finds doing so” as He commanded him, and he who knows and does not do, He says, “will be beaten many times” (Luke 12:42-48; Matt. 24:45-51). Truly, the Lord counts among the wise only those who know and fulfill His words. But whoever knows and fulfills the word of the Lord, according to the promise, acquires in himself the One who commanded it (John 14:23), and He is wisdom itself and the focus of all true knowledge. Therefore, whoever, through observing the divine commandments, has acquired Him in himself will no longer even need to study the scriptures; he knows them all exactly without it, and, like John and Anthony, can become a reliable teacher for those undergoing training 266. 44. This true knowledge, which we learn from the divine commandments, truly leads us to perfection, dedication and salvation. Paul called the reward or guarantee of reward in this struggle the rapture and heavenly ascension (2 Cor. 12:2), and Christ called the coming, indwelling and appearance of Himself and the Father (John 14:21, 23). It is not hidden from the initiates that although the expressions here are different, they mean the same thing: not from one place to another will the omnipresent power come, and not somewhere in a certain space will it reside, not limited by space, but this His coming to us and staying in us is our ascent to Him through revelation. We will show later that this is not knowledge, but ignorance from the abundance of light. In the meantime, in addition to what has been said, I want to bring a witness who says that for salvation and perfect holiness we do not need knowledge of the laws of creation and the scientific truth about them: let us listen to Basil the Great, who diligently studied the knowledge of existence. Analyzing the words of the psalmist about the truth living in the heart of a perfect man, the saint says: “We have discovered two meanings denoted by the word “truth”: one is the comprehension of what leads to a blessed life, the other is correct knowledge regarding any of the things of this world. The truth that promotes salvation lives in the pure heart of a perfect husband, who ingenuously conveys it to his neighbor; and if we do not know the truth about the earth and the sea, about the stars and their movement and speed, this will not in the least prevent us from receiving the promised bliss” 267. Part 2. TRIADS II. About prayer 1. When a philosopher so unbridledly scolds people who simply do not value the benefits of external sciences in comparison with the benefits that they already have and which, believing false promises, those who live according to it hope to receive from the Gospel, he so unbridledly scolds that he pours out his abuse in long essays, then everyone will say that he is obsessed with a passion for science and an excessive inclination for knowledge. Since these people value only Christ’s commandments above all else and only call them to follow as the only thing that leads to holy likeness to God, perfects and deifies the human soul, they place reasoning and verbal philosophy not much above earthly affairs, calling all this, following Paul, carnal wisdom and the wisdom of this age, and the supporters of this wisdom, who turned against God the knowledge they received in the school of His creation, are denounced as outcasts and wiseless sages, the philosopher was apparently offended that his sciences were not awarded the same high honor, especially since he himself also wanted to be awarded it, for which reason he called himself a philosopher, a title that remained for him the only clear reward for the work of his whole life. But what kind of person do we have to be in order to go against our “reasonable”, or rather spiritual “ministry” (Rom. 12:1), that is, against prayer and against those who, valuing it above all else, silently and carelessly devote their whole lives to it and, from their experience, give help to beginners in this supermundane and angelic ministry? Who objects to those who choose silence? Who envies those who reject all honors? Who, like a winner, exalts himself over those sitting far from the lists? Moreover, in his previous battle for philosophy, our monk and philosopher even fought openly against monks, but against those living today; and now, having deduced in his writings the sayings of the fathers, undoubtedly taken to heaven, he, in some kind of blindness, went to considerable lengths to refute them. 2. Most of all, the philosopher attacks the essay on the prayer of the monk of holy life and confessor Nicephorus 268 - Nicephorus, who professed the true faith and for his confession was condemned to exile by the then reigning first Palaeologus, who adhered to Latin convictions; Nicephorus, who came from Italy, but condemned the evil teaching there and came to our Orthodox Church; Nikephoros, who, along with domestic errors, renounces his fatherland and begins to love ours more than his own for the sake of the “straight word of truth” that rings among us (2 Tim. 2:15), and having moved to us, chooses the strictest, that is, monastic life and settles in a place whose name is the same with holiness, on the border of the world and heaven, is Athos, the center of virtue. Here, having submitted to the chosen fathers, Nikephoros first showed that he knows how to obey well, and having given them the opportunity to experience his humility for a long time, he himself takes over from them experience in the art of arts, hesychia, and becomes the leader of those who in the mental world are preparing for battle with the “spirits of evil” (Eph. 6:12). For these disciples of his, he compiled a collection of paternal councils, equipping ascetics for the fight, defining methods of fighting, showing rewards for victory and describing the crowns of the winners; In addition, seeing that many beginners find it very difficult to cope with the instability of their own minds, he suggested a way in which they could slightly moderate the excessive mobility of their imagination. 3. It was on him that the philosopher unleashed his imaginative wisdom, like some kind of fire using the obstacle as food. He has no reverence for the confession and the subsequent exile, he does not respect the men who communicated with Nicephorus in this exile and learned from him the divine secrets, men who in our Church appeared as the “salt of the earth”, “the light of the world” (Matthew 5:13-14) and always “kept the word of life” (Phil. 2:16) 269 - we are talking about Theoliptus, who shone like the light of a lamp in the city of Philadelphia; about Seliot, mentor of monastics; about Elijah, who spent his entire life in desert life like Elijah; about others, with whose deeds God adorned, established and renewed His Church - no, the example of these men and their disciples, who still adhere to the same way of life, did not convince the philosopher to abandon suspicions and attacks on Nicephorus, or at least not to dishonor this man in his lengthy writings, whom he could not properly praise. The fact that the pious man wrote his essay, perhaps in simplicity and artlessness, spurred the philosopher to object and helped him find something to complain about. But if we say in the words of a theologian, “for us it is not the one who is wise who is wise in words, and not the one who has a good tongue, but the soul is shaggy, like coffins, which, decorated on the outside, hide the great stench of dead rotting inside; he is wise who demonstrates the authenticity of his words with his life and embellishes the unpretentiousness of his speeches with deeds” 270. However, even in those simple speeches this sage could not attach himself to anything until he distorted them, as we will soon show. 4. But now, since the philosopher begins and ends with his own teaching about mental prayer, we will also first briefly consider this teaching of his. With the beauty of its language it is capable of seducing many inexperienced people, but none of those who have even a little taste of true prayer. We will follow this teaching just enough to show his disagreement with the fathers. Moreover, the philosopher begins with the unanimity of the fathers, but in the end he leads to a completely opposite path. In fact, he first says that he who approaches prayer must give rest to his feelings and, having deceived the reader with this visible similarity with the advice of the fathers, demands to draw the conclusion from here that “it is necessary to completely mortify the passionate ability of the soul so that it does not act with any of its powers, and also to stop every action common to the soul and body, because every such action becomes an obstacle to prayer, especially to the extent that it is associated with bodily effort and entails pleasure or sorrow, first of all in the sense of touch, the coarsest and most unreasonable of all" 271. Therefore, someone will say, having heard such advice, when starting mental prayer, one must not fast, not stay awake, not kneel, not prostrate, not stand for a long time, not do anything like that, because all this produces a painful effect on the sense of touch and, as the philosopher says, gives the soul a burden in prayer, whereas it is necessary to make the soul unburdened on all sides. “After all, it would be unnatural,” he adds, “if we neglected sight and hearing, the most immaterial, dispassionate and reasonable feelings, in prayer, and allowed touch, the most coarse and unreasonable, and agreed to participate in its actions.” He does not even notice, even though he is a philosopher, the difference between feelings that, being involved, each in its own measure, with the spiritual force implanted in the body, they are therefore moved not only by what affects them from the outside. To explain what happens to material feelings from immaterial prayer, we would need both to have the perfection of prayer skill and to be able to devote all our reasoning to this subject alone; but let “he who gives prayer to those who pray” give those who come to their defense a gift of words commensurate with our present task. 5. When we turn to the inner, we must bring to rest all the feelings to the extent that they are driven by external influences; but those whose disposition corresponds to the disposition of the soul, and good ones at that—why are they there? And how is it possible for a person who has entered within himself to leave such feelings of his own free will? Why, finally, is it absolutely necessary to get rid of them, if they do not hinder at all, but, on the contrary, contribute in the best possible way to the right disposition of souls? After all, this body connected with us is connected with us, or rather, subordinated to us by God to assist the soul; therefore, we must reject the licentious body, but accept the one acting as it should. Of course, hearing and vision are purer and more meaningful than touch, but they do not perceive anything at all and do not grieve on their own unless they encounter some ugly sight or unpleasant sound outside; on the contrary, the body grieves in the sense of touch most of all when we practice fasting without bringing it food from the outside. Therefore, whoever isolates himself in the internal from everything external, ceases the activity of the senses, which act only from external impressions - stops to the extent that this activity proceeds externally; But will he really seek to stop the action of feelings that do not need external impressions, especially if they serve his purpose? And everyone who is at least a little involved in the efforts of fasting, vigilance and sobriety knows that tactile grief serves mental prayer in the best possible way. Having learned this from experience, they least of all need reasoning, and they do not approve of those who indulge in mere verbal research, seeing here “puffy knowledge” (1 Cor. 8:1). 6. If in truly mental prayer one must not fall into passionate states and cease attachment even to indifferent things, because only in this way can one achieve unburdened and pure prayer, and those who have not yet reached this stage, but striving for it, must first rise above pleasures and completely get rid of passionate obsession - because they need, on the one hand, to kill the body’s inclination to sin, which means getting rid of passionate obsession, and on the other hand, to put reason over crafty passions agitated in the mental world, which means rising above pleasures - if all this is so, and this is precisely the case, and if while we are possessed by passion we, as they say, cannot even try mental prayer with the corner of our lips, then, striving for prayer, we certainly need tactile sorrow, which comes from fasting, wakefulness and the like. Only in this way is the sinful inclination of the body mortified and the thoughts that excite animal passions become more moderate and powerless. Moreover, this is how the beginning of holy contrition is laid, which washes away the old dirt of unbelief, and most importantly, this is how divine tenderness and obedience necessary for prayer come. “God will not despise a broken heart,” according to David; and according to Gregory the Theologian, “nothing can serve God except through suffering” 272. It is not for nothing that the Lord teaches in the Gospels that the power of prayer in combination with fasting is great (Mark 9:29; Matthew 17:21). 7. What kills prayer is insensibility, which the fathers call petrification, 273 and not at all tangible grief, as the philosopher first began to say in his useless writings, speaking out against those who know the matter from experience. It is not for nothing that some fathers called fasting the matter of prayer: “Hunger,” they say, “is the food of prayer” 274. Others called this the “quality” of prayer, knowing that prayer without sorrow has no quality. And for some reason it is said that “thirst and insomnia oppressed the heart, and the oppressed heart overflowed with tears” 275; and also: “Prayer is the mother, and she is the daughter of tears”! 276 Do you see that tangible grief not only does not interfere with prayer, but even unusually promotes it? And what about these tears themselves, whose daughter and mother turns out to be prayer? Aren’t they mournful, bitter, painful in nature for those who have just tasted “blessed sadness” 277 and don’t they turn into sweetness and lightness for those who are imbued with it? So why not only do they not harm prayer, but even give rise to it and are born from it bodily actions, felt both as pleasure and as sorrow? 278 Why, finally, does God himself bestow them, as the saint says: “If you have acquired the ability to cry in prayer, it means God has touched the eyes of your heart and you have received your sight in your mind”? 279 8. “No,” says the philosopher, “Paul, caught up to the third heaven, did not know whether he was in the body or outside the body, as if he had forgotten about everything corporeal; if, therefore, in a prayerful impulse to God one has to lose the feeling of everything bodily, then how can one call what is left in the impulse to Him a gift of God? But in the rush to divine unity, one has to abandon not only bodily actions, but also “actions of the mind, all divine lights and all ascent to all holy peaks” according to the great Dionysius 280. So is it really that none of this, not even the ascent to all the holy peaks, is a gift from God, since all this is to be abandoned in the rush to divine unity? “How can one say,” the philosopher continues, “that something was sent by grace that in mental prayer that connects a person with God, he will no longer feel? Such grace would have been sent in vain, but nothing from God is in vain.” Reveling in vain reasoning and trying to drag us into it, do you really consider divine unity so insignificant that it rises only above the vain, and not above the great and necessary too? Do you really consider everything that is left in perfect unity to be in vain? However, you clearly must think so, since you yourself did not rise above the vanity; because if you rose above it, you would know how high unity with God rises even above what is necessary and useful. 9 . But you indulge in vain futility with such delight, knowing absolutely nothing about prayer, you become so overwhelmed with idle talk that you call the spiritual grace of your heart - alas! - “an imagination that carries within itself the ghost of the heart.” Those worthy of this grace know that it is not a ghostly image, does not depend on us, is not something that either exists or does not exist, but there is a certain constant energy [action] that gracefully settles, lives and takes root in the soul, giving rise to a source of holy joy that attracts the mind to itself, leads it away from various material ideas and tunes it in such a way that no bodily pleasures are sweet to it - but the physical self I call that which penetrates from the pleasures of the body into the thoughts, under the guise of what is pleasant, mixes with them and pulls them down, while on the contrary, everything that from the spiritual joy of the soul passes to the body, although it acts in the body, remains spiritual. Because just as pleasure coming from the body to the mind makes the whole mind corporeal, not being sanctified in the least by merging with the higher, but on the contrary, transferring its baseness to the mind, from which the whole person becomes “flesh,” as it is said about people drowned by God’s wrath: “Let not My Spirit be upon these people... for they are flesh” (Gen. 6:3), so the spiritual sweetness passing from the mind to the body is itself in no way does not deteriorate from communication with the body and the body transforms, making it spiritual, so that it casts off evil carnal aspirations and no longer pulls the soul down, but rises with it, from which the whole person then becomes a “spirit,” as it is written: “He who is born of the Spirit is spirit” (John 3:6, 8). However, everything becomes clearer through experience. 10. And it would be enough for this lover of reasoning and debate to say that “neither we nor the Church of God have... the custom” (1 Cor. 11:16) of engaging in fruitless reasoning; we value the living word and life faithful to the word. But since he also wrote down his reasoning, we show the truth and expose the lies in writing, too, so that he cannot deceive any of the simple ones, appear serious to them, and mislead him. We write briefly for this purpose, in more detail - for a more important purpose 281 and constantly cite fathers who are opposed to the newly-minted teacher of inactivity, who, rejecting bodily virtues as too burdensome, understandably does not recognize the imprinting of spiritual states in the body, although all the Sacred and God-inspired Scripture is full of this: “My heart and my flesh rejoiced in the living God” (Ps. 84:3) and “I trusted in Him, and I received help and my flesh flourished” (Ps. 27:7) and again: “How sweet are Your words to my throat, better than honey to my lips” (Ps. 119:103) - and what is said here specifically about sensual lips is clearly shown by Saint Isaac, calling the sweetness of the words of prayer on the lips of the one praying 282 a sign of perfection. From Saint Diadochos we read: “That there is a single feeling of the soul, we are shown by the very energy of the Holy Spirit that has entered the soul,” which “no one can know except those who have renounced the blessings of earthly life for the sake of hope for future good. Having abandoned concern for the earth and uncontrollably striving for it, the mind itself mysteriously senses God’s beauty and, to the extent of its success, transfers its beauty to the body,” about which David’s words: “My heart trusted in Him, and my flesh received help and flourished” (Ps. 27:7). The joy that then arises in the soul and body “is a true reminder of incorruptible life” 283. 11. However, the philosopher says that this guarantee of the future age, a reminder of incorruption, the action of the All-Holy Spirit, cannot come from a divine cause, much less arise in mental prayer. In his opinion, there are four reasons for not considering the changes produced in the body by the energy of the Spirit to be divine. First of all, he writes, “God’s gifts are all perfect; but for the soul to rise above sensations in prayer is better than to act with any feelings; since, therefore, the sensible energies are not perfect, since there is something better than them, they are not from God.” So, if, according to the Apostle (1 Cor. 14:5), prophesying is better than speaking in tongues, the gift of tongues is not God’s gift? And if love is the most perfect of gifts (1 Cor. 13), then it means that it is only God’s gift and nothing else, not this prophecy itself, nor miracles, nor help, nor government, nor gifts of healing, nor the spiritual word of wisdom and knowledge, nor discerning of spirits (1 Cor. 12)? Then, among those who prophesy, and among those who heal, and among those who discern, and in general among everyone who has received gifts from God’s Spirit, there are also greater and lesser gifts according to the measure of each of these gifts, which is why Paul thanks God for the fact that he speaks in tongues better than anyone else (1 Cor. 14:18), but even the smallest gift is still God’s gift. “Be zealous,” says the same apostle, “for the greater gifts” (1 Cor. 12:31): therefore, there are also smaller ones, and although “star differs from star in glory” (1 Cor. 15:41), that is, in the abundance of light, still not one is completely deprived of light. Therefore, the basis on which the philosopher condemns the hesychasts is incorrect, that is, that only the most perfect gifts are divine. It is not for nothing that the Apostle James, the brother of God, says that “every perfect gift... is from above” (James 1:17), and not “most perfect.” Having dared to add to Scripture on his own behalf, the philosopher naturally speaks out against those who live according to it. I’ll just ask him: won’t the saints in the next century endlessly move towards the perfection of God’s vision? There is no doubt that it is infinite, because angels, as Dionysius, the exponent of the heavenly world, teaches, are also always improving in their vision of God, from the insight they have already received, moving on to ever brighter ones 284 . On earth, in all ages, we also do not know and have not heard of a single person who, having received such insight, would not strive for more perfect ones. If, therefore, the striving of the seers of God does not cease, but previously received grace only increases in them the ability of its new perception, and the Giver of Himself is infinite and bestows generously and without envy, then how else can one say that the sons of the future age will not grow indefinitely, receiving grace from grace and tirelessly moving forward along the joyful path of ascension? Every gift is perfect from above, and not more perfect, because what is more perfect cannot increase. 12. This is the case with the philosopher's first argument. The second is even better: “Love of the actions [energies] common to the passionate faculty of soul and body nails the soul to the body and fills it with darkness.” But what sorrow, what pleasure, what movement in the body is not a common action of soul and body? Apparently, the philosopher made this verdict imprudently, speaking generally about the particular. After all, there are blissful passions and such general actions of the soul and body that do not chain the spirit to the flesh, but raise the flesh to spiritual dignity, carrying it upward with it. What are these actions? Spiritual, coming not from the body to the mind, as we said above, but passing from the mind to the body, which through these energies and passions is transformed for the better and deified: just as the divinity of the incarnate God's Word, which through the medium of the soul deified the flesh and through it divine deeds were united for body and soul, so among spiritual men spiritual grace, passing through the medium of the soul to the body, allows it to also experience divine passions and blessedly to sympathize with the divinely suffering soul. Since the suffering of such a soul is divine, it naturally has a blessed and divine passionate faculty, or rather, since the passionate faculty is one in us, the single passionate faculty can become blessed and divine. Having achieved this blissful fullness, she deifies the body, and then is not disturbed by bodily and earthly passions, although this may seem so to the inexperienced, but on the contrary, she herself turns the body towards herself, leading it away from the inclination towards evil and breathing into it holiness and inalienable deification, to which the miraculous relics of the saints are clear evidence. The first martyr Stephen, still alive, had a face “like the face of an angel” (Acts 6:15). So wasn’t there something divine here in bodily suffering? This means that divine suffering and the action corresponding to it are common to the soul and body! And this joint suffering of theirs does not nail the soul to earthly and bodily thoughts and does not fill the soul with darkness, as the philosopher writes, but becomes a kind of mysterious connection and unity with God, miraculously raising even the body above bad and earthly passions, because “the mighty of God,” according to the word of the prophet, “have risen high above the earth” (Ps. 46:10). These are the inexpressible actions [energies] of which we say that they are performed in the bodies of the sacred silent ones who have devoted their entire lives to hesychia. What seems unreasonable in these actions exceeds the meaning and eludes the understanding of a person who delves into them by reasoning, and not by deeds and practical experience; and if the philosopher does not call upon faith, which alone can accommodate the unthinkable truth, then, understanding the sacred, - alas! - without holiness, he impiously violates piety. 13. In fact, as I already said, he then brings us the words of the apostle that during the entire time of his supernatural admiration he did not know whether “he was in the body or out of the body” (2 Cor. 12:2), in the sense that the Spirit brings oblivion of everything corporeal; “and since,” says the philosopher, this “everything” also includes that mysterious sweetness and warmth obtained from hesychasts, which we are told about, then the coming of the Holy Spirit will make them forget, but will not cause it in any way: in fact, if what happens to them is God’s gifts, then the words of the Apostle about forgetting everything in true prayer would be incorrect, because one cannot forget anything that is given from God for good; and if all this really has to be forgotten, then isn’t it absurd to persistently ask God for just that, the absence and cessation of which is better for prayer? That most of the gifts of the Spirit, and in general all of them are sent to the worthy during prayer, every true believer knows perfectly well - “Ask,” says the Lord, “and it will be given to you” (Matthew 7:7) not only admiration, and up to the third heaven, but any of the gifts of the Spirit. And that some of them work through the body too is clearly shown by “diversified tongues” and “their interpretations”, which Paul commands to receive through prayer - “he who speaks ... in tongues, pray for the gift of interpretation” - and not only this, but also the “word of teaching” and the “gift of healings” and “miracles” and those laying on of Paul’s hands with which he transmitted the Holy Spirit ( 1 Cor.12:9–10, 14:13, 26). So the grace of preaching, the grace of tongues and the gift of their interpretation, although they arise through prayer, continue to act in the soul that has departed from prayer. Healings and miracles also never achieve effectiveness if there is no persistent mental prayer in the soul of the actor, and sometimes the body echoes it. And the transfer of the Spirit in general is necessarily accomplished not only with prayer in the soul - prayer that mysteriously connects the one praying with the inexhaustible source of this great gift - not only, I say, with mental prayer (since the apostles are not told that they said something out loud at the same time) - so, the transfer of the Spirit is accomplished not only with mental prayer of the soul, but also with the action of the body through the touch of hands, transferring the Spirit to the one on whom they superimposed. So, are these gifts really not gifts of the Spirit, and are they really given to those who ask and pray not for good, since those who are caught up to the third heaven have to forget about everything bodily? 14. But it’s better to just once again cite here for comparison the words of the philosopher 285: “If what happens to them during prayer, that is, these miracles and gifts, are God’s gifts, then the words of the Apostle about the inevitable forgetting of everything in mental prayer are incorrect, because nothing given by God for the good can be forgotten; and if in ascent to prayer one must forget about all this, then isn’t it absurd to persistently ask God for precisely that, the absence and cessation of which is better for prayer?” No, my dear, sometimes God gives those who sincerely pray a frenzy, lifting them above themselves and mysteriously abducting them into heaven, and sometimes He acts in them, remaining within themselves, with supernatural and ineffable energies, incomprehensible to the sages of this age. When the apostles were in the church, persistent in prayer and supplication, the Holy Spirit, having come, also did not force them to lose their temper and did not take them to heaven, but gave them tongues of fire 286 in their mouths and through them announced what those who had lost their temper would, of course, have to forget, since they would have to forget themselves. And to the silent Moses God says: “Why are you crying out to Me?” (Exodus 14:15) and these words show that Moses prayed, and since he prayed silently, then, of course, he prayed intelligently; but wasn’t he then fully conscious, didn’t he feel the people, their cries, the impending danger, and didn’t he feel that there was a tangible rod in his hand? Why didn’t God then delight him and deprive him of sensation - after all, you honor those who pray only with this gift of God - but, on the contrary, brought him to this sensual rod and invested enormous power not only in his soul, but also in his body and hand, although mental prayer was supposed to be in oblivion of all this? And when Moses silently struck the sea with his rod, first to divide the waters, and then to unite them again after the passage? Did he not have a firm memory of God in his soul, and did he not rise in mental prayer to the One Who could do such things through him, while at the same time fully feeling with his body these divine actions? 15. Since the philosopher also cited evidence from the writings [of the holy fathers], let’s see if they also contradict his views on prayer. First of all, he mentions the great Dionysius, who, it seems to him, should reinforce his opinions with the words of a letter to the clergyman Timothy: “Persistently giving yourself over to mysterious contemplations, abandon both feelings and mental energies, in general everything tangible and intelligible, and strive with all your might to unite with Him Who is above all being and knowledge” 287 . But only the advice of the divine Dionysius to Timothy, taken by our sage as evidence of the exceptional correctness of his reasoning about mental prayer, in fact, as what follows, reveals in him a person who completely abolishes mental prayer - which, however, he tirelessly did in all his previous writings: Of course, after all, who condemns the initial stage of prayer, that is, standing in fear, torment, groaning and heartfelt melancholy, due to lack of boldness towards God, performed for a long time mentally, silently, and then tearful and contrite prayer with palpable sorrow from fasting and insomnia 288 and the gradual introduction of the distracted mind of beginners into ever more complete and consonant prayer - whoever, I say, throws away all this, will accordingly consider the completion of the prayer and all of it in general to be evil and will try to completely destroy it. Tell me this first, philosopher: if in the prayerful impulse towards divine unity mental actions must be abandoned, does this mean that they are not given from God and that prayer does not reveal them in the greatest purity? No, that doesn’t mean: after all, prayer, as it is said, is “the mother of wise thought” 289. Think also about the fact that the prayer of the perfect is, first of all, a mental action: not addressed to the body and the things surrounding the body, not acting with feeling and its companion imagination, not clinging rationally and speculatively to the structure of existence, focusing on prayer alone, the mind will necessarily act on its own in prayer, isn’t it? But Dionysius advises Timothy to abandon even smart actions; that means prayer! You claim that everything in prayers, abandoned and forgotten in the highest frenzy, is not good and not from God; therefore, in your opinion, prayer is not good and not from God, “who gives prayer to the one who prays” 290. 16. I will again cite your own words for comparison, applying them to mental prayer 291: “Everyone recognizes that in an impulse towards divine unity, a person has to leave the feeling of anything and forget himself, and God Himself helps him to leave all this, rapturing him from the world; but if the one praying does not feel his prayer at all, then how can this prayer, which he does not feel, come from God? After all, it would then be in vain, but from God nothing is in vain. If the person praying still feels his prayer, then it is not God who sends this prayer; after all, as everyone says, when turning to God it must be abandoned, since God’s illumination grants a person oblivion of everything, including mental actions.” Do you see that your reasoning about prayer completely cancels all prayer? Calling the divine Timothy to “place ascents in his heart,” 292 the saint leads him from high to higher levels and, having raised him through them, leads him to the very extreme peak of God’s vision. And you, the all-knowing sage, think that earthly people, in some unknown way, directly touch the heavenly heights. You cite as evidence the words of the divine Maxim: “When, in a loving desire, the mind is carried away to God, then it does not feel at all either itself or the things of the world” 293; this means, the newly-minted interpreter concludes, the mind does not feel the so-called passions and states that arise in the body under the influence of prayer; hence it necessarily follows that they are in vain. Then, we would say, prayer itself is in vain, since the mind will not feel it; then it is in vain to pray, if you believe such reasoning! No, only such conclusions are truly vain and harmful. After all, what, one may ask, is Maxim, the wise singer and lover of divine love, talking about here? “When the mind is carried away to God, then it does not feel either itself or existence,” “then,” it is said here; and when he prays intelligently within himself, he feels both himself and the blessed passions and states that occur from the action of holy prayer in himself and in the body associated with him. 17. The philosopher adds a third piece of evidence: “The highest state of prayer is that the mind stands outside the flesh and the world and remains completely immaterial and formless,” 294 therefore, he concludes, in such a state it will be outside all these bodily passions. But in such a state, as far as we know, none of the beings endowed with a body is continuously in this state, except perhaps this new teacher of extreme prayer; very rare, even those who rarely visit it. Therefore, usually everyone prays, remaining in the flesh and at the same time feeling all their passions, especially pure passions born of holy prayer, which improve and elevate and make spiritual those in whom they act, and do not drag them to the ground, do not devastate, do not destroy. Because there is also a kind of good passions, not only sacred, but also natural. We can understand this even by the example of our sensations, which become more perfect while in a suffering state under the influence of external impressions: here is, as it were, an image of the divine perfection bestowed by the Spirit from above. Its beginning is the fear of God, from which the passionate ability of the soul is not mortified in its nature, as the philosopher thought and began to teach, but rising to the action of divine love, it gives birth to saving wounding and blessed sorrow, followed by the bath of remission of sins, a new birth in God, that is, tears of repentance. These cleansing tears, full of love for God, “inspiring prayer” 295 according to the paternal word, in combination with prayer, enlightening the eyes of the soul, guarding grace when it is given through this divine bath, according to Gregory the Theologian 296, and after its departure calling again, therefore becoming “the bath of holy rebirth” (Titus 3:5) and, as Gregory says, the second divine baptism, which is more difficult, but not at all lower, and even higher than the first, according to the clear word of one of the fathers: “Higher than baptism, the source of tears that opens after baptism” 297 - these, I say, tears that cleanse the crying person, tearing him away from the earth, lifting him to heaven, combining him with the grace of birth in God, and through it deifying, aren’t they the common action of the body and the passionate power of the soul? 18. How can we agree that the soul’s love for actions common to its passionate faculty and body fills it with darkness and makes it gravitate downwards, 298 because all actions common to the soul and body, the more strongly they are perceived by the soul, the more they seem to blind it, so that when these movements common to the soul and body arise, “we believe,” he says, “that they arose for evil and to the detriment of the action of the mind striving for heights”! Don't these discussions reveal a way of thinking and teaching that is contrary to the teaching of the saints and, moreover, the Holy Spirit? In fact, the fathers say that there is a certain energy common to the body and soul, a truly good and holy gift from God, which brings divine enlightenment to the soul, delivers it from evil passions and brings in their place the whole series of virtues, because “he who wants to renounce evil renounces it with tearful weeping, and whoever wants to acquire virtues also acquires them with tearful weeping” 299 - in a word, the fathers say that there are common energies of the soul and body, are invaluable to the soul, but the philosopher assures that not a single one is useful: all, he says, make the soul gravitate downwards, all movements common to the soul and body arise for evil and to the detriment of this soul! The philosopher does not excuse the fact that this energy [of mournful tears] is not specifically named by him as harmful; having ranked her among the bad ones along with the others, he deserved a fair condemnation, and all the more so because, with the help of his trick, he tried to deceive himself into the trust of his listeners. God says that the iniquity of the condemned priests in Judea is that they “did not separate the holy from the unclean” (Ezek. 22, 26); so he, along with many other good actions common to the soul and body, did not separate the blessed tearful sorrow from unclean actions. 19. “No,” says the philosopher 300, “I do not consider this sorrow dispassionate and blissful; How can something that is accomplished through the action of the passionate power of the soul be dispassionate? And how can one be dispassionate who allows this passionate force to act, instead of completely killing it as a property? But we have been taught, philosopher, that dispassion is not the mortification of the passionate power of the soul, but its direction from worse to better and its action in a divine state, when it completely turns away from the bad and turns to the beautiful; and dispassionate for us is the one who got rid of bad states and enriched himself with good ones; for whom “virtues are as familiar as ugly pleasures are for the passionately obsessed” 301; who has subordinated will and desire, which together constitute the passionate power of the soul, to the cognizing, evaluating and reasoning abilities of the soul, 302 just as much as those possessed by passion have subordinated the reasoning force to this passionate force. Abuse of the powers of the soul breeds disgusting passions, just as abuse of the knowledge of existence turns wisdom into madness; but if a person uses them well, then through the knowledge of existence he will come to the knowledge of God, and through the passionate ability of the soul, striving for the goal for which it was created by God, he will acquire virtues: he will transform the power of desire into love, and thanks to the will he will acquire patience. This will be achieved, I say, not by the one who kills them, because he will then turn out to be indifferent and motionless for the divine properties and states, but by the one who subjugates the passionate power so that, submitting to the mind, his natural head, and obediently going to God, it, thanks to the unceasing memory of God, secures the divine disposition and rises to the highest state, that is, to love for God, in which, according to Scripture, a person fulfills the commandments of the Beloved ( 1 John 4:19, 5:1–2), and through them he knows, fulfills and acquires pure and perfect love for his neighbor. And dispassion without all this is a complete impossibility. 20. This path to perfect love through dispassion is special; As a path of ascension, it is most convenient for those who have left the world. Devoting themselves to God and constantly communicating with Him with an unclouded mind, thanks to this closeness they easily shake off the heap of bad passions and collect for themselves the treasure of love. But those who live in the world must force themselves to do worldly affairs according to God’s commandments; therefore, the passionate part of the soul, together with all others, is subject to coercion, and must also act according to them. Compulsion, taking root over time into a habit, produces a stable inclination to fulfill the commandments and turns this inclination into a permanent property; this, in turn, gives the soul a strong hatred of evil properties and conditions, and such hatred of evil brings the fruit of dispassion, from which love for the only Good is born. One way or another, the passionate power of the soul must be presented to God alive and active, so that it becomes a living sacrifice, as the apostle said about our body: “I urge you... for the sake of God’s mercy, present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God” (Rom. 12:1). How can we offer our living body as a sacrifice pleasing to God? When our eyes look meekly, according to the word of Scripture: “He who looks meekly will receive mercy” (Proverbs 12:13), and thereby attracts and brings us mercy from above; when the ears are attentive to divine teachings, so that not only hear them, but, according to the word of David, “remember the commandments of God to fulfill them” (Ps. 102:18), and not forgetfully, but according to the word of the apostle and brother of God, “delving into the perfect law of freedom and abiding in it and achieving blessing in its fulfillment” (James 1:25); when the tongue, feet and hands serve God's will. So what? Isn’t this doing of God’s commandments a common action of soul and body? How can one say that “all the energies common to the soul and body fill the soul with darkness and blind it”? 21. “Who is powerless, and I am not powerless? - says the apostle, - who is tempted, and I do not burn in fire? (2 Cor. 11:29). What, isn’t this the common action of the body and the passionate power of the soul? So we decide that it is “evil and harmful to the soul”? But here the apostle has the most precise sign of love for one’s neighbor as oneself, that is, the second commandment of the Lord, which, according to the revealed Scripture, is equal to the first and greatest commandment (Matthew 22:36)! The same apostle in his Epistle to the Romans says: “I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart... for my brothers who are related to me according to the flesh” (Rom. 9:2-3). Do you see? In this dispassionate and godlike soul, the passionate faculty is alive and active. Again, if the apostle prayed unceasingly in his soul and unceasingly grieved (1 Thessalonians 1:3, 2:13, 5:17; Rom.9:2), then his prayer was accompanied by spiritual grief; and that this sorrow not only accompanied, but also contributed to prayer, he shows through the meaning of his words there: “I am ready to pray that I myself may be excommunicated from Christ for my brothers” (Rom. 9:3) and in another place: “The desire of my heart and prayer is to God for Israel for salvation” (Rom. 10:1), that is, one must understand, the enormous pain for them and the constant mental anguish intensify the desire. So should we really consider dispassion as the mortification of passionate power as a property of the soul? 22. Although the philosopher heard something and imagined something about dispassion, he apparently did not hear that insensibility is evil and that it is condemned by our spiritual fathers. There is also good sorrow, the opposite of insensibility, just as there are common actions of soul and body that help the soul, moreover, giving it the perfection of dedication, if only it is true that this perfection is bestowed by observing the divine commandments; and if such actions are performed in the body, how much more so in the passionate part of the soul, which is directly connected with the mind, while the connection of the body with the mind can only be through the medium of the soul. The philosopher acts approximately as if someone, having heard God’s command: “Stop and know that I am God” (Ps. 45:11), and seeing that those who stopped at the divine are nevertheless busy with divine and spiritual work, began to scold them: “God said “stop,” and you, in your haste to act, are mistaken.” In fact, “put to death,” says the apostle, “your earthly members, fornication, uncleanness, evil passion and greed” (Col. 3:5). Do you hear what bodily actions must be put to death? Fornication, uncleanness, in general all base things. What passion? Evil, and not at all the actions of the spirit performed through the body, not the divine and blessed passions and not the powers of the soul that serve them. As it is said: “Let all your desire be directed towards God, let your anger manifest itself only against the serpent” 303. What, are the powers of the soul being killed here? Or, on the contrary, should some of them be excited in a prayerful impulse to God and indignant against the vile attacks of the serpent? 23. Where is the solidity in the words of the philosopher? “Shall we really,” he says, “reject feeling and imagination in prayer, and allow the passionate ability of the soul to act some of its powers? Shouldn’t she, on the contrary, also be rejected, because her actions most of all blind and darken the divine eye?” How is it that hatred of evil and love of God and neighbor darken the divine eye? But these are the actions of the passionate part of the soul: it is by its power that we love and hate, become attached and alienated. Just as through the action of the reasoning faculty of the soul we praise and condemn, according to the wise Synesius 304, and to give ourselves over to divine contemplations, to send up glory and praise to God and to cleave to Him with unflagging memory does not mean to mortify the rational power, but on the contrary, this is precisely the real life and true energy of the mind, in the same way lovers of the Beautiful do not mortify the passionate faculty and do not lock it in themselves inactive and motionless, because then they will have nothing with which to love good and hate evil, nothing with which to alienate themselves from vice and become attached to God. They destroy only the disposition of this power towards evil, completely transforming it into love for God, according to the first and great commandment: “Love the Lord your God with all your strength,” that is, with all your strength. With what full force? It is clear that he is passionate; after all, she is that in the soul that is capable of love. Having reached such a state, it lifts other spiritual forces above the ground and directs them to God; having come to such a state, it gives purity to the prayer and not only does not darken the mind, but also helps it, thanks to the memory of God, to eternally preserve Him within itself; having come to such a state, it allows those who suffer for the truly Desired to neglect the flesh and endure bodily grief more easily, because when their passionate power is undividedly possessed by the magic of divine love, they seem to emerge from the flesh in prayerful and loving communication with the Spirit of God and feel all carnal passions only to the extent necessary for their recognition. 24. What else is there to write about this? It is clear to everyone, even if it was not clear to this sage, that we are commanded to “crucify the flesh with its passions and lusts” (Gal. 5:24) not so that we deal with ourselves, killing all the actions of the body and all the strength of the soul, but so that we refrain from dirty desires and actions, turn away from them forever and become, according to Daniel, “men of spiritual desires” (Dan. 9:23, 10:11, 19), living and worrying about them in accordance with perfect faith and always courageously moving forward, as when leaving Sodom, Lot constantly moved forward and did not worry about what was left behind, which kept himself alive, while his wife, who turned back, was killed 305. That the dispassionate do not kill the passionate power of the soul, but it is alive in them and acts for good, I think it has been clearly proven. 25. Now let's see in what sense the philosopher, even though he poured all his wisdom into the teachings of the venerable Nikephoros on the principles of prayer, still failed to achieve anything except slander, perversion and deception, 306 so that he disgraced not this man of holy life, but himself and his own writings. To begin with, he tells a lie that Nikephoros first began to advise what the philosopher mockingly calls “breathing”: very long before him, other spiritual men advised the same thing in exactly the same words and concepts, and in the writings of all the fathers one can find many sayings testifying to this - for example, the saying of the saint who verbally erected a spiritual ladder for us: “Let the memory of Jesus cling to your breath, and then you you will learn the benefits of hesychia" 307. In addition, when a pious husband writes: “Force your mind, together with the inhaled spirit, to enter the heart,” 308 that is, just to cleave to it and look into the heart, according to the words of Macarius the Great: “The heart rules the entire composition, and if grace takes possession of the pastures of the heart, it reigns over all thoughts and bodily members; so here we must look to see whether the laws of the spirit are inscribed by grace” 309 - when, I say, Nicephorus writes in full agreement with the great saints, the philosopher again insults him with slander, separates the word “force” from “mind”, refers it to the “inhaled spirit” and, thus distorting the words along with the meaning, puffs himself up and for a long time denounces the complete absurdity of “forced breaths”. Again, although Nicephorus calls the action of the mind “mind,” saying that in the prayer exercise one must return it from being distracted by external feelings and try to bring it inside, the philosopher slanderously attributes to him here an understanding of the mind in the sense of the essence of the mind. So he comes up with many reasons to attack the pious husband. 26. When we at one time figured out the truth, the philosopher, unable to object, said: “Let our words then teach those who stumbled over visible absurdity.” You can say to such a teacher: and you, who teach what you don’t know, have you stumbled or not? Because if you stumbled, then how can you be a teacher here, since you yourself still need to study, and you learned the truth from us; and if you didn’t stumble, then why, because of this, you say, appearance, insult not as something badly said, but as something badly thought? After all, if both were bad, would you, judge, ignore the meaning and attack only the appearance? This means that if you yourself are wary of the fallacy of verbal expression and warn others to be wary too, you should have praised the very meaning and the creator of this meaning, acting not as a judge, but as an interpreter of his words. If someone, under the pretext of fighting against appearances, calls the commandment about mortification a preaching of suicide, will you not condemn him as an atheist if he does not correct himself? And when Basil the Great - I’ll take for example the truth from among those you condemn - when Basil the Great says that the mind “spreads outward” and again “returns” 310, then will we really condemn him for teaching about the spreading of the essence of the mind, knowing that it does not move in space, and about its return, knowing that it never left itself - or still Let us guess that the saint here calls his mobile actions “mind,” whatever they may be? 27. When we prevented the philosopher from judging by appearances with our refutations and he decided to speak out against the very meaning, going to war against the works we wrote in defense of the pious man, he did not forget his slanderous art here either - or rather, he could not forget, because otherwise how could he object to things that are irrefutable due to the truth contained in them and how to impose on the right the accusation of wrongness, if he had not first slanderously distorted them words? Therefore, when we, according to Macarius the Great, whose expressions are given there 311, call the heart the first carnal rational organ, the philosopher crosses out “carnal”, recalls the divine Gregory of Nyssa, according to whom “the mental essence is combined with the subtle and light-like power of our sensual nature” 312, justifiably adds that the saint sees in this force the “first organ” of the mind, and unreasonably attacks my expressions, finding a contradiction in them in the words of the saint, since we call the first rational organ the heart, and not the light-like force. If you, many-minded sophist, added “carnal,” as it is written among us, the imaginary opposition would completely disappear, and you would see that the saints agree with each other and we, who studied with them, agree with them: after all, the light-like power of human feeling is not flesh. 28. But he came up with another one of our opposites to Nyssa: by calling the heart the organ of organs in the body and saying that the mind through the heart uses the body as its organ, we supposedly depict the unity of the mind with the body as something knowable, while the saint considers it incomprehensible 313. But why then does the saint say that the sensual force is close in nature to the plant [vegetative], occupying a middle position between the rational essence and a more material essence, and even that the mind merges with the subtlest power of sensation, using it as the first organ and through it controlling the body? 314 Didn’t he here outline the method of uniting the mind with the body more clearly and even much more clearly than we do? Is it possible to say after this that the saint considers it unthinkable and inexpressible? Doesn't it seem to your wisdom that he contradicts himself? And how could it not, in your eyes, since you know yourself to be consistent! And for me, we call contact here the use of the body by the spirit and mixing with it, but what this contact is and how it occurs between the mental nature and the physical or body is impossible for any person to conceive and express. So the fathers agree with each other, and we agree with them. And you, a lover of contradictions, apparently like it when saints seem contradictory; Isn’t that why you are fighting with us because we show their mutual agreement? 29. In fact, if Macarius the Great, taught by the action of grace, also teaches us that the mind and all the thoughts of the soul are contained in the heart as its organ, and Nyssa - that the mind, since it is incorporeal, is not inside the body, then we, bringing this apparent difference to unity and showing the absence of contradiction, say that although the mind, in agreement with Gregory of Nyssa, is not inside the body in the sense that it is incorporeal, but at the same time, in agreement with Saint Macarius, he is in the body, and not outside the body in the sense that he is connected with the body and incomprehensibly controls the first carnal organ, the heart. Since one saint does not place it outside the body in the same sense in which the second places it inside the body, there is no discrepancy between them: after all, whoever says that the divine is not spatial, since it is incorporeal, does not contradict the one who says that the Word of God once entered inside the virgin and all-immaculate womb, through ineffable love for mankind, inconceivably uniting in it with our bodily composition. 30. Again, while we are trying to prove that there is no disagreement between the saints, you are trying to prove that there is disagreement between us and them. Although about how the mind comes into contact with the body, about where the imaginative and suspicious parts of the soul are located, what place the memory has received, which part of our being is the most mobile and, as it were, leading the rest, where the blood is generated, whether the moist bodily compounds are pure and which of the internal organs serves as a vessel for them - about all this everyone can say what they like, because all people adhere to beliefs here, as in relation to the immobility of the constellations and mobility planets, the size and nature of celestial bodies and in general everything that the Spirit has not clearly revealed to us, he alone knows exactly the truth about the universe 315. So even if you managed to track down that we contradict the divine and wise Gregory of Nyssa here, you should not have attacked us for this: remember how often the sky is considered a ball or spheres, equal in number to the number of wandering planets, although Basil the Great says otherwise; how often it is considered to be eternally moving, although some consider it to be at rest; how it seems to many that the sun moves in a circle, although Saint Isaac does not think so. You would probably be happy to accuse all of them of contradicting the fathers 316, as you accused us. But by doing this you would only expose yourself as not knowing the one truth in which we must follow them. It seems to me that you have never even thought about it or tried to distinguish it from the unimportant; and it is no coincidence that, contradicting the saints in things essential for a holy life, you demand from others a strict confession in things that are useless for holiness. Then, neglecting the slander against us, which he comes immediately after what we are talking about now, let’s move on to more important things. 3rd part. TRIADS II. About sacred light 1. Our exponent of mental prayer, an opponent of those who adhere to it all their lives, condescends to teach the sighted about the sacred light, although he is blind, which he himself cannot deny. They, he assures, are mistaken in calling light what he, the blind man, does not see; Moreover, he exposes in error regarding this light not one or another of the current monks or ascetics, who in recent times became famous for the purity of life and the height of vision of God, but even the great saints worshiped since ancient times, as will be revealed in the course of the matter. And when the people who heard these reasonings of his, were amazed, one must think, by their unheard-of audacity and were unable to silently endure such an obvious blasphemy against the holy fathers, and were also afraid for themselves of touching this dirt - which is what first of all forced us to write now - when, I say, people asked him: “Uninitiated and downright blind in these things, why are you tempted to rant about mysteriously sacred contemplations, which would be difficult for you to learn, even learning from those who had experience? the philosopher imagines that, due to his abundant eloquence and the verisimilitude of dialectical sophisms, he has found a way to circumvent the word of the Gospel, which clearly states the opposite: “If a blind man leads a blind man, then both will fall into a pit” (Matthew 15:14). “I,” says this blind man, dragging other blind people along instead of their leader, “I know how to follow the sighted.” What blind person can't do this? A person crippled on both arms and both legs and a weakened body will neither hold on to you nor follow you and generally does not need a leader, bedridden; but with sound hands and feet, why, O greatest of the blind, would he go holding on to you, and not to someone who can see? Apparently you are cunningly shielding yourself from the weakness of your gaze, but you yourself do not feel your blindness in these matters, even though you say so, not having anything to object to those who see your blindness; otherwise how would you consider yourself a driver of other blind people? Think that if you are like that evangelical blind man who, due to a lack of faith, could not yet see completely and said that he sees “men walking like trees” (Mark 8:24) - if, I say, you are like that in sight, and not completely blind, then, having peered into the disk of the sun in order to describe it to others, will you not tell them that the great luminary, the all-brilliant circle, the eye of the day, is in itself direct darkness? In fact, if the sun, excessive for the purest vision, even to an intact eye seems to shed a certain admixture of darkness in its rays, then how can anyone trying to look at it with a dim gaze not see in it complete darkness, without an admixture of light? Therefore, it is not only absurd, but ridiculous, when a blind man begins to teach about light. 2. However, let us reveal the depth of the philosopher’s thought, which he, having obscured with his example, not so much hid as revealed. Namely, the philosopher calls all of us and those saints whom he later clearly contradicts blind, that is, unreasonable; and he distinguishes himself from the blind, that is, the unreasonable, by the fact that he is a philosopher, and therefore alone is able to discern the laws of existence and the meaning of Scripture, follow them and lead those who hold on to him. No, philosopher, such a person will no longer be blind; since he followed those leading to insight, that is, as you say, to true knowledge, then he has received his sight; and if he did not receive his sight by following them, then how can he promise that others will receive their sight by following him? So you are not following yourself by calling yourself both blind and sighted. In fact, if knowledge alone, in your opinion, is the intelligent light for the sake of which you went to such a struggle, and you, as you testify about yourself, have knowledge of the Scriptures, then what kind of blind and unenlightened person are you? If, however, no other enlightenment is possible than the way in which you are enlightened and enlightened, according to your repeated words, and if the great Dionysius, whom you supposedly know how to follow, is enlightened and enlightens in the same way, that is, just like you only knows how to follow those who know, who in turn are also like you, then what is this string of blind people that you here string together for us in your reasoning, blind people who lead each other to insight, but they themselves remain blind? In this way you will find many others who claim to follow the Holy Scriptures. Convicted by their own words and Scripture, they are refuted by those who follow Scripture to the truth. 3. If anyone wanted to figure out how you follow the saints, they would call you not only blind, but also deaf. In fact, when the great Dionysius, as we set out in the discussion on saving knowledge, definitely says that “likeness to God and unity with Him is achieved only through the divine commandments” 317, you say with the same certainty: “not only”; After all, you admit that he who keeps the commandments will only be cleansed by half, and even then “barely” 318. This is your following! When Gregory of Nyssa teaches that external wisdom is sterile and imperfect, and believes that we should only remain in communion with this false-named mother until we see the imperfection of age in ourselves, and after that “we should consider it shameful to be called children of this sterile one,” 319, you teach us how useful and necessary it is to engage in it all our lives, command us to boast about it and do not bother to distort other sayings of the saint, if only, hiding behind his name, to prove that the sciences provide perfect and saving purity 320. So you alone are the best in holding fast to your fathers! And when Basil the Great clearly says that for the promised bliss it is not at all an obstacle not to know the truth about heaven, earth and the elements 321, you call the harmony of the mind with the truth of all things salutary and necessary for achieving perfection. Moreover, it would be good if only with this truth, at least then you would have to pray for the unattainable, because only God has the knowledge of everything, as the Lord says to Job: “Tell me, if you understand the meaning, where the pillars of the earth are strengthened, and where the strongholds of the sea are, and what is the breadth of the heavens” (Job 38:4, 6, 16, 18); no, you are not trying to bring your mind into harmony with this truth, you imagine yourself to be the only one who knows and has achieved perfection, but with Aristotle and Plato, with Euclid and Ptolemy and their followers, and therefore you consider astrologers and natural scientists to be God-seers to a greater extent than others, supposedly their mind sensibly runs around the truth of existence, by proximity to which you even honor them with equal angels mind - and, saying this, you imagine that you will be savingly and firmly following the theologian Dionysius and you dare to declare yourself our reliable guide! 4. But let the hunchbacked man not boast as if he were stately: he will not convince the sighted and will not deceive, even if he has deceived himself; let him not lie against right-minded men who firmly follow the divine theologians, and even in things in which no one on earth, even among those who reject the Gospel of grace, can now be convicted of complete error. In fact, who now, not only among the bearers of the name of Christ, but even be he a Scythian, Persian or Hindu, does not know that God is not anything created and sensually comprehended? For just as at the future coming of Christ the grace of the Resurrection and immortality will not be limited only to those who believe in Him, but according to the Scriptures everyone will be resurrected together, although not everyone together will be worthy of the gifts promised after the Resurrection, so now, after His first coming to earth, although not everyone obeyed the Gospel of Christ, but everyone together, imperceptibly changed from the abundance of the grace that has appeared, confesses the one uncreated God, the Creator of all things; and if you ask a Parthian, a Persian, a Sarmatian, you will immediately hear from him Abraham’s word that “I... I honor the God of heaven" (Jon. 1:9), which neither Ptolemy would have said, nor Hipparchus, nor Marinus of Tire, in your opinion, the sages who brought their minds into agreement with the truth of celestial circles, epicycles and spheres 322, but still call the sky both a deity and the all-cause, nor Aristotle and Plato, who consider the stars to be divine bodies 323, nor those who talk about horse races divine horses across the entire expanse of the wine-colored sea, as far as the eye can see from a high cliff 324. 5. And so, when now everyone, thanks to the light that shone in the darkness (John 1:5), better than from the once famous sages, knew the supersensibility of God, so that nowhere is it customary to deduce His image from existence, as you did to the Gospel disciples, who received the word taught by God in the hearing of their ears, who were initiated through the gift of tongues received from the fiery tongues of the Spirit, who were taught not from an angel, not from a person, but from the Lord Himself through His venerable lips (Isa. 63:9), - for “the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained” (John 1:18), - how to them, chosen from all nations, “the holy people” (1 Pet. 2:9), the Church of God, you dared to reproach the Church of God, as if they consider the essence of God to be tangible, having an image, size and quality and merging like visible light with the air, supposedly the receiver of the heavenly outflow, spatially and sensually embracing it? Amongst such conjectures, did it occur to you that why people, having such an opinion about God, do not call the sun God? Why do they think that the deity eludes the sensation of other people if they consider him sensual? And why do they neglect sensual pleasures, which are most shunned by those whom you slander? Among the slaves of the belly, according to Paul, “their sensual god is their belly” (Phil.3:19), lovers of money and money-grubbers introduce new idolatry (Eph.5:5) and, according to the Gospel word, those who receive glory from men, but do not seek glory from the one God (John 5:44) cannot believe in Christ; but men who have despised all this, moreover, for the sake of the Almighty God, do not they show by their deeds that they truly honor God, who is beyond the world? Is it really because they advise others to reject worldly things that deprive them of the glory that is from the one God, that one should not only not believe them, but also slander them, supposedly not having true opinions about the Divine? 6. Because the last words of your long-winded attacks on these men clearly reveal the premeditation of your slander against them. “Now,” you say, “we, who have not previously expressed our opinion, will say about their so-called hypostatic light, that this intelligible and immaterial light supposedly contemplated by them, abiding in its own hypostasis...” 325 - but only here the philosopher weaves in a lie: both the great Macarius 326 and the great theologian Maximus 327 and all those who agree with them 328 say that the light is contemplated in the hypostasis, but “in your own” - no. However, even without being able to present this without slander, the philosopher still admits that men call light “intelligible and immaterial,” and the intelligible and immaterial are not sensual and not symbolic, just as sensual things are symbolic. Then why did he show at the beginning that they call the essence of God sensory light, merging with air, air embraced and having a form, quality and volume inherent only in sensory light? But even they did not call the light of grace “intelligible” in the proper sense, because they know that it is above the mind and arises in the mind only by the power of the spirit to the extent of calming every movement of the mind; Moreover, none of them even called such a light the essence or outflow of God, as the philosopher imagines, and if anyone distorts in this way any figurative likening expression of the saints, then let him answer, not them. So what to say about men who place the light of grace above not only feelings, but also the mind, and the divine essence above even this light, as if they consider the divine essence to be sensory and visible light - does this not go beyond the bounds of any slander? 7. However, what does this slanderer of those enlightened above reason say next? “If they consider their so-called intelligible and immaterial light to be the supersubstantial God himself, preserving Him invisibility and intangibility for every sense, then when they say that they see him, they consider him either an angel, or the very essence of the mind, when, cleansed from passions and from ignorance, he sees himself and in himself as in his own likeness of God; and if what they are talking about is one of these two, then one must, of course, recognize them as thinking rightly and in accordance with Christian tradition; but if they do not call the light either a super-essential essence, or an angelic one, or the mind itself, and at the same time they say that the mind sees it as another hypostasis, then I do not know what this light is, but I know that it does not exist.” But which of the people, O you, who flares against real people, would call intelligent light, which is neither God, nor an angel, nor the human mind, existing in its own hypostasis? No one, even in a dream, could imagine some unknown light located outside of these three in some kind of its own incarnation. But let us assume such an impossibility, let us assume, that is, that one of the hesychasts said this to your wisdom - I don’t know who, and you yourself cannot indicate, even though you say that he is not one of the scientists 329. So, if he did not know how to express himself well, as most likely was the case, or even could not recognize the matter well, so be it, because not everyone is given knowledge, then shouldn’t you first question those who have the gift of discernment and find out as it should be, what the great vision of light is, and not immediately condemn the seers of God as possessed, clearly falling into the error about which the divine Paul spoke? “If,” he says to the Corinthians, “any simpleton and unbeliever comes to you without listening to those who have the ability to discern, he will say that you are mad” (1 Cor. 14:23). Alas, you too, monk and philosopher, succumbed to the mistake of the simple and unbelieving! Even if not just one or some, but many and all of us would say so, this does not give you the right to say that you said after long and complex reasoning: “I know about this world that it does not exist!” Everyone will agree with you that light in its own hypostasis, which is neither God, nor angel, nor man, does not exist at all; but everyone will immediately understand that if someone talks about seeing the intelligible light in its own hypostasis, it means seeing any of these three. You yourself called the speaker so right-thinking; so against whom are the curses, abuse and slander in your numerous writings? Is it not against those whose right-mindedness you ultimately recognize even before any refutation of your slander? 8. I do not say that they think or theology about the light in accordance with you; no, they are higher than you: they stand high above your slander and reproach. You say about them: if they call God intelligent light, preserving Him invisibility and intangibility for every sense, then they are right; and they know that the divine essence is higher than even that which is unattainable by any sense, because the One who exists above all things is not only God, but also a Supergod; and not only above all positing, but also above all negation, the greatness of the Beyond rises, surpassing all greatness conceivable by the mind 330. That the saints spiritually see the light, as they themselves say, hypostatic, and not symbolic, not like imaginations, intertwined from a combination of random circumstances, and that this light is an immaterial divine radiance and grace, visible invisibly and understood incomprehensibly, they know from experience; but what this light is, they themselves say, they do not know. 9 . But you, having used your defining, dismembering and distinguishing techniques, find out, and do not hesitate to teach us, the unlearned! Light is not God's essence, for it is imperceptible and inaccessible; the light is not an angel, for it carries within itself the features of someone in power and sometimes makes one emerge from the body or, not without the body, lifts it to a mysterious height; and sometimes the body is also transformed and imparted to it its radiance, as Arsenius 331, who was in hesychast struggle, and Stephen, who was stoned (Acts 6:15), and Moses descending from the mountain (Ex. 34:35) once appeared illuminated - sometimes, I say, having deified the body, it is done - oh, a miracle! – see with bodily eyes; at times he clearly converses with the clairvoyant with ineffable, so to speak, verbs, as with the divine Paul (2 Cor. 12:4), “descending from his height so that created nature can at least a little contain him,” according to the Theologian Gregory 332, although in his own nature he remains from century to century invisible and incontainable to everyone. Then, returning to himself, he who has been awarded this light constantly thinks in his mind about the name that the children of Israel gave to the bread that came down from above in the desert, calling it “manna” (Ex. 16:14-35). What is she? This is their name for the ineffable light; try to tell more about him if you can. 10. You say that the hesychasts are right even if they consider the light to be an angel. But they will never call him an angel: taught by the words of the holy fathers, they know that the appearance of an angel occurs in various ways and according to contemplatives - either in a dense essence, and then it is perceived by the senses and is not completely invisible even to those possessed by passions and the uninitiated, or in a subtle essence, when the soul sees him a little, or in true contemplation, which is awarded only to the pure and spiritually sighted - although you, not initiated into the difference of these ways, you clearly consider angels invisible even to each other, because, you say, they are invisible not by their incorporeality, but by their essence; So, word for word, you place the seers of God next to Balaam’s donkey, since it is written that she also saw an angel (Num. 22:25–34). 11. Again, you think that the mind, if it sees not “some other hypostasis, but itself and sees God in itself as in its own likeness, when it is cleansed of both passions and ignorance,” becomes a seer of God; and it does not seem to diverge from the most mysterious Christian tradition to say that the very essence of the mind is visible in this case as light. But hesychasts know that a mind that has been purified, enlightened and clearly embraced by divine grace receives other mysterious supernatural contemplations, as we have just shown, and even seeing itself, it sees itself as something else, although it does not look at something else, and not just at its own image 333, but at the radiance imprinted by God’s grace in its own image, and this radiance restores the ability of the mind to surpass itself and accomplishes a super-intelligent unity of the mind with the highest, through which the mind sees God in the spirit better than is possible for humanity. If you don’t know this, there is nothing surprising here, because if, without admitting anything higher than knowledge, you knew everything that is available to spiritual men to know, they would not deserve surprise. That is why you say that the mind becomes a seer of God when it is cleansed not only of passions, but also of ignorance; and they, without saying anything about this “cleansing from ignorance” of yours, but having cleansed themselves from bad passions and by the power of persistent and immaterial prayer, surpassing all knowledge, achieve the vision of God - because without being deceived by reasoning like yours, without ceasing to listen to themselves and without striving in wanderings around the world for the sake of cleansing from ignorance to gain intelligence and learning from everyone who only teaches any knowledge, be whether a Scythian, Persian or Egyptian 334, they know for certain that such ignorance does not in the least interfere with the contemplation of God. After all, even if, as you yourself admit, by keeping the commandments only cleansing from passions is given, despite the fact that in the mere keeping of the commandments, according to God’s promise, His coming and abode and appearance are accomplished, then wouldn’t it be an obvious mistake to add here this cleansing of yours, which you call cleansing from ignorance? However, in previous words we have already shown in detail that cleansing from this ignorance cleanses the soul, depriving it of real knowledge 335. 12. Now, however, we must move on to what the philosopher further says against the hesychasts; although we discovered his slander against them and it became clear that he is fighting against himself, attacking the fabrications of his own mind and beating and defeating himself, but since he, as it seems to him, is writing something against us, let’s see what it is. First of all, he names the reason why those he condemns fall into the opinion that the essence of God or its outflow is sensory light; they believe so, says the philosopher, “due to the observation that most of the occult knowledge and revelations that were holy in Scripture were accomplished and revealed in the light and through the light”; and that they represent God’s essence in precisely this way and for such a reason is evidenced by the fact that “they consider a person who always touches these lights and communicates with them to be a contemplative virtue and a contemplative man.” Why, my dear fellow, to consider the contemplator as such means to consider the light of God to be the essence of God? None of us have ever defined the contemplative man as one who sees the essence of God; If the contemplator does not see the essence of God, and the hesychasts, according to you, call the one who sees some kind of light contemplative, then it is clear that they do not consider the essence of God to be such a light as, they claim, the man they call contemplative sees. It is so easy to refute slander, which refutes itself in various ways and, as it were, does not care about itself, but constantly harms itself with its continuous inconsistency. Thus, the judges, who grew old in evil, unwittingly showed Susanna’s innocence; True, there were three of them, and it is not surprising if, separately tested by the God-moved wisdom of Daniel, then still a youth, they contradicted each other 336. How much our philosopher surpassed them, unable to be consistent even with himself, the only one, and this despite the fact that he exposed his slander by careful consideration and in writing! 13. However, although the evidence that the philosopher initially put forward against the hesychasts, intending to convict them of the greatest evil, turned out to be evidence of the correctness of their teaching, he was still pleased with himself that he was able to rip off the accumulated spiritual resentment in a word: apparently, it caused him unbearable pain and made him rage against these men because they did not deign to call him a contemplator, nor any other of those who have been engaged in Hellenic science all their lives and He did not devote even a short time to prayer, psalmody, abstinence from passions, or virtues. And so, enraged in this way and for such a reason, he hides his condition in the recesses of his heart, flatteringly courtes those who are simpler, 337 as the serpent once did to Eve, and first of all learns from them some fatherly traditions, which he then maliciously distorts; and when he fails even to dissuade them, because they imitate the new rather than the old Adam, then he attacks first them, and through them all who have given themselves over to hesychia, without accusing either those who lived before us or the men revered by the Church as saints, 338 attacking them most viciously because in their writings they testified not to the highest good that he imagined. To give credibility to the slander against these men, before, as he then said, tearing up with his own hands what was taught to him as untrue, he showed his notes to the people with whom he first communicated as a student and through whom he attacked others. Then he showed these recordings to us. In them there were no interpretations of prophetic revelations or at least a mention of them, not a word about the divine essence, but it was only that he was close to God not with much learning, but with virtues who had been cleansed of passions and in persistent and pure prayer had clung to God, thanks to which he had received the fullness of certainty and tasted future blessings; this certainty, as a mysterious guarantee, was revered by the most divine names possible. And so it seemed to him that it was not enough to distort everything - for he attributed to the prayer books the opinion that not science, but the Divine Scripture is completely useless, that knowledge of things is bad, that passions are demons inherent in the soul, and many other similar things 339 - no, this seemed not enough to the newly-minted judge, and he, alas! added something about the essence of God. And since he realized that this was also a figment of his imagination, then, looking for how to give credibility to the monstrous slanderous fiction, he cited prophetic revelations about the world, and next to them their direct opposites, which no one had ever expressed except this enemy of the saints. Whether the philosopher at war with himself gained the upper hand or not, we will not say; Let's leave him to beat and hit himself. 14. After a difficult struggle caused by his own slander, the philosopher embarks on something new, trying to prove that the light contemplated by the mind is simply the knowledge of creatures; he hopes that if he proves this, anyone who has not studied Aristotelian philosophy, Platonic theology and Ptolemaic astrology will appear darkened and unclean; For this reason, he scolds and reviles with base nicknames those who honor more than just mental enlightenment, saying literally this: “But those who practice inhalation assure that there are two intelligible lights revealed from God to holy men: one is the light of knowledge, the other is hypostatic, shining especially clearly for those who have gone far in inhalation.” Let's see, however, whom he humiliates with such nicknames as if they were lost; for as soon as they are pointed out, it will at the same time be proven that there is a light much higher and more divine than knowledge, which is revealed only to those who are spiritually sighted, not only to those living today, but to all saints in general from the ages. And that the philosopher does not specifically accuse one of our people, but directly all those who have given themselves up to a holy and silent life, is clear from the fact that the written tradition that has come down to us from the fathers, approved, as we know, by the divine men of high virtue who recently lived among us and which had experimentally shown its benefit for novice monks, he first sophistically distorted and perverted, and then he began to call everyone by a nickname invented for them, setting forth the reason for their common slander 340. 15. Since most of the saints who have been worshiped among us since ancient times had the opportunity to experience the light of grace and teach about it, we, defending the Gospel commandments, have already cited as evidence their sayings, containing an indication that Scripture teaches this, and making it clear that other judgments not cited by us have the same meaning 341. In the same way, here we will present those fatherly words that, as those who speak them claim, were written in accordance with the meaning of all other fathers. The faithful and reliable interpreter of divine things, Isaac 342, says that “we have been given two spiritual eyes, according to the testimony of the fathers...” - did you hear? All fathers say this! and they say that “we have two spiritual eyes, and the benefits of seeing with them are unequal: in fact, with one vision we see what is hidden in natural things, that is, God’s power, His wisdom and His providence for us, comprehended through the greatness of His guidance by us; with another vision we see the glory of His holy nature, when God deigns to introduce us into spiritual mysteries.” Since both are vision, what they see is light; and since there is unequal benefit from both visions, a certain ambiguity appears in the vision of light: with each vision a different light is seen, which is not visible with the other vision. What each of them is, the divine Isaac explained to us, calling one the comprehension of God's power, wisdom and providence and, in general, the knowledge of their Creator extracted from creation, and the other a vision not of God's nature, so that slanderers would not again find a reason to find fault, but “the glory of His nature.” This is the vision the Lord gave to His disciples, and through them to all who believed in Him and showed their faith in practice; This is what He wanted them to have: “I want,” He says to the Father, “for these to see My glory, which You have given Me, having loved Me from the foundation of the world” (John 17:24); and again: “Glorify Me, Father, with Yourself with the glory that I had with You before I was in the world” (John 17:5). So He also gave to human nature the glory of divinity, but He did not give divine nature; therefore, the divine nature is one thing, and its glory another, although they are not separate from each other; and at the same time, although glory is different from God’s nature, it cannot be counted among things that exist in time, because it transcends existence and is inexpressibly inherent in the nature of God 343. God gave this glory that surpasses all things not only to the hypostatically united with Him, but also to the disciples: “The glory that You gave Me, Father,” says the Lord, “I gave to them, so that just as We are One, so they might be one, I in them and You in Me, so that they might be perfect in one” (John 17:22-23). He also wanted the disciples to see her. This glory is what allows us to acquire God within ourselves and, in the proper sense of the word, to see Him. 16. But how do we acquire and see this glory of God's essence? Is it really by exploring the laws of existence and through them capturing the knowledge of divine miracles, wisdom and providence? No, everything like this is subject to a different vision of the soul - one with which it is impossible to see the divine light, “the glory of His nature,” according to what was said above by Saint Isaac and all the other fathers; therefore, divine light is not the same as the light of the same name as knowledge. Therefore, God does not dwell in everyone who has knowledge of things or sees through such knowledge; such a person has only knowledge of creation, from which he guesses about God by means of probable reasoning. On the contrary, the mysterious possessor of the divine light, who no longer sees based on probability, but in a true contemplation that lifts above all creation, knows and has God within himself, because God is not separated from His eternal glory. We just need not to be embarrassed or lose hope from the immensity of this benefit, but, having trusted in Him who joined our nature and conveyed to it the glory of His nature, we must look for how the gift of this vision is acquired. And how? Keeping the commandments; to those who observe them, the Lord promised His divine appearance, which He later called “His and the Father’s abode,” saying: “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our abode with him”; and: “I will show myself to him” (John 14:21, 23). What He calls His commandments here by “word” is clear, because above, instead of what was said here “word,” He said “commandments”: “He who has My commandments and keeps them,” He says, “he is the one who loves Me” (John 14:21). 17. So from here it is also clear, and precisely in direct relation to the reasoning and teachings of the philosopher, that, no matter how unpleasant it may be for him, the gracious vision of God is in no way a knowledge of existence. We just need to remember that we do not call such a vision knowledge because of its superiority over knowledge, just as we do not call God a being, for we believe that he is higher than a being. And how, against the will of the philosopher, from his reasoning it turns out that divine light is not the same as knowledge? He says that by not observing the commandments, one can drive out the darkness of ignorance from the soul; only science and persistent study of it are capable of this 344. What does not drive out ignorance can in no way give knowledge; but precisely what, according to him, does not give knowledge, according to the word of the Lord, leads to vision of God; therefore, this vision of God is not knowledge. It should be considered and called not only not knowledge or knowable - perhaps in a loose usage and by the same name, or, perhaps, in the proper sense, but as something exceptional - vision, I say, should be considered very little not knowledge, but even incomparably superior to all knowledge and all cognitive speculation, if only it is true that there is nothing higher than the dwelling and manifestation of God in us, neither equal nor close to this. We know that fulfilling God's commandments brings both knowledge and true knowledge - after all, only in this way does health come, but where does rationality come from for a rational soul if its cognitive ability is sick? So, we know that God’s commandments also provide knowledge, but not only knowledge, but also deification; and we receive it by fully acquiring and seeing by the Spirit the glory of God in ourselves whenever God deigns to introduce us into His spiritual sacraments according to the above-mentioned saint 345 . 18. Since the saint mentioned the fathers who said the same thing, we, too, bypassing all those who lived after him, will see what the saints said before him about the glory of God, which is seen mysteriously and ineffably only by the initiates, and first of all by the eyewitnesses and apostles of the one God and our Father Jesus Christ 346, through whom “every fatherland is named” in the fullness of the Holy Church (Eph. 3:15), and before the apostles - again theirs head Peter, who says: “We did not follow cunning fables when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty” (2 Pet. 1:16). And what glory of the Lord Jesus Christ he witnessed, let another apostle show us: “Having awakened,” he says, “Peter and those with him... saw the glory of Christ” (Luke 9:32). What kind of glory was that? Let another evangelist appear, co-testifying: “His face shone like the sun, and His garments became white as light” (Matthew 17:2). The Lord showed them that He is God, “clothed with light as with clothing,” according to the psalmist (Ps. 103, 2); therefore, after the words that he saw “on the holy mountain” the glory of Christ - a light illuminating, it’s wonderful to say, even the hearing, because they saw there a luminous cloud sounding with words - after the vision, therefore, of this glory of Christ, he says: “We have the most certain prophetic word.” What true prophetic word did you accept after contemplating the light, God-seers? What, if not that God “puts on light as a garment”! “And you do well,” says the apostle, “holding fast to this prophetic word... like a lamp shining in a dark place, until the daylight shines” - what kind of daylight? Of course, shining on Tabor! - “...and the morning star will rise” - what morning star? Of course, Peter shone there with James and John. “...Until this morning star rises” - where? “In our hearts” (2 Peter 1:18–19). Is it not clear that this light now shines in the hearts of the faithful and perfect? Is it not clear that he immeasurably surpasses the light of knowledge? And not only from the knowledge obtained by Hellenic science, because such is unworthy even to be called knowledge, being all false or mixed with lies and closer to darkness than light - not only, I say, from this knowledge, but also from the knowledge of the Divine Scriptures, the light of this vision differs so much that the light of knowledge is comparable to a lamp shining in a dark place, and the light of a mysterious vision is to the morning star shining during the day, that is, to the sun. 19. “But how,” he persists, “can one compare this light, if it is divine, with the sensual sun?” You, the greatest contemplator of all, do not know this and cannot understand typically, and not comparatively, that God shines like the sun and is brighter than the sun? Think that if a second luminary equal to the first also shone during the day, the daylight would become twofold and each of the suns would seem less bright in such light. Therefore, the One who shines “as the sun and brighter than the sun” shines not like the sun, but above the sun, so that even being likened to the sun has no equality with the sun, and even being typically compared to the sun does not have any equal likeness with it. However, that the light that shone on the chosen disciples at Tabor was not at all sensory or intelligible, was shown to the best of my ability in the word about God’s enlightenment and sacred bliss 347 . 20. Those who are militant against such enlightenment and light say that all the lights revealed from God to the saints are symbolic ghosts, hints of certain immaterial and intelligible things, changeable and imaginary visions, depending on circumstances. They slander Dionysius the Areopagite for allegedly expressing himself in agreement with them, although the saint clearly says 348 that the light that shone upon the disciples at the Divine Transfiguration with “the brightest brilliance” will continuously and endlessly illuminate us in the next century as “always present with the Lord,” according to the promise (1 Thessalonians 4:17). Doesn’t the eternally existing, in the proper sense existing, unchangeably existing, the brightest and most divine light rise above all the symbols and allusions that change from random circumstances, appear and disappear, sometimes exist, sometimes do not exist, or rather sometimes appear, but in the proper sense of the word never exist at all? Is it really the Sun, of all sensible things the brightest, which began with change and is subject to many annual changes, obscured by many bodies and sometimes eclipsed, sometimes hidden, and sometimes obeying holy commands, from which it stops its movement, returns back and stops (Josh. 10:12; 2 Kings 20:11) - will we really call this Sun and the light from it existing and hypostatic, and light, “in which there is no change or shadow of change” (James 1:17), a reflection of the God-equal Flesh, abundantly bestowing the glory of His deity, light, the beauty of the future and eternal age, shall we call it a symbol and a ghost, devoid of its own hypostasis? This will not happen as long as we are in love with this light. 21. In fact, both Gregory the Theologian, and John the Golden Mouth, and Basil the Great clearly call him Divinity. “The Godhead who appeared on the mountain to the disciples is light”; and again: “The Lord revealed himself in unprecedented brilliance when His Divinity revealed His rays”; and again: “Shining through the venerable Body as through a crystal lamp, this power appeared to those who are pure in heart” 349. Therefore, that glory was not just the glory of the body, but the glory of God’s nature, which, uniting one of His holy hypostases with the venerable Body, invested in It all its glory, that is, the splendor inherent in the Divinity; No wonder Macarius the Great called it “the glory of the Spirit” 350. So will the Divinity, the radiance and glory of His supremacy, either exist or not exist; sometimes to arise, sometimes to die; appearing and disappearing; not hidden from the unworthy, but doomed to disappear like ghosts, symbols, allusions and other things listed by the daring sophists, who, supposedly in confirmation, in fact in refutation of themselves, brought in the divine Dionysius and Maximus, not noticing that the godly Maximus called the light of the Transfiguration of the Lord “a symbol of theology” 351 by analogy, in an elevating, anagogical sense? 22. Since in analogical and spiritually elevating, anagogical theology any hypostatic things appear and are called symbols by the same name, Maxim also calls light a symbol, which is why he called his reasoning contemplation 352, making it an elevating symbol of his own contemplation, which is why, however, this symbol did not become a non-existent imaginary. Moreover, the divine Maximus makes Moses a symbol of judgment, and Elijah a symbol of foreknowledge 353; so did they really not exist in reality, but were also symbolically fictitious? And what, for a theologian striving for elevating contemplation, will not Peter become a symbol of faith, James - hope, and John - love? And the mountain itself, having ascended which Christ appears to everyone who can follow Him, if we say according to the same Maxim, in the image of God in which He pre-existed before the beginning of the world, a symbol of ascension through all the degrees of virtue? 354 Do you see what kind of light was that shone upon the disciples there? In this light, seeing the transfigured Lord, the chosen disciples “passed from flesh to spirit before laying down life in the flesh,” as he says, “thanks to the change in sensory energies produced in them by the energy of the Spirit” 355. Do you see that the light was imperceptible to a feeling not transformed by the Spirit? That is why he did not reveal himself to the shepherds nearby, although he shone brighter than the Sun. This is Maxim. 23. The great Dionysius calls the light of the Transfiguration simple, without image, supernatural, superexistent, that is, existing above all existing things. How can such a thing be sensual or symbolic? Wanting to write sacredly about the light as its unfalse spectator, the secret one and the initiate into it, Dionysius says: “Now our divinely inspired mentors have taught us through the sensory - intelligible, and through the existing - the super-existent, and through the diversity of separate symbols - supernatural and formless simplicity; but when we become incorruptible and immortal and are worthy of a Christ-like and most blessed inheritance, then, according to Scripture, we will always be with the Lord, filled with the most holy contemplations of His visible theophany, and a dazzling radiance will illuminate us, as disciples at the most divine Transfiguration” 356. Do you see how much this light exceeds not only the senses, but also everything that exists, and its contemplation is supernatural? 24. Indeed, now we see the eternal light by feeling, through existence and separate symbols; then, having risen above this, we will see directly, without any intermediate veil, as the most divine initiate clearly taught us in such sacraments: “Now,” he says, “we see through a mirror and in hints, but then face to face” (1 Cor. 13:12). He says this “now”, indicating a feasible and analogous contemplation, commensurate with our nature; having surpassed it himself, rising above the feeling and mind, he saw the invisible and heard the unheard (2 Cor. 12:2-4), accepting into himself the guarantee of a future rebirth and contemplation commensurate with it, which is why he said “I know,” for he heard and saw; this, it would seem, is the action of feeling; but Paul also says that “I do not know whether I felt the mind or the body” (2 Cor. 12:3); so this sensation is above the feeling and the mind, because when they act, it is felt and thought that they act. Therefore the apostle added: “God knows,” for the Lord was then active. Having risen above humanity in unity with God, the apostle saw through the invisible the invisible, which had not lost its supersensibility and had not become sensually visible. 25. And the great Dionysius did not make the contemplation of the eternal light sensuous when he called it “visible,” since, as he says, the vision is revealed to the “Christ-like” 357 . You will find that in other places he clearly calls the supersensible light visible: “If the arbitrary autocracy of the mind,” he writes, “begins to boldly transgress the moderate limits of the vision given to it, then the action of the light will not change at all, and autocracy will deprive itself of even its moderate share of it” 358. And if the contemplation of intelligent things does not deviate from its supersensibility, although it is visible, then will the contemplation of those who have reached a Christ-like destiny not be supersensible because of what is visible? That visible theophany is not only supersensible, but also superrational, as explained by Saint Maximus, who says: “Through deification, the spirit then gives us peace from all bodily and mental natural actions, so that God will appear through the medium of both soul and body” 359. Light, therefore, will be perceived by both the mind and feeling, each, of course, in proportion to itself, but above the feeling and mind. And what the Areopagite calls “visible theophany” and “unity above the mind” are not very different from one another; and in any case, since according to the God-seers we will not need air and space 360 ​​there, why will we need sensory light? 26. But again, did the Apostle Paul, who was in God and contemplated the invisible things of God in a ecstasy, see the essence of God? Who will say that? In the same way, those who have been purified through hesychia are rewarded with invisible contemplations, and the essence of God remains unattainable, although those who have been rewarded are initiated into His mysteries and reflect on what they have seen, and so in the dispassion and immateriality of the mind they partake of God’s intelligible gift of light, knowing for all that the Divine is above all contemplations and all contemplative initiations; in this way they receive a super-rational grace inaccessible to us, cognizing the invisible not through invisibility, like those who theologize by taking away properties, but through vision itself, cognizing the higher vision and experiencing, as it were, a kind of withdrawal, but not in reasoning. And so, just as the containment and vision of the deity is different and higher than affirmative theology, so the containment of negation in spiritual vision due to the immensity of the visible is different and higher than negative theology. In fact, if someone sees in a mirror the shadow of the Sun, which is brighter in the sky, and even the brilliance of the shadow-like reflection exceeds the power of the gaze of the beholder, then he, of course, will comprehend the inaccessible invisibility of the prototype, however, not through non-vision, but through vision; and in the same way, men who have been worthy of the most blessed contemplation, not through denial, but through vision in the Spirit, recognize the invisible height of his deifying action, and how much more - the One who acts in him. Those who learn from them somehow become familiar with the intelligible gift of light and can rise to negative theology; however, to gain such contemplation and through it and in it to see the invisibility of God is an impossible task, unless they are granted a supernatural, spiritual and supermental unity. 27. For in the same way, Stephen, according to the divine Gregory of Nissa, sees the divine not in human nature and power, but having merged with the grace of the Holy Spirit, “since, as Scripture testifies, 361 like is seen through like; and if the glory of the Father and the Son became accessible to human nature and power, then he who asserts the incompatibility of the vision of God for man would be lying, but, on the other hand, he undoubtedly does not lie and history speaks the truth” 362. It is true, therefore, as we said above, that in the Transfiguration of Christ there was the glory of the Father, since the Father and the Son have one glory; for here too, Stephen, who was in God, clearly saw not only God in glory, but also the glory itself, which is the glory of the Father. “So what was that achievement of human nature? Or which of the angels raised the base nature to such heights? No; for the Scripture does not say that Stephen saw what he saw, having acquired great power or being filled with angelic help, but it is said that Stephen, being filled with the Holy Spirit, saw the glory of God and the only begotten Son of God (Acts 7:55); after all, according to the word of the Prophet (Ps. 35, 10) it is impossible to see the light except by seeing in the light” 363. But if by the power of the spirit we see the Son as light in the paternal light, then it means that a certain direct unity with God is possible for us, as well as such a gift of light, to which we participate not through the mediation of angels, even if our philosopher denied it and imagined that the great Dionysius also taught him what he wanted, due to his inability to accurately understand the meaning of the theology of this mentor in the holy mysteries. 28. Revealing to us the reason for the angelic names, Dionysius says that through angels many visions are revealed to us, 364 but does not say that all self-manifestations or any unity or any radiance occurs through them. Talking about the fact that the much-sung doxology at the birth of Christ was transmitted to people on earth through the multitude of the heavenly army and that an angel announced it to the shepherds as having been purified away from the crowd and in silence, hesychia 365, he no longer calls the glory of God that shone upon them sent through angels. But the shepherds did not receive the revelation of salvation from the glory that shone upon them: “When they were afraid, for they were unaccustomed to such contemplations, the angels told them what the appearance of light meant” (Luke 2:9-10). And the angel told the Virgin Mother that she would carry God in her womb and give birth to Him in the flesh 366; however, God’s union with Her did not occur through an angel. Let us also note here that it was not she herself who dedicated herself to unity, but she needed a messenger. And what is the need to expand when the theologian clearly says that in unity with the supreme light, which “occurs only among angels awarded higher than the angelic title, the godlike minds are likewise united in an angelic manner after the calming of all mental action” 367; and again: “Just as the teachers say about our mystical initiations that the self-manifested fulfillment of divine things is more perfect than what happened through the communion of others, in the same way, I believe, among the angelic ranks, the direct communion of angels, primarily inclined to God, is more obvious than that which takes place through intermediaries” 368. As the great Dionysius instructs us, Zechariah (Luke 1:11) saw one of the first and closest angels to God, and Ezekiel (Ezekiel 10:18) receives the most holy law from the most glorious Deity Himself seated on the cherubim 369. 29. So, not only among angels, but also among us, visions of God are accomplished not only indirectly and through others, but also directly and self-revealed, without transmission from primary to secondary, for the Lord of lords is not subject to the laws of creation. It is not for nothing that, according to our holy tradition, 370 the first and only one was dedicated to the mystery of the ineffable exhaustion of the Word, although he does not belong to the first and installed in the immediate vicinity of God the angelic rank. It was fitting for the beginning of a new creation, we see here, to be new. He who exhausted Himself and came down to us for our sake (Phil. 2:7) made everything new (Rev. 21:5; 2 Cor. 6:17), and therefore, having ascended into heaven, He, as St. Cyril says, makes the lower rank angels and those closest to the world enlighteners and initiators for the higher rank, and the lower ones command the higher ones and teach them to raise the gates eternal (Ps. 23:7, 9), for He will ascend and be exalted and sit above all principality and power (Eph. 1:21) He who clothed himself in flesh for the sake of His unspeakable love for mankind. For He is “Lord of hosts and King of glory” (Ps. 23:10), able to do all things, and to set the last over the first whenever He wills. Before the appearance of God in the flesh, we did not know anything like this either from the angels or from the prophets, except those of them who foreshadowed future grace; Now that she has appeared, everything does not have to be accomplished through mediation. The same is true for the great Paul: “Now through the Church the manifold wisdom of God has become known to the principalities and powers” ​​(Eph. 3:10); and according to the leader of the apostolic ranks, Peter: “Through those who preached the gospel to us in the Holy Spirit sent down from above, that which the angels long to see has now been made known to us” (1 Pet. 1:12). But if the smaller ones, through grace, initiate the larger ones, then thereby the order of improvement is again observed in an inviolable and wonderful order. 30. The saint, who explains angelic naming, most beautifully and in the best possible way told, revealed and taught us why angelic names were originally introduced and given 371. And to the divine prophets, you will read, it was revealed that the angel who directly taught the mystery of the descent of the Word to us, although he was the archangel, was not, however, among those installed in the immediate vicinity of God; in fact, the Archangel Gabriel is sometimes with someone else, superiorly different from him in dignity, to whom the Archangel obeys and from whom he hears commanding words: “Explain this vision to him” (Dan. 8:16). With all this, it should be noted here that it is not said “convey” this vision to him, but “explain”, because the gift of knowledge is mostly sent through one medium or another, and most of the epiphanies are self-manifested. Therefore, theology tells us that the imprint of the law was communicated to Moses through the angels, but the vision and vision of God was not through them; they only interpreted to him what they saw (Gal.3:19; Heb.2:2) 372. Mystical visions can reveal different things: existing, future, tangible, intelligible, material, immaterial, essential, random, and each time in different ways; Moreover, everything is revealed differently in proportion to the strength of vision and in accordance with the meaning and purpose of the thing. The appearance of the One who is beyond the limits of all things “shone upon the seers and prophets,” says the great Dionysius, “in holy churches and other places each time for a different reason and with different power” 373. Let him who calls himself blind and indiscriminately attaches the same name to everyone, or rather, does not attach it to anyone, imagine that we, who duly honor the eternal light, consider visions of chariots, wheels, swords and other similar things equally honorable to the light of the future age (Zech. 4:1-7; 2 Kings 2:11; Ezek. 1:15-21, 10:9-19 ; Dan.7:9 ) 374 . Didn’t he even hear from theology that “the divine nature will then become for us instead of all things” 375, so that at least from here we can be convinced of the divinity of the mysterious light? 31. Of course, no one has seen or will see God (John 1:18), neither man nor angel, but insofar as the angel and man see sensually or mentally. Having become the spirit and seeing in the Spirit, how will he not see like in like, according to the expression of theologians? 376 However, even to the most spiritual gaze, the all-surpassing divine light appears only to an even more perfect extent hidden. For what created creature has the power to contain all the immeasurable power of the Spirit, so that by its power we can consider everything in God? And what do I call that intimacy here? The very brilliance of this light, incomprehensibly using the gaze of the beholder as a substance, sharpening the spiritual eye through unity and making it more and more capable of perceiving itself, will never, throughout all eternity, cease to illuminate it with ever brighter rays, fill it with ever more intimate light, and illuminate with itself what was initially dark. Also in this sense, therefore, theologians call the light limitless, through which, after the calming of all cognitive power, in the power of the Spirit, God reveals himself to the vision of the saints, uniting with them as God with the gods: “having turned into something better thanks to participation in the Best and, according to the prophetic word, “changed in power”” (Is. 40:31), they cease all activity of the soul and body, so that they manifest themselves and contemplate only what is said light, for the abundance of glory overshadows every natural sensation, “so that God may be all in all,” according to the Apostle (1 Cor. 15:28). In fact, we will become sons of God, being “sons of the Resurrection” and “being like the angels of God in heaven” (Luke 20:36; Matt. 22:30), who always “see the face of our Father in heaven,” according to the word of the Lord (Matt. 18:10). 32. It is not for nothing that the great theologian Dionysius, who said above that the saints who have achieved a Christ-like and blessed destiny are filled with a visible manifestation of God, added a little lower: “in the most divine imitation of the most heavenly minds” 377; and even further, having mentioned angelic unions with God, which are granted only to angels who have been awarded these unions beyond angelic knowledge (it is the giving or transfer of a super-radiant good), that is, to good angels, he adds: “God-like people, who have become entirely minds, angelically also unite with this light and sing of it through the denial of all material properties behind it”; however, they recognize that light is “super-essentially excluded from everything,” not thanks to this negation, but thanks to unity with light 378. It is by uniting with this light, unique from all that exists, that they recognize that it is removed from created things; and it is not through the negation of the created that they achieve unity, but on the contrary, through unity they learn to withdraw, and unity itself is excluded from all created things, being by transcendence non-existent. For what is not given to angels - except to those who are worthy of super-angelic knowledge - is inaccessible and incomprehensible to any power of mind, surpassing it. 33. But what surpasses it, as by nature inaccessible to it, is above all that exists, and that means such unity is above all knowledge, although unity is figuratively called knowledge; it is not intelligible, although it is called such: how can that which surpasses all reason be intelligible? Yes, due to its superiority, it could be called ignorance, and even rather than knowledge. It will not be a part of knowledge, nor a type of it, just as the Superexistent is not a type of being; Of course, it cannot be embraced by universal knowledge, just as universal knowledge does not have it as a division - in fact, it is rather embraced as a kind of ignorance than by knowledge, and this is also incorrect, because ignorance is superior, that is, higher than ignorance. Unity is unique, and no matter what you call it - unity, contemplation, feeling, knowledge, intelligibility or insight - it is either all of this not in the proper sense, or all of this is inherent in it alone in the proper sense. 34. So the philosopher’s speeches about unity betray obvious ignorance? In fact, he there calls unity a part and type of universal knowledge on the basis that it is called knowledge, and compares one with the other, not noticing that if, due to its name, it enters the genus of knowledge, then it will also enter the genus of ignorance, since it is called that way, and even more often. Then the same thing will enter into different genera, the highest will become the lowest, and the unique and super-extracted from any multitude will be subordinated to the multitude. The main absurdity is that he not only calls unity a species, a part and a lower one, but also what he calls the highest knowledge there, he now calls the worst of universal knowledge as its kind, a part and a subordinate one - as if someone, having called the One Superexistent a part, a kind and a lower essence of the essence by the same name, since It is called a superexistent essence, would then dare to subsume It under the general genus of essence. Let him who combines the incongruous, who subordinates knowledge to knowledge to be superior to knowledge and calls the supramental part of knowledge, know that the comparison of knowledge with that which is higher than knowledge has placed them on a par, so that one and the same thing is senselessly compared with itself. Also: if knowledge, which exceeds knowledge, by its namesake turns out to be a type of universal knowledge, then those who count ten kinds of being are mistaken, since everything then has one kind - existing, or being; then the One Who exists above all will enter into it and being will appear above this One, that is, the creation dependent on this One will constitute another being, higher than the One 379. And one more thing: since there is sensation above sensation, vision above vision, and in general feeling above feeling, for thinking by homonymy is called by all these names, then as soon as what exceeds feelings turns out to be a type of feeling, feeling will become higher than the supersensible, and so on about everything and everyone. 35. But let's go back. What is unity, which is not any of the existing things by superiority? Could this be apophatic theology? But unity is unity, not negation. Moreover, for such theology, even we do not need to go out of ourselves, and in that unity even the angels go out of themselves; and one more thing: whoever does not theologize by taking away is not pious, and only the godlike among the pious achieve unity. Then, we can both think and express apophatic theology, and the great Dionysius called unity ineffable and unthinkable for the contemplatives themselves 380. Finally, the light of theology is a certain knowledge and a certain meaning, and the light of contemplation is contemplated hypostatically 381, acts intelligently and ineffably spiritually converses with the deified. And of course, in negative theology, the mind reflects on what is not characteristic of God, that is, it acts dismembering, and there – unity; in addition, the mind, in addition to everything else, withdraws itself from the Highest, and there is the unity of the mind with God and what the Fathers said: “The purpose of prayer is admiration for the Lord” 382. No wonder the great Dionysius says that through her we unite with God 383. Indeed, in prayer, the mind, little by little, puts aside attachments to what exists, first to the ugly, bad and vicious, then to what occupies a middle position and turns into good or evil, depending on the intention of the user - such, by the way, is every science with its knowledge, which is why the fathers admonish us not to accept during prayer the knowledge offered by the enemy, so that the highest 384 is not stolen from us, - Having put aside, I say, little by little these and higher attachments, the mind in pure prayer completely emanates from all that exists. This frenzy is without comparison higher than negative theology: it is accessible only to those who have acquired dispassion; and there is still no unity if the Comforter does not illuminate from above the praying person, seated in the upper room at the extreme height accessible to his nature and awaiting the promise of the Father, and does not take him up through revelation to the vision of light. Moreover, this vision has a beginning and what follows the beginning, differing from the first as more brilliant from more obscure, but there is no end: its ascension is into infinity, like the rapture of revelation. For illumination is one thing, sufficient contemplation of the light is another, and a still new thing is the vision of things in the light, when the distant appears before the eyes and the future appears as the present. 36. Of course, it is not for me, the humble one, to describe and explain this, as, indeed, what was mentioned above; however, the matter required it, and I will return to it. So, contemplation of light is unity, although it is unstable for the uninitiated; and what is unity with light if not vision? Since it is accomplished after the cessation of mental actions 385, how can it be accomplished if not by the Spirit? Indeed, light is seen in light, and in a similar light is the seer; if there is no other action, then the seeing, moving away from everything else, itself becomes entirely light and becomes like the visible, or rather, without confusion, unites with it, being light and seeing light through light: if it looks at itself, it sees light; whether what he sees is the same light; whether through what he sees, the light is here too; and the unity is that all this should be one, so that the seer can no longer recognize what he sees, what he looks at, or what it all is, except that he has become light and sees light, different from every creature. 37. That is why the great Paul says that in his extraordinary admiration he did not know about himself, what he was (2 Cor. 12:2). Therefore, he saw himself; How? Feeling, reason, mind? No; raptured from them, he emanated from these abilities, which means he saw himself through the Spirit who accomplished that rapture. And what was he himself, inappropriate for any natural ability, or rather, having renounced all natural ability? Of course, by what I connected with, through which I realized myself and thanks to which I renounced everything. After all, he had such a unity with the Light, which even angels cannot achieve unless they surpass themselves by the power of unifying grace, so that he then became both Light and Spirit, with whom he was united and from which he received unity, having emerged from all things and becoming light by grace and non-existent by transcendence, that is, above creation, as the divine Maximus says: he who is in God has left behind “everything, what is after God" 386; and again: “All works, names and dignities that stand after God will be lower than those who will be in God by the action of grace” 387. But, having become so, the divine Paul has not yet in any way participated in the divine essence: the essence of God is higher and non-existent, surpassing existing, not without reason He is “Supergod” 388; there is a non-existent by superiority, spiritually visible by the intelligent sense and, however, being in no way the essence of God 389, but the glory and splendor that are integral to His nature and through which He is united only with the worthy, angels and men. By the way, if angels and men alike see God in this way, unite with God and sing praises to God, then probably the angel also talks about his supernatural contemplation, just as Paul would say: “I know the angel who saw it; I don’t know if he was even an angel, God knows.” And so, to call these contemplations of holy men, known only to God and acting in them, as sensual, imaginative, as sensual symbolic, and to compare with human knowledge these contemplations of holy men, as Gregory the Theologian says 390 - is this a sign of a man who understands the infinity of the divine height and the greatness to which the Lord has kindly drawn our insignificance? 38. But then three passed in front of us, one of the three parts of the army of Christ: from the apostles - their leader Peter, from the hierarchs - Dionysius, the explainer of the entire divine hierarchy, from the hermits - Isaac, the seer of the mystic and the sanctifier of the hesychian way of life 391; and just as in the story about the shepherds dedicated to the birth of Christ, it is written that immediately together with the word of the angel arose, witnessing it, a multitude of the heavenly army (Luke 2:3), so together with the word of the apostle the apostolic multitude rose up, witnessing it, and a multitude of holy men and priests, witnessing the other two. All, with one voice, raised their voices and declared that there is a light that is holy, distinct from all knowledge of existence, as much more holy as it is “the glory of divine Nature,” 392 contemplated only by those who are godlike, and as far from the imagination, the sensible lights, and the symbols fashioned from them as the hypostasis and beauty of the future age; the one true, eternal, unshakable, unevening, unchanging light, through which we become light, a product of perfect light. You vilify such and such men, philosopher, calling them “exhaling and inhaling” and claiming that they - God-seers, God-wise, God-spoken - have made a mistake regarding the divine essence! I fear lest you deny these things “in the light of the inheritance of the saints” (Col. 1:12); as if “having opened his lips, he did not attract the spirit” (Ps. 119:131), but only contrary to the truth; as if he would not dogmatize the non-existence of the divine essence. What, in fact, is this struggle of yours leading to, in which you set out with the greatest care to prove that there is no contemplation higher than mental action, when only this contemplation, surpassing all mental actions, is the most undoubted, completely exceptional evidence of the truth of the existence of God and the exaltation of God above all things? How can there not be a divine essence if men, who in pure prayer have transcended everything both sensual and intelligible, see in this very prayer the glory of the divine essence? But how much higher is the divine essence than everything sensible and intelligible, if it is higher even than such contemplation, which is above all feeling and understanding? 39. What about the benefits of the next century? Are they not above all our sensory and mental faculties? After all, it is said: “What the eye has not seen, and the ear has not heard, and has not entered into the heart of man, God has prepared for those who love Him” (1 Cor. 2:9), and yet purity of heart will then see everything, according to Saint Maximus 393. How then can contemplation not be above all understanding? Let the philosopher, no longer able to object to us, express hypocritical agreement with us, sophistically hiding behind the name of the same name; Let him, metaphorically and by the same name, call knowledge that exceeds knowledge, since it is above every name, and then try not to prove that it does not exceed knowledge. Of course, in calling the superintelligent not superintelligent on the grounds that it is sometimes called knowledge, he has a certain pretext and reason for this naming; However, without placing unity above mental actions, the philosopher may no longer work on his sophisms, because no one will ever call unity mental energy anyway. No, in the most blessed life of the endless age, the sons of the Resurrection will not need anything that makes up the life of the present age, “neither air, nor light, nor space and the like, but instead of all this we will have divine nature,” according to Gregory of Nyssa 394; and according to Saint Maximus, the deification of soul and body then grants the cessation of all mental and sensory natural actions, so that “God will appear through soul and body, for all natural signs will overcome the abundance of His glory” 395. What is this light, beyond all natural knowledge, visible with bodily eyes without air and without feeling? Is not the illuminating and illuminating glory of God? And what acts in us, giving us contemplation beyond all sense and mind? Is it not the Spirit of God who then makes not only our mind, but also our body spiritual? How is it that after this there is no contemplation beyond understanding and no other light in the heart other than knowledge? 40. And I would consider our holy faith to be a kind of contemplation of our heart that surpasses any feeling and any understanding, since it surpasses all the mental abilities of our soul; I do not call a pious confession of faith, but an unshakable affirmation in it and in the divine promises. Indeed, how do we see with it what is promised in the future endless age? Sensual? But faith is the “fulfillment of things hoped for,” but there is no way to see the future and things expected by feeling, which is why the apostle adds: “and the evidence of things unseen” (Heb. 11:1). Then what, some kind of mental power will see what we hope for? But how to see what “has never entered a person’s heart”? Does this mean that we do not at all see in faith what is promised to us from God, since it surpasses all our mental and sensory energies? No, from the beginning of the century, everyone who in fact sought the heavenly Fatherland, according to the divine apostle, although they died without receiving the promises, saw and embraced them from afar. There is, therefore, both vision and understanding of the heart above all mental actions. What is higher than the mind is not the mind except by superiority; One cannot call him unreasonable due to deprivation. 41. Perhaps, since all “to whom their faith testified did not receive what was promised according to God’s special provision for us, lest they should be made perfect besides us” (Heb. 11:39–40), then, having achieved perfection, they will not see the promise? Or will they see, but not beyond all knowledge? Or let it be above all knowledge, but in the same way as before achieving perfection? What nonsense?! Therefore, they will see, and they will see beyond all knowledge; and not as they saw before, but in such a way that the vision will be a taste of the promised. There is, therefore, a vision that is beyond all understanding, and there is something that is even higher than that, because faith is already above reason, and tasting what we believe in is a vision that is above the vision that exceeds the mind. There is, of course, contemplation and taste that corresponds to it, and it is not the essence of God, which stands above everything sensible and intelligible, because the essence of God rises superiorly above this too. This is the realization of future benefits. Do you realize how much God-worthy greatness is infringed upon by those who do not recognize a vision that is higher than the mind? And how much better do they magnify the Lord than they, who either, thanks to the purity of their hearts, tasted a little of this vision, receiving in themselves the guarantee of the future age, or accepted it in faith, which in many ways prepares untold blessings? But the philosopher, unable to comprehend the height of this meaning, did not honor and glorify God in the Spirit in a worthy manner, and considered those who glorify God in the Spirit of God to be doing something completely opposite and mixed up truly exalted and unwavering theologians with a host of wicked people. 42. However, let us dwell on faith and the divine and sweet vision that corresponds to it for Christians; on faith, the bearer of the gospel power, the apostolic life, the justification of Abraham; on faith, by which all righteousness now begins, by which all righteousness consists, and from which “every righteous person... will live” (Rom. 1:17), and the apostate will lose divine favor, for “without faith it is impossible to please God” (Heb. 11:6); on faith, which always delivers our race from manifold wandering and establishes the truth in us and us in the truth, in which no one will shake us, even if he declares us fools (Acts 26:24) because by the power of true faith we remain in a super-rational frenzy, testifying in deed and word that we are not “driven by the wind of any doctrine” (Eph. 4:14), but We adhere to the only Christian knowledge of truth and honor the simplest, most divine and truly unwandering contemplation. Leaving aside the future for now, let us notice from the past from the beginning how by faith a vision is given above the mind. “By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that what we see was not made from things visible” (Heb. 11:3). What mind can accept that the universe arose from complete nothingness, and only by the power of the divine word? For mental actions are only comprehensible that which in no way surpasses them. It is not without reason that the Hellenic sages, having noticed that things that are destroyed never pass into non-existence, just as nothing that arises ever arises from non-existence, considered the world to be non-originating and without an end. However, faith rose above considerations derived from the observation of created things, united us with the supreme meaning and unstructured simple truth, and we understood more accurately than from proof that the universe was created not only from nothing, but also solely by the word of God. What is this faith? Natural or supernatural strength? Of course, supernatural; that is why “no one can come to the Father except through the Son” (Matthew 11:27; John 10:9), who placed us above ourselves, gave us deifying simplicity and returned us to the unity of the Father, the Gatherer. This is why Paul “received the grace of conversion” (Rom. 1:5); that is why “if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved” (Rom. 10:9); That is why those who saw and believed in the One who lives after death and the Guide of eternal life (John 20:29) did not see and believed more blessed - for with the supermundane eyes of faith they saw and honored that which is incomprehensible to the mind, which, even seeing such things with its own eyes, will not believe itself. 43. “This is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith” (1 John 5:4); it, albeit strange to say, first restored the fallen world in different ways and at different times, and then divinely transformed it, raising it above the heavens and making the earth heavenly. What preserved the seeds of the second world? Was it not the faith of Noah? What made Abraham Abraham, “the father of many nations” (Gen. 17:5), likened to sand and compared with the stars (Heb. 11:12)? Wasn’t his faith in the promises still incomprehensible at that time? Indeed, his only begotten heir lay before him, prepared for the slaughter (Gen. 22:9), and - lo and behold - he continued to unshakably believe in a numerous offspring. prepared by the grace of God, showed that faith is not madness, but knowledge that surpasses all understanding. Again, Noah expected the descent of the abysses of water from the convex circle of heaven (Gen. 6:18, 7:11). Where is the nonsense of the philosophy you honor? “Everything heavy by nature tends downward and towards the middle, everything light, to the extent of its lightness, by nature moves away from the center...” Where is your “rarefied” and “dense” substance, of which one is “unstable” and the other is “piercing”; and where is the substance “not too rarefied” by nature? Where are the exact “convexities and concavities”, where are the various and super-fast movements through which you, searching for the truth of existence, lead yourself and those who believed you away from it, making you victims of the flood, learning through bitter experience what, to your misfortune, you did not learn from knowledge? And faith, even before the exodus, will perfectly lead through ignorance to the truth, will completely deliver us through experience from the experience of evil and susceptibility to it, and through the things themselves will show the madness of all external philosophy, which neither then knew nor now does not know that, as the great Peter said, “from ancient times the heavens were made of water and consisted of water, through which the old world perished, flooded with water; But the present heavens... are reserved for fire and reserved until the day of judgment and the destruction of the wicked" (2 Pet. 3:5-7). Well, does the knowledge of God given to Christians come from knowledge of philosophy, or from faith, which through ignorance abolishes philosophical knowledge? But if from knowledge, then faith is exhausted and the promise is abolished, which says: “If... you believe in your heart that... Jesus is Lord... you will be saved” (Rom. 2:14). So it is not the one who has knowledge of things in his heart who has God through this, but on the contrary, he who believes in his heart that Jesus is Lord has God installed in him by unshaken faith. 44. Let us leave for now those who do not know God behind their knowledge, and let us forget that philosophical knowledge is not all true. Let us assume that it is all true; Let us put forward those who have come to know God through the very knowledge of His creations. It is not for nothing that their contemplation and knowledge is called natural law (Rom. 2:14); before the patriarchs, prophets and written law, it directed and turned the human race to God, showing the Creator to those who did not follow the Hellenic sages and from this natural knowledge. Indeed, who of those who have the mind, seeing such great and obvious differences of essences, opposition of invisible forces, balanced impulses of movements, as well as peace, in a special way balanced, continuous transformations into each other of the incompatible and the unmixed mutual gravity of the irreconcilably hostile, the union of the separate and the disunity of the united - minds, souls, bodies; the harmony that binds such a multitude, the stability of relationships and arrangements, the essentiality of properties and orders, the indissolubility of the universal connection - who, taking all this into mind, does not think about the One who beautifully placed each thing in itself and miraculously coordinated all things one with another, and does not recognize God from His image and work? Who, having come to know God in this way, will consider Him something created or likened? This means that there will also be negative knowledge of God. So the knowledge of creatures before the law and the prophets turned the human race to the knowledge of God, and turns it now; and almost the entire totality of the universe, all the peoples who do not follow the word of the Gospel, thanks to this knowledge of created things, now believe that God is nothing other than the creator of this universe 396 . 45. From the mere knowledge of created things, those who “did not die through the law for the law, that they might live the life in Christ” (Gal. 2:19), or rather those who never accepted any of God’s laws, know God. But now, when “God appeared in the flesh,... was established in the faith of the nations, proclaimed in the world” (1 Tim. 3:16) and the law of grace was proclaimed to all ends; now that we have “received... the Spirit of God, that we might know the gifts of God’s grace in us” (1 Cor. 2:12); when we became “disciples of God” (John 6:45) and disciples of the Comforter, according to the saving promise, for “He,” says the Lord, “will teach you all the truth” (John 16:13), that is, it means that it is now completely unknown; Now that “we have the mind of Christ” (1 Cor. 2:16) and spiritual eyes, are you turning us back again, man, and forcing us to live following the teachers of this age? What are you saying? According to the Lord's promise, we expect a new heaven and a new earth (Rev. 21:1) - and through it we will not comprehend and glorify the supermundane God of the new creation, but will we recognize Him only in the old and changeable? And not only changeable, but also perishable? After all, calling it new, the apostle defined the present as old, and everything that decays and grows old - to disappear. 46. How did we learn about the new world and ageless life? From a consideration of creatures - or from “the Son of God, revealed with power according to the Spirit of holiness through the resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom. 1:4)? Isn’t there one mentor for us, Christ (Matthew 23:8)? Where does he teach in His speeches about the nature of this corruptible world? Didn’t He Himself command not to call anyone on earth a teacher? So are we really going to visit the Hellenes and Egyptians often so that they can teach us something saving? God, our mentor, boasts of our knowledge of God: “not an angel, not a man, but God Himself taught and saved us” (Is. 63:9). We no longer know God from probability: such was the knowledge of God through created things, but now “the life... which was with the Father appeared, and came to us” (1 John 1:2) and announced to us that “God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5), and made those who believed in Him “sons of light” (Eph. 5:8), and “it has not yet been revealed that we we will be, and ... when it is revealed, we will be like Him, because we will see Him as He is” (1 John 3:2). Again you have a reason for slander: “we will see Him as He is”; but the one who spoke these words is unshakably established on the stone laid in Zion and is like it in everything: “Whoever falls on it will be crushed, and whoever it falls on will crush him” (Matthew 21:44). 47. Let us take a closer look, however, from where the philosopher derives that there is no vision that surpasses all mental actions. Let us say first of all that we know about the namelessness and supra-nameness of what we are talking about, so that even if we call it vision, we remember that it is higher than vision; and if anyone wishes to call this understanding, believing or knowing from experience that it is beyond understanding, he will be in agreement with us here. Therefore, let us leave to the philosopher all the affirmations and denials he piles up regarding understandings and speculations as vanity, meaningless for us and extraneous to real reasoning. He, of course, neither thought nor believed that there are contemplations that surpass all understanding. One who has not yet thought can be excused, because it is not given to our nature to think the super-intelligent and it is not its concern; We would also accept him who did not fully believe, remembering from the Apostle that one must accept the paralytic by faith (Rom. 14:1). But when they begin to seduce believers, write hostile works against them and against the truth, trying in every possible way to seduce not only the small ones, but also those eminent in virtue and piety, who, with the intention of serving the truth, will silently endure this? The philosopher neither knows nor believes that there is contemplation and speculation above all contemplation and speculation, super-nominal, always receiving insufficient names, but, in addition, he considers the speeches of theologians about things that exceed the mind to be negative theology, and that it is not above the mind, he himself admits. “It is the known that is denied, not the unknown,” he says. We also know that in negative theology everything that is not attributed to God is in one way or another thought by the mind, so that this theology does not go beyond the actions of the mind. 48. However, about super-mental contemplation we would say that if our mind did not know how to surpass itself, there would be no vision and understanding of super-mental actions; since the mind also has such an ability and only through it, in fact, is united with God, from Whom it is brought into action at the time of prayer, to that extent there is a vision above all the actions of the mind, which vision we call superior to understanding; someone would call it both lack of vision and ignorance in excess. That both knowledge and ignorance can be part of general knowledge in equal measure? What divisions of general knowledge will it correspond to? No sage has ever divided either the essence into the body, the incorporeal and the superexistent, or the feeling into the five senses and the supersensible: how will the superexistent be included in the category of essences, and the supersensible - feelings? Likewise, higher knowledge is not a type of knowledge. And that the mind has the power to surpass itself and with it to unite with what is higher than it, the great Dionysius speaks about this most clearly, and not just says so, but puts the knowledge of this truth among the most necessary: ​​“We must know,” he instructs, “that our mind, on the one hand, has a thinking ability, by virtue of which it sees the intelligible, and on the other, a unity that elevates the nature of the mind and combines it with the transcendental” 397 . Since it raises the nature of the mind, it is higher than all mental actions and is ignorance in excess; and since it is the connection of the mind with God, it is incomparably higher than the power that connects the mind with creation, that is, knowledge. 49. By what tricks does our enemy prove that there is no vision higher than all mental actions? Because, he says, there is nothing higher than negative theology. But, most excellent, visions cannot be compared with theology, because it is not one thing to say something about God and to find and contemplate God; even negative theology is still words, but contemplations are also higher than words, and this was said by the one who revealed to us the inexpressible (2 Cor. 12:4). Negative theology, while remaining a word, has contemplation above itself, which is weightier than words, and contemplatives of what is higher than words go beyond the mind - not in words, but in deed, truth and grace of God and the almighty Spirit, who grants us to behold what “eye has not seen and ear has not heard” (1 Cor. 2:9). 50. No, without even partially understanding this, the philosopher imagines having as a co-witness the great Dionysius, who says: “Everyone who is worthy to understand and see God enters into divine darkness, becoming above vision and knowledge through the very inability to see and know in the usual way” 398; and in another place: “To penetrate into this darkness, where the Transcendent of everything truly resides, is available only to those who have stepped beyond everything: both purifications and all ascent to all holy heights and all divine lights” 399. This darkness, the philosopher interprets, is entered through the abandonment of all things; here it is, the most perfect contemplation - formless darkness, the only negative theology, and there is nothing beyond complete ignorance; therefore, in order to rise to negative theology and contemplation, you must leave your divine light, no matter what you call it. And we call it the light of grace, which, as the great Dionysius himself says, always, eternally and unremittingly illuminates the saints in the most blessed life of the next century, as disciples at the divine Transfiguration 400. How is it possible that something that eternally shines and is relentlessly contemplated, and not only sensually, but also mentally, and most of all and above all spiritually and divinely, which we have already set out in detail more than once - how, I say, is it possible, and what is the need to abandon that which, more than in our power, unites us with the strongest of the mind and allows us to see what is higher than us? Just as the mind, ineffably combined with feeling, sees the sensuous, and as feeling, through combination with the mind, symbolically and sensually represents the intelligible, beginning to perceive it, so both of them, combining with the Spirit, will spiritually see the invisible light, or rather, become co-eternal in the contemplated. How can one truly leave the light that eternally shines upon us in the next century in order to enjoy your so-called most perfect contemplation? And if we are able to leave and surpass the spiritual light now, but in the next century we will not be able to, then the present century is better for us than the future and it is not for nothing that the enemies of the eternal and true light are addicted to it. 51. Does the great Dionysius really agree with them? But how can he who has praised the light above all else agree with them? In the previous discussion about light and divine enlightenment 401 we have already shown in detail that the most brilliant light of the universe, the theologian from the Areopagus, is the greatest enemy of the enemies of the great light. Nevertheless, consider again his words, noted by his enemies. In a letter to the celebrant Dorotheus, he says: “Unapproachable light is, by the excess of the super-existent luminosity, divine darkness; “Everyone who is worthy to know and see God enters it, who has become above vision and knowledge through non-vision and ignorance itself, but who knows that he is beyond the edge of the sensory and intelligible” 402. He thus calls the same thing both darkness and light, and vision and non-vision, and knowledge and ignorance. Why is there light and darkness at the same time? By the excess of light, says Dionysius, so that in the proper sense it is light, and by its excess it is darkness, for it is invisible to those who try to approach it and see it through sensory or mental actions. 52. If everyone who is worthy to know and see God enters into inaccessibility itself, then who will be worthy to approach the inaccessible and see the invisible? Is everyone a worshiper of God? No; only Moses and the like were given the opportunity to be in divine darkness, while negative theology is the work of every God-worshipper, and now, after the coming of the Lord in the flesh, of every person in general, as shown above. It is different, therefore, this in the proper sense of light or divine darkness, and incomparably higher than negative theology - much like, say, Moses is superior to the crowd in his vision of God. Being in the light, says Dionysius, sees and does not see. How can seeing not see? Thus, he explains that he sees above vision and in the proper sense knows and sees, but does not see in excess, not by any action of the mind and feeling seeing, but by unseeing and ignorance itself, that is, in a frenzy from any such cognitive action, entering into what is above vision and knowledge - therefore, he is better than us, both seeing and acting, because he has become better than what is given to man, has already become God by grace, is united with God and sees through God God. 53. Supporters of negative speculation alone, who do not imagine any action or vision beyond it and subsume everything under one general type of knowledge without any contemplation, superior knowledge, clearly think that having achieved, according to them, all-perfect negative speculation, a person sees and does not know anything at all, deprived of knowledge and vision. Have they really not noticed that they place empty ignorance, ignorance due to deprivation, above all knowledge and are proud of such flawed ignorance? Thus, not believing in the greatest light, they also fall away from the light of knowledge. And of course, if negative speculation and divine darkness are one, and this speculation in its essence deprives of vision, according to those who say that there is no transcendental divine contemplation, then divine darkness is actually darkness due to the deprivation of light, supposedly making those immersed in it unreasonable - and truly depriving those who say such things about it of reason; who, before renouncing the Egyptian false and barren mother, as the fathers rightly command to understand external wisdom 403; before we understand in the purity of our minds that we spend our lives between two warring sides, and take the side of the best; Before we join them in attacking the evil ones, in order to drive some away, kill and bury them, and avoid others, I speak about evil passions, which, having a natural affinity with us, in the presence of reasons and accomplices, first take over us; before denouncing the bad habit of those who wrongly draw divine wisdom from the wells of creation, that is, the Hellenic sages; Before clinging to those who create peace for each other, without mutually contradicting or contradicting, I speak about godly men; before, through hermitage and hesychia 404, to keep one’s own sheep, in other words, one’s thoughts; before ascending to the mountain, that is, to the top of our soul; before looking at the new world from afar; before approaching God, before hearing Him and untying the sandals from their feet as a sign that it is impossible to touch the holy ground (Ex. 3:5) through the medium of what is dead and untrue; before placing the right hand on the chest (Ex. 4:6), that is, returning the mind to itself; before powerfully overthrowing the power of the tyrant with an almighty rod, that is, faith (Ex. 12:11), and crossing the sea of ​​life with unwetted feet 405; before, through prayer and godly deeds, transforming our distressed and bitter nature into a source of supernatural joy; before tasting the nourishment flowing from above and no longer running away from encounters with enemies, but also wanting and being able to expel them all; before, thanks to all this preparation, to completely subsist in the non-doing of evil, to hear and surpass the many-voiced trumpets, to see and pass through the many-radiant lights, that is, the glory of God proclaimed by the many-formed creatures of God, the prophetic, apostolic and paternal preaching and all the extensive teachings in divine things; before first succeeding in all this and, together with God’s chosen ones, reaching the pinnacle of divine ascents and seeing the place of God, and then incomprehensibly uniting with God - those who, uninvolved in all this, dare to say that they are delving into the super-luminous darkness through negative theology. We, having analyzed it in detail in the first parts of the discussion about light 406, found in it only the image of that formless contemplation and intelligent, above the mind, contemplative fullness in the Holy Spirit, and not this fullness itself. That is why all those who are worthy to receive the sacrament with faith can glorify God through denial, but they cannot unite with Him or see Him in the light until they accept the supernatural power of contemplation as the fulfillment of the divine commandments. 54. No, he says, those who enter the mysterious darkness must, according to Dionysius the Areopagite, leave all the divine lights, and, therefore, the divine light itself - if what you worship is something at all - must be left behind. By this he makes it clear that mysterious darkness is a complete inability to see anything. - Say something about him! and thus you count among the created diversity the light that eternally accompanies the saints, the glory of the divine nature, the beauty of the future and present ages, the beginningless and unchangeable kingdom of God! But this is exactly what the light was called by Him who shone in it on the mountain (Matthew 16:28; Mark 9:1; Luke 9:27). And what about the divine Dionysius himself? Doesn’t he clearly say in “Sacramental Theology” that “the good cause of everything lies super-essentially above everything, and undisguisedly appears only to those who have undergone all initiation and purification”? 407 If she appears to him, and undisguisedly, then where does the complete non-appearance come from? If all manifestation is limited by negative theology, consisting, as you assure, of simple non-perception of anything, in which the Greeks also practice, as you yourself again say, then it turns out that they, too, have surpassed all purity and the divine light itself, the realization of future benefits? Alas! It turns out that the knowledge of the maddened wise men (Rom. 1:22) not only includes, but also exceeds the promises of future benefits. No, Dionysius, the exponent of God's wisdom, would never have said such a thing; in fact, the divine lights, heavenly voices and the peaks of all holy things that should be left, he immediately listed - the purification of Moses before ascending Mount Horeb, the voices he encountered during the ascent and the contemplations of the lights that appeared, his distance from the multitude, after all this a vision not of God, but of the place on which He stood, “meaning that everything visible by the energy of the sense or mind represents some presumptive meanings for conjectures about the Most High, through which, above all understanding, not only He Himself is revealed, but also His presence,” 408 so that even this contemplation of the place of God is already above negative theology - but is this only what Dionysius showed? If the ascent of Moses had ended with a vision of the place of God, they, perhaps, could correctly teach from here that there is no speculation higher than negative theology. But since Moses renounces even the vision of the place of God and after that penetrates into truly mysterious darkness, abandoning, by surpassing, all cognitive action, uniting with the unknowable, the Highest and super-intelligently seeing and cognizing Him 409 - then how can we limit contemplation in divine darkness to negative theology and speculation alone? After all, it was revealed to Moses even before he entered the super-light darkness through the place of God, so that unity and contemplation in the darkness are incomparably higher than such theology. 55. And what need is there to teach in words, and not in deeds, to show the reliable truth of what we say? Did Moses, having renounced all visible and all seeing things and thoughts, rising above the vision of the place and penetrating into the darkness, see nothing there? No, he saw there an immaterial tabernacle, “which he showed to those below him through material imitation” 410. That tabernacle was, according to the word of the saints, Christ, the power of God and God's hypostatic wisdom (1 Cor. 1:24), immaterial and uncreated by nature, but symbolically through the tabernacle of Moses, signifying that it would one day accept the dispensation and come to the image and essence of the superexistent and unimaginable Word, the all-surpassing, all-surpassing and all-encompassing tabernacle, in which everything visible and invisible was created and raised up, and, having clothed himself with a body, he will offer it as a sacrifice for us - the eternal high priest (Heb. 2nd), who in recent times made Himself a holy offering for us. Therefore, having entered into divine darkness, Moses saw and materially described not only the immaterial tabernacle, but also the very hierarchy of God’s leadership and everything connected with it, which he presented materially and colorfully in accordance with the piety of the law 411. The tabernacle and everything inside the tabernacle, the pious service and everything related to it are material symbols, the veils of the contemplations of Moses accomplished in darkness; those very contemplations were not symbols, “because to those who have gone through all the initiation and purification” and are drowning in the mysterious darkness, “this appears unconcealed.” How can we be symbols of what appears, stripped of all secrecy? It is not without reason that the expounder of sacramental theology prays when starting his work: “Trinity super-existent, direct us to the highest essence of sacramental contemplations, where in the super-light darkness the simple, detached and immutable secrets of theology are revealed” 412 . After this, who else can say that nothing is visible in divine darkness and that beyond negative theology there is no longer any higher contemplation? Or - as if all the visions of saints are symbols, and the symbols are such that they “sometimes appear, never are”? 413 After all, Moses saw what he saw in forty days and the same number of nights, according to Gregory of Nyssa, “having shared in the darkness of formless life” 414, so that his contemplations had no form? What are they symbolic? However, I saw it in the darkness; and everything in that darkness is “simple, detached and immutable,” whereas in the actual symbols, composite and sensual, is there anything that is not changeable, not composed of parts, not associated with what exists, that is, the created? 56. Once he saw, what was before him was visible, which means either light or something else in the light; but everything is simple there, which means everything there is light. Since Moses saw beyond himself and drowned in divine darkness, his vision was neither sensory nor mental; therefore, that light is self-seeing and is hidden in excess from minds that have not abandoned sensory vision. Indeed, how and by what action of the mind can we consider what is self-seeing and self-thinking? When, having surpassed all mental energy, the mind becomes blind due to an excess of sight, it is filled with the most beautiful brilliance, graciously taking root in God and through super-mental unity inexpressibly acquiring and contemplating in itself and through itself the self-seeing light. What then? After this, can we no longer talk about the secrecy of the deity? Why, if here it not only does not emerge from the secrecy, but also communicates it to others, hiding them under divine darkness? Moses, having entered the cloud alone (Ex. 24:18), ceased to be visible to others, according to Scripture; and even more than that, having surpassed himself, inexpressibly renouncing himself and rising above all sensual and mental action, he made himself - lo and behold! - hidden to himself, like the divine Paul, so that, seeing, both did not know and were perplexed (2 Cor. 12: 2-3) what was actually seen. Again, beyond any limit of strangeness, it is abundantly clear that even in this ineffable and supernatural manifestation of His, He remains hidden, even for those who have renounced and hidden not only from all others, but also from themselves. Evidence of this super-unknowable hiddenness is the will, desire and ascent of Moses to a clearer vision, as well as the continuous ascension of angels and saints throughout endless centuries to more revealing contemplations, 415 when, seeing, by this very vision they recognize that light that exceeds vision, especially the God who appears in it. So our eye, staring at the solar disk, sees it and recognizes its inaccessibility to vision. 57. And again, let no one find fault with this example because of incomplete correspondence. The only meaning here is that those who openly contemplate the divine light are aware of the excess of divine hiddenness not only no less, but more and even incomparably more than we, who try in symbols or in thoughts based on symbols, or through denials, to see the incomprehensibility of the divine nature, that it is incomprehensible. After all, even a blind person knows, having heard and believed, that the brightness of the sun exceeds the measure of the visual sense, but not like a sighted person; in the same way, not only we, who have experienced it with sound eyes, but also some of the blind, believing a sighted person, can see with their minds that the daylight has disappeared underground. And not only that; someone deprived of sight can even understand that the brilliance of the solar disk exceeds the power of vision: it is simply impossible for him to perceive and taste the light. Likewise, to see God mentally and to cognize superintelligently through negation is available even to those who have had a brief experience of contemplating Him, although they did not raise the superintelligent eye of unity to Him, but believe those who did; but such a vision is not unity: and one who does not believe in those who superintelligently sees through superintelligent unity would also glorify God, but only beyond his mental abilities alone. On the contrary, whoever broke all connection of his soul with the low, renounced everything through the observance of the commandments and the dispassion achieved in this way, rose above all cognitive action through extended, pure and immaterial prayer and in the unknowable, in excess, unity of the lights with an unapproachable brilliance - only he, having become light, through the light, deified, seeing the light in the contemplation and tasting of this light, truly cognizes the supernaturality and unthinkability of God, glorifying Him not only above the thinking power of the mind alone, this human ability, for even much of the created is above it, but above that supernatural unity, by the power of which alone the mind in the divine imitation of the heavenly minds 416 is united with the Transcendental intelligible. 58. But enough about that; returning to this, let us say that if anyone wants to call supercontemplative vision understanding, above all rational energy, then he will not disagree with us in anything. However, our philosopher, having decided that we call contemplation exclusively vision, and not “superintelligent understanding,” became furious against the very word “vision”; and, angry with an in no way commendable rage, wounded by our writings, he sinned greatly against prophetic grace. Having briefly caught him in three or four of his mistakes, let’s ignore the rest. Zealous in proving that vision is much worse than understanding, he says that “everything revealed to the prophets is intuition, weaker than understanding, for it is imaginative, descriptive and consistent with sensory ideas.” But no one even slightly versed in their writings will doubt that most of them contemplated most of their visions in a frenzy. So, did they see God in a state of darkening frenzy? Who would say such a thing without being in a bad frenzy himself? And what does it mean when God Himself tells Moses that He appeared to him “openly, and not in fortune-telling” (Num. 12:8)? Did God really send him into a bad frenzy even then? And what was it when for forty whole days (Ex. 24:18), having lost his temper and communed in the darkness of formless life, he saw and heard God? Really in a bad frenzy? Truly, the one who writes such a thing has himself strayed as far as possible from the truth. 59. The philosopher, however, sins doubly here, for he again bears false witness against the great Dionysius, who allegedly thinks the same way and calls all the contemplations of the prophets inferior to the understanding; he refers to his words that “God receives His names from certain divine imaginations, for different reasons and with different powers of illuminating mystics and prophets” 417. But Dionysius clearly says here too: “for different reasons and with different strength”; just as the Lord says that He appeared to one in a dream, to another in reality and still in fortune-telling, but to Moses “by sight, and not in fortune-telling” (Num. 12:8). How then did all the prophets supposedly see only the imaginative power of the soul? In addition, the divine imagination is very different from our human imagination: the dominant and truly incorporeal in us is first imprinted, while our human imagination arises in the bodily part of the soul; there, what is imprinted remains in the main and highest part of the rational soul, while with us it remains almost in the lower region of spiritual powers; and it is imprinted here by the movements of feelings, and there, if you want to know what is imprinted in the soul of the prophets, listen to Basil the Great: the prophets, he says, contemplated due to the fact that “the main thing in them was imprinted by the Spirit” 418. So, the Holy Spirit is Who sits in the mind of the prophets, uses the dominant part of their soul as matter, and through it He Himself announces the future to them in advance, and through them to us. Is this just imagination, commensurate and equal to our human imagination? How is this imagination worse than our understanding? Or rather, how can one not see from here too that this light, visible by the mind, is different from understanding, and these contemplations, neither sensory nor imaginary, are completely different from rational knowledge? 60. The philosopher cites, however, another passage from the great theologian, speaking of “an angel who sculpted contemplation in order to initiate the theologian into divinity” 419 and interprets: “The word “sculpted” indicates imagination; for nothing that the mind as such contemplates is sculptured.” If you believe the philosopher, you will have to admit that the heavenly principles and forces, emanating from the mind, undergo a change - oh the absurdity! - for the worse, that their contemplations are physical and imaginative, and that not only contemplations, but also their very hypostases and essential indwellings are similar to the imagination. The same saint says in the eighth book of the “Heavenly Hierarchy”, chanting the revealed names of the sacred principles, that the superiority of the latter rushes to the true First Principle, “beautifully sculpting itself and what follows it according to His dominant likeness” 420. So, if nothing that is contemplated by the mind as such is sculptured, but everything that is sculptured is imaginary or even sensual, and thus much lower than what we can think of, then it means that the principles and heavenly powers have a resemblance to God not mental, but bodily and imaginative, worse than human understanding, for it is sculptured! If such is their resemblance to God, how will they have an intelligent nature? 61. The philosopher deduces the same thing from another expression of the great Dionysius: having heard that an angel, conveying his sacred knowledge to the theologian to the best of his ability, imprints his contemplation, “is it possible,” he says, “can the imprinted contemplation not be imaginative?” But we will again refute it from the heavenly round dance: “The holy orders of heavenly beings, intelligently imprinting themselves in imitation of God and striving to form their intelligent appearance in the original likeness of God, appropriately partake of the most abundant communion with God” 421. Do you see – and the impressions are intelligible? Why, because of these words, did you consider the prophets to be suffering from an evil frenzy? On the contrary, such words make me think that prophetic contemplations are no worse than human understanding, but higher than our mind, and understand that their contemplations are equal to those of angels. Having made themselves worthy of angelic unity through purification and united with the angels in an impulse towards the Divine, they themselves are sculptured and imprinted by them, like those higher in order angels, rebuilding their mental appearance into a god-like form and through this holy reorganization, as it were, introducing into themselves sacred knowledge descending from above. And what is surprising if prophetic purity receives impressions and images of equal angels, co-serving them in theology, when it is testified that it can receive impressions from God himself? “For a pure heart presents to God a mind that is completely without its own image and is ready to be identified by His imprints, through which He tends to reveal Himself” 422. 62. Zechariah, the son of Barahiah, taught that our very spirit is fashioned by God, showing that from God is either the ascent of our spirit from nothing to being, or its refining for the better and remaking for good. “The power of the Word of the Lord is upon Israel, says the Lord, who stretched out the heavens and founded the earth, and formed the spirit in man” (Zechariah 12:1). What then? Is the spirit that lives in us really also a body, since it is sculpted, created or rearranged? And the one who prays to be a good sculptor for those who wish, and who says that their common teacher in Pontus “sculpted” his beloved friend in childhood into the best and purest sculpture, really praises, considers desirable and prays for the art of sculpting bodies? And how can we understand that “God penetrates into all our affairs,” according to the divine David, “sculpting the heart of each of us” (Ps. 32:15), if by the heart sculpted by Him we do not mean the inner man? Finally, didn’t Moses see divine impressions while spending days and nights under the veil of darkness in his unimaginable life? For the Lord says to him: “You will do everything according to the seal shown to you on the mountain” (Ex. 25:40). So, Moses, having entered into divine darkness, stepped down to the lower one and saw imaginatively, since he saw, as the Scripture says, “an impression”? 63. However, the philosopher, who does not know any difference between sensory, imaginary, mental and divine impressions, hears that the theologian has learned this and that from the seers, that he is initiated through contemplation carved by an angel, raised to intellectual knowledge of what actually exists and what is seen, and from this he concludes that knowledge is higher than contemplation, since the prophet, as it is said, ascended to it, and did not descend. Then - someone will say - and everyone who judiciously interprets the meaning of Divine Scripture to us raises our minds from the lowest to the highest; and the Lord, who gave us the direct and brief word of the Gospel on earth, gave us something lower, while the explainers emanate from the Gospel and raise us to the heights of their supposedly more perfect understanding? Away with malice! No, they do not depart from Scripture; on the contrary, teachers of knowledge raise knowledge from the inherent imperfection of man to heights, drawing from Scripture as the true foundation of knowledge and the source of eternal light. In such things, original means either the starting point of movement or cause. And so, when Scripture says that the prophet was initiated through contemplation, or that an angel raised him from contemplation to occult vision, the meaning is not that the angel then led him out of contemplation, but that the prophet knew from this cause and driver of knowledge something previously unknown to him, and the angel, having understood contemplation more purely, since the angel, interpreted it to the prophet and raised him from ignorance to understanding. And the ignorance from which the prophet is brought is lower than the knowledge to which he is raised; and knowledge-giving contemplation, which imitates God and contains knowledge in a condensed form, is it not higher than the knowledge that follows from it? However, he who encroached on the fathers could not leave the prophets without insult; after all, they are the first fathers and fathers of fathers in spirit, so they had to share the insult with them. 64. Meanwhile, already fed up with the struggle against the fathers and prophets, the philosopher finds in the humble hesychasts a pretext to take up, so to speak, everything divine, appoints himself an interpreter of the most mysterious gospel sayings and deigns to teach why the pure in heart see God (Matthew 5:8), and how the Son comes with the Father and makes an abode in them (John 14:23). “The pure in heart,” he says, “see God only by analogy, or through reason, or through negation; The more God-sighted is the one who knows more parts of the world or the main thing in it, and even higher is the one who has more knowledge about what he knows. The most God-seeing of all is the one who has cognized both the obvious parts of the world and its implicit forces, the gravitation of the elements towards the earth and so on, as well as their repulsion from each other; differences, features, commonalities, actions, contact, conjugation, consonance and, in general, all hidden and expressed connections of the whole. For whoever has managed to examine all this well is able to know God both as the cause of all this and by analogy with all this. And then, placing Him above all this through denial, make sure that He is above all. In fact, since God is known only through existing things, we know Him, of course, not through what we do not know, but only through what we know; hence, the more a person knows, the more significant things he knows, and the more accurately he knows them, the more, compared to others, he is able to know God; and even the negative way of knowing God, which seems primarily to be the knowledge of the unworthiness of things in the face of God, is impossible without knowledge of the totality of things: we can only know as not being God what we first already know as existing.” 65. Oh, how many words he left here against himself! However, they are quite consistent with his other views: after all, somewhere he already defined human perfection and wisdom as omniscience 423. So, if, as he just declared here, one can ascend apophatically to God by denying only what we understand, then God will have to be - alas, absurdity! – God, known through the negation of everything. Then, in order to know God through the denial of everything, man either knows everything and appears before us as the second God, for only God has omniscience, or he considers as God what he does not know, for, as the philosopher said, it is impossible to deny the divinity of what you do not know. And again, if he knows God as the cause only of what he has known, then he does not consider Him the cause of what is beyond his knowledge; This means he will equate divine power with peace! After all, he will not be able to know more than is contained in this universe. We, on the contrary, are convinced, having risen above knowledge, that it costs nothing for God to produce thousands of worlds, not only similar, but also different, and we deny the divinity behind all things in general, even concluding from what we do not know about the limitless power of the Creator. Thus Paul, exalting the divine majesty even above what is unknown to him, says that Christ is seated above every name, not only that which is named, that is, known in the present age, but also having to be known in the age to come (Eph. 1:20-21); so in another place in his epistles, saying, “Who will separate us from the love of Christ?” and having enumerated everything sensible and mental, “present and future,” he adds: “And no other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God” (Rom. 8:35-39), thereby concluding from the existing to the non-existent and judging it as if it existed. Understanding thousands through one thing, and limitless through limited power, don’t we really recognize everything of God through parts, just as we recognize a lion by its claws and a cloth by the hem of a garment, don’t we recognize in God the cause of all things, from all of them we will take Him away and add through faith something that is higher than the knowledge of God from what exists - the derivation of the universe from non-existence by a single divine Word? 66. Superintelligible knowledge is common to all who believe in Christ; and the goal of true faith is achieved by fulfilling the commandments, leads to the knowledge of God, of course, not through only existing things, knowable and unknowable - for this existing thing is always something created - but from the uncreated light, which is the glory of God, the Lord Christ and all who have been worthy of a Christ-like destiny: “for Christ will come in the glory of the Father, and in the glory of their Father, Christ, and the righteous they will shine like the sun" (Matthew 13:43, 16:27) and they will be light and will see the light, a joyful and all-holy sight, accessible only to a pure heart, which now appears as a guarantee to those who have surpassed all that is cursed through dispassion and all that is pure through unalloyed and immaterial prayer, but then will clearly deify the “sons of the Resurrection” (Luke 20:36), co-eternalized and co-glorified with the One who bestows divine glory and radiance on our nature. However, glory and radiance even in created nature can never be called an essence; how then can one consider the divine glory to be the essence of God - God, who, being unparticipated, invisible, intangible, by superexistent power is made participatory, accessible, revealed and in contemplation becomes “one Spirit” (1 Cor. 6:17) with pure hearts through the most mysterious and ineffable prayer for us from our common Father to His Father? “Give to them,” He says, “so that like I, the Father, in You and You in Me, so they also were one in Us” (John 17:21), in truth. But if this is the vision of God, which will be seen in the endless age only by those who are worthy of the blessed destiny, which even now the chosen apostles on Tabor, the stoned Stephen and Anthony struggling in hesychia 424 have tasted, or rather, all the saints in general, in other words, the pure in heart, as anyone can, if desired, learn from the works they themselves wrote and from their biographies, - and I would said that the prophets and patriarchs also did not remain outside the taste of this light, or rather, with a few exceptions, all their contemplations, especially the most divine, were not unparticipated in this light, for why would He who has His eternal light, visible, albeit ineffable, for the pure in heart, now and in the next century, as the great Dionysius shows, would counterfeit some other light - if such contemplation of God, then how is it not that He who blesses the pure in heart promises us in the next century, but only knowledge from creation, which is also the case with the sages of this century? 67. That the philosopher considers knowledge from creation to be the most perfect vision of God, he has already told us, teaching that “not a single person who has known all the visible parts of the world and its invisible powers will be deprived of the abundance of this knowledge.” But, says the divine Gregory of Nyssa, “an analogous conclusion from action to the active and a conclusion from the harmony of the world to the supreme wisdom are accessible to the sages of this age” 425. And I would say - and not to the wise, even to the infidels: as we now see that all barbarians know one God, the universal Creator, which necessarily follows negative theology - for the Creator of everything is not anything created. Well, don’t even many wicked people have the wisdom of this age and from it a guess about God? Is it possible that the Lord blesses them? What about the Hellenic philosophers, who were very different from modern Christians and philosophized from the knowledge of creation? They, therefore, also received a blessed and eternal reward, no less, or even more, than “those who know only the Lord Jesus Christ, and him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2)? How would it not even be incomparably more, if God is known only from creation, and the best seers of God are those who have known creation in more detail? However, we all knew the Son from the words of the Father, who taught us from above (Matthew 3:16–17). The Holy Spirit himself and the ineffable light itself showed us the testimony of the Father about the beloved Son; The Son Himself revealed to us the name of His Father and, being taken into heaven, promised to send down the Holy Spirit to us so that He would abide with us forever (John 14:16); and the Holy Spirit himself, having come and dwelt in us, announced and taught us the whole truth (John 16:13). How, then, do we know God through only created things, moreover, known, and not unknown to us? It turns out that someone who has not had the experience of marriage does not know how God is connected with the Church, since he does not know how to conclude by analogy from his experience, and you will advise everyone to avoid virginity in order to find this knowledge of God of yours? But you will be refuted by Paul, who, being unmarried, was the first to proclaim: “This mystery is great, but concerning Christ and the Church” (Eph. 5:32). 68. The time has come to remember the divinely inspired words: we thank You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that, having united Yourself with us and revealing Yourself to us through Yourself, You hid it from the wise and understanding (Matthew 11:25; Luke 10:21). They are reasonable before themselves and learned in their own eyes, which is why, hearing the speeches of Your saints, they reject some, reinterpret the meaning of others, and dare to distort others in order to deceive everyone. When Gregory of Nyssa explains that there is a vision of God that is revealed to pure hearts, and, having said that “it is possible for the wise men of this age to conclude about God through the harmony of the world,” adds: “However, in my opinion, the greatness of bliss presupposes something else,” they openly insist on something that is contrary to his opinion. The great Dionysius the Areopagite writes how we know God, Who is neither intelligible nor sensible, and, as if in doubt, continues: “Wouldn’t it be correct to say that we know God not through His nature, but through the order of things” 426, after which he reveals to us the most divine knowledge, accomplished in a supernatural unity, above mind and knowledge, with a super-luminous light - they but they rejected super-intelligent knowledge as nothing, and those who doubted the words of the saint, as if they had added them in vain, did not merit any investigation and cite them in isolation from what immediately preceded and followed, as if it were a statement that God is known only through created things. The philosopher could not even understand that the saint was talking about human knowledge, inherent in everyone by nature, and not about the knowledge that is given by the Holy Spirit. In fact, says Dionysius, since every person has natural abilities of sensory and mental knowledge, how do we know through them God, who is not sensory and not intelligible? Of course, not otherwise than from sensory and intelligible beings: as the types of knowledge of beings and beings limited by beings, they reveal divinity through beings. But whoever has not only sensory and mental abilities, who is endowed with spiritual supernatural grace, will no longer know through existing things alone, but, since God is Spirit, also spiritually, above feeling and mind, becoming completely Godly and in God cognizing God. Through it we must think of the divine, as the saint admonishes us, and not through ourselves, but completely losing ourselves and becoming entirely God’s. For it is better to belong to God, and not to ourselves; so God will be given to those who are with God. 69. Do you see how the holy theologian here led us away from the knowledge of God from existing things, by revealing another knowledge, supernatural, divine and spiritual, which comes to us after leaving existing things in a supra-rational unity, and by saying that the divine is bestowed in this unity and that in it, that is, spiritually, we must understand the divine, and not by our own means, not by feeling and mind, scraping together the knowledge of God from existing things? For this knowledge is imperfect and characteristic of imperfect minds. However, what does the philosopher’s discarded addition “will it not be” mean, which the saint relates to the knowledge of God acquired by our own forces through existing things? Since we mysteriously saw the divine light with sensual eyes, and heard the voice of the Lord with sensual hearing, the saint considered it appropriate not to completely deny the knowledge of God from only created things, in accordance with the cognitive ability of man. And whoever is able to delve into the exact meaning of the saint’s words will clearly see that here, too, he considers that knowledge that comes from the knowledge of existence to be only the initial knowledge of God, which is why he added: “From him we, to the best of our ability, by way and order, ascend to the beyond.” 70. The knowledge of God through existing things corresponded to the infancy of those who lived before the law; and Abraham, as it is said, received the beginning of his knowledge of God from him, but then he talked with God and knew Him differently 427. And Job, who cried out when he began to see more clearly: “At first I heard You with the hearing of my ears, but now my eye has seen You” (Job 42:6)? And Moses, who saw God for forty days in the darkness beyond all things (Ex. 24:18)? Truly, for the sake of those imperfect in knowledge, it was necessary that the visible of the world should precede the invisible of God, just as the symbolic theology of the law should be taught to people immersed in sensuality, first through sensory signs. But again, just as some of the most perfect have been blessed with true knowledge of God and beyond the symbolic secrecy, so there are those who have seen the invisible of God (Rom. 1:20), such as Moses, Paul and the like, although they lead us to understanding Him in a way that is accessible to us, from the visible. 71. What are you trying to achieve, philosopher, with your diverse and tortuous insidious sophisms about the fact that “a person who knows something one, which exists and is a beginning and has power, should know what existence and the one and the beginning and power are”? After all, if someone began to prove that God is in no way cognizable through existence, your enumeration of these categories inherent in every rational nature would be appropriate; since we place the spiritual knowledge of spiritual sacraments above the knowledge inherent in everyone in general by nature, how will it help you in an argument with us that the initial knowledge of God is acquired from the observation of existing things? One way or another, this is what your dispute is about, since you also dispute spiritual men who claim that intelligible light exists. Don’t you prove at length that only knowledge, and verbal knowledge at that, is light, and don’t you think that through it you will win the confrontation with an advantage? “Without this initial knowledge,” you say, “there will be neither rationality nor the ascent of reason to something more perfect than rational.” But a husband cannot be mature if he was not previously a child; however, having become a husband, he leaves everything behind, and if in adulthood he retains the habits of an infantile mind, and is even proud of it, then wouldn’t he be ridiculous? And isn’t this the kind of person who calls himself a Christian and goes through Hellenic sciences in the hope of acquiring knowledge of God there? 72. So what if “if the rational part of the soul is ill, it will not become meaningful, no matter how hard you try”? The rational part of the soul is truly sick in the one who trusts his reason more than the words of the Holy Spirit and does not consider the divine commandments to be a great and perfect medicine for the soul. At first he said that they could cleanse half 428, and now, having completely deprived them of their cleansing power, he transferred all of it to knowledge, arguing that the beginning, focus and perfection of knowledge of God, as well as mental health and purification, is achieved by knowing much, knowing more and more, finally knowing everything, and that in no way should one bypass the knowledge of complex multiplicity, in order to then, through generalization, reach universal knowledge of existence, that is, to master the circle of scientific teaching 429, after which we will be rewarded with thoughts equal to the angels, uniform and indivisible, as if someone had said that whoever wants to consider an indivisible point must first assume that it consists of many parts, since unity can appear only through the articulation of a multitude, and not through abstraction from it, although every articulated unity is divisible, and here we have before us something united and indivisible. No, having been taught by the fathers, having already heard and believed in others, I know that they contemplated both the material multitude and this entire sensory world not with feeling, not with reason, but with the power and grace inherent in the God-like mind, which puts the distant before their eyes and makes the future supernaturally present. However, it is not surprising if the God-speaking Areopagite glorifies the Creator of nature and through what is inherent in us by nature, for He is the only glorified through the inanimate and through the insensible and through the unreasonable and through the reasonable - but to Him, the One of all, is also due service in the Spirit, which God Himself called the only true, the only worship worthy of God ( John 4:23–24). 73. Passing over many other sayings of Dionysius, which the philosopher cited without noticing that they testify against himself, I will mention one last thing. Namely, in the first book of “Church Hierarchy” the Theologian says: “The crowning common to every hierarchy is the constant, pious and unifying holy work of love for God and the divine; This is preceded by the all-perfect and unwavering rejection of everything contrary, the knowledge of existence as it is, the contemplation and knowledge of holy truth, the godlike communion with the one-form perfection” 430. The philosopher concludes from this as follows: “Hierarchy is the highest of what has been given to us from God; its goal, as is clear from these words, is the knowledge of existence; therefore, the most noble thing in us is the knowledge of existence, that is, philosophy” 431. Truly, he seems to hear only the sound of the words, and not their sacred meaning, for the saint says here that true knowledge of existence is “the steady rejection of the contrary,” that is, abstinence and non-doing of evil, which precedes the divinely inspired and uniting holy work. In fact, since a person is seduced and seduced by evil lusts, he rushes to what seems good to him, revealing by his actions ignorance of the true good, being possessed by the spirit of stubbornness, he fights for the apparent good and the apparent good, just as in general everyone who gravitates towards the base life is zealous in what seems to him to be better, and not in what is truly such, and only a person who has abandoned the base, discarded false opinion, considers the truly bad to be bad and has a true, existing, and not apparent knowledge of the existing - then the abandonment of the bad is “the knowledge of the existing as it is,” preceding the pious and unifying holy work; holy, unifying and divine work is observance of the commandments of God, accomplished in aversion from evil and in constant and unflagging love for God and the divine. It is this—hatred of that which is contrary to the divine commandments, love for them and for God who gave them, and a proper life in love for Him—that the saint calls the crown common to all hierarchy. This is “knowledge of beings as they are”; this is the vision of truth; this is the sacrament of perfection; Here is a feast of spiritual contemplation, revealed according to promise and intelligently enlightening, deifying and nourishing everyone who intelligently, or rather spiritually, remains in this contemplation thanks to the purity of the heart. 74. The theologian himself explains his words; a little lower he returns to what was said before, becoming his own interpreter for the sake of those who do not want to understand the divine divinely, but are trying to distort them in accordance with their false teaching. “So,” he says, “we have been told in sacred words that the goal of our hierarchy is our assimilation to God to the extent possible and unity with Him; and this, the Divine Scripture teaches, we will achieve only through love for the divine commandments and holy practice of them - for it is said that he who loves Me keeps My words, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make our abode with him” 432. Do you see what knowledge of existence the saint calls true? Doing virtues. What is its purpose? Unity with God and likeness to Him. Why did he call this comparison love? Because love is the fullness of virtues, and it, approaching the prototype, retains perfect similarity with God. By pious, unifying and holy work, we mean observance of the divine commandments, which arises only through a person’s disposition towards God and the divine, for good is not good if it is not done for the sake of good alone. Therefore, “the steady rejection of the contrary, the knowledge of what exists, the contemplation and knowledge of the truth” awakens hatred of evil passions, the denunciation of sin and the steady avoidance of it. By uniform perfection, divine communion with the One and intelligently nourishing and deifying contemplation, the saint means God’s promised visit and His dwelling in us, perfecting the spiritual eye through unity and nourishing it with contemplation. 75. But if true knowledge, unity with God and likeness to Him is achieved only through keeping the commandments, then the so-called knowledge of the philosopher is false knowledge. It is not for nothing that he himself clearly said at the beginning that this knowledge cannot come through keeping the commandments 433, and a little higher, having shown the natural source of this knowledge, he says that it “comes from awareness of the multitude of things and the laws of existence, or rather, from the knowledge of everything and the effort to study everything, no matter what knowledge is proclaimed by anyone, be it a Hellenic or an Egyptian, so that no one, missing something that is said and known about nature world, would not for this reason remain ignorant of God,” since he thinks to know God only through existence, doing something similar to what if someone, having heard that the body is nourished and supported only by food, would say that if you want to live, you must not miss any food, but you should constantly, daily and hourly be satiated, and so would incline us to believe that an unfit passion for luxurious meals and greedy gluttony without all striving for the highest is extremely necessary for human life. Likewise, God offered natural laws as matter for the understanding part of the soul, but insofar as they are capable of leading it to higher knowledge. And so, having received from the laws of existence as much as is enough for us, we leave the surplus to those who cannot accommodate more perfect food; if, having become old, they do not want to give up the food typical of babies, then we, wanting to turn those who are carried away from inappropriate nutrition, send some kind of Skill to these universal nipples, spreading to the extent that sometimes they are not entirely healthy. However, our opponents, in the matter of evil are no longer children, but mature men, approach us and threaten to overthrow us, instead of ascending to the proper level themselves. 76. That is why they say that the Son, having come with the Father, will create an abode in one who knows the natural laws of the world: such a one knows the truth, and God is truth and the Father of truth, and this means that if everyone who knows is established and abides in what is known, then he who has the knowledge of things will be unshakably established in God; since he has an unchanging abiding in God, it will not be unfair to say that it is to him that God comes to create an abode. Such a person, says the philosopher, has acquired a mind full of divine and intelligible light. This is the philosopher’s perfect knowledge of God. But I hear the Gospel saying that “The devil is a liar and the father of his lies” (John 8:44). I also know that opposites are subject to the same feeling, knowledge and science; hence, he who knows the truth knows, of course, lies; and if, according to the philosopher, the knower is affirmed and abides in the knowable, and therefore he who has the knowledge of existence rests in God, and God in him, then does it mean that lies and the father of lies also make their abode in him? It turns out that such a person himself has acquired a soul full of mental darkness; and truly great darkness envelops the soul that makes such reasoning. After all, did he who said: “I know you who you are, the Holy One of God” (Mark 1:24) have Christ in him through his knowledge? And he who knows, but does not do the will of God, also has God unshakably installed in himself? Why then “will there be many stripes” (Luke 12:47)? Christ in the Gospels says that the indwelling of Him and the Father is accomplished through keeping the commandments, and through this indwelling - the Manifestation of God (John 14:21, 23), - and this one, contrary to Him, says that the indwelling is accomplished through what seems to him to be the manifestation of God, and already in obvious contradiction with Him - as if the manifestation of God is not from keeping the commandments, but from knowledge, and knowledge, which he declared to be completely independent of keeping the commandments. The philosopher made his mind full of such light and truth! Previously, he not only said that the divine commandments are incapable of delivering knowledge of things as they are, but he called this knowledge “philosophy” created by the philosophical sciences, and recognized it as “madness with God” (1 Cor. 3:19) - and what he called then madness, he now calls God and the Only Begotten Himself, with the existing Father, the Word of the Father. – The philosopher arranged his mind full of such and such light and truth. 77. But if opposites are subject to the same feeling, then when you, philosopher, feel hot - when is your body in the appropriate state or when it is cooled and you perceive heat by its opposite? Of course, you feel the heat inside of you when you're in it. So you will truly have God within yourself when your soul comes into a divine disposition; truly divine disposition is love for God; and it arises only through the holy doing of the divine commandments: if love is their beginning, then it is also the middle and crown, because God is love, and in this alone He announced His coming and abode and appearance. And therefore, only then can you truly take on the task of correcting others when you have a loving disposition from them; Now, hypocritically pretending to be corrective, you are clearly engaged in corruption and slander. That, while promising to correct, you corrupt, our further reasoning will clearly show. And a clear indication that, under the guise of correction, you want to slander, is the greatest effort you have made not to bring to our attention these books of yours, supposedly written for our correction and admonition 434 . Thus, some doctor could announce that he had prepared a very useful drug for a patient, but would completely refuse to use it. From here it was also revealed that from the very beginning you saw the now revealed harmful power of your so-called drugs and that your cunning would not go unnoticed if it reached us, you also knew. 78. Your writings, at the end of which you say that “it is impermissible to begin to correct the incorrect judgments of one of your friends about the knowledge of God,” also fell into our hands against your desire. You call the following judgment from this friend incorrect: “Those who have been purified in heart through the holy manifestation of light that takes place in them know that God exists and that He is, as it were, light, or rather the source of intelligent and immaterial light; and those who have not risen to such contemplation see God as the universal Provider through His all-encompassing providence, as the Source of good - through what He has blessed, and as the All-Containing One and as the Transcendent One over everything - through all things in general" 435 . This is what the philosopher declares to be false. However, I know that even earlier he was ill-disposed towards the same thing; not wanting to notice the simile “as if” added to “light,” he attributed to us the opinion that we know what kind of light God is. Then, pointing to the nearby “source of light” and reading coherently: “God is, as it were, a source of light,” we asked the philosopher what this “as if” should ultimately mean here, and he had to admit that he had not noticed it, and asked for forgiveness; in fact, this “as if” could not be understood otherwise than in the sense of “like” 436. Now he started the attack differently. “Since it is clear,” he says, “that even the greatest contemplatives know God only through existing things, then knowledge of God through mental manifestation of light, which is taught here, without being knowledge of God through existing things, cannot in any way be true.” To this we naturally have to object that if from the detailed previous considerations it is clear that God is known not only through what exists, but also through the non-existent in excess, that is, the uncreated, and also through the eternal light placed above all that exists, which is now given as a pledge to the worthy, and in the endless age endlessly illuminates them, then this contemplation is necessarily true, and anyone who does not recognize its truth has fallen from divine knowledge. True, the philosopher says that “all knowledge of God comes from what is with Him, and not from what is in Him.” However, where in this speech do we say that the manifestation of God is not one of those things that are with God? Yes, we place theophany above everything that exists besides Him; but to this it is in no way added that it is one of those things which are in God Himself. And you can be convinced that theologians consider not only this one contemplation, but also many other contemplations, to be infinitely higher than the knowledge of God through existence, but this is precisely what they single out even among all others, preferentially honoring it with the title of the divine as the only deifying manifestation of God. However, now we must put an end to our already very widespread reasoning, postponing to a further refutation of the philosopher’s ignorance in his work “On Knowledge.” From Chrysostom’s “Laudatory on the First Martyr Stephen” 437 Following his Lord, the martyr did not omit anything in word or deed, but showed both the readiness of his soul to endure evil and patient courage, for which he was awarded divine contemplation; for, “having fixed his gaze on heaven,” the Gospel says, “he saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God” (Acts 7:55) - he saw, therefore, not only the glory and place of invisible things, but also the Desired One Himself, at whom even the angelic army is afraid to look (1 Peter 1:12). The martyr directs his gaze to where the cherubim cover their faces (Is. 6:2); he sees things that seraphim do not dare to look at. He lifted his gaze to boundless heights and found himself above the angels, above the authorities, beyond the thrones. He was drawn away by the voice of the Lord, foretelling and saying: “Where I am, there will My servant also be” (John 12:26). Stephen was the first servant of the Savior, as well as the first in martyrdom; seeing him, many became martyrs. Therefore, even before Paul, he calls out by his very deeds: “Imitate me, as I imitate Christ” (1 Cor. 11:1), for this is possible and useful for those who wish, and I am a witness to this, the first martyr after the Lord and the first to see the unseen in heaven; for I saw, I saw the Son standing at the right hand of the Father, and I observed that what was spoken was fulfilled: “The Lord said to my Lord, Sit on My right hand, until I make Your enemies Your footstool” (Ps. 109:1; Matt. 22:44; Mark 12:36; Luke 20:42–43; Acts 2:34–36; Hebrews 1:13). Part 1. TRIADS III. Denunciation of the absurdities arising from the second work of the philosopher, or On deification 1. No, if his book, as it is entitled, is written against the Messalians, 438 in what blindness does he present the views of our divine fathers, mixed with their false teachings, and then rant at length against them, leaving their followers? If he considered it his right to go to war against the saints who have become famous since the beginning of the century and against us, who have pledged to be faithful to them, then why are the Messalians, Blachernites and similar accusations here? 439 Isn’t it clear that everything is a stage and a guise, everything for the deception of the crowd and for the great and varied, or rather, all kinds of insult to all of us together, so that the fathers, who are no longer in the host of the living, together with everyone who exposed the deception and did not allow themselves to be convinced, would be offended by being counted among heretics, and then disputed and, amid imaginary refutations, shamelessly and monstrously offended, and those who succumb to conviction will inevitably suffer from one of two things: either they will be mistaken now, or they will find themselves among those who were clearly mistaken before, for now they will obviously have to consider as false teachers those whom they previously revered as saints - in a word, so as to present all of us and almost all the shrines we reverence as fun, disgrace and buffoonery? But if, joking in a serious matter, he piles up empty, unnecessary and crafty innovations, verbal disputes and oppositions, wanting to be considered glorious and great in the art of sophistry, and uncontrollably blasphemes - alas! - things worthy of awe and reverence, then why don’t we turn away from him or turn him away from such great evil with appropriate firmness? 2. However, he is so wary of boldly declaring his intentions that at the beginning of his reasoning he promises not only not to invent any innovations, but even to defend the Church of God, feigning zeal befitting a true philosopher against supporters of perverted teachings; Thus, he instilled in others the opinion that he was the guardian of the truth, although in reality, under the guise of fighting against the heterodox, he was fighting with men of pious life. Therefore, no one can justly reproach us if, while justifying the latter, we analyze and verify to the best of our ability what the philosopher says against them; for it seems that in his writings he is not just going to war against them, not accusing them of human weaknesses and not of deviating from a good life: no, the philosopher is clearly going against the very piety they profess, or rather, as shown above, against the very divine Church of the Lord, against its dogmas, against the traditions and writings of the saints preserved by it since ancient times, for which we are ready to give not only the labors that we find ourselves in capable, but if necessary, even our very souls, not seeking rewards either for these speeches of ours or for this willingness of ours, either from people, because people are only able to give us praise that we do not need, or from God, because those who repay the debt are not due a reward. But the urgency of duty forces us to write against our will. At the same time, having long ago abandoned the ambitious concern for words, I will only be satisfied if I write my book completely artlessly, without making it a flowery garden, or a lyre, or a trumpet, so that here I can exclaim euphoniously and loudly, there, in a measured pairing and alternation of figures, diversify melodic combinations, arranging a single harmonious harmony and everywhere decorating my speech. Attic charms, beauty and harmony of names like flowers make the meadow of words shine; If I fail to use them, despite the natural desire to speak beautifully, then let this show that need tells us to speak, and not the desire to show off. And I would call the first beauty of the meaning put into words the same as that of the soul - the feasible aspiration of the gaze to God and to the Truth; for this is where all the other beauties come from, although there is something much more important. 3. Before moving on to his individual denunciations, I consider it necessary to explain why the philosopher put so much effort into presenting the deifying grace of the Spirit as created, making this precisely the goal of his writings, although recognizing against his will that the saints call it deity, self-divinity and God's rule. Why does he himself not believe that spiritual grace should be called uncreated, and denounces those who believe in impiety, for which he leaves no stone unturned verbally, trying to prove to everyone its createdness and claiming that it is “natural imitation,” “a state of rational nature,” something defined and perceived by the senses as such? Yes, for the sake of pleasing our relatives, the Latins, to the best of our ability, not by coercion, but by deception inclining us to their way of thinking. In fact, when we hear about the “Spirit given from the Son,” “poured out on us through the Son,” 440, and then we find in Basil the Great that “God poured out the Spirit on us abundantly through His Son” (Titus 3:6), he poured out, did not create; He blessed, but did not create; bestowed, did not do” 441, and we agree to believe that grace is created, then what remains for us to call what is given, sent and poured out through the Son? Isn’t He Himself the Producer of grace 442, if only He can be called beginningless, and all His energy is created, as the newly-minted theologian claims? And isn’t this exactly the opinion of the Latins, for which they were expelled from the borders of our Church - that not grace, but the Holy Spirit Himself is sent from the Son and poured out through the Son? 443 Do you see the deep and hidden intention of the philosopher, the deceit and maliciousness of his enterprise? 4. And why not try here in every possible way, why not use all the tricks and resort to extreme cunning - since it is impossible to act openly - to the man who, having been last year sent by our most divine basileus on an errand to Italy and Trans-Alpine Gaul, to encourage sending an army against the Persians 444 with the approach of spring, forgot about the purpose of the errand, as things later showed, and came to the pope to bow with a description of how The papal prayers that he happened to send on the way to him turned out to be saving for him; prostrated himself, as he himself says, prostrate before him, and then clung to him and, apparently, joyfully and devotedly kissed him on the mouth and knees, bowed his head under his palms and joyfully accepted the blessing from them 445. After all, if his joy was not sincere, but hypocritical, everyone will ask: how can we believe that he is not hypocritical towards us in his published writings against the Latins? The precariousness of his soul is already shown by the prayer he presupposes for the successful completion of the matter: “O Pre-Eternal Word, consign such speeches to complete destruction, if Your Spirit also comes from You, carrying You and Your Father with It as a single cause and a single beginning, so that through my speeches I do not become the author of great evil, and before my death, remove me from such false teaching.”446 . For what reason, even now, after his return from the Latins, the philosopher immediately, without any need, composed works that, as it turns out, contributed to the Latins, moreover, being moved to write “Against the Messalians” from Italy, as he admits in the preface, unless his statement again turns out to be hypocrisy. 5. So, every word of his is a pretense, a mockery and a mockery of our faith; and when we read from him about the sacred ones of the Church and the Synod, it seems that he is talking about the Latin ones. And that the philosopher in everything leans more towards the Latin Church, this is evidenced by the fact that he did not receive almost any cleansing sacrament from ours in order to wash away the Latin impurity, and, bypassing everything else, for all the long time he spent among us, no one saw him partake of the Holy Eucharist; what can we say about sacred prayer or calling or a cross-shaped imprint in the hair and other symbols of monastic perfection, without which we, obedient to the laws of the holy fathers, do not recognize a monk! After all, he did not even ask for a holy prayer when being introduced to the monastic sacrament, but appeared as a self-made, and from here it’s not far to say a fake monk. “A tree is known by its fruits” (Matthew 12:33). And let those who themselves listened to him tell him mysterious words about the coming punishment (Matthew 12:32). Based on various reasons, I suspect that he calls deifying grace created not out of ignorance, but out of malice. If out of ignorance, then since he considers himself to be an expert, thereby aggravating his ignorance with madness, he is even more grievously guilty; for all the most terrible false teachings stem from the same source from which this defender of diverse and bad heresies has now appeared, as further reasoning will show. 6. As we have stated in our previously published writings on the divine light 447, the godly wise Maximus the Confessor, in agreement with Macarius and all the other saints, calls the guarantee of the future promise, the grace of adoption, the deifying gift of the Spirit, the light of ineffable glory, contemplated by the saints, the hypostatic light, uncreated, eternally existing from the eternally Existing and now in part, in the next century more completely appearing worthy and showing them God through himself. The philosopher, noticing that he is alien to this light, since he has not taken a small step on the path leading to it, and is completely unfit to go towards it, did not supplement faith with deeds, in order to achieve holy contemplation through it, but by rejecting faith and for the sake of his exaltation in the eyes of the crowd, humiliating in words all who, without rejecting it, are guided by it, puts grace into nothing, blasphemes the Lord of grace and dishonors all the saints together, to whom it was actually given to experience the light of grace and teach about it. 7. Since he considered it his right to dare to do this, not while living in Scythia, and not among the Hagarians, but in the center of the Church of Christ and, moreover, now, when it rules more directly than ever “the word of Truth” (2 Tim. 2:15), then he uses a lot of cunning, puts forward his reasoning against the saints very obscurely and with the greatest secrecy, under the guise of a warrior for the Church of Christ and her holy a creed that is actually perverted by him. Without naming a single saint by name, he exposes a certain Theodore of Trebizond, leader of the Blachernites 448, convicted of Messalian vices; and so he quotes the words of this Theodore, who in his defense said that he now recognizes as visible not the super-existent hiddenness of God, as before, but His glory, and glory calls the divine, hypostatic, non-emergent light, called “deity”, “divinity” and in general all the names that the saints give to the deifying gift of the Spirit. 8. In fact, Dionysius the Areopagite repeatedly in his writings calls this gift the superiority of God, the superiority and, since it is the beginning of deification, the deity, “beyond which God is as the Supergod and the Superprimitive” 449. The Divine Maxim called this deity deification, and defined deification as “an hypostatic illumination that does not arise, but unthinkably manifests itself in the worthy”; he also added all the other names we just mentioned 450. We have already heard Basil the Great, who says that the gifts poured out on us through the Son are uncreated 451. John Chrysostom, coinciding with Basil in the sense of words, shames the Latins and destroys the insidious fabrications of our vanity, explaining that it is not God that is poured out, but grace 452. And before the Golden Voice - the prophet Joel, or rather, God through the prophet said not “I will pour out My Spirit,” but “I will pour out My Spirit” (Joel 2:28; Acts 2:17). So, if the Spirit is not divided, then what is the spirit poured out on us by God according to His promise from the Spirit of God? Isn’t it the grace of the Spirit, His energy, the action of the essence of the Spirit? But the spirit poured out on us from God, according to Basil the Great, is uncreated. Therefore, grace is uncreated; This is what is given and sent and bestowed from the Sons to the disciples, and not the Spirit Himself: the deifying gift is not only uncreated energy, but also inseparable from the All-Holy Spirit. Listen again to Basil the Great: “The life that the Spirit sends into the hypostasis of another is not separated from Him,” 453 and so that no one would think that he is talking here about our natural life, even saying “sent” and not “created,” or rather “sends,” which is even more expressive next to “uncreated” and “beginningless,” - nevertheless, so as not to seem to be talking about something natural, adds: “And those who participate in Him live worthy of God, having acquired divine and heavenly life.” 9 . But such a divine and heavenly life of those living worthy of God in the communion of the inseparable life of the Spirit - just as Paul, according to the divine Maximus, “lived the divine and eternal life of the Indwelled One” 454 - such a life exists eternally, being inherent in the nature of the Spirit, which from time immemorial has been idolized and rightly called by the saints spirit and deity as an adoring gift, in no way separating from the bestowing Spirit; and it is light, revealed in mysterious illumination and known only to the worthy, hypostatic, but not because it has its own hypostasis, but because the Spirit sends this life “into the hypostasis of another,” where it is contemplated. This is, in the proper sense, the hypostatic (enupostaton) contemplated, not in itself and not in essence, but in hypostasis. Do the saints speak about the hypostatic in some other sense, say below 455. With all this, the Holy Spirit is higher than the divine life acting in Him and from Him as its own natural energy, which is similar to Him, but not exactly. “We do not see,” says Dionysius the Areopagite, “no deification and no life that would be exactly similar to the Cause, which rises above everything in its perfect abundance” 456; therefore similar, but not exactly. And the Holy Spirit surpasses His energies not only because He is their cause, but also because what is received always turns out to be only an insignificant portion of His gift; the recipient does not contain the fullness of divine energy. Thus, God is in many respects above the said light, uncreated illumination, life and the like. Basil the Great says all this. 10. And the divine propounder Symeon Metaphrastus, who compiled sensible chapters on the light from above and glory based on the first book of Macarius the Great, beautifully and at the same time clearly sets out the matter in greater detail. It would be best to present here, if possible, in a condensed and abbreviated form, some of his sayings because of their extreme relevance for the upcoming discussion and no less benefit for the reader. So, in the sixty-second chapter, the saint says: “Blessed Moses, in the spiritual glory that shone on his face, which no one could look at, showed a prototype of how at the resurrection of the righteous the bodies of the saints will be glorified; The faithful souls of the saints are now worthy to have this glory according to the inner man, for, as it is said in the Gospel, with open face (2 Cor. 3:18), that is, in the inner man, we behold the glory of the Lord, being transformed into the same image from glory to glory” 457. And in the sixty-third chapter: “The glory, with which, as it has been said, the souls of the saints are now rich, will cover and clothe the naked bodies at the Resurrection, preparing them for the ascension into heaven, because they will be clothed in the glory of good deeds and in the spiritual glory, which, I said, the souls of the saints will receive from now on; and so illuminated by the glory of divine light, the saints will always abide with the Lord" 458. This is the light that, according to the great Dionysius, shone on the mountain of the chosen apostles: “When we,” he says, “become incorruptible and immortal and achieve the most blessed Christ-like destiny, “we will always be with the Lord,” according to Scripture (1 Thessalonians 4:17), being saturated in His most holy contemplations with the visible theophany, which is the brightest it will illuminate us with lightning, just as it illuminated the disciples at the most divine Transfiguration” 459. This is the divine light, as John said in Revelation (Rev. 21:23–24, 22:5) and all the saints are unanimous. Gregory, nicknamed the Theologian, says that “He will come bodily, as I believe, the way He appeared or appeared to the disciples on the mountain, when the deity conquered the flesh” 460. 11. No, says the philosopher, that light was sensually felt and contemplated through the air, appearing then to amaze the disciples and immediately disappearing, and it is called a deity as a symbol of the deity. Unheard speeches! Before us is a fleeting deity, sensual and created, appearing briefly and dying on the same day like insects called ephemerals, or even less durable, which melts before our eyes as soon as it is born, or rather, “sometimes it happens, it never exists” 461. Such and such a deity, not at all divine, began to prevail over the venerable godlike body? Moreover, did it prevail over him not once, but once and for all? After all, the saint does not say “upernikhsashz” - it prevailed once, but “upernikwshz” - it became dominant, and not only in the present, but also in the next century. What are you saying? Will the Lord combine with such and such a deity, and will it prevail for endless ages? And for us, according to the word of the apostles and fathers, God instead of everything (Col. 3:11), and in Christ there will be sensory light instead of deity? And according to the same word “we will not need air, space and the like there” 462, but will we see the Divinity through the air? Will there really be old symbols again, again mirrors, again riddles, again the only hope of seeing face to face? No, if even then there are the same symbols, mirrors and riddles, then - alas, oh cunning and deceit! - we are deceived in our hopes, intoxicated by deception, we expect to acquire divinity by promise, but are not even allowed to contemplate it, instead we see sensual light - nature, the farthest from the deity. How can there be a symbol there again? If he were a symbol, would he be called a deity? Neither a drawn man is humanity, nor a revealed symbol of an angel is angelic nature. 12. Which saint ever called the divine light a created symbol? Gregory the Theologian says that “the light was the deity that appeared to the disciples on the mountain” 463. It is clear that if the light were not true and not truly deity, but only a created symbol, the saint should have said not “the light was the manifested deity,” but “the light that manifested the Divinity,” and not even “manifested,” but “revealed,” since the added “about” clearly expresses the invisibility of the manifestation of the innermost depth of the Divinity. So says the saint, who received his nickname from theology. And the Chrysostomed theologian says that “the Lord appeared brighter than Himself when the Divinity Himself manifested His rays.” Notice here the prefix “about”, which clearly indicates the expression of the hidden, and do not ignore the use of the article, for the saint did not say “qeothtoz”, but “thz qeothtoz”, that is, that same true Divinity. And how would light, if it were an alien symbol of the Divine, have divine rays? Basil the Great, having shown that God, worshiped in three hypostases, is one light, says: “God dwells in unapproachable light” (1 Tim. 6:16) 464. Unapproachable in any case and true, and true - unapproachable; It was not for nothing that the apostles fell on their faces, unable to look at the glory of the Son, since he was an unapproachable light. And the Spirit is also light: “God,” it is said in the Gospel, “shone in our hearts through the Holy Spirit” (2 Cor. 4:6). So, if the unapproachable is true, and the light was unapproachable, then it was not a counterfeit image of the deity, but truly the light of the true Divinity, not only the Divinity of the Son, but also the Spirit and the Father. Therefore, celebrating the annual feast of the Transfiguration, we all sing to the Lord: “In your revealed today in the light of Tabor we saw the Father as light and the Spirit as light,” “for he implicitly revealed, revealing, the radiance of Your Divinity” 465 Here, not only the addition of the prefix, but also the very meaning of the words indicates the expression of the hidden. And when all the saints call this light the true Divinity, what prompted you to separate it from the Divine and call it “a created and sensory symbol of the Divine,” declaring that it is more imperfect than our thinking? 13. The God-wise Maximus, who usually calls one thing in allegories a symbol of the other in view of the analogy existing between them, does not always make the lesser a symbol of the greater, as you, the all-wise, think, but sometimes the greater is a symbol of the lesser. Thus, he says, the Lord’s body, raised on the cross, becomes a symbol of our body nailed down by passions; and Joseph, which is translated as “increased,” is a symbol of virtue and faith: “When,” says the saint, “they multiply in those who were previously possessed by passions, then they take them down like Joseph the Lord from the cross.” In the same way, Maxim allegorically called the light of the Transfiguration a symbol of affirmative and negative theology, as the highest - the lowest, and as a treasury and source of theological knowledge. What then? Didn't he call Moses a symbol of providence, and Elijah a symbol of judgment? 466 Did they, therefore, not exist in reality, but everything was imagination and fake? Who among the people would have dared to say this except the incomparable Varlaam, who declared the light of the Transfiguration to be alien to the Divine, although almost the entire choir of divinely inspired theologians was careful not to call this blessed light simply a symbol so that no one, confused by the ambiguity of such a name, would consider the divine light to be created and alien to the Divine. If we call it a symbol of deity, understanding it rationally and sensibly, then there will not be the slightest contradiction to the truth. 14. Indeed, let, as you yourself insist, the light of the Transfiguration be a symbol of the Divine. Even then you will not take us and deprive us - know this - of blessed hope. Every symbol is either of the same nature as what it symbolizes, or belongs to a completely different nature. For example, when the sun rises, the dawn is a natural symbol of its light; and the natural symbol of the burning power of fire is heat. Of the unnatural, sometimes a symbol for those who use it becomes either something that exists in nature in itself, such as a fire during the invasion of enemies, or something that does not exist in its nature, but becomes, as it were, a vision that serves providence and which is only in this one respect a symbol. These are the symbols that appear sensually and figuratively to the prophets, for example Zechariah's sickle (Zechariah 5:1-2), Ezekiel's axes (Ezekiel 9:2) and if there is anything similar. And so, a symbol of the same nature always accompanies the nature from which its existence as a natural one, but it is absolutely impossible for a symbol of another, independently existing nature to always accompany the signified: whatever it may be in itself, nothing prevents it from existing before or after the signified. Finally, a symbol that does not exist independently does not exist either before or after the signified, because this is impossible for it, but having appeared briefly, it immediately passes into non-existence and completely disappears. So, if the Tabor light is a symbol, it is either one-natural or not; and if he is not of the same nature, then he either exists independently or is a non-existent ghost. If he is only a non-existent ghost, then Christ never was, is not and will not be such; but that Christ will be like this forever is undoubtedly affirmed, as shown a little above 467, by both Dionysius the Areopagite and Gregory the Theologian and all those who await His coming from heaven in glory; therefore the light was not simply a non-existent vision. 15. And of course, Christ will not only remain like this in the endless future, but He was like this even before ascending the mountain. Hear the wise man in the divine Damascus: “By being transfigured, Christ does not acquire anything more than what He was, and is not changed into what He was not, but reveals to His disciples what He was, opening their eyes and making the blind see; Remaining exactly the same as before, He visibly revealed Himself to the disciples, for He Himself is the true light, the visible beauty of glory” 468. Basil the Great also shows the same thing: “Like a certain light through glass plates, that is, through the human body of the Lord, His divine power shone forth, illuminating those whose eyes of the heart were purified.” And what is sung annually in the Church - “the thing now revealed was hidden by the flesh” and “the typical and radiant beauty, now revealed” 469 - what else does it affirm if not the pre-existence of light? And what about the reorganization of our human mixture and its deification and divine transformation? Did it really not happen immediately simultaneously with the incarnation? No, Christ was the same before, but at the Transfiguration He put divine power into the eyes of the apostles and allowed them to look and see. So the light was not a ghost; he will endure forever and has been from the beginning. 16. But if he was and will be forever, then that means he is the same now. The height of absurdity is that He is like this before the divine appearance on Tabor and endlessly in the next century, while in the intervening time He changes, adding His glory. That even now He sits in the same radiance at the right hand of the Majesty in the highest (Heb. 1:3), everyone must believe, following the one who said: “Come, let us ascend to the holy mountain in heaven, we will see the immaterial deity of the Father and the Spirit, shining in the only begotten Son” 470. Whoever does not consider it necessary to believe one saint, believe two, or rather all the saints; in fact, the one for whom Crete served as a footstool, a reasonable and holy light, blessed Andrew, chanting the light that shone on Tabor, says: “Such a sign of the Word’s love for mankind towards us is posited by the intelligent, immaterially triumphant order of the world” 471 . The great Dionysius says almost the same thing, glorifying the highest ranks of supermundane minds: they become partakers and contemplators not only of the Trinity glory, but also of the light-manifestation of Jesus, for since He is the idolizing light, they, having been rewarded with contemplation, undergo initiation “truly approaching Him and achieving the first communion with the knowledge of His idolizing lights” 472. And Macarius the Great, whose language is the wise Simeon, or rather, who speaks in the same language with Simeon in order to proclaim the truth more clearly in two languages, teaches: “The confusion of human nature, accepted by the Lord, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven, filled with glory not only in one face, like Moses, but also in the whole body” 473. So, Christ invariably possesses light, or rather, He always had, always has and will always have it with Him. If the light with which the Lord shone on the mountain was, is and will be, then it means that it is not a ghost and not just a non-hypostatic symbol. 17. If anyone says that this is a symbol that exists independently, separated from the nature of the signified and has become a symbol of the latter by use, then let him show where this symbol independently exists, what it is and why it turned out to be impregnable in reality, and not only impregnable to sight, for, as it is said, “the disciples fell headlong to the ground” 474, and yet the light shone dazzlingly only from the worshiped face and body and from nowhere else. Moreover, if he were a symbol from among those independently existing, and we know that he will be co-present with Christ incessantly in the coming centuries, then Christ would then consist of three natures and essences - human, divine and this light. So it is absolutely clear and proven that the light of Transfiguration does not exist independently and is not separated from the deity. However, now, at this point in our reasoning, it is necessary to say why the saints call deifying grace, that is, the deifying light, hypostatic. 18. That with such a name they do not express the independence of his hypostasis, it is clear from the fact that nowhere can you find words about his special hypostasis, as we said elsewhere before and as was revealed even more clearly from the distinction just outlined. Since not only non-existent things, not only appearances, are called non-hypostatic, but also quickly collapsing and fluid, susceptible to decay and immediately disappearing, which is the nature of lightning and thunder, but also our word and thought, the saints rightly called the light of the Transfiguration hypostatic, thereby showing its constancy and stability as something that lasts and does not flash before the observer like lightning, words or thoughts. However, our wisest, before learning the meaning of this word “hypostatic,” condemns it for one utterance as impiety; although if he had left the beautiful sayings alone and not interpreted them with his own inventions in the opposite direction, deigned not to call the light hypostatic, since it does not have its own hypostasis, and even condemned for such use of words, but not as heretics, none of us would have considered it necessary to object to him. But enough about that; and we have already said that the second meaning of the word “hypostatic” is pious and true. Now it's time to move on to the next part of our consideration. 19. If the light that shone on the mountain from the Savior is a natural symbol, then it cannot be co-natural with both of His natures, because the properties of each of them are different. Moreover, it is impossible for him to be of human nature: our nature is not light, especially the kind that Favorsky was; in addition, the Lord then ascended the mountain, leading the chosen ones there, certainly not to show them that He was a Man - He had already been seen living and taking citizenship with everyone for three years, and if we say according to Scripture, He was in the assembly with them (Acts 1:4) - but to show, as it is said in the hymn, that He is the radiance of the Father 475. Moreover, neither you yourself, nor even someone bolder than you, will call the light of the Transfiguration a symbol of humanity, but of Divinity. If this is a natural symbol, and not of human nature, then, therefore, it is a natural symbol of the Divinity of the Only Begotten Son, as the divine John of Damascus clearly taught us. “The Son, born without beginning from the Father,” he says, “possesses a natural beginningless ray of the Divine; and the glory of the Divine becomes bodily glory” 476. So, light did not arise, did not begin and did not cease, for natural symbols are always co-inherent in the nature of which they act as symbols: always being symbols, they always accompany this nature, and it is not for nothing that the great and divine Maximus calls beginningless and infinite everything essentially contemplated by God 477 . There are many, he says, things that are essentially contemplated with God, but do not in the least harm His monosyllabic simplicity; Moreover, the light-like symbol will not cause any damage to it, being one of these things. 20. And that light is among the things essentially contemplated in God, we learn from many other things, but most clearly from the annual church hymns, of which one will be enough for proof: “The radiance of Your natural and divine beauty, Christ, hidden in the flesh, on the holy mountain You showed, O Good Worker, shining forth to the co-present disciples” 478 . However, the godly Maxim, having said that Christ “He himself became a symbol of Himself out of love for mankind,” 479 thereby showed light as a natural symbol. In the unnatural, one thing becomes a symbol of another, and not something of its own becomes a symbol of itself; we say that something becomes a symbol of itself when the symbol naturally proceeds from that of which it is a symbol. Thus, the burning power of fire, exposing as its own symbol the warmth accessible to the senses, becomes, of course, a symbol of itself, always having this warmth with it, but still remaining united and itself not undergoing any bifurcation, naturally showing warmth as its symbol whenever the receiving is present. Likewise, the light of the Sun ready to rise, symbolizing the glow of dawn, becomes a symbol of itself. We also know sunlight as a symbol, because it is perceived with the same power of vision with which we discern twilight, although the solar circle does not even allow us to look at ourselves and its shine turns out to be almost invisible. In the same way, the sense of touch perceives the warmth of fire, but the sense of touch does not have the slightest knowledge of its burning power, the symbol of which we called heat, except that it knows about its existence, but not about what it is and how much of it; after all, if the sense of touch tried to experience for itself what the burning of fire is, producing heat, it would perish, turning everything into fire and ceasing to be touch, which is why, barely daring to approach it, it immediately backs away and runs swiftly, cruelly repenting of its inquisitive impulse. The sense of touch can become part of the power of fire, that is, heat, but never 480 of its burning sensation. 21. If this is the case in these things, then who will say that the Divinity transfigured in the hidden is known when its natural symbol is known? What then? If the morning symbol of daylight were inaccessible to the eye, just like the sun, or even more inaccessible than the sun, how could the eye consider this daylight or look at anything else in it? And how could the eye then recognize the sun, commensurate with this daylight, what kind of light it is? Moreover, divine objects in the same way are known only through communion with them, but in themselves, in their foundation and beginning, they are completely unknown to anyone, not even to the highest among supermundane minds, which means they are inaccessible to the full extent of our understanding. 22. Yes, the Lord’s disciples saw this symbol for a reason, but first they received eyes that they did not have before, in order “from the blind to become sighted,” according to the divine John of Damascus, and to see the uncreated light. So, although the light is perceived by eyes, they are those that were better than the previous eyes and perceived spiritual light with spiritual power. It turns out that the indescribable light is both sensual and supersensible, unapproachable, immaterial, uncreated, idolizing, eternal, the radiance of the divine nature, the words of the deity, the splendor of the Kingdom of Heaven. Does such and such seem to you alien to the deity, a sensual and created symbol, visible through the air? But that the light is not alien, but co-natural with the deity, hear again from the divine sage of Damascus, who says: “The brilliance of divine glory is not introduced, as it was with Moses, but from the natural divine glory and radiance”; and again: “In the age to come we will “always be with the Lord” (1 Thessalonians 4:17), seeing Christ shining with divine light, who triumphs over all nature”; and again: “He accepts the chief apostles as witnesses of His glory and divinity and reveals to them His divinity” 481, transcendental to everything, one and all-perfect and super-perfect. And that light is not visible through air is shown by the great Dionysius and all those who call it the light of the future century, 482 when, they say, we will not need air, and besides them Basil the Great, who says that light is seen by the eyes of the heart. Finally, that we do not perceive it with our senses is clear from the fact that, not needing air for its contemplation, it, shining brighter than the sun on Tabor, was not visible to those nearby. Is it not clear that in opposing such great saints, who sing so loudly of this light, you are openly and deliberately blaspheming? 23. Will you not stop, human being, from portraying the light of divine and essential beauty as something that is little sensually comprehended and created, but also less perfect than our understanding? Below understanding - O earth and heaven! - all who contemplate in themselves the light of the Kingdom of God, the beauty of the future century, the glory of the divine nature! Moreover, the light that, according to the divinely inspired Andrew of Crete, the apostles saw, having lost all sensory and mental perception in a frenzy, “having been awarded true vision through a complete inability to see and acquiring a supernatural sense through the experience of the divine”! 483 What then? Isn't frenzy in such subjects, when it is more imperfect than understanding, demonic? Therefore, the secrets of the Lord - oh, the most unheard of absurdity! – suffered a demonic frenzy? No, we were taught by the fathers to collectively say to the Lord that “the inconceivability of Your light and the inaccessibility of Your deity, seeing on the mountain, the chosen apostles changed in a divine frenzy” 484. And how can we not convict you of equating God with creation when you declare His essential energies to be created? After all, no one with reason will say that essential goodness and life is the very super-existent essence of God: containing the essential in itself, it is not equal to the essence, but, according to the great Dionysius, “by calling the super-existent hiddenness God, life or essence, we think of nothing other than the providential powers emanating from the unparticipated God” 485. They are essential forces, but super-existent, and moreover, “super-existent as in itself super-existent” Beginning, which collectively and completely disposes of these forces 486; So there are essences and idolizing light, but it is not the very essence of God. 24. However, the philosopher later declares not only this, but all the power and energy of God to be created, although the saints clearly say that in uncreated nature everything is natural, all power and energy are uncreated, just as in created nature they are created. “How is it,” he says, “that what you call supersensible, superintelligent, truly existing, eternally existing, immaterial, unchangeable and, moreover, hypostatic, bearing the Lord’s features, being beyond the boundaries of every visible and intelligible creature, will not turn out to be a superexistent divine essence? Why do you say that the divine essence is beyond such light? He does not ask about this in bewilderment, not expecting an explanation of everything unclear or a solution to difficulties; no, it seems to him that he is denouncing us, or rather, having had enough of denouncing us, then enraged by his own powerlessness, he arrogates us, now claiming that we have miserably ruined the critical ability of our soul, now saying that we have become equal to the Messalian heretics who once lived and even surpassed them, now calling us superstitious and polytheistic; however, he also did not hesitate to call us unfaithful, godless and completely lost: “ditheistic,” he affirms in writing and orally and informs everyone that the nickname that has become more common to us than others, although with his own speeches he involuntarily removes any accusation from us; in fact, by saying that we consider what is beyond everything to be one, and this one is a super-essence, he testifies that we consider God to be one, but light is not an essence, but the energy of the essence, which we called both one and beyond everything as omnipotent. – Even if we call energy inseparable from the divine essence, still God’s super-essence will not become composite; otherwise there would be no simple essence at all, since you cannot see a single natural essence without energy. How can the idolizing light, which you yourself, compelled by the obviousness of the matter, call a symbol of the deity, not have the Lord’s traits? When the saints call him hypostatic, not self-hypostatic, where do you get some kind of second essence in itself, where do you get a second God who does not have his own existence? And if you, in your insightful assumptions, transform this energy into a second God on the basis that it is without beginning, uncreated and inconceivable, then you will turn us here into a second God and the divine will, when you hear from Saint Maximus that “just as the trinitarian divine nature remains without beginning, uncreated, inconceivable, simple and incomposite in its entirety, so does its will” 487 . You will have to say the same about all its natural actions - energies. 25. Imitation of God is “an idolizing gift, a state of intelligent and meaningful nature, starting from the first dispensation of the world and ending in the last limits of rational orders; It’s not for nothing that the great Dionysius teaches” – in some reinterpretation! - “that God rises above the rulership of God, if you think of deity as the essence of an idolizing gift and an inimitable imitation of the Supergod and the Supergood” 488. But, most excellent, before “imitation” the saint put the “inimitable” in first place; therefore, there is no more imitation here than inimitability; What kind of keeper of your father’s word are you if you stick to only half of what was said? Then, the saint named two things, the idolizing gift and the inimitable imitation, showing us, as it seems to me, that although a person cannot be deified by his own power, through imitation he becomes like the inimitable God, However, he must imitate the inimitable; so he will receive the gift of deification and become God “according to his condition” 489. There are, therefore, two reasons for deification for the great saint; You discarded one of them, did not interpret it, but distorted it, erased the conjunction, wrote in a pronoun instead and decided, apparently, to read what was said to us like this: “If you think of deity and goodness as the essence of an idolizing gift, the very inimitable imitation of the Supergod and the Supergood...” 26. Moreover, you also consider the grace of deification to be a natural state, namely entelechy, perfection and the discovery of some natural ability, which is why you fall, without knowing how, into the Messalian error: after all, if deification is accomplished by the action of a natural ability and is encompassed by the limits of natural nature, then the one deified will necessarily turn out to be God by nature. Do not attribute your own perversion to those who are firmly established in the truth, and do not try to impose your vice on those who are blameless in the faith, dumping your guilt before the truth on them, or rather, shamelessly slandering them as if they are the same as you. No, learn for yourself from those who know and from those who learned from them that the grace of deification is completely uncontrollable, “having no ability in the natural for its acceptance,” 490 otherwise it is not grace at all, but a manifestation of the energy of a natural ability, and if deification is accomplished by the action of a natural ability suitable for its perception, there will be nothing unexpected in what happens; then deification will clearly be a work of nature, but not a divine gift, and the one who experiences it will be able to become God by nature and in the literal sense be called such, because the natural ability of all things consists precisely in the constant ascent of nature to reality, energy. And how deification, if it is entirely contained within natural limits, makes one go out of oneself, I cannot understand. 27. Above nature, above virtue and knowledge, is the grace of deification, and “everything like that,” according to the word of St. Maxim, “infinitely far from it” 491 every virtue and every imitation of God that depends on us makes the righteous convenient for divine unity, while grace accomplishes the unspeakable unity itself, for through it “the whole God moves into the completely worthy” 492, and the whole saints move completely into the whole God, having accepted the whole God in place of themselves and having acquired, as if as a reward for his ascent to Him of the one God Himself, “Who, as with His own members, grows with them in the manner of the fusion of the soul with the body” 493 and deigns to abide in Himself through hypostatic adoption by the gift and grace of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, when you hear that God dwells in us for virtues, or that through the memory of God we carry Him within us, 494 consider deification here not just the acquisition of virtues, but the divine radiance and grace bestowed for virtue, as Basil the Great says: “A soul that has increased its natural impulses through its own effort and the help of the Holy Spirit, according to God’s righteous judgment, is worthy of radiance, God's grace given to the saints." That the radiance bestowed by the grace of God is light, learn from the one who says that “the radiance from above, given to those who have purified themselves here on earth, is light; and “the righteous shall shine upon them like the sun” (Matthew 13:43), in the midst of which, existing gods and kings, God stands (Ps. 81:1), sending out and distributing the virtues of the highest bliss” 495. Finally, no one will refute that the light is above heaven and above the world, and even more so when he says that “among the promised blessings we expect light above heaven,” as Solomon testifies: “There is always light for the righteous” (Prov. 13:9), and the Apostle: “Giving thanks to God..., who has made us worthy of the inheritance of the saints in the light” (Col. 1:12). 28. However, even when we say that wisdom is instilled in a person through work and diligence, we call wisdom not the work and diligence themselves, but what comes thanks to them. The Lord dwells in people in different and varied ways, depending on the dignity and character of those who seek Him: in the active, not as in the contemplative, in the seer even differently, and in one way in them as those who have acquired virtue, in others – as those who have already been deified. But there are also great differences in the vision of God: of the prophets, God appeared to one in a dream, to another in reality, but in riddles and mirrors, to Moses apparently, and not in fortune telling. And when you hear that the contemplation of God takes place visibly, and not in riddles, remember the one who said: “Deification is a hypostatic visible radiance, which has no origin in those worthy, but only an inconceivable manifestation; a mysterious union with God that transcends reason and meaning and takes place in the imperishable age, when, contemplating the hidden light and ineffable glory, together with the highest powers the saints themselves become recipients of the most blessed purity; and the invocation of the great God and Father, serving as a symbol of hypostatic and actual adoption by the gift and grace of the Holy Spirit, when in the visitation of grace the saints are established as sons of God, which they all will remain” 496. 29. It is not for nothing that the great Dionysius, who in another place called light the “first-illuminating and idolizing ray” 497, and here - “the idolizing gift and the beginning of deity” 498, that is, deification, answering the questioner how God rises above the boss of God, that is, above the beginning of deification, says that if, having heard that God is contemplated “visibly, and not in riddles”; that He grows together with the worthy as with His own members and unites with them up to the point of being completely transmigrated into completely righteous people, just as they are completely transmigrated into Him; that “the Spirit is poured out upon us richly through the Son” (Titus 3:6), but is not created, is received by us and speaks through us - in a word, if you hear this, you will not forget that God is not contemplated in His super-existent essence, but in His god-creating gift, that is, in His energy, in the grace of adoption, in uncreated deification, in hypostatic visible radiance, and if you think of this deifying gift, allowing supernatural communion and unity, as the beginning of God, the beginning of deity, that is, deification, then the supernatural essence of God will be higher than this beginning. It is still a state, although not natural; and it is uncontrollable not only as supernatural, but also as a state; for how can a state maintain its state again? The essence of God is uncontrollable not as a state, but because it rises beyond even supernatural states. And the beginning of deification is shared in its own way and proportionately with everyone; and God’s essence is exalted even above everything that is shared. 30. Finally, to call the idolizing gift “the final state of rational nature, beginning from the first dispensation of the world and ending in the last limits of rational orders” means clearly opposing the Gospel of Christ. If deification completes the rational nature, but does not elevate the godlike ones above it, being the state of this rational nature itself, when it passes from natural possibility into reality, then the deified saints neither rise above nature, nor are “born of God” (John 1:13), nor “are the Spirit, being born of the Spirit” (John 3:6) and it is not true that Christ, having come into the world, “only to those who believe in His Name gave the power to become sons God” (John 1:12): after all, if deification is naturally inherent in the rational soul, then even before His coming it was accessible to all languages and now - to all the current ungodly and wicked. In addition, if deification really is the final state of rational nature, then the Hellenes, it turns out, had no reason at all, just like the fallen angels; This means that they not only use their knowledge for evil, but simply have not yet reached the natural maturity of this knowledge; Is it fair to blame them then? Moreover, external sages say that the essence is always unchanged; therefore, some angels and souls cannot be more intelligent than others, because in immaturity imperfection does not come from the soul, but from the nature of the body; Does this mean that deification is an age that imparts understanding? And some, we believe, are from birth more receptive to knowledge than others, depending not on the nature of their soul, but on bodily mixture; therefore, deification is a favorable bodily mixture? No, we know that innate abilities are God’s gift, and knowledge is not just God’s gift, but also the final state of rational nature; however, it is still not an idolizing gift, because it is not supernatural, but he is above nature. Even if all men and angels were entirely some more, others less gods, they would still be imperfect gods and demigods, a demonic tribe. So, deification is not that state; no matter how you call the perfect state of rational nature, whether knowledge, mixture, natural, bodily or mental talent, whether it is considered to come from outside or from within, it will make those involved in it reasonable, but not yet gods. 31. As shown above, the saints clearly call adoption, which rises from faith to reality, and the adoring gift, hypostatic 499; the philosopher, on the contrary, argues that the imitation of God, which he alone of all considers to be the principle of God and the gift of God, is not hypostatic; therefore, it is not the same as the deification that the fathers experienced and recognized. After all, the divine Maxim called the latter not only hypostatic, but also unborn; and not only uncreated, but also unlimited and transtemporal, so that those who have received it become uncreated, beginningless and limitless in it, although, from the side of their nature, they arose from nothing 500. This one, invading things that he has not seen, asserts that deification is created, natural and transtemporal, clearly creating it in his own way, and thereby degrading God to the position of a creature; according to the fathers, deification is the essential energy of God, and the essence, whose essential energies are created, is itself, of necessity, also created. And you can see that our poor fellow falls into this absurdity in various ways and repeatedly; does not blush, declaring all natural divine forces and energies created, although according to our faith, every saint through the infusion of grace becomes a church of the living God, but how will the dwelling of creatures become a church of God? And how is every saint uncreated through grace, if it is created? It also makes me very surprised why the philosopher, who himself says that the saints call the light that shone on Tabor an idolizing one, does not tolerate being called a deifying gift? Meanwhile, since the deifying gift of the Spirit is the energy of God, and God receives names from His energies, for His super-essence is nameless, then if deification were contained only in the virtue of wisdom, God, whose energy would be revealed only in wisdom and virtue, would not be called God - the source of deifying energy. Nor would He be called a Supergod, transcendental to this deity: then it would be enough for Him to be called Superwise, Supergood, and the like. So grace and the energy of deification are different from virtue and wisdom. 32. Discarding the abuse of the incomparable Varlaam - after all, it is addressed not to us, but to the fathers, for it is their teachings that he mocks, although, more accurately, he does not hurt them either, since he who spits at the sky, as they say, spits not at the sky, but at himself - so, putting these vile blasphemies into nothing, let us assume that we were asked in bewilderment what deification is, and we will answer на это как только позволяют отмеренные нам от Господа силы. O most incomparable one, having heard that divine energy deifies and spiritual grace idolizes, do not bother, do not be curious about why it is this, why this, why not another - although without it it is not given to you, according to the saints who spoke about it, to be established in God - but stick to the deeds through which you can receive it, for then, to the extent of your abilities, you will know it: only one who has experienced it knows the energies of the Spirit, according to Basil the Great 501. He who seeks knowledge before deeds, if he believes what he has experienced, will perceive a certain semblance of truth, but reflecting on himself, loses this image, and then, supposedly having succeeded in his search, he is filled with great pride and becomes arrogant, mocking experienced men as lost. So, don’t bother, but follow the experienced ones, moreover, in practice, and if not, then at least in words, being content with likening expressions; for deification is higher than names. After all, we, too, although we wrote a lot about hesychia, prompted either by the admonitions of the fathers or by the requests of the brethren, never dared to write about deification; only now, since there is a need to speak, let us say something pious about the Lord’s grace, although we are powerless to depict it: even expressed, it remains inexpressible, and its name, according to the father’s word, is known only to those who have received it as a good inheritance. 33. So, natural divinity, the beginning of deification, from where, as from an unparticipated cause, it is given to the deified to be deified, the highest, most transcendental, most divine bliss in itself is invisible to either the senses, or the mind, or connected with the body, or the incorporeal, even if any of them, having been deified, descends from itself to greater perfection; for according to our faith it can be visible and has become visible only in the mind and body that have achieved hypostatic unity, although not in proportion to their own nature. Only they “through the presence of the All-Anointed One” 502 were deified and received energy equal to the deifying essence 503 , containing and revealing it through themselves entirely without a trace; for, according to the apostle, “in Christ dwells bodily all the fullness of the Godhead” (Col. 2:9). It is not without reason that some of the saints, after the coming of God in the flesh, saw this light like an endless sea, strangely pouring out from the one Sun 504, that is, from the worshiped body, like the apostles on the mountain. This is how the “firstborn” (1 Cor. 15:20, 23) of our human mixture is deified. The deification of deified angels and men is not the super-existent essence of God, but the energy of the super-existent divine essence, and this energy resides in the deified not like art in the creation of art - so in the works of the Creator there is a productive force, appearing or expressing itself in everything - but “like art in the one who owns it,” according to the great Basil 505. Therefore, the saints are instruments of the Holy Spirit, having received the same energy as Him; and ready proof of this is the gifts of healings, the operation of miraculous powers, foreknowledge, irrefutable wisdom, which the Lord called “the Spirit of your Father” (Matthew 10:20), and not only, but also the sanctifying transmission of the Spirit, which from the saints through the saints is given to those who are sanctified through them: “I will take from the Spirit that is on you and put it on them" (Num. 11:17), God said to Moses, and: "When Paul laid hands on the twelve Ephesians, the Holy Spirit descended on them and they immediately began to speak in tongues and prophesy" (Acts 19:6). So, when we consider the own dignity of the Spirit, we see that He is together with the Father and the Son; when we mean grace acting upon His partakers, we say that the Spirit abides in us, “poured out upon us, not created; given to us, not created; graciously bestowed, not erected” 506, abiding even in the imperfect, to say again according to Basil the Great, like a certain predisposition “due to the instability of their consciousness”, and in the perfect - as an acquired, in others a rooted state, and moreover; for “as the power of vision is in a healthy eye, so is the energy of the Spirit in a purified soul” 507. 34. So, the deifying gift of the Spirit is not the super-existent essence of God, but the deifying energy of the super-existent divine essence, and not even all of it, although it is indivisible in itself. For what created thing is capable of containing all the boundless power of the Spirit, except for the One conceived in the virgin womb at the descent of the Holy Spirit and under the cover of the power of the Most High (Luke 1:35)? That is why He contained “all the fullness of the Godhead” (Col. 2:9); “but we have received everything from His fullness” (John 1:16). And here is God’s essence - everywhere, for, as the Scripture says, “The Spirit fills... everything” (Wis. 1:7) in its essence; everywhere is deification, ineffably inherent in this essence and inseparable from it as its natural power. But just as fire is invisible if there is no matter or sensory perception of its luminous energy, so deification is invisible if there is no matter receptive to the manifestation of the Divine; when it receives suitable matter that remains in an unclouded state, and such is every purified rational nature, not burdened with the veil of manifold evil, then deification is contemplated as spiritual light, and, more accurately, makes those deified into spiritual light. For it is said: “The reward for virtue is to become God and be illuminated by the purest light, becoming the son of the day, which is not interrupted by darkness, for it is produced by another sun, shining with true light, which, having once illuminated us, no longer hides in the west, but, investing everything with its luminous power, constantly and unfailingly introduces light into the worthy, making the very participants of this light new suns" 508. In the next century, “the righteous will shine like the sun” (Matthew 13:43). What sun? Of course, the one that will appear then and is now worthy. 35. Is it not clear that they acquire the very energy of the Sun of Righteousness? It is not for nothing that various divine signs and the transmission of the Holy Spirit are performed through them. “For,” we read, “just as this near-earth air, raised by the force of the wind, becomes light-like under the influence of the transparent purity of the ether, so the human mind, having rejected the clouded and darkened life here, having become light-like thanks to the miraculous power of the spirit and having merged with the true and sublime purity, somehow becomes transparent and itself, penetrated by its rays, becomes light according to the promise Lord, who declared that the saints would shine like the sun" 509. This, we see, happens on earth with a mirror or water: having received a ray of sunlight, they send out another ray from themselves. If we leave earthly darkness, then either we will rise up and become light-like, approaching the true light of Christ, or the true light, shining in the darkness, will descend on us and we will become light, as the Lord tells the disciples (Matthew 5:14). Thus, the deifying gift of the Spirit is an ineffable light and makes those enriched by it with divine light, not only filling them with eternal light, but also giving them the grace of knowledge and a God-worthy life. So Paul, according to the divine Maxim, no longer lived a created life, but the eternal life of the One who came into being (Gal. 2:20) 510; So the prophets contemplated with their own eyes what had never happened; This is how everyone saw God who looked at Him not through something alien, but through a natural symbol - and the non-natural symbol of God I call that which in itself is a symbol, is seen or heard by the senses as such and acts through the air, whereas if the eye, seeing something, sees not as an eye, but as if opened by the action of the Spirit, it sees God not in a foreign symbol, which is why we then talk about the “supersensible feeling." 36. A sign of the divine light is the pacification of evil pleasures and passions arising in the soul, calm and ordering of thoughts, peace and joy of the spirit, contempt for human glory, humility in union with unspeakable joy, hatred of the worldly, love of the heavenly, or rather, the One God of heaven; finally, if at the same time we not only obscure, but even gouge out the eyes of the contemplator, he will see the light no less clearly. How can we believe the one who says that we see light through the air and, having to do only with bodily sensations, is not at all useful to the rational soul? The contemplator, whose mind tells him that he sees not with feeling as such, thinks that he sees with his mind; but by examining and understanding, he discovers that the mind is inactive in front of the light; This is what we call “understanding above the mind,” wanting to say that the owner of the mind and feelings sees, but sees above both of them. At the same time, do not conclude, having heard the advice of the great Dionysius from the letter to Timothy about “giving up the senses and mental energies and striving towards the truly Existent” 511 that a person cannot then understand or see - he does not suffer deprivation of these abilities, except from amazement - but understand that mental actions remain infinitely behind the unifying light and luminiferous energy. This is clearly shown by the head and foundation of the Church Peter: at that hour of holy Pentecost, when he was rewarded with the ineffable and divine unity, he saw the apostles enlightened with him, and noticed those gathered around, and heard those speaking to him, and remembered the time of day: “Now,” he said, “it is the third hour of the day” 512. The darkening of the human mind in a frenzy under the influence of the energy of the Holy Spirit would be contrary to the promise of God's coming. In fact, the one who has accepted God into himself does not become reckless, but is filled with a certain meaning that brings him closer to the one who is maddened by the visitation of the spirit of wisdom; Divine light is also God’s wisdom, entering into the deified without separation from God, for through Him, says the saint, “all knowledge is revealed and God is truly known by the soul He loves” 513. But righteousness, holiness, and freedom are also revealed. Hear Paul: “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Cor. 3:17); and again: “Who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness, sanctification and deliverance” (1 Cor. 1:30). Hear Basil the Great: “Moved by the Holy Spirit into eternal movement, he became a holy living being; and the man in whom the Spirit dwelt acquired the dignity of a prophet, an apostle, an angel of God, having previously been earth and dust” 514. Hear John Chrysostom: “The lips through which God speaks are the mouth of God; for just as these lips are the mouth of our soul, although the soul has no lips, so the lips of the prophets are the mouth of God.” Hear the Lord who seals this with His seal; Having said: “I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which all who oppose you will not be able to contradict or withstand” (Luke 21:15), He added: “For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you” (Matthew 10:20). 37. This wisdom cannot be used for evil. What am I saying – use it? It cannot be acquired even in the slightest degree without first being purified by deeds, and it is not for nothing that the wise Solomon said that “wisdom will not enter into an evil soul and will not dwell in a body subject to sin” (Wisdom 1:4), for even if it can first, when we regularly perform the initial virtues, dwell in us, then as soon as we change for the worse, it will disappear. “The Holy Spirit of teaching will depart from foolish thoughts,” according to the same Solomon (Wis. 1:5). A person of an evil disposition will acquire learned wisdom from knowledge of nature and from training, and will use it in accordance with his disposition, just as he uses nature. And this wisdom is as inferior to spiritual wisdom as nature is to the spirit. So where are those who say that we acquire prophetic and apostolic wisdom through teaching? 38. And that spiritual wisdom is also given through light, hear from two saints who say at the same time: “The light that shone upon blessed Paul on the road to Damascus” (Acts 9:3), thanks to which he ascended to the third heaven and heard the unspeakable mysteries, was not the enlightenment of some thoughts and knowledge, but the hypostatic shining of the good Spirit in his soul; unable to bear the abundant brightness of this radiance, the bodily eyes became blind; but through him all knowledge is revealed and God is truly known by a soul worthy and beloved by Him” 515. This light is eternal life, entering into the deified and inseparable from God. So Paul said: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2:20). So Maximus says about Paul that he “lived the divine and eternal life of the One who has come into being” 516. So Basil the Great said: “Life, brought forth by the Spirit from itself into the hypostasis of another, is not separated from it, but just as the warmth of fire is inherent in it and is transferred to water or something else of this kind, so the Spirit preserves life in Itself and lives in a God-worthy manner in that which participates in Him, having acquired divine and heavenly life.”517 This is the life that the saint in another place called “spiritual and eternal movement,” saying that the one who receives communion becomes a saint, “having previously been earth and dust” 518. Where are those who say that God’s idolizing grace is created and that apart from His super-essence there is nothing eternal? 39. But, someone will object, does the saint here call only eternal life, and not light? However, whoever calls the radiance eternal and the visible glory eternal, of course also calls the light, to which only the saints participate, eternal. That the great Vasily knows the intelligent pre-mundane and supra-mundane light, to which the worthy partake, you will clearly see if you pick up his “Six Days”. “We think,” he says there, “that if only something existed before the dispensation of this sensory and perishable world, it would clearly be in the light, for neither the angelic dignities, nor all the heavenly armies, nor in general any named or unnamed rational natures and serving spirits were in darkness”; why the saint prays there for us, saying: “Father of true light, who adorned the day with heavenly light, who illuminated the night with sparkles of fire, who prepared the peace of the future century in intelligent and unfading light, enlighten our hearts with the knowledge of the truth” 519. 40. That this intelligent, worldly and unfading light is God Himself, Gregory, the christened Theologian, definitely said: “God, who wished to organize this world, Himself is the light for His eternal creatures, and nothing else; for what need is there of any other light for those who have the greatest?” 520 This light is a divine and immaterial fire that enlightens souls. He, to use the words of Saint Basil again, acted in the apostles when they spoke with tongues of fire (Acts 2:3-4); and he, having illuminated Paul, darkened his visual sense (Acts 9:8), but enlightened his heart's eyes, because bodily vision cannot accommodate the power of such light. Fire appeared to Moses in a bush (Ex. 3:2); he, in the form of a chariot, snatched Elijah from the earth (2 Kings 2:2); Seeking his energy, blessed David exclaimed: “Try me, O Lord, and tempt me, cleanse with fire my bowels and my heart” (Ps. 25:2). This fire kindled the hearts of Cleopas and his companion when the Lord spoke to them after the resurrection from the dead (Luke 24:34). Both angels and serving spirits are involved in this fire, as the Scripture says: “He who creates a fiery flame with His angels and His servants” (Ps. 103:4). This fire, burning the beam in the eye, restores the purity of the mind, so that, having regained his natural vigilance, he does not look at the speck in his brother’s eye, but tirelessly comprehends the wonders of God, according to the one who said: “Open my eyes and I will comprehend the wonders of Your law” (Ps. 119:18). This fire is the expeller of demons, the destroyer of all evil, the mortifier of sin, the power of resurrection and the energy of immortality, the enlightenment of pure souls and the arrangement of rational forces. Let us pray that this light will reach us too, and that as we walk forever in it (Eph. 5:8), we will never stumble, even for a brief moment. 41. Finally, the theologian Chrysostom, teaching that there is a light that “shines in the dawn” of the merciful 521, says that it is “not this sensory light, but another, much more beautiful, which shows us heaven and angels and royal dwellings; for if you are worthy of this light and see it, then you will turn away and go away from Gehenna: there torment and sorrow disappear, there is great joy, peace and love, there is eternal life, ineffable glory and indescribable beauty - let us readily endure everything in order to acquire the clothing of the Kingdom of Heaven and this ineffable glory.” However, now, turning our word to a different beginning, let us return to Basil the Great, in accordance with whose speeches we will analyze and refute the fundamental principles and premises of the reasoning of our vanity, from which he hopes to deduce something against us and against the truth. Part 2. TRIADS III. A list of absurdities arising from the premises of the philosopher Varlaam.. The second word, against the second 1. One of the beginners asked whether a person could maintain himself in the above state. On behalf of the great Macarius, Simeon, a skillful and at the same time deep, sweet-voiced and divinely inspired Metaphrast, answers the question: “Grace always accompanies a person and, like something natural and lasting, is embedded in the person in whom it lives; being one, she directs everything in a variety of ways, as she wishes, for human benefit, and her light sometimes shines more, sometimes decreases, although the lamp burns unquenchable; and when it flares up brighter, then a person experiences, as it were, a greater intoxication of God’s love” 522. And in the seventy-fourth chapter he again says: the soul, having regained the purity of its nature, “observes the glory of the true light with clear and unclouded eyes”; and although such people “are clothed in heavy flesh, yet their hope rests unshakably thanks to the pledge of the Spirit, and they have not the slightest doubt that they will reign with Christ and enter into the abundance and abundance of the Spirit, for from here they are admired for the future age, seeing its beauties and wonders: just as the bodily eye, when it does not suffer or is not sick, boldly looks at the rays of the sun, so and they, having a bright and purified mind, always contemplate the unsearchable radiance of the Lord” 523. And again: “Such a shining of the Spirit is not simply some kind of revelation of thoughts and the grace of enlightenment, as has been said, but a stable and constant shining of the hypostatic light in souls. The words “Out of darkness shall shine the light that has shone in our hearts for the illumination of the knowledge of Christ’s glory” (2 Cor. 4:6) and “Enlighten my eyes, that I may never sleep into death” (Ps. 12:4), that is, let the soul not be darkened after the flesh is allowed to be covered with the cover of sinful death, as well as “Open my eyes, that I may perceive the wonders of Thy law” ( Ps.119:18) and “Send forth Thy light and Thy truth, that they may guide me and lead me to Thy Holy Mountain and into Thy mansions” (Ps.42:3) and, of course, “The light of Thy countenance is imprinted on us, O Lord” (Ps.4:6) - they all show the same sequence of meaning” 524. And he says: “The light that shone upon blessed Paul on the way to Damascus, thanks to which he ascended to the third heaven and heard the ineffable mysteries, was not the enlightenment of thoughts and knowledge only, but the hypostatic shining of the good Spirit in his soul; unable to bear the abundant brightness of that radiance, the bodily eyes became blind; but through this all knowledge is revealed and God is truly known by a soul worthy and beloved by Him” 525. 2. That's the way it is; and it is not surprising if the saints, seeking interpretative expressions and applying in their teachings to the measure of understanding of the listeners, interpret those contemplations in a variety of ways. The divine and faithful interpreter Simeon, initiated into the mysteries by those who have well experienced the mysterious and sanctifying actions of the Spirit, again, as if from him, says: “Hearing the word about the Kingdom and shedding tears, let us not remain either with our tears, or with our hearing, supposedly having heard enough, or with our eyes, supposedly having examined enough, and let us not consider that we have reached a satisfactory state; for other ears and other eyes and another cry, as well as another mind and another soul, namely the divine and heavenly Spirit himself, hears and groans, prays and knows, and truly does the will of God 526; and whoever has reached the pinnacle of virtue and in whose heart the intellectual light has effectively shone, this becomes obvious and clear to him. For “solid food,” says Blessed Paul, “is for those who are perfect, for those who have exercised their senses by experience in distinguishing between good and evil” (Heb. 5:14); and the divine Peter also says: “And you who have the prophetic word do well to hold fast to it, shining like a lamp in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts” (2 Peter 1:19).” 3. But Barlaam, considering all this empty and presenting it as supposedly Messalian teaching, attributes everything together to the head of the Messalians, Blachernitus, and, declaring wicked everyone who calls anything other than the divine essence eternal, he recklessly gives this Blachernitus the contemplation of God’s eternal glory. In fact, does he ever say that the eternal glory of God is visible, and not His essence? If Blachernitus had said this, we would have absolved him of all guilt as a person who had returned to piety, because Stephen also saw the heavenly glory of God. After all, what need would there be for the heavens to open if the beholder was not to see the heavenly glory? He saw her with his eyes: “When he looked,” the Scripture says, “he saw” (Acts 7:55–56). But at the same time he contemplated it supersensibly, for what power of the eyes could penetrate beyond the boundaries of heaven itself? Wasn’t Gregory the Theologian himself a Blachernitus of Trebizond, who said that angels are “contemplatives of eternal glory”? 527 And I think that you will easily declare the heavenly angels as lost if you dared to condemn on an equal basis with heretics those who have chosen an angelic life on earth, praise the one-origin Trinity for the rays of its natural co-eternal glory and long to see its inexpressible radiance; Shouldn't we also classify them among the Messalians? And those who pray for illumination by the essential ray of God and for the acquisition of the gift of bright illumination of what radiance and what illumination will we call seekers? After all, knowledge, which you alone consider to be the light of God, is not the essential divine illumination. And those who see the brilliance of Christ’s essential splendor hidden in the fleshly shell, what brilliance do you think they see? Non-sensual light is God's essential beauty. And how is the essential light of the Most High Trinity created? What do you want, man, by attributing such things to the Messalians and contradicting so many and such great saints? Should Messalians be declared Orthodox or Orthodox Messalians and impious? After all, both will come out of your words. To what rank shall we classify you then? However, we’ll leave this for now: everything will become clear very soon. 4. “The reasoning of Blachernitus, which turns out to be contrary to almost the most undoubted teachings of the Church,” he says, “in short, are as follows: firstly, when it is generally accepted and firmly established that the essence of God, who created the universe, is alone beginningless and infinite, and outside of it everything is created nature, so that between the essence of God and creation there is no other reality, Blachernitus dared to put something in between.” O ignorance, if he thinks that such is the generally accepted and firmly established dogma of the Church! O madness, if he hoped to mislead with his speeches anyone with intelligence, and this is when the great Dionysius speaks in detail about the fact that “beginningless and incorporeal” 528 also the illumination produced by God in the supermundane forces, in accordance with which Gregory the Theologian calls the glory of God visible by the angels “eternal” 529. But having heard it out of nowhere, the newly minted theologian says that “the essence of God alone is beginningless and infinite, and besides it, everything of created nature,” that is, created things, had a beginning and once did not exist. But what is with the essence, O most blessed one, is of course apart from the essence, since it is with the essence. And if the Father is from eternity, and his ungeneracy is beginningless, and the only thing without beginning, in your opinion, is the divine essence, then ungeneracy itself turns out to be the essence of God, which is the essence of the heretical teachings of Eunomius. However, the Son’s begetting is also either not without beginning and there was a time when He did not possess it, and there will be a time when He ceases to possess it, as Sabellius would say, or His begetting is without beginning and then it is His essence, since only the essence is supposedly without beginning, and that means the Son is not of the same essence as the Father, but directly opposite. The same reasoning can be repeated about the Holy Spirit, and just as the philosopher just found himself together with those who deny the divinity of the Son, so here he will find himself together with the Doukhobors. Here it is, the clear and unanimous teaching of the Church! All kinds of heresies emanate from him as if from some evil source. No, God's essence is not the only thing without beginning; everything that is defined under it is also without beginning, like hypostases, their relationships, their distinctions, and in general all expressions of the super-essential divine generation; This is generally accepted, but not that. And it is so generally accepted that after the appearance of God in the flesh, no one, even among those who fell into the worst heresies, dared to declare what the philosopher has now introduced, calling the essence of God the only one without beginning - namely, that all hypostases and everything hypostatic in the Most High Trinity are created. 5. I would be happy to ask the one who calls the divine essence the only one without beginning, and everything besides it is created nature, whether he considers it omnipotent? That is, I want to say, does she have a cognizing, foreknowing, creative, protective, providential, deifying power and generally everything like that or not? Because if not, then this single beginningless entity is not God at all. And if there is, then either she acquired these powers sometime later, which means there was a time when she was not perfect, that is, she was not God, or she had these powers from eternity, and that means not only the divine essence is beginningless, but also each of these powers. But only one essence is without beginning, that of God; the forces within it have no essence; everything is necessarily always inherent in the divine essence, as if to say in a distant resemblance, the powers of sensory perception - the so-called “general feeling” of the soul. This is the clear, firm and generally accepted teaching of the Church, but not that - far from it. For just as only one essence is beginningless, the essence of God, and all essences besides it are of created nature, since they arose outside the essence that is the only one without beginning and the only one capable of creating other essences, so the only providential power is without beginning, divine, and everything that is besides it is created nature; and the same in relation to all other natural divine powers. In a word, the divine essence is not the only beginningless, besides which everything is supposedly of created nature. 6. My reasoning, which follows the self-perfect and predetermined nature of everything from infinity, intends to clarify, moreover, that not only the forces, which the holy fathers often call “natural energies,” are without beginning, but also the acts of God, briefly showing the incredulous that the fathers say this in the most excellent way. What, really? Wasn’t a providential act required even before creation, so that every created being would emerge from non-existence in its own time? Wasn’t it also necessary to have knowledge worthy of God, so that, having first known, one could then choose, although not in time? What about divine foreknowledge? Did it ever begin? And can anyone imagine the beginning of this self-contemplative theory, and was there a time when God moved towards contemplation of Himself? No way. One providence is clearly without beginning - God's, for it is the act of God, and the providences besides it are of created nature; but providence is not the essence of God; therefore, the essence of God is not the only anarchy. And the only foreknowledge that is without beginning and uncreated is divine; besides him, every foreknowledge inherent in us by nature had a created beginning. And one will is without beginning - God's, and wills besides it had a beginning; but even those who called the Word of God the son of will did not dare to call the will the divine essence 530. As for predestination, the name itself shows that it was before the creatures; If anyone wishes not to consider him pre-eternal, the Apostle Paul will reprove him with the words: how “God predestined the age before” (1 Cor. 2:7). 7. There is no doubt, however, that foreknowledge, will, providence, self-contemplation and all similar acts of God are beginningless and eternal; but if contemplation, providence and foreknowledge, then predestination and will are the beginningless acts of God, and therefore virtue, because in all of the above there is virtue, and existence, because existence precedes not only essence, but also everything that exists, being primary. Then, aren’t will and predestination a virtue? Maximus, who knows a lot about the divine, says that “existence and life and holiness and virtue are the acts of God, not done in time” 531; and so that no one would think that they exist in the century, although not in time, he continues: “There has never been a time when there was no virtue, goodness, holiness and immortality” 532. Again, so that no one would think that he is calling the human thing without beginning, the saint adds that “what is done exists and is called by the sacrament of what is not done; for all life and immortality, holiness and virtue,” that is, inherent in us, “the Creator is God.” This is what it says in the fiftieth chapter of the first “Hundred”; and there, in the forty-eighth chapter, Maximus says that “in themselves they are essentially contemplated with God” and they allow communion with themselves, and already communing beings and actions performed in time participate in them as beginningless acts: “Non-existence is in no way older than virtue or any other of the things said, for they eternally have God as the only Parent of their existence.” And so that it would not seem to anyone that we are talking about a super-essence, to which we ascend with reason after renouncing everything, the saint immediately wrote in the forty-ninth chapter that “God is exalted to endless infinities above those who allow themselves to be communed,” 533 that is, above the unoriginate, which means uncreated goodness, holiness, and virtue. Neither uncreated goodness, nor eternal glory, nor life and the like will therefore be the directly super-existent essence of God. And above all this God rises as the Cause. We call Him life, good, and the like only by the revealing energies and powers of His super-essence, since, according to Basil the Great, the certification of every essence is the energy inherent in its nature, raising the mind to that nature 534, and according to the divine Gregory of Nyssa and all other fathers, “natural energy is a force that reveals every essence, which only the non-existent is deprived of, because the existing, participating in that or another essence, in any case, it participates in nature and the power that reveals it.” But as the Entirely Existing One in each of the God-worthy energies, we name Him from each of them, from which it is also clear that He is exalted above all. For how, in the presence of many God-worthy energies, would the whole of God abide completely inseparably in each of them, how would He be entirely contemplated in each and how would He be named through them in view of the supernatural nature of His indivisible simplicity, if He did not stand above them all? 8. And other energies of God had a beginning and an end, as all the saints again testify to. For if a philosopher, who thinks that he knows everything exactly, considers everything that has a beginning to be the same created (which is why, having called the divine essence the only one without beginning, he adds by way of opposition that “besides it, everything has a nature that has become”) - if, I say, he considers everything that has a beginning to be the same created, then we know that all divine energies are uncreated, although not all are without beginning. In fact, if not the creative power, then its implementation, that is, the energy directed at what was created, had a beginning and an end, and this was shown by Moses, who said: “God rested from all the works that He began to do” (Gen. 2:3). How can one not see that His super-essence is something other than its energies? Может быть ты скажешь, что ей тождественны безначальные энергии? But some of them had an end, if not a beginning, as the great Basil said, for example, about divine foreknowledge 535. This means that God’s super-existent essence is not identical even to beginningless energies, from which it is again clear that it is not just super-exalted above all any energies, but “to infinite infinity,” according to the great Divine Maxim. 9 . Blessed Kirill calls it God-worthy energy and strength that God is present everywhere and contains everything. Nothing can contain him. In itself, omnipresence, therefore, is not the divine nature, just as our nature is not simply being somewhere, for how can something that is not an essence at all be a human essence? It is clear that although, due to the indivisibility of His essence, God is completely revealed in every energy, the essence and energy in Him are by no means the same. The eloquent John calls the essential energy of God that He is nowhere, not because of non-existence, but because of the elevation above place, times and nature 536. You, however, not knowing any difference between essence and energy, will probably call elusiveness not something in essence, but the essence of God. The great Basil says: “Isn’t it ridiculous to call the creative ability an essence, the providential ability - again an essence, the foreknowing ability - and in general to consider all energy an essence?” 537. And the divine Maxim: “Good and everything embraced by the meaning of goodness and in general all life, immortality and everything essentially contemplated with God are the acts of God, moreover, not created in time, for non-existence is never older than virtue or anything else said, although what is involved in them began to be consistent with them in time” 538. So, nothing like this is the essence of God - neither uncreated goodness, nor beginningless and eternal life; for all such things are not in God, but with God. 10. Also, all the holy fathers together testify that for the uncreated Trinity it is impossible to find a name that reveals Her nature, but all Her names are the names of Her energies. For even "deity" expresses energy, meaning either running, or contemplation, or fire, or self-deification 539; the supra-nominal is not the same as the named, therefore the essence and energy of God are not the same. And so, if the deity of God manifests the actual energy of God, and all energy, in your opinion, is created, then in your opinion, the deity of God is also created. However, the deity is not only uncreated, but also without beginning, for He who knew everything before the emergence of existing things did not begin to contemplate existing things sometime in time; although the super-nameable essence of God still exceeds this energy as much as such an Actor is Action, and the Super-nameable One is named in this way. And such truths do not in the least interfere with honoring the One God and the one deity, just as it does not interfere with considering the Sun and its light one, if we call its ray “sun”. Do you see how exactly we agree with the saints? 11. And you, who call created things participatory and not only deeds, but also all the forces and energies of God as having a beginning and an end in time, declaring - O insanity and unafraid of all daring madness! - the wicked and excommunicating and anathematizing the saints who teach that God in His essence is beyond even uncreated energies, since He rises in it above all positing and negation - you, I say, who affirm and invent such things, can you prove that you are not one of the eternal evil-teachers, especially since you call not only all the actions and all the deeds of God created, but also His powers self-superexistent nature? Meanwhile, the very name “essence” is a designation of one of the mentioned powers in God. Dionysius of the Areopagus says: “If we call the super-existent hiddenness God, life, essence, light, then we mean by this nothing more than the powers emanating from it to us, deifying, or fulfilling, or life-giving, or bestowing wisdom” 540. When, therefore, you call the divine essence the only one without beginning, you force us to think that only God’s power, the existent, is without beginning, while all others are subtemporal. Why is God's existential power without beginning, and the life-giving power will have a temporary beginning, and the same - generative and wise? Either all divine power is beginningless, or none! By naming and slipping uncreatedness into only one of them, you throw the others out of uncreatedness; but by declaring everything created, you throw away that one with everyone else. Truly, such untruth contradicts itself and undermines itself; and it serves her right to be a refutation and denigration of herself, to speak out against herself and to refute herself through herself. 12. He will say that by “essence” he means a beginning that in a unique and unifying way absorbs into itself all those forces? But, firstly, he should be called God; for we received this name for him from the Church, and talking with Moses, God said not “I am the essence”, but “I am the essence” (Ex. 3:14), not from the essence of the Existing, but from the Existence the essence: the Existence embraced in himself all being 541. Then, even if instead of “essence” he would have used the word “God,” he should have added “by nature,” since we are talking about grace and “gods by grace,” whom the saints also call “by grace, without beginning and uncreated” 542 . So he should have said, “One by nature, beginningless God.” And he, replacing this with “God” and discarding “by nature,” expressed himself in such a way as to deceive those listening to him as much as possible, calling the only beginningless thing not at all that which unites and precedes everything; After all, if he called it beginningless, why would he try to prove that the forces that are natural to him are created? 13. And that this man considers the powers of God to be created, hear from his own clear words. Having cited the great Dionysius, who calls “self-existence, self-life and self-divinity, which can be shared with themselves, the providential powers emanating from the God of the unparticipated, to which, in their own way, being associated, the existing appears, and is called existing, living and divine, which is why it is said that their primary founder is Good” 543, he jumps from here to the conclusion: “Consequently, what has been said self-deity and so on, which the great theologian clearly calls powers, do not exist forever, but they have a Founder, the Good One”; and again: “It is said about the existence of a certain boss and deity, above which the Beginning of everything is exalted, but in no way is it said about their eternity, for they have as their founder the Author of everything; and again: “The unparticipated glory of God is eternal and not another of His essence, but the participated glory is another of the divine essence and is not eternal, for it also has a hypostasis, a universal Cause.” That it is not true that the eternal divine glory is a divine non-participating essence was shown by the saint who called the angels contemplators of eternal glory, 544, as I said above, which at the same time testifies to the communion of the eternal divine glory: after all, what is contemplated in God is in one way or another participated. And the great Dionysius: “Divine minds,” he says, “move in a circular motion, uniting with the beginningless and endless radiances of the Beautiful and the Good” 545. How can these beginningless and endless radiances not be another incomprehensible divine essence, different, although not separate from it? Firstly, the essence is one, and those radiances are multiple, sent according to the properties of those who partake and increase to the extent of their perceiving ability, hence the “dispensation of the Holy Spirit” according to Paul (Heb. 2:4); and then, no one will argue that the emanations of that super-existent essence are its energies or energy, and that they are participable, and that one is not participatory. 14. Moreover, all unity is through touch, sensual in sensual, intelligent in intelligent; since there is unity with those radiances, then touch is possible, namely mental, or rather spiritual. And the essence of God is inviolable in itself. Also: is unity with the radiances other than a vision? This means that those radiances are visible to those worthy, but the divine essence is completely invisible; beginningless and endless radiances are, of course, beginningless and endless light. There is, therefore, an eternal light, another essence of God, not an essence in itself - not at all - but the energy of His superessence. Since this light is beginningless and infinite, it is neither sensory nor intelligible in the proper sense, but spiritual and divine, exceedingly removed from all created things; and what is neither sensible nor intelligible is subject to either sensation as sensation or intellectual power in itself. So, not only what she saw, but also the power that sees the spiritual light is neither sensation nor understanding, but a certain spiritual power, superiorly removed from all created cognitive powers and introduced by grace into pure rational natures. 15. That is why Gregory the Great Theologian called the good angels not just “contemplatives of eternal glory,” but “in eternity,” thereby showing that angels contemplate God’s eternal glory not with created, natural and mental power, but with eternal, spiritual and divine power, “not in order,” he says, “for God to be glorified, for there is nothing to add to the fullness of Him who gives good to everything else, but so that the benefit of the first natures after God does not cease” 546. Do you see that they do not have eternal contemplation of eternal glory by nature, but, blessed by the eternal divine nature, they receive both that power and contemplation like saints? “For what was moved by the Holy Spirit into eternal movement became living and holy,” according to Basil the Great, “and the person in whom the Spirit dwelt acquired the dignity of a prophet, an apostle, an angel of God, having previously been earth and dust” 547. Those blessed with such power are themselves called seers; so that light is both according to the mind and above the mind. Moreover, they are called seeing themselves; for this light is introspective, elusive to the created cognitive power, but visible to those worthy. 16. That is why the great Dionysius said: “Minds move in a circle, uniting with the beginningless and endless radiances” 548. And then you need to know that he, always the most precise theologian, did not simply say that minds, uniting with the beginningless insights, move in a circular motion, but that they are “called” moving, meaning, as I think, that this movement is not natural for them, even though they, having never experienced any defilement, initially co-inherit grace. However, that the highest light and the power that sees it are not inherent in the supermundane angels by nature, one can, perhaps, receive the most reliable evidence from their worst enemy: in fact, the demonic race that fell away from them is not deprived of anything natural, but it is deprived of light and the power that sees it; This means that neither this light nor its vision is natural. And the demonic race is also not devoid of thinking: demons are minds, they have not been stripped of existence, and they say: “I know who You are: the Holy One of God,” and “He does not allow them to say that they have learned that He is the Christ” (Mark 1:24, 34; Luke 4:41). That’s why the theologian said: “You don’t believe in deity? Even demons believe" 549. And if they know the deity, then it is inevitable for them to also know that it is nothing created. 17. So, that light is not knowledge, whether it comes by affirmation or by negation. And of course, every bad angel has a mind, but the Assyrian according to the prophet (Is. 10:12-14), uses knowledge for evil, but it is impossible to use divine light for evil; he immediately flies away from the one who tends to evil, leaving everyone who consented to evil deprived of God. So that light and illumination are not intelligibility, except to call them so by homonymy, more for the sake of the mind that is blessed by it, as well as “divinity” - for the sake of the One who acts with the energies of ineffable grace: for it is god-creating energy, in no way alienating from the active Spirit, and the enlightened one begins to exist through his purity and to the extent of enlightenment itself, which is why among the fathers it is also called purity, whereas light and its illumination are beginningless. And most of all this is revealed in a person who is angelically enlightened and has perfected deification; such, according to the word of the great in the divine Maxim, contemplating the light of the unmanifested and ineffable glory, and he himself, together with the highest powers, becomes a recipient of blissful purity. 18. If we investigate the reason why this new speaker rigged the creation of the idolizing gift of the Spirit, or rather all the powers of God, then besides the evil source of heresies we have exposed above 550 we will not find any other reason, except for the expression of the great Dionysius that God created 551 these powers; but it indicates only their existence, and not in any way the way of existence, and therefore is predicable about both created and uncreated things that exist from God. Basil the Great applied this expression to the Son, saying: “He who gave birth to the abysses of water ( Job 38:28 ) did not he equally create those abysses and his own Son?” 552; and about the Holy Spirit: “Do not consider the Spirit of the mouth of God” (Ps. 33:6) to be something external and created, but believe that He was created 553 from God" 554; and again: “The specter of His hypostatic peculiarity is that He is known through the Son and created from the Father" 555. Gregory the Theologian also often calls “created” pre-eternal birth of the Son. Because of such names, of course, you will instantly prove to us the createdness of both the Son and the Spirit, since you declared the divine powers to be created on the basis that they have a founder, a universal cause, without even noticing that Dionysius there designated these powers as non-existent by superiority; Having spoken about the providential forces emanating from the unparticipated God, he added: “... by joining with which, existing things are called existing, although those powers, of course, are located above existing things” 557. And Maximus, who is wise in the divine, calling what is participated as begun, sees what is participated as beginningless 558 . 19. So, do you classify the forces emanating from the super-existent hiddenness - deifying, existential, wise - as those who partake or among those who partake? But if you join, you will have to look for other forces similar to them, to which they join. Isn’t it clear that those forces are necessarily from among those who participate, and not from those who participate? Then, if that deifying force needs yet another deifying force, thus turning out to be participatory and not participatory, the other, in turn, will need a third, that again a new one, and ad infinitum. So, the deifying power is participatory, but not participatory. Also, if they partake of God, then they partake of either His essence or power or energy. But they will not partake of strength and energy: after all, according to your wisdom, they also partake of created things; This means that they will partake of the essence of God, which is absurd. Moreover, those very powers, even if they are partakers and not partakers, what else will they partake of if not the super-existent essence of God? After all, not again to other similar forces? Two absurdities will emerge: the communion of the essence of God and the transformation of forces into essences, and not just into essence, but into the essence of God: power passes into energy and from energy comes completeness, and the essence is immediately participable, and from the same essence in communion the communed are obtained. Do you see what an absurdity and how he who relates those powers, like him, to the participatory and created is truly a polytheist, for he declares the essence of God not one, but multiple and different? 20. But we, worshiping the one and only omnipotent God, know, in agreement with the saints, the divine powers that are shared and all that never began, not by action, but by existence, although not independent; participatory, according to the word of the great Dionysius 559, as pre-existing in God. The participatory, according to the divine Maxim, never began to be and “non-existence is not older than it,” but eternally exists from the eternally existing God, eternally remaining without separation with Him and existing in Him coeternally with Him 560. We will not be frightened by the sophisms of your vain art, these two-theisms, polytheisms and complex gods that you put up against us and against the saints like some kind of scarecrows - confusing, know this, those who have not come of age, but infants - and you use them to falsely move your plagues onto us, refuted, as has been shown more than once, by your own reasoning and trying, alas, to entice others into your fall, insidiously lead them away from the true teaching, entangling them with verbal tricks. 21. “Since,” he says, “you affirm many things that are eternal and uncreated, inferior and superior, you introduce many gods; since you base all this in God without division, calling one and the same God now visible glory, now invisible essence as having eternally both, in so far you reduce two gods into one composite god.” To whom are such speeches, unbridled reproaches, desperate denunciations, or rather delusional fabrications? Isn’t everything clear to everyone even without our words? You have already heard the saints say that there is much in common, that it is all without beginning, that God rises above everything to infinite infinities, 561 that the visible glory of God is eternal and co-eternal with Him. However, let us briefly outline how all this is said, because we also agree with the saints. 22. Yes, most incomparable, we affirm that God possesses all this, or rather, to say according to the great Dionysius, he prevails over everything and prevails over everything incomprehensibly, collectively and unifyingly, just as the soul uniquely possesses in itself all the providential bodily powers 562. And just as the soul no less possesses the providential powers of the body, if the eyes are taken out and the ears are deaf, in the same way, even before the existence of the world, God possessed the providential powers of the world; and just as the soul is not reduced to providential powers alone, but possesses powers, so is God; and just as the soul is one, simple and uncompounded, in no way composed or molded from the forces existing in it and emanating from it, in the same way God, being not only powerful, but also omnipotent, does not retreat from unity and simplicity because of the forces available to him. Then, studying on yourself, you will be convinced that the soul has many actions that it has and is unharnessed from the body, communicating them to the body when coupled. However, doesn’t the great Dionysius, calling Self-Life, Self-Deification and the like the principles and prototypes of existence, say that God predominates over all of this? 563 How then does that which God predominates have a beginning? And if He offers these as gifts, then how will He give what He does not have? And if there all this is called predestination and God's wills 564, then how are such predestinations and wills not without beginning and not uncreated? Why is it “generally accepted that the essence of God is the only thing without beginning, and everything besides it is of created nature and has a beginning in time”? 565 Which saint ever said this? And if no one, where does it become “generally accepted”? 23. He weaves in here something else from the same generally accepted: “Between the essence of God and the created there is no other essentiality 566.” 567 If, however, here too he calls the essence of God the shared existential power of God, which the great Dionysius calls “self-existent creation” 568, then it should have been said that there is nothing between the essence of God and not just everything that has arisen at all, but only those that have arisen essences, since what lives as alive, sensually, meaningfully or intelligently, is created not by the existential power of God, but by the life-creating one, just as what is made wise is made wise, and what is deified is deified, which is why we think and call the super-existent and unifying Intimacy both God and Wisdom and Life, and not just Essence 569. If he speaks of the most super-existent, and, therefore, incomprehensible Hiddenness, transformed into an impregnable mystery 570, which he declared above to be the only one without beginning, unkindly cutting off from it the forces and energies co-eternal with it, or rather those most worthy of God, those actions that had no beginning - if, therefore, he speaks about it, asserting that between it and what has arisen there is no other essentiality, then the super-existent essence of God as For him, the participatory turns out to be the essentiality of everything that has arisen; He made her like this and by excluding any other, because if not another, then it must necessarily be her. So, everything that has arisen will partake of the incomprehensible essence of God. How can everything that has arisen not participate in essentiality? And where will there be an age, or time, or space, or what is in them, if they do not participate in being, that is, essentiality? This means that each of them, no matter how many essences and non-essences there are, will participate in the essence of God; After all, it is not different, but Itself alone in itself, in your opinion, it becomes the essence of what has arisen; and the most absurd thing is that what partakes of an essence, moreover, a divine one, will not even become an essence. 24. Even if essentiality is the beginning of any kind of existence, then isn’t its Super-Initial higher? And if the beginning certainly surpasses everything that comes from it, then is not essentiality superior to the existing? But if it is higher than the one who partakes of it, and the Superprimitive is higher than it, then how can there not be a participatory essentiality between the partaker and the non-participating Super-essence? Of course, all such principles are nothing more than the meanings (logoi) of existence and prototypes (paradigms) attached to existence, but removed from existence as abiding and pre-existing in the mind of the Creator; everything arose from them. How are they not between the non-participating and the participating? No, if there is something that partakes of God, and the super-existent essence of God is completely non-participating, then it means that there is something between the non-participating essence and the participating one, through which they partake of God. If you remove what is between the non-participating and the participating - oh, what damage! - you cut us off from God, throwing away the connecting link and leaving a great and impenetrable gap between that Foundation and the emergence and structure of what arose. We must, apparently, look for another God, not only self-sufficient, self-acting and deifying himself through himself, but also good, then he will not be satisfied with the simple movement of self-contemplation, not only not in need, but also overflowing with abundance, then, wanting to do good out of his goodness, he will not become weak; not only motionless, but also moving, then he will be present for everyone with his creative and providential outflows and energies; Yes, we just need to look for God who is somehow participatory, so that each in our own way communing with Him, to the extent of our communion, we exist, live and become deified. 25. There is, therefore, something between what has arisen and that non-participating Superessentiality, and not just one, but many, precisely equal in number to those who partake. But it, I mean that average, does not exist in itself: these are the forces of the Super-essence, which in a unique and unifying way has anticipated and embraced the entire innumerable multitude of the participating, in which it multiplies at the origin and, participated by everyone, non-originally holds on to its non-community and unity. For if the center of the circle, which contains within itself the power to emit from itself all the radii of the circle, does not consist of two or many points, then all the more does God, who predominates in Himself with the forces and prototypes of what arises, reject all duality. These forces and prototypes exist and pre-exist, but not as essences and not as self-hypostatic ones; They do not together constitute the existence of God: He is their creator, and does not Himself consist of them; for what exists with God is not His essence, but He Himself is the essence of everything that is with Him. On the one hand, He is a super-existent essence, ineffable and inconceivable, elusive and inaccessible; on the other hand, the essence of being, the life of the living, the wisdom of the wise, in general, the essentiality and good-beneficial power of everything that exists in any way, which the created one thinks, speaks and to which the created one participates. After all, if, according to the great Dionysius, “not only through ignorance, but also through knowledge, God is known, and there is His thought, and telling, and science, and touch, and feeling, and opinion, and imagination, and naming, and everything else” 571, then there is communion with Him both through the fact that His intelligibility, sensation and touch exists, and through the later revealed encompassing Word 572 . Unparticipated, therefore, God himself will be included, unparticipated as the Superexistent, uncommitted as having existential power and all-transforming and all-perfecting energy. 26. And basely and unworthy of God, Pythagoras and Socrates presented these prototypes (paradigms) as independent principles, equivalent to God. This is who must be blamed for polytheism, between the Superessence and the created, who have invented from themselves principles different from the divine essence, “which neither they themselves nor their fathers knew” (Jer. 16:13). We and our fathers do not consider any of this to be either self-existent, or uncaused, or co-caused with God, which is why we talk about divine predestination, foreknowledge and decrees that exist in God before creation - how could it be otherwise? – and according to which what is created is subsequently created. “He said” - according to Scripture, and therefore His thought was action, and “whatever He willed, He did” (Ps. 33:9, 113:11). And let us not speak about the multitude of super-essential initial and creating entities that have arisen, but about the One, rejecting all division and diversity and complexity, deriving from His uniform and super-unified simplicity, but we know Him as omnipotent and omnicontaining, having everything in Himself even before creation. After all, if the one Sun, say, according to the great Dionysius 573, uniformly prefigured in itself the causes of many things that are associated with it, then how much easier it is to admit that the Sun and everything in general, the Cause, in its integral super-existent unity, initially pre-formed the prototypes of all things. 27. Thus, there is and eternally exists and in the proper sense there is predestination and foreknowledge and providence and the like; all this is inseparably united with God and differs from His super-essence and it is higher than this. How else? What if all this exists in a certain way forever and God also exists forever, will there be two or many gods? And if all the forces and energies are inseparably united in Him, will He turn out to be composite for us? Again, because we arose through them, we are no longer creatures of God, but of something else? Or if the earthly king given to us by God, by his own decision and will, establishes destinies, and his decree becomes a revered word and law for every dignitary, will you really turn one king into two and declare his reign a combination of two kingdoms, calling not him, but someone else, the publisher of the laws? After all, here too there is necessarily a command between the one who commands and the one who obeys! No one will say that our king does not predispose with force, sometimes with foreknowledge, although not in everything and not always. So, shall we equate his decree with the decree of the synclite, since the decree is not a kingdom, as you have here the shared energies are created, since they are not the very essence of God? These are the principles, and this is how generally accepted, on the basis of which you proved the bigtheism and polytheism of the Orthodox. 3rd part. TRIADS III. A list of absurdities arising from the conclusions of the same philosopher. The answer is third, to the second 1. So great, such are the attacks on the truth and the God of truth from principles and premises that are generally accepted, as he thinks, and are aimed against the truth itself; they reach such an extent of evil teaching; in reasoning that he imagines to be demonstrative, he unintentionally exposes himself, on the contrary. His works, against his will, fell into our hands 574 like messengers of the wickedness of their author. And the malice revealed by the writings that have come to us again does not in any way refute what was said about it earlier. In short, he is in such immeasurable evil that he accuses the prophets of demonic possession; saints who lived according to God's Gospel are classified as heretics; the virtue of the prophets, apostles and their followers is declared to be a vice and not a virtue. Since the beginning of the century has there ever come a worse evil-doer than the one who composed such speeches? Can anyone become angry with someone who objects to such a writer? Will there be any part among the saints of the one who tolerates such writings and condemns those who are intolerant of them? And is it better if he says something in secret, when what he says is collected into such satanic abysses, into such mysteries of evil that he whispers to those with lilting ears, not muffling and weakening the tone of his voice, but concealing the harmfulness of his thoughts? We will briefly reveal here how he tries to manipulate what is said, and first - how he proves demonic possession in his speeches - alas! - divinely inspired prophets. 2. He assures that their contemplations are below understanding, and in order to prove the superiority of knowledge over them, he depicts them as visions 575, albeit tangible 576; then below he again says that “the mind, acting in an energy worse than understanding, turns out to be passionate and demonic.” And if the prophets saw with their minds, “not sensually,” says Basil the Great, the vision of the prophets, “but understandable with the mind when God enlightens it” 577; and again: “The prophets foresaw what was to come, receiving the impression of the Spirit in the leading part of the soul” 578 - if, I say, the prophets contemplated with their minds in the Spirit, but “in an energy worse than understanding,” as he says, and it is demonic, when it does not act for profit and base pleasures or opinions, then according to the speaker, such a divine vision does not turn out to be demonic? What then is the Spirit of God and the light that inspires such a vision? No, let the great blasphemy of the author of such speeches return to his head, or better yet, having passed it, move away as far as possible, moving into oblivion, and he will repent and return to the truth. 3. Someone will ask why the philosopher fell into such a hole? Because he tried to use reasoning and natural philosophy to explore super-rational and supernatural mysteries, not believing the word of the fathers: “It is impossible to interpret by reasoning the paths of prophetic vision, but he only has obvious knowledge who is taught by experience; if even natural actions and sufferings often cannot be imagined by any reason, much less the actions (energy) of the Spirit” 579; The saints after Christ, one can see, testified to the same thing many times. And when everyone speaks in this way, he calls those who say that such things must be known or known by experience Messalians! So, isn’t it obvious from a geometric conclusion that it is not involved in the divine sacrament or the energy of the Holy Spirit? After all, he would not have declared himself a Messalian. If only the one taught by experience knows the action of the energies of the Spirit, but he has not learned from experience and does not believe in those who know it in any way, then who else can doubt that all the chatter he has piled up in relation to idolizing spiritual energies is a lie, which he also directed against those who have experience, without knowing what he is broadcasting, talking about anyone. Who can explain the sweetness of honey to those who have not tried it, says the proverb; But tell me, how can someone who hasn’t tried it explain it? If, moreover, he begins to object to those who have tried, then, in addition to being convicted of an obvious lie, will he not incur the greatest ridicule? All the more deceitful and ridiculous is he who performed such miracles about the supernatural energies of the Spirit and, according to the Apostle, “invaded what he did not see, being vainly puffed up from his carnal mind” (Col. 2:18). This alone will be enough to convict him not only of lying, but also of equating saints with heretics; after all, according to their word, the energies of the Spirit are revealed only to those who have learned from experience, and he proclaims those who say such things to be heretics. This is enough to convict him of condemning the saints after Christ; but no, it seemed to him that it was not enough and he used other, then third and many more techniques against them, or rather against himself. 4. Since the saints sometimes seem to contradict each other in their writings, he, clinging to one or another saying, shamelessly attacks others with it and exposes them as cursed and rejected, so that he excommunicates and anathematizes them. So Gregory of Nyssa, who placed the mind in view of its incorporeality and neither outside nor inside the body 580, he led a war against other saints who placed the mind in the heart 581, immediately classifying them as heretics as opponents of the truth. However, in the “Svyatogorsk Definition” 582 against those who think so and in the second word “On Prayer” 583 we clearly showed that the saints here agree with each other, just as we do with them. Hear, however, that he will again classify Nyssa himself among the heretics, since this saint says about the First Martyr Stephen that “Stephen does not see the divine while dwelling in human nature and power, but having been dissolved in the grace of the Holy Spirit, for like, according to the testimony of Scripture, is seen by like; in fact, if the glory of the Father and the Son turned out to be inclusive for human nature, then he who declared the incomprehensibility of the vision of God is wrong; but of necessity, he does not speak a lie and history tells the truth” 584 - since the saint clearly says this in a word of praise to the divine Stephen, the philosopher, for many reasons, will condemn him with the heretics for “grace” and for “dissolution,” not being able to reliably understand the meaning of what is being said and most of all trying to expel those who say such things from the ranks of the Orthodox, calling them Messalians and Blachernites for their vision of God and contrasting them with those who assert the invisibility of God. 5. “Well,” he says, “does man, having become higher than man, see God? After all, then he will become an angel, and the strongest of our theologians is far from the last of the angels, and even if we admit that he will become an angel, then even the angels do not see the essence of God.” In fairness, one can say to him: disciple of the bad angels, it was at their instigation that you became the accuser of the saints. No, when a king wishes to honor a warrior with personal communication, he will not immediately become a military leader; and because the warrior then stands closer to the king, he does not thereby acquire the dignity of an archangel. But, he says, “it is impossible for a person to meet God except through the mediation of an angel, for angels are in charge over us.” What are you doing, man? Do you impose necessity on the One who rules over necessity, who resolves it whenever he wants, and sometimes completely rearranges it? Tell me: which of the angels said to Moses “I am who I am,... the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob” (Ex. 3:14–15), if not the Son of God, as Basil the Great says? 585 Why is it written in the Exodus of Israel that “the Lord spoke to Moses face to face, as if one were speaking to his friend” (Exodus 33:11)? And if the One who talked with Abraham when he “swore by Himself” (Gen. 22:16) was an angel, then why does the Apostle say that “He could not swear by anyone greater” (Heb. 6:13)? If God had deigned to converse with the Fathers Himself in the shadow (types) of the law, then why, when the truth appeared and the law of grace was revealed, according to which not an angel, not a man, but the Lord Himself saved us (Isa. 63:9) and the Spirit of God Himself taught us the whole truth (John 16:13), God would not reveal Himself to the saints? Is it really possible that He did not disdain to become a man for our sake, to accept the cross and death for us, and this when “we were still... wicked,” according to the Apostle (Rom. 5:6), but to directly inhabit a person, appear to him and talk with him, he abhors, and this is when a person is not only pious, but also sanctified, purified in body and mind through the observance of the divine commandments and thus became a convenient chariot and carriage for the Almighty Spirit? And the divine Gregory of Nyssa, having shown this, after mentioning the divine and supernatural Stephen's vision, says: “Was this an achievement of human nature? Or which of the angels raised the underlying nature to such a height? No, something else; for it is not written that Stephen, having entered into great power or being filled with angelic help, saw what he saw, but it is written that Stephen, being full of the Holy Spirit, saw the glory of God and the only begotten Son of God (Acts 7:55-56) - for it is impossible, said the prophet (Ps. 35:10), to see the light without seeing in the light” 586. Here vision is said to be contained through the Spirit, but not knowledge; and referring to knowledge the expression “no one has seen God” and perplexingly contrasting it with Stephen’s spiritual vision, the saint gave us the most beautiful and pious solution. Moreover, he called attainable and visible, again, not the essence, but the glory of the Father and the grace of the Spirit. 6. “But,” he says, “hearing that that grace and glory are supernatural and, since like is contemplated by like, are similar to God, and therefore uncreated and without beginning, I call them the essence of God.” No, a theologian who went against the saints, this cannot happen; Know that you will not be able to hide from those who know, even if, even by hiding the names, you present the sacred meaning of the saints in the form of some kind of heretical heterodoxy: can’t divine energy be supernatural, beginningless, uncreated, and, since it is supernaturally contemplating it, it reveals itself as the complete God, similar to God? "No way! - he says, - after all, the essence of God is the only uncreated and beginningless, but all His energy is created. O wickedness! Either God does not have natural and essential energies and the speaker is an atheist - for he directly asserts that there is no God, because the Holy Fathers clearly say, according to the divine Maximus 587, that no nature exists and is not knowable apart from its essential energies - or, I say, there are no essential and natural divine energies and, it turns out, there is no God, or, if natural and essential divine energies exist, but are created, and the essence of God that possesses them will also be created, because when an essence has natural and essential energies that are created, then the very nature and essence that possesses them is also a creature and is known as a creature. 7. Tell me, why do we confess two energies and natures of Christ, if the natural energies of God are not uncreated? How do we know about His two wills, if and as God He does not possess a natural and divine will? Well, God's will is not the energy of the divine nature? Maybe the will of the Uncreated is created? Or was He under time and beginning and acquired a will that He did not have before? What, did someone force Him to do this or did He Himself change His intention? – Thus, with his innovations, our wretched man rebels not only against the divine nature, but also against the coming of the Savior in the flesh and, wishing to become a judge of Christians, expels himself from their pious council, exposing himself with his own speeches as a Monophysite and a Monothelite, moreover, worse than those who once were. In fact, if every divine energy, with the exception of the essence of God that initially brought everything into action, had, according to him, a temporary beginning and every divine energy is necessarily created, then Christ, it turns out, naturally had not created and uncreated, but only created energies; then He had only one energy, and even that was not divine, as those evil-doers said, since all energies are created; if He was about one energy, then it was necessary to have one nature, and again not divine, as was the case with the former Monophysites, but created: a nature whose energy is created cannot be uncreated. 8. Then, if God does not possess beginningless energies, remaining beyond them, to what extent the actor rises above his actions, then how will He be pre-beginning and super-beginningless? Just as there would not have been a Supergod, according to the great Dionysius, if the theologian had not called deity that “being of the deifying gift” 588, which, according to the divine Maxim, “eternally emanates from the eternally existing God” 589, without the recognition of which it would have turned out that the deified partakes of the divine nature and becomes god by nature - as if there were no grace of deification, then God would not be called a Supergod, so He would not have been called the Pre-Beginner, if, again according to the words of the divine Maxim, “immortality, infinity, existence and everything essentially contemplated with God were not the beginningless acts of God” 590. And how could the same saint say that in the communion of grace “man becomes beginningless like Melchizedek, of whom it is said that he “had neither beginning of days nor end of life” (Heb. 7:3),” and like “everyone who, following Paul, lives the divine and eternal life of the indwelling Word” 591, if grace were not beginningless? 9 . “If,” he says, “even if we assume that divine energies are uncreated, still no one has seen them unless they have become created.” That energies never become created, but only that which partakes is created, and the principles which are participated pre-exist in God, and if this were not so, creatures would partake of God’s essence, which is the greatest absurdity - we will not touch on this for now. But we do not see the distant as standing before our eyes, nor the future as the present, nor do we even know the will of God about us until it comes true; and the prophets recognized the very plan that existed in God from all eternity before its fulfillment. And although we always add the “supersensible” to “feeling,” showing that vision is not only above nature, but also above any naming, the ill-experienced sage hopes by means of superstitious divisions to say something against us and confuses infant minds, talking nonsense about supposedly considering the divine to be sensual, as if someone, cutting off the essence from the superessential essence, has blamed those who call God a super-essential essence. wild nonsense that “since you attribute an essence to God, then this is either some kind of generalization, something conceived in an empty thought and not true, or something indivisible.” They would have answered him the same as we rightly say to a philosopher who has earned the nickname of a Latin pagan: apparently, you are as versed in theology as a bull and a donkey are in singing; It’s not for nothing that you heard it, and you accused us that we were talking about the sensual, calling it spiritual and super-rational; and it is not without reason that although “in him” 599 and “in himself” 600 are completely different, you hear the same thing here, so that you consider everything natural around God to be in Him. 11. “If you see God through what is with him, He will not be any different from what is visible, because each of the visible things is visible not from what is in it, but from what is with it; This is how vision perceives not the essence of the sun, but what is with it.” But, firstly, the example you gave exposes you as a deliberate slanderer of God and His saints: after all, both the ray and the source of the ray are called the sun, but this does not make there two suns; one and God, although theologians also call God the deifying grace emanating from Him, and the light - from the things that are in the sun - does this mean that this is not the essence of the sun? Is the essence of God the light that shines from God to the saints? But what about sunlight? Does it arise after being seen, or was it also there before being seen? Moreover, then such is the light that deifies those who are deified. Then, if God is no different here from anything visible, then why don’t you and people like you, and, moreover, people much better than you, see Him? Let your eyes, blind to the light contemplated by the saints, be blocked by your lips, which spewed such blasphemy against the divine light; your eyes teach you that that light is not natural and is not “visible through the air” 601. By affirming this, you do not leave the future age as your encroachment: the exponents of the divine definitely say that we will not need air there and the light that needs air, but you declare this light, not perceived by sensory power, the beauty of the future and present age, to be sensual and even in the future century visible through the air. 12. “But,” you say, “even if in relation to such light I am struck by blindness, still, having my ears open, I hear them saying that only the mind receives from what is with God the shadow of His image, which illuminates the leading part of the soul in us, and even then only in those who have been purified, as short-lived lightning illuminates the gaze.”602 Indeed, you are like a blind man who learns about the light from someone who can see, but before listening to the teacher, prompted by extreme unreason, he rebels against him, as if he himself knows better and is going to teach him. In fact, what does the theologian say next? “Therefore, at first God only very dimly illuminates the mind alone, in order to attract to Himself with incomprehensible, to amaze with incomprehensible, to attract with astonishing, to purify through attraction” 603. What does the Attractive cleanse? Is it really just the mind? No; the mind, according to the fathers, does not require much work for its purification, just as it is most easily capable of falling away from purity, which is why it is purified even without divine attraction, as the theologian showed, and such purification is accessible to beginners. The divine attraction, purifying all the disposition and ability of the soul and body and delivering a more stable purification to the mind, makes a person a recipient of idolizing grace. “Therefore, by attracting the divine, it purifies, purifying, it makes God-like, and speaks with the god-like as with relatives and household and, if one dares to say boldly, uniting as God with the gods and making Himself known, moreover, as much as He Himself knows those known” 604. Where is the vagueness of insight here? To the extent that God knows them, says the theologian, they themselves know God. And how? Not with vague glimpses of understanding, as he said at the beginning, but seeing God in God, becoming godlike through unity with Him and through the action of godlike power achieving the most divine grace-filled gifts of the Spirit, which it is impossible to peer into without achieving godlikeness and exploring the divine with one mind. 13. Isn’t it already clear now that in the grace that makes a person God-like, God is known to those who experience this grace. From whom do we now learn that this grace is light? From the same saint or from another one taught by experience? Come to us again so that there will be more co-witnesses. Divine Maximus, having spoken about the coming unity of the saints with the intimacy of divine simplicity in the next century, continues: “In it, contemplating the light of the unmanifested and ineffable glory, together with the highest powers they will also become recipients of blessed purity.” And from whom do we learn that this light is also deification? Hear again from the same theologian: having spoken about the method, to the extent achievable, of the unity of God with the deified - it occurs in the way of the unity of the soul with the body, so that the whole person, deified by the grace of the incarnate God, is deified - he continues: “All remaining in soul and in body human by nature, and all in soul and in body becoming god by grace and by the divine radiance of the blessed one who completely permeates him glory" 605. Do you see that that light is the radiance of God? So, is the radiance of God created? But listen further: “Beyond which it is impossible to imagine anything more brilliant and higher; for what is more desirable for the worthy than deification?” 606 Have you heard that radiance is deification and that for those who are worthy there is nothing higher than such a theory? Do you want to know, however, that it is through her that God unites with the worthy? Hear again what follows: “In whom God, united with the deified, by His goodness makes all things His own” 607. This is the idolizing gift, which the most brilliant light of Athens, the Areopagite, called a deity, saying that God is beyond him 608. Where then are you with your knowledge and imitation and sublation, with which you try to remove the universal knowledge that comes from faith about the genuine imitation of God that exceeds humanity? 14. “No,” he says, “let the Areopagite say that God rises above this deity, but he did not say that God rises above the one who bears in abundance.” Of course, he didn’t tell you, that’s clear; he speaks not into your ears, but into the ears of those who listen, because he is blessed. When he says that God “super-essentially disposes of super-existent” 609, does this not mean that if the non-existent is super-existent in abundance, then God is superior to it, super-essentially disposing of the super-existent? And the speaker, or rather, the speakers - for they are one according to the Lord's prayer (John 17:21), and by bringing one, we bring all the saints - saying that God infinitely rises above the super-essence of deification? Or who said that the abundance of God is beyond all putting and taking away? 610 Isn’t this higher than non-existent in abundance? And they also call God the highest of uncreated immortality, life and goodness, although you are not able to peer into the heights of their false theology - oh insolence, oh abyss of delusion! - openly called those who said such things wicked and excommunicated them all. However, without taking into account either you, or your creeping science, or your daring language, they, on top of everything else, added to the divine superiority “to infinite infinities” 611, knowing that it is inexpressible by any thought and no word. Anyway, enough about that. 15. And how this man turned virtue into a vice must be shown briefly. He calls the mortified state of the passionate part of the soul dispassion. “For,” he says, “her actions most of all blind and darken the divine eye, and one must not allow the slightest of her power to act” 612. Alas! How does hatred of evil and love of neighbor and God darken the divine eye? But these are the energies of the passionate part of the soul: with this power of the soul we love and turn away, become related and become alienated, and those who thirst for good build up, and do not kill, this ability, not locking it motionless in themselves, but showing it effective in love for God and neighbor, on which two commandments, according to the word of the Lord, “all the law and all the prophets” depend (Matthew 22:40). If they also darken the divine eye and give the person who lives by them to the power of passions, then which of the other virtues is not vicious? Having slandered the Old Testament of God, he did not spare the New; having sinned against the divine nature, he did not fail to hurt the coming of God in the flesh; having defamed divine contemplation, he did not bypass the fulfillment of virtues with his lies; attacking the citizenship of blessed men in the present century, he did not leave alone the sacraments of the future century, but went, so to speak, to everything that is good, holy and divine, present and future, depending on us and not depending on us, expected and now, as a pledge, given to the saints worthy before the law and after the law, each of whom in his time fought against the heresiarchs and on whom for this he now attacked, releasing a full of all kinds of monstrous a work of heresies, in which he variously slanderes all the saints together and almost all of their teachings, so that it is not difficult for us, by citing short excerpts from each saint, and then re-reading these tablets of vice, to immediately show everyone that this person is not afraid to call those who wrote those passages heretics, wickedness, atheists, preachers of polytheism and sinners. If anyone, not trusting us, wants to clearly examine the truth, let him come to us, who display such writings, and figure it out; but if, with or without reason, he agrees to endure the condemner of the saints, then he will condemn himself, no matter who he is. First at St. Gregory Palamas did not yet have the works of Varlaam in his hands, and he could so far only object to his orally transmitted opinions. Each of the parts of Triad I is therefore constructed as Palamas’ answer to the question of a young monk who had heard about Varlaam’s attacks on the hesychasts, and perhaps had already read some of his writings. The expressions of this apparently generalizing quotation are reminiscent of some passages from the 1st and 3rd “Letters to Palamas” by Varlaam: “philosophy is a gift of God”, “dispassion does not save the soul from accidental ignorance”, “wisdom was given to them (the pagans) from God”, etc. Varlaam’s writings against the hesychasts were burned by patriarchal decree in 1341; some surviving letters are published in the edition: Barlaam Calabro. Epistole grèche. I primordi episodici a dottrinari delle lotte esicaste. Studio introduttivo e testi a cura di Giuseppe Schiro. Palermo, 1954 (in the footnotes below indicated only by the publisher's name: Schiro, with page indication). St. has no indications of the relevant passages from Holy Scripture. Gregory Palamas, like all writers until the 16th-17th centuries, when the text of the Bible was marked with chapter and verse numbers for ease of quotation and parallel references: in the Middle Ages it was assumed that these places were known to everyone. When quoting patristic works, it was also considered superfluous to mention a section, chapter, and sometimes even the title. Only modern editions acquire reference apparatus, which is also used in this translation with the addition of new indications of quotations that were not previously identified. Well-known expressions and texts are left without references. St. Dionysius the Areopagite. On the divine names I 1: PG 3, 587B. Since it has already been definitively proven that the author of the Areopagic treatises could not have been the Athenian Dionysius, a contemporary and disciple of the Apostle Paul, we consider it possible in the context of the works of St. Gregory Palamas to use the name “Dionysius the Areopagite” as a full pseudonym, i.e. without "pseudo -". Whoever this pseudonym actually belonged to, over the long centuries of Christian theology it has justified itself, and the attribution of the Areopagitica to the direct disciple of the Apostle Paul acquired not a technical and historiographical, but a deep symbolic meaning, expressing the truly central place of the Areopagitica corpus in theological thought. Perhaps this refers to Varlaam’s statement that the main achievement of Greek philosophy is the thesis about the unknowability of God and the limitations of human knowledge (3rd letter to Palamas). Schiro, pp. 298–299. Deviations from the text of Holy Scripture known to us, not uncommon in St. Gregory Palamas (like other medieval theologians), are explained, perhaps, not so much by the fact that he used some other editions, although this is also not excluded, but by an involuntary modification of the text usually given from memory in its living use: in this case, for example, the Apostle Paul says “Look who you are...”, and St. Gregory is already writing “Look who we are...”. Taking into account these deviations, and also trying to convey quotations from the Holy Scriptures in the sense in which they begin to sound in Palamas, we do not “comb” them according to the text of the Synodal translation of the Bible into Russian. For similar reasons, we are also re-translating all quotes and extracts from the holy fathers. It should be borne in mind that if, in relation to the Holy Scriptures, St. Gregory Palamas in the vast majority of cases retains literal accuracy, but patristic writings are rarely quoted verbatim. What is taken from them in quotation marks in modern editions and in our translation (i.e. what in the Greek original is accompanied by an unstressed particle (φησι - “says”, or other words and phrases used in the meaning of the current quotation marks) is not necessarily an exact quotation: St. Gregory very often not only does not preserve the exact expressions and word order, but simply gives only a statement of the meaning, a retelling (“abstract”) of the passage cited. Palamas treats texts of non-Christian authors and Barlaam even more freely (see below II 2, 14 and 15). That is, from the Apostle Paul, to whom these words belong: 1 Cor. 14, 20; Wed Matt. 5, 48; Phil. 3, 14–15; Col. 1, 28; 1 Cor. 2, 6. St. Dionysius the Areopagite. On the Church Hierarchy II PG 3, 392A. For this whole passage, see 1 Corinthians 1:20–30. Palamas subsequently condemned the famous Byzantine humanist Nikephoros Gregoras for the fact that “having rotted himself, grown old and worn out in the care of external science and devoted his life to the futility of sterile philosophy,” he lost the spiritual structure necessary for the study of theological issues, and, worst of all, acquired “an arrogant way of thinking” (Objection 1 against Gregoras). That is, Gregory of Nazianzus, who second after the Evangelist John received the honorary title of Theologian. The third to receive it was Simeon the New Theologian. It did not establish itself with Gregory Sinait and Gregory Palamas, although many called them that. St. Gregory the Theologian. Word 21, 6: PG 35, 1088B; To Nemesius: PG 37, 1554. St. Basil the Great. Discourse on Psalm 45: PG 29, 429A. St. Basil the Great. Discourse 12, on Proverbs. 1, 6: PG 31, 397ВС. St. Basil the Great. Letter 223: PG 32, 824AB. 16. St. John Chrysostom. Discourses on the Gospel of John IV 4: PG 59, 50. Play on words: natural, φυσικη - puffs up, φυσιοι. The similarity of the saying “Know thyself”, inscribed on the church of Apollo in Delphi, with the commandment from the Mosaic “Deuteronomy” (Deut. 15:9), which in the translation of 70 interpreters sounds like “Take heed to yourself” (and in Slavic; in the synodal translation of this place from Hebrew - “beware lest an evil thought enter into your heart”), along with many others parallels (Palama also partially mentions them below) have been used more than once to prove the kinship or even direct interdependence between Greek wisdom and the Old Testament. Both Western Europeans, especially the Renaissance, and Byzantine humanists were inclined to see here, first of all, coincidences and identities. Palamas, on the contrary, emphasizes the essential incompatibility of the two traditions, Greek and Jewish, as many Christian theologians did (see, for example, St. Basil the Great. Discourse on the words “Listen to yourself”: PG 31, 197–217). The maid said this about Paul and about Silas, Timothy and, probably, Luke who were with him, and not about Paul and Barnabas (Acts 16:17). Apparently Palamas is quoting from memory and mixing this incident with an episode from Acts 14:11. The words of the Pythagorean Numenius from Apamea (they are cited by Eusebius in “Gospel Preparations,” chapter 96). A similar thought is expressed by the Christian writer Clement of Alexandria (Teacher, 3, 11): “...The rival of Moses, in all respects the most excellent Plato...” Gregory Palamas cites here one of the main Christian objections to ancient theology: God cannot be perfect if he is faced with matter equivalent to himself for his creativity. Apparently, among the pagan “theologians”, Palamas here means primarily Plato, who writes in Timaeus (52 e) that matter - hyle, the eternal receptacle of ideas, all sways randomly, and this leads to the sifting and stratification of the elements of the cosmos. True, Platonism and Neoplatonism also knew about the First Unity, which absolutely rises above both ideas and matter, and therefore the Christian dogma of creation from nothing is directed not against the Platonists, but against the Stoics, for whom the nature of the world really grows from its own depths, like a tree from a seed. In rejecting everything that sympathetic but unbelieving worldly philosophy and science says about God, St. Gregory Palamas agrees with the most profound Christian theologians. For example, St. John Chrysostom expressed the same thought even more sharply: “The one who does not value external wisdom and knows that it can give nothing for the acquisition of faith becomes a fool for the world” (Conversation on 1 Cor. 10:1: PG 61, 82). St. Dionysius the Areopagite. On the Divine Names IV 19: PG 3, 717A. Angels were called “second radiances” or “second lights” by many Christian writers starting with Gregory the Theologian (Conversations 38, 9; 40, 5; 44, 3: PG 34, 320C, 364B, 609, as well as in other places). In the heretical subordinationist understanding of the Trinity, this term, even before Gregory the Theologian, was used to designate the second Hypostasis. St. Gregory is referring to the fact that for Christians the promised time is ahead, while for almost all ancient thinkers the true “golden age”, the “age of Kronos”, the happy era of humanity were only in the past. Palamas calls this sign of worldly wisdom the main one because the most dangerous and distressing thing in the hesychast disputes was the widespread use by the opponents of the hesychasts of both the Holy Scriptures and patristic works. Establishing the meaning of certain expressions of great theologians is one of the main concerns in the Triads. This is again an inaccurate and perhaps from memory quote from Plato’s dialogue “Phaedrus” (245a): “And whoever approaches the gates of poetry without musical fury, hoping that he will become a good poet thanks to technique, will not succeed and his prudent creations will be eclipsed by the creations of the furious.” In the “Apology of Socrates” (22c) it is also said about poets that “it is not thanks to wisdom that they can do what they do, but thanks to a certain natural ability, as if in a frenzy, like fortune-tellers and soothsayers; after all, these too say a lot of good things, but they don’t know at all what they are talking about.” At the beginning of Plato’s dialogue “Timaeus” (27c), the Pythagorean Timaeus says: “Everyone who has even a little prudence in any small or great matter certainly calls on God; and we, intending to describe in some way the universe, how it came into being, or even exists uncreated, unless we are completely mistaken, should, calling upon the gods and goddesses, pray to say everything as much as possible in agreement with their minds, but without contradicting ourselves.” Accepting the death sentence, Socrates admitted to his friends that since childhood, “the prophetic voice of my genius (demon), familiar to me, has always been very persistent and sharply opposed to me at my slightest attempt to do something wrong” (and throughout the trial, when Socrates aggravated the hatred of his accusers with independent speeches, the demon-genius did not restrain him; “Apology of Socrates” 31d, 40ab). The demon of Socrates is mentioned in Theaetetus (151a), Euthydemus (272e), Alcibiades the First (103ab), as well as in Xenophon’s Memoirs (I 1, 4). The Delphic soothsayer called Socrates “the wisest of all” (“Apology of Socrates” 21a). Homer begins the Iliad with the words: “Wrath, O goddess, sing to Achilles, son of Peleus.” At the beginning of the Works and Days, Hesiod calls on the Muses from Macedonian Pieria near Olympus, the homeland of the Muses, and at the beginning of the Theogony, from Helicon, their sacred mountain in Boeotia. In “Works and Days” he says that when he “grazed sheep under the sacred Helicon,” the Olympian muses, “carved a wonderful staff from a lush green laurel, gave it to me and breathed in the gift of divine songs to me” (translation by Veresaev). Palamas may be deliberately parodying: instead of sheep, he has pigs, and the obsolete form of the past tense of the verb “to give” εδων, “gave”, is understood as εδον, i.e. “eating”, as a result of which Hesiod seems to be eating laurel. From the essay “On Insomnia” by Synesius, a Neoplatonic and Christian philosopher and poet of the late 4th – early 5th centuries. (PG 66, 1289A). “You have been taught everything, O godly Musey,” - this is how it begins in the transmission of the Byzantine philologist of the 12th century. John Tsetsa (Chiliads 12, 149) is one of the addresses of the legendary singer Orpheus to his teacher. Palamas is again deliberately careless. Palamas, apparently, also read about these wishes of the pagan poets from John Tzetz in the “Scholia” to Hesiod’s “Works and Days” (§§ 23–24). St. Dionysius the Areopagite. Message 7: PG 3, 1080V. St. Dionysius the Areopagite. On the divine names IV 23: PG 3, 725AB. St. Gregory Palamas speaks here of atheists who explain the origin of the world by a chain of successive transformations and at the same time do not notice that the art of the Creator operates in each transformation. St. Dionysius the Areopagite. Message 7: PG 3, 1080V. 29. Palamas lists here the usual and widespread ancient philosophemes or theologumen (since in antiquity, reasoning about the Divine principle was also called theology): stars and planets - animate living beings (cf. e.g. Plato, Timaeus 38e); the soul of the world or the world soul, higher and fuller than individual souls (cf. esp. Plotinus. Enneads IV 3, 4; 6); in the vicissitudes of metempsychosis, a former human soul can move into an animal and even a plant. St. Dionysius the Areopagite. On the Divine Names VII 2: PG 3, 868C. St. Dionysius the Areopagite. On the divine names IV 23: PG 3, 725B: demons “are not completely devoid of good, since they exist, live, think, and since there is generally a certain movement of desire in them.” Gen.4:7. In the translation of the 70: “If you offered righteously, but did not share righteously [i.e. e. did not separate what is humanly perverse from God’s], then have you not sinned?” St. Isaac the Syrian. Word 72: ed. Σπετσιερη (Αθηναι, 1882), p. 314; ed. Θεοτοκις (Leipzig, 1770), p. 463. St. Gregory the Theologian. Word 41, 14: PG 36, 448s. See below II 1, 12. St. Gregory of Nyssa. On the dispensation of man 3544, 2400 (the word “Church” is not in the text of Gregory of Nyssa). St. Gregory of Nyssa. Letter II PG 46, 1041C. St. Basil the Great. Discourse on the 14th Psalm 3: PG 29, 256BC (not on the 7th Psalm). See above I 1, 4. These words are in the 2nd, and not in the 1st book of the “Church Hierarchy”. St. John Chrysostom. Discourses on the Gospel of Matthew 1, 4–5: PG 57, 17–19. St. Gregory the Theologian. Word 16, 12: PG 35, 936BC. St. Cyril of Alexandria. Commentaries on Psalms 9, 23: PG 69, 780A. This passage is not taken from St. Gregory of Nyssa, and from Gregory of Agrigentum (Commentary on Ecclesiastes 118: PG 98, 796CD). This criticism is in the 4th and 5th letters of Barlaam of Calabria to the hesychast Ignatius (Schiro. 315; 323). Varlaam asserts here that the mind, tied to the body in hesychast prayer, “is mixed with bodily meaninglessness and rudeness”; he ridicules “certain miraculous decouplings, as well as couplings of the mind with the soul” in the region of the heart, “certain mental outflows and entrances of the spirit through the nostrils that occur together with breathing,” which the hesychasts known to him allegedly taught. He repeats the Platonic definition of the mind as a reflection of pure unity, which is equal only to itself and in this sense does not depend on the body and bodily sensation, mocking the seeming inconsistency of the hesychasts who want to unite the mind with God and at the same time try to “confine the mind in the body.” On will and desire, see below II 2, 19. St. Macarius the Great. Conversations 15, 20: PG 24, 589B. 43. That is, truly worthy of his name (Macarius means “blessed”). In fact, a similar expression appears in Macarius the Great not after the above passage, but before it. About intelligent feeling, see below I 3, 20. St. John of Sinai. Ladder 26: PG 88, 1020A; see also the note of the anonymous scholastic to this place (1040D): “The intelligent feeling is in us, in so far as it is connected with the mind in every person; but it is not in us because, being hidden by passions among those who are passionately obsessed, it is inactive and unrecognizable.” St. Gregory Palamas, of course, condemns here not ecstasy in general, but only the destructive emptiness of such ecstasy, when a person runs away from himself. It is clear that the heart is understood by St. Gregory is not biological. Bringing the mind into the heart is a deep and concentrated bodily gesture, a “bodily symbol” that signifies something even deeper, namely the concentration of the mind in itself. For the fact that the prayer “form” is understood as a gesture and a symbol, see below I 2, 8, 11. The same word “mind” refers to the spirit, reason in general and its action in us, just as (if we use the comparison of St. Gregory) the same word “sun” refers to the heavenly body and the heat on which we bask. Discourse 12, on Proverbs. 7: PG 31, 401A. Wed. 1Tim 6:20. On the divine names IV 9: PG 3, 705AB. Letter 2 to St. Gregory the Theologian 2: PG 32, 228A. About divine names, ibid. Ladder 27: PG 88, 1097B: “The hesychast is the one who strives with all his might to bring the incorporeal into the corporeal house - incredible! In his hunt he guards the mouse, the intelligible mouse, the thought of the hesychast. Let this comparison not seem despicable to you; and if it does, it means you haven’t yet known hesychia.” In other words, since the mind, i.e., the created spirit, is connected to the body not by chance and meaninglessly, but with divine wisdom, and this connection is not always given by itself, but can be different and even end in death, then a person may never understand how the connection of the spirit with the body is accomplished, but all the more so in this case he must always preserve and strengthen it in himself, leading, to the best of his ability, a way of life that does not separate the mind and body. This is stated in the essay “The Method of Sacred Prayer and Self-Attention,” the author of which was considered to be Simeon the New Theologian. There is an edition of this work made by I. Hausherr: Orientalia Christiana IX 2, 1927 (see p. 164 there). When repeated in notes, this and similar editions are identified by the same publisher's name: Hausherr, followed by the page number. St. Dionysius the Areopagite. On the Divine Names IV 9: PG 3, 705A. St. Macarius the Great. Conversation 16, 7: PG 34, 617D; St. John of Sinai. Ladder 25; 28: PG 88, 1133V; 1000D-1001A. Pseudo-Simeon. A way of sacred prayer and self-attention: Hausherr, 164. Theophan the Recluse in a note to this place (Philokalia, vol. 5, M., 1900, p. 297) indicates that this refers to the sense of the omnipresence of God characteristic of the prophet David. Apparently, Palamas here has in mind the reasoning of Varlaam (Against Ignatius: Schiro, 318, 76–77) that sobriety is acceptable if it leads to the mortification of passions, but if it deprives the soul of wisdom and fills it with sophistication, we must look for another type of abstinence. (κοιγιοψυχους, "gluttonous") For symbols and their differences, see below III 1, 12–22. In one of his letters, Varlaam ironically says (Schiro, 229, 5) that Palamas sees the already invisible true light, “bypassing its images and shadows”; Varlaam himself considered it possible for a natural person to see only these latter. Apparently, we are talking about the composition of this name, which belongs to Nikita Stifat (see in the edition of I. Hausherr: Orientalia Christiana XII 45, 1928). This is a short essay by the hesychast monk and confessor Nicephorus, “On Keeping the Heart.” It ends with a brief teaching, which - along with an even briefer treatise “The Method of Sacred Prayer and Attention to Self,” attributed to Simeon the New Theologian, but possibly also written by the monk Nicephorus - serves as the main and almost the only evidence of the use of “bodily” methods of prayer on Athos. For Palamas's opinion on this work of Nicephorus, see below II 2, 3 and 30. Theoliptus means “embraced by God.” Theoliptus, a disciple of the hesychast Nicephorus, a selfless opponent of the Union of Lyons of 1274, who suffered for this from Emperor Michael VIII, theologian, the first teacher of monastic life of Gregory Palamas (see Philotheus’s “Eulogy”: PG 151, 561), and Patriarch of Constantinople from 1289 to 1293 and from 1303 to 1309 Athanasius, also an opponent of the Union of Lyons, are the most glorious hierarchs of the Byzantine Church of the late XIII - early XIV centuries. Nil, Elijah and another Athanasius (and possibly Seliot and Gabriel) were monks of the monasteries on Mount St. Auxentius near Constantinople. See about them even below II 2, 3. Further, apparently, it was intended to include a collection of extracts from the holy fathers on prayer. Wed. below II 1, 1. Barlaam sets out how he understood the instructions of the hesychasts in Letter 5 to Ignatius: Schiro, 6, 323–324. On October 10, 359, by hook or by crook, the Arians persuaded a group of bishops, participants in the council in Ariminum, to sign in the city of Nike (Thrace) a definition of faith deviating from the Creed adopted in 325 in Nicaea. See about this: Socrates Scholasticus. Ecclesiastical History I 38: PG 67. Monosyllabic or single-minded (μονολογιστος) prayer, which is sometimes inaccurately called “monologue” or “single-word,” is to overcome the disordered wandering of thoughts in your soul with a decisive movement of the mind and will. Usually such a prayer was performed together with the Jesus Prayer, said in part or in full, but it could be performed without words with a single impulse of the heart. John Climacus says that a monosyllabic prayer is often able to collect the mind that has been scattered in detailed prayer, and that it lays the foundation for any real prayer work (Ladder 28: PG 88, 1132B-D; cf. Ladder 9, 15 and 27: PG 88, 841, 889D and 1116CD). Hesychius of Sinaiti wrote that like-minded prayer destroys and burns away demonic deception (On Temperance and Virtue, 2, 72: PG 93, 1536B; cf. also his essay “On Fasting” in the 2nd volume of the Greek “Philokalia”). In one work, which is attributed to Maximus the Confessor, wandering in thought is equated to standing in front of a closed veil: only the one who successfully performs a like-minded prayer penetrates into the sanctuary (Chapters Others, 102: PG 90, 1424A). Diadochus Photicensis speaks about a monosyllabic prayer in his Chapters (Chapter 59: Diadochus Photicensis, Capitula, ed. des Places, Paris, 1955, p. 119 - in the future this book will be designated only by the name of the publisher: des Places with an indication of the page), in Nil of Ancyra - in Letters (Letter 3, 238: PG 79, 493D). About Abba Philemon, see the Greek Philokalia, vol. 2 (Dialogue about Abba Philemon). At St. Gregory Palamas, this thought is expressed here with the vividness of an aphorism: φευκτον εποιησαν το διωκτον. If evil is inherent in a human being, a person cannot fight against it, because then his very struggle will be filled with evil and all that remains is to flee simultaneously from evil and from himself. The rules are stated at length 2: PG 31, 909ВС. St. John of Sinai. Stairs 28: PG 88, 1137С. It cannot be otherwise in genuine prayer, continues Climacus: “If an effective change occurs in the body from contact with another body, then will the one who touched God’s body with clean hands remain unchanged?” (scholia for this place: “Speaks of illumination”). St. Isaac the Syrian repeatedly speaks about the transformation of a person during prayer, including external transformation. See, for example, Words 31 and 32: Επετοσιερη, 34 ff.; Word 85: Θεοτοκσις, 498. Diadochos of Photicus has similar thoughts (Chapter 68: des Places, 128). On the Divine Names IV 6: PG 23, 701B. On patience and prudence 13: PG 34, 876D. Although these exact words are not found in the known works of St. Macarius the Great, he speaks in many places about the immortal light, its radiance on the face of Moses and its appearance to worthy Christians, for example at the beginning of the 1st Conversation, especially in the 5th Conversation (chap. 17-21) and in the transcriptions of Symeon Metaphrastus (On freedom of mind 2, 2; On patience and prudence 4; On the elevation of the mind 1, 2). Most completely with the words of Macarius the Great quoted by Palamas are two passages from the recently found conversation “On the Resurrection of the Dead” (Conversation 2 in the collection: Neue Homilien des Makarius/Symeon, herausgegeben von E. Klostermann und H. Beithold, Berlin, 1967 - in the future we designate this publication only by the name of the publisher: Klostermann, indicating the page): “Like the eyes of the sensual eyes see the sensual sun, so the eyes of the soul see the intelligent light of the sun of truth” (chapter 4) and “The beauty hidden by their [the righteous’] soul of God in the resurrection will suddenly and abundantly be revealed and illuminate the outer body with eternal light” (chapter 1). See Macarius of Egypt. New spiritual conversations. Per. V. Veniaminova. M.: Interbook, 1990, p. 22, 25, etc. What differs from knowledge is the insight in which this knowledge comes: insight is given spiritually (smartly), knowledge is only rational and gradually assimilates what was revealed in instantaneous insight, see about this below I 3, 4–5. Random, or accidental, ignorance (literally, “ignorance by location”) is so called in contrast to essential, irreducible human ignorance about such things as death, the future, etc. On the Divine Names IV 5: PG 3, 700D. Ibid. I 5: PG 3, 593 V; Evagrius of Pontus. On prayer: PG 79, 1192D. St. Dionysius the Areopagite. On sacramental theology I, 1: PG 3, 997A; On divine names 14; 15; II 4: PG 3, 592V; 593B; 640D. The super-unknowability of God, which Dionysius the Areopagite speaks of here, is sometimes understood simply as complete unknowability. But Palamas interprets this expression of the Areopagite in an unexpected affirmative sense: God is above the unknowable and, therefore, He ceases to even be unknowable, although the very knowability of Him thus revealed is mysterious. St. Neil of Ancyra. Letter 2: PG 79, 233A. These are the expressions of St. Dionysius the Areopagite, see On the Church Hierarchy I 4: PG 3, 376B. St. Dionysius the Areopagite. On the celestial hierarchy, I 3: PG 3, 124A; VII 2: PG 3, 208BC et seq.; On divine names I 4; PG 3, 592ВС. Conversation 12, 14; PG 34, 565V. St. Andrew of Crete. Conversation 7, on Transfiguration: PG 3 97, 933С. St. Neil of Ancyra. About evil thoughts 18: PG 79, 1221B. There is an assumption that this work actually belongs to Evagrius - cf. Evagrius. Practical chapters to Anatoly 1, 70: PG 40, 1244A. St. Isaac the Syrian. Conversations 23: Σπετσιερη, 140 Θεοτοκσις, 206. St. John Chrysostom. Discourses on 2 Corinthians 8, 3: PG 61, 457. Conversation 5, II PG 34, 516C; On patience and prudence 4: PG 34, 868CD. Conversation 5, 10: PG 34, 516AC; On the elevation of the mind I PG 34, 889C; On Freedom of Mind 21: PG 34, 956BC. Chapters 40: des Places, 108. St. Maximus the Confessor. Theological and economic chapters 1, 31: PG 90, 1096A (cf. Works of St. Maximus the Confessor, book 1, M.: Martis, 1993, p. 220). See the excerpt from Evagrius's work "The Gnostic", given by Socrates (Ecclesiastical History IV 23: PG 67, 520B). Wed. Evagrius. Practical chapters to Anatoly 1, 93: PG 40, 1249B. Like passages from the Gnostic by Evagrius, this work was also attributed in the time of Palamas to St. Nil Ankirsky. St. Macarius the Great. On Freedom of Mind 22: PC 34, 956D-957A. St. Dionysius the Areopagite. On the celestial hierarchy XV 2: PG 3, 329AC. From what is attributed to St. Basil the Great works “Ascetic institutions” II 1: PG 31, 1340A. St. Gregory the Theologian. Word 21, 2: PG 35, 1084D. St. Macarius the Great. On Freedom of Mind 21: PG 34, 956. St. Basil the Great. Discourse on Psalm 14, 3: To young people about reading pagan books 2: PG 31, 565–566. The “practical chapters” of Evagrius, from which this idea was borrowed with some modifications, were for a long time attributed to Maximus the Confessor. They are in Greek in the book: S. L. Epifanovich. Materials for the study of the life and works of St. Maximus the Confessor. Kyiv, 1917, p. 58. Origen already interpreted the comparison of the eyes of his beloved in the “Song of Songs” (1, 14) with doves (in Greek this word is feminine) as an image of the presence of the Holy Spirit: “And that her eyes are compared with doves, this is because she no longer understands the Holy Scripture literally, but spiritually... after all, the dove is an indication of the Holy Spirit” (Origen. Interpretation of the Song of Songs 3: PG 13, 145D; cf. Discourse 2 on the Song of Songs: Sources chretiennes, 37. Paris, 1953, p. 87 - henceforth this series will be designated in capital letters: SC indicating the volume and page). “Your eyes are doves,” writes Theodoret of Cyrrhus in his commentary on the Song of Songs (I 15; II 10), “this means spiritual, because the Spirit visited the bride and moved into her in the form of a dove” (PG 81, 28 ff.). See Discourses on Ecclesiastes 4: PG 44, 684; Discourses on Song of Songs 4; 7: PG 34, 833CD; 920BC. (και ην εχουσι καταληψιν ακαταληπτως εχουσι) On divine names I 5; PG 3, 593С. St. Isaac the Syrian. Letter 4: Θεοτοκις, 576 Σπετσιερη, 393. “Enduring ignorance”, or “unknowing state” (το πασχειν αγνωστως) is patient abstinence from the work of reason, turning the mind into an open readiness to meet God, enduring “bewilderment” (amechania). Wed. “influx” and “reception” of light from St. Dionysius the Areopagite, about which below I 3, 25. On Mystical Theology 3: PG 3, 1033B. Origen, translating in his essay “Against Kels” (I 48: PG II, 749AB) some expressions from the books of Solomon (Prov. 2, 5: cf. 5, 2: Pres. 7, 22–25), introduced the concept of “God’s sense” (70 interpreters - “knowledge of God”, “sense of the lips”, “spirit of reason”). Origen spoke about the ascent from sensible things to “God’s senses” (Commentary on the Gospel of John 10, 40; PG 14, 385C): “Just as the body has various senses, so among the senses that Solomon calls God’s, one is the seeing and contemplating power of the soul, the other is the ability to taste and perceive the properties of intelligible food” (ibid., 20, 43; PG 14, 676B; cf. Against Kels 7, 39: PG II, 1476C). The concept of “God's feeling”, connecting incompatible things - direct sensation, which in all philosophy was considered an earthly and carnal matter, and the incomprehensible transcendence of God - is found in St. Gregory of Nyssa (Discourse 9 on the Song of Songs: PG 44, 951C), at St. Maximus the Confessor (Puzzling questions: PG 91, 1248B). The combination “smart feeling”, as well as “spiritual feeling”, close to “God’s feeling”, was used by Diadochos of Photica, speaking about love, which “explores the invisible with a smart feeling” (On spiritual perfection 1: ed. 1. E. Weis - Liebersdorf, Leipzig, 1912, p. 65; see also Chapters 15: des Places, 92). On the Divine Names VII 1: PG 3, 865С. On the divine names IV II PG 3, 708D. Wed. Maxim the Confessor. Chapters theological and economic II 70 and 76; PG 90, 1156 and 1160 (cf. Creations..., pp. 248–250). (54) Word 32: Σπετσιερη, 140 Θεοτοκις, 206. Rev. Isaac the Syrian quotes here, possibly St. Gregory of Nyssa. Conversation 2, 4–5: PG 34, 465 words; On Freedom of Mind 21: PG 34, 956. Apparently this is Saint Benedict of Nursia, whose Life, translated into Greek by Pope Zechariah (741–752), was well known to the Byzantine monks. For the relevant text, see PL 66, 197B. Wed. St. Basil the Great. Against Eunomius 1, 12: PG 29, 540A: reason “tells us that God is, and not that He is”; St. John Chrysostom. About the incomprehensibility of the nature of God, or against the Anomeans 1, 5: PG 48, 706: “What God is, man knows, but what He is in His essence, he does not know.” In this sense, the word “soul” is used, for example, by the Evangelist Mark (Mark 8:35). St. Dionysius the Areopagite. On the divine names IX 6: PG 3, 953B-956A. Wed. ibid., 2, 11 and 5, 8: PG 3, 649C and 824A. Ibid., 2, 3: PG 3, 640V. St. Dionysius the Areopagite. On the celestial hierarchy I 2: PG 3, 121A. St. Dionysius the Areopagite. Letter 2: PG 3, 1068–1069A. Readings from the 3rd book of Kings (1 Kings 19:13) are included in the service of the Feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord on August 6. The Prophet Elijah has always been considered, together with John the Baptist (see below II, 1, 43), a prototype of monasticism and prayer. On divine names IV 4; 5: PG 3, 592C; 593BC. See St. John Chrysostom. Letter 1 to Theodore II PG 47, 292. On the divine names I 4: PG 3, 592C; Letter 8, 1: PG 3, 1084 and elsewhere. Conversation 40, 6: PG 36, 365A. Simeon Metaphrastus. Life of the Evangelist John 1: PG 116, 685D. On the divine names I 4: PG 3, 592С. Discourse on Psalm 44: PG 29, 400CD. In the gospels of Matthew (Matthew 16:28), Mark (Mark 9:1) and Luke (Luke 9:27), the words about the Kingdom of God come right before the story of the Transfiguration; connecting the light of the Transfiguration with the Kingdom of God, Palamas follows St. John Chrysostom (Discourse on the Gospel of Matthew 56, 1: PG 58, 549), St. Andrei Kritsky (7th Discourse on the Transfiguration: PG 97, 937A) and many other theologians. In the famous works of Macarius the Great, this place was not exactly found, although the same thoughts are, for example, in the “Discourse on the Crucifixion of the Lord and on Patience” (Conversation 3: Macarius of Egypt. New spiritual conversations..., pp. 27–31) and in the “conversation about how the soul, little by little nurtured by grace, comes to perfection”, where there are words (Conversation 16, 8: Ibid., p. 102): “Give me the robe of light of salvation, that I may cover the shame of my soul.” Given by St. By Gregory Palamas, the place recalls, among other things, the description of the clothes of the royal son in the hymn of the soul of the so-called “Acts of Thomas,” as well as the exapostilary of Holy Week: “I see Your palace, my Savior, adorned, and the clothes are not imam, but I go into it; enlighten the robe of my soul, Light-Giver, and save me.” St. Macarius the Great. On Freedom of Mind 21: PG 34, 956A. These words are also not found exactly in St. Macarius the Great, but similar thoughts are in the “Homily on patience and prudence” (Homily 4, 4: PG 34, 868 CD), in the “Conversation on faith in God and love for Him” (Conversation 20, 1: Macarius of Egypt. New spiritual conversations..., pp. 113–117) and in the “Conversation on what they are looking for Christians, cannot be compared with anything in this world,” where there are words (Conversation 26, 6: Ibid., pp. 153–154): “Her [soul’s] image was placed by Him in the highest, in the heavenly city of saints Jerusalem (Heb. 8:1, 12, 22), and He placed His own image of the ineffable light of His Divinity in her body.” Acrostic poem of the first canon of Cosmas Mayumsky on the Transfiguration. St. John of Sinai. Stairs 28: PG 88, 1137С. 94. Wed. (Ps. 83:6) in the Slavic translation: “Blessed is the man who has his intercession with you: set ascension in your heart.” According to the interpretation of Eusebius of Caesarea, ascensions, meaning good thoughts, occur when God “catches up a person” (Commentaries on Psalms 83, 6: PG 23, 1009B-D; cf. Gregory the Theologian. Conversation 31, 26: PG 36, 161-D.) According to Cyril of Alexandria, such ascensions instill in us the thought of the heavenly city and the hope of achieving it (Explanation of Psalms 83, 6: PG 69, 1208D). On the celestial hierarchy XV 9: PG 3, 340A. See Discourses 18, 1–3: PG 34, 633–636; About Love 24–27: PG 34, 928–929; and especially “Conversation on how the soul, little by little nurtured by grace, comes to perfection” (Conversation 16, 3: New spiritual conversations, p. 93): “For the spiritual is mysterious and cannot be expressed in human words, unless the Spirit himself teaches a worthy and believing soul through experience and deeds.” On the distinction between theology and vision of God, see also I 3, 48 and Letter 2 to Barlaam 52. On divine names 1 4: PG 3, 592С. St. Maximus the Confessor. Chapters theological and economic II 88: PG 90, 1168A. St. Gregory the Theologian. Conversation 40, 5: PG 36, 364B. St. Dionysius the Areopagite. On the Divine Names II 6: PG 3, 644BC; Maxim the Confessor. Letter 6, 5: PG 92, 429AB. Wed. Maxim the Confessor. Mystery 23: PG 91, 701C; Commentary on Dionysius the Areopagite. On the Divine Names XIII; PG 4, 97A (as almost everywhere in Palamas, free quotation). Conversation 40, 5: PG 36, 364B. This text has been attributed to Nilus of Ancyra, but belongs to Evagrius. See Elijah the Plaintiff (Presbyter, Ekdik). Gnostic chapters 4: PG 127, 1149. See Evagrius. On Prayer 149: PG 79, 1200 A; these same words are in the form of a note to Ladder 28: PG 88, Ts48 A. St. Maximus the Confessor. Chapters theological and economic II 80: PG 90, 1161D (Creations..., p. 251). St. Maximus the Confessor. Chapters theological and economic II 82: PG 90, 1164A. Here Maxim literally quotes the words from Mark the Hermit, Chapter 24 on sobriety: PG 65.1064B. St. John of Sinai. Ladder, 25: PG 88, 989A. On the divine names I 4: PG 3, 592ВС. On Freedom of Mind 23–24: PG 34, 957B. Ibid., 25: PG 34, 957CD. St. Macarius the Great. Conversation 5, 10: PG 34, 516AB; On the Elevation of the Mind 1: PG 34, 889; esp. “The conversation is that what Christians are looking for is incomparable with anything in this world” (Conversation 26, 8: New Spiritual Conversations, p. 156). St. Basil the Great. Discourse on Psalm 29: PG 29, 400CD. Evagrius. On Prayer 57: PG 79, 1180A. Ibid., 5679, 1179D-1180A. St. Dionysius the Areopagite. On the Divine Names VII 1: PG 3, 856C; St. Maxim the Confessor. Comments: PG 4, 444A. St. Dionysius the Areopagite. On sacramental theology 1, 1: PG 3, 997; On the Divine Names IV 13: PG 3, 712AB. On the divine names IV 13: PG 3, 712AB. On the divine names IV 3: PGЗ, 712АВ; Wed Maxim the Confessor. Confused questions: PG 91, 1413AB. St. Macarius the Great. On the Elevation of the Mind 6: PG 34, 893C. Wed. above I 3, 3. Mark the Hermit. Minor Works II 26: PG 65, 933D. St. Macarius the Great. On Patience 13: PG 34, 876B-D. St. John of Sinai. Ladder 4: PG 88, 696D. See similar expressions in the same place, ch. 1, 26 and 29: PG 88, 640A, 1013A, 1033A-D and 1488C. Staircase 26: PG 88, 1033B. St. Diadochos of Photikie. Chapters, 69: des Places, 129. Evagrius. On prayer 62: PG 79, 1180C. See Discourse 19, 6–8: PG 34, 648BD; On Freedom of Mind 18–19: PG 34, 949 D-953A. Here, as at the end of the previous parts, a selection of patristic sayings is again expected, but it is not in the surviving lists. On the relationship to Varlaam, see also II 1, 40. See I 2, II; II 1, 2; II 1, 3. This refers to the first triad. St. Gregory of Nyssa. On the Life of Moses 2: PG 44, 329B. St. Gregory of Nyssa. Against Eunomius 1: PG 45, 265B. The overexposure is typical for Palamas and for late Byzantine polemics in general: instead of katfke - “he was a tenant in the house” (Life of Plotinus 9), Palamas reads - “cohabited”. That is, against the first book of the first triad or against the 1st and 2nd Letters to Varlaam. Such knowledge, especially the Psalter, was very common among illiterate people in the Middle Ages; but even to this day on the Holy Mountain, many monks know by heart all the Scriptures or most of them, as well as entire sequences. St. John of Sinai. Stairs 27: PG 88, 1116C. St. Gregory of Nyssa. Conversation 45, 26: PG 36, 657D.St. Gregory of Nyssa. Conversation 45, 26: PG 36, 657D. St. Gregory of Nyssa. On infants taken prematurely by death: PG 35, 1088B. That is, St. Gregory of Nyssa, younger brother of Basil of Caesarea. St. Gregory the Theologian. Conversation 43, 21: PG 36, 524C. St. Gregory the Theologian. Conversation 21 (Word of praise to Athanasius) 6: PG 35, 1088B. St. Basil the Great. Discourse 12 on Proverbs 1, 6: PG 31, 397С. St. Basil the Great. Letter 223: PG 32, 824A. St. Gregory of Nyssa. On the Life of Moses 2: PG 44, 329 In SC, I bis, Paris 1955, p. 34–35. St. Gregory of Nyssa. About babies taken prematurely by death: PG 46, 181C. St. Gregory the Theologian (Conversations, 21, 22: PG 35, 1105C) prefers to use the name “Chalne” instead of “Babylon,” probably due to the consonance of the first with the Greek verb meaning “to crumble.” St. Basil the Great. Discourse on Psalm 14 3: PG 29, 256C. For Varlaam, there is wisdom in general, independent of its embodiment in individuals. St. Gregory Palamas, on the contrary, always and in everything sees first the personal will, good or evil, and secondly, the wisdom and knowledge created by this will. Just as in God-likeness, in his opinion, man is above the heavenly powers, so in evil no universal, universal and world-wide laws and archetypes can put a limit on him. St. Gregory the Theologian. Conversation 16, 2: PG 35, 936С. In this listing there is an allusion to Varlaam, who wrote a commentary on Ptolemy’s “Harmony”, on Book II of Euclid’s “Elements” and other works on logic, arithmetic and astronomy. See eg. To Young People on Reading Pagan Books 5–6: PG 31, 576CD. On the Divine Names III 1: ROS, 680B. Gregory Palamas, a former chorister, borrows this comparison from the practice of contemporary church chants, which by the 13th century had long been composed exclusively by substituting the text into ready-made melodic patterns - irmos. Evagrius. About prayer 58: RO 79, 1180A; St. Gregory the Theologian. Conversation 4, 100: PG 35, 636A. St. Basil the Great. Letter 2, 4: PG 32, 229B. St. Gregory the Theologian. Conversation 6, 5: PG 35, 728B. Compare, also, Conversation 4, 100. St. Gregory the Theologian, Discourse 6, 6: PG 35, 728D-729A. Wed. Rom.5:5; 15:1–4; 2Kop.6:7. This is the expression of St. Gregory the Theologian in relation to people who rejected pagan science (Conversation 43, II PG 36, 509A). Already in the first letter to Palamas, Varlaam called him - on a different occasion - “ignorant and uneducated” (Schiro, 243). Julian the Apostate banned Christians from teaching in schools. On the Divine Names V 4: PG 3, 817D. The monastic ideal is described here according to St. Dionysius the Areopagite; see On Ecclesiastical Hierarchy VI 2–3: PG 3, 533A-536B. Beauty or decoration, especially hair, is expressed in Greek by the same word “cosmos” as the world, the human universe. (Cf. Russian “cosmas” - V. Airapetyan). Byzantine canon law prohibited monks from spending the night outside their monastery. Here the pre-Ptolemaic astronomical ideas accepted among Christian writers are named. Varlaam adhered to Ptolemaic astronomy (see note to II 1, 20). St. Maximus the Confessor. Small theological and polemical works. To Marin: PG 91, 12A. The attitude towards Varlaam here is still softer than in the 1st letter to Akindinos, written immediately before the June Council of 1341. However, in III 1, 4, speaking about Varlaam’s closeness to “Latin thought,” St. Gregory Palamas becomes much harsher. That is, St. Gregory Palamas admits for a time that scientific speculation and Revelation coincide in their latest conclusions. St. John Chrysostom repeated this thought more than once, see Discourse 23 on the Gospel of Matthew 5: PG 57 314; Discourse 4 on John 4: PG 59, 50–51. John the Baptist, this prototype of all monasticism, never studied, as Palamas wrote about him in I 1, 4. St. Anthony refused to study as a boy, but later could refute the Greek philosophers (St. Athanasius of Alexandria. Life of Anthony 1 and 72: PG 26, 841A and 944 ff.). For Nikephoros and Theoliptus, Seliot and Elijah mentioned below, see above I 2, 12. This refers to the steadfastness of Theoliptus and, apparently, others listed (almost nothing is known about them in more detail) in opposing the Union of Lyons (see above I 2, 12 and note). St. Gregory the Theologian. Word 16, 235, 936D-937A. Varlaam. 1st letter to Ignatius: Schiro, 315. St. Gregory the Theologian. Word 24, 11: PG 35, 1181B. St. John of Sinai. Ladder 6; 18: PG 88, 796V; 932B. To the 18th chapter (“On insensibility, or the mortification of the soul and on the death of the mind before the death of the body”) there is an old anonymous note: “The insensible is the one who has made the senses inactive and has prevented the natural states of his sensations, and the same with thoughts.” Ibid. 14:865D (but in different expressions: “The mind of the fasting man prays soberly”). Wed. above II 2, 4 the formulation of Varlaam. St. Mark the Hermit. On spiritual law 12: PG 65, 908. On sacramental theology 1, 3: PG 3, 1000С. St. Isaac the Syrian. Conversation 31: Σπετσιερη, 134 Θεοτοκις, 197. St. Diadochus of Photiki. Chapters, 25: des Places, 97. On the celestial hierarchy IV 2: PG 3, 180A. In the text of Varlaam, already quoted in the previous paragraph, Palamas now inserts an expression that reveals exactly what energies operate in hesychasts during prayer (“... that is, these miracles and gifts...”), and the meaning of the text turns out to be clearly absurd: it turns out that in true prayer one must avoid gifts of grace. A similar experiment with the words of Varlaam was carried out above in II 1, 7, and also, possibly, in other places, although it is difficult to judge all cases of parodying quotation, since the burned works of Varlaam have not reached us. For general comments about the experiment with text in the Middle Ages, see the book: A. V. Akhutin. History of the principles of physical experiment from antiquity to the 17th century. M., 1976, p. 106–123. Acts 2, 1–4 mixed with 1, 14. On sacramental theology 1, 1: PG 3, 997B. St. Diadach of Photicus. Chapters, 16: des Places, 92–93. St. Gregory Palamas again brings Barlaam's thought to the point of absurdity, rearranging his entire text (see II 2, 8) so that it refers to mental prayer in the sense just stated. St. Maximus the Confessor. Chapters on Love I 10: PG 90, 964A, cf. II 6: PG 90, 985V. Ibid. II 61: PG 90, 1004D (Creations..., p. 116). St. John of Sinai. Ladder, 28: PG 88, 1132С. About sorrow in general, see there, step 7 (“On sorrow that creates joy”): 801D-815D. St. Gregory the Theologian. Word 40, 31: PG 36 401D-404A. St. John of Sinai. Ladder, 7: PG 88, 804AB. “Higher than baptism is the source of tears that opens after baptism, let this be said a little boldly; because baptism is the cleansing of our former vices, and tears are the cleansing of our present ones, and the baptism received in infancy we have all tainted, but through tears we restore it to its first purity, and if God had not given them to humane people, the saved would be truly rare and it would be difficult to find them.” See about this opinion of Varlaam above II 2, 12. St. Isaac the Syrian. Word 85: Σπετσιερη, 342 Θεοτοκις, 503–504. This is also not a quote from Varlaam, but a development and reduction to the point of absurdity of his views on the immortality of the soul. In the third triad of St. Gregory Palamas, this method of exposing the wrongness of the enemy becomes the main one. St. John of Sinai. Stairs 29: PG 88, 1149A. Will (θυμος in the sense of persistent stubbornness) and desire (επιθυμια), starting with Origen and Clement of Alexandria, are considered by Christian writers as a pair of active unreasonable forces of the human soul walking in the same yoke. The impulses of a too stubborn will are restrained by the separating force of desire, and vice versa, the spreading desire is curbed by the will (see Theodoret of Cyrrhus. Interpretation of the Epistle of the Apostle Paul to the Romans 7, 17). Reason forces this harness to serve virtue and strictly rules it, but when the natural law completely submits to the law of the spirit and the image of the beginningless King is revealed in integrity and purity in man, reason gives complete freedom to both will and desire: will - for the pure enjoyment of divine love, desire - for “spiritual boiling” (St. Maximus the Confessor. Questions to Thalassia about Scripture 55: PG 90, 548CD). Therefore, “will and desire... are not directly bad by nature” (St. Dionysius the Areopagite. On the Divine Names IV 25: PG 3, 728): the highest irrational force, natural will, is in direct contact with the lower spiritual virtue, courage (On the Church Hierarchy XV 8: PG 3, 337B). According to Evagrius (Practical Chapters I 15: PG 40, 1225B), the natural inclination of the will is to fight against all kinds of demons, defending the pleasures experienced by a person; Knowing this, God's angels show man the beauty of spiritual pleasures, which the will begins to defend against demons. Unspoiled will is the “spear-bearer of the spirit”; the virtue of patience is built on it; perverted will - anger. A good desire is love, a perverted one is lust. St. John of Sinai. Ladder 26: PG 88, 1068CD: “Some have been mistaken in saying that there are some natural passions in the soul, and not realizing that we ourselves have turned simple natural properties into passions: let’s say, by nature we have the seed for childbearing, but we have turned this ability into fornication; by nature we have anger against the serpent, but we directed it against our neighbor; We have zeal in us to be zealous about virtues, but we are zealous about evil; by nature in the soul there is a desire for glory, but exalted; arrogance by nature, but against demons.” Nemesius has a similar idea, On Human Nature 31: PG 40, 725A. Gen.19:26. Using here the same word “mortified” as in relation to the passions, Gregory Palamas gives this episode the meaning that Lot’s wife, not being a sinner, died due to the suppression of active forces in herself and that for Lot her death meant the killing of everything that was not captured by the active impulse forward. It should be borne in mind that a “lie” is simply an incorrect, erroneous and generally untrue statement (as the concept of “lie” is used in modern formal logic), and “slander” is a malicious reinterpretation of a thought or a deliberate distortion of an opponent’s expressions. St. John of Sinai. Staircase 27: PG 88, 1112С. Nikifor. About storing the heart: PG 147, 963B-964A. Letter 2 to St. Gregory of Nazianzus: PG 32, 228A. See above I 2, 3 and I 3, 41. On the structure of man 8: PG 44, 145С. In the interpretation of St. Gregory of Nyssa Palamas takes Varlaam’s point of view here for a minute in order to immediately expose it. St. Basil the Great. Discourse on Psalm 14 3: PG 29. 256BC. The toxicity of this remark is that Varlaam, as an astronomer, adhered to a spherical picture of the sky. This quotation has already been cited, see above I 1, 4, 23; II 1, 39. Palamas interrupts Varlaam's phrase mid-sentence, continuing it in the next paragraph. On freedom of mind, 22 (PG 34, 956A): “Spiritual illumination is not only the revelation of thoughts and grace-filled... enlightenment, but the constant and continuous luminosity of the hypostatic light in souls.” Rev. Maximus the Confessor (To Thalassius 61, scholia 16: PG 90, 644D) calls deification “hypostatic illumination.” In the fifth book, Against Eunomius, attributed to Basil the Great, grace is called “hypostatic” (PG 29, 772C). Again, as above I 3, 4, the “Sacramental Theology” of Dionysius the Areopagite is retold. See Theodore the Studite. Commendation to Arseny 12: PG 99, 880ВС. Word 45, II PG 36, 637B. See II, 9; II 1, 34, and other places. Dan. 13 (there were two elders). We are most likely talking about Simeon the New Theologian and Nicephorus the Confessor. See in I 1, 23 the words of Dionysius the Areopagite: “Likeness to God and unity with Him, as the divine Scripture teaches...” That is, the glory of God is as transcendental to all things as God Himself, whom Dionysius the Areopagite calls “non-existent” because He “transcends” all existence (see Mysterious Theology 5: PG 3, 1048A). In the apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, in relation to the second Person of the Trinity there are the expressions: “Merciful Father, Savior Christ” (Acts of Thomas A 97, Lipsius R. A., Bonnet M. Acta apostolorum apocrypha, vol. 2. Leipzig, 1903, p. 210, 1. 8) and “I am the Father of all these ages” (Acts Matthew 3, Ibid., p. 220, 1. 4). Melito of Sardis (2nd century) also calls Christ Father in “Conversation on the Passion of Christ,” 9. Theodoret of Cyrrhus speaks of the saving calling of Jesus Christ, that He is “the Father of the future age, because just as Adam is called the father of the present age, so He is the Father of the future” (“Commentaries on the Book of Isaiah” 9, 6). The naming of Christ Father is also found in some works attributed to St. Macarius of Egypt, and in the ascetic and mystical works of subsequent centuries, but it is not found in the great teachers of the Church. Its justification in Holy Scripture is Isa. 9:6: “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given; dominion is on His shoulders, and His name will be called: Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Father of Eternity” (in the Slavic Bible - “Father of the future age”). About divine names 1 4: PG 3, 592ВG. These quotations, the third of which have not been identified by researchers, have already been cited (I 3, 26, 43). Note the freedom of quotation. Macarius of Egypt. About love 21: PG 34, 925С. Maxim the Confessor. Book of Perplexed Questions: PG 91, 1165BC. See Maximus's "contemplations" on the Transfiguration (in the "Book of Perplexed Questions" PG 91, 1160-1168), just as Gregory, who received his nickname from theology, called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil "contemplation" Word 43, 12: PG 36, 324C. See also Nikita Stifat. About the intelligible paradise 8 words. Book of Perplexed Questions: PG 91, 1165 B-1168C. Below (III 1, 13) Palamas will present Maximus’s thought more precisely. Ibid: PG 91, 1125 D-1128A. On divine names 1, 4: PG 3, 592VS. On the Church Hierarchy 7, 2: PG 3, 553D. Ibid., 2, 3: РG 3, 397D-400A. Theological Chapters II 88: PG 90, 1168A. Gregory of Nyssa. On the soul and resurrection: PG 46, 104C. Wed. Ps.35:10; John 3:2. There is no philosophical thesis, Gregory of Nyssa wants to emphasize, which would not be contained in the Bible. Gregory of Nyssa. Commendation to Stephen 1: PG 46, 717B. Ibid: PG 46, 716 D-717A. About the heavenly hierarchy 4, 2: PG 3, 180B. About the heavenly hierarchy 4, 4: PG 3, 181B. On the Divine Names I, 5: PG 3, 593B. About the heavenly hierarchy 8, 2: PG 3, 240C. See the 6th stichera of Vespers on March 25 (old style), the eve of the Council of the Archangel Gabriel. Dionysius the Areopagite. On the heavenly hierarchy IV 2; VIII 2. Dionysius the Areopagite. On the Divine Names I 8. Wed. Dionysius the Areopagite. On the heavenly hierarchy XV 9. Gregory of Nyssa. On the soul and resurrection: PG 46, 104C. Clement of Alexandria. Stromata V 1; Gregory of Nyssa. Eulogy for Stephen 1: PG 46, 717B; Basil the Great. Discourse on Psalm 48: PG 29, 449C. On the divine names I 4. Aristotle's doctrine of categories is invoked here to remind us of the heterogeneity of being (existence) and the incomprehensible exclusivity of the divine presence. On the divine names I 5, etc. Wed. above I 3, 7; II 3, 6. John of Sinai. Ladder 28: PG 88, 1132D. As almost everywhere else in Palamas, quotation is conditional and turns into interpretation. On divine names III 1. Here, as often in other places, instead of “energy” we translate “action”. Maxim the Confessor. Chapters theological and economic I 54: PG 90, 1104A; Book of Perplexed Questions: PG 91, 1200V. Book of Perplexed Questions: PG 91 1241AC. Dionysius the Areopagite. Messages 2: PG 3, 1068A, etc. Wed. Dionysius the Areopagite. On mysterious theology I 1 and V (God is “super-knowable”; He is “not anything that does not exist”, etc.). However, the formula “non-existent by superiority ... is not the essence of God” belongs to Palamas, who emphasizes the impossibility of speaking in any way about the divine essence. Theological Conversations 28, 19: PG 36, 52B. The following authorities are meant: The First Epistle of Peter (II 3, 29), the constantly quoted Dionysius the Areopagite and Isaac the Syrian (II 3, 15). John Meyendorff puts the phrase “purity of heart will then see everything” in quotation marks. From Maximus the Confessor: “Natural things, as they are, are either seen by a pure mind or clearly represented by a spiritual meaning... The more meek will in the next century be higher than the less meek... If in the next century the depiction of things is done in a sensual word, then, of course, the wise men of this age will acquire the Kingdom of Heaven; but if purity of mind is seen and the word denotes it accordingly, then the wise will be far from the knowledge of God... One must guard the heart with all care” (Practical chapters 1–25. In the book: Epifanovich S. L. Materials for the study of the life and works of St. Maximus the Confessor. Kyiv, 1917, pp. 56–59). As we have already noted, Palamas has practically no citations in the modern strict sense. Even passages from the Gospel can be cited with abbreviations and minor changes. On the soul and resurrection: PG 44, 104С. Chapters theological and economic II 88: PG 90, 1168A (Creations..., p. 253). On sacramental theology I 3: PG 3, 1000С. The third part of the first triad. Gregory of Nyssa. On the life of Moses 2, 10: PG 44, 329B. Wed. same place: PG 44, 332ВС. Words of the Byzantine liturgy (cf. the fourth tone of Matins of the week, the first irmos of the canon). Dionysius the Areopagite. On Mystical Theology I 3: PG 1000C-1001A. Gregory of Nyssa. On the life of Moses 2, 169: PG 44, 380A. Dionysius the Areopagite. On the Church Hierarchy V 2: PG 3, 501C. Dionysius the Areopagite. On sacramental theology I 1: PG 3, 997AB. Wed. Plato. Timaeus 27d; 28a: what has arisen, unlike the eternal essence, is in constant becoming, never is. On the life of Moses 1, 58: PG 44, 321A. Gregory of Nyssa. On the Life of Moses 2, 162–163: PG 44, 376D-377A. Dionysius the Areopagite. On the divine names I 4: PG 3, 592С. On the divine names I 8: PG 3, 597A. Basil the Great. Commentary on Isaiah, introduction: PG 30, 124C. Dionysius the Areopagite. About the heavenly hierarchy XIII 3: PG 3, 300С. Ibid. VIII 1: PG 3, 237С. Maxim the Confessor. Chapters theological and economic II 82: PG 90, 1164A. Athanasius of Alexandria. Life of St. Anthony 10: PG 26, 860AB. Gregory of Nyssa. On Human Bliss 6: PG 44, 1269B. On the Divine Names VII 3: PG 3, 869CD. Maxim the Confessor. Chapters theological and economic II 26: PG 90, 1136CD. Εγκυκλιος παιδεια, “encyclopedic education” meant in Byzantium a collection of sciences taught by higher education. Dionysius the Areopagite. On the Church Hierarchy I 3: PG 3, 376A. Wed. II 1, 21. The difference between the real text of Barlaam (which has not reached us) and its accusatory interpretation in polemics is not always strictly observed, and in the heat of passions is completely erased. On the Church Hierarchy II 1: PG 3, 392A. Wed. II 1, 34, 37; II 3, 17. The friend in question is Palamas himself. This passage is taken from his first letter to Akindinus. For the personal meeting between Varlaam and Palamas, see II 3, 13. A short homily, presumably belonging to St. John Chrysostom (PG 59, 701–702). A sect condemned at one of the councils that practiced continuous prayer to the detriment of church discipline and doctrinal dogma. Cyril of Alexandria. On Worship in Spirit and Truth 1: PG 68, 148A. Pseudo-Basily the Great. Against Eunomius V: PG 29, 772D. According to Palamas, “from the Son” and “through the Son” it is not the third divine hypostasis itself (the Holy Spirit) that is sent, but its uncreated energy (III 1, 8). The Byzantines called the Turks Persians (cf. II 3, 4). There is an account in Latin of Barlaam's negotiations with Pope Benedict XII in 1339 (PG 151, 1331–1342). This prayer, repeated in Barlaam’s treatises against the Latins, suggests that he deliberately made the text ambiguous, allowing for a Catholic reading. See I 3, 20; 37; II 3, 37. Theodore is a priest of the Blachernae church in Constantinople, convicted under Alexei Komnenos. Dionysius the Areopagite. Messages 2: PG 3, 1068–1069. Maxim the Confessor. Questions to Thalassia about Scripture 61: PG 90, 644D. John Chrysostom. Discourse on Titus 6, 5: PG 62, 696. Basil the Great. Against Eunomius 5: PG 29, 772B. Maxim the Confessor. Book of Perplexed Questions: PG 91, 1144C; Five hundred chapters V 85: PG 90, 1384. On the Divine Names II 7: PG 3, 645B. Symeon Metaphrastus. On the elevation of the mind 1: PG 34, 889С; Arrangement of Macarius Conversations V II PG 34, 516BC. Ibid: PG 34, 517AB; 892AB. On divine names 1 4: PG 3, 592ВС. Gregory of Nazianzus. Epistle 101, Kledonia: PG 37, 181AB. This expression of Plato (Timaeus 27d) was used by Barlaam in his time to characterize the contemplations of the hesychasts. Gregory of Nyssa. On the soul and resurrection: PG 44, 104С. Gregory of Nazianzus. Conversations 40, 6: PG 36, 365A. Basil the Great. Against Eunomius 5: PG 29, 640AB. The exapostilary sung at the Matins of the Transfiguration of the Lord on August 6/19, and the last stichera of the vespers after the Transfiguration on August 7/20. Maxim the Confessor. Book of Perplexed Questions: PG 91, 1376CD; 1165 VS; 1168С. John of Damascus. Talk 1 on Transfiguration 12–13: PG 96, 564C-565A. Vespers of the Transfiguration. John of Damascus. Canon for the Transfiguration, canto 9, troparion 2. Andrey Kritsky. Discussion 7 on Transfiguration: PG 97, 933C. On the celestial hierarchy VII 2: PG 3, 208C. Kosma Mayumsky. Canon for the Transfiguration, canto 9, troparion 1. Words from the Kontakion of the Feast of the Transfiguration. John of Damascus. Conversation on Transfiguration 12: PG 96: 564B. Theological and economic chapters 1, 48: PG 90, 1100D. Words from the sedalna after the polyeleos at the Matins of the Transfiguration. Book of Perplexed Questions: PG 91, 1165D. Dionysius the Areopagite. About the heavenly hierarchy XV 2: PG 3, 328D-329C. John of Damascus. Homily on the Transfiguration 7; 10; 12; 15–16: PG 96, 557C; 561D; 564C; 569AB. Dionysius the Areopagite. On divine names 1 4: PG 3, 592ВС. Andrey Kritsky. Homily 7 on the Transfiguration: PG 97, 949С. From the service of Vespers of the Transfiguration. Dionysius the Areopagite. On the Divine Names II 7: PG 3, 645A. Maxim the Confessor. To Marin: РG 91, 268D. Dionysius the Areopagite. Message 2: PG 3, 1068A-1069A. Expression of Maximus the Confessor. Maxim the Confessor. Questions to Thalassia 22: PG 90, 324A. Maxim the Confessor. Book of Perplexed Questions: PG 91, 1240С. Basil the Great. Messages 1 4: PG 32, 229V. It is unknown who is being quoted here. This text, attributed to St. Maximus also in I 3, 20 and III 3, 13, is not found in his published works. On the Celestial Hierarchy III 3: PG 3, 165A. Dionysius the Areopagite. Epistles 2: PG 3, 1068–1069. Maxim the Confessor. Book of Perplexed Questions: PG 91, 1140A; 1144C. Gregory of Nazianzus. Homilies, 30, 21: PG 36, 132B. Wed. Maxim the Confessor. Book of Perplexed Questions: PG 91, 1076BC. Andrey Kritsky. Discussion 7 on Transfiguration: PG 97, 933C. On the Holy Spirit 26: PG 32, 180C. Basil the Great. Against Eunomius, 5: PG 29, 772D. On the Holy Spirit 26: PG 32, 180CD. This text, quoted more than once by Palamas, is attributed to St. Vasily, but was not found in his possession. Gregory of Nyssa has similar thoughts. Interpretation on the Sixth Day: PG 44, 88, and by John the Sinaite. Staircase 26: PG 88, 1033. Book of Perplexed Questions: PG 91, 1144BC. Dionysius the Areopagite. Sacramental Theology I 1: PG 3, 997B. Wed. Maxim the Confessor. One Hundred Chapters Against the Gnostics, 2, 83: PG 90, 1164B: “The mind of Christ... does not come through the deprivation of our human mental capacity.” Macarius-Simeon. On Freedom of Mind, 23: PG 34, 957B. Basil the Great. Against Eunomius, 5: PG 34, 957B. Wed. Gen.18:27. See above § 36 and note. 76. See above § 35 and note. 73. See above III 1, 9 and note. 17. See above § 36 and note. 77. Basil the Great. Conversation 2 on Six Days 5; 8: PG 29, 40C; 52V. Gregory of Nazianzus. Conversations, 44, 3: PG 34, 609BC. See Isa. 58, 8. In the surviving interpretation of John Chrysostom on the book of the prophet Isaiah, there is no text cited by Palamas. Macarius-Simeon. On Grace 9: PG 33, 916BC. It's him. On the Elevation of the Mind 13: PG 34, 901AB, with the order of the sentences changed. It's him. On Freedom of Mind, 22: PG 34, 956D-957A. Ibid., 23: PG 34, 957AB. These sayings are not in the published works of Macarius-Simeon; subsequent ones - see On Freedom of Mind, 27: PG 34, 960С. Gregory of Nazianzus. Conversations 28, 31: PG 36, 72C. Dionysius the Areopagite. On the Divine Names IV 8: PG 3,704D. Gregory of Nazianzus. Conversations 28, 31. Arians, for whom the Son was the intentional creation of the Father. Maxim the Confessor. One Hundred Chapters Against the Gnostics 1, 48: PG 90, 1100D. Wed. above III 1, 19. Ibid 1, 50: PG 90, 1101B. Ibid. 1, 48–50: PG 90, 1100С-1101В. Basil the Great. Epistles 189, 6–7: PG 32, 692–696. Basil the Great classifies foreknowledge among energies distinct from essence in his essay “Against Eunomius” I 8: PG 29, 528B. See Maximus the Confessor. Small theological works, appendix - a selection of texts from St. fathers: PG 91, 281BC. Basil the Great. Against Eunomius 1, 8: PG 29, 528B. Maxim the Confessor. One Hundred Chapters Against the Gnostics 1 48: PG 90, 1100D. The word %θεος, God, recalled running, θεειν, contemplation, θεασθαι, fire, αιθειν to both the ancient and Christian world (Gregory of Nazianzus. Conversations 30, 18: PG 36, 128A; Gregory of Nyssa. K Alabius that there are no three gods: PG 45, 121D, 124A; Scholium 4 to “Step 1” of St. John Climacus: PG 88, 645AB). Dionysius the Areopagite heard in θεοτης, Divinity, the meaning of self-deification (On the Divine Names XI 6: PG 3, 956 A). Wed. Gregory of Nazianzus. Discourses 45, 3: PG 36, 625C and Dionysius the Areopagite. On the divine names V 4: PG 3, 817С. Wed. Maxim the Confessor. Book of Perplexed Questions: PG 91, 1144С. On the Divine Names XI 6: PG 3, 953D-956A. Gregory of Nazianzus, see above III 2, 3. On the Divine Names IV 8: PG 3, 704D. Conversation 28, 31: PG 36, 72C. Basil the Great. Against Eunomius 5: PG 29, 769B; Wed Gen.18:27. On the divine names IV 8: РG З, 704D. Gregory of Nazianzus. Conversations 45, 27: PG 36, 661A. υποστησαι – On the divine names XI 6: РG 3, 953В. Against Eunomius II 23: PG 29, 624A. The place was quoted in the Palamite documents of the council of 1351 (PG 151, 744B); later Nikifor Grigora drew attention to the fact that in some lists of Basil the Great, instead of “performed” (υπεστησατο), there is “begotten” (ετεκνωσατο); in the controversy of 1356, Palama defended his right to rely on “performed”. Discourse on Psalm 32, 4: PG 29, 333B. Epistles 38, 4: PG 32, 329C. On the Divine Names XI 6: PG III 3, 956AB. Cp. Theological chapters... I 48: PG 90, 1100CD. On the Divine Names XI 6: PG 3, 956A. Theological chapters... 1 48: PG 90, 1100D. Maxim the Confessor. Theological chapters... 1 49: PG 90,1101A. On the Divine Names V 5–7: PG 3, 820B; D; 821B. On the divine names V 8: RO 3, 824С. On the Divine Names VII 3: PG 3, 872A. On the Divine Names IV 4: PG 3, 697CD. Wed. above II 1, 2 and II 3, 78. (φαντασιας) – See above II 3, 58. Commentary on Isaiah 13: PG 30, 565C. Ibid., 7 and “Introduction” PG 30, 452A; 121A; 124V). John Chrysostom. Commentary on Isaiah 1: PG 56, 14. On Creation 12: PG 44, 156 ff. Or “Svyatogorsk Tomos”. See this article about him. book, afterword. For St. Stephen: PG 46, 717B. Against Eunomius 2, 18: PG 29, 609B. For St. Stephen: PG 46, 716D-717A. Epistle to Nikander; Small prod. theologian and polemical; Disp. with Pyrrhus (PG 91, 96B; 200C; 205AC; 340D). Message 2: PG 3, 1068–1069. Wed. On Grace III 25: PG 90, 1024C. One Hundred Chapters Against the Gnostics 1 48: PG 90, 1100D. Book of Perplexed Questions: PG 91, 1144BC; Chapter Five Hundred V 85: PG 90, 1384D. Sedalene after the polyeleos at the Matins of the Transfiguration; the third stichera of “praise” at the evening of the same holiday. Conversations on Transfiguration 12: PG 96, 564C. On divine names 14; Wed About the heavenly hierarchy XV 4: PG 3, 592BC; 353C. Maxim the Confessor. Theological chapters II 4: PG 90, 1128A. Maxim the Confessor. Mystery 5: PG 91, 681B. See this expression of Varlaam above. III 1, 11. Gregory of Nazianzus. Conversations 45, 3: PG 36, 625C-638A. Maxim the Confessor. Book of Perplexed Questions: PG 91,1088С. Epistles 2: PG 3, 1068–1069. On the Divine Names II 10: PG 3, 648D. Dionysius the Areopagite. On Sacramental Theology 5: PG 3, 1048B and elsewhere. Maxim the Confessor. One Hundred Chapters Against the Gnostics 1, 7: PG 90, 1085B; 1, 49: PG 90, 1101A; To Thalassia 63: PG 90, 673D, etc. You might be interested in: