Triads in Defence of the Holy Hesychasts 1 part 14/21

This whole multitude, then, sent up one unanimous voice, declaring that there is a light that appears to the saints, other than the knowledge derived from all created things — and the more sacred, in that it is also the glory of the nature of God, and is beheld only by those who have become God-like — and so far removed from being fantastic, or resembling sensible lights, or being fashioned symbolically after them, that it is even the very substance and beauty of the age to come, the only true light, eternal, unchangeable, without evening, unalterable, through which we ourselves become light, the offspring of perfect light.

I fear lest you fall away from the lot of the saints that is in the light; lest, opening your mouth, you draw in not the Spirit but that which is opposed to the truth; lest you dogmatize as the essence of God that which does not truly exist.

For what is that struggle of yours aiming at, in which you strive with the utmost zeal to show that there is no contemplation beyond the noetic operations — although it is precisely through this contemplation alone, which transcends the noetic operations, that both the truly-being of God, most clearly and pre-eminently above all else, and the being of God above all existing things, are made known?

For how, indeed, would the essence of God not be beyond all things sensible and intelligible — (p.

) — if indeed, to those who through sincere prayer have ascended above everything whatsoever that is sensible or intelligible, the glory of that divine nature is beheld within that very prayer?

And how much more would the essence of God be above everything sensible and intelligible, if indeed it is even above this very vision, which is itself above all sense and intellection?

And what of the good things of the age to come?

Are they not above all our faculties, both sensory and noetic?

"What eye has not seen, and ear has not heard, and has not entered into the heart of man, God has prepared," Scripture says, "for those who love Him"; yet these things, at that time, purity of heart will behold, according to St. Maximus.

How, then, is there in no way a vision above all acts of intellection?

For do not, once again, sophistically, by means of the equivocation, since you no longer have any way to contradict us, feign to be one who speaks in agreement with us.

For neither will he who metaphorically and equivocally calls that which is beyond intellection "intellection," on account of its also being "above-named," then turn around and struggle to show that it is not beyond intellection.

...being called "intellection," has some pretext and mask, namely the equivocation; but he who does not even posit that as beyond the noetic operations has no means of sophistry at all; for that could least of all be called a noetic operation.

For indeed, in that most blessed way of life, in the unceasing age to come, the sons of the resurrection will have need of none of the things that, in this present age, sustain life — not air, not light, not place, and the like — but instead of all these, the divine nature itself will come to be for us, according to Gregory of Nyssa; and, according to St. Maximus, the deification of the soul and, at that time, of the body, will grant a cessation of all the natural operations according to intellect and sense, so that God will appear through both the soul and the body, once the natural (p.

What, then, is that light which is seen through bodily eyes, yet without air, and is not sensible, and is above all natural knowledge?

Is it not the glory of God, shining round about and shining within?

And what is it that renders us capable of contemplation beyond all sense and intellection?

Is it not the Spirit of God, who will make not only our intellect, but at that time our body too, spiritual?

How, then, is there no vision above intellection, nor any other light of the heart than knowledge?

I, for my part, also posit our sacred faith, in another sense, as a vision of our heart above all sensations and all acts of intellection, as transcending all the noetic powers of our soul; and by "faith" I do not mean the pious confession, but the unshakable establishment upon it and upon the things promised by God.

For how do we, through it, see the things promised for that unceasing age to come?

But faith is the substance of things hoped for, and there is no device by which one could even see, by sense-perception, that which is future and hoped for; wherefore the apostle also added: the evidence of things not seen.

Will, then, some noetic faculty see the things hoped for?

And how, seeing that these are things which have in no way entered into the heart of man?

What then — do we not, through faith, see the things promised to us by God, inasmuch as it rises above all sensory and noetic operations?

But did not all those who, from the beginning of the age, sought the heavenly homeland through their works, according to the divine apostle, die without having received the promises, but having seen them from afar and embraced them?

There exists, then, both a vision and an intellection of the heart above all noetic operations; for that which is above intellect, unless it is so by way of transcendence, is not thereby unintelligent — since that which is unintelligent by way of deficiency is of a different sort.

Nevertheless, since all those who were borne witness to through (p.

) faith did not receive the promise, since God had foreseen something better concerning us, so that they should not be made perfect apart from us — will these, then, once made perfect, not see the things promised?

Or will they indeed see, but not see above all intellection?

Or will they see even above all intellection, but in the same manner as also before being made perfect?

And how could this be reasonable?

They will therefore see, and they will see beyond all noetic apprehension, and not as they saw before, but the seeing will be an enjoyment of the things that were promised.

There is, then, a seeing that is beyond all noetic apprehension, and yet still beyond even this; for this faith is itself a seeing beyond the mind, while the enjoyment of the things believed is a seeing beyond that very seeing which is beyond the mind.

And indeed that which is seen and enjoyed according to it, being above all things sensible and intelligible, is not the essence of God; rather, the essence of God is exalted transcendently even above this.

For such is the whole reality of the good things to come.

Do you understand how much of the God-befitting majesty is taken away by those who do not know this seeing beyond noetic apprehension, and how much greater, beyond such people, is the God magnified by those who have either, through purity of heart, moderately tasted of it and hold within themselves the pledge of the age to come, or have accepted it in faith — faith which in manifold ways procures those ineffable goods?

But let us dwell yet further on faith and on the divine contemplation, delightful to Christians, that accords with it — faith, the vehicle of the power of the gospel, the apostolic life, the righteousness of Abraham; faith, from which all righteousness now begins and in which it ends, and from which the righteous shall live, while he who draws back shall fall away from the divine favor, (p.

) for without faith it is impossible to please God — faith, which continually frees our race from every kind of error and establishes us in the truth and the truth in us, faith from which no one among all shall move us, even should he deem us mad, because through true faith we have been put into an ecstasy beyond conception, bearing witness by deed and by word that we are not carried about by every wind of doctrine, but hold fast to the one true knowledge of the Christians and profess the simpler and more divine and truly unerring contemplation.

So then, setting aside for the moment the things to come, that we may survey the contemplation beyond mind that comes from faith, beginning from the things that happened from the beginning: by faith we understand that the ages were fashioned by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that appear.

What mind could ever comprehend how this universe came into being out of that which in no way whatsoever exists — and that, by word alone?

For that which is comprehensible to the noetic energies certainly does not at all surpass those very noetic energies.

For this reason, then, the wise among the Greeks too, having perceived that nothing of the things that perish passes over into non-being, and that nothing of the things that come to be arises from non-being, held the world to be unbegotten and unending.

But faith, transcending the notions that arise from the contemplation of created things, has united us to the Word who dwells above all things, and to the unconstructed and simple truth; and we have understood — better than by demonstration — that all things were brought forth not only out of non-being, but also by the word of God alone.

Is it, then, some natural power, or one that surpasses nature?

Surely one that surpasses nature; wherefore no one can come to the Father except through the Son, who sets us above ourselves, and gives the deifying simplicity, and turns us back toward the unity of the Father who gathers [us] together, (p.

) For this reason Paul received grace unto the obedience of faith; for this reason, 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; for this reason, more blessed than those who saw and believed in him who lives from the dead and is the author of eternal life, are those who did not see and yet believed; for the very things which even the seeing eye disbelieves, and which the understanding cannot grasp, these they saw and reverenced through the supra-worldly eyes of faith.

This is the victory that has overcome the world — our faith; this is she who, strange as it is to say, first constituted the lower world in various ways and at various times, and afterward refashioned it toward the more divine, and set it on high above the heavens, and made the earth into heaven.

Who made Abram into Abraham, and father of many nations — of those likened to the sand and of those resembling the stars?

Was it not faith concerning those promises, then incomprehensible?

For though his only-begotten heir stood before him destined for slaughter, and yet through him he was to have many descendants — oh, the wonder! — he believed without wavering.

What then? Would not the old man then have seemed to be acting foolishly, to those who view matters by mere reasoning?

But the outcome of events, through the grace of God, showed that faith is not folly, but a knowledge that surpasses all reasoning.

Noah, again, expected floods of water from the curved circumference of the sky.

...being so far distant from the center...

Where are the precise sphericities and (p.

) the curvatures and the manifold, swiftest motions, by which you, in seeking the truth among existing things, will lead astray both yourself and those who trust you from that very truth, and will make [them] the prey of a flood — learning bitterly through experience the very things which, through [such] knowledge, they wrongly failed to know?

But faith, even before the outcome, will through unknowing rightly lead one to the truth, and will render [him] altogether untried and unaffected by evils through experience, and by the very facts will prove all secular philosophy foolish — a philosophy which neither then nor now has known what was said by the great Peter: that heavens existed of old, formed out of water and by means of water, through which the world of that time, being deluged with water, perished; but the heavens that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.

Is the knowledge of God that exists among Christians, and the salvation that comes through it, [attained] through the knowledge of philosophy, or through faith — [faith] which through unknowing nullifies this [philosophical] knowledge?

But if it is through knowledge, then faith has been emptied, and the promise which says, 'If you believe in your heart, you will be saved through the Lord Jesus,' has been nullified.

So then, it is not the one who has the knowledge of existing things in his heart who thereby has God, but the one who has believed in his heart [in] the Lord Jesus who, through simple and uncurious faith, has God established within himself.

And let us now pass over those who, through this very knowledge, failed to know God, and [the fact] that not all knowledge derived from philosophy is true.

But let us grant that all of it is true, and let us bring forward those who, through this very knowledge of created things, came to recognize God.

The contemplation and recognition [of God] that comes through these things, then, is called the natural law; wherefore even before the patriarchs and prophets and the written law, the human race was called to account and turned toward God, and displayed the (p.

For who, having a mind, and having seen so many differences among visible essences, and the oppositions of invisible powers, and the mutually counterbalancing impulses of motion, and, moreover, rest of another, counterbalancing kind, and unfailing successions arising out of opposed affections, and unconfused friendship arising out of irreconcilable strife, and the cohesions of things distinguished and the non-mixture of things united — of minds, of souls, of bodies — the harmony achieved through so many things, the stable relations and positions, the essential states and orders, the indissolubility of their cohesion — who, taking all such things to mind, would not perceive that he who has well established each thing within itself and has wondrously fitted them to one another is to be known from [his] image and from [his] effect — that is, would not perceive that God is to be known [in this way]?

And who, having thus known God, would consider him to be one of the things caused, or one of those set forth as an image of him?

So that he will also possess the knowledge of God that comes by way of negation.

The knowledge of created things, then, turned the human race toward the knowledge of God before the law and the prophets, and now again it turns [them]; and almost the whole fullness of the inhabited world, as many as do not submit to the evangelical decrees, have, through this alone, at present no other God than the maker of this universe.

These, then, know God from the knowledge of created things alone — those who have not, through the law, died to the law, so as to live the life that is in Christ; or rather, those who have never at any time received any law of God at all.

But do you now [urge] us — at the time when God has been manifested in the flesh, believed on among the nations, proclaimed in the world, and the law of grace has been revealed to the ends [of the earth]; at the time when we have received the Spirit of God, so that we might know the things graciously given to us by God; at the time when we have become taught by God and disciples of the Paraclete, according to the saving promise (for, he says, 'that one will teach you all the truth' — as though it were not yet known at all); at the time when we have the mind of Christ — and (p.

...a teacher, live according to the elemental principles of the world, O man?

We await a new heaven and a new earth according to his promise; and shall we not, out of that, understand and glorify God in a manner that transcends the world, but instead come to know him only out of this old and changeable [world]?

Not merely changeable, but also corruptible.

For indeed, by calling that [heaven and earth] new, he showed this one to be old; and everything that grows old and ages [moves] toward disappearance.

Is it, then, from the contemplation of created things, or from him who was declared Son of God in power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead — Jesus Christ our Lord?

Is not Christ our one and only teacher?

Where, then, among his words were we taught concerning the nature of this perishable world?

Did he not himself command that no one be called teacher on earth?

How then shall we go to the Greeks and Egyptians, as if to learn from them something salvific?

Our knowledge of God boasts of God as its teacher; not an angel, not a man, but the Lord himself taught us and saved us.

We no longer know God from probability/inference; for such is the knowledge of God that comes from created things. But now the life has been manifested, that life which was with the Father and has been manifested to us, and has announced to us that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all, and has made those who believed in him children of light; and it has not yet been manifested what we shall be, but [we know] that when it is manifested, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.

Here again you have an occasion for calumny: for we shall see him as he is.

But he who says these things, being immediately built upon the stone laid in Zion, is in every respect like it: whoever falls upon it will be broken, and on whomever it falls, it will crush him to powder.

) But let us consider on what grounds the philosopher establishes that there is no vision above all the noetic energies — first stating this: that we know that thing, concerning which our discourse is, to be both nameless and beyond every name.

If, then, we too call it 'vision,' we nonetheless also know it to exist beyond vision; and if someone should wish to call it 'noetic apprehension,' inasmuch as he believes — or knows through experience — that it too is beyond noetic apprehension, in this he agrees with us.

But that there is a vision beyond all noetic apprehension, that [philosopher] neither understood nor believed; yet we would forgive him for not understanding, since to understand what is beyond mind does not belong to our nature and its exercises; and we would have accepted him even had he not believed altogether, knowing, as we ought, according to the apostle, that the one weak in faith is to be received.

But as for attempting to overturn those who believe, and using contentious writings against them and against the truth, and hastening by every means to give offense not only to the little ones but even to those who excel in virtue and piety — who, choosing to be a servant of the truth, could bear this in silence?

He, then, did not understand nor believe that there is a vision and noetic apprehension beyond all vision and noetic apprehension — [a vision] itself beyond every name and possessing appellations that fall short of it; and as for that which he supposes the theologians mean by 'beyond mind,' namely the theology by way of negation, he himself confesses that not even this is beyond mind.

'For,' he says, 'they deny the things that are known, not the things that are unknown'; and we too know that in this [apophatic] theology the mind conceives the very things which it denies of God, so that not even this theology has transcended the noetic energies.

But concerning the vision beyond mind, we would say this: that if our mind did not have [the power] to transcend itself, (p.

...into actuality — there is, then, a vision beyond all the noetic energies, which vision we call 'beyond noetic apprehension'; that which, therefore, is no more non-understanding than it is understanding — how could it be a part of universal/general knowledge?

And how shall it be set in contradistinction to the species/kinds of that [knowledge]?

For none of the wise ever divided being into corporeal and incorporeal and supra-essential, nor sense-perception into the five senses and that which is beyond sense-perception; for how could that which is above being fall under being, and that which is beyond perception fall under perception?

Thus, then, neither is that which is above knowledge a species of knowledge.

That the mind has the power to transcend itself, and through this to be united to what is greater than itself, the great Dionysius also states most clearly; and he says this not simply in passing, but signifies that such knowledge is among the things most necessary for Christians; for, he says, it is necessary to know that our mind has, on the one hand, a power for understanding, by which it beholds the intelligibles, and, on the other hand, a union that surpasses the nature of the mind, by which it is joined to what lies beyond itself.

In that it surpasses the nature of the mind, [this union] is above all the noetic energies and is not knowledge, by way of transcendence; but in that it is the bond joining mind and God, it is incomparably superior to the power that joins the mind to created things, namely, knowledge.

But how does he who contradicts us establish that there is no vision above all the noetic energies?

'Because,' he says, 'nothing is higher than the theology by way of abstraction.'

But contemplation, O best of men, is one thing, and theology another, since it is not the same thing to say something about God as it is to possess and to see God.

) for the theology by way of negation [likewise belongs to discourse]; but there are also contemplations that are beyond speech, and this was demonstrated by him to whom the unspeakable things were revealed.

Since, then, the theology by way of negation belongs to discourse, the contemplation beyond discourse is therefore also above it; and those who behold the things beyond discourse transcend it, not by discourse, but in deed and in truth and by the grace of God and of the all-powerful Spirit, who grants us to see the things that eye has not seen and ear has not heard.

But he, not even moderately understanding these things, supposes that the great Dionysius bears witness on his behalf when he says: 'Everyone who is deemed worthy to know and see God comes to be in the divine darkness by the very fact of not seeing and not knowing, truly coming to be in that which is above sight and knowledge'; and elsewhere: 'it belongs only to those who have transcended all things — both the pure things and every ascent of all the holy summits, and all the divine lights — to enter into the darkness where He who is truly beyond all things is.'

'One enters,' says the philosopher, 'into this darkness through the removal of all beings, and this is the most perfect contemplation — this darkness, apophatic theology alone; and there is nothing beyond not knowing anything at all. So even that divine light — whatever it is that you speak of — must be left behind, so that you may run back up to apophatic theology and contemplation.'

But indeed we call that the light of grace which the great Dionysius himself says shines round about the saints always, eternally and unceasingly, in that most blessed way of life of the age to come, just as it also shone round the disciples in the most divine Transfiguration.

What device, then, could there be for [renouncing that light which] shines round about eternally and is seen unfailingly then — and this not only sensibly, but also noetically, or rather even beyond these, spiritually and divinely, as we have often (p.

...) shown also through many arguments — what device, then, or what benefit could there be in being released from that light which, in a manner surpassing us, unites eternally those who are greater than mind, and grants them to see what is beyond you?

For just as the intellect, ineffably joined to sense-perception, sees sensible things, and just as sense-perception, through its conjunction with the intellect, presents symbolically and sensibly the intelligible things, coming to apprehend them, so also these two, joined together by the Spirit, will behold the invisible light spiritually — or rather, they will live eternally together with it in the beholding.

But if now we are able to abandon and transcend this light, yet then we are not able, then the present age is better for us than the age to come, and reasonably those who war against the eternal and true light are all agitated about it.

Does the great Dionysius, then, agree with these things?

And how could he, who above all others hymned this light, agree?

Now this we have already demonstrated at length, through many arguments, in the discourses previously set forth 'On the Divine Light and Illumination' — that he who is, above all others, most opposed to those who are opposed to the great light, is this most radiant luminary of the inhabited world from the Areopagus.

But let us now also take up and examine those words of his which have been put forward by them.

Writing, then, to Dorotheus the deacon, this Dionysius says: 'The divine darkness is the inaccessible light, because of the excess of the super-essential outpouring of light; in this darkness comes to be everyone who is deemed worthy to know and see God, by the very fact of not seeing and not knowing, coming to be in that which is above sight and knowledge, knowing this very thing — that He is beyond all sensible and intelligible things.'

Here, then, he calls the same thing both darkness and light, both seeing and not seeing, both knowing and not knowing.

How then is this light also darkness?

'...) of light,' he says, 'so that it is light properly, but darkness by way of excess, being invisible to those who attempt to approach and see it through the operations of sense-perception or intellect.'

Since, then, everyone who is deemed worthy to know and see God comes to be in that very inaccessible light, who is this one deemed worthy of such a thing — to approach the inaccessible and see the invisible?

But to come to be in the divine darkness belongs to Moses alone and to those like him, whereas apophatic theology belongs to every God-fearing person; and now, after the Master's sojourn in the flesh, it belongs also to every human being, as has already been demonstrated above.

This light, properly speaking, and this divine darkness itself, are therefore something other, and incomparably surpass apophatic theology; let it be granted, however, that this is only to the same degree that Moses surpasses the many in the vision of God.

But he who has come to be in this light sees, and yet does not see.

Because, he says, he sees above sight, so that properly he does know and see, but in a transcendent manner he does not see — seeing by no operation whatsoever of intellect or of sense-perception, by the very fact of not seeing and not knowing, that is, by such a one transcending every cognitive operation, coming to be in that which is above sight and knowledge — evidently seeing and operating in a manner better than we do, inasmuch as he has become better than what accords with man, and is already God by grace, existing united to God, and seeing God through God.

Have they not, then, deceived themselves, [taking] this true ignorance — yet an ignorance by way of privation — [to be] better than all knowledge? (p.

...) declaring this and priding themselves on being ignorant by way of deficiency.

Thus those who do not believe in the greatest light fall away also from the light of knowledge.

...when these are present and cooperate, it becomes, at the outset, more prevailing for us) — before refuting the wicked use made, by those who unjustly draw the wisdom of God from the wells of creation, that is, the wise men according to the Greeks; before dwelling together with those who maintain peace with one another and neither disagree nor speak against one another — namely, with those wise in divine things; before, through withdrawal and stillness, attending to one's own sheep — that is to say, one's own thoughts; before running up to the mountain, the summit of the soul that is ours; before gazing from afar upon the strange light; before drawing near; before hearing and loosing the sandals from one's feet, since it is not permitted to touch the holy ground while the dead, and things that do not truly exist, act as mediators; before the right hand is transformed by being placed in the bosom — that is, the intellect having plunged down into itself; before, through the all-powerful staff, namely faith, [casting down] the might of the tyrant (p.

...) utterly, and to walk with unwetted feet across the salty sea of life; before making our nature — embittered and hardened — into a spring of supernatural gladness through prayer and God-pleasing action; before tasting the food that flows down from above, and being both eager and able no longer to flee the adversaries but to pursue them all; before, through the preparation of all such things, completely 'keeping sabbath' from the inactivity that belongs to evils, and hearing and passing beyond the many-voiced trumpets, and seeing and passing beyond the many-poured lights (these being the glory of God proclaimed through the manifold creatures of God — and let this include also the preaching through prophets, apostles, and fathers, and all the detailed teachings of divine instruction); before having first accomplished so many things, and, together with the chosen ones consecrated to God, arriving at the summit of the divine ascents and seeing the place of God, and then also being united inconceivably to God Himself — without having accomplished any of these things, being free of them all, they dare to say that they enter into the darkness beyond light through apophatic theology.

But we, having sufficiently examined this in our earlier discourses 'On Light,' have shown it to be an image of that formless contemplation and of that contemplative fulfillment which, according to mind yet above mind, occurs in the Holy Spirit — but not that it is that very thing itself.

Therefore all the faithful who have been deemed worthy to receive the mystery are able to hymn God by way of negation, but they are not thereby able also to be united to Him and see Him through light, unless they also, through the fulfillment of the divine commandments, receive the supernatural power of contemplation.

'But,' he says, 'according to Dionysius the Areopagite it is also necessary for those who enter into the mystical darkness to leave behind all the divine lights; therefore also that divine light itself — if indeed it is anything at all, this thing which you propound — ought to be left down below,' (p.

...) and from this it is shown that to see nothing at all, in any way whatsoever, this is that mystical darkness.

What do you say? And do you thus number among the many that light which lives eternally together with the saints — the glory of the divine nature, the beauty of the age to come that endures forever, the beginningless and unending kingdom of God?

For thus did He Himself, who on the mountain also caused this very light to shine forth, name it.

But what does this divine Dionysius say?