Triads in Defence of the Holy Hesychasts 1 part 5/21

And all beings, as though contained under some single ray of this noetic sun, another of the more perfect saints has seen — although he too saw not what and how much that light is, but only as much as he made himself receptive of it, having seen it, and having learned from this contemplation and from the union with it above the mind, not what it is in its nature, but that it truly is, and that it is supernatural and supersubstantial, a being other than all beings, yet a being properly and alone, and one that ineffably comprehends within itself every being.

Yet this infinite light is never seen, whether by one or by all, in its fullness.

But he who does not see fully understands that it is he himself who is unable to see, not having been perfectly attuned to the Spirit through more complete purity — but it is not the thing seen that receives a limit.

When, therefore, the degree of contemplation has diminished, from the similar dispassionate gladness that wells up in the one who sees, and the noetic calm, and the fire of love toward God that is kindled anew, he who sees knows exactly that

that this is that same light, even though he sees it more faintly; and, in proportion to his God-pleasing practice, and to his abstention from all other things, and to his attentiveness in prayer, and to his turning back toward God with his whole soul, being carried ever forward and experiencing an ever more luminous contemplation, from this he also understands that the infinity of what is seen is infinite; and while he does not see a limit to that light's brightness, he sees all the more clearly the weakness of his own fitness to receive light.

But neither does he suppose that what he has been deemed worthy to see is simply the nature of God; rather, just as life comes to be in the ensouled body by the soul, and we also call this life itself "soul," yet we know that the soul that is in us and that furnishes life is something other than this life — so also, in the God-bearing soul, the light comes to be through the indwelling God.

But, moreover, the union of God, the cause of all things, with those deemed worthy is above even this — a union according to a supersubstantial power, God remaining wholly in himself and yet dwelling wholly in us, and imparting to us not his own nature, but his own glory and brightness.

This light, then, is divine, and is rightly named "divinity" by the saints, for it deifies; therefore it is not only this, but also self-deification and divine principality; and although it seems to be a distinction and multiplication of the one God, nevertheless it is no less the arch-god, the supra-god, and the supra-principal one, one in one Godhead — and for this very reason arch-god, supra-god, and supra-principal, because he is the sustainer of this Godhead — as the teachers of the Church have said, following the Areopagite, the great Dionysius, calling "Godhead" the deifying gift that has proceeded forth from God.

And so the same Dionysius, writing to Gaius, who had asked how God is above the divine principality, says: "If, having understood by 'Godhead' the thing that is the deifying gift according to which we are deified, and if this becomes the beginning of being deified, then he who is supra-principal over every principle is beyond this Godhead so named."

The divine grace of the light beyond sense-perception is, therefore, theologically named thus by the fathers; but God is not simply this in his nature — not only able to illumine and deify the mind, but also to bring forth out of non-being every noetic essence.

Do you see how, even while seeing him, they consider him invisible, in a manner surpassing those who are proficient in the outer wisdom?

Those, then, who have ascended to this contemplation know that they see a light by noetic perception, and that this light is God, who, by the grace of union, ineffably brightens those who participate.

But if you ask them how the invisible is seen, they will answer you: not in words taught by human wisdom, but in words taught by the Holy Spirit.

For they are without need, and have no need of human wisdom, having the teaching of the Spirit, and having, together with the Apostle, this boast: that they conducted themselves in the world in simplicity and sincerity and by the grace of God, and not in fleshly wisdom.

They will, then, answer you reverently: divine things are not circumscribed within our own knowledge, O man; but many of the things unknown to us have causes befitting God. Comparing, then, spiritual things with spiritual, according to the same Apostle, we shall confirm the graces of the New Testament from the Old.

For this reason the Apostle called the proof drawn from ancient things a "comparison," since by the confirmation coming from that source the gifts of grace are shown to be even greater than those of the Law.

And so those who live and see in the Spirit will say, to those who ask how the invisible light is seen, that it is as that seer of God, Elijah, likewise saw it. For that he did not see it by sense-perception is shown by the sheepskin mantle placed over his face; but that he had indeed seen God — having veiled his sensible eyes with the mantle — is attested and heralded notably by the recognition, acknowledged by all, borne in his very title: for he is called by all "a seer of God," or rather, even to a superlative degree, "most God-seeing."

And if again someone should ask such men, "What is this you say — that prayer mystically resounds for us in the inward parts, and what is it that stirs the heart?" — they will again put forward that same earthquake of Elijah's, which was the prelude to the manifest noetic manifestation of God, and the sounding belly of Isaiah.

...to show the invisible one to him who gazes upon it; and Elijah himself, as being both fire and appearing as fire, and ascending in a fiery chariot together with his body; but also that other prophet whose inward parts were, as it were, burned as by fire — and this because the word of God had become as fire within him.

And if you should inquire into anything else of what is mystically wrought within them, they, comparing it with similar spiritual things, as we have said, will show you like examples, and will answer everything in common: "Do you not hear, O man, that man ate the bread of angels?"

Do you not hear the Lord saying that He will give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him day and night?

What, then, is the bread of angels?

Is it not the divine and supracelestial light, with which — whether by direct application or by reception — minds are united beyond mind, according to the great Dionysius?

This light's illumination toward mankind God prefigured for a period of forty years, sending down manna from above; but Christ fulfilled it, instilling the illumination of the Spirit into those who firmly believe in Him and demonstrate their faith through works, and setting forth His own illuminating body as food — for this too is a pledge of the ineffable communion with Jesus that is to come.

But if those things also prefigured something else of what has been granted to us by Christ, it is a marvel (p.

But do you see that even from those symbolic illuminations a certain noetic illumination shines forth, along with mysteries other than mere knowledge?

But since you said that those who reject the divine light of grace call the light that appeared on Tabor "sensible," we shall first ask them whether they hold as theology the light that then flashed round the chosen ones among the disciples on Tabor.

For if they do not so affirm, Peter will refute them — who, according to Mark, kept watch on the mountain and saw the glory of Christ, and who himself, writing in the second of his epistles, says that he had been an eyewitness of His majesty, being with Him on the holy mountain; and he who with a golden tongue expounds the preaching of the Gospel will brilliantly silence them — for he says that the Lord appeared brighter than Himself, His body remaining in its own form while His divinity displayed forth its rays; and Dionysius the Great will utterly stop their mouths, plainly calling this a theophany and a vision of God; and further Gregory, surnamed the Theologian, calling it "light" — the divinity displayed on the mountain to the disciples; and, along with many others, Symeon too, who adorned the lives of almost all the saints with such beauty, writing that the theologian exceptionally beloved by Christ beheld on the mountain the very divinity of the Word laid bare.

But if, in harmony with the truth and with the interpreters of the truth, they call that light which was seen "divine" and "the light of God," they will necessarily agree together that the most perfect vision of God is light.

Wherefore Moses too saw Him thus, and nearly every one of all the prophets, and especially those to whom He appeared in waking reality and not in a dream.

Yet let all their sacred visions be symbolic — such as those who contradict us would wish; but not so the vision granted to the apostles on (p.

) Tabor: it was not such a symbolic light as to come into being and pass away; for it holds the dignity of the second, future coming of Christ, and this very light, shining round about, will unceasingly surround the worthy throughout the unending age, as the divinely-inspired Dionysius said; wherefore the great Basil called this the prelude of that future light, and the Lord in the Gospels names this the kingdom of God.

What, then, do they find fault with in those who say that the saints ineffably see God as light, if the vision of Him is as light both now and in the age to come?

Is it perhaps because they say that this is not sensible but noetic, just as Solomon too calls the Holy Spirit "noetic"?

How then, having forgotten themselves, do they suppose that those who say the divine light is not sensible deserve to be accused?

Do you see their inconsistency, and how easily they become entangled?

For it seems they are clever at speaking ill, but not at discerning anything good.

Nevertheless, let the exact interpreters of the ancient and universally acknowledged light-manifestation answer this: if an irrational animal had happened to be present on the mountain at that time, would it have perceived that radiance which outshone the sun?

I, for one, do not think so; for indeed it is not written that the flocks perceived the glory of the Lord that shone around the shepherds at the birth of Christ.

How, then, is it a sensible light, if it is not seen by the eyes of irrational animals that do see sensible things — eyes present and open, even as it shines upon them?

But if it was seen by human sensible eyes, then they saw it precisely in respect of that wherein human eyes differ from the sight of irrational creatures.

What else, then, is this but the intellect seeing through human eyes?

But if it was not by the sense-perceiving faculty — for then perhaps the irrational creatures too would have seen it — but by that faculty which apprehends through the sense (p.

) — that is, the intellective faculty — or rather, not even by this; for then every eye would have seen it, especially those nearby, flashing forth beyond the sun.

If, then, they did not, strictly speaking, see that light even by this faculty, then this light is not, strictly speaking, sensible either.

And indeed nothing sensible is eternal; but the light of the Godhead, which in many places is also called the glory of God, is both before all ages and without end.

But if it is not sensible — even though the apostles were deemed worthy to receive it with the eye — it was by some other faculty, and not the sense-perceiving one; wherefore all the theologians call the brightness of Jesus' face ineffable, inaccessible, and timeless, as being something ineffable, but not, strictly speaking, sensible — just as also the light which is likewise the place of the saints after their departure from here, according to their allotted portions in heaven, where the light is, of which this brightness was a prelude, and which has been given to the saints here as a portion of pledge.

For even if all these things are called by the name "light," and sometimes seem, paradoxically, to fall under sense-perception, yet they are also higher than intellect, and bear appellations that fall short of their own truth — how then are they, strictly speaking, sensible?

And indeed, in offering sacred prayers on behalf of those who have fallen asleep, do we not cry out fervently to the sovereign Goodness, "Rank their souls in a place of light"?

What need, then, have souls of sensible light?

And what distress, on the contrary, could sensible darkness likewise bring to them?

Do you see that none of these things is, strictly speaking, sensible?

That the knowledge of these things is also not simply ignorance, we showed earlier, when we also made mention of the dark fire prepared for the demonic tribe.

It was therefore necessary, concerning the ineffable light-manifestation of Jesus on Tabor as well, not to pronounce judgment by timid reasonings — human ones, evidently — and precarious speculations, but rather to submit to the paternal voices, and to await, in purity (p.

) of heart, the precise knowledge that comes through experience.

For this purity, sacramentally effecting union with that light, mystically teaches those who have obtained it that this light is none of the things that exist, insofar as it surpasses all existing things.

How then is that which is beyond all existing things sensible?

And what among sensible things is not a creature?

But how could the brightness of God be a creature?

The great Macarius says that when the soul, with fear and love and shame — like the prodigal son — returns to its own Master and Father and God, He receives it, not reckoning its transgressions, and gives it a vesture of glory, the light of Christ.

And what other glory and light of Christ is there than that which Peter, having kept watch, saw, being with Him on the holy mountain?

How then could this become a garment of the soul, if it were sensible?

And elsewhere the same theologian calls this light "heavenly."

What, then, among sensible things is heavenly?

...not in the face only, as Moses shone, but with the whole body.

Does it then shine there in vain, with no one apprehending that light?

It would indeed shine in vain, if it were sensible.

Or is this truly the food of the spirits — both of the angels and of the righteous?

Wherefore also, praying on behalf of those who have fallen asleep, we say to Christ, "Rank their souls where the light of Your face watches over them."

How then will souls enjoy, and how at all will they dwell in, a light that shines sensibly?

) manifestation, he says that souls continually behold this power shining forth from His venerable body.

How then is that light sensible, which is seen through purity of heart?

"But Christ, upon a single peak, came with boundless radiance of form" — according to the divine hymnographer Kosmas.

How then is it boundless, if indeed it is sensible?

And Stephen, who after Christ bore witness on Christ's behalf, gazing intently, saw the heavens opened, and the glory of God in them, and Christ standing at the right hand of God.

Is it possible, then, for the sense-perceiving faculty to reach as far as the very things above the heavens?

And yet this man was looking there from below, from the earth, and — what is more — beheld not only Christ, but also His Father.

For how could he have seen the Son at His right hand, unless he had also seen Him Himself?

Do you see that the Invisible is seen by those purified in heart — yet not sensibly, nor intellectively, nor by way of abstraction, but by some ineffable power?

For the surpassing height, and the glory of the Father, in no way admits of sense-perception.

But the standing posture was symbolic; the vision, however, was not.

But even this standing at the right hand — although it is a symbol of the fixed, unchanging, and most stable establishment of the divine nature — was itself, that very thing which it was, also seen ineffably.

For the Only-Begotten did not merely feign the standing at the right hand, so as to signify by this something else; rather, being always at the right hand of the Father, He was well pleased to show His own glory to him who was still in the flesh — to him who had given up his own soul for that glory.

But it is not possible to see anything, nor to know it, by way of abstraction; yet that man saw the glory of God.

But if that vision were intellective — whether according to causation or according to analogy — then we too would henceforth see in the same way as he did; for we too reason by analogy about the standing, and the sitting, at the right hand of majesty in the heavens, of God who became man.

But how is it that this disciple of the Gospel was not thinking this beforehand, and always, but understood it only then?

"For behold," he says, "I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man…"

"…standing at the right hand of God."

But what need was there for him to gaze intently into heaven, and for the heavens to be opened, if the vision were merely knowledge, arising noetically?

How then did that protomartyr see this, if he saw it neither noetically, nor sensibly, nor by way of negation, nor by reasoning about the divine things according to cause or analogy?

I will tell you plainly: spiritually — as I have also said of those who see the undefiled light through revelation, which many of the Fathers likewise declared before me.

This indeed the divine Luke himself also taught, saying: "But Stephen, being full of faith and the Holy Spirit, gazed intently into heaven and saw the glory of God."

And you too, therefore, if you become full of faith and the Holy Spirit, will spiritually behold even those things invisible to the mind; but if you are utterly devoid of faith, you will not even believe those who testify to what they have seen.

For if you have even a measure of faith, you will reverently listen to those who recount, so far as it may be conveyed from experience, the ineffable things — neither dragging these down to the level of sensible or of noetic things, even though they are called by the same names, thereby contending against the truth as though it were error, nor rejecting the ineffable grace of God given to us.

— pleasure, and the heart-gladdening tear that comes from grace.

Thus the face of Moses shone, the inner brightness…

…of the intellect having been poured out even upon the body, and it shone so greatly that not even those who gazed upon him with sense-perception could look steadily, because of the abundance of that radiance.

Thus the sensible face of Stephen appeared as it were the face of an angel; for indeed, within him, his intellect — in a manner imitating and befitting the angels, whether by direct apprehension or by reception — being united to the light enthroned above all things, by ineffable participation, became angel-formed.

Thus Mary the Egyptian — or rather, the heavenly one — was lifted up, even in body, while praying in a particular place and sensibly; for indeed, as her intellect was raised up, the body too was raised up together with it, and, rising up from the earth, was seen suspended in the air.

Thus, as the soul is inspired and, as it were, moved together with the unrestrained love of the sole object of desire, the heart too is moved together with it, showing forth by spiritual leapings the communion of grace, and, as though setting out from thence, going forth toward the meeting with the Lord — together with the body, in the clouds — according to the Lord's promise.

Thus in intense prayer, when the noetic fire has appeared and the noetic lamp has been kindled, and the intellect has, through spiritual contemplation, raised up the desire into a soaring flame, the body too is paradoxically both lightened and heated through, so that it seems to those who observe it to be issuing forth as though from the fire of a sensible furnace — according to the author of the Ladder of Divine Ascent.

But as for me, even the sweat of Christ during his prayer teaches me the sensible warmth that arises in the body from intense supplication to God alone.

Or will they also teach this: not to pray agonizingly, nor intensely, lest, in proportion to the struggle of the soul, the body too should receive that pleasure which they have forbidden it?

But let these men be teachers of a prayer that does not lead toward God, or toward the God-imitating life, nor transforms man toward what is better.

But we know that, even as we push away, through the voluntary pain of self-restraint, that pleasure to which — alas! — we deserted, having rebelled against the commandment, so in prayer we taste, by noetic perception, the pleasure of that divine and unmixed pain; and as this pleasure wonderfully transforms even the body toward passionless and divine love, the one who has come to experience it cries out to God: "How sweet are your words to my throat, sweeter than honey to my mouth," and "may my soul be filled as with marrow and fatness, and my mouth shall praise you with joyful lips."

After which, and through which, those who set the ascents in their heart come to participate in a God-formed ease and angelic well-being, according to the theurgic visitations of the divine illuminations, as the great Dionysius has said.

But if the purifying mourning that is according to God is accomplished not only in the soul of those who are striving, but passes over from the soul also into the body and into bodily sense-perception (and a clear proof of this is the sorrowful tear of those who mourn over their own sins) — why should we not reverently accept also, at least, the tokens of that divine pleasure which is according to the spirit, when they are signified in the capable senses of the body?

And is it not for this very reason that the Lord also blesses those who mourn — because they shall be comforted, that is, they shall have in themselves joy, the fruit of the Spirit?

…having become such, and these things are also manifest to those who observe them from without: the gentle character, the sweet tear, the discourse full of graces for those who draw near — according to him who spoke in the Song of Songs…

For it is not the soul alone that receives the pledge of the good things to come, but also the body, which runs together with the soul the race of the Gospel toward these things.

But he who denies this also denies that the body — which in the age to come will then co-participate with the soul in those ineffable good things — even now, surely, co-participates, in its own measure, in the grace given by God to the intellect.

For these reasons, then, we say that these things are apprehended by sense-perception; but we add "noetic," both because they are above natural sense-perception, and because it is the intellect that is first receptive of them, and on account of the extension of our intellect toward the primal Intellect — our intellect partaking divinely, according to what it is able to receive, being itself, and through itself the body united to it, transformed toward what is more divine, thereby showing forth from this and prefiguring the swallowing up of the flesh by the Spirit in the age to come.

For it is not the eyes of the body, but those of the soul, that receive the power of the Spirit by which these things are seen; and for this reason we call this power noetic, even though it is above the noetic.

Moreover, in addition to these things — so that we may also guard the understanding of our hearers against supposing these spiritual and ineffable energies to be material and bodily, which is precisely what these men have just now suffered, who, trusting profane and unhallowed hearing and an understanding that does not truly know, and taking hold of the things of the holy ones in an unholy manner, contrary to the sayings of the Fathers, have trampled these things underfoot and torn apart those who first showed them these things — not obeying the great Macarius, and perhaps not even having inquired of him, when he says: "Spiritual things are untouchable to those without experience of them; but the communion of the Holy Spirit comes to apprehension for a soul that is holy and faithful, and the heavenly treasures of the Spirit become manifest only to the one who has received them by experience,

but to the uninitiated it is not even possible to conceive of them at all."

Listen, then, reverently concerning these things, until it should also come to pass for you — believing — to be deemed worthy to attain to them; for then you will know, by that very experience of the eyes of the soul, of what great good things and mysteries the souls of Christians are able, even here, to have communion.

But when you hear of "the eyes of the soul" as knowing the heavenly treasures by very experience, do not suppose this to mean discursive reasoning.

For it is this discursive reasoning that renders both sensible and noetic things alike objects of discursive thought, through itself.

Just as, if you reason discursively about a city you have not yet seen, you do not thereby, by reasoning about it, come to have experience of it — so also concerning God and things divine: you do not, by reasoning about these things and theologizing, come to have experience of them.

And just as, in the case of gold, if you do not acquire it sensibly, and hold it in your hands sensibly, and see it sensibly, then even should you conceive the notion of gold in your understanding ten thousand times, you by no means possess, or see, or have acquired gold — so too, even should you reason discursively ten thousand times about the divine treasures, yet do not experience the divine things themselves, nor see them with the noetic eyes that are above discursive reasoning, you neither see, nor have, nor have truly acquired anything divine at all.

And I said "noetic eyes" inasmuch as it is in them that the power of the Spirit — through which these things are seen — comes to be; since indeed that all-holy spectacle of the most divine and surpassingly radiant light is even above the noetic eyes themselves.

For this reason the Lord too summoned together not all, but only the chosen ones, to that spiritual vision that came to be on Tabor — ineffable, and invisible to the power of sense-perception.

For even if the great Dionysius of the Areopagus says that in the age to come we shall be illumined round about by the visible theophany of Christ — as the disciples were at the Transfiguration — and shall partake of the noetic bestowal of light in a passionless and immaterial intellect, and of the union above the intellect in a more divine imitation of the supercelestial minds, yet not even so do we hold this to be sensible in that manner…

…of the power of the Spirit, through which the light of grace is seen.

But that which is not perceived through such ordinary bodily senses is not, properly speaking, sensible at all; and the saint himself indeed showed this there to those who have understanding.

For since he says that in the age to come we shall be illumined round about by this light — where there will be need neither of light nor of air nor of anything else pertaining to the present life, as we are taught from the God-inspired Scriptures, for then God will be all in all, according to the Apostle — we shall then have no need at all of sensible light; for if God will then be all things to us, then that light too is divine.

And indeed, if it were sensible, it would be visible through the air; and so it would not be according to the measure of each man's own virtue and of the purity that comes from it, but according to the measure of the purity of the surrounding air, that they would see the light more clearly or more dimly.

But if indeed the righteous shall shine as the sun, then likewise each of them would appear brighter or dimmer — not according to their good deeds, but according to the purity of the surrounding air.

Moreover, would the things of the age to come — which not only "eye has not seen, nor ear heard," but which have not even "entered into the heart of man," even as man ventures forth into the incomprehensible by the approaches of his reasonings — be perceptible by sensible eyes, both now and hereafter?

And how, moreover, could it be invisible to sinners, if it were sensible?

Or will there also then be an obscuring screen, and shadows, and cones of shadow, and, following upon these, eclipsing conjunctions and many-shaped circles of illumination — so that there would be need, even in the life contemplated in that unceasing age, of the elaborate skill of astrologers?

But how will bodily sense-perception apprehend a light that is not, properly speaking, sensible?

By the power of the almighty Spirit — the very power by which the chosen among the apostles beheld this on Tabor — flashing forth not only from the flesh that bore the Son within itself, but also from the cloud that bore within itself the Father of Christ.

And besides, at that time the body too shall be spiritual, not soulish, according to the Apostle; for, he says, "it is sown a soulish body, it is raised a spiritual body"; and being spiritual, and seeing in a spiritual manner, it will fittingly apprehend the divine radiance.

And just as now it is a laborious task to perceive that we possess a noetic soul, capable of subsisting by itself, on account of this thick and mortal and resistant flesh which overshadows and drags it down, rendering the soul above all bodily-formed and given chiefly to imagination — for which reason we are also unaware of the noetic perception according to the intellect — so too, in that most blessed manner of life of the age to come, for the sons of the resurrection the body will, as it were, be hidden, having been transformed, according to the Gospel of Christ, into the dignity of angels; for it will be refined to such a degree that it will seem not to be matter at all, nor to obstruct the noetic energies, the intellect having gained the mastery.

For this reason, they shall also enjoy the divine light even with their bodily senses.

For the holy Maximus says: "The soul becomes god by participation in the divine grace, having itself ceased from all the natural energies according to intellect and sense-perception, and having caused the natural energies of the body to cease together with it, the body having been deified together with it according to the participation in deification proportionate to it, so that then God alone appears through both soul and body" — their natural properties…