I’m a bit late mentioning this, and still have to find time to read at least some of the posts mentioned, but for anyone interested who hasn’t yet seen it, this month’s Patristics carnival has been put together by Tim Troutman at The God Fearin’ Forum. He has done a great job bringing together a wealth of patristic related reading matter.

Having (eventually!) completed my series of posts on the Syrian Fathers, I have created a new page that provides easy links to them. I will hopefully also use this for future series, or linking to posts on particular books once I have finished reading them.

By the way, I realised halfway through this series that I had been using the term “Syrian” rather than “Syriac”. I’m not sure that it’s an important distinction - perhaps it’s just that the latter sounds more ”scholarly” - but by then it was too late to change it…

For the central truth, or mystery, of the Christian faith is primarily not a matter of words, and therefore ultimately of ideas or concepts, but a matter of fact, or reality. The heart of the Christian mystery is the fact of God made man, God with us, in Christ; words, even his words, are secondary to the reality of what he accomplished. To be a Christian is not simply to believe something, to learn something, but to be something, to experience something. The role of the Church, then, is not simply as the contingent vehicle - in history - of the Christian message, but as the community, through belonging to which we come into touch with the Christian mystery.

Andrew Louth, Discerning the Mystery. An Essay on the Nature of Theology, (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983) 74.

Here is the last conference from the colloquium in Ghent. Please see my previous disclaimer concering the accuracy of my reporting and translations!

Brother Benoît Standaert, osb, is a monk of Saint Andrew’s Abbey, Zevenkerken, in Bruges, and author of several books which have been translated into French and Italian, but I am not aware of any English translations.

John of Dalyatha or John “Saba,” which means “the elder,” lived in the eighth century in Dalyatha, a mountainous region where modern Turkey, Iran and Iraq meet.

His life

John lived between 690 and 780 and was thus younger than Isaac of Nineveh whom he quotes. He began his novitiate around the year 710 in the monastery of Mar Yuzadaq and after seven years of formation was allowed to begin his eremitical life in the mountains of Dalyatha where he lived for the greatest part of his life. He had two brothers who were also monks. Towards the end of his life he returned to the region of Qardu in the southeast of modern Turkey. Together with other monks he rebuilt the deserted monastery of Mar Ya’kub where John became abbot. He died at a ripe old age surrounded by his brothers, and before he died he entrusted them with a rule of life.

After his death he was condemned by a synod presided over by Catholikos Timotheos I, together with two other monastic writers, John of Apamea and Joseph Hassaya. This occurred in 786 or 787 and he was accused of Messalianism and Sabellianism. After Timotheos’ death in 823 his successor rehabilitated John of Dalyatha, John of Apamea and Joseph Hassaya, but it is possible that they were once more condemned by another Catholikos.

His writings

The oldest manuscripts that we possess date from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and are attributed to “the elder” or to “Mar John the elder”. In the fifteenth century he receives a more specific identification as either John of Dalyatha, or else possibly a certain John Bar Penkayé from the seventh century. The critical work of Robert Beulay and of Brian Colless has confirmed the former identity.

John’s writings include 29 homilies, 51 letters, some centuries (there are eight attributed to him) and some other writings. Of the letters, two can be attributed to Joseph Hassaya and two of the homilies attributed to Isaac are thought to be by John. Of the centuries attributed to John, it appears that only one and a half are from him while the rest should be attributed to Joseph Hassaya. Thus we see that, probably partly as a result of the condemnation, the writings of John, Joseph and Isaac have been confused.

The two main genres that we find in John, namely letters and homilies, are often very close to each other. The tenth homily and the eighteenth letter are the same and comprise a sort of rule for beginners, probably the rule that according to his biographers John left behind for his monastic disciples. In fact the letters include all genres, including prayers, homiletic explanations, monastic advice, the witness from his own experience or that of others. The homilies are both more and less than homilies as they are full of advice, digressions, mystical contemplations and prayers. The word “homilies” was chosen in the translation because of the similarity of genre with the homilies of Pseudo-Macarius.

At least one of John’s correspondents is a real soul friend and the letters reflect this friendship and tell of their visits with each other. They are thus real letters. One of the correspondents may have been one of his own brothers.

John is not concerned with building a theoretical system, unlike Evagrius and Joseph Hazzaya. He speaks from his own experience that he seeks to convey as accurately as possible, away of the limitation of words to convey the reality about which they speak.

Someone who speaks from experience

John speaks from his own experience and his words vibrate with what he has seen and grasped and which he attempts to formulate, fully aware that his words are inadequate to pass on the intensity of his experience. In his writings one encounters his own mood changes and his humour in reporting these. He writes: 

You ask me how I am. I don’t know what to answer considering the ups and downs that I experience. Sometimes I am full of Life and sometimes death seems to rage against me in all my members. Sometimes I kill life and sometimes it is the dead who bring me down. Sometimes I am cut off from everything through union with the Lord and sometimes I am a mixture of everything. It is a wonder for me that the Spirit of Life so lends Himself to alienation that the dead can so exercise power. But He allows this to happen in order to warn us, so that we should not breath in the odour of the dead with any longing. (Letter 37, 1)

 Someone who is anchored in a tradition

 John speaks from within a tradition, which provides him with a language in which to speak. We can name three major influences.

• Evagrius, or Mar Evagrius as the Syrians call him, the fourth century master who provided a valuable grammar of spiritual life. He describes an ascent through which one’s heart is purified from the passions and thanks to a complete apatheia may enter into the light of the Spirit. From there, one learns to contemplate the light in all beings and eventually also the light of the Holy Trinity. The Syrian tradition took this further and distinguished a further stage beyond purity of heart, namely, serenity or transparency.
• Pseudo-Macarius, who through his homilies (which had been translated into Syrian), inspired John through his use of the imagery of the heart and of fire.
• Pseudo-Dionysius and his use of paradox in speaking of the ultimate in which knowledge becomes unknowing provides inspiration for John and a freedom with language that is directly loaned from Dionysius’ writings.

A formed reader

John stands within a tradition and certainly didn’t find everything out for himself. He read the biblical texts and digested them according to a tradition that had long existed in the Syrian Church, especially influenced by Theodore of Mopsuesta.

We can identify the texts that he most often cites to illuminate the different stages of spiritual life. In these, the apostle Paul plays an important role.

• Mt 5, 8: Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God in their hearts (John adds his own correction)
• Lk 17, 21: The Kingdom of God is within you
• Jn 7, 38: From his heart shall flow streams of living water
• Rm 8, 9: The Spirit of God lives in you
• 1 Cor 3, 16: You are God’s temple
• 2 Cor 3, 18: And all of us, with our unveiled faces like mirrors reflecting the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the image that we reflect in brighter and brighter glory; this is the working of the Lord who is the Spirit.
• 2 Cor 4, 6: It is God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ that has shone into our hearts to enlighten them with the knowledge of God’s glory, the glory on the face of Christ.
• Ep 1, 18: May He enlighten the eyes of your heart…
• 2 Pet 1, 19: The morning star arises in your hearts.

John places great emphasis on “the place of God” (Ex 24, 10 and Is 24, 16 in the LXX) which he interprets as being in the heart of the monk. He sees the spiritual life as being a way of transformation in which Christ is formed in us and we are renewed according to His image and likeness. This spiritual growth moves from the hidden to the visible. Even now our life is “hidden with Christ in God” (Col 3, 1-3) and will be fully revealed “when He appears” (1 Jn 3, 1 and Col 3, 4).

John does not often cite entire biblical texts, but his thought patterns circle around certain key passages which he alludes to in different ways in order to express his insights.

Rhetoric

John is fond of aphorisms and enjoys piling up blessings or rhetorical questions in order to suggest something beyond what we can grasp with words and with reason. He plays with antithesis and paradox, although it sometimes sounds rather forced. We reach a limit and it can be difficult to determine what is purely a matter of style and what is simply his own witness to his experience.

The genre of encouragement

John is a friend and a brother who wants to encourage others and offers his brothers an orientation and points of recognition on their common path of solitary eremitical life. He is also sometimes someone who pours his own heart out to a friend and acknowledges his own weakness, recommending himself to the prayers of the other.

In one text he appears as a “novice master” (Letter 18 which is the same as homily 10) and summarises a series of elementary principles for beginners in monastic life. This text was greatly appreciated and included in the writings of Isaac of Nineveh. Closer inspection reveals that it draws strongly on the writings of Isaiah of Scetis.

Where does he want to bring his readers?

John wants to bring his readers to “the light without form,” an expression that derives from Evagrius and is often used by the Syrian Fathers. By this he understands the contemplation of the Holy Trinity. Commentators have noted that while Evagrius constantly alluded to this, he hardly ever speaks of it directly. The eighth century Syrian Fathers, by contrast, speak of it far more extensively, using a series of biblical images such as the dark cloud and the paradoxical language that they had inherited from Pseudo-Dionysius.

This path begins with radical detachment which expresses itself for the monk in life in his cell, cut off from the rest of the world. In this solitude the struggle with the passions begins in which austerity and watchfulness give birth to purity of heart which is the fruit of this struggle. According to the Syrian translation of the Beatitudes, the pure of heart will see God “in their hearts” and John situates this whole process of spiritual growth within the heart. Nadira Khayyat writes: 

The entire mystical advance occurs for John of Dalyatha according to a way of interiorisation on the objective interior path: through deepening the vision of the soul that contemplates itself, one initially achieves the contemplation of God’s light in the sensibly observable creatures, thereafter on the face of Christ and eventually in the Cloud. And each time the progress occurs not by going without but by entering further inwards, for the sensibly observable things are in the soul through the mystical knowledge, the angels are on the inside of the sensibly observable things, Christ is inside the angels, and the Father is inside Christ.

Here the Syrian tradition identifies a stage beyond that of purity of heart, which is variously translated as transparency, serenity, limpidity and realisation. It would appear that in the first stage, that of purity of heart, one still tastes something of one’s effort, while in the second passivity dominates and everything is “light without form”.

John uses biblical imagery in order to illuminate this. Thus the spirit climbs the mountain, enters into the cave, is overwhelmed by the Cloud and sees the Sea. He uses language of wonder and amazement in which, in the highest stage, everything becomes still. The fire has consumed everything, even our ability to remember it.

John emphasises that if we wish to discover the working of God’s Spirit in us, then we need to die to all images, thoughts and feelings. The more radical this death, the greater the freedom that God’s Spirit has in order to transport us to the most inner temple, where we shall be able to contemplate the glory of the Holy Trinity, the Light without form. John is, moreover, particularly sensitive to that which we cannot utter, and avoids all indiscretion in his speech about God. Amazement is followed by silence, as the most appropriate way of relating to God.

If we look at the role of tradition in our coming to know God we find in the Fathers a pattern reminiscent of what we have already noticed in Gadamer and Polanyi. Participation in the tradition of the Church meant for the Fathers acceptance of the Church’s rule of faith, acceptance of the framework of preconceptions within which Scripture and one’s own experience of grace could be interpreted as furthering the understanding of God. This tradition was essentially non-specifiable, or if specifiable, not simply by an indication of specific doctrines, but primarily as the bond of unity, the bond of love, which established the Church as the Body of Christ. As the Church reflected on the notion of tradition, it developed (as we shall see in more detail in the next chapter) a notion of what we might call, following Polany, a tacit dimension in which our knowledge of God is rooted. The Patristic doctrine of tradition might well be paraphrased in the language of Polanyi by saying that all knowledge of God in Christ is either the tacit knowledge of tradition or rooted in such tacit knowledge.

The notion of the tacit has deeper resonance within the Fathers’ thought, however, than in the thought of Polanyi. In them the tacit is interpreted as silence, the silence of presence, the presence of God who gives himself to the soul who waits on him in silence. The silence of the tacit makes immediate contact with the silence of prayer: and prayer is seen in the Fathers to be, as it were, the amniotic fluid in which our knowledge of God takes form. Participation in the tradition of the Church implies participation in a life of love, of loving devotion to God and loving care of our neighbour. Participation in the tradition is indeed a moral activity: it implies a growing attentiveness to Our Lord, and a growing likeness to him. In other words, the Fathers understand the place of what we have called, following Gadamer, paideia in making us into those who are capable of knowing God, or rather in making us receptive to God’s revelation of himself in Jesus Christ. Hort’s assertion that ‘the perception of truth depends as much on the state of him who desires to perceive as on the objects that are presented to his view’ is axiomatic for the Fathers.

Andrew Louth, Discerning the Mystery. An Essay on the Nature of Theology, (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983) 64-65.

Louth’s discussion has brought him to a point where the Enlightenment paradigm not only looks “less compelling” but where it “is seen to be based on assumptions about how we come to knowledge that re being rendered increasingly incredible and naïve.” (66) Indeed it has had damaging effects for both the humanities and theology in leading to a one-sided understanding of truth.

While Louth rejects an absolute division between the sciences and the humanities, the sciences can be characterised by a concern with solving problems, whereas the humanities have a deeper dimension and require a deeper sort of reason to that required by the sciences. Understanding in the humanities does not bring definitive solutions but leads to a deeper engagement with reality. Drawing on Gabriel Marcel’s distinction between mystery and problem Louth continues 

… what I am suggesting is that concern for the mysterious is at the heart of the humanities, whereas at the heart of the sciences there is a concern with the problematic. That this is a contrast, and not a dichotomy, is seen in the way in which problem-solving has a place in the humanities - though the most significant kind of problem is one that, in Marcel’s language, ‘conceals a mystery’ - and in the complementary way in which some scientists, such as Einstein, have spoken of a deepening sense of awe and wonder awakened in them, an awe and wonder in the presence of the universe, that grows through the advance of the sciences, through the growing success in solving problems. But the contrast remains, and since problem-solving can be successful, whereas contemplation of mystery cannot, there cannot be in the humanities any hope for the sort of success the sciences have known. Nor in theology: and especially not in Christian theology whose central mystery is focused in the birth of a child in a stable, and in the death of a man on a cross. (70)

Louth highlights the return to mystery in twentieth century theologians such as Barth and Rahner. He proceeds to argue that the main concern of theology should be not so much to elucidate anything, but rather to prevent us from dissolving the mystery that lies at the heart of the faith, which is precisely what the heresies attempted to do. The task of theology is to guard the mystery and to lead us back “to those ultimate unities that have so long eluded our grasp, unities that draw together the mind and the heart (or rather, find there a primordial unity which we have lost), unities that are nourished by the love of God which is the mystery of our faith.” (72)

***

I’m not sure if there’s much point commenting as I am generally most appreciative of everything Louth has argued in this chapter, even if my own background in science and religion is rather minimal. I’ve particularly appreciated his emphasis on the involvement of the one who knows in the process of knowing, which points to an ascetical dimension for all aspects of theology, something that has far-reaching implications and which I keep thinking I’d like to pursue further but never seem to get to! (A while ago Father Gregory Jensen of Koinonia had an insightful post on the role of the passions, and the struggle against the passions, in Orthodox-Catholic dialogue, and this is a theme that could be explored much further, not least in the polarised situation within the Catholic Church).

I have also been wondering whether Father Louth would use the language of “mystery” in the same way if he were to write this book today. This is sparked by having recently read his Afterword to the new edition of his The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition in which he provides a thorough going critique of the concept of “mysticism”, something that I really do intend writing on soon!

The elderly Elizabeth gave birth to the last of the prophets, and Mary, a young girl, to the Lord of the angels. The daughter of Aaron gave birth to the voice in the desert, but the daughter of David to the strong God of the earth. The barren one gave birth to him who remits sins, but the Virgin gave birth to him who takes them away. Elizabeth gave birth to him who reconciled people through repentance, but Mary gave birth to him who purified the lands of uncleanness. The elder one lit a lamp in the house of Jacob, his father, for this lamp itself was John, while the younger one lit the Sun of Justice for all the nations. The angel announced to Zechariah, so that the slain one would proclaim the crucified one and that the hated one would proclaim the envied one. He who was to baptize with water would proclaim him who would baptize with fire and with the Holy Spirit. The light, which was not obscure, would proclaim the Sun of Justice. The one filled with the Spirit would proclaim concerning him who gives the Spirit. The priest calling with the trumpet would proclaim concerning the one who is to come at the sound of the trumpet at the end. The voice would proclaim concerning the Word, and the one who saw the dove would proclaim concerning him upon whom the dove rested, the lightning before the thunder.

Saint Ephrem the Syrian, Commentary on Tatian’s Diatessaron, 1, 31, quoted in Arthur A. Just (ed), Luke, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture New Testament III, (InterVarsity Press, 2003) 28.

Today is the solemnity of Saint John the Baptist.

At the heart of Polanyi’s insight here is his recognition of what one might call the mysteriousness of our engagement with the outside world. The kind of empiricism that often underpins the scientific or experimental method assumes that our perception of the external world is relatively straightforward and unproblematic: that we simply register impressions from the external world and organize them by a process of interpretation. Polanyi’s point is that in much of our perception of the external world, what we perceive is often unspecifiable in detail. We recognize one another’s faces, yet are quite unable to specify what it is that we are recognizing … If we attempt to attend to the detail, we often miss the more elusive total impression that we discern but cannot explain.

Andrew Louth, Discerning the Mystery. An Essay on the Nature of Theology, (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983) 59.

Louth highlights Polanyi’s concept of the tacit, which functions as an interpretive framework that enables us to know. This is knowledge that has been grasped and understood by a person, involving numerous ways of perception and a range of anticipations that we have learnt by experience. It enables us to form a framework by which we instinctively interpret our conclusions. For Polanyi all knowledge is either tacit or rooted in tacit knowledge. It relies on stimuli coming from outside and on a wide range of linguistic pointers “which bring to bear our pre-conceptions - based on past experience - on the interpretation of our subject matter.” (62)

 Louth suggests that

What we have in Polanyi is an analysis of what is involved in knowing that calls into question some of the simplifications underlying the idea that the scientific method, the experimental method, is the way of moving from ignorance and error to objective knowledge. (62)

Far from this being a one-way movement, explicit knowledge needs to become tacit if it is to be fruitful, and Polanyi gives the example of the skills involved in learning to drive a car. Knowledge is more a personal orientation to reality than an objective account of it. Moreover, Polanyi develops Dilthey’s idea of knowledge as indwelling in which we interiorise the means by which we come to knowledge and come to dwell in them. He writes:

Tacit knowledge now appears as an act of indwelling by which we gain access to new meaning. When exercising a skill we literally dwell in the innumerable muscular acts which contribute to its purpose, a purpose which constitutes their joint meaning. Therefore, since all understanding is tacit knowing, all understanding is achieved by indwelling. The idea developed by Dilthey and Lipps, that we can know human beings and works of art only by indwelling, can thus be justified. But we see now also that these authors were mistaken in distinguishing indwelling from observation as practised in the natural sciences. The difference is only a matter of degree: indwelling is less deep when observing a star than when understanding men or works of art. The theory of tacit knowing establishes a continuous transition from the natural sciences to the study of the humanities. (64-65)

Thus there is no absolute distinction between patterns of knowing in the sciences and in the humanities, and it is therefore unnecessary to look to the sciences to shed light on the theological task. Moreover, Louth points out that the ways of knowing described by Polanyi are precisely those that we find in the theology of the Fathers, a theme that I will discuss in the next post.

This is my report of a public lecture given by Dom André Louf in Saint Andrew’s Orthodox Parish, Ghent, as part of the colloquium on the Syrian Fathers. Please note my earlier disclaimer on the accuracy of my reporting and translations, something that may particularly apply to my reporting of this talk as I was tired and my note taking somewhat uneven! I also have the impression that Dom André skipped over some sections due to time constraints. Once the text is published I may consider doing an English translation for publication somewhere.

Dom André Louf, ocso is abbot emeritus of the abbey of Mont des Cats in France and author of several books, including Teach us to Pray, The Cistercian Way and Grace can do more. He is now a hermit and translates Syrian texts. He was responsible for the French translation of the second series of St Isaac’s homilies.

The phrase “liturgy of the heart” is not found in Scripture but it finds its roots in the reference in 1 Peter 3, 4 in which Peter speaks of the “ho kruptos tès kardias anthropos” (”interior disposition of the heart”, NJB, or “inner self”, NRSV), literally the hidden human being of the heart.

This interior human heart is viewed by Scripture in rather ambiguous terms. It may be orientated to wicked schemes (Gen. 6, 5), it may be hard and even turned to stone (Ex. 7, 3) but it may also be softened and humbled (2 K 22, 19) and especially contrite (Ps 50, 17) and to be healed by God (Ps 147, 3). God reproaches the uncircumcised heart (Lv 26,41; Dt 10, 16; 30, 6; Jer. 9, 26). It is on the tablets of the heart that God will write a new law (Pr. 3,3; 7, 3). With the prophet Ezekiel God promises to change the heart of stone to a heart of flesh (11, 19; 36, 26). Solomon will plead for such a heart at the beginning of his reign (1 K. 3, 9) and advises his son David to watch over his heart, for from the heart come the wellsprings of life. (Pr. 4, 23)

Jesus’ teaching on interiority lies within this tradition. He calls the pure of heart blessed, and contrasts them with closed hearts and hearts which bring forth evil (Mt. 15, 18). “Good people draw what is good from the store of goodness in their hearts; bad people draw what is bad from the store of badness. For the words of the mouth flow out of what fills the heart.” (Lk 6, 45) It is in the heart that one can ponder the Word as Mary did (Lk 2, 19) for as Paul reminds us (quoting Deuteronomy) “the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart.” (Rm 10, 8) It is likewise the hearts that burned within when Jesus appeared to the disciples on the road to Emmaus. (Lk 24, 32) The heart is also the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 6, 19), a temple in which an interior liturgy is celebrated (Ep. 5, 19).

Such are the biblical illusions that are summed up in the phrase “ho kruptos tès kardias anthropos” of 1 Peter 3, 4.

Paul contrasts this “inner nature” with our “outer nature” that is decaying. (2 Cor. 4, 16-18).

Could it be that this most interior reality is frightening for our contemporaries? We can even ask why the text from Ephesians 5, 19 “sing and praise in your hearts” is often translated today as “with all your heart”. While this might be linguistically defensible, no single Church Father interpreted in this way, for they understood it as alluding to the interior liturgy of the heart, which runs as a thread through the entire patristic tradition.

This liturgy of the heart is something which the Holy Spirit is constantly praying in every baptised person, whether we are aware of it or not. “…the Spirit too comes to help us in our weakness, for, when we do not know how to pray properly, then the Spirit personally makes our petitions for us in groans that cannot be put into words” (Rm 8, 26). This prayer is something which all Christians carry in their hearts, whether they are aware of it or not. In the deepest part of our being we find grace and prayer, and even if we are unaware of it the Spirit is praying “Abba, Father” in us.

If this is true, then the purpose of prayer is simply to bring us into contact with this prayer that is already being prayed in us. Any “methods” or “techniques” of prayer, or the disciplines of turning inwards and quieting the heart, only exist to help this unconscious prayer to become conscious. This is, moreover, an unconsciousness that is much deeper than the psychological unconscious which is becoming better known today. This is an unconscious that touches the very roots of our being. It is metaphysical and meta-psychological, for it is concerned with that place where our being is immersed in God and repeatedly springs up from God. This is the place where prayer does not stop, the domus interior or templum interius as it was called in the Middle Ages.

Most of the time we are not conscious of the prayer taking place in this inner temple. We can only believe in it with a growing certainty, and trust that God will lift the veil and allow a little of this unconscious prayer to emerge to consciousness. Sometimes this is merely a sudden illumination, a passing light which clarifies aspects of our existence and which never leaves us even in the midst of new periods of dryness. More often, though, it involves a slow and patient process in which something emerges towards the surface, awakening a new sensitivity or what Ruusbroec called a “feeling above all feelings”.

While it is certainly true that some circumstances are more conducive to this process than others, and thus silence, simplicity and asceticism can be important preparations for prayer, Christian prayer is never determined by such preparations. God allows prayer to arise in us “when He wills, as He wills and where He wills” as Ruusbroec says. For God is always greater than our heart and remains the only Master of our prayer. Prayer is totally gratuitous although we need to persevere in times of trial.

In persevering in times of dryness and crisis, in seeing all of our efforts ending in dead ends, and in being confronted with our own weakness that we receive the grace of recognising ourselves for the sinners who we really are. It is precisely in encountering ourselves as sinners that we also encounter the grace of God. John Cassian tells us: 

Let us in this way learn in all that we do to perceive both our own weakness and the grace of God at the same time, so that we are able to proclaim every day with the saints: “They have pushed me down to make me fall, but the Lord has supported me.”

What is our task as human beings in this process? It has only one name, and that is humility. Cassian describes this as “every day humbly following the grace of God that draws us.” Learning humility, even, or perhaps especially, through failure, is the greatest lesson that we can learn. As one of the Fathers said: “I would rather choose a defeat humbly accepted than a victory achieved with pride.”

This is the heart of the process, the point at which it is possible for a new sensitivity to be born, and it can be characterised by confusion and doubt. The old Christian literature referred to this with the imagery of “diatribe tès kardias” or “contritio cordis” or “contrition mentis”. It would be good to try and recapture something of the jolting language which has been lost in later translations, for this is not simply about “contrition” as we have come to understand it in recent spiritual literature but rather about a “broken” and “pulverised” heart that has literally been shattered. In this we are reminded of the utter poverty of the Christian. Isaac of Nineveh writes:

Believe me, my brother, you have not yet understood the power of temptation, nor the subtlety of its guiles. One day the experience will teach it to you and you will see yourself as a child who no longer knows where to look. All your knowledge will be nothing more than confusion, like that of a little child. Your spirit which appeared to be so firmly anchored in God, your precise knowledge, your balanced thought world, they will all be submerged in an ocean of doubt. Only one thing will be able to help you and will conquer them, namely, humility. Once you have grasped this, their power will disappear.

And, as Saint Basil tells us, “Often it is humility that saves someone who has sinned frequently and heavily.”

This is a painful pedagogy. Instead of fleeing from it, we are called to follow its trajectory and to make it our own, not out of masochism, but because one senses that it is the secret source of the only true life. In biblical language we can say that it is here that the heart of stone becomes broken so that may be made into a heart of flesh.

If such temptation does lead to sin then this is not due to a lack of generosity, but rather to a lack of humility. And sin offers us the chance to discover the narrow and low gate that leads to the Kingdom. Indeed, it could be that the most dangerous temptation is not the temptation that leads to sin, but rather the temptation that follows sin, namely the temptation of despair. It is only through eventually learning humility that we can escape this. And through this we learn the gift of mercy. Isaac of Nineveh writes: 

Who can still be brought into confusion by the memory of his own sins…? Will God forgive me these things whose memory so torments me? Things that I have an aversion to but which I nevertheless slip towards. And when I have done them their memory torments me more than a scorpion’s bite. I detest them and yet I find myself in their midst, and when I feel pain and sorrow over them I continue to seek them our - oh unhappy person that I am! … This is how many God fearing people think, people who desire virtue but whose weakness forces them to take into account their own frailty: they live continually imprisoned between sin and remorse. … Nevertheless, do not doubt your salvation … His mercy is much greater than you can imagine, and His grace is greater than you can dare to ask for. He looks only for the slightest sorrow …

How does this transition occur? We cannot predict when or how we will be brought into this interiority, but when it happens we know that we are not in control. We become aware of a new sensitivity and of a peace that cannot deceive us, of a centeredness and of a prayer that emerges of its own accord. There are certain times or places in our lives at which we find ourselves closer to this breakthrough, times or places where one is closer to its becoming a reality.

One of these privileged places is always the listening to the Word of God in Scripture. Scripture has the power to shake our heart awake, to drill through it, batter it open, so that prayer can spring up. Likewise, sickness, the death of someone close to us, and great temptations are favourable moments in which our longing for God means that we are more open to Him.

We find all these favourable moments brought together in the celebration of the Liturgy. The Church has instinctively sensed the mysterious affinity between the external Liturgy celebrated in churches of stone and the Liturgy celebrated in the deepest depth of each baptised Christian. The Church has learnt through experience how to harmonise these two liturgies of the praying Christian.

In our contemporary world we find conflicting desires that make such interiority difficult. On the one hand there is a desire for such interiority, but, on the other hand, there is much that makes it difficult for us to surrender to it. We cannot blame this on God, who desires to give Himself to us. But the children of the Church are also the children of their culture and find themselves in a cultural transition. It may be that there are elements in our culture, both of yesterday and of today, that make it more difficult to find real interiority. Or it may be that there are elements that at first sight make it easier to enter into such interiority - such as the reactions to the dangers below found in some youth movements which are orientated to religious experience - but which are really illusory.

We can name three negative influences in the religious culture of the last decades. The first is to reduce the Gospel to an ideology, which is more orientated to thought patterns than to life. The Second is to reduce the Gospel to activism, in which one loses contact with one’s inner life and reduces the Gospel to marketing. And the third is to reduce the Gospel to moralism in which a skewed moral vision which can hinder authentic interior experience.

[Dom André skipped over the first two points - I suspect due to time pressure - and concentrated on the third.]

The life of the Holy Spirit in us seeks ways to express itself in concrete circumstances, but if it is authentic this is, in the first place, expressed in spontaneity, freedom and deep joy. In a second moment we can describe Christian behaviour from without, such as Paul does in his teaching on the fruits of the Spirit. Such a moral pedagogy should help to bring us into contact with the inner experience and make us sensitive to the workings of the Spirit. However, it has not always been so simple. Influenced by cultural ethical schemas, morality has sometimes lost its way in abstract and absolutised studies of human behaviour which resulted in an idealised set of rules which one had to adhere to.

This is not to deny the need for ethical norms, but rather to recognise their pitfalls, and in particular the danger of separating interior disposition and exterior action. This can result in two dangers. Firstly, it can result in someone who is unable to live up to the expectations of the law becoming caught up in a spiral of guilt. The law accuses, but Jesus refuses to accuse and has come to free us from guilt. Secondly, it can result in a more subtle and dangerous danger, that of an easy conscience and apparent perfection in which one becomes cut off from the liberating action of the Holy Spirit.

Jesus avoided both of these dangers. He never drove sinners to despair and he confronted the conceit of the Pharisees. He did not come for the righteous, but for sinners.

To speak about sin and sinners is a problem in our contemporary world, which does not know how to deal with sin and sinners. Yet there is a link between sin and our access to the inner way. We may be desperate sinners who are burdened with guilt feelings. Or we may play the role of freed sinners who dream of a morality without sin. Or - and this is the worst - we may be the incurably righteous who look down on sinners. Insofar as we belong to one of these categories we are not able to access the inner way.

God longs for sinners as a Father longs for his lost son. For genuine sinners, who do not seek to gloss over or excuse their weakness, but who have become reconciled with their weakness and who rely on God’s mercy. At the moment that one receives God’s forgiveness, someone is opened up in one’s heart so that one’s heart can become transformed from a heart of stone to a heart of flesh. Sin no longer drags one down and bruises one, but has rather become the door to the depths of our heart for it leads us to the knowledge of the merciful Father.

[Hort] points out that the contrast between truth of revelation and truth of discovery merely brings out a polarity in the human grasping of truth that is necessarily implicit in it. There cannot be pure truth of revelation: for to apprehend a truth which is received is to relate it to what we know already, to make it one’s own. But neither can there be pure truth of discovery: for no one starts from scratch, we take for granted a body of learning that has been handed down to us, we trust those from whom we learn, and those from whom they learnt. ‘Truth of discovery is received by everyone except the discoverer as much from without as if it were revealed. Truth of revelation remains inert till it has been appropriated by a human working of recognition which it is hard to distinguish from that of discovery.’ Hort draws attention to the danger of thinking that because much of the advance in knowledge since the Renaissance has been by criticism and rejection of traditions discovered to be false, it follows that tradition has no place in our knowing, and that we should accept only what we have proved for ourselves. The task is impossible; but more dangerously, the attitude behind such a determination is self-frustrating: ‘in knowledge as in all else he labours in vain to be independent: he is most himself when he receives most, and most freely acknowledges that he receives’.

Andrew Louth, Discerning the Mystery. An Essay on the Nature of Theology, (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983) 55-56.

While Louth sees theology as more closely allied to the humanities than to the sciences (theologians work in “libraries, not laboratories”) he nevertheless want to avoid an absolute division between the two. Moreover, he questions whether the emphasis on method, experimentation, objectivity and a break with tradition that became prominent in the wake of the Renaissance is not something of a caricature. Such emphases have certainly proved successful, but “this may not mean that it is a complete way of developing human knowledge, only that it is effective within its limits.” (55) Drawing on Hort’s work Louth argues for a sort of continuity between scientific and theological knowledge in which the personal implication of the one who seeks is not something which one should seek to elide, but means rather an integral part in the process of undeception. In this the quest for truth acquires ascetical overtones. (For Hort’s description of this process, see here). Thus

From Hort there emerges a very positive attitude to the growth of the sciences which yet sees the pursuit of the scientist as part of the common human pursuit for truth, and not as fundamentally different from it in kind. Emphasis is laid on the importance of tradition; while the objectivity required of the one who is seriously dedicated to the truth is seen not as an impersonal elision of the observer, but rather in moral terms as a growth in wisdom and selflessness. Nor is there any reliance on some ‘method’ which holds the key of knowledge, rather there is an awareness of the manifoldness of the truth and of our perception of it. (59)

For anyone interested in the Syrian Fathers, I have just found this rather useful Syriac Studies Encyclopedia, which you may find helpful.

The rest of my posts on the colloquium will take a few days to appear as writing them up has involved more work than I realised and time is limited, but I do intend to do them.