Editor
July 24th 2005, 08:07 PM
UNSEEN WARFARE
Submitted by George Blaisdell
Taken from the book:
Unseen Warfare by Lorenzo Scupoli [1530-1610]
as edited by Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain [Greek: 1749-1809]
and revised by Theophan the Recluse [Russian: 1815-1894]
SVS PRESS
ISBN 0-913836-52-4
3rd Printing 2000
Introduction by Professor H. A. Hodges
I have been since completing the reading of that book, and I should tell you, I am planning to re-read it till I wear out the pages...
II. The spiritual teachings of the Fathers [p. 17]
Christian Ascetic theology is not something borrowed from extraneous sources, from eastern religions, or from Greek philosophy. It is firmly based in the Bible. The ruling idea of it is familiar to all of us from St. Paul, for it is he, again, who likens Christian life to a battle, and the Christian to a soldier; he describes the discipline to which the Christian is subject, his armor and his weapons of offence, and the enemies, internal and external, against whom he has to fight. Christian ascetic theology is simply the development of these Pauline conceptions into a systematic doctrine and a practical discipline, so that the Christian soldier or athlete may know exactly what he is contending for, and be well trained for the struggle.
The Bible is full of material for such a doctrine and discipline. If it contains the gospel of God's free grace, it also contains the new law, the law of liberty and love, by which God's people are to govern themselves. If it tells of the work that was wrought for us once for all by Christ on the Cross, it also tells of the work which is wrought in us every day by the Holy Ghost, and in that work it summons us to be 'fellow workers with God'. We are told to work out our salvation in fear and trembling, knowing that we can do nothing unless God works in us, and yet that in Christ we can do everything.
The Bible, both Old and New Testaments alike, is full of teaching which bears upon this theme. But, as is the manner of the Bible, it is presented piecemeal, and often in figurative and obscure language. Ascetic theology is the attempt to present it as an organized body of doctrine, with an agreed terminology and accepted principles, and to relate it to the experience gained through practical discipline. Such an organized body of doctrine has come down to us by continuous tradition and development from its first beginnings, which can be traced back to the third century.
The intellectual formulation begins with Clement of Alexandria. He, and after him Origen, taught Christians to think of the Christian way of life in terms which could be understood by educated Greeks. They began the construction of a theory of Christian living, by establishing certain fundamental conceptions and providing the beginnings of a terminology. The practical discipline, however, and the experiential content, came from the deserts of Egypt and Syria. There, hermits living in solitude, and monks living in communities of various kinds, set themselves to create a perfect pattern of Christian living. 'If you wish to be perfect,' said Christ to the rich young man, 'sell all that you have and give it to the poor, and come, and follow me.' The men of the Desert obeyed the command and claimed the implicit promise. They aspired to that perfection which Christ commands. [Matt v. 48, 'You therefore shall be perfect’.] They sought the kingdom of God, the pearl which the merchant in the story sold all his possessions to buy. They did not say that no one can be a true Christian in the world. They told stories of holy lives lived in the world, to shame the lazy monk. But for themselves they chose to withdraw from worldly temptations and distractions, in order to devote themselves wholly to the spiritual combat. It is therefore not surprising that, from daily experience, they came to know a great deal about it.
Their doctrine was codified in Greek by Evagrius of Pontus [d. 399], and a generation later in Latin by John Cassian, as well as by various other writers. It is the starting-point of all subsequent development in ascetic theology. A short summary of it will enable us to see how faithfully the "Unseen Warfare" follows the primitive models:
The goal of the Christian discipline is union with God by loving contemplation.
The goal of the Christian discipline is union with God by loving contemplation. This is the Kingdom of God, and this is eternal life. For this we were created, but from this we have fallen; our minds are distracted and fascinated by created things, our wills are held in bondage to finite and transient goods. The purpose of our discipline is therefore to turn the mind and will back into their proper alignment, so that they may receive in full measure the illumination of divine grace. They cannot do so while they are inordinately attached to the creatures; it is the pure in heart who shall see God, and therefore the immediate aim of our discipline must be to attain to purity of heart. This is what Abbot Moses explained to Cassian: 'The goal of our profession is the Kingdom of God or the Kingdom of heaven; but our immediate aim or target is purity of heart, without which it is impossible for anyone to reach that goal.'
The way which leads to the goal can be considered under three aspects:
1. It is a moral way, a discipline of the will and character, and this has naturally two sides: a purgation of what is evil, and a cultivation of what is good.
[a] The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord. At first, while the passions are strong and liable to carry us away, we are governed and kept in order mainly by the fear of God, together with shame and repentance for past sin. These motives lead gradually to the building up of self-control, and patience [long-suffering] under temptations and difficulties. This in turn kindles hope. Drawn on by hope and guided by a growing experience, we set to work not merely to control, but to 'eradicate' the passions. It is a lengthy process; but gradually the bodily appetites are weakened and the soul purged, until at last we arrive at purity of heart, of freedom from passion [apatheia]. This does not mean that we cease to have any feelings; it means that we are no longer ruled by our feelings, but remain untroubled and tranquil in all circumstances. The heart or will, no longer swayed by emotions or carried away by its own self-will, is 'sober', 'awake', 'attentive', to God.
As we purge ourselves of passion, we also grow in virtue. The seeds of all the virtues are latent in us from the start; it is they which constitute the likeness of God in the soul, which sin has defaced but not destroyed. We must set to work methodically to cultivate them, until at last, by constant practice, they become easy and congenial to us. As passion weakens, virtue grows, and at length the heart which is pure from all passion is also adorned with all the virtues; or rather, at this stage, the separate virtues are united and summed up in the all-sufficient virtue of love. Love toward God, and love of our neighbor for the sake of God, becomes the ruling power in the heart.
From Scriptural study and from long experience the Desert Fathers built up an unsurpassed body of moral teaching. They classified and analyzed the various types of sin and of virtue; they found out effective ways of mortifying the one and strengthening the other; all subsequent Christian teaching on these matters is under their influence.
2. Parallel with the moral discipline, helping it on and helped on by it, runs the discipline of the mind, i.e. of the senses, the imagination, and the intellect. Here too there is a negative and a positive side.
[a] The senses, the memory, and the imagination must be guarded, not only against things which are a direct temptation to sin, but against everything which may engage the mind in passing interests when it should be bent upon the unseen realities. The intellect too must be called off from all vain curiosity, from all learning or enquiry pursued merely for its own sake.
[b] Instead we must teach ourselves to see God in all things and all things in God. This is done by stages. First we learn how to contemplate material things and the face of nature; we come to see these things with the eyes of the Psalmist, to whom they all declare the glory of God. Then we can rise to contemplate the glory of God in immaterial things, especially the human soul, which bears His image and likeness. Next we go on to contemplate God's actions in history, His judgments and His saving acts and the whole 'economy' or 'dispensation' of our redemption. The mind becomes so penetrated with the meaning of these things, so that whatever we see or hear speaks to us of them. In time a great simplification takes place. Instead of contemplating all these things separately and in detail, we come to see them all as summed up in Christ, from Whom are all things, and in Whom is fulfilled the whole counsel of God toward us. When the heart becomes pure and love reigns in it, then also the contemplation of Christ becomes habitual in the mind. The soul has become Christ-centered.
There is a stage beyond this. However the imagination and the intellect may be disciplined, we cannot truly apprehend God while we cling to visible things, and let our minds dwell upon images of such things. Even Christ Himself, Who is the heart and center of the visible universe, is not truly known if we stop short at His human nature, not recognizing in Him the Eternal Word, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. A time must come when the mind turns from all objects of sense and clears itself of imagery. The eye of the body and the imagination being then shut, the inward eye of the spirit is opened; the soul, recollected and concentrated within herself, can see herself for what she is, and rise above herself to the vision of God, Whose image and likeness she bears. There is a supreme mode of contemplation, indeed, in which the soul, seized and uplifted by God, forgets all created things, including herself, being involved, so far as they are concerned, in an 'infinite ignorance'; but this ignorance of creatures is at the same time a luminous knowledge of God, a formless contemplation of Him Who is without form or mode. The soul which has enjoyed this high contemplation has reached the summit of 'knowledge' [gnwsis] and 'wisdom' [sofia]. She has attained to the Kingdom of God. Even when not engaged in actual contemplation, such a soul is permanently 'settled' on God, and lives in the light of a perpetual awareness of Him, accompanied by an abiding joy.
3. Officially, the Fathers recognize only two ways, the moral and the contemplative; but in fact they also show us a third way running parallel with these two. It is the way of prayer.
In I Tim. ii 1 we are bidden to practice petitions, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings'; [dehseis, proserxas, enteukseis, euxaristias]; the Fathers take this as a progressive series marking out the road of prayer. 'Petitions' are confessions of sin and prayers for pardon and restoration, and the prayer of beginners is dominated by these. In them the fear of God finds voice. 'Prayers' are taken to mean requests for the virtues and graces, and acts of self-dedication and renunciation of the world. These are expressions of hope; they are characteristic of the soul which is beginning to be led forward in the paths of righteousness. As time goes on, this soul will begin to spare more time, in charity, to intercede for others. By the time that purity of heart is attained, even intercession will have been transcended, and the prayer of the pure soul will be predominantly thanksgiving and adoration. Of course it is not meant that the soul, in passing from one form of prayer to another, leaves the old one behind and ceases to practice it. No one can outgrow penitence; and the earliest and lowliest of all prayers, the prayer of the publican, will accompany the soul to the very end of her journey. Nor can she ever cease to make requests for herself and for others. It is a question of where the emphasis lies; and the pure heart, which lives in the contemplation of Christ, cannot live predominantly in fear and shame. It is ruled by thankfulness and love.
Prayer and contemplation are closely joined together; and as in contemplation, so in prayer, a time comes when we must rise above the colorful imagination and the busy intellect, and approach God in 'pure prayer'. By this is meant a kind of prayer in which the mind does not run from image to image, or from one consideration to another, nor to work out its prayer in a coherent texture of words, but stands still in unmoving attachment to God. The various elements of prayer, penitence, supplication, intercession, thanksgiving, adoration etc., are not separately expressed in successive sentences; they are all present at once in the unity of this prayer. The soul may use a few pregnant words which say much in little, i.e. in modern western terminology an 'aspiration' or the prayer may be wordless altogether, i.e. what in modern western terminology is called the 'prayer of simplicity', or 'prayer of faith'. The Fathers class all such types of prayer together under the name of 'pure prayer' [kathata proseuxh] or ‘quietness’ [hsuxia]. In the pure heart, such prayer becomes habitual, and so fulfills the apostolic command to 'pray without ceasing' Such a soul may also be visited by moments of 'burning prayer', or 'infused' prayer as modern writers would say; these are a gift which God gives when it pleases Him. But the abiding state of the pure soul is one in which pure love, habitual contemplation, and perpetual prayer are all united; for though the three ways are distinct all along their courses, they become one and the same when they reach their common goal. Pure contemplation is inseparable from perfect love, and this pours itself out in pure prayer.
The foregoing is a summary of the spiritual teachings of the Desert. It is not a full account of the ascetic theology of the Eastern Church. I have said nothing about that body of teaching which stresses above all the transcendent mystery of God, and which speaks of the contemplation of God not as light, but as darkness. That teaching is known to the whole Christian world, East and West, through the writings which bear the name of Dionysius the Areopagite. Its influence in some quarters has been very great indeed, but on the other hand it has never been universal. Christian ascetic theology was already an organized body of thought, accompanied by the appropriate practical discipline, before the "Dionysian teaching was accepted into it, and it was not accepted everywhere. The "Unseen Warfare" shows little trace of specifically Dionysian phrases or conceptions. It stands firmly on the basis of that earlier tradition, fundamental alike to East and West, whose main points are summarized above.
[b]DISCUSS THE ARTICLE HERE: (http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/showthread.php?p=1127377#post1127377)
500
[i]Notice - The featuring of a particular article does not constitute endorsement of every single item or point of view contained therein by each and every member of TheologyWeb leadership. We strive to have a varied cross-section of representations of differing opinions on secondary Christian issues. The only requirement for the featuring of a particular article is that said article must not contradict the essentials articulated in the TheologyWeb statement of faith found here in our Mission Statement (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/mission/)or be blatantly offensive to the Christian worldview of the site Owners.
Submitted by George Blaisdell
Taken from the book:
Unseen Warfare by Lorenzo Scupoli [1530-1610]
as edited by Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain [Greek: 1749-1809]
and revised by Theophan the Recluse [Russian: 1815-1894]
SVS PRESS
ISBN 0-913836-52-4
3rd Printing 2000
Introduction by Professor H. A. Hodges
I have been since completing the reading of that book, and I should tell you, I am planning to re-read it till I wear out the pages...
II. The spiritual teachings of the Fathers [p. 17]
Christian Ascetic theology is not something borrowed from extraneous sources, from eastern religions, or from Greek philosophy. It is firmly based in the Bible. The ruling idea of it is familiar to all of us from St. Paul, for it is he, again, who likens Christian life to a battle, and the Christian to a soldier; he describes the discipline to which the Christian is subject, his armor and his weapons of offence, and the enemies, internal and external, against whom he has to fight. Christian ascetic theology is simply the development of these Pauline conceptions into a systematic doctrine and a practical discipline, so that the Christian soldier or athlete may know exactly what he is contending for, and be well trained for the struggle.
The Bible is full of material for such a doctrine and discipline. If it contains the gospel of God's free grace, it also contains the new law, the law of liberty and love, by which God's people are to govern themselves. If it tells of the work that was wrought for us once for all by Christ on the Cross, it also tells of the work which is wrought in us every day by the Holy Ghost, and in that work it summons us to be 'fellow workers with God'. We are told to work out our salvation in fear and trembling, knowing that we can do nothing unless God works in us, and yet that in Christ we can do everything.
The Bible, both Old and New Testaments alike, is full of teaching which bears upon this theme. But, as is the manner of the Bible, it is presented piecemeal, and often in figurative and obscure language. Ascetic theology is the attempt to present it as an organized body of doctrine, with an agreed terminology and accepted principles, and to relate it to the experience gained through practical discipline. Such an organized body of doctrine has come down to us by continuous tradition and development from its first beginnings, which can be traced back to the third century.
The intellectual formulation begins with Clement of Alexandria. He, and after him Origen, taught Christians to think of the Christian way of life in terms which could be understood by educated Greeks. They began the construction of a theory of Christian living, by establishing certain fundamental conceptions and providing the beginnings of a terminology. The practical discipline, however, and the experiential content, came from the deserts of Egypt and Syria. There, hermits living in solitude, and monks living in communities of various kinds, set themselves to create a perfect pattern of Christian living. 'If you wish to be perfect,' said Christ to the rich young man, 'sell all that you have and give it to the poor, and come, and follow me.' The men of the Desert obeyed the command and claimed the implicit promise. They aspired to that perfection which Christ commands. [Matt v. 48, 'You therefore shall be perfect’.] They sought the kingdom of God, the pearl which the merchant in the story sold all his possessions to buy. They did not say that no one can be a true Christian in the world. They told stories of holy lives lived in the world, to shame the lazy monk. But for themselves they chose to withdraw from worldly temptations and distractions, in order to devote themselves wholly to the spiritual combat. It is therefore not surprising that, from daily experience, they came to know a great deal about it.
Their doctrine was codified in Greek by Evagrius of Pontus [d. 399], and a generation later in Latin by John Cassian, as well as by various other writers. It is the starting-point of all subsequent development in ascetic theology. A short summary of it will enable us to see how faithfully the "Unseen Warfare" follows the primitive models:
The goal of the Christian discipline is union with God by loving contemplation.
The goal of the Christian discipline is union with God by loving contemplation. This is the Kingdom of God, and this is eternal life. For this we were created, but from this we have fallen; our minds are distracted and fascinated by created things, our wills are held in bondage to finite and transient goods. The purpose of our discipline is therefore to turn the mind and will back into their proper alignment, so that they may receive in full measure the illumination of divine grace. They cannot do so while they are inordinately attached to the creatures; it is the pure in heart who shall see God, and therefore the immediate aim of our discipline must be to attain to purity of heart. This is what Abbot Moses explained to Cassian: 'The goal of our profession is the Kingdom of God or the Kingdom of heaven; but our immediate aim or target is purity of heart, without which it is impossible for anyone to reach that goal.'
The way which leads to the goal can be considered under three aspects:
1. It is a moral way, a discipline of the will and character, and this has naturally two sides: a purgation of what is evil, and a cultivation of what is good.
[a] The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord. At first, while the passions are strong and liable to carry us away, we are governed and kept in order mainly by the fear of God, together with shame and repentance for past sin. These motives lead gradually to the building up of self-control, and patience [long-suffering] under temptations and difficulties. This in turn kindles hope. Drawn on by hope and guided by a growing experience, we set to work not merely to control, but to 'eradicate' the passions. It is a lengthy process; but gradually the bodily appetites are weakened and the soul purged, until at last we arrive at purity of heart, of freedom from passion [apatheia]. This does not mean that we cease to have any feelings; it means that we are no longer ruled by our feelings, but remain untroubled and tranquil in all circumstances. The heart or will, no longer swayed by emotions or carried away by its own self-will, is 'sober', 'awake', 'attentive', to God.
As we purge ourselves of passion, we also grow in virtue. The seeds of all the virtues are latent in us from the start; it is they which constitute the likeness of God in the soul, which sin has defaced but not destroyed. We must set to work methodically to cultivate them, until at last, by constant practice, they become easy and congenial to us. As passion weakens, virtue grows, and at length the heart which is pure from all passion is also adorned with all the virtues; or rather, at this stage, the separate virtues are united and summed up in the all-sufficient virtue of love. Love toward God, and love of our neighbor for the sake of God, becomes the ruling power in the heart.
From Scriptural study and from long experience the Desert Fathers built up an unsurpassed body of moral teaching. They classified and analyzed the various types of sin and of virtue; they found out effective ways of mortifying the one and strengthening the other; all subsequent Christian teaching on these matters is under their influence.
2. Parallel with the moral discipline, helping it on and helped on by it, runs the discipline of the mind, i.e. of the senses, the imagination, and the intellect. Here too there is a negative and a positive side.
[a] The senses, the memory, and the imagination must be guarded, not only against things which are a direct temptation to sin, but against everything which may engage the mind in passing interests when it should be bent upon the unseen realities. The intellect too must be called off from all vain curiosity, from all learning or enquiry pursued merely for its own sake.
[b] Instead we must teach ourselves to see God in all things and all things in God. This is done by stages. First we learn how to contemplate material things and the face of nature; we come to see these things with the eyes of the Psalmist, to whom they all declare the glory of God. Then we can rise to contemplate the glory of God in immaterial things, especially the human soul, which bears His image and likeness. Next we go on to contemplate God's actions in history, His judgments and His saving acts and the whole 'economy' or 'dispensation' of our redemption. The mind becomes so penetrated with the meaning of these things, so that whatever we see or hear speaks to us of them. In time a great simplification takes place. Instead of contemplating all these things separately and in detail, we come to see them all as summed up in Christ, from Whom are all things, and in Whom is fulfilled the whole counsel of God toward us. When the heart becomes pure and love reigns in it, then also the contemplation of Christ becomes habitual in the mind. The soul has become Christ-centered.
There is a stage beyond this. However the imagination and the intellect may be disciplined, we cannot truly apprehend God while we cling to visible things, and let our minds dwell upon images of such things. Even Christ Himself, Who is the heart and center of the visible universe, is not truly known if we stop short at His human nature, not recognizing in Him the Eternal Word, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. A time must come when the mind turns from all objects of sense and clears itself of imagery. The eye of the body and the imagination being then shut, the inward eye of the spirit is opened; the soul, recollected and concentrated within herself, can see herself for what she is, and rise above herself to the vision of God, Whose image and likeness she bears. There is a supreme mode of contemplation, indeed, in which the soul, seized and uplifted by God, forgets all created things, including herself, being involved, so far as they are concerned, in an 'infinite ignorance'; but this ignorance of creatures is at the same time a luminous knowledge of God, a formless contemplation of Him Who is without form or mode. The soul which has enjoyed this high contemplation has reached the summit of 'knowledge' [gnwsis] and 'wisdom' [sofia]. She has attained to the Kingdom of God. Even when not engaged in actual contemplation, such a soul is permanently 'settled' on God, and lives in the light of a perpetual awareness of Him, accompanied by an abiding joy.
3. Officially, the Fathers recognize only two ways, the moral and the contemplative; but in fact they also show us a third way running parallel with these two. It is the way of prayer.
In I Tim. ii 1 we are bidden to practice petitions, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings'; [dehseis, proserxas, enteukseis, euxaristias]; the Fathers take this as a progressive series marking out the road of prayer. 'Petitions' are confessions of sin and prayers for pardon and restoration, and the prayer of beginners is dominated by these. In them the fear of God finds voice. 'Prayers' are taken to mean requests for the virtues and graces, and acts of self-dedication and renunciation of the world. These are expressions of hope; they are characteristic of the soul which is beginning to be led forward in the paths of righteousness. As time goes on, this soul will begin to spare more time, in charity, to intercede for others. By the time that purity of heart is attained, even intercession will have been transcended, and the prayer of the pure soul will be predominantly thanksgiving and adoration. Of course it is not meant that the soul, in passing from one form of prayer to another, leaves the old one behind and ceases to practice it. No one can outgrow penitence; and the earliest and lowliest of all prayers, the prayer of the publican, will accompany the soul to the very end of her journey. Nor can she ever cease to make requests for herself and for others. It is a question of where the emphasis lies; and the pure heart, which lives in the contemplation of Christ, cannot live predominantly in fear and shame. It is ruled by thankfulness and love.
Prayer and contemplation are closely joined together; and as in contemplation, so in prayer, a time comes when we must rise above the colorful imagination and the busy intellect, and approach God in 'pure prayer'. By this is meant a kind of prayer in which the mind does not run from image to image, or from one consideration to another, nor to work out its prayer in a coherent texture of words, but stands still in unmoving attachment to God. The various elements of prayer, penitence, supplication, intercession, thanksgiving, adoration etc., are not separately expressed in successive sentences; they are all present at once in the unity of this prayer. The soul may use a few pregnant words which say much in little, i.e. in modern western terminology an 'aspiration' or the prayer may be wordless altogether, i.e. what in modern western terminology is called the 'prayer of simplicity', or 'prayer of faith'. The Fathers class all such types of prayer together under the name of 'pure prayer' [kathata proseuxh] or ‘quietness’ [hsuxia]. In the pure heart, such prayer becomes habitual, and so fulfills the apostolic command to 'pray without ceasing' Such a soul may also be visited by moments of 'burning prayer', or 'infused' prayer as modern writers would say; these are a gift which God gives when it pleases Him. But the abiding state of the pure soul is one in which pure love, habitual contemplation, and perpetual prayer are all united; for though the three ways are distinct all along their courses, they become one and the same when they reach their common goal. Pure contemplation is inseparable from perfect love, and this pours itself out in pure prayer.
The foregoing is a summary of the spiritual teachings of the Desert. It is not a full account of the ascetic theology of the Eastern Church. I have said nothing about that body of teaching which stresses above all the transcendent mystery of God, and which speaks of the contemplation of God not as light, but as darkness. That teaching is known to the whole Christian world, East and West, through the writings which bear the name of Dionysius the Areopagite. Its influence in some quarters has been very great indeed, but on the other hand it has never been universal. Christian ascetic theology was already an organized body of thought, accompanied by the appropriate practical discipline, before the "Dionysian teaching was accepted into it, and it was not accepted everywhere. The "Unseen Warfare" shows little trace of specifically Dionysian phrases or conceptions. It stands firmly on the basis of that earlier tradition, fundamental alike to East and West, whose main points are summarized above.
[b]DISCUSS THE ARTICLE HERE: (http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/showthread.php?p=1127377#post1127377)
500
[i]Notice - The featuring of a particular article does not constitute endorsement of every single item or point of view contained therein by each and every member of TheologyWeb leadership. We strive to have a varied cross-section of representations of differing opinions on secondary Christian issues. The only requirement for the featuring of a particular article is that said article must not contradict the essentials articulated in the TheologyWeb statement of faith found here in our Mission Statement (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/mission/)or be blatantly offensive to the Christian worldview of the site Owners.