Archimandrite Ephraim

All Articles by Archimandrite Ephraim

Abbot of the Holy and Great Monastery of Vatopaidi

Godforsakenness Αccording to St Sophrony the Athonite

Volume 11 – St Sophrony the Athonite
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St Sophrony divides the spiritual life into three periods. The first, the initial one, is that of the call to and inspiration for the struggle in question; the second is that of the withdrawal of ‘perceptible’ Grace and the experience of Godforsakenness; and the third is the return of perceptible Grace and its retention. Godforsakenness is not experienced by those who live Christianity as a moralistic or intellectual philosophical-cum-religious system, because such people have no empirical communion with God. They are unaware of the existence, the sharing of divine Grace, its advent and its removal. They may believe that God exists, but they do not have living faith, the faith of experience.

The subject with which we deal in this article is not one which is easily accepted by those who are not initiates in the life of divine Grace. We would say that it is rather daunting, as testified by the title: ‘Godforsakenness’. It is, however, extremely important, the sine qua non for the spiritual life. Many—perhaps most—will say of what follows: ‘This is a hard saying; who can bear it?’.1 But St Sophrony, the blessed Elder who was recently enrolled into the Catalogue of Saints of the Orthodox Church and who, through his experience and writings, has left for us the unimpeded path for the life in Christ, stressed that God wants to see us perfect, as he is perfect.2 And the path to perfection necessarily passes through the Golgotha of Godforsakenness.

At the important moment in our life, whenever it pleases God that we should define ourselves positively before him, we experience the supernatural revelation of God. Having offered up the whole of our freedom towards the observation of his commandments, we ‘walk in the newness of life’,3 we enter a particular spiritual milieu where we encounter God, share in his Grace empirically and experience states ‘beyond reason and conception’, which we could never even have imagined before. It is then that Christians begin, to all intents and purposes, to experience the spiritual ‘new life’, life in Christ.

Following the earlier Fathers of the Church, St Sophrony divides the spiritual life into three periods. He writes: ‘The first, the initial stage, is the summons and the

1.

Jn. 6:60.

 

2.

See Archimandrite Sophrony (Sakharov), We Shall See Him as He Is (Essex: Stavropegic Monastery of St. John the Baptist, 1988), 223.

 

3.

Rom. 6:4.

The Use of Human Reason and Noetic Energy According to Saint Gregory

Volume 5 – St Gregory Palamas, Special series – Part 3
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Saint Gregory Palamas, continuing the teaching of the earlier Fathers, distinguishes between man’s two cognitive faculties: reason (dianoia), which is related to logic, and the intellect (nous), which is related  to immediate, intuitive perception. While reason is the vehicle of created knowledge, the logical power that can be expressed through reasoning about sensible and spiritual things, the intellect is the intuitive (noera) energy within man’s heart, which constitutes the means of divine vision, and becomes the only vehicle of the uncreated knowledge of God. The discovery of the intellectual (noera) energy within the heart of a man that lives in repentance contributes to the unification of the powers of the soul, to the purity of the heart, and to the acquisition of self-knowledge and firm faith, thus signalling the spiritual completion of man through participation in the uncreated deifying energies.

In his second homily On the Entrance of the Mother of God, where he presents our Lady as a model of the hesychast life, Saint Gregory Palamas discusses at length the  five  powers  of  the  soul:  sense,  imagination,  thinking,  intellection,  and  nous.1 Here, the great anatomist of the human soul makes the distinction that intellection is the power of reason which, through a variety of successive syllogisms, completes

1.Gregory Palamas, Ὁμιλίαι ΚΒ΄, Σοφοκλέους τοῦ ἐξ Οἰκονόμων (Ἀθήνα: Φ. Καραμπίνη καὶ Κ. Βαφᾶ, 1861), Ὁμιλία 53.35, pp. 172 ff. On the distinction between the terms nous, intellect, heart and soul, see Metropolitan Ierotheos of Nafpaktos, Ὀρθόδοξη Ψυχοθεραπεία (Λεβαδειά: Ἱερὰ Μονὴ Γενεθλίου τῆς Θεοτόκου, 1986), 91–228, where, on pp.111–17, he notes that the Fathers often interchange the terms, characterizing the nous sometimes as intellect or the noetic energy of the soul and sometimes as the essence of the soul. In Western theology, the nous is always understood as the intellect and reason. For theologians in the West, there is no such thing as ‘noetic energy’. We would note here: ‘Νοῦς λέγεται καὶ ἡ τοῦ νοῦ ἐνέργεια ἐν λογισμοῖς συνισταμένη καὶ νοήμασι. Νοῦς ἐστι καὶ ἡ ἐνεργοῦσα ταῦτα δύναμις, ἥτις καὶ καρδία καλεῖται παρὰ τῆς Γραφῆς’ (Τρία κεφάλαια περὶ προσευχῆς καὶ καθαρότητος καρδίας 3, in Γρηγορίου τοῦ Παλαμᾶ, Συγγράμματα, ed. P. Christou, vol. 5, [Θεσσαλονίκη: Κυρομάνος, 1992], 159 [hereafter Συγγράμματα]). ‘Ὅταν δὲ ἀπαιτώμεθα εἰπεῖν τί νοῦς καὶ τί διάνοια, τὸν μὲν νοῦν οὐσίαν λέγομεν, τὴν δὲ διάνοιαν οὐσιώδη ἐνέργειαν… ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἔστι ποτὲ χωρὶς νοῦ ἡ διάνοια’ (Ἐπίτομος διήγησις Φακρασῆ Πρωτοστράτορος 26, Συγγράμματα, vol. 4, 229). And Isaac the Syrian, Λόγος 83, Spetseris, 320: ‘Ὁ μὲν γὰρ νοῦς μία ἐστὶ τῶν τῆς ψυχῆς αἰσθήσεων· ἡ δὲ καρδία ἐστὶν ἡ περιέχουσα καὶ κρατοῦσα τὰς ἔνδον αἰσθήσεις. Καὶ αὕτη ἐστὶν ἡ ρίζα’.

The Sinlessness of our Most Holy Lady

Volume 1 – Mary, The Theotokos
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Following the Third Ecumenical Council, the assimilation of the dogmatic teaching about the Theotokos was very slow. Certain Fathers were waypoints regarding the person of the Theotokos, such as Cyril of Alexandria, John Damascene, Gregory Palamas, Nicholas Kavasilas, Nikodimos the Athonite, and Silouan the Athonite.In this paper, we compare the positions of certain contemporary Orthodox theo-logians with those of the previously mentioned Fathers regarding the subject of the sinlessness of the Virgin Mary.

Let no uninitiated hand touch the living Ark of God’, we sing at the ninth ode of many of the feasts of the Mother of God. Indeed, the mystery concerning the person and the life of the Mother of God is a book ‘sealed with seven seals’1 for the uninitiated, for those who do not have the revelation, the divine grace. It is a real and audacious mystery, divine and human, inaccessible to those with feet of clay. How can anyone understand the most sublime matters concerning the Mother of God, since he or she does not even have experience of lesser things? How can anyone who has not been purged of the passions speak with authority about deification?…

The Gospels are silent regarding the life of Our Lady, the Virgin, and reveal only very little. But the Holy Spirit, with the Tradition of the Church, teaches us a great deal, such as the significance and meaning of the Gospel references. And the Mother of God herself often reveals information to her faithful servants, the Fathers of the Church.

In the beginning, the Church was not greatly concerned with formulating dogma about Our Lady. It did so only as regards the Triune God (Trinitarian dogma) and the incarnate Word (Christological dogma). The dogmatic teaching of the Church concerning Our Lady was formulated gradually, in direct correlation with Christology. It was only the Roman Catholic Church which formulated particular doctrines about Our Lady (immaculate conception, the assumption of her body, etc.). Thus, Saint Basil the Great, within the perspective of the ancient patristic tradition and addressing those who had doubts about the virginity of the Mother of God after she gave birth, shifted the significance of the matter onto the virgin birth of Christ, and said that virginity was essential until the incarnation, but that we should not be curious about afterwards because of the mystery involved.3

*Literally ‘outside the temple’ therefore ‘uninitiated’, which is what the hymn says, rather than the modern meaning of ‘irreverent’. [trans. note]

1.Rev 5:1.

2.Basil the Great, Εἰς τήν ἁγίαν τοῦ Χριστοῦ γέννησιν 5 (PG 31:1468ΑΒ).

3.See Chrysostomos Stamoulis, Θεοτόκος καί ὀρθόδοξο δόγμα. Σπουδή στή διδασκαλία τοῦ ἁγίου Κυρίλλου Ἀλεξανδρείας (Thessaloniki: Palimpsiston, 1996).