Triads in Defence of the Holy Hesychasts 1 part 9/21
Greek original · 105 verses · some words can be tapped for a gloss · long chapter, split into parts; this part covers 1:948–1:1052 (2460 verses in all)
ℹ️ This corpus has no verse-level morphological tagging. Lemmas come mainly from word-level tagging of other books in the same language (not from this verse), falling back to dictionary form-matching for the rest. Rare homographs can still be misread; verify against the original and a specialist lexicon where precision matters.
ℹ️ The Chinese and English alongside are this site's own translation, made directly from the original text on this page (not the CUV or the WEB, which follow the Masoretic Text and a different textual tradition).
Just as if someone, hearing the Psalmist say, 'The fool has said, there is no God,' should think it necessary to rank with this fool the God-revealing theologian from the Areopagus, who says of God that he neither was, nor is, nor shall be — himself being the most foolish of fools, and failing to understand the surpassing difference: that the saint knows and speaks theologically of God as beyond being, whereas the heart of the fool places, in the realm of utter non-existence, the only truly Existent.
In the same way, we know that the monastic way of life is above reason; but that apostate, supposing the Christian way of life to be without reason, on that account excluded them from learning. This distinction that man — who supposes himself to know everything — has failed to grasp, and he holds worthy of the same charge those who set the things of Christians above all honor, ranking them with those who have chosen, above all else, to dishonor them; and he holds that the pious deserve to be hated in equal measure with the most impious, because the pious declare persevering devotion to God in prayer to be more to be pursued in earnest than anything whatsoever.
Does he not thereby distinguish and take up what is useful in outward wisdom, and blend it together with the simplicity of the Gospel — which is precisely what we too say in those very words, we who are now, for this very reason, insulted by you?
And what, again, when he says, 'I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which none shall be able to withstand,' and, 'when the Comforter comes, he will teach you all truth'?
Did he not thereby promise a wisdom more divine, and superior beyond all telling to this worldly wisdom which is by nature always subject to contradiction — the very wisdom which you, contending on its behalf, extol?
Did the apostles, then, go about seeking whether anyone — Greek, Egyptian, or Chaldean — professed to know something, so that they might learn from him and his writings and gather understanding from every quarter, as you yourself teach us, saying in these very words: 'It is not from the keeping of the commandments, nor from dispassion alone, that the knowledge of beings is attained, and it is not possible to be holy without having received the knowledge of beings and having been purified of this ignorance'?
Did they, then, go about everywhere gathering understanding, as you yourself teach us, or were they, according to what is written, continually in the temple, persevering in prayer and supplication, and thereby prefiguring and, in practice, sacredly inscribing this truly super-eminent and all-holy life according to the monks — a life by which we profess to transcend the sacred way of life that stands in the middle estate, and renounce every divisible life and every fantasy, and are truly led up, monastically, through the unifying commandments, to the unitary theosophy that is higher than all philosophy, and are hierurgically brought to perfection into the most sacred Monad?
For in truth we become a monad in the one Monad that is exempt from and set above all things, and that alone is in every way beyond conception, in three hypostases — according to the glorious and mystical manifestation on our behalf, and the cooperation of him who, for our sake, entered into communion with our dyad, and yet, ineffably, did not depart from his own Monad, according to his supraessential and undeparting power.
What absurdity, then, do we commit, O most learned one, if we require the one who, according to his profession, is hastening toward the unifying concentration of the intellect, having let go of study in the manifold disciplines, to transcend the divisible and discursive acts of thought found in these, and the sensible forms of reasoning, and the kinds of knowledge that take their origin from sense-perception?
And how could the inner man be constituted a monk in accordance with the transcendent, unitary life, unless he should rise above the acquired world, and above all human
...learnings, and stretch himself out, in unity and solitude, briefly toward God — a truth which the removal of the adornment of hair from the head also symbolically teaches to those capable of understanding?
And perhaps, too, the command not to go up to the divine altar by steps, and to build it of uncut stones, upon which no tool has been laid, was hinting at this very thing: that the very nature of the intellect, stripped bare, must itself be the house of prayer, untouched by every circuitous device and human method?
If, then, we require these things of them, will someone accuse us, speaking after your own manner — you who seem to twist everything with the twists of your arguments — saying that, none the less, because he did not forbid it, one ought to hold to it, or, because he did not permit it, one ought to abstain from it?
Certainly not — unless he himself wishes rightly to stand accused; for many things done without condemnation by the whole body that bears the name of Christ are, in every way, not permitted to monks, because of the distinctiveness of their manner of life.
There are indeed among the fathers those who forbid even the use of baths, and, when the brethren are sick, do not permit them to make use of the help that comes from medicine, on the ground that they are wholly devoted to God, and have their whole dependence fixed there, and hold in unwavering expectation that what is beneficial for them will come from God.
Yet they do not, for all that, regard as detestable those who do not attain to this measure of faith, even though God has often borne witness to that resolve by extraordinary miracles.
But in a fatherly way, they sometimes also condescend to us who are lowly; and this very thing one might find them both doing and saying with regard to the discipline of learning as well.
How then, O monk and philosopher, did you bring yourself to rank with the transgressor and apostate one who does and says the very same things as the fathers?
...of learning, but I exhort them toward the good that is above reason, inasmuch as they have professed to hasten toward this — leading those who blessedly follow after learning not by way of deficiency but by way of superiority beyond it; for attendance upon God in prayer is, beyond all comparison, loftier than the discipline of learning.
You, then, hold opinions contrary to the fathers — not in the matters which you have listed among your arguments merely by way of insinuation, but in that you say the evangelical commandments are not sufficient to cleanse perfectly the soul of him who has kept them; nor does dispassion procure for him who has acquired it the perfecting and saving knowledge; nor is it possible to be freed from ignorance and false opinions without learning and diligent study of it; nor can one who has not been freed from these attain to perfection and holiness; and you say that Greek education is likewise a gift of God, equal to those given by revelation to the prophets and apostles, and that both this learning and that revealed learning are, in like manner, grasped by human reasonings once they have been given; and you say that to know all things — which we know to belong to God alone — is the perfection befitting man.
But as for sacred Scripture — even though you mix it in with secular learning and seem to contend zealously in its defense — you do not think that it, either, brings about perfect purification for the soul; for otherwise you would not have introduced the requirement to seek out and learn, whether anyone professes to
Since, then, you plainly contradict those who maintain that the divine commandments must be kept as procuring dispassion and saving purification and knowledge, and since among the commandments is also the searching of the Scriptures, those who exhort to the keeping of the commandments are, by every necessity, exhorting also to persistent reading of the Scriptures; but you do not think that even these Scriptures impart purification to the soul.
That, then, is a bait — your bringing together into one the divine Scripture and the studies of philosophy; but to say that one who pursues both is led by them to a single end is not merely a deceit, but a plain opposition to the sacred and divine Scripture itself.
For she gave birth to no fruit from her long labor-pains, but all were wind-eggs, unbrought to term, never reaching the light of the knowledge of God — even though, on your account, they cast off through the light of learning that darkness of the soul which is above all the ignorance of disposition.
But then, by this reasoning, how were not most of the saints darkened and unfulfilled — some who, taken all together, never laid hold of Greek learning at all, and, among those who did partake of learning from that quarter, some who pitched the world like a tent, set up the heaven as if it were a vault, brought the sun back up from the northern parts of the earth, whence [they said] it rises, and held the heavenly vault to be hollow so as to receive the waters — themselves possessing, and endeavoring to persuade others of, that very ignorance of disposition which you yourself call the darkness of the soul above all?
But lest we seem to be reciting this man's opinions here on our own say-so, let us set out his very words, and cite alongside them those of one or two of the saints against whom (p. ...
...) he plainly contradicts. Now it is certainly no secret to those of sound judgment that all [the saints] are of one lip, moved by the one Spirit; nevertheless we shall set forth those [words] which will make their agreement evident.
...will purify his own soul of the passions and false opinions, calling upon assistance from above for both purifications, while himself also doing everything that avails toward the goal.
For it will make no difference to him who the teacher is, so long as he contributes something to his knowledge; for such a man has laid hold of the perfection befitting human beings, one who has fitted his own mind to the truth that pervades all things, in an abiding union.
He says, then, that our soul requires two purifications: that of the passions, and that of the ignorance of disposition; and he says that the keeping of the commandments provides only the purification from the passions — and this only grudgingly, as he himself puts it, does he grant to the commandments of God — while he says that it is learning which gives the purification from ignorance, and not the learning of the divine Scriptures, for the learning of these is already included in the keeping of the commandments.
Yet if this were what he meant, no harm would follow, since the great Maximus too says something of this kind, distinguishing the practice of virtue from the divine dogmas — and we ourselves (p. ...
...) sometimes say that the soul is purified of the passions through the divine commandments, while through pure prayer it lays aside, in a transcendent way, all knowledge.
But such things are said in this manner by way of eminence, just as the angel of the Lord's resurrection said to the myrrh-bearing women: 'Tell his disciples, and Peter, that he goes before you into Galilee.'
As, then, Peter belongs to the company of the disciples, even though, being singled out for special mention, he is distinguished from them, in the same way both prayer and the reading of the sacred Scriptures are commandments of God, even though they are distinguished from the rest by way of eminence — but the taking up of philosophical studies is not [a commandment of God] at all; and were it too to be said [to hold this eminence], what an absurdity that would be!
But this man does not say that it is the learning of the divine Scriptures that purifies the soul completely, but that of the Greek disciplines; and this is why he adds that the one who is to be purified must learn from whoever professes to know something, whether that person be godly or not, and declares unclean and unfulfilled anyone who has not attained the knowledge of things that are — so as to show that this [secular] learning is salvific, purifying, and perfective.
That the one who says these things thinks the very opposite of all the Fathers, and of the God of the Fathers, is, I think, plain to all who judge rightly; but let there come forward for us, as a witness on behalf of all, Dionysius the God-revealer of the Areopagus — the one with whom, above all others and in all things, this man, who boasts of speaking more perfectly of the divine commandments, claims to agree.
He says, then, in the first chapter of the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy: 'The assimilation to, and union with, God — as the divine oracles teach — is accomplished only through the loving observance and sacred performance of the most venerable commandments.'
...) 'On Human Perfection'; for there he says: 'A perfect man is one who has made his own soul, so far as is possible for a human being, like unto God.'
If, then, assimilation to God is perfection, and this is accomplished only through the sacred work of love in the divine commandments, where then is the purification and perfection [supposed to come] from knowledge and studies, and from the desire to keep learning one's whole life long and to hasten to converse with all who profess to know something and who contribute to knowledge — be they Egyptians, Scythians, or Greeks?
...calling ignorance, above all, the darkness of the soul, which is by its nature purified through external education — how then does this man regard the Greeks and Egyptians, and whoever else were the discoverers of the rational disciplines, as physicians and luminaries and saviors of our soul no less — nay, even more — than he regards Jesus himself?
But the disease that has come upon the reasoning faculty of this knowledge-loving man's soul has shown itself to be so great, and this from these few words alone concerning it; and since it is precisely the philosopher's reasoning faculty that is diseased, it is no wonder that he fails to perceive both what his disease is and whence it comes.
We, then, shall try both to discern and to declare the cause of the disease, and also, with God's help, to compound a remedy — should he indeed be persuaded to accept it — that will lead him back to health.
And as for the labor I underwent in writing — as I myself said at the time to those who were with me — I took it up not so much for the sake of those who embrace stillness as for this man himself, against whom the counter-arguments are directed; and had he been willing, when I requested it at the outset, to dissolve these opinions of his, and his attacks on the simpler of the brethren, through words exchanged mouth to mouth between us, the long treatises would have been unnecessary.
But I think I have wandered from the first and more remote causes of this disease; the most immediate cause of all — one that shows itself even in the diseased man's own words — is the matter, and indeed the very name, of the truth that lies beyond us.
It is indeed a terrible thing to steal away a learning-loving man, and to implant in souls avidly disposed toward knowing a desire that cannot be fulfilled; for this very thing was what, at the beginning, implanted in Adam the longing for equality with God.
For this philosopher too supposed that it was salvific — and that without it there could be no perfection — that the knowing faculty of the soul should be fitted, in an abiding union, to the truth that pervades all God's creatures.
But seeing that this did not come about completely through the divine oracles and commandments, he looked instead to the Greeks who seemed to have discovered the principles of creation, and revered their studies as perfective of the soul; for he did not realize that in the present age this is both unprofitable to the soul and impossible — 'for as the bones in the belly of her that is with child,' says Solomon, 'so you shall not know the works of God, which he shall do — all things.'
This is why the accounts the outsiders give concerning creation are various — yet, that they are not all true, there does exist a reasoned demonstration showing this; but as to which one of the disputing parties actually possesses the truth, no science of theirs is able to show this, nor has any such science ever even been devised.
And so, one who does not attribute the unquestionable certainty of truth solely to what has been disclosed by the God-inspired [writers] for our benefit, nor grasps — even from what was said by God to Job — the incomprehensibility of God's wisdom in his creatures, but supposes that from secular wisdom he can accurately understand the truth that is displayed through all things, is unaware that he is building the house of knowledge upon sand — or rather, upon waves rolling one upon another — entrusting so weighty a matter to the turns of arguments which, by their very nature, are always to be overthrown by the turns of other arguments. Such a 'wise man,' then, will be made like a fool, and there is no small fear that he may suffer a great fall as well, according to the Lord's parable.
...that true accounts of created things can be found by way of secular studies — but let us require them, in turn, to follow what has already been demonstrated to us from the oracles [of God], and to believe that Christ alone is physician of spirits — he who is the God of spirits — and that assimilation to him is accomplished only through the love and keeping of his commandments, which is to say, the same thing as the health and perfection of the soul.
Since, then, we have gone along with them, yielding to a degree we ought not even to have done, while demanding from them what they could not deny (p. ...), come, let us see what follows from this agreement.
What else, than that this is salvific perfection, both in knowledge and in doctrine — to think the same things as the prophets, the apostles, the fathers, simply all those through whom the Holy Spirit is attested to have spoken, concerning both God and his creatures.
But whatever was passed over by him, yet discovered by others, contributes nothing to the salvation of the soul, even if true; for nothing of what is profitable is left out of the teaching of the Spirit.
And indeed, leading us toward the perfection of that salvific knowledge, Christ said, 'If you believed Moses, you would believe me,' and he commanded us to search the sacred Scriptures, since in them we would find eternal life.
This is why the golden-tongued theologian John says of the Lord that he spoke about doctrines only rarely, since that matter requires no labor, but spoke about [the conduct of] life often — indeed, everywhere; 'for this,' he says, 'is the Law and the Prophets: that whatever we would wish others to do for us, this we should also do for them.'
Now since there is also a knowledge that consists in discerning what is to be done, and we need this in the very doing of it, and it is necessary that the man who is assimilated to God and made perfect should have laid hold of this knowledge too — leading us, then, toward this knowledge, the Lord commanded once more, saying, 'Be wise as serpents and innocent as doves,' thereby joining guilelessness of character with understanding; and he deemed the wise virgins worthy of the bridal chamber, since the works of love are not (p. ...
This is why the Lord calls that servant blessed whom, when he comes, he shall find doing just as he commanded him, and says that the one who knows but does not do shall be beaten with many stripes; and truly he ranks among the prudent the one who hears and does his words. Indeed, the one who hears the word of the Lord and does it acquires within himself, according to the promise, the very One who gave the commandment — who is Wisdom itself, and the compass of all true knowledge.
Therefore the one who has acquired him within himself through the keeping of the divine commandments will have no further need even of the learning of the Scriptures, but even without it knows all of them accurately, and could be a sure teacher of those who advance by way of learning — as were John and Antony.
That, then, which is for us truly perfective and salvific is this kind of truth, as we are taught by the divinely-working commandments; and the prize consequent upon it, or the pledge of that prize, Paul called a 'rapture' and 'a supracelestial ascent,' while Christ called it a 'coming,' and an 'abiding,' and 'a manifestation' of himself and of the Father; for that these are one and the same, though spoken of in different ways, is not unclear to the initiated.
For that power which is everywhere present will not come from one place to another, nor will that which is nowhere abide anywhere; rather, his 'coming' to us and his 'abiding' is [in truth] our own ascent to him through revelation. That this, then, is not knowledge but, in a transcendent manner, an unknowing, we shall demonstrate hereafter.
Let there come forward, then, Basil the Great, who himself thoroughly cultivated the knowledge of created things; for, elucidating the truth which the Psalmist attests to be present in the heart of the perfect man, he says: 'We find two senses of truth: one, the apprehension of the things that lead to the blessed life; the other, sound knowledge concerning whatever things there are in the world. Now the truth that cooperates with salvation is present in the heart of the perfect man, who also hands it on to his neighbor without deceit; but as for earth and sea, the stars, and their motion or speed — even if we do not know the truth about such things, this will in no way hinder us from attaining the blessedness that is in the promises.'
ON PRAYER. Now, that this philosopher should so unsparingly accuse those who set no great store by the benefit derived from secular education, in comparison with that which now accrues from the Gospel to those who live according to it, and which is hoped for in accordance with its unfailing promises — accusing them to the point of devoting long treatises to invectives against them — one might well say he has been carried away by the love-charm of learning, and by an extreme disposition toward knowing.
For since [the hesychasts] regard only the commandments of Christ as of the highest worth, and urge everyone toward these alone, as the only things that sacredly effect assimilation to God and perfect and deify the human soul, while they do not rank secular discourse and the philosophy found in discourse very highly among earthly things, but call it, following Paul, 'carnal' and 'the wisdom of this age,' and declare the champions of the Greeks — for having used the instruction God gave through creation against God himself — to be abominable, 'wise fools': it was, it seems, on behalf of his own cherished studies that the philosopher took offense, seeing that they were not accorded by these men even the greatest honor — an honor of which he too was meant to be a partaker, on account of which he acquired the very name of 'philosopher,' and which was the only visible prize he reaped for his lifelong pursuit.
But against our rational — or rather our spiritual — worship, that is, prayer, and against those who honor it above all things, and cling to it without distraction, in stillness, throughout their lives, and lend a helping hand to those (p. ...
And there, in the contests he waged on behalf of philosophy, this monk-and-philosopher was clearly opposed to monks — but ones still living; here, however, by openly setting the sayings of the fathers now dwelling in the heavens amid his own arguments, in order to overturn them, I do not know what has come over him — but he has waged no small contest indeed.
...and he counts our patrimony and our homeland dearer than his own, on account of the word of truth rightly divided among us; and having come here, he chose the stricter way of life — namely, the monastic — and as a dwelling-place, that spot named for holiness, situated on the border between the world and what lies beyond the world (this is Athos, the hearth of virtue), conceiving a desire to make his abode there.
And there he first showed that he knew how to begin well, by submitting himself to the most distinguished of the fathers; and having, over a long time, given them proof of his own humility, he in turn received from them the experience of that peace of the arts — that is, the experience of stillness — and became a leader of those wrestling in the world of the mind (p. ...
...stripping off [their garments] to wrestle against the spirits of wickedness — for whom he also compiled a collection of patristic teachings, one that anoints them for the contests, sets forth the manner of the struggles, displays beforehand the prizes, and outlines the crowns of victory. Then, after this, since he saw that many of those being introduced [to this discipline] were unable to restrain the instability of the mind even moderately, he also proposed a method by which they might moderately curb its restless wandering and its tendency to fantasy.
Against this man, then, this philosopher unleashed his own fantasy-ridden excess of ingenuity, like a kind of fire, using as fuel the very one who taught this restraint — showing no reverence for that blessed confession [of faith] and the exile endured on account of it, nor any reverence for those who conversed with him during his exile and were instructed by him in divine things, men who have shown themselves to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world, and more radiant than luminaries to the Church, holding forth the word of life (you hear of Theoleptos, who flashed forth like a lamp on its stand in the city of Philadelphia; Seliotes, the leader of the monastics; Elias, who embraced the desert almost his whole life long after the manner of Elijah; and the others through whom God, having restored his own Church, adorned and established it) — not even on their account, then, nor on account of those instructed by them and who to this day hold to the same discipline, was he persuaded to give up his ill-intentioned insinuations, that is, his arguments against the man; or, failing that, at least to give up dishonoring with lengthy treatises one whom, had he chosen to praise him, he could never have praised worthily. But it was precisely because the treatise had been composed by him [that father] in a simple and artless manner that this moved the philosopher to controversy, since it was from this that he was able to find his handles [for attack].
And so, to speak now that theological saying: it is not the one who is wise in words who is wise in our eyes, nor whoever has a nimble tongue but an untrained soul — like those tombs which, being comely on the outside, (p. ...
...) conceal within them decaying corpses, covering over their great stench — but rather whoever, through his life, lends credibility to his words, and adorns with his deeds whatever is unlovely in his speech.
But indeed, not even against those simple words was this 'wise man' able to mount an attack without first distorting them, as we shall clearly show in a moment.
Now, since this man, from beginning to end, teaches on his own authority concerning noetic prayer, let us too briefly examine beforehand this teaching of his; for it is of such a kind as to deceive, through specious eloquence, many of the inexperienced, but none of those who have tasted true prayer even in moderate degree.