For instance consider the Gospel passage which states "But as many as received {the true Light}, to them gave he power to become the sons of God..." (Jn 1:12):
Compare with substance.
For continence is not merely a matter of sexual abstinence, but applies also to the other things for which the soul has an evil desire because it is not satisfied with the necessities of life. There is also a continence of the tongue, of money, of use, and of desire. It does not only teach us to exercise self-control; it is rather that self-control is granted to us, since it is a divine power and grace.Compare with lust.
(Stromateis III, 1, 4; translated by Oultone and Chadwick in "Alexandrian Christianity")
... if once uses the name 'Christ' one does not mean the pure Word or an ordinary man like one of us, but, as I said, the incarnate Word of God the Father anointed for his mission. There was not, as some assert, a deified man united with the Word, but the Word himself took flesh, being made man, and remained, even in this state, God.Walter J. Burghardt provides further information on Cyril's view of Christ's anointing and mission:
(Select Letters, p. 163, quoting "Answers to Tiberius" 9)
As God, Christ is holy by nature; as man He is holy by participation; He receives the Spirit in His human nature, even though it is He Himself who effects the sanctification of His human nature by His own Spirit. It is His own Spirit He receives; He receives the Spirit as man; He gives the Spirit to Himself as God. Moreover, it is not for Himself that Christ receives the Spirit, but for us, to communicate Him to each of us.St. Gregory the Theologian (329-390 AD) indicates that Christ is "the pure Seal of the Father and His most unerring Impress." Or as Christ Himself puts it, "He who has seen Me has seen the Father" (Jn. 14:9).
(The Image of God in Man according to Cyril of Alexandria, p. 75, footnote 31)
For related information, refer to hypostatic union, to self-emptying, and finally to St. Gregory of Nazianzus' metaphor which likens Christ to a burning candle.
... coincidence does not really describe God. Rather it sets forth the way
God works, the order of things in relation to God and to each other, and the
manner by which humans may approach and abide in God. God is beyond the realm
of contradictories. God ... preceded opposites, is undifferentiated, not
other, incomparable, and without opposite, precedes distinctions, opposition,
contrariety, and contradiction.
(Definition by H. Lawrence Bond in Nicholas
of Cusa: Selected Spiritual Writings, p. 366)
When the individual goes for some length of time without worldly consolations (because of his self-denial) and without spiritual consolations (because these are truly "gifts" from God and He sends them when He wills), the individual is said to experience "aridity." At first individuals tend to chafe, grumble, and complain when God withdraws these consolations. However as the individual's love for God becomes more pure and less tainted with self-interest, these consolations become less important. Over time the individual gradually learns to joyfully abandon himself to whatever God wills for him because he trusts in God's goodness. This eventually leads to a state where God communicates Himself directly to the inner most center of the soul, without this experience being mediated through any physical or spiritual sensations. Yet the soul knows that God is present with greater conviction than it has ever known anything else.
He, indeed, assumed humanity that we might become God.At this site similar statements are made by St. Gregory of Nazianzus.
(On the Incarnation, Chapter 8, paragraph 54)
In his translation of St. Cyril of Alexandria's Commentary of the Gospel of St. Luke, Georges Florovsky explains that through deification the total person is assimilated to the divine life and union with God. Such assimilation is believed to have become possible when Christ took on human flesh, thereby sanctifying it. For the Eastern Orthodox Church, Christ's incarnation is seen as closing the the gulf between spirit and matter.
Biblical passages which are regarded as supporting the doctrine of deification include: 2 Cor. 3:18; 2 Pet. 1:3-4; Phili. 3:20-21; Gal. 3:27; Eph. 4:24; John 3:5-6; Acts 17:28-29; 1 John 2:29; 1 John 4:15.
By dispassion I mean a heaven of the mind within the heart... Its effect is to sanctify the mind and to detach it from material things, and it does so in such a way that, after entering this heavenly harbor, a man, for most of his earthly life, is enraptured, like someone already in heaven, and he is lifted up to the contemplation of God.Bishop Kallistos Ware adds in the introduction to The Ladder:
(The Ladder of Divine Ascent, p. 282)
{Dispassion} connotes not repression but reorientation, not inhibition but freedom; having overcome the passions, we are free to be our true selves, free to love others, free to love God. Dispassion, then, is no mere mortification of the passions but their replacement by a new and better energy.And finally Norman Russell adds in his notes to The Ladder:
(The Ladder of Divine Ascent, p. 32)
For St. John Climacus dispassion is the denial of the passions, not merely in a negative way by ascetic discipline, but by redirecting the natural impulses of the soul and body toward their proper goal.
(The Ladder of Divine Ascent, p. 75, footnote 3)
Note that oikonomia in Greek means "accommodation", and hence these activities within time and space are ways in which the Lord has accommodated Himself to our human condition.
Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Hearken diligently to me and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in fatness. Incline your ear, and come to me; hear, that your soul may live.
(Is. 55:2-3)Jesus said to them, "... I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst."
(Jn. 6:35)
The fruits of the inner man begin only with the shedding of tears. When you reach the place of tears, then know that your spirit has come out from the prison of this world and has set its foot upon the path that leads towards the new age. Your spirit begins at this moment to breathe the wonderful air which is there, and it starts to shed tears. The moment for the birth of the spiritual child is now at hand, and the travail of childbirth becomes intense. Grace, the common mother of us all, makes haste to give birth mystically to the soul, God's image, bringing it forth into the light of the age to come. And when the time for the birth has arrived, the intellect begins to sense something of the things of that other world -- as a faint perfume, or as the breath of life which a newborn child receives into its bodily frame. But we are not accustomed to such an experience and, finding it hard to endure, our body is suddenly overcome by a weeping mingled with joy.Somewhere between normal and supranormal tears are the tears shed in mourning over one's sins. Like normal tears, these tears bring healing. However with reconciliation, tears of sorrow begin to mingle with tears of joy and take on a supranormal quality.
(Kallisto Ware adapting a passage from "Mystic Treatises by Isaac of Nineveh" ET A.J. Wensinck, p. 85, quoted by Ware on pp. 26-27 of The Ladder of Divine Ascent)
If the Word who was begotten mysteriously of God the Father and who afterwards issued as man from woman by assumption of flesh (not lifeless flesh but flesh endowed with life and reason) is truly and actually one Son, he cannot be divided into two persons or sons but remains one, though not disincarnate or incoprporeal but possessing his very own body in inseparable union. To say this could not possibly mean or entail mingling, merger or anything of that kind {i.e. the assumption of human nature cannot be conceived as changing the divine nature in any way, since the divine nature is simple, and immutable}, how could it? If we call the Only-begotten Son of God become incarnate and made man "one", that does not means that he has been "mingled"...; the Word's {divine} nature has not transferred to the nature of the flesh or that of the flesh to that of the Word -- no, while each element was seen to persist in its particular natural character for the reason just given, mysteriously and inexpressibly unified he displayed to us one nature (but I said, incarnate nature) of the Son {i.e. the actions of Christ are the product of one person, experiencing himself as one subject, even though He is composed of two disparate natures}.As to the impact of Christ's hypostatic union on human nature, Lionel R. Wickham writes:
(Cyril of Alexandria: Select Letters, p. 89)
Did it give human nature any new constituent properties? Cyril's answer is that it did not, but that it restored the image {of God in man which man had} distorted by sin but not lost ... and made it possible for man actually to be what he was intended to be.
(Cyril of Alexandria: Select Letters, pp. 160-161, footnote 37)
Since the divine image in Christ was never sullied through sin, this led St. Gregory the Theologian to say that Christ is "the pure Seal of the Father and His most unerring Impress" (Oration 30:20). This has also led many Christians to attempt to increase their own likeness to the divine Image by imitating Christ.
Christ Himself refers to the divine image metaphorically in Luke 20: 24-25 when He was asked whether people should pay tribute to Caesar. Christ responded by requesting a coin and asking his audience whose image was on it. The crowd replied, "Caesar's". Hearing this, Christ said that you should give to Caesar those things which belong to Caesar (i.e. his coins, for they bear his image), and you should give to God what belongs to God (i.e. your very selves, for you bear God's image).
According to Wickham, some patristic authors believed that the two terms,
image and likeness (Gen.
1:26), meant the same thing, while others differentiated their meanings.
Irenaeus (adv. Haer. 5, 6, 1; 5, 16, 2) distinguishes between image and
likeness, with our likeness being lost at the fall and restored
by Christ. Clement (Strom. 2, 22) and Chrysostom similarly distinguish
image from likeness. Although Origen distinguishes the two
terms, he reserves the term likeness for the consummation of creation
at the end of time, which is when he believed our likeness to God would be
restored. However the Alexandrians, Philo (the Jewish philosopher),
Athanasius, and Cyril all believed the two terms were identical, as did the
Antiochenes, Theodore and Theodoret.
(Cyril of Alexandria: Select
Letters, p. 193, fn. 9)
Wake up, O sleeper,Quotations cited here from St. Gregory of Nazianzus would seem to suggest that the word, Illumination, was intended to have more than a metaphorical meaning.
Rise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you.
With respect to the intellectual vision of light, one of St. Teresa's first editors, Luis de León stated:
Though man in this life, if so raised by God, may lose the use of his senses and have a fleeting glimpse of the Divine Essence, as was probably the case with St. Paul and Moses and certain others, the Mother is not speaking here of this kind of vision, which, though fleeting, is intuitive and clear, but of a knowledge of this mystery which God gives to certain souls, through a most powerful light which He infuses into them, not without created species. But, as this species is not corporeal, nor figured in the imagination, the Mother says that this vision is intellectual and not imaginary.
Mourning which is according to God is ... an anguished heart that passionately seeks what it thirsts for, and when it fails to attain it, pursues it diligently and follows behind it lamenting bitterly.
(The Ladder of Divine Ascent, p. 136))
St. John Climacus (circa 579-649 A.D.) makes some interesting observations in how obedience leads to humility and death before dying.
As the name suggests, Orthodox Christians believe they have preserved the Christian faith intact as it has been handed down since the days of the apostles.
The sought-after pleasures may be patently sensual in nature, but they may also be more subtle. For instance a person who is dominated by the passion of vainglory is motivated by the pleasure that comes from being held in high esteem by other people. Hence Christ denounces ostensibly pious acts that are in fact an outgrowth of the passions (Mt. 6:5-6; Mt. 6:16-18). The Apostle Paul makes a similar point when he states that the carnal mind in itself constitutes enmity against God and that individuals who are governed by this mindset lack the capacity to please God (Rom. 8:7-8).
To be in right relationship with God, a man must imitate Christ whose motivation was not to please Himself, but to always do those things which pleased His Father (John 8:29). By seeking to please God instead of self, an individual is following Christ's injunction to deny himself, pick up his cross, and follow Him (Mark 8:34).
Note that it's not pleasure itself which is being condemned here. What's being condemned is permitting a hoped for pleasure to control one's behavior, thoughts, or even one's outlook. It's through submission to such control that one becomes a servant of sin; yet Christ promises freedom to those individuals who put his teachings into practice (John 8:31-36).
has completely died to the world so that it may live more fully in God. This is a delectable death, a snatching of the soul from all the activities which it can perform while it is in the body... The mind would like to occupy itself wholly in understanding something of what it feels, and, as it has not the strength to do this, it becomes so dumbfounded that, even if any consciousness remains to it, neither hands nor feet can move; as we commonly say of a person who has fallen into a swoon, it might be taken for dead.
(Interior Castle, p. 98).For as long as such a soul is in this state, it can neither see nor hear nor understand: the period is always short and seems to the soul even shorter than it really is. God implants Himself in the interior of that soul in such a way that when it returns to itself, it cannot possibly doubt that God has been in it and it has been in God...
(Interior Castle, p. 101).For when He means to enrapture this soul, it loses its power of breathing, with the result that, although its other senses sometimes remain active a little longer, it cannot possibly speak. At other times it loses all its powers at once, and the hands and the body grow so cold that the body seems no longer to have a soul -- sometimes it even seems doubtful if there is any breath in the body. This lasts only for a short time (I mean, only for a short period at any one time) because, when this profound suspension lifts a little, the body seems to come partly to itself again, and draws breath, though only to die once more, and, in doing so, to give fuller life to the soul. Complete ecstasy, therefore, does not last long.
(Interior Castle, pp. 154-5).
The ingrained influence of habits running counter to virtue. When this is operative over a long period, it exerts a pressure which drags the intellect down towards earthly things.
(Theoretikon, p. 40 of the Philokalia, vol. 2)
We must not think that he who descended into the limitation of manhood for our sake lost his inherent radiance and that transcendence that comes from his nature. No, he had this divine fullness even in the emptiness of our condition, and he enjoyed the highest eminence in humility, and held what belongs to him by nature (that is, to be worshipped by all) as a gift because of his humanity.St. Gregory the Theologian (329 - 390 AD) explains the purpose of Christ's self-emptying below:
(On the Unity of Christ, p. 123)
He Who gives riches becomes poor, for He assumes the poverty of my flesh, that I may assume the richness of His Godhead (Oration 38:18).The Apostle Paul describes this act of self-emptying at length in Philippians 2:5-11, where he enjoins his readers to humble themselves and adopt a mind-set similar to that of Christ.
... this spiritual prayer is more interior than the tongue, more deeply interiorized than anything on the lips, more interiorized than any words or vocal song. When someone prays this kind of prayer he has sunk deeper than all speech, and he stands where spiritual beings and angels are to be found; like them, he utters "holy" without any words...St. Ephrem the Syrian:For God is silence, and in silence is he sung by means of that psalmody which is worthy of Him. I am not speaking of the silence of the tongue, for if someone merely keeps his tongue silent, without knowing how to sing in mind and spirit, then he is simply unoccupied... he is just keeping an exterior silence and he does not know how to sing in an interior way
(quoted in "The Fountain & the Furnace: The way of tears and fire", written by Maggie Ross, published by Paulist Press, copyright 1987)
Praise... starts out as vocal praise, but the more refined and purified it becomes, the more it takes on the character of the silent praise of the angelic beings.Sebastian Brock elaborates on the above:
(The Luminous Eye, p. 79; quoting from Ephrem's "Faith" 4:1)
There is thus a twofold movement from the silence of ingratitude to vocal praises, and then on to a different sort of silence, the silence of silent praise. This movement of praise from sound to silence is seen by Ephrem as a counterpart to the movement of God from the Silence of His ineffable Being to the divine Utterance, the Word.
(The Luminous Eye, p. 79)
We {humans} are fathers of our children by way of an outflow and division, because what is born attains to a complete and absolutely distinct individuality. But this is not what we mean when we say that the Son was begotten of God the Father. He shone forth from his substance and radiated from him like light; he is not outside him but is of him and in him. Human fathers are older than their children but this is not at all the case with God. He ever co-exists with the Father and possesses unoriginate existence along with his parent so that the Father too is always being revealed, because there was no time when this was not so.The Son of God is also known as the Word of God. Once He incarnated Himself, He became known as the Christ.
(Cyril of Alexandria: Select Letters, pp. 145, 147, quoting "Answers to Tiberius" 2)
St. Gregory the Theologian (329 - 390 AD) states:
And He is called the Word, because He is related to the Father as Word to Mind; ... because of ... His declaratory function... {For} the Son is a concise demonstration and easy setting forth of the Father's Nature... And if any one should say that this Name was given Him because He exists in all things that are, he would not be wrong.The Word of God is also known as the Son of God. The incarnate Word is known as the Christ.
(Oration 30:20)