The Feast of the Transfiguration

The Transfiguration is one of the most critical, glorious, enigmatic texts in the Gospel story, not to mention one of the most neglected. I sat in an Episcopal church yesterday morning, and no mention was made of the upcoming feast at all. (Labor Day, on the other hand, is going to be a big to-do.) The Catholics didn't even decide to uniformly celebrate it until the fifteenth century. Only the Orthodox seem to have afforded the story and its commemoration the appropriate place of importance in their corporate life.

Perhaps it's not as sexy as the various smaller, less central passages about sexual ethics or gender economics. It's certainly not as gory as the Passion. But, in spite of its gross inability to satisfy our western lust for sex and violence, the Transfiguration represents a crucial moment in the Christian narrative when God manifests Himself to the world, glorifies His Son, and declares our hope and our promise in Christ. Jesus is revealed for who he truly is, and we glimpse what we will be through conforming ourselves to his likeness.

So, to commemorate the Transfiguration--in addition to eating grapes--consider the following quotes from two great theological masters for whom the Transfiguration was central.

Maximus the Confessor, First Century on Theology, 13-14:

If a man seeks spiritual knowledge, let him plant the foundation of his soul immovably before the Lord, in accordance with God's words to Moses: "Stand here by me." But it should be realized that there are differences among those who stand before the Lord, as is clear from the text, "There are some standing here who will not taste death till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power"...To those who follow him as he climbs the high mountain of his transfiguration he appears in the form of God, the form in which he existed before the world came to be...

When the Logos of God becomes manifest and radiant in us, and his face shines like the sun, then his clothes will also look white. That is to say, the words of the Gospels will then be clear and distinct, with nothing concealed. And Moses and Elijah--the more spiritual principles of the Law and the prophets--will also be present with him.

Gregory Palamas, Triads, I.3.5:

So, when the saints contemplate this divine light within themselves, seeing it by the divinizing communion of the Spirit, through the mysterious visitation of perfecting illuminations--then they behold the garment of their deification, their mind being glorified and filled by the grace of the Word, beautiful beyond measure in his splendor; just as the divinity of the Word on the mountain glorified with divine light the body conjoined to it. For "the glory which the Father gave him," he himself has given to those obedient to him, as the Gospels says, and "He willed that they should be with him and contemplate His glory."

..It is necessarily carried out in a spiritual fashion, for the mind becomes supercelestial, and as it were the companion of him who passed beyond the heavens for our sake, since it is manifestly yet mysteriously united to God, and contemplates supernatural and ineffable visions being filled with all the immaterial knowledge of a higher light. Then it is no longer the sacred symbols accessible to the senses that it contemplates, nor yet the variety of Sacred Scripture that it knows; it is made beautiful by the creative and primordial Beauty, and illumined by the radiance of God.

A Century of Love in a Day, Pt. 3

3-4. When we misuse the soul’s powers their evil aspects dominate us. For instance, misuse of our power of intelligence results in ignorance and stupidity; misuse of our incensive power and of our desire produces hatred and licentiousness. The proper use of these powers produces spiritual knowledge, moral judgment, love and self-restraint. This being so, nothing created and given existence by God is evil.
It is not food that is evil but gluttony, not the begetting of children but unchastity, not material things but avarice, not esteem but self-esteem. This being so, it is only the misuse of things that is evil, and such misuse occurs when the intellect fails to cultivate its natural powers.

8. …A man dominated by self-love is dominated by all the passions.

10. If a man loves someone, he naturally makes every effort to be of service to that person. If, then, a man loves God, he naturally strives to conform to His will. But if he loves the flesh, he panders to the flesh.

14-15. Do not compare yourself with weaker men but rather apply yourself to fulfilling the commandment of love. For by comparing yourself with the weak you will fall into the pit of conceit, but by applying yourself to the commandment of love you will reach the height of humility.
If you totally fulfill the command to love your neighbor, you will feel no bitterness or resentment against him whatever he does. If this is not the case, then the reason why you fight against your brother is clearly because you seek after transitory things and prefer them to the commandment of love.

17-18. There are three things which produce love of material wealth: self-indulgence, self-esteem, and lack of faith…the self-indulgent person loves wealthy because it enables him to live comfortably; the person full of self-esteem loves it because through it he can gain the esteem of others; the person who lacks faith loves it because fearful of starvation, old age, disease, or exile, he can save it and hoard it. He puts his trust in wealth rather than in God, the Creator who provides for all creation, down to the least of living things.

21-2. God knows himself and He knows the things He has created. The angelic powers, too, know God and know the things He has created. But they do not know God and the things He has created in the same way that God knows Himself and the things He has created. God knows himself through know His blessed essence. And the things created by Him He knows through knowing His wisdom, by means of which and in which He made all things. But the angelic powers know God by participation, though God Himself transcends such participation; and the things He has created they know by apprehending that which may be spiritually contemplated in them.

45. The virtues exist for the sake of the knowledge of creatures; knowledge of the sake of the knower; the knower, for the sake of Him who is known though unknowing and who is beyond all knowledge.

54. …The Son teaches us, “Do not judge so that you may not be judged;” “Do not condemn, so that you may not be condemned.” St. Paul likewise says, “Judge nothing before the time, until the Lord comes;” and “By judging another you condemn yourself.” But men have given up weeping for their own sins and have taken judgment away from the Son. They themselves judge and condemn one another as if they were sinless. Heaven was amazed at this and earth shuddered, but men in their obduracy are not ashamed.

55. He who busies himself with the sins of others, or judges his brother on suspicion, has not yet begun to repent or to examine himself so as to discover his own sins, which are truly heavier than a great lump of lead…That is why, like a fool who walks in darkness, he no longer attends to his own sins but lets his imagination dwell on the sins of others, whether these sins are real or merely the products of his own suspicious mind.

58. Just as parents have a special affection for the children who are the fruits of their own bodies, so the intellect naturally clings to its own thoughts. And just as to passionately fond parents their own children seem the most capable and most beautiful of all – though they may be quite the most ridiculous in every way – so to a foolish intellect its own thoughts appear the most intelligent of all, though they be utterly degraded. The wise man does not regard his own thoughts in this way. It is precisely when he feels convinced that they are true and good that he most distrusts his own judgment. He makes other wise men the judges of his thoughts and arguments --- lest he should run, or may have run, in vain – and from them receives assurance.

79. A true friend is one who in times of trial calmly and imperturbably suffers with his neighbor the ensuing affliction, privations, and disasters as if they were his own.

82. The person who truly wishes to be healed is he who does not refuse treatment.

98. A soul is perfect if its passible aspect is totally oriented towards God.

99. A perfect intellect is one which by true faith and in a manner beyond all unknowing supremely knows the supremely Unknowable…

Appendix to the Apology: More Quotes on Passion and Impassibility

My presentation of the patristic evidence in my Apologia Apatheia was at best haphazard. More unfortunately, it was incomplete. So, without attempting any kind of deliberate systematization, I would like to offer an additional list of relevant patristic quotations which will hopefully further illustrate my point that impassiblity is primarily a question of the sinlessness of God in the Fathers, not a lack of emotions. I intend to continue to update this post as I, inevitably, find more quotes which support my thesis about the truly classical definition of impassibility.

Maximos the Confessor, Four Centuries on Love, 2.16

Passion is a movement of the soul contrary to nature either toward irrational love or senseless hate of something or on account of something material. For example, toward irrational love of food, or a woman, or wealth, or passing glory or any other material thing or on their account. Or else it can be toward a senseless hate of any of the preceding things we spoke of, or on account of any one.

Gregory Palamas, Triads, II.2.7

To become “insensible” is in effect to do away with prayer; the Fathers call this “petrification.” (This importance of this post is highlighted in a note by the translator which discusses the word for “insensible”: “analgesia – lit. incapability of feeling pain, i.e., spiritual blindness or obtuseness: not to be confused with impassibility, control of the disordered passions, or purity of heart.”)

Triads, II.2.19-20

Impassibility does not consist in mortifying the passionate part of the soul, but in removing it from evil to good, and directing its energies towards divine things…and the impassible man is the one who no longer possesses any evil dispositions, but is rich in good ones, who is marked by virtues, as men of passion are marked by evil pleasures; who has tamed his irascible and concupiscent appetites (which constitute the passionate part of the soul), to the faculties of knowledge, judgment and reason in the soul, just as men of passion subject their reason to the passions. For it is the misuse of the powers of the soul which engenders the terrible passions, just as misuse of knowledge of created things engenders the “wisdom which becomes folly.”

…the prize goes to him who has put that part of his soul under subjection, so that by its obedience to the mind, which is by nature appointed to rule, it may ever tend towards God, as is right, by the uninterrupted remembrance of Him..Such is the way which leads through impassibility to perfect love, an excellent way which takes us to the heights.

The Declaration of the Holy Mountain

If anyone does not acknowledge that spiritual dispositions are stamped upon the body as a consequence of the gifts of the Spirit that exist in the soul of those advancing on the spiritual path; and if he does not regard dispassion as a state of aspiration for higher things that leads a person to free himself from evil habits by completely spurning what is evil and to acquire good habits by espousing what is good, but considers it to be a deathlike condition of the soul’s passible aspect, then, by adhering to such views, he inevitably denies that we can enjoy an embodied life in the world of incorruption that is to come.

For if in the age to come the body is to share with the soul in ineffable blessings, then it is evident that in this world as well it will also share according to its capacity in the grace mystically and ineffably bestowed by God upon the purified intellect, and it will experience the divine in conformity with its nature. For once the soul’s passible aspect is transformed and sanctified – but not reduced to a deathlike condition – through it the dispositions and activities of the body are also sanctified, since body and soul share a conjoint existence. As St. Diadochos states, in the case of those who have abandoned the delights of this age in the hope of enjoying the blessings of eternity, the intellect, because of its freedom from worldly cares, is able to act with its full vigor and become capable of perceiving the ineffable goodness of God. Then according to the measure of its own progress it communicates joy to the body too, and this joy which then fills both soul and body is a true recalling of incorruptible life.

Peter of Damascus, A Treasury of Divine Knowledge, I

[The hesychast] loves the supernatural God with all his soul and imitates His dispassion with all his strength.

A Treasury of Divine Knowledge, XIV

Dispassion is a strange and paradoxical thing: once someone has consolidated his victory over the passions, it is able to make him an imitator of God, so far as this is possible for man. For though the person who has attained the state of dispassion continues to suffer attacks from demons and vicious men, he experiences this as if it were happening to someone else, as was the case with the holy apostles and martyrs. When he is praised he is not filled with self-elation, nor when he is insulted is he afflicted. For he considers that what is pleasant come to him by the grace of God and as an act of divine concession of which he is unworthy, while what is unpleasant comes as a trial: the former is given us by grace to encourage us in this world, while the latter is given us to increase our humility and our hope in the world to be. Such a person is impassible, and yet because of his power of discrimination is acutely aware of what gives pain.

Dispassion is a not a single virtue, but is a name for all the virtues. A man is not merely one limb; for it is the many limbs of the body that constitute a man; and not merely the limbs, but the limbs together with the soul. Similarly, dispassion is the union of many virtues, while the place of the soul is taken by the Holy Spirit. For all activities described as ‘spiritual’ are soul-less without the Holy Spirit, and it is given by virtue of the presence of the Holy Spirit that a ‘spiritual father’ is given this title. Yet if the soul does not reject the passions, the Holy Spirit will not come to it; nor, on the other hand, unless the Holy Spirit is present can one properly speak of the all-embracing virtue of dispassion. And if someone were to become dispassionate without the Holy Spirit, he would really be, not dispassionate, but in a state of insensitivity…The one who attained dispassion becomes impassible out of his perfect love for God.

Diadochos of Photiki, On Spiritual Knowledge and Discrimination, 98

Dispassion is not freedom from attack by the demons, for to be free from such attack we must, as the Apostle says, “go out of the world;” but it is to remain undefeated when they do attack…we can break through the black ranks of the demons if, because of our good works, we are protected by the armor of divine light and the helmet of salvation.

Pseudo-Anthony, On the Character of Men, 89

Evil is a passion adherent to matter, but God is not the cause of evil. He has given men knowledge and understanding, the power of discriminating between good and evil, and free will. It is man’s negligence and indolence that give birth to evil passions, while God is in no way the cause.

Some Miscellaneous Wisdom

Some thought-provoking quotations from three Church Fathers:

Gregory Palamas

Do you not understand that the men who are united to God and deified, who fix their eyes in a divine manner on Him, do not see as we do? Miraculously, they see with a sense that exceeds the senses and with a mind that exceeds mind, for the power of the spirit penetrates their human faculties, and allows them to see things which are beyond us.

It should be remembered that no evil thing is evil insofar as it exists, but insofar as it is turned aside from the activity appropriate to it, and thus from the end assigned to this activity.

God is not only beyond knowledge but also beyond unknowing.

No one has ever seen the fullness of this divine Beauty, and this is why no eye has seen it, even if it gaze forever: in fact, it does not see the totality such as it is, but only a measure in which it is rendered receptive to the power of the Holy Spirit. But in addition to this incomprehensibility, what is most divine and extraordinary is that the very comprehension a man may have, he possesses incomprehensibly.

Not only are man’s knowledge of God and his understanding of himself and his proper rank (which knowledge now belongs to those who are Christians, even those considered uneducated laymen) a more lofty knowledge than natural science and astronomy and any philosophy in these subjects, but also our mind’s knowledge of its own weakness and the search for its healing would be incomparably superior by far to the investigation and knowledge of the magnitude of the stars and the reasons for natural phenomena, the origins of things below and the circuits of things above, their changes and risings, their fixed positions and retrograde motions, their disjunctions and conjunctions, and, in general, the entire multiform relation that results from their considerable motion in that region. For the mind that realizes its own weakness has discovered whence it might enter upon salvation and draw near to the light of knowledge and receive true wisdom which does not pass away with this age.

Maximos the Confessor

The wise man who gives or receives instruction wishes to give or to receive it only in useful matters. However, when the man who appears wise seeks information or is questioned, he advances only more contrived things.

Those who are still timid in the war against the passions and who fear the inroads of invisible enemies should be quiet, that is, not engage in warlike behavior above their strength, but by prayer abandon the care of themselves to God’s concern.

Who knows how God is made flesh and yet remains God? This only faith understands, adoring the Logos in silence.

The one who has joined the body to the soul through virtue and knowledge has become a lyre and a flute and a temple. A lyre, firstly, because he beautifully maintains the harmony of the virtues; next, a flute because through the divine experiences he receives the Spirit’s inspiration; finally a temple because through the purity of his mind he has become the Word’s dwelling place.

John Chrysostom

A drop of grace filled all things with knowledge; through it wonders took place, sins were loosed.

Apologia Apatheia

My thoughts here are largely in response to this post, though I hope that they have value on their own as well.

It has been suggested that the classical doctrine of impassibility is an assertion of the emotionlessness of God. I reject this, both as a depiction of the history of dogma and as a theological assertion. While it may be said that the post-scholastic, Western conception of impassibility necessitates a God without emotion, the historical doctrine of impassibility, even the basis of that Western doctrine, is not directly related to the ability of God to feel.

The doctrine of God's impassibility (formulated, as was almost all early doctrine, in Greek) regarded His apatheia (impassibility or dispassion), that is His lack of pathos (passion). As with most theological discussion, the language here took on a specialized meaning so that passion cannot simply be equated with emotion (which was never the meaning of "pathos" to begin with). Therefore, to truly understood what is meant in an authentically classical definition of impassibility, one must first determine the classical defition of that which impassibilty says God is without: pathos.

Kallistos Ware, in his introduction to John of Sinai's Ladder of Divine Ascent, writes that passions are "regarded as the contranatural expression of fallen sinfulness." Pathos represents the human perversion their emotions, their natural impulses. Pathos are the sinful impulses of a fallen creation. If a direct relationship to emotion is necessary, then passion can be said to be our subjugation to our corrupted emotions rather than our domination and purification of them. Anger, for example, is pathos not because it is an emotion but because it has been perverted to ungodly ends. Desire is a pathos not because it is an emotion but because it has been coopted by humanity for the purpose of indulgence. Pathos is by its very definition sin.

Impassibility then becomes an ethical imperative, rooted in the nature of God, which is intended for humans. God governs His pure emotion rather than being governed by them, so humanity must transfigure and govern their emotions. The impassibility of God is a goal for man to achieve; in Ware's words "...it is a reaffirmation of the pure and natural impulses of our soul and body. It 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."

Clearly passion refers to something other than the emotive aspect of the human soul, as the fathers vigorously affirm the God given virtue of emotionality:

"Hatred against the demons contributes greatly to our salvation and helps our growth in holiness." Evagrius Ponticus, "On Discrimination," 9.

Evagrius also writes that one should experience, while fasting, the emotions of joy "at the blessings that await the righteous" and fear of resurrection and "that fearful and awesome judgment-seat," because "in this way you will have the means for helping others and for mortifying the passions of your body" ("On Asceticism and Stillness")

"We should be afraid of God in the way we fear wild beasts. I have seen men go out to plunder, having no fear of God but being brought up short somewhere at the sound of dogs, an effect that fear of God could not achieve in them." John Climacus, "Ladder of Divine Ascent"

The dichotomy between emotion and passion is evident in Diadochos' contrast of real joy (an emotion) and counterfeit joy (a diabolical passion): "When we experience things in this manner, we can be sure that it is the energy of the Holy Spirit within us. For when the soul is completely permeated with that ineffable sweetness, at that moment it can think of nothing else, since it rejoices with uninterrupted joy. But if at that moment the intellect conceives any doubt or unclean thought, and if this continues in spite of the fact that the intellect calls on the holy name...then it should realize that the sweetness it experiences is an illusion of grace, coming from the deceiver with a counterfeit joy. Through this joy, amorphous and disordered, the devil tries to lead the soul into an adulterous union with himself."

Passion then is not simply equated to emotion but is the corruption of and domination by emotion. This, at least, is the testimony of the Church Fathers.

(This, I might add, is a view of passion and impassibility consistent with the Bible, if not the exclusive biblical view. While apatheia is never used in the New Testament, the three instances of pathos and its forms are all negative leading one to conclude that the absence of passion is a virtue. The three occurrences of pathos, moreover, never tie pathos to emotion strictly but always in some sense to control by passion as opposed to self-control: 1 Thess 4:3-5: "It is God's will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; that each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the heathen, who do not know God;" Rom 1:26: "For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions;" Col 3:5: "Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil lust, and greed, which amounts to idolatry." Notably God is never described as being "passible" since pathos is a sinful state.)

Therefore, in its original formulation, impassibility is not a feature of the divine distinct from humanity. Instead, it is the shared possession of God and His creature in its natural state. Impassibility is a mandate for humanity in an attempt to once again recapture our created purity, our image of God. "Blessed dispassion raises the poor mind from earth to heaven, raises the beggar from the dunghill of passion." (John Climacus) It requires that people not be subject to their pathos (sinful impulses) but that purified emotion should be subject to them in order that they may be subject to a dispassionate God. Quotes from a few fathers should suffice to demonstrate that this is the case.

"When the intellect rescues the soul's senses from the desires of the flesh and imbues them with dispassion [apatheia], the passions shamelessly attack the soul, trying to hold its senses fast in sin; but if the intellect then continually calls upon God in secret, He, seeing all this, will send His help and destroy all the passions at once." Isaiah the Solitary, "On Guarding the Intellect," 14.

John of Carpathia parallels sin and passion: "Once certain brethren, who were always ill and could not practice fasting, said to me: 'How is it possible for us without fasting to rid ourselves of the devil and the passions?' To such people we would say: you can destroy and banish what is evil, and the demons that suggest this evil to you, not only by abstaining from food, but by calling with all your heart on God." ("Texts for the Monks of India," 68)

More telling still is the exposition of impassibility/dispassion (both apatheia) by Ilias the Presbyter in his "Gnomic Anthology," I.71-74, where he intimately connects passion to sin and impassibility to sinlessness: "Pasionateness is the evil matter of the body...the self-indulgent man is close to the impassioned man; and the man of impassioned craving to the self-indulgent man. Far from all three is the dispassionate man. The impassioned man is strongly prone to sin in thought, even though for a time he does not sin outwardly...the man of impassioned craving is given over freely or, rather, servilely, to the various modes of sinning. The dispassionate man is not dominated by any of these degrees of passion...Dispassion is established through remembrance of God."

Gregory Palamas notes that the goal of ascetic practice is the attainment of impassibility, that is to no longer be "dominated by passionate emotions:" "In every case, those who practice true mental prayer must liberate themselves from the passions, and reject any contact with objects which obstruct it, for in this way they are able to acquire undisrupted and pure prayer...for the body's capacity to sin must be mortified" ("The Hesychast Method of Prayer," II.ii.6).

In addition to an ethical goal for humanity restored to its pure created state, there is another function of the impassibility of God in the Fathers. The insistence on impassibility is a tacit affirmation of the incomprehensibility of God, part of a theology of negation which says that God is no confined to our categories of emotionality. Therefore, the kataphatic assertion that God loves/hates/rejoices/burns with anger is both accepted and countered with the apophatic assertion that God is impassible, and this in turn should be accepted and then met with the even more apophatic assertion that God is beyond impassibility. Nikitas Stithatos expresses the paradox in "On Spiritual Knoweldge, Love, and the Perfection of Living," 1: "God is dispassionate Intellect, beyond every intellect and beyond every form of dispassion." [And as a way of cheating to further prove my previous point about the ethical implications of this, he immediately continues:] "If on account of your purity these qualities have been bestowed on you and are richly present in you, then that within you which accords with the image of God has been safely preserved and you are now a son of God guided by the Holy Spirit; for all who are guided by the Spirit of God are sons of God."

Thus, when Anselm formulates what becomes the "classical" doctrine of impassibility for the West, he is not truly reiterating what has always been held by the church universal. Instead, he is expressing and justifying what he believes has been taught in proto-scholastic terms that will take hold in the West. His sentiment is rooted neither in the sinlessness nor the incomprehensibility of God expressed by the fathers who preceded him:

But how are You at once both merciful and impassible? For if You are impassible You do not have any compassion*; and if You have no compassion Your heart is not sorrowful from compassion with the sorrowful, which is what being merciful is. But if you are not merciful whence comes so much consolation for the sorrowful?

How then are you merciful and not merciful, O Lord, unless it be that You are merciful in relation to us and not in relation to Yourself? In fact, You are [merciful] according to our way of looking at things and not according to Your way. For when You look upon us in our misery it is we who feel the effect of Your mercy, but You do not experience the feeling. Therefore You are both merciful because you save the sorrowful and pardon sinners against You; and You are not merciful because You do not experience any feeling of compassion for misery. (Proslogion, 8)

In fact, just the opposite, this view of God's impassibility is motivated by our ability categorize God, the opposite intention of the original proponents of impassibility. Rejecting these scholastic trends that were creeping into Eastern theology, Gregory Palamas writes:

By examining the nature of sensible things, these people have arrived at a certain concept of God, but not at a conception truly worthy of Him and appropriate to His blessed nature...wrapped up in this mindless and foolish wisdom and unenlightened education, they have calumniated both God and nature. (Triads, I.1.18)

A good formal theology will always be fundamentally apophatic, and thus affirms that God transcends all human categorization including form and emotion, but the motivation is something quite different than a scholastic understanding of impassibility. The beautiful paradox of God is that we can at one time affirm that He transcends all emotional categorization and at the same time truly declare that we experience His love: not feigned love or effects which are analogous to the effects of love but love that is true and pure, the perfect expression of how He created His creatures to experience love. When true impassibility is applied to God it is first and foremost a defense of God's sinlessness, since pathos is a patristic term which refers to our contranatural impulses (which all ought to agree are absent in God). From there, impassibilty may be employed as an apophatic category which rejects the finitude of God, even from being restricted truly into the category of impassibility. What impassibility can never be is an assertion that we have an unfeeling God, indifferent to the plight of His creation and incapable of interacting with it in any genuinely personal way. Neither Scripture nor the Fathers who formulated the doctrine of impassibility necessitate this, and all good sense seems to prevail against it. Most importantly, the testimony of the Incarnation positively precludes it, or else the sorrow of Jesus in the garden and the anger in the temple are instances of the divine succombing to the human rather than the human conforming to the divine, something which is particularly untenable.

See also: Appendix to the Apology

*As almost a curiosity, it is worth noting that Anselm's problem here is undoubtedly partly linguistic. In Latin compassion and passion clearly have the same root, the Latin pati for "to suffer." A Greek would never have seen dispassion as opposed to compassion, since in Greek pathos forms no part of the etymology of either mercy (eleos) or compassion (oiktirmos).

A Century of Love in a Day, Pt. 2

7. Whatever a man loves he inevitably clings to, and I order not to lose it he rejects everything that keeps him from it. So he who loves God cultivates pure prayer, driving out every passion that keeps him from it.

10. …prefect love presupposes that you love all men equally.

29. …the Divinity is divided but without division and is united but with distinctions. Because of this both the division and the union are paradoxical…

36. In everything that we do God searches out our purpose to see whether we do it for Him or for some other motive.

42. When a trial comes upon you unexpectedly, do not blame the person through whom it came but try to discover the reason why it came, and then you will find a way of dealing with it. For whether through this person or through someone else you had in any case to drink the wormwood of God’s judgment.

43. As long as you have bad habits do not reject hardship, so that through it you may be humbled and eject your pride.

49. …To be spontaneously disposed to do good to those who hate you belongs to perfect spiritual love alone.

54. A monk is a man who has freed his intellect from attachment to material things and by means of self-control, love, psalmody, and prayer cleaves to God.

63. Let no one deceive you…with the notion that you can be saved wile a slave to sensual pleasure and self-esteem.

66. No sinner can escape future judgment without experiencing in this life either voluntary hardships or afflictions he has not chosen.

68. Just as the intellect of a hungry man imagines bread and that of a thirsty man water, so the intellect of a glutton imagines a profusion of foods, that of a sensualist the forms of women, that of a vain man worldly honour, that of an avaricious man financial gain, that of a rancorous man revenge on whoever has offended him, that of an envious man how to harm the object of his envy, and so on with all the other passions. For an intellect agitated by passions is beset by impassioned conceptual images whether the body is awake or asleep.

75. Some of the things given to us by God for our use are in the soul, others are in the body and others related to the body. In the soul are its powers; in the body are the sense organs and other members; relating to the body are food, money, possessions and so on. Our good or bad use of these things given us by God, or of what is contingent upon them, reveals whether we are virtuous or evil.

83. In its natural state, the human intelligence is subject to the divine intelligence and itself rules over the non-intelligent element in us. Let this order be maintained in all things, and there will be no evil among creatures nor anything which draws us towards evil.

A Century of Love in a Day

The following are from Maximus the Confessor's Four Hundred Texts on Love. The work is organized into four "centuries," that is collections of one hundred related texts, which correspond in some sense (even if only in their fourfold nature) to the four Gospels. These selections are from the first century on love. The numbers to the left of each quote are "verse" citations. I have only included about a fourth of the texts from the century. Though I would have liked to include more, I'm already afraid that I'm dancing on the edge of copyright infringement.*

1. Love is a holy state of the soul, disposing it to value knowledge of God above all created things. We cannot attain lasting possession of such love while we are still attached to anything worldly.

2. Dispassion engenders love, hope in God engenders dispassion, and patience and forbearance engender hope in God; these in turn are the product of complete self-control, which itself springs from fear of God. Fear of God is the result of faith in God.

4. The person who loves God values knowledge of God more than anything created by God, and pursues such knowledge ardently and ceaselessly.

11. All the virtues co-operate with the intellect to produce this intense longing for God, pure prayer above all. For by soaring towards God through this prayer the intellect rises above the realm of created beings.

12. When the intellect is ravished through love by divine knowledge and stands outside the realm of created beings, it becomes aware of God’s infinity. It is then, according to Isaiah, that a sense of amazement makes it conscious of its own lowliness and in sincerity it repeats the words of the prophet: “How abject I am, for I am pierced to the heart; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell among a people of unclean lips; and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts” (Isa 6:5)

13. The person who loves God cannot help loving every man as himself…

17. Blessed is he who can love all men equally.

19. Blessed is the intellect that transcends all sensible objects and ceaselessly delights in divine beauty.

22. He who forsakes all worldly desires sets himself above all worldly distress.

24. He who gives alms in imitation of God does not discriminate between the wicked and the virtuous, the just and the unjust, when providing for men’s bodily needs. He gives equally to all according to their need…

31. Just as the thought of fire does not warm the body, so faith without love does not actualize the light of spiritual knowledge in the soul.

41. He who loves God neither distresses nor is distressed with anyone on account of transitory things…

43. If a man desires something, he makes every effort to attain it. But of all things which are good and desirable the divine is incomparably best and the most desirable. How assiduous, then, we should be in order to attain what is of its very nature good and desirable.

50. When the intellect associates with evil and sordid thoughts it loses its intimate communion with God.

60. Silence the man who utters slander in your hear. Otherwise you sin twice over: first, you accustom yourself to this deadly passion and, second you fail to prevent him from gossiping against his neighbor.

63. We carry about with us impassioned images of the things we have experienced. If we can overcome these images we shall be indifferent to the things which they represent. For fighting against the thoughts of things is much harder than fighting against the things themselves, just as to sin in the mind is easier than to sin through outward action.

69. …If you are offended by anything, whether intended or unintended, you do not know the way of peace, which through love brings the lovers of divine knowledge to the knowledge of God.

70-71. You have not yet acquired perfect love if your regard for people is still swayed by their characters – for example, if, for some particular reason, you love one person and hate another, or if for the same reason you sometimes love and sometimes hate the same person. Perfect love does not split up the single human nature, common to all, according to the diverse characteristics of individuals; but, fixing attention always on this single nature, it loves all men equally. It loves the good as friends and the bad as enemies, helping them, exercising forbearance, patiently accepting whatever they do, not taking the evil into account at all but even suffering on their behalf if the opportunity offers, so that, if possible, they too become friends. If it cannot achieve this, it does not change its own attitude; it continues to show the fruits of love to all men alike. It was on account of this that our Lord and God Jesus Christ, showing His love for us, suffered for the whole of mankind and gave to all men an equal hope of resurrection…

72. If you are not indifferent to both fame and dishonour, riches and poverty, pleasures and distress, you have not yet acquired perfect love. For perfect love is indifferent not only to these but even to this fleeting life and to death.

90. Just as the physical eye is attracted to the beauty of things visible, so the purified intellect is attracted to the knowledge of things invisible…

95. When the sun rises and casts its light on the world, it reveals both itself and the things it illumines…

[And your apophatic moment for the day:]

100. When the intellect is established in God, it at first ardently longs to discover the principles of His essence. But God’s inmost nature does not admit such investigation, which is indeed beyond the capacity of everything created…and the very fact of knowing nothing is knowledge surpassing the intellect.

As a concluding not, I would like to point out the rich irony which is played out in this text. Maximus begins (and I have in mind here 4 in particular, but also 1) by saying that the pursuit of the knowledge of God is the most holy and righteous aim of man. Yet, he concludes with the familiar and definitive statement that knowledge of God must ultimately conclude that man exists in almost total ignorance of God. In view of my recent musings on paradox as the foundation of Christian belief, it seems particularly fitting to me that Maximus (and I with him) should affirm that the greatest task of the Christian is the quest to know a God that we affirm is unknowable.

*Consequently, let me cite my source here to somewhat alleviate my conscience. Maximus the Confessor. "Four Hundred Texts on Love." In The Philokalia. Translated and edited by G. E. H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, and Kallistos Ware. New York: Faber and Faber, 1981.