The Shaping of the Soul’s Perceptions in the Byzantine Ascetic Elias Ekdikos
J.A. McGuckin.
Elias who styled himself ‘The least Presbyter and Ekdikos’ is a wonderful person to write about, since his biography is more or less totally unknown, the list of extant scholarly articles on him runs to single figures 1, and his surviving opus is a solitary short treatise of gnomic sententiae. Like many another obscure writer, his work (which attracted the interest of later ascetics more than the author himself did) was accepted in the scholarly tradition in a confused form. The writing has at various times been attributed to no less than five different authors 2. In the most accessible forms of the printed text in modern Europe, his treatise was published under the title of Kephalaia Hetera or ‘More Chapters’ of the 7th century theologian Maximus Confessor 3. This attribution was made by Combefis, the editor of the Paris 1675 editio princeps of Maximus’ works. This late patristic master was certainly one of the influences on Elias, but the latter is from a significantly later Byzantine context, and clearly parts company from Maximus on the nature of the passions in relation to human nature. In fact he seems to be aware of some of the work of Symeon the New Theologian, which places him at the earliest in the mid 11th century 4 (possibly the 12th)5 . None of the extant manuscripts of Elias’ work date before the 12th century.
Under what is its proper and original title of Gnomic Anthology of the Zealous Philosophers 6 the work made its way into the Philokalia of St. Nicodemus the Hagiorite in the Venice edition of 1782, and was translated into English in the 3rd volume of the English Philokalia edited by Palmer, Sherrard and Ware7. It is from this latter version and its pagination and section numbers, that the work is cited in this essay. The treatise is also found under this title in volume 127 of the Migne Patrologia Graeca. The text here was taken direct from the 1782 Philokalic edition 8. Older books sometimes refer to the treatise sections by reference to the chapter divisions represented in the Combefis edition in PG. 90 which, while it may perhaps be a more scholarly ‘edition’, is not a superior text in many instances.
What else can be said of the man before we pass to an analysis of his writing? We might deduce that he was a native, or at least resident, of the imperial city, and part of the higher clergy of the capital, who served as an Ekdikos (hence his title). This was an imperially instituted office held by several priests, under the governance of a Protoekdikos, who served as a judiciary council attached to the great church of Hagia Sophia. A lead seal referring to the office survives, showing that the Ekdikoi were priests ranked high in the Byzantine clergy as Theosebastatoi 9. They considered claims for asylum lodged at the Great Church, and adjudicated problematic moral and disciplinary cases referred to them10. The editors of the English Philokalia presumed that since legal office was incompatible with clerical status (a general premise of eastern canon law) Elias must have exercised his legal position before his admission to orders, but this seems an unnecessary premise. The Ekdikos was a canon lawyer, working specifically in church related cases; and that he occupied this office precisely as a senior-ranking cleric in the Queen of Cities is the most likely scenario. Moreover, since he collated so much material from the philosophoi spoudaioi we can presume that he was a devoted follower of monastic culture, if not a monastic himself. Since we know also from the manuscript tradition of his elevated presbyteral status, it seems almost an unavoidable conclusion that he was, in all probability, a higumen of an ascetic community.
The kephalaia genre brings us to the usual question in regard to Byzantine ascetical writing – how much is original? Such materials when not simply reproduced as a florilegium from earlier authors (in Elias’ case they are not reproductions) nevertheless stand for an eclectic sharing over many decades from innumerable study groups, reading societies, catechetical discourses delivered in the course of monastic Matins, or even seminars devoted to the discussion of classical texts; things which marked the normal intellectual life of clergy and laity in Constantinople. The form of ‘anthology’ in Elias’ case is merely nominal. It bears the character of an assembly of traditional chapters, as if from past masters, but each sententia is the new-composition of Elias himself, who is evidently wishing to ‘bring up to date’ the kephalaia tradition, in ways very similar to the same tendency witnessed in Symeon the New Theologian’s Practical and Theological Chapters 11. The generic ‘tone’, therefore, can be expected to be in perfect harmony with the overall quality of the later Byzantine ascetical Kephalaic synthesis, especially as this reproduces ‘standard’ doctrines of early-stage asceticism for beginners (regular renunciation of vices and re-dedication to the ascetical lifestyle), but the more advanced materials (those gnomic chapters which are clearly more cryptic and demanding of the reader) can be expected to be the places where the author is developing some of his own themes and stresses. In the case of Symeon we find the Chapters to represent a large amount of traditional material on renunciation simply recycled, but with a clear intrusion of his own ‘special concerns’, dealing with zeal, tears, and absolute levels of obedience to the spiritual master.
It is similar with Elias in the Gnomic Anthology. In the ‘more advanced’ sententiae, especially clustered around the opening sections of each of the four parts, he is very interested in a dialogue on the nature of the soul and the psychic perceptions. His aporia, therefore, relate quite specifically to ‘ways of knowing’ (that are different, though related in a complex) when referred to the capacities of Nous, Psyche, and the Embodied-awareness of Soma. It is comparable, perhaps, to a distinction we would make between empirical awareness, emotive and intuitive sensibility, and psychic apprehension (though in the latter case our vocabulary languishes because the term ‘psychic’ refers to the second of the Byzantine stages (the soul-perception) rather than the third level as properly signified by Noetic, of which the English translation ‘Intellective’ is hopelessly inadequate. Nonetheless, it is the aspect of Elias’ spiritual epistemology which shall be the main focus of our interpretative remarks in this essay.
Elias uses his ascetical sources with a light hand. He certainly seems to be aware of Origen, Evagrius, Pseudo-Macarius, Diadochus of Photike, Mark the Hermit, John Klimakos, Maximus the Confessor and Symeon the New Theologian 12. The choice of the word ‘Gnomic’ in his title, and the condensed character of the sententiae suggests that he saw his Kephalaia specifically for consumption by a reading circle, or more intimate monastic community (certainly an educated and élite ascetical audience), where he acted as leader. The explication and discussion of the propositions in text might well have been the weekly ‘agenda’ of the meetings Elias presided over. Even today they invite such a response from the attentive reader.
Elias’ style is vivid. There is a freshness in the writing and in the style of presentation that gives it all, as Darrouzes says, ‘un saveur originale’. 13 Kazdhan 14 has noted that a distinctive trait of Elias’ writing is his preference for military, alongside agricultural, imagery. Whether or not this tells us anything of his past is doubtful, as both sets of images would have been designed by any skilful rhetor of the imperial capital, at that time, to appeal to all sections of his wider audience: the military, the landed classes, and the more modest agricultural small holders who might have an interest in ascetic literature, and would have comprised the wider body of lay patrons that normally accumulated on the outskirts of the ‘kin-group’ of a late Byzantine ascetic master with his own ascetic community, as a kind of supportive ‘third order’.
The manuscript tradition divides the kephalaia into four divisions across two parts (represented by four parts numbered across two sections in the modern Philokalic translation)15. Disdier 16 thought he recognised here a literary motif of four stages of spiritual advancement using the structural motif of the Exodus typology (comparable perhaps, though much simplified, to Origen’s vision of the soul’s progress in his Homilies on Numbers) where the first stage is the flight from Egypt when the ascetic tries to purify the body from sin. The second stage is the passage through the Red Sea when the monk mortifies the passions through the purification of the soul. The third stage is the sojourn in the desert, which is the advanced state of the purification of the spirit; and the fourth stage is the entry to the Promised Land which is the rediscovery of the lost integral state of being through a thoroughly spiritual way of life. This schema appears in Elias in a relatively few Kephalaia 17; and Disdier has seemingly over-estimated its structural importance in the Gnomic Anthology. If one were to look for other original structural forms in the materials, alongside occasional references to Exodus, one would recognise a heavy reference to the Song of Songs (indicating reliance on the spiritual tradition of Origen and his Canticles Commentary via Maximus); but there are equally as many references to the symbols of the ‘Admission into the Vineyard, or the ‘Nuptial Chamber’ 18, and also many allusions to the evangelical Parables, the Psalms, and the Old Testament Wisdom literature.
The manuscript tradition gives the simplest and perhaps the author’s own, idea of structure when it announces a division into four parts, each with their own proemia in the form of a verse couplet. The first of these is: ‘Here you will find, if you truly seek / a flowing spring, a pure fount of moral knowledge’ 19. The second is: ‘Prayer unites with the Bridegroom / a soul wounded by nuptial love.’20 The third is: ‘Exalted as it reads these texts / the Intellect is radiant with spiritual contemplation.’ 21 And the fourth is: ‘Here is a meadow / full of the fruits of spiritual practice and contemplation.’22 In the light of this we can see that the imagery of Canticles is predominant, but there is a clear sense of progress from Praxis through Theoria to Gnosis, in terms very redolent of Kephalaia collections from the time of Evagrios onwards. The initial stages of the ascetic battle concern moral katharsis. Growing control of the pathemata brings the ascetic into a deepening sense of intimacy with the soul’s Divine Bridegroom. This intimacy, if sustained by the ascetic in faithfulness to prayer admits the intellect (the Nous) to an increasing illumination and range of comprehension of the mysteries, and the last stage of wisdom is when the ascetic-sage becomes a master teaching others, the meadow of apatheia when the fruits can be passed on. This too is but a general structural notion, since in the fourth and final collection (the ‘Meadow of the Fruits’) there is a great deal of material dealing with the control of passions. In other words the sense of progress within the material is generic and not strictly observed in each part, although there is a general flow from more basic spiritual practices (accepting slander and hard labours) to the conditions of the more advanced. The author seems to write for older monks. His advice on sexual abstinence is certainly not that of the desert literature where the issue reaches obsessive levels. Elias presumes that his readership will, by their stage of life, have little difficulty with sexual problems, though enduring difficulties with the other pleasures that can seduce an ageing monk, and he names the delights of the ‘table’ explicitly23, once more suggesting to us that we are dealing here with a group of upper-class ascetics. There is something almost Zen-like in his formulation of the monastic path to dispassion (apatheia):
Desire and distress subsist in the soul; sensual pleasure and pain in the body. Sensual pleasure gives rise to pain, and pain to sensual pleasure (for, wanting to escape the wearisome feeling of pain we take refuge in sensual pleasure); while desire results in distress.
Many of the kephalaia repeat standard ascetical lore 24 but set in an elegantly pithy form. One such example is 1.2: ‘The first step towards excellence is the fear of God; the last is loving desire for Him,’ 25 which is a rewriting of the famous sententia attributed to Antony the Great. The issue of literary elegance is not simply a matter of ‘good style’ for Elias, it is a prime example of the order (taxis) that is brought to the soul by discipline. Thus, the ascetic is one who ought to be capable of bringing good order to the very form of the words used to describe spiritual realities, not merely order to the bodily desires or the (e)motions of the soul. As he puts it:
‘Let your words combine insight and self-awareness, so that the peaceable divine Logos may not be ashamed to enshrine himself in them because of their brashness and lack of restraint.’ 26
The sage here is of necessity the aesthete. It is a continuation of the doctrine found in Gregory of Nazianzus’ Oration 27, where the Cappadocian (regarded as the ultimate ‘Theologian’ in Elias’ time) taught that literary carefulness was part and parcel of the soul’s ongoing katharsis. Indeed the spiritual rhetorician who is able to offer Logoi to his brethren is like someone who serves as tailor and launderer to the community but is really the master of all:
Whoever washes his neighbour’s garment with inspired words, or who sews it up by contributing to his needs, has the outward appearance of a servant, but is really a master. But when he acts in this way he must be careful to do so truly as a servant, lest by growing conceited he lose both his reward and his proper rank. 27
Rhetoric thus revises the monastic social hierarchy in a movement towards true meritocracy that is devoid of pomposity, but nonetheless ordered in as fixed a manner (on its own terms), as the layers of Byzantine court society with their infinite gradations of ‘proper rank’.
In the tradition of Evagrius and Maximus, in particular, the idea of the inner logos of each created phenomenon is very important to Elias in the Gnomic Anthology. The Divine Logos, is seen to have set within the ontological structure of each existent thing a rationale and inner taxonomy (logos) which of necessity has to be exegeted before it can be comprehended 28. The ascetical philosopher, therefore, is not simply supposed to withdraw himself from the world for prayer, but actually to engage with the ‘meaning’ of the world’s phenomena as his prayer. The exegesis of the Eternal Logos within the Logoi of the created order is a theological task of the recognition of the divine within the epiphenomenal. At its higher levels such an exegesis, necessary for any advancement in prayer or holiness, is required of the ascetic in terms of the inner constitution, or logos, of his own soul (psyche). The goal of all ascetical philosophy, for the Byzantine monk, was the communion of the ascetic’s Spiritual Intelligence (Nous) with the divine Logos himself who was the source of being for that Nous, as well as the power of bonding together all other Noetic intelligence in the communion of love (the rationale of the monastic life in common, as a prelude to the communion of the Kingdom to come). This is why Elias is so concerned with the archaeology of the soul in the Gnomic Anthology, and also why he sets the sententiae in the form of aporia. The exercise of working out the puzzle is itself an extension of the soul’s activity in prayer, a manifestation of the sacred logos of being. His understanding of that quest for the logos of all things as the organising process of the ascetical life, is phrased as follows:
Until the intellect (Nous) has seen God’s glory with unveiled face (2 Cor. 3.18) the soul cannot say from experience of that glory: ‘I shall exult in the Lord. I shall delight in his salvation’ (LXX. Ps. 35.9). For the heart is still shrouded in self-love, so that the world’s foundations – the inner essences of things – cannot be revealed to it. And it will not be free from this shroud until it has undergone both voluntary and involuntary sufferings. 29
To this extent, the epistemologically themed sententiae are, in my opinion, the heart and soul of this work. Elias is concerned with the nature of intellection, and with the analysis of intellection’s highest form, the vision of the divine glory which allows the soul to become aware of its transcendence, and its ‘innate luminosity’. This notion is turned over several times as part of a recurring discussion on the nature of awareness. Elias states the problem in such a way that the reader is clear that the highest level of self-awareness is linked to the concept of a transcendent form of intellection (sensation of reality mediated entirely through the spiritual Nous), one that allows the soul its first authentic glimpse of its natural (innate) state as a luminously incandescent energy. 30
Perception is the key to the correct functioning of human life; but since our perception of reality has been disrupted by sin and the distortions of a disordered desire-system (epithymia), an initial ‘re-ordering’ of the Episteme is required. This, is not just a reworking of Plato’s epistemological preference of intellective over material realities, however; rather a new ordering of an epistemology that grows out of the Byzantine ascetical reading of the scriptural tri-partite anthropology of the human being as Sarx (Flesh), Psyche (Soul) and Pneuma (Spirit). For Elias the three categories that constitute perception, and thus constitute the person are Soma (Body), Psyche (Soul) and Nous (Spiritual Intelligence). He is not primarily interested in this tripartite division as a psychological theory (indeed it had largely been elaborated already in the 4th century by Evagrius of Pontos), but predominantly in the application of it. It is the ascetic Praxis he wishes to get at:
Praxis where the body is concerned consists of fasting and vigil… where the soul is concerned, praxis is self-control accompanied by simplicity, and simplicity animated by self-control. In the case of the Nous, praxis is prayer in contemplation. 31
Here we see his understanding of perception as conditioned by which of the three modes of awareness (bodily, emotional, or intellective) has priority over the subject at any given time. Each of these awarenesses can be trained so that they co-operate accumulatively, to give rise to the higher sense of awareness, the Noetic. In other words, unless the first two sense perceptions are brought into co-operation, the third, the Noetic, cannot be attained at all. The first two, physical sensibility, and psychic, or emotive sensibility, are tied together most intimately. If sensual awareness predominates, then psychic awareness is coarsened. If, on the other hand psychic awareness is given priority, then the material awareness is disciplined and made ready to serve an ever deepening sense of perception, becoming, in turn, a more elevated ascentive understanding of life. This three-fold form, or modality, of the human awareness is energised by the operation of a kind of bi-polar tendency: there is an inevitable movement towards one or other pole of attraction. The whole nexus of this Byzantine religious anthropology is thus dynamic and transformative:
The deiform soul, placed as it is on the frontier between sensible and spiritual life, is enabled through the former to see and do what pertains to the body, and through the latter what pertains to the Spirit. But as a results of Man’s inveterate habit of mind, the light of the Spirit has grown dim within the soul, whereas the light of the sensible world shines more brightly within it. Consequently, the soul cannot fix its attention totally on things divine unless it is wholly united with intelligible (noetic) light during prayer. In this way it is compelled to stand mid-way between darkness and light, linked to spiritual light through participation (methexis), and to sensible light by means of the fantasy. 32
In relation to the Material, or somatic, awareness, the instincts and desires are predominantly concerned with the preservation of the self, and are mainly self-referential. Those of the Psyche are of a different order and are closely related to the moral life: the learning of ethical discipline, and accordingly they have a more social reference. The highest intellections of the Nous are described by Elias as transcendent, having primary reference to the divine mystery. Even so, it is clear that all three levels of perceptibility are closely related, and a human being can only be successful in developing Noetic insight if all three are properly correlated. This takes place by applying the correct and appropriate discipline to each level of awareness:
The soul’s non-intelligent or passible aspect consists of the five senses and the faculty of speech. When in a state of dispassion, the faculty of speech is preserved fully integrated with the soul’s passible aspect; but when it is in an impassioned state, it receives the evil influences that that the passible aspect communicates to it. The body cannot be purified without fasting and vigil; the soul [cannot] without mercy and truth; and the Nous [cannot] without contemplation of God and communion with Him. These pairs constitute the principal virtues in these three aspects of the human person. 33
As there are three levels of the perceiving human, so twin pairs of virtues (or affective powers of awareness and action) relate to each one of them. For material awareness the senses and the power of speech are the primary modes of investigation and communication; the whole energy of the Soma-Body can be directed by fasting (signifying the diminishment of food and bodily desires), and Vigils, in which the sense of speech is directed to reproduce the sacred words of the psalms and prayers. For psychic awareness the empathetic virtues of compassion and integrity (mercy and truth, Hesed and Emet, are the biblical synonyms) bring direction and order to the individual’s sense of identity-completion. The praxis, or exercise, of fasting and prayers, and then at a higher level the application of compassion and integrity, are both intrinsically kathartic activities. They refine and simplify both the body and the soul in the course of being activated within them. Elias simply takes for granted that the ascetic will understand the need to control the waywardness of the body; and so only explains the need for the direction of the soul:
When the soul moves in obedience to these virtues, her citadel – patient endurance – is not disturbed by temptations. ‘You will gain possession of your souls through your patient endurance’, says the Logos 34. Otherwise the soul will be shaken by fits of cowardice, as an unwalled city is by a distant uproar. 35
Noetic vision, for Elias, is something that can only be achieved by absolute dedication to the levels of awareness appropriate to that dimension. It is a rarefied state of perception that is afforded as a grace, or gift. Prayer is the beginning of this state, one that can also be described as Apatheia, or dispassion, a condition he says which ‘is established through remembrance of God’36, thus showing it to be changed in his hands from the earlier patristic use (where Apatheia connoted transcendence of temptation) to one in which it functions as an indicator of states of perception. This is why the Gnomic Anthology focuses so much on prayer.
It is for us moderns a cliché, perhaps, that a Byzantine monk should be interested in prayer. In his own day, however, prayer probably meant far more to Elias, than it would to an unsuspecting reader of spiritual literature today. Prayer itself, for the later Byzantine ascetics (the philosophoi spoudaioi of the treatise’s title) was a form of advancing the penetrative ability of human awareness. As such it was the highest level of philosophy, the point at which it simultaneously transcended philosophy. Prayer, therefore, was fundamentally important for the development of the Nous. It initiated different ways of seeing. It was a perception that began only after the ascetical regulation (and implied reining in) of sensory perception, by ascetical endeavour and the use of monologistos prayer.37 When both physical and psychic awareness have been set in a quiet stasis Noetic perception is allowed to take over. This is the role and function of true prayer (not to be confused with psalmody and vigils which are appropriate to the earlier stages of consciousness guiding):
In the contrite bridal bed of the life of virtue, the bride (which is prayer) says to her lover, ‘I will give you my breasts if you dedicate yourself entirely to me.’ 38 So, you cannot become intimate with prayer, unless you have renounced all material things.
During prayer, therefore, alienate yourself from everything except life and breath if you want to be with the intellect alone.’ 39
This last phrase (apart from signifying the dedication needed to achieve this degree of Noetic awareness) has particular reference to the Byzantine practice of restricting the breathing, concentrating on the phrase of prayer as it rises and falls with the intake of the breath. As with the simplicity of the repeated phrase of prayer, aimed at quietening the teeming thoughts of the rational mind, so the slowed and regulated in-breathing and out-breathing lulled the physical body. When both Soma and Psyche were thus calmed, Noetic awareness was allowed to glimmer out.
The communication of what that state of Noetic awareness involves is conveyed by Elias with images of fire. It is at this point that language (our semantic system drawn entirely from the sensory and emotive categories of human life) falters. In a crude way we might describe this special category of noetic awareness as an alteration from physical and psycho-emotive forms of perception to universally objectified intuition. Elias uses images of fire, to connote the biblical sense of divine epiphany, the fiery chariot of the Lord of Hosts (the Merkavah) that rapt the prophet Elias into heaven 40, and which had symbolically been used before him, by the early Syrian mystics, to describe the soul as a vehicle of heavenly ascent:
Whenever the soul, paying no attention to external things, is concentrated in prayer, then a kind of flame surrounds it, as fire surrounds iron, and makes it wholly incandescent. The soul remains the same, but can no longer be touched, just as red hot iron cannot be touched by the hand. Blessed is the one who in this life is granted the experience of this state, and who sees his body, which by its nature is of clay, become incandescent by grace. 41
This rapt condition of awareness, is both something that transforms the natural condition (rendering clay as fire) and transcends it: since Elias indicates it is induced within the soul by the presence of the divine Spirit. The invocation (Epiclesis) of the Spirit is a concept Elias the priest must have been familiar with in its liturgical significance as the solemn prayer, recited quietly and secretly (mystikos) that invokes the consecration of the eucharistic elements in the Divine Liturgy. In the passage which follows Elias approaches the notion by means of musical imagery taken from the imperial court. As lute music soothes the physical ear, and the soul accordingly; so does the Epiclesis of the Spirit through the monk’s highest level of Noetic awareness lead to an ekstasis that cannot fully be described:
The music of a lute sounds sweet to the outer ear; but a soul in which during prayer there is no sound of mystical invocation in the Spirit has not attained to true compunction. It is only when ‘we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself makes intercession for us’ 42 that we are brought to this state of compunction.
After experiencing it, this advanced state of awareness needs to be ‘relaxed’ by its gradual diminution, and its replacement with the next inferior level of awareness, which Elias describes as the ‘contemplation of created realities’ 43. The navigation of the passage between the two states of intellection, Noetic and Psycho-Sensory is one that a true philosopher, a Gnostic sage who has achieved ‘self unity’, will seek as the highest state of perception, a state that Elias compares to a communion with the angelic orders:
The man of spiritual knowledge is one who descends from the realm of intellection to that of sense-perception in a sublime manner, and who raises his soul heavenwards with humility. … Dispassionate thoughts arise in a person who lives in a state of self-unity; logical calculations in one who lives in a state of self-division. But when all thoughts have been expelled from the fragmented soul, only incorporeal intellects commune with it, revealing to it the principles of Providence and Judgement that constitute the foundations of the world. 44
The thoughts concerning the foundation of the world are comparable to the universals of philosophic imagination. They are not to be confused with the lesser order of mental ideations which we today would normally call ‘thoughts’. Such thoughts belong to the lower world of the Soma and the Psyche. As we have seen it is the role of monologistos prayer to still them. Elias calls the disruptive ideations ‘pirates’ who are swarming around constantly trying to capture the ship of the soul, whereas stilling thoughts are ‘oarsmen’ who bring the soul-ship back quickly into calm shores 45. Such thoughts are not proper either to the Nous or to the Psyche. They stand somewhere between the physical Soma and its property of rational deduction. Accordingly these thoughts are ‘animal’: they are not known either to inanimate matter or plants, and not known to angels, for the latter are entirely Noetic beings who have no materially generated thoughts only pure awareness46. The governance of thoughts is of critical importance to the practitioner of Noetic awareness for, if not governed, the thoughts can trap the Nous within the lower levels of perception:
Sense perception is the forecourt of the deiform soul; the reason is her temple; and the Nous her high priest. The intellect is to be found in the forecourt when held captive by inept thoughts; in the temple when circumscribed by thoughts that are apposite. But when it is free from both, it is privileged to enter the holy sanctuary. 47
For Elias the chief matter of the praxis of this ordering of the different awarenesses of the soul is the mode of intuition one allows to predominate. A well ordered reason will serve as tutor (Paidagogos) to the monastic sage who strives to keep the somatic and psychic faculties acute and vital. But it is the Divine Logos himself whom Elias sees as the Psychopompos who initiates all the degrees of the Noetic life:
Ascetic praxis girds the soul’s vital powers with fasting and vigil; while contemplative virtue keeps the spiritual powers burning like lamps by means of silence and prayer. The vital powers have the reason as their tutor, the spiritual powers have the indwelling Logos as their bridal companion. 48
The final image of the bridal consummation is linked with the ecstatically transcendent image of being consumed by fire when he summarises the goal of monastic philosophy as the Eros of communion with the divine:
A flame gives light so long as it is wedded to matter. But the soul becomes God’s shrine only when it is free from matter. The flame rises up as long as it has something to burn from; the soul is raised upwards until it is consummated in divine love. 49
Conclusion
Elias the Ekdikos was clearly one of the learned sages of his day. His treatise, the Gnomic Anthology, has been kept by generations of later monks (finally earning a place in the Philokalia), largely as a guide to ascesis, and has not attracted any attention so far for the extraordinary doctrine of ‘awareness’ which it advocates; a doctrine which is not peculiar to him, but which had been developing throughout Byzantine epistemology, after the time of Maximos the Confessor, until it had reached a certain pitch after the 9th century in the schools of Byzantium. Here, in Elias, it is set out succinctly by someone who wishes to practise it; that is to attempt to attain and exemplify distinctly different types of ‘awareness’ in the individual’s quest to rise through the varying levels of human consciousness, to a degree of transcendental intuition of God. It is this practical and applied epistemological character that gives substance to the oft-repeated claim that the monks in Byzantium were the true philosophers (a concept reflected in the sub-title of Elias’ treatise – ‘ for the zealous philosophers’ ). This epistemological focus has a direct bearing on the understanding of the soul in Byzantine religious philosophy; and its mediating position between what we might call ‘somatic awareness’, and ‘noetic insight’. The root of Elias’ theory of the three degrees of awareness is the concept of the universal Logos manifested in the multitudes of logoi within the material and psychic order. The inner rationale and order, system if one likes, of each thing, at its deepest level of meaning, manifests the inner order of the Divine Logos which personally constituted it. For this reason, natural philosophy is critically important for the development of the true monk; as a path to the vision of God. This theory had been well established by Maximus, following the fourth century master Evagrius, and Elias is merely elaborating it slightly. The method of Aporia, which he advocates throughout his treatise, is perfectly suited to allowing the individual monk, and reader, to penetrate the problem of perception, by the sustained attack on various puzzles presented to the consciousness by acute observation. In the case of Elias, the scrutiny of perception in the path of prayer is his chosen focus. Here the ‘zealous philosopher’ who has proven him or herself, by the disciplined training of the unruly body (through fasting, chastity, and a life of virtuous compassion), is able to embark upon a higher quest, seeking to elucidate the principles of a more refined direction of awareness. Elias conceives of this as an intensity of inner gaze that reveals to the observer that all human consciousness is built upon a triadic pattern: Soma, Psyche, and Nous, where each of the three constituent parts of human ontology shape, and colour, the different consciousnesses that arise in the domains presided over by each. The human triadology must function in correct order if the pursuit of ascentive consciousness is to succeed. The body must first be quietened by the soul; the soul must then be willing to allow the Nous to emerge and take the lead in an increasingly ‘luminous’ and transcendent form of perception of ‘presence’.
The Soul has a uniquely mediating function in this system. In the first place it masters the chaos of bodily desires (the ‘unreflected life’) that always seek to swamp any desire to engage in a systematic study and experience of awareness. Once it has done this, the soul prepares for the ‘entry’ of the Nous with its own, more refined, level of consciousness, which seems to be more akin to what we would today regard as intuitive, and describe as insightful, or revelatory. The reflections of the Nous, Elias tells us, have a luminous quality about them, that he regards as closer to the pure Logos. Here, ‘like meets like’ (a basic Platonic epistemological premiss) and can find mutual knowledge only on the basis of the likeness. Where Plato had set the basis of the mutual affinity in the inner ‘spiritual’ character of gnosis, Elias, following a long Christian tradition before him, understands it to be an aspect of the creative power of the Divine Logos who has set the ‘image and likeness of God’ within the inner core of humanity’s being: in other words the gift of divine capacity to receive the Logos in reflection and activity which is logike. In short, the Nous, is the pre-eminent locus of the divine presence in the human being.
Soul-perception, though not as elevated as Noetic vision, is not unimportant, however. It serves as a critical mediating valve in the triadological structure of human consciousness, where the Soma experiences things in a direct bodily fashion, the Psyche empathises with things more discretely, and the Nous, intuits things transcendentally. In this system the Psyche has the unique quality of being able to see things from two perspectives: that of the Soma, and that of the Nous. Soul can share in the different modes of knowing, and ally its own powers to each of the different modes; whereas Soma and Nous are incapable of relating to one another directly: like two people with little mutual affinity incapable of understanding the other’s (foreign) language.
At the Noetic level of understanding, Elias sees the individual as capable of perceiving the ‘universals’; what he calls the ‘foundations’ or ‘principles of the world’. While ‘thoughts’ (mental ideations as we would term them) are, properly speaking, ‘animal’ (by which he means mainly somatic and partly psychological), Noetic intuition, on the other hand, is wholly non-animal. It is of universal scope, not of particular embodiment. For Elias, Noetic intuition is driven by the light of the transcendently aspirant Nous, the one factor in created humanity which is divinely graced (proper to humans and angels alone, and not shared with the animal creation) and in which resides the divine Image and Likeness. But this drive is something in which the Psyche shares intimately, even though it is not its own proper mode of awareness. The Noetic drive is, in fact, rooted in the energy of the Psyche, whose function it is to keep ‘thoughts’ away from the Nous while it seeks to extend itself out of bodily consciousness towards the universal and non-ideational realities. The Soul wards off the thoughts from the vulnerable Nous just as an admiral repels pirates who attempt to board and seize a sea-going vessel. The Psyche, therefore, is like a Mystagogue (the Psychopompos of the old mysteries) of the trans-ideational awareness. The wise monk, in Elias’ estimation is like a person who tends the fire carefully, feeding it appropriately combustible material at the right time 50; someone who is thus aware of the processes involved, the delicate balance required between all the parts of human ontology in what is essentially a very delicate extension of human knowing from the material epistemic, through the intuitive, towards the transcendental.
While this is, in many aspects, a traditional anthropology of the Byzantines, based upon biblical, patristic, and longstanding ascetical principles; what Elias manages to do with it, in a very compact, and extremely elegant dissertation, is quite remarkable. He brings a personal and incisive vision; clearly focused on the epistemological problems inherent in the quest for the ‘luminous vision’ that so much of the later Byzantine tradition spoke of as the proper way to an understanding of God. In the process of commenting on this, the central question facing any master of the inner life, he has left his modern readers with a very intriguing set of reflections on the ways of knowing that are appropriate to humans; and on the central place of the Psyche, which serves as the true ‘facilitator’ of awareness, and one which fulfils its highest function when acknowledging its own need to be transcended.
J.A. McGuckin.
Union Theological Seminary &
Columbia University. New York.
NOTES
1.See A P Kazhdan. (ed). The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium. Oxford 1991. vol. 1. p.686; also (chiefly) M Th. Disdier. ‘La vie spirituelle selon Elie l’Ecdicos.’ Echos d’Orient. 31. 1932.
2. 144-164; J.Darrouzes. ‘Elie l’Ekdike’. In: Dictionnaire de Spiritualité Chrétienne. Vol. 4. Paris.
1960. cols. 576-578; and also (Greek text) N G Politis. ‘The Path to contemplation in Ilias the
Ekdikos.’ Epetiris Hetaireias Vyzantinon Spoudon. 43. 1977-78. 345-364.
Such as Maximus the Confessor, Nilus, John of Karpathos, and Nikephoros
Moschopoulos. See: N Tomadakes. Athena. 78. 1980-82. pp. 284f. He has also been
(mis)identified as the 12th century theologian Elias of Crete. V. Laurent , in his study ‘Le rite de la pros-comidie et le Metropolite Elie de Crete. Revue des études byzantines 16. 1958. 116-126, has described the identification with Elias of Crete as ‘possible but unproven’ from the text; but it is rejected by M Th. Disdier. ‘Elie l’Ekdicos et les hetera kephalaia attribués à S. Maxime le Confesseur et à Jean de Carpathos.’ Echos d’Orient. 31. 1932. 17-43, who opines that he is really
‘Elias the Melodist’. The association with Elias of Crete is also rejected by S. Salaville in
Dictionnaire de théologie catholique. Vol. 4. Paris. 1911. cols.2331-2333, as well as by most contemporary critics.
3. PG. 90. cols. 1401-1461 as Maximus’ Kephalaia Hetera.
4, see. HG Beck. Kirche und theologische Literatur im byzantinischen Reich. Munich. 1959. p. 588.
5. see. MT Disdier. ‘Elie l’Ekdikos et les hetera kephalaia.’ Échos d’Orient. 31. 1932. pp. 17-43.
6. Anthologion Gnomikon Philosophon Spoudaion. The Philosophical ‘Spoudaioi’ in question
signified the Byzantine monks.
7. The Philokalia. Translated and edited by G Palmer, P Sherrard, and K Ware. Vol. 3. London.
1984. pp. 32-65.
8. PG. 127. cols. 1129-1176. Nicodemus, who produced the Philokalic edition, was unaware of the
Combefis edition when he gathered Athonite manuscripts on his own.
9. See F Lenormant. Revue Numismatique. new series. 9. 1864. plate 12; idem in G Zacos. Byzantine
Lead Seals. Vol. 2. Berne. 1984. 71-73b; Reproduced in T Detorakis. Hagia Sophia: The
Church of the Holy Wisdom of God. Athens. 2005. p. 14.
10. see. KM Rhalles. ‘Peri tou ekklesiastikou axiomatos tou protoekdikou’ Akademia Athenon
Praktika. 11. 1936. pp. 286-291; J Darrouzès. Recherches sur les offikia de l’église byzantine.
Paris. 1970. pp. 323-332.
11. C.f. P (=J.A.) McGuckin (tr). Symeon the New Theologian. Chapters and Discourses. Kalamazoo.
1982.
12, He is not an uncritical disciple. For example he never speaks of theologia in the sense Evagrius
uses it for divine intellection. Other key terms such as nipsis (sobriety) only appears once,
prosoche (attentiveness) only twice. Though he speaks a lot about prayer monologistos he does
not explicitly associate it with the name of Jesus, though in every instance the English translation
of the Philokalia intrudes the reference anyway, presuming that he must have implied it, because of their
inappropriate presumption that he was a hesychast.
13. Dictionnaire de spiritualité 4. Paris. 1960. 4. 578.
14. Kazdhan (1991) p. 686.
15 Part 1 cc.1-79. Philokalia. pp. 34-42; Part 2. cc. 80-109. ibid. pp. 43-46; Part 3. cc. 1-32.
pp. 47-51; Part 4. cc. 33-139. pp. 52-65.
16. Echos d’Orient. 31. 1932. 144-164.
17. 3.14.-15. Philokalia. p. 49; ibid. 4.52. p.54; ibid.4.77. p. 57.
18. A liturgical concept, as well as an allusion to Canticles.
19. Philokalia. p. 34.
20. Philokalia. p. 43.
21. Philokalia. p. 47.
22. Philokalia. p. 52.
23. 1.56. Philokalia. p. 40; again in 4. 134-135, 139. Philokalia. pp. 64-65.
24. For a collation of traditional monastic ‘chapters’ from a variety of Byzantine writers see
J.A. McGuckin.(tr). The Book of Mystical Chapters. (Shambhala Press). Boston. 2002.
25. Philokalia. p. 34.
26. 1.15. Philokalia. p. 35.
27. 1.50. Philokalia. p. 37.
28. c.f. J van Rossum. ‘The Logoi of creation and the divine ‘energies’ in Maximus the Confessor and
Gregory Palamas.’ Studia Patristica, 27. (Peeters). Louvain. 1993. 213-217; J Meyendorff.
‘Creation in the history of Orthodox theology’. St. Vladimir’s Theol. Quarterly. 27.1. 1983. 27-37.
29. 3.13. Philokalia. pp. 48-49.
30. 2.82. ‘Let prayer inhere in the Nous as a ray in the sun. If the Nous lacks prayer then worldly
cares… deprive it of its native luminosity.’ Philokalia. p. 43. A similar theme, that the Nous when
elevated in contemplation of the non material realities, becomes transfigured into an incandescent
state can be found in 2. 105-106, Philokalia p. 46; 3.32. Philokalia p. 51;4.54. Philokalia. p. 54;
4.79, Philokalia. p. 57.
31. 1.4-6. Philokalia. p. 34.
32. 2.80. Philokalia. p. 43.
33. 1.20-21. Philokalia. p. 36.
34. Lk. 21.19.
35. 1.22. Philokalia. p. 36.
36. 1.74. Philokalia. p. 42.
37. The repetition over countless instances of a short phrase of scripture, or a simple prayer formula.
One of the preferred forms of the later Hesychasts was the constant repetition of the Jesus Prayer.
The hundreds of repetitions of the same short prayer, engaged the senses and lulled the thoughts
(see 1.18. Philokalia. p. 36), so that Noetic awareness could emerge without competition.
38. Song of Songs 7.12.
39. 2. 91.-93. Philokalia. p.44.
40. 2 Kings 2.11-12.
41. 2.105-106. Philokalia. p. 46.
42. Citing Rom. 8.26.
43.3.17. Philokalia. 49.
44. 3.21 -24 passim. Philokalia. p. 50.
45. 3.28. Philokalia. p. 50.
46. 3.26. Philokalia. p. 50.
47. .54. Philokalia. p. 54.
48. 4.62. Philokalia. p. 56.
49. 4.79. Philokalia. p. 57.
50. One is reminded of Hesse’s Magister Ludi as he recalls that potent symbol in his beautiful elegiac
poem Hours in the Garden.