The Sight of God in the Theology of Saint Symeon the New Theologian [56]

Here, parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55.

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2. 5. 4. The Union with God and the Communional Images

The pre-critical editions and the critical of symeonian operas suffer of what we call false-puritanical pudibondery and, equally, and many of the articles which dealt of symeonian opera, then when is puted the problem of reception of the communional images, of biblical paradigms or realistic, which illustrates the relation between God and believers who see His glory.

From our point of view, we believe that a such spiritual impotence, which manifests as lack of appetency for the realistic-mystical expression of Symeon, fundamented on the paradigm of the Incarnation, comes from the fact that the authors suffer from advanced docetism and of damaging interior non–alignment at the mysterious process of deification, where all these become current personal realities.

The advanced docetism about that we speak defends in theological terms the total reality of the Incarnation in christological dogma but it cannot to accept its real consequences and in the frame of personal salvation.

The interior non–alignment at the process of deification represents just the lack of any interior reporting at the trinitarian God, through the ascesis cleansing of passions, for to reach at the sight of divine light.

But both syntagms, under umbrella of whom we have grouped a whole serie of theologians, that have nothing to do with real mystical experience and that contests it in terms how can the clear, from different personal motives, these two talk about the divorce and the schizoidy, really staggering, between the theology as archiving of theological datas and charismatic theology, as direct experience and contemporary of us of Trinity’s life.

Saint Symeon precisely against of such theology and of such theologians, that had nothing to do with the direct link with God and considered it superfluous, gave them the realistic replicas of the union of God with the believers.

His vehemence was not based on vainglory and on the revanchist sentiment that he must to give a rough replication of their, but on the direct experience of the mysteries of deification and on the zeal to confess the truth in full mode.

Thus, in the ethical Discourse 1, Symeon speaks of our communion with God, quoting copiously from John 14 and 17^[1] and concluding: „the union [enosin] which [the Son] has it in the natural [fisicos] face with His Father, on this He promises to have in grace [en hariti] and to us, if we want [ean telomen]”^[2].

The same thing will be repeated still two times in the discourse quoted, he said: „the glory which the Father gave the Son, the Son gives us through the divine grace [didosin imin tia hariti]; and a thing even greater is that, like He is in the Father and the Father in the Son, so the Son of God will be in us, and we, if we want [is vulometa], we will be in grace in the Son”^[3], for that „He taught that the union [enosin] which He has with His Father, the one we have and we in similar [omios] face with Him”^[4].

The reality of the man’s union with God connects at Symeon with the full assumption of human nature by God the Word.

Just for that the Logos of God took the entire human body and He has made ​​God and man, Symeon speaks about a fill of light of each part of our body.

Our  deification does not exclude any part of the body and the our soul, for that Christ has deified, in full mode, the body and His soul, which He assumed in His pre-existing hypostasis.

From this integral assumption of humanity and from its pnevmatization, ie from the reality resurrected and glorified body of the Lord, Saint Symeon speaks about a pnevmatic soteriology, in the frame of it the man is integral filled of light and makes like of the Lord’s body [conf. Phil. 3, 21].

His exemplifications, in our opinion, are admirable through their concreteness and their theological non-ambiguity, alike with the communional images of Scripture.