The Sight of God in the Theology of Saint Symeon the New Theologian [15]

Here, parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14.

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The faith is the one that receives from God the knowledge. And the knowledge or the spiritual experience consists in the receiving from God of many sumei,wn (signs), aivnigma,twn (enigmas), avso,ptrwn (mirrors), evnergeiw/n  (works), qei,wn avpokalu,yewn (divine revelations), evlla,myewn (enlightenments) and in the deepening in qewri,a, in contemplation[1].

But the certitude (plhrofori,a) of the faith is given by the coming of the Holy Ghost (parousi,aj tou/ VAgi,ou Pneu,matoj) in our being and more fully enlightenment we have through the sight of the divine light, that it is our teacher in the mysteries of God[2].

The faith must to follow the repentance (metanoi,a)[3].  The repetance is what provides us the knowledge that we are people but and the knowledge of God [4].

Repentance destroies the wall (tei/coj) that separates us from Gods light[5] and therefore its importance is essential in the symeonian theology[6].

Faith and repentance bring the spiritual knowledge[7].

In II, 304-305, Symeon speaks by another condition of the glory’s sight and namely: „th/j tw/n evntolw/n Auvtou avkribou/j fulakh/j” (the exact keeping of His commandments)[8].

The perspective of the purification of passions of the spiritual life is the frame in that Symeon lives and sanctifies his life.

And in this perspective, the spiritual knowledge is acquired not studying the theology or the philosophy from books, but by repentance we Amasya Rent A Car understand the mysteries (musthri,wn) of our faith[9].

But Symeon does not exclude the theological study (he himself was a man who knew the scripting Tradition of the Church) but he does not anteput the theological study to asceticism, for that he considers primordial in the spiritual life the cleansing of passions, the way to the sight of God. His focalization was on methods Amasya nakliye fiyatları to fight with himself, of the mode in that must to do ourselfs worthy of the sight of God.

It becomes evident the nondiscrimination of the theological study by Simeon from the next reference at knowledge. Those who have beautifully repented, he says, to those is revealed the knowledge of God contained in the sacred books[10].

With other words, we must not to transform theology into an attribute of those who are doing very easily with the textual study and with the Amasya kombi servisi memorizing of the sacred texts of the Church, but must decipher the texts of the Tradition with the help of the divine grace, that comes into our ascetic lives[11].

Not the autonomous mind[12] must prevails in the understanding of Tradition’s texts, but the mind that is enlightened by grace and humble is what that keeps the deep meanings of faith and can transmits of its in consciousness of cause.

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In conclusion, the symeonian Theological Discourses put before us a triadology without mystifications and that guarantees the energetics relation between the Trinity Amasya klima servisi and the faithful man.

Symeon does not propose us a substantialist triadology,  that gives preeminence to the divine nature in the detriment of the trinitarian persons, who possess, in perichoretic mode, the same divine being, but highlights, in special mode, the unit of being of the Trinity, because it was defectious understood in his time.

Therefore, in measure in that we know the triadological positioning of Saint Symeon, we can not suspect of the idecent pietism or of the ailing exacerbation his relation with God and we can not see the his ecstatic experience in outside of a real relation, personal with Trinity.


[1] SC 122, The Theological Discourses, I, 195-198, p. 110 / Ică jr. 1, p. 81.

[2] Idem, The Theological Discourses, I, 200-203, p. 110-112 / Idem, p. 82.

[3] Idem, The Theological Discourses, I, 255, p. 114 / Idem, p. 83.

[4] Idem, The Theological Discourses, I, 256-257, p. 114 / Ibidem.

[5] Idem, The Theological Discourses, I, 253, p. 114  / Ibidem.

[6] About the role of repentance in the theological knowledge to see and SC 122, The Theological Discourses, I, 273, p. 116; I, 304 -306, p. 118; I, 313-319, p. 120.

[7] SC 122, The Theological Discourses, I, 304-306, p. 118 / Ică jr. 1, p. 85.

[8] Idem, The Theological Discourses, II, 304-305, p. 152  / Idem, p. 100.

[9] Idem, The Theological Discourses, I, 306-311, p. 118  / Ibidem.

[10] Idem, The Theological Discourses, I, 313-325, p. 120/ Ibidem.

[11] In SC 122, The Theological Discourses, I, 380, p. 124, Saint Symeon warns in trenchant mode to the fact, that we can not make theology without purity, without sanctifing our lives in continuous mode. The purity is the place where the grace likes to live and that only the pure can see, aided by grace, the depths of the holy writings of the Church.

To see and SC 122, The Theological Discourses, II, 33-35, p. 132; II, 60-62, p. 134.

[12] About the devastating problems aroused by the autonomous mind of man that does not want to obey God in noway, to see Rev. Prof. D.Th. Dumitru Popescu, The Man Without Roots [Omul fără rădăcini], op. cit., p. 11-12: „the modernity transferred the center of gravity of the world from God to man, thus that the man feels so autonomous in the face of the Divinity, that considers the will of God as a kind of attempt against his own freedom. In this anthropocentric conception, the man realizes himself by himself, without Gods help. The sacred is the principal obstacle in the way of his freedom, and he does not feel free only in measure in that eliminates the sacred from nature”.

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