To the term ‘wonder’, the term ‘inebriation’ (rawwayuta) is semantically close: it is used by Isaac to describe an especially strong experience of the love of God, joy and spiritual elevation in a state of mystical ecstasy. The theme of ‘sober inebriation’ is a central one in the whole of the Christian mystical tradition, from Origen and Gregory of Nyssa onwards.[1] In the Syriac tradition, this theme is outlined as early as in Ephrem and John of Apamea; among the writers of the seventh century, it was developed by Dadisho and Symeon d’Taibutheh.[2] For Isaac the Syrian, the theme of spiritual inebriation is a synthesis of the whole system of his mystical theology: when analyzing it, we can perceive the most characteristic traits of his mysticism.

            In one of the chapters of Part II, speaking of the state of wonder which begins beyond the borders of prayer, Isaac uses the image of wine to describe the spiritual exaltation which grips a person: 

Sometimes... the intellect is taken away from it as if into heaven, and tears fall like fountains of waters, involuntarily soaking the whole face. All this time such a person is serene, still and filled with a wonder-filled vision. Very often he will not be allowed even to pray: this in truth is the state of cessation above prayer when he remains continually in amazement at God’s work of creation - like people who are crazed by wine, for this is ‘the wine which causes the person’s heart to rejoice’...[3] Blessed is the person who has entered this door in the experience of his own soul, for all the power of ink, letters and phrases is too feeble to indicate the delight of this mystery.[4] 

            The symbolism of inebriation is most frequently used by Isaac when he speaks of how the love of God seizes someone’s soul. According to Isaac, love is a gift which cannot be acquired by human efforts. Ascetical activity, including the reading of Scripture, is conducive to the attaining of love, but it still cannot appear in a person without being given from above. It is impossible to taste love from reading books: one can only eat or drink it oneself. 

Love of God... cannot be stirred up in someone solely as a result of knowledge of the Scriptures; nor can anyone love God by forcing himself... For until a person receives the Spirit of revelation and his soul, with its impulses, is united to that wisdom which is above the world and he becomes aware in his own person of God’s lofty attributes, it is not possible for him to come close to this glorious savour of love. Someone who has not actually drunk wine will not be inebriated as a result of being told about wine; and someone who has not been himself held worthy of a knowledge of the lofty things of God cannot become inebriated with love for Him.[5] 

            The symbolism of wine and inebriation gives Isaac the possibility to describe different phenomena of the mystical life which are otherwise difficult to express in words. For example, the thirst for God which is characteristic of periods of abandonment, is symbolized in him by an alcoholic thirst which is experienced by a drinker in the absence of wine: ‘...With a laudable ecstasy the heart soars up toward God and cries out: “My soul thirsted for Thee, the mighty, the living God! When shall I come and appear before Thy face, O Lord?”[6] Only the man who drinks deeply of this wine and afterward is deprived of it, only he knows to what misery he has been abandoned, and what has been taken away from him because of his laxity’.[7]

            Speaking of the weakening of the limbs of the body which is characteristic of certain kinds of ecstasy, Isaac likens this to a similar weakening in a state of alcoholic intoxication: ‘...Through such zealous and divine diligence... a man begins to be stirred to divine love and straightway he is made drunk by it as by wine; his limbs become limp, his mind stands still in awestruck wonder, and his heart follows God as a captive. He becomes, as I said, like a man drunk with wine’.[8]

            The oblivion of the cares and sorrows of this world at the inebriation with the love of God is symbolized by forgetfulness of all sorrows in a state of intoxication by wine: ‘As a man who drinks wine and becomes inebriated on a day of mourning forgets all the pangs of his sorrow, so the man who in this world, which is a house of lamentation, is drunk with the love of God, forgets all his sorrows and afflictions and becomes insensible to all sinful passions through his inebriation’.[9]

            In mystical life, a person’s spiritual state changes, and he becomes capable of those experiences which were inaccessible for him before. Instead of a contrite sorrow a man lives through joy at God, and another vision of the world opens in him, another perception of reality. This change of a spiritual state is symbolized by a distorted apperception of reality that is characteristic of a drunken person: 

Rightly directed labours and humility make man a god upon earth. Faith and mercy speed him an the way to limpid purity. Fervency and contrition of heart cannot dwell simultaneously in one soul, even as drunken men cannot have control of their thinking. For when the soul is given this fervour, the contrition of mourning is taken away. Wine has been given for gladness, and fervour for the rejoicing of the soul. The former warms the body, and the word of God, the understanding. Those who are inflamed by fervour are ravished by hope’s meditations and their mind is caught away to the future age. Just as men drunken with wine imagine diverse hallucinations, even so men drunken and made fervent by hope are conscious neither of afflictions nor of anything worldly.[10] 

            Speaking of that unearthly sweetness and delight which are characteristic of mystical experience, when even the body is rejoicing together with the soul, Isaac emphasizes that these feelings are impossible to describe in words.[11] The language of inebriation comes to the aid of Isaac, helping him to describe the indescribable: ‘When the soul is drunken with joy of hope and with the gladness which is in God, the body becomes insensible to tribulations, even if it be feeble... And it enjoys and works together with the soul in her spiritual delight. Thus it is when the soul enters into spiritual joy even though the body may be weak’.[12]

            To the theme of inebriation, that of ‘divine madness’, or ‘divine foolishness’, is closely connected, a theme also characteristic of many mystics. It appears as early as in St Paul, who opposes the ‘foolishness’ of the Christian message to the ‘wisdom’ of this world,[13] and the ‘foolishness’ of the Christian way of life to worldly honour.[14] Mystical writers more frequently speak of madness and foolishness when they want to emphasize a paradoxical, unutterable and super-rational character of the experience of communion with God.

            Thus the inebriation and intoxication with God’s love which accompanies a state of wonder is compared by Isaac with foolishness: 

Love is fervent by nature, and when beyond measure is descends upon a man, it throws his soul into ecstasy. Therefore the heart of the man who has felt this love cannot contain it or endure it... This is the spiritual passion with which the apostles and the martyrs were inebriated. With it the first traveled the world over, toiling and being reviled, while the second, although their members were severed, and although they shed their blood like water and suffered the most dreadful torments, yet they did not grow faint-hearted but endured courageously, and being truly wise, were thought fools.[15] Still others wandered in mountains and caves and dens of the earth,[16] and amid disorder they were well ordered... May God grant us also to attain to such madness![17] 

            Isaac speaks of mystical ‘foolishness’ as his own experience. Foolishness and madness is that love of God and neighbour which has no boundaries whatsoever and goes far beyond reasonable limits. The taste of love is compared with honey, which, like wine, symbolizes sweetness: 

He who has attained to the love of God no longer wishes to remain in this life, for love abolishes fear.[18] My beloved, I have become foolish, and I cannot bear to guard the mystery in silence, but I am become a fool[19] for the sake of the profit of my brethren. For true love is not able to tarry in any mystery without her beloved. Often when I was writing these things my fingers failed me in setting down everything on paper, and they were unable to endure the sweetness that descended into my heart and silenced my senses... Joy that is in God is stronger than this present life... Love is sweeter than life, and understanding according to God, from which love is begotten, is sweeter than honey in a honeycomb.[20] 

            Isaac’s use of the symbolism of wine and inebriation sometimes grows into eucharistic symbolism. Eucharistic symbolism is characteristic for the Syriac tradition from Ephrem onwards. According to Isaac, love is food and drink, bread and wine, and these are at every hour given to those who love God: 

...When we find love, we partake of heavenly bread, and are made strong without labour and toil. The heavenly bread is Christ, Who came down from Heaven and gave life to the world.[21] This is the nourishment of the angels. The one who has found love eats and drinks Christ every day and hour and hereby is made immortal. ‘He that eateth of this bread’, He says, ‘which I will give him, shall not see death unto eternity’.[22] Blessed is he who consumes the bread of love, which is Jesus! He who eats love eats Christ, the God over all... Love is the Kingdom, whereof the Lord mystically promises His disciples to eat in His Kingdom... Love is sufficient to nourish a man instead of food and drink. This is the wine ‘which maketh glad the heart of a man’.[23] Blessed is he who partakes of this wine! Licentious men have drunk this wine and became chaste;[24] sinners have drunk it and have forgotten the pathways of stumbling; drunkards have drunk this wine, and became fasters; the rich have drunk it and desired poverty; the poor have drunk it and been enriched with hope; the sick have drunk it and became strong; the unlearned have taken it and became wise.[25]