Stephen Thomas. Review of 'St Symeon the New Theologian and Orthodox Tradition' by Hilarion Alfeyev

Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev

Hilarion Alfeyev, St Symeon the New Theologian and Orthodox Tradition, Oxford University Press: Oxford Early Christian Studies, 2000. (pp., 338.)

Father Hilarion’s monograph demonstrates that a good standard of modern critical scholarship may harmonize with a perspective upon a Byzantine theologian written from within Eastern Orthodox Tradition and experience. This monograph is written in a clear style, with beautifully-chosen quotations and a highly informative and scholarly apparatus criticus and system of referencing. The best primary texts have been used and the knowledge of secondary material is full. This book is notable because Fr. Hilarion has chosen to relate St Symeon to Orthodox Tradition, that is, to that living stream, to which the written sources witness, a stream of experience which preceded St Symeon, but which also continued beyond his time and still today flows into the future. Fr. Hilarion’s hermeneutic, then, is to use historico-critical method, which is usually associated with the pretension of detached objectivity, in order to place St Symeon in a particular, living Christian Tradition. This is a courageous move and one which will not be congenial to the kind of ecclesiastical historian who believes in pure, theologically presuppositionless history of dogma, whose proper subject matter is a supposedly dead but intellectually reconstructable past. This project demands total theological engagement. Until this book has been fully assimilated by the theological academic community, with regard to a variety of sub-disciplines, it remains an open question as to whether or not Fr Hilarion has delivered what he has so ambitiously promised. 

Despite its vast range, the book tells a connected story, because of its careful and elegant editorial decisions. It is the judiciousness with which the author marshals his auxiliary material so as to place St Symeon in the narrative of the Orthodox experience of God by which this book’s success will, ultimately, be judged. Students of St Symeon will have been long familiar with Bishop Basil Krivochene’s admirably straightforward summary of the saint’s life and teaching. Father Hilarion, however, gives us a multi-dimensional treatment of St Symeon and so substantially adds to the subject.

From his opening salvo, in a long and erudite footnote, Fr. Hilarion announces his pretension to the calibre and accuracy of a major scholar, by pointing to the controversy surrounding the appellation ‘The New Theologian’. Now, Orthodox Christians do not like anything new and hold to the early dictum of St Irenaeos (2nd century) that innovation is heresy. Yet this book about an Orthodox saint and theologian shows that something new, or, at least, fresh, was being taught at the end of the first Christian millennium in Constantinople. This is a book which also appears at first uncomfortable to the Orthodox reader who is well-versed in the ascetic writers, because it shows a canonised teacher doing something quite wrong – proclaiming, as it were, from the rooftops his personal spiritual experiences – and in considerable detail. This does not entirely harmonise with Orthodox sobriety, because St Symeon publicised what would normally only be revealed to a Spiritual Father or Confessor, in secret. Moreover, there is still a certain class of English reader, or, rather reader in England, who is wary of ‘enthusiasm’, which an 18th century bishop declared, with emphasis, to be ‘a very horrible thing.’ What good reason did St Symeon have for telling us so much about his experience of tears, of the Uncreated Light – of the most intimate aspects of his being?

Father Hilarion’s answer arises from his assessment of the spiritual climate of Byzantium during St Symeon’s epoch, when, he argues, Tradition had become temporarily ossified: Tradition had by then come to be seen as only the past, and the experience to which Tradition testified no longer possible, as if  ‘there were [spiritual] giants in the earth in those days.’(Genesis, 6.4.) St Symeon, Fr Hilarion argues, wanted to demonstrate that this timidity was an error and a constriction of the Gospel. For him, what was possible for the Apostles continued to be possible at any time for the faithful in the Church. Inevitably, then, he had to be bold and have recourse to his own experiences in order to reconnect the apostolic experience with the Apostolic, Orthodox Church of his own time. It is an old insult, to which Orthodox have become accustomed, that they are stuck in the past. The theologian who most dramatically shows that this is not true is St Symeon the New Theologian. One may argue that he witnesses to the reason for Orthodox conservatism: that the deposit of the faith must be kept untampered with, but precisely so that it may be experientially renewed in every age.

Fr. Hilarion foregrounds St Symeon’s sacramentalism, for his was not an individualistic ‘mysticism’ in the modern sense, nor a neo-charismatic anti-sacramentalism. Christians who read this book belonging to present-day forms of ‘charismatic’ revivalism may, however, be struck to find St Symeon speaking of a ‘Second Baptism’. This is very audacious language indeed for a Father of the Orthodox Church, where it is axiomatic that there can be but One Baptism. To understand this in an Orthodox sense, Fr Hilarion argues that St Symeon, whilst never doubting the efficacy of the sacraments, wanted to stress as much as possible that sacramental life involves a personal encounter with Christ, something awesome and life-changing. In the case of Holy Communion, which St Symeon urged should be frequently received, (not a common Orthodox practice everywhere today), there should be nothing routine about it. It should be received with the ‘godly sorrow’ of St Paul (II Cor. 7.10 ), that is, with compunction or  penthos, and tears, the latter being the sign of a high spiritual state – and not something which is normally to be displayed at such a corporate event as the Holy Liturgy. In receiving the Holy Gifts of Communion, St Symeon teaches that the faithful receive ‘a participation in the Divine Nature’. This is, again, very bold, for it was an axiom of Orthodox Theology, from the time of St Basil the Great (4th century), that the Divine Nature is unknowable and that the faithful can only experience God through His uncreated energies. St Symeon’s most shocking passage, and one which editors down the ages have bowdlerised, is the one where he declares that even our genitalia are deifiable. The latter is not so new as might appear. St Paul said something of the same kind (I Cor.12. 23-24), but most translations obscure it. It is to Fr. Hilarion’s great credit that he brings all this out and faces up to it squarely and honestly. His argument is that such boldness is justified, because it is to such intimacy that Christ would raise us, in deification.

The book contains a careful delineation of St Symeon’s relationship with his Spiritual Father, Symeon the Pious or the Studite, because of his place in the Studion Monastery in Constantinople. Fr. Hilarion argues that St Symeon the New Theologian’s audacity was in obedience to his Spiritual Father, both in recounting his personal experiences so nakedly, and in his decision to leave the Studion.This counterbalances the startling elements in St Symeon’s thought and behaviour outlined above, because his actions may now be seen as based upon the ascetic principle of obedience, rather than spiritual self-promotion. Moreover, the author also argues that St Symeon’s extraordinariness was an intensification and concentration of already-existing elements in the Eastern Orthodox Tradition. St Symeon’s favourite theologian was St Gregory the Theologian (Gregory Nazianzus) – significantly also a poet. It is on this point that I would hazard a criticism of Fr Hilarion, because, although he discusses St Symeon’s writings most learnedly with reference to the Greek, he does not distinguish between the Hymns, that is, the poems, and the prose works. St Symeon’s poetry is certainly, like all great poetry, untranslatable. Nevertheless, I would like to have learned more about the poetic tradition in Eastern Orthodox theology from St Gregory Theologian to St Symeon, about its conventions and technique, because propositions must be weighed and assessed, not only according to the meaning and context of the original words, but also in relation to the literary form.

I end with an enquiry concerning St Symeon’s language to describe the experience in this life of God’s energies, especially the Uncreated Light, first manifested to the chosen Apostles on Mount Thabor, but in Orthodox teaching, accessible to all the faithful, though not without great ascetical striving. Fr Hilarion cites a number of texts to show that St Symeon preferred to describe the ‘seeing’ of this Light as a non-corporeal kind of seeing. He argues, dogmatically, that St Symeon always qualifies references to the sight of the eyes with some such phrase as ‘of the heart’, or that St Symeon uses language to denote ineffability. However, the event on Mount Thabor did, according to St Gregory Palamas (14th century), involve a physical seeing, for St Gregory says that the Apostles received the light with their eyes (ophthalmois labein is the phrase used in St Gregory Palamas’ Capita). A reading of the Gospel account could – pace Rudolph Bultmann – be interpreted as Orthodox icons of the Transfiguration do, as a shattering experience, both mental and corporeal, the disciples falling to the ground, covering their eyes blinded by light, and in every respect, both intellectual and physical, utterly confounded. Palamas teaches that, in addition to an intellectual vision of the Uncreated Thaboric Light, bodily vision may also be experienced: the Light is, in other words, quite literally, seen, in the dramatic manner narrated by Motovilov about St Seraphim of Sarov (19th century), and as in the more recent accounts of the corporeal sight of Divine Light experienced by Athonite monks. This is not to suggest that the Uncreated Light is material, but to enquire whether a human being can have an experience of this Light as an embodied human being, through, or in, the senses. Fr. Hilarion declares:

‘Symeon clearly indicates that the term ‘light’ must not be understood in the sense of material light: the term only symbolises the reality that is far beyond any human word.’ [My emphasis]

I agree with Fr Hilarion in the first half of this sentence, but consider that ‘only symbolises’ is a serious theological mistake. In modern philosophical and systematic theology the word ‘symbolises’ can bear many senses, and the book is addressed to a Western audience. Clarification is required at this point lest Fr Hilarion give the impression of a Gnostic mind-body dualism in which the body, and, consequently, the senses, are excluded from deification. I consider it unlikely that this is Fr Hilarion’s meaning. From an Orthodox point of view, it is safe to say that there are some things belonging to the uncreated order which were and can still be experienced humanly, by the body as well as in the mind – not least the Resurrected Christ. Fr Hilarion might have avoided this blunder, had he given more attention to the relation between St Symeon and St Gregory Palamas. If he is right that St Symeon belongs to the Orthodox Tradition in the particular sense which constitutes the argument of the book, then he must address St Gregory Palamas’ anthropology, because St Gregory belongs to that trajectory of experience which Fr Hilarion defines as ‘Tradition’. According to the theological anthropology of St Gregory Palamas, however, the human person is deified as a psycho-somatic unity, by means of prayer  - the Jesus Prayer – a prayer both mental and physical, in which the body is hallowed in a unity with the human intellect. According to Fr Hilarion, Symeon the New Theologian appears to exclude a corporeal vision of the Uncreated Light, which St Gregory Palamas, writing some three hundred years later, allows. Thus two great Byzantine Fathers seem to be in conflict. This dislocates the narrative by which Fr Hilarion attempts to relate St Symeon to the whole Orthodox Tradition. Indeed, the phrase ‘only symbolic’ makes St Symeon conflict with himself, - with his very teaching about the tangible reality of Christian experience that is the theme of the book. I do not want to quibble over a word, nor to introduce philosophical categories unnecessarily into historical scholarship. However, as I believe that Fr Hilarion would be the first to acknowledge, Orthodox Theology is not a vague metaphorical mysticism, but demands accuracy and refinement of nuance, akribeia to the smallest detail. Theological language in Orthodoxy is a map of the way, through struggle, to salvation: the map must be an accurate guide. It is Fr Hilarion’s effectiveness as a scholar at other points in the book which makes his error leap off the page. Since this book deserves republication in numerous impressions and editions, I await Fr Hilarion’s response to this important point. It is reasonable to demand exactness in all respects from a scholar and theologian who possesses such talents.

Stephen Thomas.  October 2001.

Added by Review Editor:

Until he took early retirement, Dr Stephen Thomas taught Patristic Theology at the University College of Christ, Canterbury, England, and before that at the University of Southampton.  He is a member of SS Peter and Paul Russian Orthodox Eucharistic Community, Portsmouth, UK.