Hieromonk Alexander (Golitzin). ‘St Symeon the New Theologian and Orthodox Tradition’ by Hilarion Alfeyev

Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev

Oxford/NY: Oxford University Press, 2000. Pp. xiv+338.

This is the doctoral dissertation of a young Russian theologian working under the direction of Bishop Kallistos Ware at Oxford. Father Hilarion Alfeyev is a star of the first magnitude in the rising constellation of Orthodox scholars who have published in recent years, and his is one of a growing number of dissertations in patristics and Early Church published by Oxford University in the recently inaugurated series, Oxford Early Christian Studies, under the general editorship of Andrew Louth and Gillian Clark. The aim of this book is to present St Symeon the New Theologian (+1022) as fully representative of the Orthodox tradition: learned in the scriptures, formed by the liturgy, informed by monastic literature and the fathers, and the faithful disciple of an illumined elder, St Symeon the Pious, both receiving from the latter and handing on his teaching to his own disciples, notably to St. Nicetas Stethatos (+ ca. 1090).

The book proceeds topically, covering Symeon’s ties to the monastic tradition of the Stoudios, his reading in the scriptures, liturgical texts, and dependence on the elder Symeon in Part I, “The Historical, Monastic, Liturgical, and Scriptural Background of St Symeon the New Theologian” (9-123). Part II, “St Symeon the New Theologian and the Patristic Tradition of the Orthdox Church” (125-270), moves to detailed consideration of Symeon’s theology against its patristic background under the headings: “Cycle of Daily Readings” (127-42), arguing that Symeon’s schedule provided him with ample reading time, and pointing to the likely materials for his study, including scriptures, hagiography, and patristic texts -- either complete, or in florilegia; “Triadological Polemic” (143-54), particularly with Hymn 21 and the Theological Discourses in mind, and against the background of medieval Byzantine debates; “St Symeon’s Theology based on the Church Fathers” (155-74), with special attention to apophatic theology, the names of God, and the divine light; “The Patristic Basis of St Symeon’s Anthropology” (175-90), attending to Symeon’s understanding of the human being as imago trinitatis, and to his great emphasis on theosis; “The Patristic Background of St Symeon’s Ecclesiology” (191-207), dealing particularly with its cosmic thrust, together with questions of hierarchy and authority; and finally an omnibus chapter, “Some Aspects of St Symeon’s Asceticism and Mysticism with Patristic Parallels (208-70), where Alfeyev returns with especial attention to questions bearing on the visio dei luminis and Symeon’s traditional vocabulary of mystical experience, including light, ecstasy, and -- once more -- deification. The “Conclusions” (272-87) rehearse the book’s findings, and then devote a few interesting pages to Symeon’s “afterlife,” noting particularly his importance for subsequent movements of monastic renewal throughout the Orthodox world, and lending rare attention to his popularity in Russia from as early as the fourteenth century.

There were a number of things which I found new and very helpful in this book, and for which I am grateful to its author. These were, first, Alfeyev’s emphasis on Symeon’s Studite background, received through the elder Symeon, together with his dependence on the latter as personal guide whose own main themes he would go on to echo at greater length (102-23). Second, there is Alfeyev’s related clarification of something that has always struck me, and a number of other commentators, as odd or even silly: Nicetas Stethatos’ recourse, in his Life of Symeon, to the language of iconoclasm in order to describe the attack of Stephen of Nicomedia on the New Theologian’s veneration of his elder. Obviously, one thinks, Stephen was not an iconoclast in the eighth-century sense, and Symeon was surely being a little bold in instituting a cult of his master, so what could Nicetas’ appeal to a long-ago controversy be other than pious overkill? Not so, replies Alefeyev, for what was what at stake in the contest between the New Theologian and the Chancellor was the notion of the saint as both living icon and present possibility: “Only the accent in the argument had been removed, from the veneration of [painted] icons to the veneration of the [contemporary] saints” (140). This is indeed a kind of summation of Symeon’s entire message, as expressed later in the book, “that the foundation stone of tradition is nothing else but the direct relationship between God and the human person,” and thus that “true tradition is unimaginable unless mystical experience stands behind it” (224). It is the entire human being, soul and body, who is called to be the “true icon of the Creator” (184) or, as Nicetas refers to his master, “embodied theosis” (cited in 261) -- a phrase to which I shall be returning below. For now, let me point, third, to Alfeyev’s singling out of the importance of the hagiographic tradition for Symeon, surely a key, particularly in light of his own experience with Symeon the Elder, to his understanding of Christianity as the living and “golden chain” of the saints, as the flame of the Spirit passed on without break from one generation to another. Fourth and last, I would underline Alfeyev’s fascinating, if sadly too brief, remarks on St Symeon’s presence, and steady popularity, in Russia: “from that time [i.e., the fourteenth century] Symeon became one of the most widely read Byzantine authors in Russia,” and that that part of the New Theologian’s works which appear most frequently in the Slavonic manuscripts are his hymns, “his most mystical works” (278).

This is simply the best introduction to Symeon presently extant in English, and it rivals the best I know of available in any other language. Serious students of the New Theologian will be obliged to begin here. What criticisms I do have to offer -- and other scholars, such as John McGuckin (with whom Alfeyev quarrels on occasion), will doubtless find different points of disagreement -- are very mild and lie, moreover, in the area of my own past and present research. To keep things brief, let me touch here on two Church fathers and two related issues, one general and one specific. The fathers are Dionysius Areopagites and the anonymous author of the Macarian Homilies; the general issue is the matter of divine light and transfiguration in view of ancient Jewish traditions; and the one specific quibble deals with St. Symeon’s handling of Ephesians 4:13, particularly the phrase, “the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.”

The matter of Dionysius’ presence or non-presence in Symeon has been an issue of mild and peripheral scholarly debate for over a century. In reading Alfeyev’s handling of this question, I was reminded of something Andrew Louth wrote a few years ago on the Dionysian presence in the Iconoclastic Controversy: “[Dionysius] remains very much in the background. But he always seems to be in the background.” The same appears to me to be case here, both in Symeon himself and in Alfeyev’s analysis. What is quite striking, though, is the latter’s ambivalence toward this quiet but real ubiquity. On the one hand, Alfeyev acknowledges the Dionysian presence, on occasion even forcefully, for example on apophaticism, where Symeon is “very close” to Dionysius (167 and 270), or on the divine names (161 ff.), or on theosis (184 and 258), or on Symeon’s reading of the symbolism of the Church’s worship in Ethical Discourse 14 (98), or in his presentation of mystical ecstasy (242-3). On the other hand, and much more emphatically, we are informed that Symeon differed with Dionysius on the Eucharist (95); that the Dionysian presence in his works cannot be proven (129); that Symeon’s understanding of hierarchy is “foreign” to the Dionysian (198); that the New Theologian had nothing to do with the famous (and I think hugely overblown) Dionysian mysticism of “darkness” (173 and 235); and finally that, for whatever reason, Nicetas Stethatos, Symeon’s disciple, biographer, and editor, was oddly “more dependent on Dionysius than on Symeon, in spite of his high veneration” for the latter (275, n.9). Some years ago I wrote an article for this Quarterly pointing out at some considerable length the reasons why Dionysius, Symeon, and Nicetas should be considered together, why it is not at all strange that we should find a pronounced and explicit Dionysian presence in Stethatos, and indeed why the latter was in this regard, as in so many other ways, the faithful disciple of his elder. Now, Alfeyev cites that article (129, n.18), but certainly does not reply to it. He instead carries on repeating the same opinions that the article was intended to address. Might he be trying to protect his pet from too close an association with my pet? The Areopagite has, after all, a kind of dubious quality for many modern Orthodox scholars, who take the generally prevailing disdain for Dionysius -- Neoplatonist fraud, doubtful Christian, etc., etc. -- in modern patristic studies more seriously than they should. Poor Dionysius! and poor Nicetas! Yet, even given Alfeyev’s reluctance, the number of appearances that the Areopagite makes in this monograph should by themselves provide us with some hint that Nicetas was not jilting his master, but rather that he was accentuating the prominence of a Church father who was of considerable importance for Symeon as well.

Macarius, to accord this anonymous saint the name he was posthumously awarded, is another figure whom I think might have been used to better advantage, though this would have meant stepping a little bit outside the scholarly mainstream, or, since the Macarian echoes (though not precise quotations) have long been noted in Symeon, taking a stand. It is at once a virtue and a defect of Alfeyev’s book that it is scrupulously careful, even cautious, reflecting in those characteristics the typical marks of a doctoral dissertation. While it is true that Macarius is cited a number of times as one of Symeon’s possible sources, e.g., on the divine light (229-30), ecstasy (244), dispassion (251), and theosis (259), I think that a bit more might have been said, particularly on the divine light. Arguably more frequently and more emphatically than any other of St Symeon’s predecessors, Macarius is explicit on the subject of the light as divine and uncreated, and so anticipates Symeon. Alfeyev cites in particular from the first, fourth, and eighth homilies in the more familiar Collection II, The Fifty Spiritual Homilies, but even more striking passages were available to him in Collection I, edited thirty years ago for GCS by H. Berthold, where, especially in homilies seventeen and fifty-eight, Macarius takes express issue with the suggestion that the light of illumination is a product of the intellect, a noema. It is not, he replies, but is rather a “divine light [phos theion] shining essentially and substantially [en ousia kai hypostasei] in the hearts of the faithful,” a “divine and essential [ousiodes] light” (17.1.3), or, in the fifty-eighth homily, “a substantial [hypostatikon] light” (58.2.1). Given the frequency of ousiodes and even of hypostatikon in reference to the light that we find in Symeon, together with his own similar efforts to defend his position with regard to it, these are surely texts of the first importance. The more I read in both fathers, the more I am persuaded that the New Theologian must have had some direct acquaintance with Macarius. There are still other parallels which are just as striking as the ones I cited, and to which I hope one day to devote further study.

Turning to my two other items, here I really cannot fault Fr. Hilarion at all. There are not many scholars who are looking much into the Second Temple era for the Jewish roots of Christian doctrine and mysticism, and next to none who are seeking to apply that research to the doctrine of deification and the mysticism of light which are so prominent in -- indeed, arguably at the very core of -- Orthdodox tradition. Take, for example, the oft-repeated and (I think) originally Protestant assertion that the scriptures place primary emphasis on the hearing of God’s word, while primacy accorded to vision is a very Greek (i.e., pagan) approach. Yet, while this may be true of certain books in the Bible, such as Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomistic histories, it is not at all the case in others, for example the “Priestly” source of the Penteteuch, the Psalms, or a number of the prophets. “My eyes have seen the King,” says Isaiah, and Ezekiel likewise is shown God’s chariot throne. One Jewish scholar has written of “the overwhelmingly visual character of early [i.e., biblical and immediately post-biblical] Jewish mystic experience...The revelations in the great mystic passages of the Bible are almost entirely visual” (M. S. Cohen, The Shi’ur Qomah: Liturgy and Theurgy in pre-Kabbalistic Jewish Mysticism, 105). Visions abound in the large body of intertestamental literature which was preserved almost exclusively by Christians, many -- and from the fourth century on, perhaps most -- of whom were monks.

This strikes me as having direct relevance to Symeon’s predecessors, and even perhaps to the New Theologian himself. Hence, for example, the latter’s not infrequent references to the Godseers of both the Old and New Testaments, especially to Paul, and the scriptural passages he so frequently cites: Mt 5:8, Jn 14:21 and 23, Acts 7:55-56, 1 Cor 2:9, 2 Cor 3:18 and 4:6, Phil 3:21, and Eph 4:13. These are texts which also appear with surpassing frequency in Macarius, and less often (though regularly) elsewhere. Although he is not particularly to be blamed for it, since so very few Orthodox scholars are much different, I cannot help feeling a certain frustration when I then find, yet again, Alfeyev (215) deploying Vladimir Lossky’s Vision of God for the latter’s embryonic exploration of the scriptural basis for patristic teaching on the visio dei. We can do more, I think, than just the two paragraphs which appear in Alfeyev’s book, and we now have much better resources at our disposal for the examination of our scriptural roots than were available to Lossky and his generation. Again, this not particularly Alfeyev’s fault, but I still think it regrettable that we Orthodox should be so shy of our inheritance in the “Israel of God.” Perhaps it is the daunting (and largely false) impression which biblical criticism has given us over the past two hundred years that it alone has the key to the scriptures, and that that key will not fit our lock. Here I think of Andrew Louth’s otherwise valuable book, The Origins of Christian Mysticism, which begins its considerations with Plato, Philo, and Plotinus, and only then, with Origen, moves on to its analysis of Christian writers. Clement is absent, as are any of the New Testament apocrypha with their rich trove of mystical doctrine (albeit sometimes of a distorted kind), as is Ignatius, as is Irenaeus, and as is the entire body of the Bible. The impression given, which I am sure Professor Louth did not intend, is that virtually our entire tradition derives less from “Jerusalem,” to borrow Tertullian’s categories, than from “Athens.” This is not so, and it is surely time for us to go “beyond” a Lossky or a Florovsky, grateful as we must be to them both and continuing to stand on their shoulders, to trace the origins of the great trajectories we find in patristic literature (and in both liturgy and hagiography) back to their sources in the revelation delivered “once for all” to Israel. As our Lord reminded the Samaritan woman, “Salvation is of the Jews.”

A particular instance of these traditions turns up in Ephesians 4:13, which appears with considerable frequency in Symeon, as it does in Macarius. Two of these appearances are taken up in some detail by Alfeyev. Early on (65), he addresses Symeon’s use of the verse in the latter’s fourth Ethical Discourse, where the new Theologian develops an allegory of the “body of the virtues” of the perfected Christian, and then later on (194) in Ethical Discourse I.6 where Symeon applies the verse to the whole body of Christ’s Church, which Alfeyev reads as an instance, first, of the New Theologian’s emphasis on the Church as “body of Christ,” and, second, as in continuity with the saint’s vision of the Church as the new creation, or “new world.” I have no quarrel with the latter, but I do take issue with Alfeyev’s earlier characterization of the “body of the virtues” as an allegory which “to our taste...may seem unnatural and unattractive, but to the Byzantine ear...sounded rather pleasant and even poetic” (65). I think Symeon is doing a great deal more here than indulging in rhetorical confections. First of all, he is elaborating on an important theme to which he comes back with some frequency, and in which he echoes earlier ascetical writers. Second, he is also playing off of a tradition which is at once of great antiquity, and of singular relevance to the notion of the Christian saint as “embodied theosis,” to recall the felicitous phrase from Nicetas that I quoted earlier.

The first point I have in mind, the one to which Symeon (and more so, Nicetas) comes back a number of times, perhaps most clearly in his fourteenth Ethical Discourse, is that of the Church as macrocosm and the Christian as microcosm, such that the Church’s liturgy and very existence comprises at once the icon and enabling power of the sanctified believer. Rather each, the Church and the Christian, is the image of the other, with both turning round and manifesting the divine Presence -- Christ -- upon the mutually reflecting altars of the sanctuary and the purified heart. As I have argued elsewhere, at length and several times, we find this relationship at least adumbrated in the New Testament (especially in the triple likeness of the temple: Christ as temple, the Church as temple, the Christian as temple), and then developed expressly in such fourth-century Syrian writers as Aphrahat, Ephrem, the Liber Graduum, and, perhaps most tellingly for St Symeon, in the Macarian Homlies. I have also argued that it is perhaps the key to reading the Dionysian hierarchies, while its presence thereafter, in such authors as Maximus the Confessor, Gregory of Sinai, and Nicholas Cabasilas, is widely acknowledged in the scholarly literature (which generally tends to award all the credit -- or blame -- to Maximus).

Regarding the second item, “embodied theosis,” I am thinking particularly of a number of Jewish and Christian scholars working in the train of the late Gershom Scholem, perhaps especially Gilles Quispel, Christopher Rowland, Jarl Fossum, Alan Segal, Michael Fishbane, Christopher Morray-Jones, Alon Goshen Gottstein, April DeConick, and, most recently, Crispin Fletcher-Louis and Charles Gieschen. Scholem, Fishbane, and Segal, most notably, have underlined Ephesians 4:13 as a likely, first-century play on a theme that would later emerge prominently in the rabbinic-era, mystical literature of the hekhalot, the heavenly palaces or temples, which promised its adepts a mystical ascent to heaven in order to see the enthroned form of God. A subset of that literature was specifically devoted to praising the “measure of the stature” -- shi’ur qomah -- of the divine body of the Glory beheld on the heavenly throne. Paul’s metron tes helikias in Eph 4:13 is the precise Greek equivalent of the Hebrew shi’ur qomah, and, if we accept that identification, his message in context would thus be that the Christian is to grow into the human form of God’s Glory, Christ, an idea which the Apostle echoes in Phil 3:21, where we are called to “become conformed to the body of his [Christ’s] glory.” Here, I think, we find essential, New Testament (and perhaps pre-Christian, Jewish) roots for that “embodied theosis” which Nicetas finds in his master, and which Symeon himself is getting at in his “allegory” of the “body of the virtues.” He is therefore not engaging in rhetorical flights of fancy, but in theology, and in very deeply rooted and serious theology at that. What is the saint, after all, if not the presence among us of God in his Christ, the revelation of the Presence in a human form, the radiance of the Glory shining from a human face (recall St Seraphim’s conversation with Nicholas Motovilov!) -- in short, a theophany?

I have not meant to be overly critical here, and I do hope that Alfeyev and the readers of this review will forgive me for taking this occasion to climb onto my favorite hobby-horses and go off for a ride, even if a (relatively) brief one. I also hope that as many as wish to acquaint themselves with St Symeon will avail themselves of this book. For placing the New Theologian in his patristic and generally traditional context, it is unmatched, and it will surely retain that status for many years to come.

Alexander (Golitzin)