Article 1: On Spirits (Part 2)

“The essence of God,” says Saint John Chrysostom, “inexpressibly (immeasurably) surpasses men, angels, archangels, and—to say without exception—every understanding of created beings, and cannot be comprehended by them.60 — Not that any man has seen the Father, except He who is from God; He has seen the Father.61 By ‹seeing› He here (the Lord) means knowledge: and He did not say simply ‹No one has seen the Father› and then fall silent, lest one should think He said this only of men, but wishing to show that neither angels, nor archangels, nor the Highest Powers can see Him, He made this plain by the addition: for having said: not that any man has seen the Father, He added: except He who is from God, He has seen the Father.62 — The King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, dwelling in unapproachable light.63 Stop here a moment and ask the heretic what is meant by dwelling in unapproachable light. I wish you to give due weight to the precision of Paul (the Apostle): he did not say the light is unapproachable, but dwelling in unapproachable light, so that you might learn that if the very house is unapproachable, how much more so God, who dwells in that house. However, he said this not so that you should think God has a house and a place, but that you might ever more fully understand the incomprehensibility of God. He did not say ‹dwelling in incomprehensible light›, but in ‹unapproachable›—which is far beyond incomprehensible. Incomprehensible is that which cannot be comprehended by inquiry and study; unapproachable is that which by its very nature cannot even be subjected to inquiry, to which no one can draw near. What will you say to this? No doubt you will say: unapproachable to men, but not to angels and not to the Highest Powers. So that you may understand that He is unapproachable not only to men but also to the Highest Powers, hear what Isaiah says (and by naming Isaiah I declare the determination of the Holy Spirit: for the prophet speaks by the action of the Holy Spirit within him): In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting upon a high and exalted throne, and the whole house was full of His glory. And the Seraphim stood around Him; each had six wings and the other six wings: and with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet.64 Tell me, I ask, why do they cover their faces and cover their feet with wings? why, I say, if not because they cannot bear the brilliance and rays proceeding from the throne? Although they did not see the light itself untempered, nor the pure Essence itself, yet what they did see was adapted to them. What does this adaptation consist of? In the fact that God appears not as He is, but tempers Himself according to the capacity of the one who is to see Him, and accommodates Himself to the weakness of the beholder. And that what was taking place occurred by way of adaptation is clear from the very words of Scripture. The prophet says: I saw the Lord sitting upon a high and exalted throne. God does not sit upon a throne, for such a position pertains to a body; God cannot be contained upon a throne, for the Godhead is not limited by place. And even thus diminished, they could not endure it while standing near Him: the Seraphim stood around Him. The very reason they could not see was that they stood near. Near, I say—not in place: by this the Holy Spirit wished to declare that the Powers are closer to this Being than we are, yet they could not see the Being itself. Therefore, when you hear the prophet say: I saw the Lord, do not suppose that he saw the divine essence. He saw a form accommodated to himself, and he did not see even so clearly as the Highest Powers see: he could not see as much as a Cherub can see.”65 Saint Athanasius the Great, in answer to the question of Antioch: “In what manner do the prophets appear often to have seen God?” — replied: “After all the prophets, after the coming of Christ, the apostle, evangelist, and theologian John declared: No one has ever seen God.66 To give full credibility to these words, as most important and fundamental, he added: The only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.67 Also the holy Apostle Paul says: Whom no man has seen or can see.68 Therefore no human being could see the divine essence as it truly is; but God, accommodating Himself to human weakness, assumed a form corresponding to that weakness and appeared to the prophets. It is known that He, being incorporeal, often appeared to them in the form of a man clothed in flesh. From this it is clear that they saw not the essence of God, but His glory.”69 Such an accommodation of God in His communion with rational creatures is described with particular clarity by the Venerable Macarius the Great: “He Who Is (that is, God), in whatever manner He wills and with whatever He wills, by His inexpressible goodness and inconceivable kindness, transforms, diminishes, and likens Himself to holy and worthy faithful souls, enfleshening Himself according to their measure of receptivity—so that the Invisible might be seen by them, and the Intangible, in proportion to the nature of the soul’s subtlety, might be touched, and that souls might perceive His goodness and sweetness and taste in very experience the light of inexpressible delight. When He wills, He becomes fire, burning up every unworthy passion that has entered into us. For it is written: our God is a consuming fire.70 When He wills, He becomes inexpressible and inexplicable repose, that the soul may repose in the repose of the Godhead. When He wills, He becomes joy and peace, and warms and shields the soul.71 Thus, as He Himself was pleased, He appeared to each of the holy Fathers: differently to Abraham, differently to Isaac, differently to Jacob, differently to Noah, Daniel, David, Solomon, Isaiah, and each of the holy prophets; differently to Elijah, differently to Moses. As He Himself was pleased, He appeared to each of the saints—to give them rest, to save them, and to lead them into the knowledge of God. For all that He wills is easy for Him, and, diminishing Himself as He pleases, He enfleshed and forms Himself, becoming visible to those who love Him—by great and inexpressible love, appearing to the worthy in the unapproachable glory of light, according to the strength of each.”72 Such an accommodation of God for communion with rational creatures is necessary not only for human souls but also for the angels—by the unanimous teaching of Saint John Chrysostom and the Venerable Macarius the Great—because God, differing from all creatures by an infinite difference and surpassing them by an infinite superiority, cannot in His own essence be either seen, or comprehended, or approached by them in any manner whatsoever. Explaining this, the Venerable Macarius says: “The unlimited, unapproachable, and uncreated God, by His unlimited and inconceivable goodness, enfleshened Himself and, so to speak, as it were diminished in His unapproachable glory—in order that He might enter into union with His visible creatures, I mean with the souls of the saints and with the angels, and that they might be able to be partakers of the life of the Godhead. But every creature—both angel, and soul, and demon—by its own nature is a body: for although they are subtle compared to gross bodies, yet in their very substance, by their distinctive features and form, in correspondence with the subtlety of their nature, they are subtle bodies, while our body in its very substance is gross.”73 This exposition is most natural.

If created spirits are limited, then both their essence and their properties are limited. If their essence and properties are limited, then their spirituality also is limited. If their spirituality is limited, they must of necessity possess a certain degree of materiality proper to their nature. On the contrary, if we attribute to them perfect immateriality—that is, unlimited spirituality—then we must of necessity also attribute to them unlimitedness of essence, since only an unlimited being can and must have unlimited properties. The creation of creatures in diverse forms and various degrees, and their endowment with manifold properties, the Venerable Macarius most justly attributes to the omnipotence of the Creator and to His will, for which nothing is either difficult or impossible. “God willed,” says the Venerable, “and without effort created from nothing coarse and hard substances—for example, mountains, trees (see what solidity their nature has!); then intermediate ones—waters, and from the waters He commanded birds to be born; and still more subtle ones: fire and winds, and even those which on account of their subtlety are invisible to the bodily eye.”74 Contemporary science in no way contradicts this teaching; on the contrary, it has arrived at a wondrous agreement with it. Obsolete knowledge, acknowledged as entirely erroneous, contradicted it.

From the extracts we have cited from the holy Fathers—belonging not only to the Eastern Church but to the whole Universal Church—it is evident what a very great, what an infinite difference the Fathers of the Church, grounding themselves on Holy Scripture, acknowledged, confessed, and proclaimed between the essence of God and the essence of an angel, a demon, and a soul; although both Holy Scripture and the holy Fathers generally call both God a Spirit, and angels, demons, and human souls spirits. By this is expressed only that, just as God, so too angels, demons, and souls are invisible to our bodily eyes. They are called incorporeal, immaterial for the reason that they do not possess our flesh, our gross materiality, and are not subject to our senses—whereby they are distinguished from the class of material objects that are subject to our senses. They are called rational, noetic, on account of their chief distinguishing property—the mind, or spirit—the capacity not only to think but also to perceive spiritually. For the same reason man is also called a rational being; he is called verbal (endowed with the word), on account of the verbal faculty—the power of the word, or spirit—which the human soul possesses and which the earthly animals, called irrational, do not possess, though they too have life, instinct, and their own sensations, which is called their soul even in Holy Scripture. So it has always been understood and expressed in human society; so it is understood and expressed today as well. In the common mode of expression, which scholars too employ outside their studies, what is subject to our senses is called material, and what is not subject to them is called spiritual, immaterial. This common mode of expression is employed most of all by Holy Scripture and the holy Fathers, since the purpose of both Scripture and the Fathers was that the word proclaimed by them should be easily comprehensible to all human beings—and by no means that it should be the exclusive property of scholars, inaccessible to the masses. But in Scripture and in the Fathers precision of meaning and significance is always preserved and can always be determined.

The manner in which ancient Christians understood the nature of spirits and the word “spirit” is explained with most satisfying precision by Saint Cyril of Jerusalem. This manner of understanding is grounded entirely on the Word of God. “Under the common name of spirit,” says the Archbishop of the Holy City, “many and various things are spoken of in Holy Scripture. There is danger lest someone confuse one meaning with another, not knowing to what kind of spirit what is written should be applied: therefore it has now proved essentially necessary to mark with sure signs that Spirit which Scripture calls the Holy Spirit. Aaron is called a christ,75 David76 and Saul77 are also called christs; but there is one true Christ. So too the name of spirit is applied to various things: hence it is necessary to see who precisely is called the Holy Spirit. Many things bear the name of spirit. An angel is called a spirit; a soul is called a spirit; this blowing wind is called a spirit; a great power is called a spirit; an impure deed is called a spirit; the adversary demon is called a spirit. Beware then, and when you hear this word, do not, on account of the similarity of names, accept one thing in place of another. Of our soul Scripture says: His spirit shall go forth, and he shall return to his earth.78 Again it says of the soul: He who forms the spirit of man within him.79 Of angels it says in the psalms: He makes His angels spirits, and His servants a flame of fire.80 Of wind it says: With a stormy wind You shall break the ships of Tarshish.81 And: As a tree in the forest is shaken by the wind (by spirit, ὑπὸ πνεύματος).82 And: Fire, hail, snow, ice, and a stormy spirit.83 Concerning the Holy Teaching the Lord Himself said: The words which I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life84 — that is, these words are spiritual.

The name “spirit” also denotes sin, as we said above, but in a different and contrary sense—for example, when it is said: they went astray by a spirit of fornication.85 An unclean spirit, a demon, is also called a spirit—but with the addition “unclean.” To each word “spirit” is joined a word that characterizes the quality of the spirit. If Scripture speaks of the human soul as “spirit”, it adds “of man”; if it speaks of wind, it says “spirit of storm”; if it denotes sin, it says “spirit of fornication”; if it means a demon, it calls it an unclean spirit—so that we might know precisely what subject is under discussion, and so that you might not think this is said of the Holy Spirit. God forbid! The name “spirit” is a neutral and common one, and everything whatsoever that does not possess a dense and compact body is, by universal usage, called a spirit. And therefore demons, as not possessing such bodies, are called spirits.”86

“No creature is equal in honor to the Holy Spirit. All the ranks of angels, all the heavenly host, united together, cannot be compared or likened to the Holy Spirit.”87

Having thus defined the sense in which created spirits are called spirits in Scripture and in common usage among Christians, having stated that there is nothing in common, no comparison whatsoever, between created spirits and the Spirit-God, Cyril calls spirits incorporeal and bodiless in the commonly accepted sense. In his “Homily on the Meeting of the Lord” he says: “He is God the Word, who brought all things into being from nothing by a single word. He is the Daystar, who before the daystar created the incorporeal Powers of the heavens—the bodiless, invisible hosts and orders.”88 Concerning the nature of the devil Saint Cyril says that “he was created good, and by his own will made himself into the devil, receiving his name from his manner of activity. Having been first an Archangel, he received the name of devil from slander; having been a good servant of God, he became and was called Satan, because Satan means ‹adversary›.”89

In like manner the Venerable Macarius the Great—having mentioned only in Homily 4 that an angel, a demon, and the human soul, despite the subtlety of their substance compared with gross bodies, possess a materiality proper to themselves—in the rest of his Homilies, like the rest of the Fathers, calls spirits incorporeal beings. He begins Homily 16 thus: “All rational beings—angels, I mean, and souls and demons—were created by the Creator as simple and without any admixture.”90 In precisely the same manner are expressed all the Fathers who have said directly of spirits that they possess light, gaseous bodies—such as Basil the Great, Athanasius the Great, and others; they call spirits, in accordance with the common usage and understanding of Scripture and of humanity, as simple, incorporeal, invisible beings. Those among the holy Fathers who did not explicitly state that spirits possess a materiality proper to them—such as, for example, Saint John Chrysostom—described spirits in such a manner that from this description the gaseous materiality of spirits becomes entirely evident. It is precisely this materiality that all the ancients call simple, incorporeal, spirit.

The hypothesis of the perfect immateriality of created spirits—subject neither to time nor space—the hypothesis that attributes to created spirits the same essence as God, appeared in the seventeenth century. It was borrowed by Descartes, as we have already said, in significant degree from the ancient pagan philosophers. How could the Fathers have been followers of that hypothesis, which was adopted by the Western heretics after them? And if it had appeared even in their time, how could they have agreed with it—when it blasphemously attributes the identical essence to created spirits as to the Spirit-God; when all the Fathers proclaimed the infinite, immeasurable difference between the essence of God and the essence of spirits; when they repudiated a similar teaching of the Platonists? The error of the Westerners consists precisely in this: they strive to impose upon the Fathers Descartes’s understanding of the immateriality and incorporeality of spirits, while concealing that understanding of this immateriality and incorporeality which the Fathers actually held—which is found entirely in Scripture and is proclaimed by Scripture. By cunningly foisting Descartes’s hypothesis upon the Fathers, the Westerners seek to put the Fathers into conflict with one another and into mutual contradiction. There is no conflict, nor was there ever any contradiction among the Fathers. All of them proclaim the incorporeality of spirits in the sense of Holy Scripture, which calls spirits incorporeal in comparison with human beings. Some of the Fathers, as we have already said, while calling spirits incorporeal, mentioned that they possess subtle bodies proper to them; others, while calling them incorporeal, did not mention that they possess bodies, but described them in such a manner that from the description the materiality of spirits proper to them is entirely evident. It is precisely these latter Fathers that the Westerners seek to put into conflict with the former—slandering the latter as if they adhered to the hypothesis of Descartes, unknown to them, or to the hypothesis of Plato, which the Fathers repudiated. The Fathers could not have accepted the Cartesian hypothesis even if they had known it. They would have consigned it to anathema as a blasphemous teaching that places God in the same category as creatures—as a teaching that leads to the rejection of the most important events related by Scripture. How could the Archangel Gabriel, appearing to Zachariah, have stood at the right of the altar of incense91 if he had no relation whatsoever to space? How could the Archangel first enter to the Mother of God, then announce the glad tidings to Her, and finally depart from Her—if he possessed no movement and no relation to time and space? And how could the angels first appear to the shepherds of Bethlehem, then sing the doxology to God made man, and finally depart to heaven, as the Gospel narrates,92 if they had no relation to space, time, and materiality? The hypothesis of Descartes leads to the rejection of Scripture—to unbelief. The rationalism of Descartes has in fact accomplished this: it widely spread godlessness, deceiving many superficial minds with its outward brilliance. Now it has fallen, as void of sense; only ignorance can believe in it, only outmoded knowledge unacquainted with science in its present development—and only at the cost of rejecting the proclamation of Scripture and the Tradition of the Orthodox Church.

The teaching of Descartes concerning the perfect immateriality of spirits—their independence from time and space—when tested by science, proves equivalent to the denial of the existence of spirits. By presenting them as equal to God in essence, it renders their existence impossible. An infinite being can only be one. Even if one were to admit two such beings—and not a multitude—these two beings would already have to be designated by number, as possessing limitation through one another, and would lose the property of the infinite. But that which is unlimited in properties must necessarily also be unlimited in essence. Such is the irrefutable conclusion of positive science—mathematics—against which there is no objection. Two magnitudes do not depend on space: the infinite (∞) and the point (•). To be independent of space, one must be one or the other. What are the infinite and the point? They are ideas.

The infinite is an idea that arose in the human mind from the progressive increase of numbers—an idea of a magnitude that surpasses all numbers. For this reason the infinite is an indeterminate magnitude, incomprehensible to man both in itself and in its properties. But the very law of numbers has furnished many true and remarkable concepts concerning this magnitude. We have not remained with a merely barren idea! We have understood that the infinite, in order to remain infinite, must not be subject to any change, whether by the addition of any numbers to it or the subtraction of any numbers from it. The difference between the infinite and all numbers is infinite. For this reason all numbers are equal to one another before the infinite. Compared outside their relation to the infinite, they have a definite difference among themselves. Again—what is a magnitude? It is an idea that arose in our mind from the comparison of objects with ourselves. A concept entirely relative—and not essential! By the law of mathematics—which, not finding in human speech sufficient means to represent its objects and concepts by expressions adequate to the requirements of its process, represents them by signs—God is depicted with full precision as the infinite. On the basis of the laws of mathematics, God must be acknowledged as a being that surpasses every definition, having nothing in common with beings that can and must be represented by numbers, such as spirits. Even by this magnificent law: if God is a being, then all created beings without exception endowed with life are not beings but something else. If they are beings, then God is something Other—infinitely higher than what is here called a being.93 Such is the difference between God and a rational creature! Such are the concepts furnished by science in its present state of development. Mathematics, working with signs and representing both objects and their properties by signs, arrives by the most reliable path at knowledge that is unattainable by other means and often inexpressible in words. To illustrate this by an example comprehensible to everyone, let us point to the practice adopted in educational institutions of representing by numbers the abilities of students, their diligence and progress in the sciences. Why so? Because numbers express these abstract concepts with such precision and definiteness as words are wholly inadequate to provide.

In contrast to the idea of the infinite, the idea of the point or zero was formed by the progressive decrease of numbers. A point is a magnitude having no extension in length, width, height, or depth. It is evident that in nature there is neither a point nor the path or trace of a point—the line. In nature only bodies exist—that is, objects possessing three dimensions. Everything that is in space, everything bounded by space or place, is a body. The geometric point and line are bodies that approximately represent a point and a line. They satisfy the mechanism of science, but they do not express its precise understanding. This has been demonstrated with full positivity and decisiveness. Remove space from any object, and you—being unable to raise the limited to the infinite—are of necessity compelled to reduce it to a point or zero, that is, to deny the existence of the object. Thus with full clarity is demonstrated the perfect absurdity of the entirely abstract concept of spirits that many have formed for themselves—clearly those who have not studied the subject with the thoroughness accessible only to a Christian ascetic. An abstract concept of spirits is a denial of the existence of spirits.

Descartes aroused the admiration of many of his contemporaries by his learning. Indeed: he made a certain progress in science; but this progress is negligible compared with the progress accomplished after the recent emergence of the new science of chemistry. It produced an unbelievable transformation in humanity’s concepts of matter, and much knowledge before which humanity had reverenced for millennia has been laid in the archive of the history of science as having been shown to be entirely false. The contemporaries of Descartes repeated with enthusiasm his saying: “Give me motion, and I will make myself a creator!” He could have proclaimed such a boast only with the contemporary understanding of matter, of the four elements, of the simple and the compound, and so on. The creation of anything from nothing belongs to the infinite alone: it produces number by transforming zero into it through the infinite’s action upon zero.94

But let us suppose that motion was granted to Descartes. How would he proceed to create, when the principles of matter are unknown to man and cannot be known? What is to be done with motion alone? One must create the known and from the known; the creation of the unknown and from the unknown is impossible. Let us take water as an example. In the days of Descartes it was regarded as a simple, uncompounded substance. In more recent times it has been decomposed by galvanism into two gases—oxygen and hydrogen: in various combinations with caloric it exists in the form of a solid body, a liquid body, and a gaseous body; and through the microscope a multitude of moving creatures called infusoria have been discerned in water. The science that has attained these discoveries justly calls its knowledge a degree of knowledge—and by no means complete knowledge. This is proven by the very knowledge acquired. For example, in decomposing water into hydrogen and oxygen, we do not know what happens to the infusoria, whose existence is nonetheless fully known. Consequently, we have no satisfactory decomposition of water—only what is possible for us—and we are assured that there must be a more complete decomposition by which matter would be explained in all its satisfaction, whereby all that hitherto remains inexplicable would be explained as well. With the poverty of knowledge of his day, Descartes could have proclaimed a foolishness of foolishnesses, and his contemporaries could have sounded the trumpet for this foolishness as an extraordinary manifestation of genius. It is very profitable to draw from science proofs for the faith. The truth of faith stands in unity with the truth of science. But why accept from science a fantasy that science itself has acknowledged as one of the inevitable errors on its path? Every mathematician and chemist must of necessity reject the absurd teaching concerning spirits that belongs to Descartes and the Westerners—which the Westerners present as a teaching of faith, thereby depicting faith as pronouncing absurdities unworthy of trust or attention. This has been attested by experience. The majority of mathematicians and chemists have doubted Christianity and have become deists: they cannot be atheists, having discovered an abundance of wondrous laws in nature and being convinced of their countless multitude—which testifies to the boundless mind of the Creator and to the boundlessness of His properties. These persons fell into deism solely because the faith was slandered and distorted before them.

Upon attentive reading of the holy Fathers, it becomes evident that all the Fathers spoke of the simplicity, incorporeality, and immateriality of spirits in the sense that these words were given by Scripture, by common usage, and by the science of their time. But this is not all! The holy Fathers employed the word “spirit” precisely in the meaning in which Holy Scripture employed it. They could not, they ought not, have given the word “spirit” any other meaning—and they did not give it. Otherwise they would have separated themselves from Holy Scripture and shown preference for human understanding over the understanding of Scripture—over the understanding which the Holy Spirit was pleased to impart to mankind. Grounding themselves entirely upon Scripture and upon their own experiences consonant with Scripture, the Fathers—like Scripture—spoke of spirits solely with the aim of guarding man from the machinations of the evil spirits and of drawing him to the good spirits. The Fathers acquaint us with the nature of spirits to the degree necessary for our salvation. They do not strive to define with precision what can only be known in part. Not only spirits, not only our body and the bodies of animals, but all objects from the realm of plant and mineral remain for us subjects known only in part. He who attributes to himself complete knowledge of any substance expresses only his own ignorance. We know something—by no means everything. What is a leaf on a tree? What is a blade of grass trodden underfoot? What is a field flower? Why do plants, drawing sap from the same earth, manifest such different properties? How is the sap of the earth decomposed by the root of a plant or by its seed? Why in this decomposition do diverse fragrances, colors, tastes, and other most diverse and numerous properties appear? Such questions can be posed in an endless series; the answer to them is impossible for limited man. Creation is the product of an unlimited Mind. It is known fully and essentially only by its Creator alone. To man is given knowledge of the smallest portion of the laws in the vast system of the world. This knowledge is like an open door to the knowledge and confession of the boundless majesty of God. Orthodox theology leads through this door; so does contemporary science, separating the Creator from creatures by an infinite difference.