Article 1: On Spirits (Part 8)

“A certain nun named Redempta had two disciples, one of whom was called Romula. Romula was struck with paralysis and lay in complete exhaustion upon her bed for many years, enduring the illness with patience and devoting herself diligently to prayer. One night Romula suddenly called Redempta to herself with the words: “My mother! come to me, my mother! come to me”. Redempta immediately approached the sick one’s bed, inviting the other disciple to accompany her. While they were standing, in the middle of the night, by the bed on which Romula lay—a light from heaven filled the entire space of the cell, and there shone a brilliance of such great glory that it pierced the hearts of those present with an inexpressible awe. They heard sounds as if from some entering multitude; the door of the cell was shaken as if by the pressure of a crowd hastening to enter. Sensing the multitude entering, from excessive fear and the light they could see nothing: their eyes were shut both by fear and by the blinding brightness of the immeasurable light. Immediately following the appearance of the light, there came a wondrous fragrance, and the pleasantness of the scent brought calm to their souls, which had been frightened by the light that appeared. But when they could bear it no longer, Romula began in a gentle voice to comfort the trembling Redempta, her abbess, saying: “My mother! do not be afraid: I am not yet dying”. As she repeated this, the light that had appeared gradually faded—and the fragrance that followed it remained. Thus passed the second and third day; the scent of the diffused fragrance continued. On the fourth night, Romula again invited her abbess to herself. Upon her approach, Romula asked for the last rites, and received them. Redempta and the other disciple had not yet moved away from the sick one’s bed when suddenly, in the street, before her door, the voices of two choirs of Angels were heard—and, as the nuns testified, the distinction of sex was clearly discernible in the voices. The men began the singing of psalms; the women responded to them. While this heavenly funeral singing was taking place before the door of the cell, the holy soul separated from the body. As it was being borne up to heaven, and the higher the choirs of singers ascended, the singing became less and less audible. When the sounds of the singing ceased at the height, the fragrance ceased also. Saint Gregory knew these nuns personally”333.

“The angelic spirit is circumscribed; but the supreme Spirit, which is God, is uncircumscribed”334.

The extracts from the holy Fathers cited by the Western writer, which we have presented above, decisively define the teaching of these Fathers on spirits. The extracts testify: 1) that the teaching of the Fathers on spirits is identical with the teaching of Holy Scripture; 2) that the teaching on spirits set forth in Orthodox theology is identical with the teaching of Holy Scripture and the holy Fathers; 3) that the teaching attributed by the Western writer to the Fathers—of the complete spirituality and immateriality of created spirits, on a par with the complete immateriality and spirituality of God—has been attributed without justification.

The Western writer says that the Fathers of the Church were influenced by pagan philosophy and by contemporary learning in general. This is true, but only with respect to certain Fathers and to certain, very few, subjects. This was noted, and an appropriate caution was given to Orthodox readers335. At the present time, everyone who studies properly those Fathers who possessed the learning of this world can see in what respects they paid an inevitable tribute both to the contemporary ideas of human society and to the ideas drawn from science in the state in which it was taught in their day. This cannot be said of the writers of Holy Scripture. These persons were enlightened solely by the Holy Spirit. Similarly, Venerable Anthony the Great was illiterate; having purified himself by a devout ascetic struggle, he became a dwelling-place of God and announced a teaching on spirits in accordance with how spirits were revealed to him by God. A learned man, a patriarch—Saint Athanasius the Great—although also a man of grace, yet deemed it more solidly grounded to transmit to the Church the teaching on spirits as it had been imparted to him by Anthony, who possessed experiential knowledge, rather than to write a treatise about them drawn from reading, his own reasonings, and perhaps from a few insufficient experiments—such as those experiments must have been given the occupations of the Archbishop336. The account of spirits by Saint Anthony the Great is simple, natural, clear! And yet it imparts a knowledge so detailed and definite that all the scholars together, on the basis of their learning, could in no way have imparted it. Knowledge of matter must be confirmed by experience. By reasoning alone it is impossible to arrive at precise and reliable knowledge. A judgment that appears outwardly unerring often proves, when tested by experience, to be mistaken. Judgments not confirmed by experience, however plausible they may appear, however magnificently they may be set forth, are only propositions and suppositions—not truth. Such is the verdict of science. It is based on the history of the sciences that study matter; it is based on innumerable experiments: there is no repeal of it, no voice against it. The voice raised by ignorance or by the arbitrary play of imagination has no standing before the tribunal of science. What standing in science does Descartes’ teaching on spirits have? — This teaching is not a positive, proven conclusion obtained by the lawful path of science. This teaching is a hypothesis, or supposition. A hypothesis is admitted in the natural sciences not as certain teaching, but as teaching that endeavors to give a definite concept of a subject which science cannot yet work out by its own lawful path. For this reason science, until it obtains precise knowledge of a subject, adheres to the hypothesis as something that explains the subject, without entrusting itself to it in the least. It rejects the hypothesis the moment facts begin to demonstrate its incorrectness. Thus the celebrated Franklin devised a hypothesis to explain electricity. When science had worked out facts contradicting Franklin’s hypothesis, the hypothesis was rejected by science and became a possession of the history of science. What then was Franklin’s hypothesis? A play of a gifted mind enriched with much knowledge of the natural sciences—a play of the mind, and nothing more. On the basis of new facts, Symmer devised his own hypothesis, since science had not yet worked out precise knowledge about electricity. But with the further labor of science, even Symmer’s hypothesis attained the same standing as Franklin’s. For all that, the devising of hypotheses is in no way rejected by science as a labor that contributes to the development of science. A felicitously devised hypothesis may pass into doctrine when it is positively proven. Such, by all indications and at least to a significant degree, must be the most recent hypothesis about light.

What is Descartes’ hypothesis about spirits? It is a teaching he composed—a play of his mind, leaning upon the knowledge of his time. The hypothesis of Descartes is completely refuted by science in its present development. It is refuted both by the facts supplied by the Orthodox Church, and by facts obtained through means hostile to the Church—magic, magnetism, and spiritism. Descartes sees between gross matter and created spirits a decisive opposition. Science sees not opposition but gradation and kinship. The fact that a finite object is not subject to our bodily senses and to our comprehension in no way grants it the properties belonging to an infinite object. Every finite object can be expressed by a number. Even if that number, by reason of its immensity, were to be beyond any human grasp—it remains a number, possessing all the properties of other numbers, and differing from the infinite by an infinite difference.

The teaching on spirits presented here is imparted exclusively by revealed knowledge of God, by the Christian faith. There are no other means of acquiring it; all other means lead to erroneous conclusions337. This teaching does not have the character of the systematic doctrines compiled by the scholars of this world and according to the elements of the world. It is set forth in Holy Scripture in the same manner as many other teachings are set forth therein. In the same way it is set forth in the holy Fathers. But through attentive reading and study of Scripture and the Fathers, the precise opinion of Scripture and the Fathers on spirits becomes clear. For such study one needs not merely a devout life, but a life of ascetic struggle—a concentrated, solitary life. The Church sings to its sage: you found the way of action, O God-breathed one, the ascent of vision338. Only those who have renounced the world and given themselves wholly to the service of God can attain to an experiential knowledge of the fallen spirits in the thoughts, imaginings, and sensations they bring—as Venerable Macarius the Great says339; only with the aid of inner experience do those places of Scripture and the Fathers that speak of this invisible warfare become accessible to the understanding. As experience increases, the knowledge becomes fuller and fuller, and the teaching of Scripture and the Fathers clearer and clearer. Saint Isaac the Syrian, having mentioned Saints Basil the Great and Gregory the Theologian—that they first formed themselves in human society through the virtues appropriate to such a manner of life, and then withdrew into the desert and abode with their inner man—goes on to say that the desert is of benefit to the strong because in it they attain to warfare with the spirits of malice340. Venerable Cassian the Roman, having described the devout life of the ancient monks in community life, says that this holy life produced from itself an even more exalted manner of living—the eremitic life—to which even in the first centuries of Christianity very few proved capable. These chosen ones Cassian calls the flower of monasticism. They, “not content with the victory obtained in the midst of human society—by which they had trampled underfoot the invisible machinations of the devil—desired to enter into open warfare and open battle with the demons, and for this purpose did not shrink from withdrawing to the solitary places of the vast desert”341. In such chosen ones of God, the interior invisible warfare intensified immeasurably, raising them to an extraordinary struggle, and crossed over into the visible. This was accomplished by a particular dispensation of God342. The Fathers raised to such a struggle were granted special gifts of the Holy Spirit, came to a lofty spiritual advancement and enlightenment, and received entrance into the world invisible to the bodily eyes. The door to that world was opened for them by the hand of God. Such were the Venerables Anthony and Macarius—Egyptian desert-dwellers—whom the Church acknowledges as Spirit-bearers and names Great. Possessing an abundant experiential and grace-given knowledge of spirits, they spoke of them far more clearly than the other Fathers—whom the grace of God likewise sanctified, and to whom other spiritual gifts were given, commensurate with their manner of life and activity. Among the few Fathers who wrote about spirits with particular definiteness is Venerable Cassian the Roman. He sets forth in his work the teaching transmitted to him personally by a monk of the Egyptian Scetis—Abba Serenus—who had attained great spiritual advancement. Serenus possessed an experiential and grace-given knowledge and vision of spirits; hence the teaching on them is set forth by him with particular clarity and simplicity343. This teaching is identical to that which we have seen in the Fathers cited by us and in Orthodox Theology. When in the fifth century the “Conferences” of Venerable Cassian appeared in the West, some Westerners vigorously rose against his thirteenth conference; but against the seventh and eighth—in which the teaching on spirits is set forth344—not the slightest objection was raised. Only after the adoption of Descartes’ opinions on the complete immateriality of created spirits, on their independence from time and space, and on the identity of their nature with the nature of God, did voices arise in the West against the teaching on spirits as set forth by Cassian. A refutation has not been made: it is impossible; refutation has been replaced by censures. — At the Seventh Ecumenical Council, an extract was read from the writings of Saint John, Bishop of Thessalonica, in which it was stated that Angels possess a materiality and form proper to them—and that in this, their own form, they appeared to many holy men. The Council, on the basis of this citation from a holy Father, unanimously vindicated and established the depiction of Angels in icons. The Fathers of the Council not only expressed no doubt whatsoever concerning the teaching pronounced by Saint John, not only made no observation, but on the basis of this teaching made a decree to depict Angels in icons by painting345. The Seventh Ecumenical Council has been equally received in the East and in the West.

The teaching on spirits set forth here in no way grants the right to depict—either as images of spirits or as images of other objects of the invisible world spoken of in Holy Scripture and in the writings of the holy Fathers—forms composed by the imagination. Forms invented by the imagination can in no way be correct; not being copies of the truth, they must of necessity be false, and place the visionary on the path of self-delusion. A correct understanding of the vision of spirits—whether sensory or spiritual—cannot be acquired otherwise than by experience. Vision, acting upon the faculties of the soul or upon those of the body, or upon both together, is explained by the sensation of it and cannot be explained in words. Thus for the blind from birth and for those blinded in infancy, the communion of man with the visible world by means of sight remains inexplicable, despite every effort to explain it in words; thus the taste of fruits we have never tasted remains inexplicable, however much it may be described in words, until it is explained by tasting. In a word, all concepts acquired by means of the faculties of the soul and the body remain very obscure so long as they are explained by words alone. The Fathers346 rightly say that healthy eyes have no need of being taught to see, because sight is natural to man; in exactly the same way, the eyes of the mind and heart cleansed by repentance begin to look into the mysteries of God and into the spiritual world, because this is natural to human nature, renewed by the Redeemer.

Given the obscurity of the concept of spirits—derived solely from narrative accounts, even holy ones—it is all the more dangerous to give free rein to the imagination and to interpret according to one’s own fancy what cannot be satisfactorily explained even by experiential knowledge in the realm of matter.347 The faculty of imagination is particularly developed in passionate people. It operates in them according to its own disposition and transforms everything sacred into something passionate. This may be confirmed by paintings in which sacred persons and events have been depicted by famous yet passionate artists. These artists labored to imagine and portray holiness and virtue in all its forms; but, being saturated and steeped in sin, they depicted sin—sin alone. A refined sensuality breathes from the image in which a gifted painter sought to represent chastity and divine love, which were unknown to him. The prophets and Apostles, when the artist wished to express their state of inspiration, have been given the appearance of pagan frenzied priests or actors in a bloody tragedy.348 The works of such artists enchant passionate viewers; but in people anointed with the spirit of the Gospel, these brilliant productions—stamped as they are with blasphemy and the filth of sin—give rise to grief and revulsion. The imagination of passionate people, of depraved and corrupt people who have no conception of truth, no sympathy with holiness, is capable only of fabricating false images. It cannot but deceive these people. And it does deceive and seduce them, hiding the deception that is plain only to those who are pure in mind, heart, and body. To the activity of imagination in the carnal and sin-loving person there easily joins the activity of the fallen spirits, for whom it has become natural to revolve and creep within sin, to find in sin their only delight and nourishment. And since all who enter upon a devout ascetic struggle, despite their good intention, remain in the power of the passions, feel the strongest sympathy toward sin, and stand in union and fellowship with it—the holy Fathers strictly forbid the use of the faculty of imagination, commanding that the mind be kept entirely without image, unimpressed by any stamp of the material. One must not imagine to oneself either paradise, or heaven, or the throne of God, or the radiance of God’s glory, or an angel, or a martyr, or a saint hierarch, or a venerable ascetic, or the Mother of God, or Christ Himself. The fallen spirits strive to arouse within us the activity of imagination, and sometimes appear themselves in various false and seductive phantoms; for this reason, not only day-dreaming, however plausible it may appear, is forbidden to us, but also trust in any manifestation whatsoever from the invisible world. Demons assume the images of bright angels, of holy departed souls, and even of Christ Himself, in order to seduce and destroy not only beginners in the struggle but even those who have made progress in it. The vivid representation of the fires of hell, of eternal darkness, of the terrifying subterranean prison, and of the other horrors preceding and following death is permitted solely when carnal sensations, thoughts, and fantasies arise; the use of imagination is permitted only in the hour of need, and when that need has passed, the weapon is immediately laid aside. When employed without necessity, it may cause harm to the mind, making it prone to day-dreaming and self-delusion.

In the early centuries of Christianity, there was a particular need to draw those newly converted from idolatry away from representing angels and even God in a coarse, sensual form. Idols were simultaneously the image both of demons and of sinful passions. Those habituated to idol-worship—branded by long years of directing all the faculties of soul and body toward idols, having filled their minds with concepts and their imagination with images borrowed from idolatry—were inevitably under the influence of these impressions.349 A disciple of the Apostle Paul, Saint Dionysius the Areopagite, perceived the need to caution his contemporaries against a coarse understanding. He set forth this caution in his profound and spiritual work “On the Celestial Hierarchy”. “It is necessary”, he says, “that we should not coarsely imagine the heavenly and godlike Powers350 as having many feet and faces, bearing the animal form of oxen and the bestial appearance of lions, with the curved beak of eagles or with the wings of birds; nor likewise imagine that there are fiery chariots in heaven, material thrones needed for the Deity to sit upon, multi-colored horses, and military commanders armed with spears, and much else of the like that has been shown to us in Holy Scripture under various mysterious symbols. Theology has employed sacred poetic images for describing the spiritual Powers, which have no form”.351 Further, Saint Dionysius says: “Perhaps someone might truly think that heaven is filled with a multitude of lions and horses, that the hymns of praise there consist of lowing, that there are flocks of birds and other animals, that low things are found there, which leads to something false, improper, and passionate”.352

Having expressed himself thus concerning the Celestial Powers, Saint Dionysius speaks of God as follows: “The Mystical Teaching handed down to us in Holy Scripture describes in various ways the venerable, supremely exalted Deity. At times it names God the Word, the Mind, the Being,353 indicating thereby the understanding and wisdom proper to God alone, and expressing that He truly exists and is the cause of all being; it likens Him to light and calls Him life. Of course, these sacred images appear in some respect more fitting and more elevated than sensory images;354 but even they fall far short of being an exact reflection of the supremely exalted Deity. The Deity is beyond all being and life; no light can be an expression of Him; every mind and word is infinitely far from being like to Him. At other times the same Holy Scripture majestically depicts God in terms unlike Him. Thus it names Him invisible, boundless, and incomprehensible,355 indicating not what He is, but what He is not. The latter, in my judgment, is even more proper to God, because although we do not know the incomprehensible, unfathomable, ineffable, and boundless being of God, we nonetheless, on the basis of mystical Sacred Tradition, truly affirm that God has no resemblance to any existing thing”.356—The Deity, by reason of His superessential majesty, incomparably surpasses every visible and invisible power, and is so exalted above all things that even the supreme beings bear not the slightest resemblance to Him. The Deity is the beginning of all things, is the cause that brings all things into being, is the unchanging foundation of the enduring existence of creatures, upon which depends the being and blessedness of the Highest Powers themselves.357 The Areopagite affirms that the divine appearances to the saints were adapted to human nature.358 He says that “no one has seen or will see the hidden things of God;359 but God appeared to the saints in certain visions worthy of Him and conformable to the character of those to whom these holy visions were given. The vision that manifested within itself, as in an image, the likeness of the Deity that can be depicted by nothing, is rightly called in God’s Word a theophany—a Divine Appearing—because it led those who saw it to God, enlightening them with Divine illumination and revealing to them from on high something Divine. These Divine visions were opened to our glorious Fathers by means of the Celestial Powers. Thus: does not Holy Tradition tell us that even the Holy Law was given by God Himself to Moses? By this it teaches us the truth that it is an imprint of the Divine and Sacred Law. But the same Word of God clearly teaches also that this Law was conveyed to us through angels”.360

Saint Dionysius, in his work on the Celestial Hierarchy, explains only the mystical visions of the prophets and the spiritual relationship of the Celestial Powers among themselves and toward holy human beings; but he makes no mention whatsoever of the fallen angels, nor of the sensory appearance of angels to simpler people (such as Hagar, the servant of Abraham361), nor of the capacity of animals to see spirits, nor of the dwelling-place of the holy angels in heaven, nor of the casting down of the fallen angels from heaven, nor of their torment in the flame and darkness of hell—while Holy Scripture tells us of all these things. Even of the Lord Jesus Christ, Dionysius speaks solely as “of the true Light of the Father, who enlightens every man that comes into the world”362, passing over in silence His Incarnation, His human flesh in which He appeared upon earth, in which He sits in heaven at the right hand of the Father, and in which He will appear to judge the living and the dead. “This Light”, theologizes Dionysius, “нever loses its inner unity, though by its beneficent property it divides itself in order to mingle with mortal beings in a mingling that raises them upward and unites them with God. It both remains within itself and abides constantly in unchanging and identical sameness, and those who direct their gaze upon it in the proper manner it raises upward, in proportion to their strength, and unites them, after the example of how it is itself simple and one”.363 From the book on the Celestial Hierarchy it is already evident that the Areopagite was in the state of spiritual vision which he there describes; in his other writings he speaks openly of this state of his.364 This state is the state of Christian perfection and is called by the Fathers Divine illumination.365 The Venerable Symeon the New Theologian, citing Saint Gregory the Theologian, says: “The beginning of wisdom is the fear of God. Where the fear of God is, there is also the keeping of the commandments. Where the keeping of the commandments is, there is the purification of the flesh, which, being as it were a thick cloud before the soul, does not allow it to see clearly the Divine radiance. Where the purification of the flesh is, there is the Divine radiance. Where the Divine radiance is, there is the fulfillment of the Divine desire. And therefore the illumination of the Divine Light and the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit is the endless end of every virtue: he who has reached this end forgets all that is sensory and begins to attain knowledge of spiritual gifts”.366 Even the concept of such a state is entirely foreign to those not initiated into the mysteries of Christian ascetic endeavor! For this reason, the Areopagite intended his book on the Celestial Hierarchy in no way for the general use of Christians, but only for those who had made considerable spiritual progress. He charged the presbyter Timothy, for whom the work was written, to conceal it carefully from carnal and soulish people, even if they were devout. “You, my son”, writes Dionysius to Timothy, “in accordance with the holy ordinance handed down to us by our hierarchs, reverently attend to the sacred words, being overshadowed by the inspiration of inspired teaching, and, having hidden the holy truths in the depths of your soul as things that are of one form, guard them carefully from the uninitiated—for according to the teaching of Scripture, one must not cast before swine the pure, bright, and precious adornment of the spiritual pearls”.367 Anyone acquainted with the work on the Celestial Hierarchy will vindicate the wise caution of its author and confess that the work is little understood and even in many places strange to those unfamiliar with the spiritual state.

The book of Holy Scripture that most readily illuminates the work of the Areopagite is unquestionably the Revelation of the holy Apostle and Evangelist John the Theologian: the Theologian, in many passages, having described a vision, immediately says or explains that the vision is a symbol, that it is mystical. Such are the visions: the vision of the seven stars and seven lampstands;368 the vision of the woman called Babylon, seated upon many waters;369 the vision of the woman clothed in the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars upon her head;370 the vision of the dragon that swept away with his tail a third part of the stars of heaven;371 the vision of the beast rising out of the sea and the beast rising out of the earth.372 In contrast, the vision of the protomartyr Archdeacon Stephen contains nothing symbolic or allegorical: the Archdeacon, filled with the Holy Spirit, saw the heavens opened and the Son of God in His human flesh standing at the right hand of God.373 A similar vision was granted to the great man of God Carpus: this vision is described by Saint Dionysius the Areopagite without any allegorical explanation. The Venerable Macarius the Great made a mystical interpretation—with reference to the human soul—of the vision that the prophet Ezekiel had,374 to which Saint Dionysius also refers; yet despite this, the Venerable one did not refrain from saying that the most perfect Christians are accounted worthy to see the very essence of the human soul, and that souls, angels, and demons have the form of man in his body. Likewise the Areopagite, having explained that the symbolic visions of the prophets have a mystical meaning, did not refrain from saying that Saint Carpus, having attained Christian perfection, saw angels in the form of human beings. — The Homilies of the Venerable Macarius the Great, like the book of Saint Dionysius, bear primarily a mystical significance and may be a most beneficial reading for ascetics who have made progress: in them, the unfortunate communion into which man entered with demons through the medium of sin is set forth in detail—a subject about which Saint Dionysius is entirely silent. The Homilies of the Venerable one are little understood by those unfamiliar with the spiritual struggle, although some of them seem comprehensible by reason of the extraordinary simplicity and clarity of his style.