| New Book: When Hearts Become Flame (Revised, Second Edition), by Dn. Stephen Muse, Available from St. Tikhon " s Monastery Press October 24, 2015 A new book, When Hearts Become Flame (Revised, Second Edition) by Dn. Stephen Muse is now available from St. Tikhon " s Monastery Press : St. Tikhon’s Monastery Press is pleased to introduce its most recent title, When Hearts Become Flame, by Dn. Stephen Muse. Whatever else he or she does, the pastoral counselor, same as the priest at the Divine Altar, enters into a call and response relationship, invoking God’s presence and seeking to be receptive to God’s activity unfolding in the here and now. The intention of pastoral counseling must be to offer Christ to the other (and receive Him) while serving at the altar of the human heart. When Hearts Become Flame reflects on the question, “What Makes Counseling Pastoral?”. This question is in light of the integration of all three aspects of our human nature in dialogue with others, occurring in such a way that Christ appears in ‘between’ bringing healing and transformation. It is not enough to be emotionally warm, theoretically correct and methodologically skillful. Pastoral care and counseling involve an integrated mindful presence existentially engaged in dialogue with the other with the same vulnerability and alertness that one brings to God in prayer. Inner discernment and ascetical struggle along with existential engagement with and for others in working for a just and humane world are equally important in response to God’s love given for all. Praise for When Heart Become Flame “Opens the spiritual and psychological depth of the caregivers’ vocational world and does not allow the reader to relax or to stay indifferent. The author’s experience and ideas make your brain think, your soul pray, your eyes cry, your ears listen to the heart and your heart love God and people.” -Tatiana Filipieva, Ph.D, psychologist, St. Sergius Orthodox Theological School, Moscow, Russia. “Some profound and very useful insights are found within these pages.” |
| Материал из Православной Энциклопедии под редакцией Патриарха Московского и всея Руси Кирилла ПАВЛА И АНДРЕЯ ДЕЯНИЯ Условное название раннехрист. апокрифа, к-рый частично сохранился на саидском диалекте коптского языка . Единственным свидетелем существования текста П. и А. д. является пергаменный кодекс MONB.DN (совр. принятая аббревиатура согласно базе данных Corpus dei Manoscritti Copti Letterari (Корпус коптских литературных рукописей)). Кодекс принадлежал б-ке Белого монастыря (близ совр. г. Сохаг, Египет) и, вероятно, был создан в одном из скрипториев Файюмского оазиса между X и XII вв. Он представляет собой собрание апокрифических деяний ап. Андрея Первозванного . Как и др. рукописи из Белого мон-ря, кодекс MONB.DN сохранился не полностью; его листы в наст. время находятся в фондах 7 европ. б-к. Рукопись открывают Андрея и Матфия деяния (заголовок не сохр.; предположительно, они были озаглавлены как «Первое деяние апы Андрея в городе людоедов»). За ними следуют «Деяния Андрея и Филимона», представляющие собой 2-е, 3-е и 4-е «Деяния апы Андрея» ( Miroshnikov. 2017. P. 12-13), П. и А. д., «Деяния Андрея и Варфоломея» и «Деяния Петра и Андрея». Несохранившиеся последние листы кодекса, вероятно, содержали копт. «Мученичество Андрея» ( Idem. 2018). В составе кодекса П. и А. д. занимали от 20 до 23 страниц, из к-рых сохранились 15 (ныне в Ватиканской б-ке - Vat. Borg. copt. 109. Fasc. 132. Fol. 1-8); их издал с франц. переводом Кс. Жак ( Jacques. 1969). Поскольку начало и заглавие текста отсутствуют, невозможно определить, были ли П. и А. д. самостоятельным произведением (подобно следующим за ними «Деяниям Андрея и Варфоломея») или же представляли собой 5-е «Деяние апы Андрея». Последний вариант более вероятен, поскольку предшествующее П. и А. д. 4-е деяние является вторичным добавлением к тексту «Деяний Андрея и Филимона», известным как и П. и А. д. только по кодексу MONB.DN. Т. о., П. и А. д., возможно, были написаны как последняя часть «Деяний апы Андрея» и никогда не существовали независимо. |
| 8, y otros. Sobre este fundamento la doctrina eclesiástica limita el coro angelical a nueve grados. Algunos Padres de la Iglesia, por otra parte, manifiestan su particular y piadosa opinión, que la división de los Ángeles en nueve coros, abraza sólo los nombres y los grados que revela la Palabra de Dios, pero no da a conocer muchos otros nombres y coros angelicales, que no se nos ha revelado en la vida actual, y que se nos dará a conocer ya en la futura. Esta idea la desarrollan San Juan Crisóstomo, los venerables Teodorito y Theofilacto. San Juan Crisóstomo dice: «Hay en verdad y otras fuerzas, cuyos nombres no sabemos…no solamente los ángeles, arcángeles, tronos, dominaciones, principados, potestades habitan en el cielo, sino también innumerables géneros e inimaginables clases, las cuales no estamos en condición de representar con palabra alguna. ¿Dónde se ve que hay más fuerzas que las mencionadas y cuyo nombre desconocemos?» El Santo Apóstol Pablo, testimoniando sobre Cristo, cita unos y menciona otros: «Lo hizo sentar a Su derecha en el cielo, elevándolo por encima de todo Principado, Potestad, Virtud, Dominación y de todo cuanto tiene nombre no sólo en este mundo, sino también en el venidero» (Ef. 1:21). ¿Ven, que hay nombres, que serán conocidos allá, pero que ahora son desconocidos? Por eso él dijo «y de todo cuanto tiene nombre no sólo en este mundo, sino también en el venidero.» La Iglesia acepta estos razonamientos como particulares. Nota : En las Sagradas Escrituras algunos ángeles (los más célebres) gozan de nombre propio. Dos de estos nombres los encontramos en los libros canónicos: «Miguel» (quién como Dios) «Miguel – uno de los primeros Príncipes» (Dn.10:13); «en aquel tiempo surgirá Miguel, El gran Príncipe, que defiende a los hijos de tu pueblo» (Dn. 12:1), «el arcángel Miguel se enfrentaba con el diablo» (Judas versículo 9), «Miguel y sus ángeles combatieron contra el dragón» (Ap. 12:7). «Gabriel» (hombre de Dios), – «oí una voz de hombre a las orillas del río, que gritaba: Gabriel, enseña a este la visión» ( Dan. 8:16 ), «estaba en oración, cuando vino el hombre Gabriel» (Dn. |
| Denys then says that differentiation in speaking of God who is beyond being is applied in two ways: either to the names we give to the Persons that distinguish them (‘Father’ and ‘Son’, for instance) or to the way in which God manifests himself in creation as being, life, wisdom, etc., so as to share these properties (and ultimately divinity itself) with the whole created order (DN II.50). So union and differentiation can be conceived of in two different ways. There are ‘unified names’ which refer to the whole indivisible Godhead: as a result of differentiation (‘the generous procession of divine unity overflowing with goodness in a way that transcendently preserves unity and making itself manifold’) these manifestations of God flow into the world, manifesting the divine and stirring up beings to return to the One. There are ‘differentiated names’ which refer to the Persons of the Trinity: these differentiations are contained within the unity of the Godhead. Another example of differentiation is the incarnation, for this refers to the Person of the Word (or the Son) and not to the Father or the Spirit (644C): Denys refers to this a little later on, to profess its utter ineffability (DN II.9:648A). It is, however, clearly something quite different from God’s manifestation of himself through the divine names. If we try and put all this together, we seem to have the idea that God manifests his whole being in attributes (or names) which we grasp as they are differentiated from God in their procession or radiation from him. There is also the idea that within the Godhead there is some kind of primordial procession in which ‘the Father is the originating Source of the Godhead, and the Son and the Spirit are divine shoots, and, as it were, flowers and transcendent lights of the divinely fruitful divinity’ (DN II.7). (The Father as ‘originating source of Godhead’ is not far from the Cappadocian idea of the Father as ‘source of divinity’; the rest of the language is reminiscent of the Chaldaean Oracles, doubtless transmitted through Proclus.) In the incarnation, it seems, this primordial procession is manifest in the world of creation. |
| Or it is as if we were on a boat pulling on ropes thrown across from a rock to help us: we do not draw the rock towards us, but ourselves and the boat to the rock... (DN III.1:680C) Such an understanding of prayer had been commonplace in the Christian tradition, 123 but it was commonplace, too, among Neoplatonists: prayer, as it were, makes conscious the reality of our relationship to what is higher, what is ultimate. As such it has been called ‘ontological prayer’, prayer which expresses the nature of our ontological condition. 124 The Structure of the Divine Names Denys now embarks on his systematic treatment of the divine names. These names, we have seen, begin with the Good and end with the One. A good deal of ingenuity has been expended on the question of the structure of the Divine Names. As we have it now, it begins with some intelligible order, with the Procline triad, being–life–intelligence, providing the basis for the next three chapters after the chapter on the Good (DN IV): Being (DN V), Life (DN VI), Wisdom (DN VII). After that any order seems less clear. A rearrangement of the chapters (first suggested by Endre von Ivánka 125 ) finds in the Divine Names a reference to the names of the churches built in Constantine’s new capital, Constantinople: the churches of the Holy Wisdom (Haghia Sophia), of Holy Power (Haghia Dynamis), and of Holy Peace (Haghia Eirn). If chapter XI is transposed to follow chapter VIII, then the chapters following chapter IV (on the Good) treat successively two triads: the Procline triad, being–life–wisdom, and the ‘Constantinopolitan’ triad, wisdom–peace–power (the two triads overlapping in DN VII). Then would follow the chapter on the ‘Parmenidean’ attributes (the present chapter IX: Ivánka regards the present chapter X as a biblical appendix to that) and then the final chapter on the One (the present chapter XII Ivánka regards as having been introduced as a transition between the chapters on Peace and the One, when DN XI was transferred to its present position). |
| This sympathy, or suffering of divine things, is presented as divine possession, which issues in ecstasy. Given this language of possession, ecstasy, suffering, it is no surprise that all this is summed up in Denys’s teaching on love. Love, we have seen, is defined as a ‘power that unites and binds together and effects an indissoluble fusion in the beautiful and the good’ (DN IV.12:709C), and it is ecstatic in the sense that it draws the lover out of himself and centres his life on the beloved: ‘those who are possessed by this love belong not to themselves, but to the objects of their love’ (712A). Denys’s example of such ecstatic love of God is the apostle, St.Paul, the common master of himself and Hierotheus (and of Timothy 147 ): So also the great Paul, caught up in rapture by divine love and participating in its ecstatic power, said with inspired speech, ‘I live, and yet not I, but Christ lives in me.’ As a true lover, caught up out of himself into God, he lives not his own life, but that life so much longed for, the life of his beloved. (DN IV.13:712A) Ecstasy, for Denys, does not primarily mean an extraordinary experience, it means having one’s life centred on the beloved so that the life of the beloved is one’s own. In the case of the love of God, it means letting God’s love be the principle of one’s life. It is ‘suffering’ in that it means receptivity of such a high degree that the one who loves God is a vehicle of his power and love. It is ecstatic in the sense that the self of the lover is driven out by the love of God. In one place, Denys speaks of the soul not so much going out of itself, as being driven out of itself (the soul is the object of the verb, existmi: ‘going out’ or ‘standing out’) – and indeed being driven out of itself by the way of negation (DN XIII.3:981B). For it is the way of negation, apophatic theology, that surrenders the soul to the unknowable God. This is precisely the teaching of the Mystical Theology: as Moses ascends the mount, he passes beyond what can be affirmed, and can only express what he experiences by means of negation – ‘now, belonging wholly to that which is beyond all, and no longer to anything, whether himself or another, and united in his highest part with him who is unknown by renunciation of all knowing, by that very not knowing he knows in a manner that transcends understanding’ (MT I.3:1001A). |
| What we have in Denys is really a transformation of the Greek notion of ers: for Plato ers primarily (though not exclusively) met a need, and the neediness of love remains in the pagan Greek tradition; for Denys ers, yearning love, is an overflow of divine goodness – it needs nothing, it is the source of everything. The way in which love, though mentioned only briefly in DN IV, has deeply coloured Denys’s understanding of reality can be seen in his treatment of the twin names, Power and Peace, for love is a force as powerful as anything we know and its goal is unity. So Denys waxes his most eloquent as he hymns the name, Power: It preserves the immortal lives of the angelic henads unharmed and the heavens and the luminous starry beings and their orders unchangeable ... it makes the power of fire unquenchable and the flow of water unfailing ... it protects the indissoluble abiding of the universe; to those made godlike it grants the power of deification itself. (DN VIII.5:829D–893A) But the power of deification is the power of union and harmony: the power of peace. For peace is the longing of all things: Denys affirms this as strongly as Augustine. 136 And the perfection of peace is a harmony that preserves the distinctiveness and individuality of all: And perfect peace guards the unmingled individuality of each, with its peaceful providence ensuring that all things are free from disturbance and confusion both within themselves and amongst themselves, holding all things in peace and rest by a stable and unshakeable power. (DN XI.3:952C) The One The last chapter of the Divine Names leads us back to the name, the One, which is not only the source and goal of all things, but, as we have seen, one of Denys’s favourite terms for God. It provides an opportunity for summing up much that he has said about the essential role of unity in the nature of reality. But the absolute nature of the One implies that it is beyond any kind of attribution, and so the Divine Names ends by reminding us of the greater ultimacy of apophatic over cataphatic theology: |
| 106 Even when these ‘perfect’ names are names that are also used of humans, their primary meaning is divine, it is their human use that is ‘borrowed’. So Ephrem explains that people ... have been called ‘gods’, but he is God of all; They are called ‘fathers’, but he is the True Father; They are named ‘spirits’, but that is the Living Spirit. The terms ‘father’ and ‘son’ by which they have been called Are borrowed names that through grace have taught us That there is a Single True Father And that he has a single True Son. 107 In the ‘perfect names’ there takes place the most exalted encounter between human beings and God: by pondering them we are drawn close to God himself. The ‘borrowed’ names God has put on in his love of mankind, in order to draw men and women up to him. There are parallels to all this in Denys’s Divine Names. Especially in the first chapter he speaks of the innumerable names by which God is praised in the Scriptures. And the purpose of these names, as with Ephrem, is not just to reveal something about God, but to draw men and women into union with God: to deify them. ‘When, for instance, we give the name of “God” to that transcendent hiddenness, when we call it “life” or “being” or “light” or “Word”, what our minds lay hold of is in fact nothing other than certain activities apparent to us, activities which deify, cause being, bear life, and give wisdom’ (DN II.7). But there is much in Denys’s treatment of the divine names that seems very different from Ephrem. He has, for instance, no real parallel to Ephrem’s distinction between ‘perfect’ and ‘borrowed’ names: his classification of the divine names proceeds on quite other lines. He distinguishes between names expressive of concepts and names drawn from the realm of the senses: these latter names belong to ‘symbolic theology’, the former are the concern of the treatise, the Divine Names (DN I.8). He maintains, like Ephrem, that names like ‘father’ and ‘son’ apply properly to God and to human beings only in a secondary sense (DN II.8): but this had been a commonplace of Christian theology from the time of the Arian controversy. |
|
|
