The Philokalia

by Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain

26. For those newly engaged in spiritual warfare the swift path to the recovery of virtue consists in the silencing of the lips, the closure of the eyes and the stopping of the ears; for once the intellect has achieved this kind of intermission and has sealed off the external entrances to itself, it begins to understand itself and its own activities. It immediately sets about interrogating the ideas swimming in the noetic sea of its thought, trying to discern whether the concepts that irrupt into the mind's crucible are pure, alloyed with no bitter seed, and conferred by an angel of light, or whether they are tares, hybridized, trashy, emanating from the devil.

33. If you husband evil thoughts your face will be morose and sullen; your tongue will be incapable of praising God and you will be surly towards others. But if you husband in your heart what is deathless and holy, your face will radiate joy and gladness, you will lift up your voice in prayer and be most gentle in speech. Thus it will be quite clear to all whether you are still subject to unclean passions and to the law of the mundane will, or whether you are free from such servitude and live according to the law of the Spirit. In the words of Solomon, 'A glad heart makes the face radiant; but a doleful heart makes it sullen' (cf. Prov. 15:13).

He who for our sake endured a disgraceful, unjust death desires us to be like this, for there is nothing so dear to Him or that in its true virtue so fully accords with Him - nothing so apt to raise us from the dunghill of the passions - as gentleness and humility and love for our fellow beings. If these are not present with us as we cultivate the virtues, all our labor is in vain and all our ascetic endeavors are useless and unacceptable.

62. Do not keep company with those who enkindle in you suspicions about your fellow beings, for such suspicions are false, destructive and utterly deceitful.

Love for God begins with detachment from things human and visible. Purification of heart and intellect marks the intermediate stage,

8. 'Devote yourselves to stillness and know that I am God' (Ps. 46:10). This is the voice of the divine Logos and is experienced as such by those who put the words into practice. Thus once you have renounced the turmoil and frightening vanity of life you should in stillness scrutinize yourself and the inner reality of things with the utmost attentiveness and should seek to blow more fully the God within yourself, for His kingdom is within us (cf. Luke 17 : 21). Yet even if you do this over a long period of time it will be difficult for you to erase the imprint of evil from your soul and to restore it wholly to its Creator in all its primal beauty.

13. Life is short, the age to come is long, and little the length of our present existence. Man, this great but petty being, to whom the scant present has been allotted, is weak. Time is scant, man weak, but the contest set before him, with its prize, is great, even if it is full of thorns and puts our trivial life at risk.

25. To speak humbly is one thing, to act humbly is another, and to be inwardly humble is something else again. Through all manner of hardship and through the outward labors of virtue those engaged in spiritual warfare can attain the qualities of speaking and acting humbly,

29. Do not readily assume that someone who in outward appearance and dress, and in manner of speech, seems to be humble is actually humble at heart; and do not assume - unless you have put it to the test - that someone who speaks exaltedly of high things is full of boastfulness and vanity. For 'you shall' know them by their fruits' (Matt. 7:16).

35. 'Know thyself: this is true humility, the humility that teaches us to be inwardly humble and makes our heart contrite. Such humility you must cultivate and guard. For if you do not yet know yourself you cannot know what humility is, and have not yet embarked truly on the task of cultivating and guarding. To know oneself is the goal of the practice of the virtues.

Strive to enter the shrine within you and you will see the shrine of heaven, for the one is the same as the other, and a single entrance permits you to contemplate both. The ladder leading to that kingdom is hidden within you, that is, within your soul: cleanse yourself from sin and there you will find the steps by which to ascend.

when your intellect is firmly established in your heart, it must not remain there silent and idle; it should constantly repeat and meditate on the prayer, 'Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me', and should never stop doing this. For this prayer protects the intellect from distraction, renders it impregnable to diabolic attacks, and every day increases its love and desire for God.

2. Only those who through their purity have become saints are spiritually intelligent in the way that is natural to man in his pre-fallen state. Mere skill in reasoning does not make a person's intelligence pure, for since the fall our intelligence has been corrupted by evil thoughts.

Hence there is no justification in aspiring to become rich even for a good cause. The truth is that people are frightened of being poor because they have no faith in Him who promised to provide all things needful to those who seek the kingdom of God (cf. Matt. 6:33). It is this fear that spurs them, even when they are endowed with all things, and it prevents them from ever freeing themselves from this sickly and baneful desire. They go on amassing wealth, loading themselves with a worthless burden or, rather, enclosing themselves while still living in a most absurd kind of tomb.

If love for material things is the first offspring of evil desire, there is a second offspring which is even more to be shunned, and a third that is no less evil. What is the second? Self-flattery.

The third offspring of the desire of a sick soul is gluttony; and from gluttony arises every kind of carnal impurity. Yet why do we call this the third and last when it is implanted in us from our very birth?

If you do not cut off the inner flow of evil thoughts by means of prayer and humility, but fight against them merely with the weapons of fasting and bodily hardship, you will labor in vain. But if through prayer and humility you sanctify the root, as we said, you will attain outward sanctity as well. This it seems to me is what St Paul counsels when he exhorts us to gird our loins with truth (cf Eph. 6: 14). One of the fathers has excellently interpreted this as signifying that when the contemplative faculty of the soul tightly girds the appetitive faculty it also girds the passions manifested through the loins and the genitals. The body, nevertheless, is in need of hardship and moderate abstention from food, lest it become unruly and more powerful than the intelligence. Thus all the passions of the flesh are healed solely by bodily hardship and prayer issuing from a humble heart, which indeed is the poverty in spirit that the Lord called blessed.

2. 'You shall not make an image of anything in the heavens above, or in the earth below, or in the sea' (cf Exod. 20:4), in such a way that you worship these things and glorify them as gods. For all are the creations of the one God, created by Him in the Holy Spirit through His Son and Logos, who as Logos of God in these latter times took flesh from a virgin's womb, appeared on earth and associated with men (cf Baruch 3:37), and who for the salvation of men suffered, died and arose again, ascended with His body into the heavens and 'sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on High' (Heb. 1:3), and who will come again with His body to judge the living and the dead. Out of love for Him you should make, therefore, an icon of Him who became man for our sakes, and through His icon you should bring Him to mind and worship Him, elevating your intellect through it to the venerable body of the Savior, that is set on the right hand of the Father in heaven. In like manner you should also make icons of the saints and venerate them, not as gods - for this is forbidden - but because of the attachment, inner affection and sense of surpassing honor that you feel for the saints when by means of their icons the intellect is raised up to them.

26. To know God truly - in so far as this is possible - is incomparably superior to the philosophy of the Greeks, and simply to know what place man has in relation to God surpasses all their wisdom. For man alone among all terrestrial and celestial beings is created in the image of his Maker, so that he might look to God and love Him and be an initiate and worshipper of God alone, and so that he might preserve his own beauty by his faith in God and his devotion and affection towards Him, and might know that whatever is found on earth and in the heavens is inferior to himself and is completely void of intelligence. This the Greek sages could never conceive of, and they dishonored our nature and were irreverent towards

29. For a man to know God, and to know himself and his proper rank - a knowledge now possessed even by Christians who are thought to be quite unlearned - is a knowledge superior to natural science and astronomy and to all philosophy concerning such matters.

34. The supreme Intellect, the uttermost Good, the Nature which transcends life and divinity, being entirely incapable of admitting opposites in any way, clearly possesses goodness not as a quality but as essence. Hence everything that we can conceive of as good is to be found in It or, rather, the supreme Intellect both is that good and surpasses goodness. And everything that we can conceive of as being in the Intellect is good or, rather, is both goodness and a Goodness that transcends goodness. Life, too, is to be found in It or, rather, the Intellect is life; for life is good and the life that is in the Intellect is goodness. And Wisdom is in It, or, rather, the Intellect is Wisdom; for Wisdom is good and the Wisdom that is in the Intellect is goodness. It is the same with eternity, blessedness and everything that we can conceive of as good. There is no distinction between life and wisdom and goodness and so on, for this Goodness embraces all these things comprehensively, untimely and in utter simplicity, and we conceive of It and call It Goodness by virtue of Its embracing every form of goodness.

For God loves, knows and has the power to effect what is profitable for every created being. If God only knew what is profitable but did not love it. He might have left unfinished what He knew to be good. Again, if He loved what is profitable but did not know it or was unable to accomplish it, perhaps against His will what He loved and knew would have remained unaccomplished. But since to the highest possible degree He loves, knows and is able to effect what is profitable for us, everything that comes to us from Him, even though it be without our wanting it, will certainly prove to be to our profit. On the other hand, it is greatly to be feared that whatever we engage in on our own initiative, as creatures endowed with free will, will prove to be unprofitable for us. When, however. God in His providence has plainly forbidden something, whether speaking directly, as He does in paradise and in the Gospel, or else speaking through the prophets, as He does to the Israelites, or through the apostles and their successors, as He does in the law of grace, it is clearly most unprofitable and destructive for us to desire and pursue it. And if someone proffers it to us and induces us to seek it, either by persuasive words or by enchanting us with apparent friendship, he is manifestly an enemy and hostile to our life.

That it was not yet to our ancestors' benefit to eat of the tree is made clear by St Gregory of Nazianzos when he writes: 'The tree, in my vision of things, is divine contemplation, which only those established in a high degree of perfection can safely approach, while it is not good for those who are still immature and greedy in their desires, just as solid food is not good for those who are yet tender and have need of milk.' But even if you do not want to refer that tree and its fruit anagogically to divine contemplation, it is not difficult, I think, to see that eating its fruit was of no benefit to our ancestors, since they were still immature.

57. Since the Logos of God through His descent to us has brought the kingdom of heaven close to us, let us not distance ourselves from it by leading an unrepentant life. Let us rather flee the wretchedness of those who sit 'in darkness and the shadow of death' (Isa. 9:2). Let us acquire the fruits of repentance: a humble disposition, compunction and spiritual grief, a gentle and merciful heart that loves righteousness and pursues purity, peaceful, peace-making, patient in toil, glad to endure persecution, loss, outrage, slander and suffering for the sake of truth and righteousness.

68. The divine supraessentiality is never named in the plural. But the divine and uncreated grace and energy of God is indivisibly divided, like the sun's rays that warm, illumine, quicken and bring increase as they cast their radiance upon what they enlighten, and shine on the eyes of whoever beholds them. In the manner, then, of this faint likeness, the divine energy of God is called not only one but also multiple by the theologians. Thus St Basil the Great declares: 'What are the energies of the Spirit? Their greatness cannot be told and they are numberless. How can we comprehend what precedes the ages? What were God's energies before the creation of noetic reality?' For prior to the creation of noetic reality and beyond the ages - for the ages are also noetic creations - no one has ever spoken or conceived of anything created. Therefore the powers and energies of the divine Spirit - even though they are said in theology to be multiple - are uncreated and are to be indivisibly distinguished from the single and wholly undivided essence of the Spirit.

74. Because both the divine essence and the divine energy are everywhere inseparably present. God's energy is accessible also to us creatures; for, according to the theologians it is indivisibly divided, whereas the divine nature, they say, remains totally undivided.

God both is and is said to be the nature of all beings, in so far as all partake of Him and subsist by means of this participation: not, however, by participation in His nature - far from it - but by participation in His energy. In this sense He is the Being of all beings, the Form that is in all forms as the Author of form, the Wisdom of the wise and, simply, the All of all things. Moreover, He is not nature, because He transcends every nature; He is not a being, because He transcends every being; and He is not nor does He possess a form, because He transcends form. How, then, can we draw near to God? By drawing near to His nature? But not a single created being has or can have any communication with or proximity to the sublime nature. Thus if anyone has drawn close to God, he has evidently approached Him by means of His energy. In what way? By natural participation in that energy? But this is common to all created things. It is not, therefore, by virtue of natural qualities, but by virtue of what one achieves through free choice that one is close to or distant from God. But free choice pertains only to beings endowed with intelligence. So among all creatures only those endowed with intelligence can be far from or close to God, drawing close to Him through virtue or becoming distant through

94. The light of the sun is inseparable from the sun's rays and from the heat which they dispense; yet for those who receive the rays but have no eyes the light is imparticipable and they sense only the heat coming from the rays. For those bereft of eyes cannot possibly perceive light. In the same way, but to a greater extent, no one who enjoys the divine radiance can participate in the essence of the Creator. For there is absolutely no creature that possesses the capacity to perceive the Creator's nature.

105. If we have conformed ourselves to God and have attained that for which we are created, namely, deification - for they say that God created us in order to make us partakers of His own divinity (cf 2 Pet. 1:4) - then we are in God since we are deified by Him, and God is in us since it is He who deifies us. Thus we, too, participate in the divine energy - though in a different way from the universe as a whole - but not in the essence of God. Hence the theologians say that 'divinity' is also an appellation of the divine energy.

106. The supra-essential, supra-existential nature that transcends the Godhead and goodness, in that it is more than God and more than goodness, and so on, can be neither described nor conceived nor in any way contemplated, since it transcends all things and is surpassingly unknowable, being established by uncircumscribed power beyond the supracelestial intelligences, and always utterly ungraspable and ineffable for all. Neither in the present age nor in the age to come is there any name with which it can be named, nor can the soul form any concept of it or any word express it; and there can be no contact with or participation in it, whether sensible or noetic, nor any imagining of it at all. Thus the theologians hold that the closest idea we can have of this nature is that of its perfect incomprehensibility attained by means of negation, or apophasis, since this nature is transcendentally privative of all that exists or can be expressed. Hence he who possesses knowledge of the truth beyond all truth, if he is to name it correctly, cannot legitimately call it either essence or nature. Yet it is the cause of all things and all things pertain to it and exist on its account; and it is prior to all things and in a simple and undetermined manner it precontains all things in itself.

110. That which is said to participate in something possesses a part of that in which it participates; for if it participates not in a part only but in the whole, then strictly speaking it does, not participate in but possesses that whole. Hence, if the participant must necessarily participate in a part, what is participated in is divisible. But the essence of God is in every way indivisible, and therefore it is altogether unparticipable. On the other hand, the property of the divine energy is to be divisible, as the holy father St John Chrysostom frequently affirms. Hence it is the divine energy that is participated in by those who have been privileged to receive deifying grace.

123. Apophatic theology does not contradict or confute cataphatic theology, but it shows that although statements made cataphatically about God are true and reverent, yet they do not apply to God as they might to us. For example. God possesses knowledge of existent things, and we, too, possess this in some cases. But we know things in so far as they exist and have come into existence, whereas God does not know them solely in this way, since He knows them just as well even prior to their coming into existence. Thus he who says that God does not know existent things as existent does not contradict him who says that God knows existent things and knows them as existent. There is also a cataphatic theology which has the force of apophatic theology, as when one says that all knowledge is affirmed of some object, namely, the thing known, while God's knowledge does not refer to any object. This is the same as saying God does not know existent things as existent, and He does not have knowledge of existent things - that is to say, does not have it as we do. In this way it can be said that in terms of His pre-eminence God does not exist But he who asserts this in order to show that people who say God exists are not speaking correctly, clearly employs apophatic theology not in a way that connotes pre-eminence, but as though it connoted deficiency and signified in this case that God has absolutely no existence whatsoever. This is the uttermost impiety, of which, alas, those are guilty ...

127. An accident is that which comes into existence and passes out of existence, and in this way we can conceive of inseparable attributes as well. From one point of view, a natural attribute is also an accident, since it increases and decreases, as, for instance, knowledge in the soul endowed with intelligence. But there is no such thing in God because He remains entirely changeless. For this reason nothing can be attributed to Him that is an accident. Yet not all things said of God betoken His essence. For what belongs to the category of relation is also predicated of Him, and this is relative and refers to relationship with something else, and does not signify essence. Such is the divine energy in God. For it is not essence, nor an accident, even though it is called a kind of accident by some theologians, who mean to say simply this, that it is in God and that it is not essence.

132. In God the hypostatic properties are affirmed relatively one to the other. The hypostases differ from each other, but not with respect to essence. Sometimes God is also referred to in relation to creation. Yet God, the All-Holy Trinity, cannot be called Father in the same way that He is called pre-eternal, pre-unoriginate, great and good. For it is not each of the three hypostases that is the Father, but only one of them, from whom and to whom subsequent realities are referred. None the less, in relation to creation the Trinity can also be called the Father, because creation is the joint work of the Three, brought forth from absolute nothingness, and because our adoption as sons is achieved through the bestowal of the grace common to the Three. The scriptural texts, 'The Lord your God is one Lord' (cf. Deut. 6:4) and 'One is our Father in heaven' (cf. Matt. 6:9; 23:9), refer to the Holy Trinity as our one Lord and God, and also as our Father who through His grace confers on us a new birth. As we said, the Father is called Father only in relation to His coessential Son. In relation to both Son and Spirit He is called Principle, as He is also called Principle in relation to creation, but here in the sense that He is the Creator and Master of all creatures. Thus when the Father is called such things in relation to creation, the Son is also Principle, though they constitute not two Principles but one. For the Son is called Principle in relation to creation, as He is likew...

134. All existent things can be grouped into ten categories, namely, essence, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, activity, passivity, possession and dependence; and these ten categories apply likewise to everything subsequently seen to pertain to essence. But God is supra-essential essence, in which can be seen only relation and activity or creation, and these two things do not produce in His essence any composition or change. For God creates all things without being affected in His essence. He is Creator in relation to creation, and also its Principle and Master in that it has its origin in Him and is dependent on Him. But He is also our Father, since by grace He confers on us rebirth. Yet He is Father, too, in relation to the Son who is completely without any temporal beginning. The Son is Son in relation to the Father, while the Spirit is the projection of the Father, coeternal with the Father and the Son, being of one and the same essence.

144. God's essence is entirely unnamable since it is also completely incomprehensible. Therefore we name it on the basis of all its energies, although with respect to the essence itself none of those names means anything different from any other.