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Man was created with free will. Its power was compromised by the fall. It is further dimished by delusion and the passions. We escape them through true faith, worship and fasting. Our freedom increases as these negative forces decrease.
For Norman Cantor (1929-2004)
By James Kelley | December 19, 2008
I first heard about Norman Cantor from Dr. Joseph P. Farrell. Dr. Farrell’s God, History, and Dialectic quoted from some of Cantor’s works, and I took it upon myself to read Mr. Cantor’s work. Good enough for Dr. Farrell, good enough for me.
Possibly the greatest achievement of Norman Cantor, in this scholar’s opinion, is not his well-known (perhaps too well-known, to the point of over-saturation of the market) textbook on medieval history, but rather Cantor’s 1991 historiographical tour de force Inventing the Middle Ages. Dear readers, if you only take the time to read one volume of historiography, please read this one.
Inventing the Middle Ages may be the greatest work of historiographical biography ever written. Cantor’s insight into the hopes, desires, foibles, and deep-seated motivations of over thirty of the world’s greatest medievalists is literally unparalleled. Most touching is the humanity of the author, who relates the gruelling experiences he endured as a graduate student at Princeton under Joseph Strayer, who seems to have worked Cantor to the bone and gave him little encouragement. After Princeton, Cantor and a group of likeminded Rhodes scholars ended up at Oxford, where they, according to the wistful but manly Cantor, thought of themselves as knights at Dick Southern’s Round Table. Cantor, in a moment which must be ranked up there with St. Augustine’s invention of phycho-biography in the Confessions (yes, this is a compliment to the prelate of Hippo Regius), relates how his first interview with Southern went: His King Arthur glibly informed Cantor that he did not want to mentor him, and did not believe Cantor was worth the time. Cantor: “I went back to my bed-sitter at Oriel…. I cried for a half hour. Then I wrote for fifteen hours on the typewriter.” The essay on St. Anselm blew Southern away.
May God grant you rest, Norman. I did not know that you had passed away until a few weeks ago, when I looked you up in Wikipediea. You fought harder than most, always for the right reasons, and I hope you will not be offended to be numbered amongst my spritual heroes.
James
Topics: General | 4 Comments »
He Ain’t Experientially Heavy, He’s My Passenger!
By James Kelley | November 23, 2008
Passenger,
1) Orthodoxy is an association of spiritual hospitals which exists to cure the heart of man. (Nothing difficult or challenging there.)
2) Non-Orthodox “Christians” have no idea what the heart/nous is much less how to cure it (this point is easy to prove and should cause no controversy whatsoever).
You do need a reasoning brain to verify that Augustinian metaphysics is too stupid to be called a heresy [a paraphrase of JSR] :) My five-year old knows that Platonic forms do not exist, and she accepts that the reasoning power is distinct from the noetic energy in man :) In this she has already surpassed eleven centuries of Frankish theological nonsense :) Good luck to any of her playmates or future instructors who may try to convince her that man is a “reasoning substance plus emotions,” which is what my harebrained (and harenoused!) secondary and university teachers have, for the most part, tried to make me believe.
Like my daughter, you have used your reasoning brain well, for you are exploring Orthodoxy out of your deep dissatisfaction with an arid, sentimental, happiness-mongering Western “spirituality.”
Now, take the next step and use your nous. Contact the clergy of the Orthodox church and they will guide to the cure you are searching for. Without obedience, we cannot even dream of taking a single step toward Him. Let’s face it, at this stage you cannot go back to some outfit that calls itself Christian but that does not guide anyone to the cure of the inner man. Thus, we are stuck together, two passengers in a stormy sea. I’m happy as pie about it, aren’t you!
In love,
James
Topics: Freedom, Friendship, Heresy, Hesychia, Prayer, Theology, Theosis, Truth | 23 Comments »
Andrew’s great site on Orthodox beards elicits praise from these quarters
By James Kelley | October 4, 2008
Andrew (who recently thanked me for posting a pro-beard message on an Orthodoxlite website),
God bless you. Your list of quotations is wonderful. Especially the one from St. Kosmas. I have a hand-painted icon of him in my cubicle at work. It’s funny how his extremely holy, exceedingly austere personality shines through any given icon I have seen of him. This Protestant lady was leaning in to help me on an account once, and when she looked up at the icon of St. Kosmas, she had to step back a little. He was definitely “in the world, but not of it.”
Does anyone know the commemorative prayers for St. Kosmas said on his day? I would like to add them to my daily rule.
All of the readers of this site are a blessing to me. I humbly ask you all to pray for me.
the unworthy James
Topics: Beards, Prayer, Theosis, Truth | 5 Comments »
What is the nous?
By James Kelley | September 29, 2008
It has been pointed out to me that many may not understand the term “nous,” from whence the term “noetic” comes. Here are some quotations to begin the discussion.
Met. Hierotheos
“all who pray with the nous have communion with God, and this communion is man’s spiritual knowledge of God”
“St. Maximus goes on to say that man is ‘granted the grace of theology when, carried on wings of love’ in theoria and ‘with the help of the Holy Spirit, he discerns - as far as this is possible for the human nous - the qualities of God’.”
“St. Thalassios, who had the same perspective, wrote that when man’s nous begins with simple faith, it ‘will eventually attain a theology that transcends the nous and that is characterised by unremitting faith of the highest type and the vision of the invisible’ (15). Theology is beyond logic, it is a revelation of God to man, and the Fathers define it as theoria. Here too theology is chiefly vision of God. In another place the same saint wrote that genuine love gives birth to spiritual knowledge, and ‘this is succeeded by the desire of all desires: the grace of theology’ (16).”
Fr. John explains it best in his new book, Patristic Theology. Aaron and the boys need to jump in here with patristic references to back this up. It is non-negotiable Orthodoxy. God bless,
“The chief concern of the Orthodox Church is the healing of the human soul. The Church has always considered the soul as the part of the human being that needs healing because She has seen from Hebrew tradition, from Christ Himself, and from the Apostles that in the region of the physical heart there functions something that the Fathers called the nous. In other words, the Fathers took the traditional term nous, which means both intellect (dianoia) and speech or reason (logos), and gave it a different meaning. They used nous to refer to this noetic energy that functions in the heart of every spiritually healthy person. We do not know when this change in meaning took place, because we know that some Fathers used the same word nous to refer to reason as well as to this noetic energy that descends and functions in the region of the heart.
So from this perspective, noetic activity is an activity essential to the soul. It functions in the brain as the reason; it simultaneously functions in the heart as the nous. In other words, the same organ, the nous, prays ceaselessly in the heart and simultaneously thinks about mathematical problems, for example, or anything else in the brain.
We should point out that there is a difference in terminology between St. Paul and the Fathers. What St. Paul calls the nous is the same as what the Fathers call dianoia. When the Apostle Paul says, I will pray with the spirit,[1] he means what the Fathers mean when they say, I will pray with the nous. And when he says, I will pray with the nous, he means I will pray with the intellect (dianoia). When the Fathers use the word nous, the Apostle Paul uses the word spirit. When he says I will pray with the nous, I will pray with the spirit or when he says I will chant with the nous, I will chant with the spirit, and when he says the Spirit of God bears witness to our spirit,[2] he uses the word spirit to mean what the Fathers refer to as the nous. And by the word nous, he means the intellect or reason.
In his phrase, the Spirit of God bears witness to our spirit, St. Paul speaks about two spirits: the Spirit of God and the human spirit. By some strange turn of events, what St. Paul meant by the human spirit later reappeared during the time of St. Makarios the Egyptian with the name nous, and only the words logos and dianoia continued to refer to mans rational ability. This is how the nous came to be identified with spirit, that is, with the heart, since according to St. Paul, the heart is the place of mans spirit.[3]
Thus, for the Apostle Paul reasonable or logical worship takes place by means of the nous (i.e., the reason or the intellect) while noetic prayer occurs through the spirit and is spiritual prayer or prayer of the heart.[4] So when the Apostle Paul says, I prefer to say five words with my nous in order to instruct others rather than a thousand with my tongue,[5] he means that he prefers to say five words, in other words to speak a bit, for the instruction of others rather than pray noetically. Some monks interpret what St. Paul says here as a reference to the Prayer of Jesus, which consists of five words,[6] but at this point the Apostle is speaking here about the words he used in instructing others.[7] For how can catechism take place with noetic prayer, since noetic prayer is a persons inward prayer, and others around him do not hear anything? Catechism, however, takes place with teaching and worship that are cogent and reasonable. We teach and speak by using the reason, which is the usual way that people communicate with each other.[8]
Those who have noetic prayer in their hearts do, however, communicate with one another. In other words, they have the ability to sit together, and communicate with each other noetically, without speaking. That is, they are able to communicate spiritually. Of course, this also occurs even when such people are far apart. They also have the gifts of clairvoyance and foreknowledge. Through clairvoyance, they can sense both other peoples sins and thoughts (logismoi), while foreknowledge enables them to see and talk about subjects, deeds, and events in the future. Such charismatic people really do exist. If you go to them for confession, they know everything that you have done in your life before you open your mouth to tell them.”
Endnotes
- 1 Corinthians 14:5.
- Romans 8:16.
- This means that the Spirit of God speaks to our spirit. In other words, God speaks within our heart by the grace of the Holy Spirit. St. Gregory Palamas in his second discourse from In Behalf of the Sacred Hesychasts notes that the heart rules over the whole human organism. For the nous and all the thoughts (logismoi) of the soul are located there. From the context of grace-filled prayer, it is clear that the term heart does not refer to the physical heart, but to the deep heart, while the term nous does not refer to the intellect (dianoia), but to the energy/activity of the heart, the noetic activity which wells forth from the essence of the nous (i.e., the heart). For this reason, St. Gregory adds that it is necessary for the hesychasts to bring their nous back and enclose it within their body and particularly within that innermost body, within the body that we call the heart. The term spirit is also identical with the terms nous and heart. Philokalia, vol. IV (London: Faber and Faber, 1995), p, 334.
- Cf. Metropolitan Hierotheos Vlachos, who notes: Man has two centers of knowing: the nous which is the appropriate organ for receiving the revelation of God that is later put into words through the reason and the reason which knows the sensible world around us. The Person in Orthodox Tradition, trans. Effie Mavromichali (Levadia: Monastery of the Birth of the Theotokos, 1994), p. 24.
- 1 Corinthians 14:19.
- In Greek, the Prayer of Jesus consists of exactly five words in its simplest form, which in English is translated as Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me TRANS.
- Thus as Saint John of Damascus puts it, we are led as though up a ladder to the thinking of good thoughts. Saint Paul also indicates this when he says: I had rather speak five words with my nous. St. Peter of Damascus, The Third Stage of Contemplation, in Philokalia, 3, page 42 [my translation: cf. also English Philokalia, vol. XXX, p. 120] and St. Nikitas Stithatos, as cited below.
- With respect to this, Venerable Nikitas Stithatos writes, If when you pray and psalmodize you speak in a tongue to God in private you edify yourself, as Saint Paul says. If it is not in order to edify his flock that the shepherd seeks to be richly endowed with the grace of teaching and the knowledge of the Spirit, he lacks fervor in his quest for Gods gifts. By merely praying and psalmodizing inwardly with your tongue, that is, by praying in the soul you edify yourself, but your nous is unproductive [cf. I Corinthians 14:14], for you do not prophesy with the language of sacred teaching or edify Gods Church. If Paul, who of all men was the most closely united with God through prayer, would have rather spoken from his fertile nous five words in the church for the instruction of others than ten thousand words of psalmody in private with a tongue [cf., I Corinthians 14:19], surely those who have responsibility for others have strayed from the path of love if they limit the shepherds ministry solely to psalmody and reading. St. Nikitas Stithatos, On Spiritual Knowledge, in The Philokalia, vol. 4, pp. 169-170.
Topics: General, Hesychia, Patristics, Prayer, Romanides, Theology, Theosis, Truth | 5 Comments »
An apology to those I have wronged
By James Kelley | September 17, 2008
To Aaron Taylor and to Nathaniel McCollum,
Forgive me, brethren, I have sinned against you.
As I chanted “O Gladsome Light” in my corner, my heart became soft and I was filled with remorse. How could I speak so casually about glorification, for I am the man of pride and self-regard. I know nothng about what the neptic Fathers speak about.
It is good that Aaron spoke against my prideful ways. Thinking I was doing good, I caused him and Nathaniel much distress. Let my unfortunate words, spoken in anger, stand as an example of the evil man and his self-righteousness.
Where will I be on that fearsome day? Without the Lord’s mercy, I will be left in lowliness and darkness.
James
Topics: Blog etiquette, Friendship, Prayer | 41 Comments »
Nathaniel McCollum misrepresents my theology and then is offended when I defend it.
By James Kelley | September 16, 2008
Here is Nathaniel McCollum’s recent message:
“James, I’m not offended at theosis or squeamish of the doctrine of the Fathers. I have not even once said that I disagree with what you say, only that its presentation is “a bit overstated.” Part of my objection is largely your acerbic tone, which you have now turned upon me. Please forgive me if I have wronged you.”
Here’s what Nathaniel originally accused me of:
“I think you have perhaps overstated your case and are tending toward guruism and some strange form of progressive revelation. Please remember that even Christ rose again “according to the Scriptures” and that “this was delivered once for all the saints.” Please be careful in your polemic not to distort the Orthodox faith as did Justin Martyr in his apologetics.”
Notice that Nathaniel not only oppunes my theology, but also that of St. Justin Martyr! How dare you accuse a Saint of “distorting” the faith! You are the one who is distorting the faith, sir. Your comments are distressing not only to myself, but also others who blog here. I know because many are my personal friends, and we’ve discussed it.
When total strangers get on my site and accuse me of “strange” teachings when I am merely restating the bedrock dogmas of the Orthodox Faith, I do not beat around the bush, but rather cut to the chase and point out the offending party’s error. People who do not know anything about the Faith are reading this site, and I refuse to let the theological waters be muddied. You would do well to recant your accusation that I “distort” anything about Orthodoxy. Nobody around here needs your “correctives” or your advice about theology.
Other than the above, I have no problem with you personally, Nathaniel. I apologize if you find my tone ascerbic, but I do not take back a single word I’ve written.
May God have mercy on us all,
James
Topics: Blog etiquette, General, Heresy, Intellectual honesty, Patristics, Prayer, Theology, Theosis, Truth | 16 Comments »
Praise for Fr. John Savvas Romanides, of blessed memory
By James Kelley | September 11, 2008
May your memory be eternal,
Most honored and holy noetic athlete,
Protopresbyter John Savvas Romanides.
Your memory is ever-blessed.
May we have a joyous meeting when we see each other in glory
At the Lord’s Heavenly Altar!
Memory eternal!
Memory eternal!
Memory eternal!
Fr. John Romanides has restated the central teachings which the Holy Fathers learned through lives of noetic martyrdom. Fr. John gave his life to the Church, and he followed the interior life of hesychia, as many of his closest associates tell us. His assiduous application of the Jesus prayer preceded his recovery from stroke-induced paralysis late in life.
As Orthodox we stridently proclaim Fr. John to be–
New Defender of the Church of Christ against the errors of the Franco-Latins.
Topics: Hesychia, Prayer, Romanides, Theosis, Truth | 3 Comments »
Fr. Michael Azkoul comments on man’s free will
By James Kelley | September 11, 2008
- Fr Michael Azkoul Says:
September 10th, 2008 at 4:03 pm e
Fr. Michael submitted this comment to the “Kelley/Dyer” debate recently. Listen to Fr. Azkoul, who has studied the Fathers in their original languages and has led a life of prayer in imitation of these same Fathers.
St. Irenaeus insists that God gives man the power over his own salvation. The Fathers after him echo this truth. To say that man’s will is controlled by prevenient grace is unbiblical and unpatristic.
Topics: General | 17 Comments »
The Real Issue in the Kelley/Dyer Debate: Epistemology and Revelation
By James Kelley | August 31, 2008
I’m glad that you mention the infallibility of the Apostles, for you have unwittingly underscored what the real issue is: you and I have two divergent epistemologies.
You believe that the Pope, the Apostles and the Bible are somehow “infallible.”
I believe that the prophets, Apostles, and saints of all ages, up until this exact minute, have experienced revelation, which is glorification. Glorification is not part of any “two source” Roman Catholic theory of Church authority; Glorification is the basis and inspiration which inspires biblical and patristic writers to write books and liturgies. The Church is comprised of “doers,” who have experienced glorification or at least illumination, and “hearers,” who follow the former and are ascetically trained to also become doers. This experience of glorification is suprarational. It is light and darkness; it is a knowing and an unknowing. As St. Gregory Palamas tried to explain to the heretic Barlaam the Calabrian, the uncreated glory of God cannot be seen by the senses until man himself BECOMES the divine light, not that man is merged with God’s essence, but that man, since he is made in God’s image, was created to grow more and more like the Godman, and this is done not as one zapping us from the outside with created grace, but from the inside, since our nous is the site of divine/human synergy.
I follow the Orthodox Church, whose authority is based not upon Scripture or Liturgy per se, but upon real revelation, which is direct, noetic experience of the divine. Before the Bible was written (and while it was written and after it was written, up to today), man communed directly with God, via glorification. That’s why I believe that God is only love and not “love and wrath.” All of the lives of the Orthodox saints and all of the writings of the Orthodox Church Fathers teach this, and the elders on Athos and elsewhere who are alive today teach this.
Without glorification, Christianity becomes a “religion.” A set of rules and maxims which are dictated to man by mere men. For anyone who does not follow Orthodox epistemology to give me proof-texts from Holy Scripture and the writings of the Holy Fathers is quite pointless. It is as if I requesed someone to turn the station on the television and that person instead jumped up and danced the Beguine, all the while thinking that they were “channel surfing.” To quote the Bible and Fathers to an Orthodox to prove non-glorification theology and for me to respond with Orthodox teaching is to engage in “cross talk,” for any book which says God is wrathful (in the sense we have been discussing) lies, and the Bible does not lie, not because the book is a stand-alone authority, but because the Bible is written by those who are inspired by their experiences of glorification to write words that lead (in the context of the Church and individual spiritual fatherhood) others to the selfsame experience of God. Is there anything else to say on this subject? Not really, but I’m sure I will anyway 
Topics: General | 25 Comments »
Response to Jay Dyer’s recent messages
By James Kelley | August 30, 2008
Above, Jay, you wrote:
“the Incarnation was not contingent upon a human willing in Christ, if you will. In the 5 and 6th Councils we read that the Savior’s human will is “altogether deified,” which, following the Incarnational principle of soteriology, itself indicates an initiatory and primary place to the divine in our conversion. Otherwise, our human wills would not need to be deified, and certainly the divine is what is the cause and power of our entire being’s theosis.”
Here I detect, if I am right, a kind of Nestorianism in that you are separating Christ’s human will (along with its nature) from his divine will and nature, as if the second Person of the Trinity has to rustle His own flesh into conformity with Himself, or one could also see your position as Monophysitistic since you seem here to indicate that there is an inactive human will which does not actually will the human energies of Christ into action, but merely slavishly follows some alien divine will. I hope you are not saying any of this, and I eagerly await your clarification.
Also, you said:
“But in all Eastern Orthodox theology, because of its refusal to admit a completely gratuitous election, ultimately Abraham was saved because he willed it, and God’s help was contingent upon his “ok” and perseverance therein.”
I could easily quip that the Augustinian West refuses to follow all of the early Christian Fathers’ teachings on the completely free choice of man to love God. Indeed, The Church Fathers and the teachings of the Orthodox Church do not conceive of man’s will or nature in isolation from God. Instead the good that man does is synergistic (and man can really do the good, and without being coerced by God, for this would be God doing it. However, God’s love/energy consantly calls us and aids us, keeping us intact and drawing us to Him, though God’s love is not deterministic), and thus totally free. Therefore, your notion of a totally gratuitious election just seems bizarre to us Orthodox. It’s like someone walked up to St. Gregory of Nyssa and said, “You know, your writings on free choice and man’s self-determination limit the sovereignty of God. I just don’t think it covers some verses which give me trouble.” But seriously, it depends on what you mean by “totally” and what you mean by “gratuitous.” Don’t you believe that man is free to choose, and is thus free to love God? Don’t you believe that God loves man and that because of this love He allows opposition to his will?
Every time I get to this point with a Calvinist or some other type of non-Orthodox Christian, I’m met with something like: “but the Scriptures say otherwise.” Do they? If my interpretation of Scripture ever leads me to deny that God is love, I will hopefully doubt my own interpretation before doubting that of the Orthodox Fathers, who are inspired with the same inspiration as the writers of the Bible. I have talked to non-Orthodox who have tried to reel me into their Augustino-scholastic interpretations of Scripture, such as the guy who said to me: “The Bible says ‘Essau have I hated.’ See there, God hates people He wants to hate.” At that point, I hear that zany circus song start up. I’m not saying you are doing anything that far off, Jay, but it is basically the same thing to expect me to agree that God is wrathful in the sense to which Fr. John objects. Maybe that is the problem: It just seems simple as pie to both of us that we are right.
However, for you to say that Fr. John Romanides disagrees with St. John of Damascus is just plain shocking. Nothing in the lengthy quotation from the Damascene which you quoted above does anything but prove me right and prove you wrong, as far as I can tell. I already said that God wills that there be a real freedom in creation so that an equally real love can exist. This means that God is not dependent upon man or creation, as St. Gregory of Nyssa and many other Fathers have always agreed. St. Gregory of Nyssa, in Contra Eunomios I, describes the experience of noetic illumination as the realization in the heart that all created beings are dependent upon God, the truly real Being, Who is dependent upon nothing.
Fr. John Romanides, along with the whole Orthodox Church, affirms that God knows His elect because he, as God, is all-knowing. Even Boethius knew that God’s foreknowledge and predestination of the elect did not mean that free choice was negated. What puzzles me is why we even disagree, for you, Jay, seem to be agreeing with me and Fr. John on the deep truth that God is sovereign without impairing man’s freedom.
What you are doing in other places, Jay, is telling us that synergistic, deificatory Orthodox theology does not seem “Biblical” to you. Maybe a better approach is to explore the implications of your interpretations of the Holy Scriptures. You wrote: “…we certainly do think His wrath is soothed by the pleasing sacrifice of Christ…”. You back up your seemingly impious imputation of wrath to God by saying that there are many references to God’s “wrath” in Scripture. What kind of God is wrathful? Only one answer is possible: A wrathful God is Himself in need of salvation, for He is subject to the passions and is no better than me. In the Orthodox view, God hates no one, but only loves. Our saints do not become deified by hating evil people, but by perfecting their “love for enemies,” as St. John of the Ladder insists.
It is truly difficult to say anthing “original” about this subject, since a lot of ink has been spilled about it over the centuries, but Dr. J.P. Farrell has written a great book about it called Free Choice in St. Maximos the Confessor.
As usual, I appreciate your interest, Jay, and I believe our only way forward is to be humble, keep our heads down, pray, and try to be open to each other as sincere followers of Truth. Along the way, we’ll also do this (blog)
Topics: General | 14 Comments »
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