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My initial comments on the subject of Orthodox sainthood
By James Kelley | August 9, 2008
My previous post about Augustine, sainthood, and “Azkul and the Gang,” never got off the ground, mainly because I needed time to pray and reflect upon the issue. This is what I have so far. Do not be shy about correcting my errors, especially in subjects like this, where there is no guide book. –jk
Wow, here’s a burning question if I ever heard one: “What is a saint?” Let me just start things out with a few observations that I think cannot be gainsaid:
Sainthood is holiness. Holiness is the communion of man with the Logos via the uncreated energies of the Holy Trinity. Holiness is “from the nous out,” meaning it results from the restoration (as God’s absolute free act of grace and man’s relatively free act of “agreement” with this divine love) of the nous to its normal function, which is to commune with God directly, “from glory to glory.” Because the whole man communes with the whole God by energy, holiness results in the immortalization and incorruptability of the flesh. If St. Maximos the Confessor were standing here today, he would doubtless shush me and proclaim: “It suffices to say that sainthood is love. But not just any love, rather the unceasing love of God which can be shaken my nothing!”
If we talk about how Orthodox saints are “made,” it must be in the above terms, and not in any other.
Remember in junior high, the comeback “It takes one to know one.” Circlularity is an element which cannot be suppressed in “mystical” matters. I hope we all understand what I mean by “mystical,” not Eckhart, but “mystike,” things that are secret because they are noetic. True mysticism is both a knowing and an unknowing, and thus we see saints only when we start our own course from glory to glory.
My own usual triumphalistic rhetoric is sickening from a truly spiritual perspective. What is a saint? I don’t know, because “I am a worm,” as St. Makarios of Corinth was known to say.
Topics: Prayer, Theology, Theosis, Truth |
August 10th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
Dear James,
So far so good, but you have to examine the second question I asked in order to ascertain if “sanctity” is exhausted by its primary definition. What I mean is that Constantine was not illumined or deified (he was only baptized on his deathbead, and that by an Arian) but is called a saint because the services he rendered the Church are arguably more than any other single person has done. Likewise, Barlaam and Joasaph probably did not really exist, except as a literary adaption of Buddha, but because their life is so edifying and their historicity unknown to the life of the Church, the Church considers them to be saints. God judges movement of the heart towards Himself, not appearences: Saint Joasaph, pray to God for us! So where does Augustine fit in? He was certainly a very good man who rendered great service to the Church, on the edge perhaps of illumination, and so far as we can tell made his theological errors not in conscious opposition to the teaching of the Church. I think the question is not whether a saint says something that is in error, but the manner and circumstances in which he says it.
August 10th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
You are right that it takes one to know one. So, what saints considered Augustine a saint? What saints did not?
August 12th, 2008 at 8:11 am
Father bless,
You bring up a good point about the seeming existence of “non-noetic, non-glorification” criteria for saints. Still, I believe my basic point is not contradicted but is rather supported by your examples. For example, I do not venerate St. Constantine merely because he was a good administrator who supported my Orthodox party. I venerate him because I follow the Church in seeing him as a holy man, despite his shortcomings. If he was not a holy man, but merely a good-intentioned heretic, then he would not have had the noetic inspiration to follow Christ at his darkest hour, or to write “words that lead men to glorification” into the Roman lawbooks (did you know that the canons were written into Roman law, on the spot, in Northern African councils, Nicea, and thereafter?). Simplistic? Childish? I don’t mind being accused of being these things (not that you are doing so, Father, I am merely voicing what is perhaps an interior doubt) for the sake of the saints.
As Fr. John once pointed out, we do not know what else St. Augustine wrote, or what his spiritual condition was at his death (or, I might add, after!). As a good friend of mine recently retorted, “If you were exiled to a desert island today, with no books but with the knowledge that some holy men considered St. Augustine a saint, would you gainsay it?” No, I wouln’t. I venerate St. Augustine and St. Constantine as saints, for if I am wrong, what harm does it do? It would be wrong if I made up some “non-glorification, non-holiness” principle to acount for St. Augustine, but I would never do so. I believe, along with my Church, that men these men, St. Constantine and St. Augustine, were holy, and I trust that I can share in the same glory, though unworthily.
St. Photios the Great once remarked that no one could or should oppune the character of St. Augustine. Did St. Photios know all of his writings? How can we know? We don’t even know if we know all of his writings.
However, the astute analyses of modern Orthodox theologians concerning the uses and abuses of St. Augustine’s speculations sometimes may cause us to lose sight of the saint who would never have wanted his writings to be used by the West to spread heresy.
As for the Buddha-saints, Barlaam and Joseph, I never heard of them, which shows my ignorance and impiety. Tell me more about them, and where I can read of them.
“Pray unto God for me, o holy god-pleaser Augustine, for I fervently flee unto thee, the speedy helper and intercessor for my soul.”
August 12th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
I liked your comment here, James. I myself was starting to wonder if you weren’t among those who denied Augustine’s sanctity! The ‘Buddha-saints’, Ss Barlaam and Joasaph, can be read about 1) in a Loeb Classical Library edition of their Vita by St John of Damascus, or 2) in Fr Asterios Gerostergios’s translation, ‘The Precious Pearl: The Lives of Ss Barlaam and Ioasaph’, which I’ve got, and which you’re welcome to borrow if you like! I don’t know if I’d go so far as to call them _merely_ a ‘literary adaptation of the Buddha’, but the resemblances are certainly there. Anyway, the book itself is wonderful, and particularly for the catechetical material it presents in the form of St Barlaam’s instructions to St Ioasaph. It also has notes by, apropos of the St Augustine discussion, Metropolitan Augoustinos of Florina.
October 4th, 2008 at 10:04 pm
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