Florin Caragiu: Father Neofit, I would like for us to direct our attention towards certain features, reference points, founding ideas-outlines, openings of the iconic specific and, particularly, to the language emphasized in Father Ghelasie‘s theology. What would you like to begin with in connection to the hesychastic mysticism presented by the Pious Father of Frasiney Holy Monastery?
Father Neofit: I would begin by saying that I find it appropriate to express my inability to provide an explanation, a commentary, an exegesis, or a eulogy of Father’s writings because I honestly have not yet assimilated them and, more importantly, I do not think such an approach should be made hastily. Besides, it is more proper to let his work make him authentically accessible. That is why I would like to make it clear from the very beginning that my answers are only personal opinions on certain topics that you have brought up, and that they should be regarded with critical prudence.
Getting back to your question, I believe Father Ghelasie was important by spotting and bringing to light the iconic concept from a Christian perspective which, in a way, even in the specific language, is richer than certain founding ideas.
In fact, the term iconic is regarded as a sign with different meanings. Thomas Sebeok points out some of them, stating there are numerous examples of iconicity in the animal discourse, which actually involves all available channels – chemical, auditory, and visual. Peirce regards images, diagrams, and metaphors as three subcategories of icons, etc. Umberto Eco also mentions the basic icon, iconism and hypo-iconism, a scale of iconicity, aso. Thom considers that iconic signs take shape in the entire nature as the evidence of an irreversible, universal dynamic: a model ramifies into an isomorphic replica, etc.
In The Signs: An Introduction to Semiotics, Sebeok asserts the connection between the icon and Plato’s process of mimesis; moreover, he stresses the extension made by Aristotle who, from a preponderantly visual representation associated with this notion, comes to include the whole cognitive and epistemological experience. Sebeok even maintains the iconic function of the auditory sign, and the fact that iconic signs invade mankind’s verbal, as well as non-verbal communication codes. It is interesting that Sebeok considers there are still apparently indissoluble questions related to this issue.
Yet, I believe that beyond the written confession made by Father Ghelasie and the direct contact, there remains a mystery that was and still is highlighted and discovered by each of us personally. In a movie that was probably made by one of Florin Zamfirescu’s students (the actor, Father’s cousin), the Father spoke about the mystery understood by/through the mystery itself as a plenary, ineffable, inexhaustible opening, the mystery communicated and partaken of as mystery as well. It is, in a way, a call for an iconic dialogue sealed by Divinity.
This means that the Father must be sniffed at, otherwise he eludes, he escapes from being devoured, and it is but natural that he should be perceived diversely. He unquestionably has plenty of ideas with, let’s say, cultural impact; nevertheless, he cannot be limited to and understood only through them. Father Ghelasie has wholly survived through the iconic image. We can take into account different aspects of his writings, for they can be approached intellectually, philosophically, and scientifically as well, however they remain within the same mystery and revelation mentioned before.
As to the last part of your question regarding my own emphasis on the hesychastic mysticism presented by Father Ghelasie, the answer is that I would definitely focus on the “presenter”, namely Father Ghelasie, for a role model, worthy of being followed.
F. C.: How do you appreciate the Father’s contribution to Romanian theology? Can we consistently find these features of iconic mysticism in a detailed, conspicuous way in the works of other Romanian theologians?
F. N.: We cannot find these features in other theologians’ writings as such. It is a great accomplishment that he has succeeded to translate theology, or mysticism, if you like, into a specific language, and to emphasize a way of being or living in which we discover ourselves. That gives you the freedom to live like a Christian naturally. You do not feel the shock of a graft. The food and ritual gestures stand for dialogue, they help you be receptive to the whole creation, hesychasm not being regarded only as a practical method, but as a general attitude towards the entire reality, based on meaningful gestures and rituals. Therefore, it is obvious that the Father neither broke away from the context of reality in general, nor from the theological one, from the Romanian theology you mentioned. He is not from Mars! ...
I feel inclined to consider Romanian theology as the leader of the last century’s Christian theology at least by its two representatives, Father Staniloae and Father Ghelasie. Taking into account the fact that they have not been assimilated yet, I do believe they will be made actual as leaders and mark the 21st century to some extent. They will nonetheless remain everlasting and unalterable landmarks. The seed sowed by them and others is beginning to bear fruit. The existence of such fathers is a matter of comfort and delight to us.
In what regards the Romanian theological context, in The Man and God, Father Staniloae states that ‘the human being is an inexhaustible speaking word’ (Orthodox Dogmatic Theology Studies, The Metropolitan Church of Oltenia Publishing House, Craiova 1991, p. 202), and that ‘God does not only speak to us through His hypostatic Word, but He also creates, supports, strengthens and leads us to Him by this very communication. And He made us hypostatic words as well by stamping His mark on us’ (idem, p. 208). Consequently, man does not only speak in the sense of uttering words, but he is a self-expressing word, a hypostatic one that can express itself directly.
In this sense, Father Ghelasie highlights the language of indwelling, interpersonal communication more consistently, and finds an impressively efficient and clear way of rendering it. Father Staniloae also affirmed that ‘as the human being exists concretely only in persons, it grows more closely-knit and stronger if there is a loving communication between two of them or more. The human being, existing only in persons, involves the movement of interpersonal communication, and is consolidated either by the latter’s being made actual, or by sincere, positive dialogue between persons’ (idem, p. 205).
Father Staniloae affirms that God our Lord stamped a mark on us which, in order to make some analogies between the quoted texts, is named iconic image, filiation image, archetype, etc, by Father Ghelasie. This mark is also given different names in Father Staniloae’s writings, such as founding model (Orthodoxy and Romanianism), transconscious, supraconscious, spirit, heart, or the mysterious depth (Ascetism and Orthodox Mysticism).
In the same context, it is well known that Father Staniloae has brought Saint Gregory Palamas back to the attention of contemporary theologians’; here I will quote some fragments from Orthodoxy and Romanianism, which I find extremely interesting from a Palamite anthropological perspective.
‘Of course that the persons of the Holy Trinity, like the human persons, anchor and act in men through their manifestations, but what governs and supports the work is the person, who is as present as the work itself. We often notice an action, an influence, a pressure on us, but we do not realize this action is deliberately connected to a person.’
‘Knowing the person who carries out an action on us stands for a superior level of knowledge than knowing the action itself. While we recognize only the work, the action, we tend to consider it one of nature’s actions, or one of nature’s forces. Anyway, very few of us tend to derive it from a person.’
Thus, knowing the manifestations, works, energies of a human person is distinct from knowing the person. Father Ghelasie emphasizes Palamas’s anthropological model, like the being of creation and energies of creation, and he details it by pointing out the triadic character of the soul (the person in Father Staniloae’s text), described as a threefold indwelling substance. In Ascetism and Orthodox Mysticism, Father Staniloae speaks about Calist Katafygiotis’s triadic character of the soul as sense, spirit and reason, as different from lust and anger as energies and works. Before Father Ghelasie, theologians had not tried to synthesize Calyst’s anthropological model with the Palamite one by an up-to-date connection with the anthropological, relationist, ontological, seething personalism of the 20th century. Father Ghelasie was successful in clarifying the Christian anthropology by placing it within a general context, and presenting it in an unmistakably specific language. I think Father Ghelasie has other relevant contributions as well.
F. C.: We must not forget that, in Father Ghelasie’s opinion, the iconic ritual refers to the common meeting place and personal partaking between two realities, God-uncreated and created, both dynamically indwelling and involved beyond self in a different reality. It is an active process based on a loving dialogue and mutual self-abandonment. We can say that both the Father’s writings and his own life, revealed through impressive evidence, iconically mirror a lively, unique, personal experience which cannot be “reduced” or leveled up by means of filters or standard-systemic patterns of thought, namely an incarnate living language/word! In Father Ghelasie’s writings, we discover an array of shapes and meanings of an oral-natural-gestic language which surprises and incites many people, or even baffles those who are hastier or more conservative regarding the “letter”. Father Ghelasie is different from other thinkers due to this very language: natural, spontaneous, permanently life-oriented, having a multitude of connections, redirections and active openings, mixing highly profound, mystical-theological reflections with exceptional Philokalia-inspired parables, sometimes bursting with expressions of highly poetical intensity, as well as with psychological and physiological analyses, comparative studies and extremely varied, surprising applications within the “concreteness” of the soul and body. But, more importantly, he stresses the iconic “concreteness” of Christian worship and liturgical unfolding–partaking by which man “assimilates” his Iconic Image and regains his spiritual ability to communicate, that is to open a dialogue beyond self with God, his neighbor and the whole creation, being fulfilled through the Eucharist and pre-tasting the eschatological. Father Ghelasie’s writings seem to resemble more to a mystical “Phenomenon” rather than to a ‘System of Thought’.
F. N.: As far as I see it, Father Ghelasie was an ‘adversary’ of fixed conceptions in their various forms, and even the iconic focus he mentioned represented a gestic settlement of a flexible relation, distinct from any mental concentration, any strictly intellectual, affective, volitive, body-related, pathological fixations, or spiritual practices.
In my opinion, the dynamic of his total (iconic!) adequacy while meeting different people, which was consistently spontaneous and strikingly new, represents the happiest event I have ever been part of. It was nothing but an icon within a procession, an iconic procession!
His writings somehow reflect this particular, I would stress iconic appropriateness, for they must have been created to arouse an answer from the reader, an equivalent to a rebirth due to the indisputably spiritual presence of the hieromonk Ghelasie Gheorghe. They are iconic, dialogic writings. I am not sure whether they can be properly defined by a certain term, which would probably comprise their entire diversity. It is obvious that a word like system is not adequate, either from Bertalanffy’s flabby systemic schematism, or Bateson’s holon-type system. Even the expression mystical phenomenon seems to have a rather static, spectacular, slightly discordant connotation. Anyway… these are all attempts…
On the other hand, I think there are differences between the ways of adequacy and reception of the same text if orally delivered, typed, audio or video recorded. They involve adequacy and require different types of involvement. The tension of a dialogue imposed by the interlocutor or interlocutors has influence upon adequacy. Interestingly, it was Father Ghelasie’s writings that irritated the most, or at least this is my impression. I have heard many readers who were annoyed that, when meeting him face to face, he did not seem to be the author of the writings; they simply perceived him spiritually in a different way during direct meetings. He is likely to be more easily perceived when video or audio recorded, he sounds softer, he does not shock as much as through his written words. This is interesting to notice…
F. C.: In which way do you think that Father Ghelasie’s writings and life represent a ferment, a leavened dough for religious Christian life and the life of the world today? I particularly have in mind the dialogic opening they stimulate, the confessional proneness to assimilate the iconic identity, to rediscover Man’s iconic Image and self-worship of God as a stage before transfiguration, namely the Eucharistic “wedding”?
F. N.: I can positively affirm that he has also caused contrary reactions, more or less aggressive. Many of them have become neutralized and changed into a condescending expectation, or they have made the gesture of dialogic greeting, answer, participation, involvement. What I want to say is that he brought about a sudden awakening, which has surprised, enlightened or made people happy. It is normal that such a strong ferment should make some ‘doughs’ turn sour or prematurely swollen, while others should leaven and rise in due time, thoroughly and firmly.
The dialogic opening you mentioned is not like any other, it is a particular one, which is not limited to a mere dialogue of ideas. Father Staniloae beautifully puts it: ‘ideas carry weight as long as they reflect the love between people’ (idem, p. 203). Such an opening is close to eschatology; it is iconically centered and unfolds thoroughly like a ritual, in the sense of a communion as Eucharistic body. The model, source, the supreme example is represented by the Holy Liturgy. To be more specific, I would say this generalized dialogic opening is an incessant Liturgy, but not transposed into the prayer of the heart, but into a gestic, ritual, iconic, Eucharistic dialogue which is specific to the Carpathian tradition. Father Staniloae mentions such an experience of knowledge, let us call it Eucharistic, and I will quote from God’s Eternal Face: ‘The body can become God-like without ceasing to have the features of matter, for the whole man becomes God-like. Due to such a body, man will come to have, like the angels, through a direct and real experience, a thorough insight into existence, or into God Himself, since he will completely and deeply be pervaded by God. He will know God through the entire universe and through all people who have now become transparent for God’ (God’s Eternal Face, Oltenia’s Metropolitan Church Publishing House, Craiova, 1987, p. 374). ‘Only through love for each other and the universe will men acquire knowledge that will make them full of light, revealing God’s mysteries, and the knowledge itself will be like a bright source of light and love from and through the universe, all around them. And this will be their permanently new movement and food, from and through the universe. This will be ‘the new sky and the new earth’ (Apocalypse, XXI, 1)” (idem, p. 376).
There is a distinction, a clear demarcation between this dialogic, iconic, Christ-centered, Eucharistic manner, and the ontological-relational one exposed by M. Buber, E. Levinas or E. Mounier’s personalism, etc.
Father Ghelasie’s writings and life are highly important to us as Romanians because they reveal a mystical code in which we can rediscover ourselves, and move freely in our own element. They make it possible for us to live as genuine, consistent Christians in the concrete events of life, elegantly avoiding breaches. For example, they do not ask for a succession or alternation between work and prayer, or even a concomitance, but for a gestic, dialogic, continuous ritual, a permanent one.
F. C.: This reminds me of a “word” from the Philokalia: ‘if you pray only when you pray, then you do not really pray.’ It seems to me that the integral dynamism of such a mystical approach focused on dialogue and involvement discloses, as a specific characteristic of man’s opening and advance towards God’s mystery, a continuous movement of refinement and renewal of communication means, and of recovery of the iconic memorial affected by the “accident” caused by sin. Thus, it permanently urges an involved answer from the reader seen as a “witness” of the word. In contrast to the philosophical logic, the Image is not an “accident” of the essence-being, but the Super-essence or the Essence of Essence, the Image of the being, while only the anti-image or the perverted memorial of sin can be called an “accident”. The weight of Father Ghelasie’s systematic and “complete” writings is given by its unveiling of this specific iconic language as the imprint/impression/mark of a spiritual view. Such a view is not reduced to partial approximations of thinking for, while not totally disregarding them, it transcends them by its irreducible, speaking, “living” feature. Now, let us get back to the mixture of real life and prayer you mentioned. How could it be accomplished within the iconic specific?
F. N.: Some problems arise in monasteries because work is not seen also as a prayer in this gestic, ritual sense. The specific iconic gesture does not only make a connection between prayer and work, but it discloses a method of maintaining yourself within a permanently and fundamentally iconic gesture.
F. C.: You imply it should be seen as a ritual-liturgical higher form of both prayer, and work...
F. N.: Well, it does not necessarily involve only a concomitance, but a manner of a consistent and oriented dialogue during everyday work and prayer as well. The iconic gesture requires that you should work ritually and gestically, while also preserving yourself within a present-gestic prayer. I believe it would be very important that such a dialogic, relational approach should be stimulated in monasteries, discreetly and elegantly, of course, not stridently, roughly, brutally. They would become stronger and turn into extraordinary “centers of personalization”. I also believe that Father Staniloae ought to be much more assimilated in monasteries, especially by the young generations, and not only through the Philokalia. For instance, Man and God from the ‘Orthodox Dogmatic Teology Studies’ points out the relational, inter-personal dialogue through a range of rich, firm, and beautiful nuances. Why should such a writing not be assimilated into the Philokalia?
By means of this Carpathian Image, Father Ghelasie could imprint a unique depth, profoundness, opening, ease, and power of expansion on the Romanian monasticism. I mentioned the latter in particular since the temptation of an unyielding isolation or uncomfortable seclusion is more powerful here and, besides, in monasteries there are currents of living derived from specific models which generate certain attitudes, even conflicts. I have read an article in the magazine The Commandment of Love about a pious Father from a hermitage around Arad, as far as I remember. He complained that Romanian monasticism, from a cenobitic perspective, is disorganized in many monasteries because they do not function wholly on the cenobitic principles taught by Saint Theodore the Studite. He considered that at the Holy Mountain there are many young Romanian monks who are now getting accustomed to the authentic tradition of monasticism preserved there, and who will return to Romania – God knows when –to reform whatever is to be reformed. This is a point of view… I think an improvement is likely to be made, but not unilaterally, only by the infusion of such models from Mount Athos, as wonderful as they may be.
In a way, even the very term reform may suggest the idea that Romanian monasticism is rather deficient, which is an exaggeration. Cenobitic life has a mystery of its own, which does not exclude functioning principles, however it cannot be substituted by them either. A person is more profound, livelier than that, and he/she has to assume some principles. Their activation acquires a personal mark, therefore particularities as well, which should not be seen as contradictions. Cenobitic life is kept alive by intense relationships capable of mutual birth that takes place according to Iconic Models, as Father Ghelasie used to say, not to functional principles. A proverb says that ‘order (good organization) represents only a part of life’. A little poetry will do no harm to functioning principles…
Father Ghelasie had a broad vision of the existence of mystical specifics: Carpathian, Athonite, Slavic, Sinaitic, etc. He saw them in their real diversity, as well as in dialogue. He did not profess useless exclusivisms and superiorities. I strongly believe that a man like the hieromonk Ghelasie Gheorghe is the incontestable proof that sainthood or profound living are possible when based on our autochthon tradition. Moreover, the exceptional life of such a Father until the beginning of this new millennium proves that Romanian monasteries are not necessarily expecting an Athonite reform alone. On the contrary, they have capable broad-minded people, and Father Ghelasie was not a singular example. We should mention Father Arsenie Boca, Father Cleopa, and there are many others. Frasiney Monastery, to mention only one, does not need to expect reforms from Mount Athos or elsewhere; it may sooner join a natural dialogue with other models, and extend a profound, open and balanced autochthon model, in a discreet and inconspicuous manner.
F. C.: A gesture is usually regarded as a body movement expressing a certain intention or mood. In the iconic mysticism, however, the iconic gesture proves to transcend this ordinary explanation.
F. N.: Father Ghelasie firstly imprints an indwelling emphasis and consistency on the iconic gesture, and then an iconic orientation, appeal and centralization. The act itself as a point of movement and gestic opening has indwelling, not mental, energetic or biologic consistency. This means that the soul, as indwelling substance of creation, can manifest directly as a soul, not only as a display of intention in a bodily form. However, the whole soul-and-body man can express himself as a unitary personality through gestures, and it is wonderful when things happen this way. On the other hand, we should be honest and admit that the experience of iconic gesture is not an easy one; it is closely connected to a certain mystery and anthropological apophatism, besides its deeper theological significance.
F. C.: We have to point out, as Father Ghelasie does clearly and frequently, that the term “indwelling” related to the act of communication does not stress the communion of man, of the nature created by God Himself, it does not “depict” a pantheistic image, but it refers to man’s ability to open up, involve and devote himself “with all his being” within communion. Furthermore, it “renders” a proneness of the created being’s Image to Eucharistic fulfillment, the mystery in which God and man communicate and partake of each other without merging or changing. The very inter-human dialogue bears this Eucharistic resemblance of the union between the limbs of a single divine-human Body. As to worship and self-sacrifice, for instance, the interpersonal communication concretely reflects and expresses this ontological gift altered by sin, but restored by Christ Incarnate, and also man’s ability to open up to the Eucharistic mystery for which he was created by God. The fact that the “indwelling” participation does not entail an annulment of the difference between the created and the uncreated, but it throws more light on it, it becomes manifest if we have the purpose of this involvement in view: the state of being face-to-face with God, and the face-to-face sight from God’s Kingdom, which convey the very mystery of love and eschatological partaking, the mystery of God’s Image and Likeness.
In the iconic specific, the Shape-Image stands for a common-personal meeting place of the realities of soul and body. More precisely, the indwelling mark created in concordance with Christ’s Arch-model, the Person’s integral features, “beyond” the soul and body. Moreover, the Image means being prone to alterity, being in communion, a “common” reality beyond the self which the person communicates with. First of all, this is a “common” meeting place between God’s Image and Word that indwell in the human being, and the filiation Image of creation with its reasons of creation. It is a “common” meeting place, which represents man’s actual life with its indwelling “inclination” for depth and fulfillment through the mystery of Christic Incarnation. Can we speak about the divine Image of the Holy Trinity within the man as an “embodied limit”, to quote Mr. Virgil Ciomos?
F. N.: Father Ghelasie seems to have been on the move even in his writings, and he is not easy to catch due to the polysemy of the words or to distinct realities expressed in different contexts by the same terms. These are some examples I came across:
“The Soul is the Person. The body is the individuality. The Soul-Body unity is the Personality” (The Memories of a Hesychast, Arhetip Publishing House 1991, p. 21).
“The Soul is the Indwelling Person of Creation” (The Last Supper, p. 39).
“In a purely Christian sense, the Soul is the Person, the energetic Body is the individuality while the Soul-Body unity is the Personality Man. As essence, the soul is the already Indwelling Personality, like the Trinity of the self, but as Integral Reality, man is the Soul-Body Unity” (The Struggles of Hesychasm, Arhetip Publishing House, 1991, p. 55).
In a more recent book, An Answer of Defense, he has a different approach. “The Image of the Personal Man is actually the indestructible Man, Resemblance of God’s Image, thereby what is of utmost importance is neither the Soul, nor the body, but the very Personal Image of Man which is then expressed as Soul and body” (Tipo Aktis Publishing House, 2002, p. 22).
“The true mysticism is that of the Personal Man’s image, not of the soul or body, but of the WHOLE Man extending thereafter into the Soul and body (…) Moreover, I consider that the man’s Personal Image is the Active part, not the soul or the body” (idem, p. 23).
In his early writings, the emphasis seems to be from the parts, from dichotomic anthropological distinctions based on the Palamite model, towards the whole, the unity, as if from the “fallen man” to the restored one. In the more recent texts, there is a shift from the whole to the parts. In the first texts, the Integral Reality-Man is called Personality Man, while in the recent texts we find the expression the Personal Image of Man. In the former situation, the Person stands for to the Soul, which is a part, while in the latter, the Person, as the Personal Image of Man, indicates the whole.
There are also other texts to exemplify this: “That is why Man needs to Regain his own Human Image through the Bond and Assimilation of DIVINITY from THE DIVINE MARK on his Human Image” (An Answer of Defense, p. 19). In The Struggles of Hesychasm we read: “The being is never separated from its energies, they Inter-penetrate. Within Creation, Inter-penetration is suggestively called Incarnation, which means Entering into the Other. Taking this as a principle, we are a Soul-Flesh Dichotomy within the Integral Body. We usually mistake the Flesh for the Body. The Body represents the Shape of the Inter-penetration between the Soul-Being and the Body’s Energies. The fall affects this very Inter-penetration” (p. 30). Therefore, it affects the Body too. From a Christian point of view, the restoration of this Inter-penetration disintegrated after the fall is carried out by means of the correlation, iconically imprinted assimilation of God’s mark on man. In this text the Body, that is the Integral Body, stands for the Image of Man from the previous text. This leads to what Father Staniloae claimed, that man’s restoration means being God-like. I apologize for the digression, but I found it suggestive to capture Father Ghelasie’s movement with its suitability, permanent accessibility of language, which is more than stylistically consistent.
You mentioned Mr. Ciomos’ embodied limit, but I do not know either the context, or the meaning of this expression. Triadic models are certainly imprinted in the process of creation, and things could not be otherwise.
Father Staniloae brought up the I-you-he relationship as triangular, triadic, and the human person as having a triadic image: “If the Father is at the foundation of our mind, the ego or the subject, the Son is reflected in our highly enriched conscience, and in the loving relationship with the others lies the Holy Spirit’s work united with our whole self-conscience and all the meanings, we realize the human person is triadic and implicitly in an absolutely loving relationship not only with God of the Holy Trinity, but also with the other human persons” (Man and God, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology Studies, Craiova 1991, p. 172). (…) “Man displays the Holy Trinity’s Image, as a person in communion with the divine Persons and the human persons” (idem, p. 171).
Father Ghelasie particularly stressed on “THE MYSTERY OF THE TRIADIC IMAGE” as “THE MYSTERY OF GOD’S IMAGE”, and made obvious the transpositions of this Model into creation, he spoke in/and about a trinitarian logic and the person’s image as threefold indwelling substance in itself. He wrote a book entitled Hesychasm, The Mystery of The Trinity Image, which shows that mystical practice is impregnated by and unfolds within this Model.
The limit was placed within a communion, as a border and sheer communication, by the Theology of the person, the 20th century personalism. Father Staniloae writes: “The fact that the person is more profound than infinity, therefore the supreme Person is deeper than the supreme infinity, was upheld by Saint Maxim the Confessor, and more recently by the German theologian Ewald Burger: “It is not infinity that is deeper than what is personal, but what is personal is deeper than infinity’” (idem, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology Studies, 1991, p. 236). “The person is deeper than infinity; the person is the subject, while infinity is the predicate” (idem, p. 237).
Hence, the person is perceived as a dynamic, expansive and extensive limit of the universe, a container of what cannot be contained! Father Ghelasie unmistakably expresses this idea in The Struggles of Hesychasm: “God is the Absolute Infinite comprising Infinity itself which can never be God’s Space, since only God can be the Space of Infinity.
The Creation, representing God’s Whole Transposition into the Being-Substance of Creation, is infinite as well, but paradoxically and antinomically Infinite in God’s Super-Infinity. God can create an Infinity in His Own Infinity which, as Infinity, can comprise God, but cannot Limit Him since He Always, as the Uncreated Infinity, can Transcend the Created Infinity. Here lies the Infinite Movement and Communication between God and Creation, Each of them being Embraced by the other, and Transcended while being embraced, which does not mean Absorption, but Eternal Communication-Dialogue of Partaking without Merging” (idem., p. 28).
The Word incarnation does not stand for God’s or man’s limitation, it is rather a common place (the dis-limited limit) whose limit-boundary is represented by the lack of mergence and changes of natures in Jesus Christ’s Person. Pantheism and evolutionism propose some absurd dis-limitations. Such mystery of the person who is not limited by either the finite or the infinite is extraordinary!
The (dis-limited) delimitation as a form of the soul reveals its own identity. As to the soul, the indwelling reality, the form does not entail a limit, but a delimitation of identity, it reveals identity in a continuous movement, but within the same space of specific identity, iconically unique. It is difficult to express these mysteries, hence the antinomic expressions used by Father Ghelasie in an attempt to make use of an iconic language.
F. C.: We should perhaps mention some connections between the iconic and antinomic language. Can the iconic language involve antinomic expressions, and in which way can the latter be intensified with the help of the former?
F. N.: Father Staniloae affirmed that history as a whole moves among the idol, the symbol, and the icon, each of them conveying a certain rapport (ST 1953). The icon co-exists with symbols in a general sense, and also with certain special, specific symbols; it does not exclude them.” The icon co-exists with transparent symbols filled with the plenary presence of God the Word Who became flesh. It represents the One who fills these symbols with presence and throws light on their meaning. On the one hand, the icon representing God the Word Who came for people in a human body removes the separating wall of the old law’s symbols made up of things; on the other hand, it refines the symbols by making the presence of God’s power more acute within them” (GB, p. 865). By analogy with Father Staniloae’s relation between icons and symbols, we can say that icons have a deeper meaning than antinomy, and both of them have different types of support and finality in Christianity. The means of expression should not be taken separately from the personal mark they are imprinted with, and the context of interpersonal relationships.
As surprisingly as it may seem, this notion was used by the ancient philosophers, Lao Tse, Heraclites, etc. It has been noticed even in science, for example, that when causal successions become circular, ceasing to be linear, their descriptions in logic terms will generate paradoxes. G. Bateson stated that the computer’s answer to the classic paradox: “a Cretan says: all Cretans lie” (does he say the truth?) is: Yes-No-Yes-No-Yes-No, … turning the paradox into an oscillation. The psychologist R. D. Laing emphasized a new type of adequate language for the new scientific paradigm. He considered that the conventional scientific language is descriptive, while the language meant to reveal an experience should be “depictive”. Such a language seems to be much closer to poetry and even music, says Laing, and renders the experience more directly, somehow conveying its qualitative feature. Bateson affirmed that, since relationships represent the essence of the living world, it is best to use a language of relationships in order to speak about it. He believed that the metaphor holds together the whole web of mental connections, and went further on (too far in my opinion…) to claim that it lies at the basis of existence.
A central aspect of the new scientific paradigm is the shift of emphasis from objects to relationships. From a Christian point of view, the person is placed before the relationship, and is furthermore given an iconic endowment that is expressed through the person and forms of verbal utterance. I could therefore say that the iconic mark stands for the ability of the verbalized iconic language to express the human person. Antinomies can be assumed by the iconic language. The human person is a speaking Word, as Father Staniloae put it, and it has a certain Word of the WORD, GOD’S SON, as its mark, model, pattern, and Iconic archetype.
What I want to say is that we should not mistake the verbalized mental, oral or written language used to mediate and connect people for the language of direct communication between people. The iconic language is a reminder of the origin, the iconic archetype as the foundation of each human person. Christianity sees the origin of the metaphor in the Word. The metaphor is a certain utterance, and its power is to be found in the Word! ...
F. C.: Which then would be the specific difference between the antinomic and the iconic language?
F. N.: First of all, what I find interesting from the point of view of reception is that, scientifically speaking, the projections on the cortex of the pathways followed by verbalized information, visually or auditorily assimilated, are different. The specialization of the cerebral hemispheres (and their integration as well!) is an already accepted fact. Not less interesting would be an attempt to draw a map of the cortex.
In the left hemisphere, when a word is heard and receipted, the nervous impulses are transmitted from the ear level toward the primary auditory area, and the word cannot be deciphered unless the nervous signal is sent to Wernicke’s area. In this cortical area, an identification of the word’s acoustic code takes place, and also its nervous transmission to Broca’s area. Here, the corresponding articulated code is activated and sent to the motor area to express the receipted word. In case of a written and read word, the visual information travels from the ocular globes to the primary visual area, and then to the angular gyrus which associates the visual shape of the word to its corresponding acoustic code from Wernicke’s area. The process of uttering a word follows the same pathway already mentioned. A picture would probably have been more suggestive. In Wernicke’s area, the words’ auditory codes and their significance are stored. The articulation codes are stored in Broca’s area. The angular gyrus compares the words’ visual form with their auditory codes, and associates the word’s visual form with its auditory code in Wernicke’s area. These different pathways of the same information presented in different forms, oral or written, seem very interesting to me. The recodification of the word’s visual form into an auditory code by an articulation loop that takes place in the left hemisphere is especially remarkable. The right hemisphere is a map of visual-spatial images, emotions and simple language forms. These specific projections of mental activity must be part of a higher integration. Levy: “These particular differences between hemispheres must be conceived as different contributions of each hemisphere to set up the cognitive activity as a whole. When a person reads a story, the right hemisphere plays an important part in deciphering the visual information, maintaining and structuring the story, appreciating the humorous and emotional content, grasping the main significances based on already existent associations, and in understanding metaphors. At the same time, the left hemisphere contributes to understanding syntax, turning words into their phonematic representations on the grounds of complex relationships between concepts and syntax. There is not even a single activity to involve only one hemisphere, or to which only a single hemisphere brings its contribution” (Introduction to Psychology, Rita Atkinson, E. Smith, Richard Atkinson, The Technical Publishing House, Bucharest, 2002, p. 62).
In The Philosophy of Images, Jean-Jacques Wunenburger mentions a cleavage between visual and verbal representations, but also a verbal-iconic alliance. The latter draws our attention to the fact that verbal experience should not be reduced to a one-dimensional model because the polymorphous nature of the language ought to be taken into consideration. “Its expressive role is double: a sonorous one that produces phonic equivalents of referents and meaning, and a graphic one that enables the sound to materialize as spatial and visual signs. The linguistic communication develops into two material systems: the oral or acoustic expression, created by the transmitting voice, is coupled with the ear in the same way in which the written or graphic expression, the expression that couples the writing hand with the reading eye, resorts to the visual perception of reading” (The Philosophy of Images, J. J. Wunenburger, Polirom Publishing House, 2004, p. 39).
As to the written language, the graphic expression and its visual perception, there is certainly an influence determined by the writing system. The phonetic alphabetic writing is much more abstract, and also implies an auditory recodification since it does not graphically preserve an image of the signified. Ideographic writings, like Chinese ideograms and Egyptian hieroglyphs, mix phonetic representation with analogical graphic characters”. In the Chinese ideographic writing, the written sign mixes half a pictograph with half a phoneme; the former has a referent in view, while the latter enables the oral reading of phrases. However, the principle is not completely uniform; in Chinese, the idea of peace is rendered by placing a woman under a roof which opens a rather mythographic perspective since it corresponds neither to the representation of a sound, nor to the pictographic representation of an action or quality, but to the connection between two images featured in a profoundly ethnic context” (idem, p. 251). Such a manner of expression by means of image associations is notable.
On the other hand, alphabetic languages can produce verbal images conceived “as a particular feature of the language, introducing in the area of generally abstract signs a concrete, sensitive, affective, emotional, poetic and even cosmic dimension (…), in contrast with pre-alphabetic languages which mix the image with the complex of their signs” (idem, p. 58). In Wunenburger’s view, metaphors, allegories, parables, etc are visual and linguistic images. Bateson considers these forms of linguistic images to have associative and relational features.
P. Klee states: “writing and drawing are identical in their essence.” In fact, in the Middle Ages and throughout the Renaissance, the verbal written expression made certain use of figurative calligraphy to which miniatures, emblems, etc. were added. “In one of his novels, U. Eco, the great semiotician, mentions the excess of capital letters the 16th -17th century writers excelled in as a sign of dignity and eloquence conferred to the writing.
This eloquence brought about by capital letters in written verbalization is clearly not due to the meaning of the words in principal, but to the attention for visual perception, the identification and recognition of the importance of focus items. The change of a word’s presentation style affects the implicit memory (Introduction to Psychology, idem, p. 374).
Note: “Usually Roberto didn’t make excessive use of capital letters, something which his contemporary writers excelled in, but when he wrote out what Father Emanuele was saying and declaring, he counted a lot of them, as if the Father didn’t only write, but he also spoke in that manner, letting the special dignity of the things he had to say be heard as a sign that he had great and fascinating eloquence” (The Island of the Day Before, Pontica Publishing House, Constanta, 1995, p. 91).
Visual ability is faster than the auditory one. It is interesting that contemporary psychology considers them to be systems of specific memory inserted in a certain code or representation that can be acoustic, visual, spatial, semantic, etc. Working memory seems to be able to classify mental representations on another basis than the one for common verbal categories – phonologic, semantic (Memory and Cognitive Functioning, Daniel Gaonac’h and Pascale Larigauderie, Polirom Publishing House, 2002, p. 69).
Therefore, the perception of a written text can be strengthened/orientated through visual perception rendered conspicuous by the emphatic form of certain target items, and can determine a specific memory processing if it conveys a linguistic image as well. An imprint, an implicit codification can take place in the area of memory schemes, patterns and archetypes, which does not exclude an acoustic and semantic codification. Such a text presentation requires a prevailing formulation of the basic gestures, attitudes, and dynamic relations, affectively and emotionally expressed, and integrated into a system of thought based on images (Introduction to Psychology, idem, p.423), which involves a similar answer of perception for a most favorable communication.
Anyway, the written text is impregnated with and implicitly expresses the attitude and mood of the writer. Yet, some psychologists consider that attitudes have cognitive, affective, and behavioral components, while others either believe that attitudes have only cognitive and affective components, or that only the affective element can be taken into consideration (idem, p. 842). These points of view must be valid on different levels, contexts, and situations, for one specific element does not rule out the possibility of their partial or total integration. Even the integration of components may cause a different degree of their participation, thus making the person’s entire attitude acquire the specific color of a component.
As to the implicit pervasiveness of the person’s mood within the text, I was impressed to read that Mihai Eminescu once sent a letter from Vienna to his parents, I suppose, to tell them he had postponed writing, as he had not wanted them to be partakers of his bitterness caused by an illness. What seems extraordinary to me is his gentleness and, in addition to this, his awareness of imprinting a certain mood on the text interstices.
Getting back to Father Ghelasie, I believe his iconic written language reflects his personality, which means that the profound iconic feature of his written language cannot be reduced only to its graphic form .The writings of Father Staniloae, Father Cleopa, Father Arsenie are iconic as well, but in a different way. This iconic characteristic is not aleatory in Father Ghelasie’s texts, although there is no constancy, recurrence or algorithm in using capital letters (or something else) for emphatic words when he transposes the Trinitarian logic or makes iconic connections, and generally in his ways of expression. These writings require, or they may even imply, a certain type of reading that can be facilitated if there is a suspension of incredulity from the part of the reader, as Coleridge put it.
Father Ghelasie’s written iconic language sometimes reveals itself as a spiritual presentation through iconic names. For instance, the triads of mystical language such as: Image-Face-Likeness, Icon-Model-Prototype, The Living-Life-Existence, Affection-Love-Devotion are mystical names, iconic identifications of actual Images Within Themselves, beyond attributes-qualities-energies, which transcend mental categories and do not reveal themselves when being looked at their meaning. Such a presentation involves a direct orientation-transcendence towards mysterious models-images of reality, and not a dialogic short-circuit, a monologue twisting round the meaning (seen as a relation between words and concepts, species or definitions) of the extensive connotations of terms.
In Kant and the Platypus, Umberto Eco outlines a history of discrepancies between different philosophical, linguistic paradigms concerning the relation between to name and to mean, between the signifier and the signified, referent or reference, and also a history of the different types of relations within the denotation-connotation pair replaced with Carnap’s extension-diminution pair.
In the Middle Ages, the most frequent opposition was between to mean and to name. The point of view “whether signs firstly mean concepts (and only by concept mediation can things be referred to), or whether they can, on the other hand, signify, designate, denote things, has been very recently debated upon (at least since Anselm from Canterbury) under the form of opposition between to mean and to name or to call” (Kant and the Platypus, Umberto Eco, Pontica Publishing House, Constanta 2002, p. 400).
“Authors like Boethius, Abelard or Thomas Aquinas were more interested in the issue of meaning rather than naming, and the psychological and ontological aspects of the language. Today, we could say that their semantics was adapted to a cognitive approach.” (…) “It would be interesting – says Umberto Eco – to watch closely the emergence of a different conception regarding the relation between a term and the object it refers to, in which the notion of meaning (seen as the relation between words and concepts, or species, universals or definitions) is becoming less and less important” (Kant and the Platypus, idem, p. 408). Throughout the 12th century, the distinction between meaning (of concepts and species) and naming (denoting concrete individual objects) was preserved.
For Bacon, “signs do not point to their referents through a mental category, but they are directly indicated, or they are used to refer to an object directly. There is no distinction if this object is a person (a concrete object), or a species, a feeling or a passion of the soul. What matters is that there is no mental connection between a sign and the object it is supposed to name” (U. Eco, Kant and the Platypus, p.411). “Bacon definitely dislocated the formulated semiotic triangle starting from Plato, who believed that the relation between words and referents is carried out by an idea, a concept, or a definition” (idem, p. 411).
Mill says that “the name signifies the subjects directly and the attributes indirectly; it denotes the subjects and implies or, as we will see later, connotes the attributes. The only object names which do not connote anything are proper names; and these ones, rigorously speaking, do not mean anything” (idem, p. 420).
“The Person, which is a proper Indwelling Image – says Father Ghelasie – is the first Mysterious Name of the Being in Itself ” (The Last Supper, p. 16).
Therefore, these names-iconic representations do not refer to objects, things, concepts or mental representations, they do not even imply being mediated by them to spiritually experience their referent; they point out-refer directly to the person’s triadic image, appealing to and demanding a recognition, a spiritual experience of this very image to find out its significance. These nouns transcend attributive connotations, representing a simple form of language .It is relevant that contemporary psychology considers the right hemisphere’s activity responsible for our understanding of simple language forms, for example, the answer to common names by selecting the designated objects such as a screw nut and a comb (Introduction to psychology, idem, p. 62).
I think that such language forms through iconic names suggest an intuitive, simple, genuine, direct perception. They show and move and I would even say they are similar to gestic language. G. B. Vico makes a connection between hieroglyphs and gestic language along the archaic history of humanity: “The deaf express themselves through gestures or objects naturally related to the ideas they want to translate. This axiom represents the principle of hieroglyphs all nations in the primitive epochs of their barbarism used in order to express themselves. It is also the principle of the natural language once used in the world” (Wunenburger, The Philosophy of Images, p. 31).
Father Ghelasie actually proposes a trinitarian logic, a logic of statements, distinct from a dual logic of contradictions, and he presents it by means of an iconic language. Such an iconic, graphic language, based mainly on iconic names, analogies, verbal images, is somehow different from an antinomic language which is not excluded either. I would affirm that such an antinomic language implies a certain relation-association, and preserves traces of a dual logic marked with its own comprehensive helplessness. Such logic is consequently surpassed, left behind, transcended. It actually points to another way of participation, acceptance, and opening. The antinomic language appears to be based on meanings rather than names, on “unacceptable”, significant associations which determine a semantic excess, stimulates a new meaning, and seeks to reveal the plentiful nuances of reality.
I would affirm, relating to two well-known expressions, that the antinomic language lays more stress on the rising immanence, while the iconic language on the descending transcendence. I suppose there is such a distinct emphasis…
Coming back to the texts’ perception and understanding, contemporary psychology mentions a scheme existing in the reader’s memory: “Glanzer and Nolan consider that the reader might have a reading control scheme available during the comprehension activity. This notion appeals to the knowledge structure specific to the text type, as well as to the reader’s purposes and interests enlarged upon by Kintsch and van Dijk. In their model, the scheme represents the readers’ purposes. They do not refer to the readers’ objectives, but to their knowledge regarding the organizational aspect of the texts. According to the authors, the representation of textual conventions activated by the reader will guide him towards building the macrostructure, especially by suppressing inappropriate micro-propositions” (Gaonach, Cognitive Memory and Functioning, idem, p. 170).
Anderson, Pichert, and Shirey mention a “content scheme which has in mind the reader’s knowledge about the real world, and whose activity facilitates the process of encoding through reading perspectives, guiding the attention towards the important elements of the text” (idem, p. 171).
We often notice a deliberate movement in Father Ghelasie’s writings due to his attempt to be adequate by means of new expressions, and this adequacy is aimed at the reader’s memory schemes. It is amazing that he managed to find the most efficient ways to refer to these schemes, memorial patterns, and not to follow simple meanings. He struck fixed ideas, stereotypes, and mental clichés directly, powerfully, and instantaneously. He imprinted archetypal, paradigmatic marks of undeniable Christian accuracy in an area of ambiguous, confusing, subconscious and/or conscious, individual and/or collective memory, impregnated with “remembrances of the fall”. He suggested, inserted, and imprinted archetypal principles as impulses to reset these memory schemes. He must have irritated already set people because he penetrated such profound psychic memory.
This approach did not define, nor did it excessively or irrevocably fix the mostly conventional terminology. For instance, the cause-effect, shape-content dual logic is different from the super cause-cause-effect Trinitarian logic; the terms cause and effect are also used in formulating the trinitarian logic, but they are integrated in another scheme, another generational mode. It does not take over a pattern of linear generation, on the cause-effect model (the cause is the origin, while the effect is the consequence) in which the super cause would represent the origin of the cause, and the cause would be the origin of the effect; it is rather a model similar to the Holy Trinity, thereby the super cause is the origin of both the cause and the effect, while between them there is a relationship, but not a generational rapport.
In Hesychastic Medicine, a chapter is named “Neuter, Yang and Yin”. At first sight, the use of these terms from the Chinese philosophy might lead to suspicion of syncretism. Nevertheless, as the Chinese model sees them, Yin and Yang imply another scheme: duality-polarity-opposition-complementarity-transformability-reversibility-periodicity. Father Ghelasie integrates Yin and Yang in a triadic, not a dual scheme: neuter, yang and yin, in which yin and yang are neither opposite, nor does one turn into the other, but they come from and return to the neuter element representing their origin, totality, and unity.
As a consequence, the yin and yang used by Father Ghelasie in the triadic model of hesychastic medicine’s functional physiology are conventional, but not arbitrary, since they can more easily create an interaction bridge between the two schemes. A Christian reader may find himself obstructed by these terms unless he notices their conventionality and integration in a triadic scheme. Such a functional model stands for an analogical transposition of the Holy Trinity model.
In Father Ghelasie’s iconic language, there are certain associative syntagms, powerfully focused and centered semantic series, semantically harmonious elements displaying evident synapses which guide our comprehension, and make their imprint on the long memory accessible. Psychologically speaking, as far as the verbal material is concerned, the dominant representation in the long memory is based on item significance, whereas significant connections and associations help memory (Introduction to Psychology, idem, p. 353). There are many examples in this respect: “Thoughts-Ideas-Mental representations”, “Transfiguration-Interpenetration-Transference”, “Interweave-Union-Dialogue-Cleaving Together” (Hesychasm, the Ritual of Christic Liturgy, p. 61). None of these syntagms seem to have anything to do with the antinomic language you mentioned.
It would be worth looking into Father Ghelasie’s written iconic language, especially into the ratio of nouns to verbs in his specific expressions. Which of them prevails? It must be the nouns since Christianity regards the person “before” the relation, and, to mention a peculiar feature of the written iconic language, names and callings are addressed to the subject. It would be interesting to make a connection with the representatives of the new scientific paradigm (with David Bohm, for example), who employed a mainly verbal language to be able to present the dynamic-gradual character of reality in its implicit order. It represents the rheomode that exhibits action, movement in a conceptual correspondence to the Hebrew language where the verb was primordial, all the forms of the words being derived from the verb root.
I personally brought up only some features of this iconic language, which should be more carefully and deeply researched by qualified people in this field.
What I found special and topical was the attempt to correlate the iconic language with Palamas’ theological and anthropological model, which distinguishes the being from its energies. The oral and written expressions are undoubtedly “energetical”, but communication is more profound.
The fact that imagistic memory is prodigious, and accurate images are stored in the long term memory, is explained by some psychologists by means of three codes: imagistic, linguistic, and semantic. Others refer only to two codes (Miclea, p. 175).
Photo by Mihai Apostolescu
F. C.: In a previous conversation, you remarked that some theologians consider inter-human communication mediated only by energies of manifestation. Yet, in Father Ghelasie’s iconic mysticism, we find exactly the iconic dimension of the relation between the being and energies. Moreover, iconicity proves to be the very “articulation” point, the apophatic and cataphatic coalescence that emphasizes the particular difference between the Christian apophatic and cataphatic mystical theology on the one hand, and the philosophical-dialectal theology on the other one. Without this iconic dimension, without this perception of the iconic as a border-altar of passage, meeting place and, above all, Eucharistic union and transfiguration, the apophatic-cataphatic relation cannot be understood wholly, that is in its final Christian outcome of transcending and becoming integral within the liturgical aspect of the Eucharist and eschatology. The fact that this passage border comprises two orientations: from creation to God as a spiritual “ascent”, and from God to creation as God’s “descent”, mirrors the Christian dialogic and Eucharistic specific.
F. N.: We need to clarify, or at least to discuss, whether the model of inter-human relations is similar to the “economic Trinity” – I am referring to some theologians’ view in which the relation between God and the world is mediated (only?) through non-created energies – and in this case the inter-human relations are seen as mediated solely through personal energies-manifestations (Yannaras), or similar to the ”Theological Trinity” model in which the triadic perichoresis, as a dynamically indwelling communion, is presented as a model of inter-human relations. Such a model enables a communion mediated by energies, but also not mediated, direct, anthropologically apophatic, a communication-partaking of mysteries, if we can put it like that.
If the human person is a reality which comprises both the indwelling substance and the energies of creation through God’s Creative Act, then man does not become or develop towards the person through relations, but the person is an ontological reality capable of relations in and beyond itself, both inter-human and with God. Hence, we can logically approve of the assumption of inter-human communication through the soul, directly indwelling-created, not only through human energies. There remains to be seen to which extent and under what circumstances such a relational mode can be made topical as long as there is no iconic transfiguration of the wedding clothes which we are potentially dressed in at our Baptism.
Getting back to the written or spoken language, to antinomic, paradoxical statements and iconic expressions, we can say that the antinomic language is, in a way, related to thought, it has energetic “support”. It tries to aim at what lies beyond, at the indwelling soul (which some mistake for the universal soul of the world, or even consider it the Divinity) – in the sense of anthropologic apophatism, or tries to aim at God, in the sense of theological apophatism. I believe that even if the iconic expression is energetically “supported” too, it rather has a two-fold designation of a Palamite model: the soul’s indwelling substance and human energetic manifestation in the sense of Palamas’ anthropology, as well as the Being and the Grace-Uncreated Energies in the sense of Palamas’ theology.
The antinomic language would be one of passage towards mystery, while the iconic language intends to present itself spiritually, and to identify a double opening that is more exact and personal, in the sense I mentioned that, for example, inter-human relations may be dynamically indwelling through energetic manifestations. Father Ghelasie may have mentioned a certain hermit called Neofit who used to see “double”, which means that his relation was both indwelling (non-energetic) and energetic. In fact, Father Ghelasie considered that Christian mysticism is not only energetic, like most occult rites, but it entails the indwelling substance of creation and, furthermore, a resemblance-iconic representation through and in the Christic iconic Archetype. The antinomic language makes use of significances, while the iconic one uses names.
“In fact, through words and meanings we always have to pass beyond words and meanings. Only this way we can sense God’s mysterious presence. If we care too much about words and meanings, they intervene between us and God; we remain within them, and regard them as God (…). Negative terms alone are as insufficient as affirmative ones. We have to synthesize them. But, at the basis of such a synthesis there lies an experience that transcends both its affirmative and negative terms”, says Father Staniloae (Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, The Biblical Institute Publishing House, 1997, p. 94).
The iconic language relies more on affirmations. About Dionysius the Areopagite, Father Staniloae says that “on the one hand, he affirms that God is better described by means of negations rather than affirmations yet, on the other hand, he states that He is much more beyond negations than affirmations. This must be understood as follows: God Himself is the most positive reality. But His supreme positive reality is beyond all our affirmations. And this is another reason why we should not give up on speaking about God in affirmative terms” (ibid, p. 95). In other words, from Father Staniloae’s comments alone, it appears that positive or affirmative terms are very much justified, and even more appropriate, to express mysteries. I think that Father Ghelasie’s iconic language appears to be more affirmative.
As to the relation between the cataphatic and the apophatic, Father Staniloae mentions these ways to knowledge from an anthropological perspective. “The human person’s depth lies within God’s infinity. That is where it absorbs the richness of infinity. This is the reason why the human person is said to be known and apophatic at the same time. God (namely God the Word) is Reason, the Word revealed to us, and He created us to know Him but, at the same time, He is beyond knowledge, and He endowed us with both features. Taking into account our Holy Fathers, and starting from the conscious and the unconscious in every man, B. Vaseslavtev asserts the following: ‘Here lies the last and the highest mysterious moment of man’s likeness to God. God is transcendent to me and I am transcendent to myself. God is hidden and I myself am hidden as well. There is a Deus absconditus and a homo absconditus. There is a negative theology that guides us towards God’s deep mystery. That is why there has to be a negative anthropology guiding us towards man’s mystery.’
Man is apophatic due to his depth, unreachable for himself, as a proof that he did not create himself but God did, who is really apophatic for man. And this very apophatic attribute points out to his roots in God. It also makes man never end the inner knowledge of himself. (…) Apophatism does not mean a lack of living his and God’s mystery in himself, as his foundation. On the contrary, it means living more in God than in himself. And this also happens in the relation with his fellow men. In this relation, he sees God more acutely and overwhelmingly than he sees his fellow man” (Man and God, Studies of Dogmatic Theology, Craiova, 1991, p. 164).
Such an application of cataphatic and apophatic knowledge from an anthropological perspective is by far remarkable. Not less relevant is the association of apophatism with living itself, that is with communication–partaking of mysteries, whether or not the mystery is its own, God’s or his fellow man’s. God’s apophatic knowledge can happen through the cosmos as well.
In Ascetism and Orthodox Mysticism (p. 63), Father Staniloae suggests that cataphatic and apophatic knowledge has different bases: reason, and the mind respectively. “Reason is always accompanied in its operations by the mind which sees more. Yet, it happens that in many cases the reason suppresses or despises the mind’s vision. But, in negative theology, the mind comes to have a more decisive role.”
Negative theology is “another rational operation by which, however, the mind discovers the insufficiency of reason. It is an operation by which reason itself becomes aware of its limitations and helplessness to sense God Almighty differently” (idem, p. 63).
Thus, negative theology is a conceptually circumscribed, rational operation, but its boundary appears to the mind through a glance at God’s abyss, which makes it not only deductive and rational, but also intuitive, a glimpse of the mind.
It would be worth making a connection between these ways of cataphatic and apophatic knowledge on the one hand, and the Palamite anthropological and theological model on the other hand.
As to the relation between the apophatic and the cataphatic, they are not mutually exclusive or contradictory, they are complementary: “We reckon the two ways of knowledge do not contradict, nor do they exclude each other, but they complete each other. The apophatic knowledge properly complements the negative-rational one” (D. Staniloae, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, p. 82). In other words, the order should be from the apophatic to the cataphatic, with the apophatic as the basis, and the cataphatic as its completion.
Father Staniloae is the one who advocated the inseparability of apophatic and cataphatic knowledge, admitting that “Lossky and Yannaras explained the Eastern apophatic theology from God’s character as a person. Yet, what differentiates us from them is that we do not consider exclusively the apophatic knowledge of God, but we see it as a combination of apophatic and cataphatic modes” (idem, p. 87, notes).
Father Staniloae refers to this relation between the apophatic and the cataphatic as even more special than a simple association or completion. “As a man progresses spiritually, the intellectual knowledge of God in the world – as its Creator and Protector, is impregnated with his direct – richer – knowledge, that is with apophatic knowledge” (idem, p. 82). Therefore, this isn’t only a simple association or completion of the apophatic mode with the cataphatic one, but also an imprint, a mark, an impregnation of the cataphatic with the apophatic.
By experiencing God directly and mysteriously, “man lives God’s presence more acutely as a person.” Apophatic knowledge is not irrational, but suprarational, since God’s Son is Logos including all creatures’ reasons. It is suprarational, inasmuch as a person is suprarational, as a subject of reason, of a life which always has a meaning” (idem, p. 25). “The being which remains beyond experience, but which we still perceive as a source of everything we spiritually experience, lives in the person. Living as a person, the being is a living source of energies or acts that are communicated to us. That is why apophatism has the person as its final basis, and this apophatic mode does not indicate a total closeness of God in Himself” (idem, p. 80).
Father Staniloae emphasizes the person as the final basis of apophatism, hence the person’s spiritual experience is the mystery of apophatic knowledge. “God’s mysterious presence can appear to experimental apophatic knowledge the moment it takes place either through the world, or directly. (…) Even living in the world, the man can contemplate God as being The One totally different from the world, even if He appears through the world, or outside it” (Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, vol. I, p. 82). Father Staniloae’s emphasis is important because it proves that living in the world does not obstruct apophatic knowledge, the mysterious dialogue between man and God, but it may well be part of this mystery and dialogue. Such a perspective can be assumed by the monastic as an attitude, a retreat within a deep opening, not as a closing retreat. His retreat must not be a closure but, paradoxically, a deep and thorough opening.
Father Ghelasie may have mentioned the hermit’s life as a retreat within a gesture, where the gesture preserves a highly communicative attribute within this very retreat. It would be significant nowadays if monastics were to extend this model of the retreat within a gesture, a retreat within an opening of the mystery, like an incessant liturgy, a cosmic one, in the sense in which the cosmos can be a meeting place between man and God.
Father Staniloae asserted that “the apophatic living of God is a definite characteristic of Orthodox Liturgy, the Mysteries, other religious services, and it is superior to the Western one, a model which is either rational, or sentimental, or both of them at the same time. Apophatic living equals a sense of mystery which does not exclude reason or feelings, but it is deeper than them” (idem, p. 99).
It is obvious that Father Staniloae should have considered the person as the active subject of the apohatic knowledge which, following the Palamite model, he distinguishes from its manifestations, energies, actions, decisions, thoughts, feelings. Still, it would be worth finding how cataphatic knowledge can be understood. If it is restricted only to rational, discoursive knowledge, then we wonder in what knowledge category we can place the following: bioenergeticians’ participations, their affective, sentimental, and emotional experiences, energetic passes, the emission and management of universal energies through qigong, reiki, radiesthetic techniques, the access to mundus imaginalis, etc.?... Can any experience different from rational knowledge be justly considered apophatic only because it is different from (beyond) rational knowledge? Can we also include everything that manifests energetically from the Palamite perspective within the cataphatic area? Thus, the cataphatic mode does not encompass only reason, but feelings, and the spiritual experience of other subtle energies of creation as well. In this case, apophatism is not an experience, a living mode that surpasses cataphatic rationality, although it is still defined in connection to the cataphatic mode. It stands for mysterious knowledge of the person, and it is defined by analogy with the being of Palamas’ model.
In the chapter Apophatic and Cataphatic in Concurrence from Hesychasm The Mystery of the Triune Image, Father Ghelasie affirms: “THE IMAGE, as MYSTERY, is Beyond all names, but the source of all names. Therefore, GOD is TRIUNE IMAGE Beyond all affirmations, both apophatic and also Affirmative-cataphatic energetic Revelation of GRACE” (p. 7).
In Hesychasm-Dialogue within the Absolute, he writes: “The Cataphatic mode is not the opposite of the Apophatic mode, but its reaffirmation; the Apophatic is the Completeness of the Cataphatic. Since the Fall, when we lost the Logic of Perfection, we have perceived Mystery as annihilation of Revelation, and the Revelation as annihilation of Mystery, while they are concurrent, Equal, Interpenetrated, neither of them without the other, and without mixing” (p. 43).
In HESYCHASM-The Ritual of Christic Liturgy, he affirms that “ ‘Mystical apophatism’ is different from ‘philosophical apophatism’. (…) Mystical and purely Christian, ‘the apophatic’ and ‘the cataphatic’ are concurrent as Mystical Supra-affirmation, not as negation. Philosophically, the cataphatic as “affirmation” is wrongly mixed with so-called external qualities-attributes of the Apophatic Being. From the perspective of purely Christian Mysticism, we must ‘well distinguish’ the Images in Themselves of the Holy Trinity’s Threefold Indwelling Substance from the Graceful-energetic, ‘qualitative images’ which are uncreated too” (p. 51). I will now quote from one of Father Ghelasie’s magazines, “Hesychasm, vol. III: “Hesychasm is THE LANGUAGE OF LIVING IMAGES. We, As Creation, are Images of God’s VERY IMAGES, translated-transposed into the ‘Created Existential Substance’. Our Created being ‘Embodies God’s ARCHETYPES into Creation’, and ‘translates’ them into Created Images. We should be careful so as to not mistake the ‘Created Images’ with the CREATIVE IMAGES. God’s ARCHETYPES are ‘beyond’ Created Images, yet their source is as well. This leads to the Apophatic and Cataphatic Mysticism. The Christian Mystical apophatism is different from the philosophical one. Philosophers label God as ‘The Unknown-without an Image’, the Divine Nothingness, up to a principle in Itself which then ‘unfolds and turns itself into ‘created forms.’ Philosophical Apophatism is thereby ‘pantheistic’, the Creation being regarded as the ‘illusion-dream’ of Divinity outside Itself. (…) The Christian Mystical Apophatism is different, starting from GOD’s IMAGE already ALIVE in Itself (…) But God’s LIVING IMAGES, ‘beyond all Images’ of Creation‘, descend Creatively into the Created Images, without ‘mergence or confusion.” Therefore, ‘This Apophatism’ is not completely ‘foreign’, but ‘related’ as Image, as UNVEILING-PROXIMITY. And the UNVEILING is made by the SON: “He who saw Me, saw the FATHER. “By His SON’s INCARNATION into Creation, God is no longer ‘foreign’ to Creation, but can be ‘all the more Partaken of’. Christian Apophatism is not ‘the total annihilator’ of the Images of Creation, the ‘absolute negation’, but ‘Supra-Affirmation within a Dialogue of Reciprocal Affirmation.’ The Images of Creation must not be ‘totally denied’ in order to be distinguished from the IMAGES OF GOD, for through the Images of Creation we get to the ones beyond creation. The Images of Creation Supra- emphasize the Images of God; they do not ‘deny them.’ The Images of Creation SPEAK about the IMAGES of God, and SUSTAIN them’, they Remain Evidence of THOSE Beyond Creation. Such a ‘Cataphatic’ mode is not the ‘philosophical one’ that stands for ‘affirmations of negation.’ The Christian affirmative Cataphatism belongs to the ‘Supra-Affirmative Apophatism’. Christianity never grants ‘negation’, but only the distinction through Supra-Affirmation. Philosophy is ‘reverse dualism’, affirmation and negation, whereas Christianity is ‘AFFIRMATIVE TRINITY’ as Supra-affirmation-Affirmation-Recognition. (…) Christianity ‘brings back the Pure LOGIC without negation.’ And the Mystery is the TRIUNE IMAGE of REALIY, THE LIVING-LIFE-EXISTENCE, AFFECTION-LOVE-DEVOTION, SUPRA-AFFIRMATION-AFFIRMATION-RECOGNITION, etc.” (see The Triads of the Person in Memories of a Hesychast, chapter 8).
I would remark that, in Father Ghelasie’s texts, there is an approach of the apophatic and the cataphatic modes similar to the Palamite model, therefore the priority of the apophatic, the reaffirmation of the apophatic by the cataphatic, their interpenetration without mergence, and also their concomitance, their concurrence as supra-affirmation. From Palamas’ anthropological model, the cataphatic mode would consequently have an energetic support. Moreover, Father Ghelasie attempts to present the apophatic and cataphatic modes in a ‘detail’ of trinitarian logic by means of affirmative terms.
Taking into consideration that man, from a Christian point of view, experiences a process of restoration, and even of becoming God-like, then the relation between apophatic and cataphatic knowledge, from an anthropological and theological perspective, undergoes a dynamic process of re-settlement within a natural order as well.
Apophatism and cataphatism are, in a way, languages with different supports. ”The Language of God’s Conscience can be understood by the Language of Creation’s Conscience, although they are Different Languages. Here we must present the matter clearly. God’s Conscience has its own, purely Divine Language. The Created Conscience has its pure Language of Creation. But the Language of Creation’s Conscience, being created by God’s Language, can Communicate with God’s Language, inasmuch as God’s Language can Communicate with the one of Creation. (…) Nevertheless, The Creation is made on the foundation of the Archetypes of God’s Language-Word” (Hesychastic Struggles, p. 28).
Yet, anthropologically speaking, this Language of Creation has a double opening. “The Language of Energies (Body) relies on the Language of the Soul Archetypes beyond energies. We are no longer aware of it, and we believe that the Language of Energies is an Independent one or even a Unique Language that is then reflected on the Conscience of the Soul. Practically, it is proved that without a Permanent Archetypal Language, the Energetic Language Vanishes and Deteriorates until Distortion. (…) As Reality, we comprise Two Parallel, yet Interpenetrated, Worlds that Meet within the Unity of Permanent Language, we are Soul and Body that meet within the Depth of the Archetypal Language of the Soul which is the Image of God’s Language, within God’s very Language Archetypes. Here lies our Kinship relation on all Cosmic Plans up to God’s Transcendence. Our soul has the Mystery of God’s Language, and our Body has the Mystery of the Language of the Soul” (Hesychastic Medicine).
On an anthropological level, we can attempt to make a connection between the Language of the Soul and apophatism on the one hand, and the Energetic Language (Body) and cataphatism on the other hand. We must take into account that the Energetic Language needs to assimilate (in order not to get deteriorated or distorted) the Language of the soul. From a Christian point of view, we need even more, an assimilation (in the process of theosis) of the ARCHETYPAL ICONIC LANGUAGE, therefore an assimilation of the Origin, of GOD THE WORD’s eternal paradigms, while the Language of the Soul itself needs an assimilation of the same ARCHETYPAL ICONIC LANGUAGE. We can make an analogy with Father Staniloae’s affirmations regarding an impregnation of the cataphatic with the apophatic. The impregnation, the imprint of the cataphatic on the apophatic is rendered possible and real by such an imprint of the Language of the Soul’s Memories and Supra-Memories of the ARCHETYPAL ICONIC LANGUAGE onto the Memories of the Energetic Language, as long as we do not forget the suggested associations (Energetic Language-cataphatic, Language of the Soul- apophatic). We could more precisely argue that such an impregnation is rather an iconic representation. The interweaving of CHRISTIC ARCHETYPAL ICONIC LANGUAGE with the ‘Unity of Permanent Language’ (simultaneously Language of the Soul and Energetic Language, without mergence or separation) would be, expressed in other words, a Eucharistic image, a process of deification that theologians speak about.
Within inter-human relationships, apophatic and cataphatic knowledge should first represent a direct communication-partaking which would preserve the principle the resemblant is known through the resemblant, which means that one’s Soul Language communicates with the other’s Language of the Soul (i.e., a communication of mysteries), one’s Energetic (Body) Language communicates-interferes with the other’s Energetic (Body) Language.
Hence it follows that everything including only human energetic experience and relations, however subtle, by means of practices and techniques like qigong, reiki, info-energo-therapy, radiesthesy, bioenergetics, energetic chakras, the so-called rising Kundalini energy, occult experiences of subtle bodies, the ethereal, astral or mental body, does not even reach the apophatic, anthropological experience. When people tend to transcend these energies, they confound and identify this Language of the Created Soul, which is transcendent to subtle energies, with the Divine Itself (called the Soul of the World, etc.), but experiencing theological apophatism is impossible outside Christianity. In other words, such a fixity within the subtle energies’ area is insufficient, a reduction from an anthropological, not to mention theological perspective. Moreover, the confounding of these subtle energies of creation with the Grace-the Uncreated Energies represents a fundamental and serious error.
I think that, in view of these distinctions, demarcations and nuances, we could clarify from a Christian point of view the notion of ‘mundus imaginalis’, of the intermediary ontologic and ontophatic space, of the imaginalis which, since Henry Courbin, seems to have been embraced by many of our influential intellectuals, and which, as their personal option, is not a subject of discussion. It is nonetheless wrong and unjust to associate Christianity with this ‘vision’, to introduce it into a world it does not belong to, it is a manipulation that places all of them outside Christianity. Jean-Jacques Wunenburger advocates the same error in The Philosophy of Images: “According to the Scriptures, the Resurrected Christ shows Himself in various luminous shapes to His disciples (the Pilgrims towards Emmaus, Mount Tabor), having a glorious immaterial body, unidentifiable in the province of physical bodies. Not only that God, by His birth into the world, embodies an image, but His own Image does not attain complete fulfillment until after His death within the visible, that is within the image of the transfigured Christ who is, at the same time, an empty body that left the perishable flesh, and a sensitive body, a pure Image of an absence-presence” (p. 209).
This text, besides other ambiguities and discrepancies, denies the very mystery of God’s Bodily Resurrection, a transfigured, glorified Body, yet a Body of flesh, for the Resurrection, the transfiguration of God’s glorified body does not mean dematerialization or subtle corporality, a subtle image of Jesus’ ethereal body as Rudolf Steiner, the anthroposophist, puts it.
Wunenburger then followed along the same ‘line’: “Christianity comes forward as a paradoxical thinking of the image in which God’s luminous appearance fulfills in a third world, neither purely spiritual, nor exclusively material, a world which we can call, together with H. Corbin, ‘imaginal’, a space in which bodies come to be spiritual, and the spirit comes to have a body. Thus, Christian teophany is located in a spiritual topology shared by visionary currents of great monotheistic traditions, which interposes an intermediary ontological and ontophanic layer between the intelligible and the sensitive that is, the imaginal world, where certain events unfold for the sight of the soul’s eyes. Divine epiphany pertains to an ontology of the being ranks which, contrary to all dualisms, proposes an intermediary world correlated to the soul’s visionary activities, where concentrate a series of visual manifestations, a category of images deprived of their psycho-material attributes” (idem, p. 210).
Christianity does not preach an intermediary world, but an intermediary person, due to the fact that it is unique, true God and true man alike. The mediator is Jesus Christ Himself; He reestablishes the bond between God and creation. From a Christian view, there is no other intermediation to the Father except through His Son Who becomes man, an intermediation to which all people and even angels are called for as long as they are partakers of Christ’s Image. In fact, the Incarnation of the Word was kept secret even from angels – “the mystery hidden for centuries and unknown by angels”, as the Scriptures tell us. Beings can be intermediated only through a synergy with Jesus Christ.
On the other hand, every being has an intermediary door represented by its own paradigm, its eternal model from God the Word through which it was created, and only through which it receives the mark of adoption and resemblance with the Son in order to stand before the Father. And this intermediary paradigm, this mark of God on man, this iconic image is a reality that transcends both the sensitive and the intelligible, not to mention any intermediary reality between the two of them. What is accomplished by means of this iconic image is a ‘embodiment’ into Christ’s Body, the Church, which is nothing else but His extension.
Therefore, this iconic image reveals a Eucharistic-like accessing process that is totally different, as substantiality, from both the intelligible and the sensitive, as well as from this intermediary layer between them. The Church’s liturgical life, which develops in an integral, fulfilling way through the Eucharistic, iconic image of Christ, cannot be confounded with ‘mundus imaginalis’ associated with visionary, allegedly the soul’s activities. The communion that people who come to Church are called for does not involve only the soul, it is a communication-partaking of the whole man, or better said, of the man who is transfigured and deified through the Christic image, of the man dressed in wedding clothes.
From a Christian view, Wunenburger also makes a huge mistake when he reduces the iconic to the image. The icon is also an image, but not only that! Orthodox Christianity can fully clarify this area of the iconic, the icon, etc.
Father Ghelasie emphasized, highlighted these unmistakably Christian models, such as the iconic image, the Eucharistic image, the filiation image, and he also detailed the Palamite model which differentiates from originally philosophical terms like spirit-matter, intelligible-sensitive. He contributed to Christian apologetics by offering it topical, indubitable landmarks. And it is even more important that he integrated these landmarks into Christian practices, into hesychastic mysticism.
F. C.: As to the iconic specific we can mention, paraphrasing Heidegger, the indwelling-personal Gesture as “home” of the being and its manifestations. Consecrated through self-worship of God and the ritual service of the Holy Sacraments, it becomes an iconic Gesture-an altar of spiritual partaking. As it has already been said, the Person is conceived as embracing the self, having the ability of opening-indwelling self-abandonment, and also of iconic proneness towards personal communion “beyond” the self. Thus, man has the ability of embracing and communicating with everything of the same essence, and of a different one, due to the “kinship” offered by the mark-filiation image of the creative Word. But the indwelling inter-human relation cannot be fulfilled, cannot break its limits to take in God’s boundless mystery and perfection unless through restoring and opening the iconic-liturgical altar of the union between God’s Image and the filial Image of creation, which is the very Mystery of the Church, the Mystery of the Kingdom to come. The very law of nature tends towards transcendence and fulfillment through the mystery of God’s Incarnation. The Image of man has an indwelling disposition towards the iconic-Eucharistic union in which the likeness-communion with God is perfected. It is interesting that man communicates mysteriously through his own Image; hence, through the transfiguration conferred by the Church’s mysteries, to the fore man’s Iconic Image come the dynamic manifestation, due to the Holy Spirit’s working, of the “icon-like” interweave-common abode of God’s Image and the filiation Image of creation, which bring about the possibility of fulfillment and perfect communication within the Eucharist.
To sum up, the mystery of the iconic Gesture involves self-thoroughness and opening by which the Gesture, perceived as indwelling Language or “House of the being”, becomes an icon and is consecrated as a church due to filial worship to God, affiliation to the Body of Christ and the Mysteries of the Church. Thus, the House of the being is not only tidied and adorned, it does not only open to welcome The Other One – the Stranger – as Guest, and invite Him at the indwelling-personal meeting table (where the specifics do not merge especially because the meeting is consumed not only on an energetic level, but also on a gestic-apophatically indwelling one!). Moreover, the dialogue becomes iconic, and turns into the Holy Supper due to its participation in God’s mystery. Christ our Lord, who accompanies and embraces us with His economy and the overshadowing of His Holy Spirit, breaks the bread of this pursuit and “indwelling” self-abandonment and opens, as He did with Lucas and Cleopa, our spiritual sight in which communication becomes partaking. The foundation of the Old Testament involved, like the commandments of the Law, the halt-separation that distinguished the transitory from the eternal, and was the preparatory condition for the liturgical-Eucharistic altar to open through the Incarnation of Christ.
“Love with all your being”, in an indwelling way, the image of God’s two commandments which sum up the Law and prophets – here lies the mystery of the indwelling gesture: to comprise your self and what is beyond it within the mystery of personal-indwelling relationship. The perfection of this relationship is possible only through the iconic Eucharistic Image of the Incarnate Son – the absolute Icon of the union between God and His creation.
F. N.: Love the Lord your God with all your soul, and all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself is a statement that has connotations from the Old Testament; in the New Testament, we are urged to love each other as Jesus Christ loves us. This is a two-fold love, interweaving God and man. It is not just any love, it is Eucharistic love!
The church, as Christ’s Body, calls us precisely to this image of Eucharistic love. The icon is an evidence of such a fulfillment. Christianity is not a religion of only devotion and love, but of Eucharistic love that has particular meanings and dimensions. Christians can express their love for the unfaithful, for the people of other religions, they are even urged to such devotion, but the Eucharistic love achieved through a common Eucharistic body is impossible outside the ecclesiastical space, outside the Church, because it is the very Eucharistic Body whose Head is Christ.
This Eucharistic love is iconic. Not only is man’s love worn and transfigured through God’s love, but it also possesses the specific restoration due to its iconically imprinted assimilation. The hand of a saint is and is not the same with what it used to be before he became a saint, i.e. a hand of an ordinary man, for now it has acquired iconicity; it is restored on the basis of original memories.
F. C.: Having this iconic logic in view, we seem to advance in knowledge not dialectically, by means of denying and getting over it, but by being more and more open. If we take its original Greek meaning, the word “energy” means literally ”within the act”, and St. Gregory Palamas shows us that God is totally, Personally present within the energies of His acts. Here, Father Ghelasie follows the closest meaning to its Greek correspondent when he maintains that energies (often understood in Romanian as emanations detached from the being, somehow autonomous, “objective”, and hence already impersonal) are not mere emanations of the being (impersonal, likely to be subject of autonomy and manipulation!), but manifestations of a personal, apophatic act through which they are set to work. We may therefore avoid a confusion that could arise from an insufficient translation or the shift in meaning of the word “energy” from Greek into Romanian. And thus, Father Ghelasie’s elucidation comes to correct a possible inadequacy of translation.
Getting back to our topic, we could indeed sustain that the Law of the Old Testament had its altar “closed”, the love with all our being for God and the neighbor, requested by the Law and the Prophets, was waiting for the altar of Incarnation, the Eucharistic altar of the Christian Church, to open. Together with the New Law, with Christ Coming in the flesh, the altar of God-human love opens, the waiting is brought to completion and the Law is renewed, as you pointed out, by the request of loving not only with all your being, but beyond nature, like Christ Himself, with His love, which is possible only by means of Eucharistic, God-man abode within the Holy Spirit.
In which sense do you see the “open” character of the iconic language? Can we speak about it as a language of the Soul, open, calling for partaking in light of the Bible in which “the deep calls unto the deep”, the depth possibly meaning also the indwelling soul feature or, otherwise said, the participative apophatism of the Person?
F. N.: Yes, I believe that what I have said so far makes this aspect clear.
F. C.: In the iconic language, the force of the word, even the written one, seems to rely on its consideration as likeness-sowing-imprint-“embodiment” of the mysterious word-logos in the visible iconic. In this sense, it points to an iconic representation of the apophatic relationship, and is perceived as a common meeting place within the dialogue, seeking ecclesiastical fulfillment through partaking which lies beyond the indwelling substance of creation, as well as the energy of creation. This strength of the word conceived as iconic, i.e. comprising both the non-energetic indwelling substance and the energy as” illumination” of the being’s Image, is brought to the fore due to the very “gestic” reorientation of the language towards the word.
The weight of the iconic language is placed on the word before the idea, seen as an energetic extension-mark of the word-logos. The emphasis is laid on the iconic word that “embodies” God’s creative logos in its own indwelling substance of creation. The iconic word is thus perceived not only as relational-informative-structural-energetic, but also as Integrality-Image, as indwelling-dialogic relation transposed-prolonged into the energetic relation. Interestingly, such a perspective seems to concretize a certain way of our Fathers’ Christian tradition in which the apprentice asks the Father not to give him an idea, but a “word” for his salvation.
F. N.: As far as I can remember, Father Ghelasie maintains that the energetic thought must be based on the word of the Soul, it must not be separated from the latter.
Our life does not consciously live this origin of the thought in the Word of the Soul for, in fact, there is a separation between thinking and the direct life of the Soul.
In this sense, we could say that, on the one hand, the thought has a memorial imprint of the word belonging to the language of the indwelling Soul of creation; on the other hand, it is apparent there should be a relation between the writing and the writer, and the written word should bring about the presence of the writer not only by means of the writing itself.
In this way we can also be “moved” and aroused towards a mysterious communication-partaking, not only towards a partial, fragmentary participation.
F. C.: If we take into consideration Saint Gregory’s affirmation that God cannot be partaken of in being, but He is wholly present, apophatically, in His energies, then, by virtue of this model, we could view the word as somehow containing the presence of the person who uttered it. It is remarkable that the iconic specific comprises both the being and the energies participating in the perichoretic partaking, so that God and His creation, the persons who partake of each other, do not become one being but, to put it differently, one image, in the sense of that likeness between man and God for which the creation was brought to life. In fact, the mystery of partaking is related to the mystery of building the iconic altar, of building the body-abode of meeting and communication between the world and God through man, until the graft and fulfillment of creation into the Eucharistic Body of the Kingdom.
Reverend Father, getting back to the form of the language used by Father Ghelasie, how does it contribute, in your opinion, to underlying the language’s iconicity in the sense that was mentioned above?
F.N.: I think iconicity influences man in a wholly manner. Therefore, we could draw the conclusion that human manifestations can be “set” from an iconic perspective. The language, even regarded as expression-manifestation, must be receptive to a supra-forming-iconic “clothing”.
F. C.: Anyway, such a language might seem a “barrier”, when in fact it can denote a boundary of iconic representation of written, “typed” language – see Heidegger’s criticism in Parmenides – resembling orality, face-to-face meeting and dialogue. It is an “impossible” attempt to surpass thinking by “guessing”, to render possible through the mystery of the word turned into flesh what is impossible to human thinking, i.e. surpassing progressive, “standardized”, noumenal-transcendental advance in the light of the Eucharistic fulfillment of the Incarnate Word. Orality does not imply the “uniformity” of words, but stresses on modulations of tone, intensity, and gestures through which the dialogue better conveys the uniqueness and force of the personal word in a face-to-face encounter. As Father Ghelasie mentioned, iconic mysticism is more about prefigurement and pre-taste of eschatological fulfillment, but it is this very pre-taste of transfiguration that brings about a liturgical orientation, an identity-image of life through Christ, and it subsequently proves indispensable to spiritual growth.
F. N.: I am not sure whether it is possible to make an analogy between the image that supports iconicity and bears iconic memorial, which is the icon, and the image of religious scenery with pale traces of iconic assimilation. In fact, the iconic language attempts to express any human manifestation by eschatological means, to imprint it iconically, inasmuch as from an eschatological perspective not only the soul, but the whole man, including the body, must be iconically imprinted. In this view of man’s complete iconicity, there is a tendency towards iconicity of all human manifestations and, why not, of the language itself which, due to this process, can acquire sacred meanings. The attempt of an iconic language is more than justified.
F. C.: We could therefore discuss, within the hesychastic Carpathian mysticism, about a “supreme” emphasis of the iconic dimension of the cataphatic-apophatic relation. The mystery and crowning achievement of Christian life lies within this very Eucharistic iconicity, through which man can attain knowledge and love “with all his being” – in the icon of eschatological, beyond nature, unity of the Kingdom. The iconic, ritual gesture is the mysterious “heart” of prayer, the “heart” which makes room for God and His creation alike, through mutual devotion and embrace that preserve the personal specific of each party unaltered. We must not forget that, historically speaking, the triumph of Orthodoxy is closely related to the theology of the icon brought forward. This transfigured beauty of the image, which is iconic-“Eucharistic” and redeeming, means, for each and every one of us, the rediscovery and fulfillment of our own identity.
It is relevant to specify that Father Ghelasie does not see the assimilation of the Image and origins as platonic, implying a spiritual existence prior to the life in the body, within a so-called “world” of ideas. The fundamental hermeneutical key to understanding Father Ghelasie’s words is the iconicity of the language. The meaning of words is re-oriented from a “spiritualistic” connotation towards an iconic comprehension that aims at and stresses on the value of the integral word turned into the “body” of the language. Hence, Father Ghelasie’s “memory-assimilation” is related to a reality of spirit. The more or less conscious effort to attain such an “assimilation” of the origins expresses man’s indwelling struggle to recapture his iconic orientation, towards God and interpersonal communion. In this sense, even in the pathological area there are attempts to assimilate identity, to “burn” the sin’s additional memorial, and to rediscover the “hidden” image, absent from the light of conscience. Such a rediscovery is equivalent to balance, a “mainstay”, a possibility of communication within a reality that “disintegrates” and “gets empty” of meaning. Significantly, the Swiss psychiatrist C. G. Jung called neurosis “the presence of an absence”. The same thinker specified that the border between the normal and the pathological cannot be clearly, scientifically marked. We could assert this happens especially because authentic normality is “due” to the very rediscovery within conscience of the memory of man’s Image, lost in the existential fault generated by disease and sin.
It is a thorough, mysterious discovery of the Image that is ineffable, apophatic, beyond partial expressions, yet shining iconically through all these and “filling” man’s life until it lovingly ”outpours” over the other. Significantly, the identity crisis that “stifles-weighs on-darkens” our life makes us think (when we remember that originally “krisis”-“crisis” meant “judgment”), of our Savior’s words: “And this is the judgment, that the Light has come into this world, and men loved darkness more than Light. For their deeds were evil” (John 3, 19).
Evil somehow appears as oblivion and darkening of the iconic Image through our superficial deeds which “turn” our life away from the Face of our living God. We thus “assimilate” our Image in the Christic Archetype through Life in the Spirit, namely through deeds-gestures animated by the Holy Spirit which does not have anything to do with the evil - the ”virus” of sin which confines our own identity to fruitlessness and “throws” it into darkness.
As a necessary digression, in Father Ghelasie’s work and life we clearly and concretely see the Orthodox Christian specifics of understanding the living, inseparable relation between ontology and ethics. While the Christian ontology of humanity is “iconic”, regarding man in his indwelling non-separation from the Son’s Archetype and the incarnate Word of God, Christian ethics relies its personal dynamism on the Holy Spirit, it is therefore “spiritual”, regarded as “life in the Spirit”,” “working of the Spirit” (Gal. 5, 16), and in the light of the Holy Spirit which shines upon Christ and reveals Him.
That is why the moral fulfillment within the Christian specific is the very freedom of the Spirit (II Cor. 3, 17). Hence, Christian life is the “follow-assimilation” of Christ’s Image and His Incarnation in the Spirit through which man “rises” to God the Lord ‘s image of son, bearing the fruit of His fatherly Blessing and the Image of the Kingdom’s Triadic communion.
Getting back to where we were, only this rediscovery of the “lost Image” will trigger the authentic motivation to walk down the fulfilling path towards deification and the fruit bearing-transfiguration beyond nature. In the iconic specific, such assimilation refers to making God’s words-memories-reasons topical, by means of the Holy Spirit’s working that calls for and carries out the opening of our spirit. It is a liturgical remembrance from the Eucharistically pre-tasted Omega point of eschatological fulfillment.
F. N.: The iconic specific of Carpathian hesychasm is thoroughly expressed in this manne of Eucharistic mysticism, which seems to be more plenary than the contemplative one.
(translated from Romanian by Claudia Ţâţu;
the original Romanian Version: “Mistica Iconică. Repere”,
“Sinapsa” Journal, no. 3, Platytera Publishing House,
Bucharest, 2008, pp. 33-56)
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