In homily 47, St. Isaac introduces his famous three degrees of knowledge, which I have spoken about at length before. Today, I’d like to take a closer look at some aspects of the first degree of knowledge. St. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 8:1 that knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. Because Paul sets up this contrast between knowledge and love, it’s easy to assume that they are somehow opposites, or tensions…
Passions are like some hard [dark] substances that, standing in the midst between the light and vision, prevent the latter from discerning the difference of things. St. Isaac the Syrian Homily 66 St. Isaac the Syrian speaks of noetic vision as natural knowledge, that is, knowledge of God, of one another and of created things that human beings in a healthy (not sinning) state would know, not rationally (by deduction) but by…
I am preparing now to give a presentation at the Antiochian Orthodox Institute in the Fall on the topic of divinization or theosis according to St. Isaac the Syrian. I have been enjoying reading through the latest edition of St. Isaac’s homilies, and when I was asked to present a small lecture on some aspect of the topic of theosis, I suggested that my focus be St. Isaac. Most of the time,…
I got to go up to spend a night at the monastery this week, and while there, Br. Samuel shared the following with me. In the Septuagint version of Genesis Adam and Eve, after eating the forbidden fruit, hide “themselves within the tree in the middle of the garden from the presence of the Lord” (3:8). This tree in the middle of the garden is none other than the tree of the…
