Adam's Holiness: Athonite and Alexandrine ...

Adam’s Holiness: Athonite and Alexandrine Perceptions Doru Costache, ThD Senior Lecturer St Andrew’s Greek Orthodox Theological College Abstract: The paper considers a particular interpretive strand within patristic tradition, for which the paradise narrative in Genesis constituted a metaphor of the spiritual life with Adam as a hesychast saint – virtuous, directly connected with God and transformed by this experience. The authors and the texts discussed herein, from St Silouan the Athonite’s diary to a Palamite chapter, from St Cyril of Alexandria’s Against the Anthropomorphites and St Athanasius’ Against the Gentiles to the Sayings of the Fathers, represented the experience of Adam both contextually and in various terms, such as image and likeness, vision, union and the breath of life, all converging toward the notion of the paradise narrative as signifying the experience of holiness in general. This contextual interpretation of Genesis, from the vantage point of holiness, reveals uncommon aspects of the traditional construal of Adam and likewise says something about the personal character of the interpreters.

W

ithin the wide range of patristic interpretations of Adam’s experience in paradise, one particularly deserves more attention than has been allocated so far. Thus, contrary to the widespread notion of the paradisal condition of humankind as unique and extraordinary, which supposedly was lost forever, on occasion

the path of the ungodly. This interpretive strand, which has never come to I am grateful to Pauline Allen, Carole Cusack and the Phronema reviewers for their competent advices.

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Adam’s Holiness: Athonite and Alexandrine Perceptions

prominence within the ecclesial tradition and still remains largely ignored, changes in a dramatic fashion our understanding of the patristic approaches to the paradise narrative. It is precisely this view of Adam as a holy man that constitutes the object of the current study, an undertaking for which I borrow from the methodology outlined by Bishop Alexander Golitzin. To be sure, in recent years Golitzin has undertaken important work in this area1 by exploring the Second Temple roots of this tradition, and its rabbinic and pseudepigraphic offshoots, together with certain pre-Nicene follows, alongside building on Golitzin’s presupposition that within various ascetic milieus Adam was construed as a saint, I move past those roots and connections to several representatives of the mainstream Alexandrine and Athonite traditions. My interest is motivated by the fact that, whilst undeniably Semitic in origin, within the traditions here considered the notion of Adam’s holiness drew on various other sources. I agree with Golitzin’s conclusion that these other sources were not opposite to the Second Temple roots and their offshoots,2 ways of articulating the same understanding. In this order, below I look at the spiritual diary of St Silouan the Athonite (d. 1938); a passage from On the Divine and Deifying 1

See for instance Alexander Golitzin, ‘Heavenly Mysteries: Themes from Apocalyptic Literature in the Macarian Homilies and Selected Other FourthCentury Ascetical Writers’ in ed. Robert Daly, Apocalyptic Themes in Early Christianity (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2009) 174-92; idem, ‘Recovering the “Glory of Adam”: Divine Light Traditions in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian Ascetical Literature of Fourth-Century Syro-Mesopotamia’ in ed. James R. Davila, The Dead Sea Scrolls as Background to Postbiblical Judaism and Early Christianity, Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah 46 (Leiden: Brill, 2003) 275-308; idem, ‘The Vision of God and the Form of in ed. John Behr, Andrew Louth, Dimitri Conomos, Abba: The Tradition of Orthodoxy in the West (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2003) 273-97; idem, ‘“The Demons Suggest an Illusion of God’s Glory in a Form”: Controversy over the Divine Body and Vision of Glory in Some Late Fourth, Early Fifth Century Monastic Literature’ Studia Monastica 44 (2002) 13-43.

2

See Golitzin, ‘“The Demons Suggest an Illusion of God’s Glory in a Form”’ 42-43.

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Participation by St Gregory Palamas (d. 1359); a chapter from St Cyril of Alexandria’s (d. 444) treatise Against the Anthropomorphites; and select passages from Against the Gentiles, by St Athanasius the Great (d. 373), the latter considered in connection with the Life of St Antony and the Sayings of the Fathers. One could wonder at this choice of authors and texts. Initially, it was a matter of circumstance; as it happens, I accidentally discovered a reference to St Cyril’s work in the Palamite treatise. What captured my attention was that both fathers construed the breath of life in Genesis 2 not as signifying the animation of a human being, as is commonly thought, but as metaphor of the typically hesychast (= the Byzantine way of peace or serenity) experience with God, unmediated and supernatural. This discovery prompted me, on the one hand, to dig up the antecedents of this unusual interpretation, and so I looked at St Cyril’s most probable sources, St Athanasius and the desert ascetics, and on the other hand it inspired me to seek more recent reiterations of this approach, for which reason I examined the writings of St Silouan the Athonite, a modern hesychast. At the end of my investigation I gathered that whilst the agendas3 of these fathers, their approaches, sensitivities, themes and immediate goals differed, they were agreed on two related matters. First, they perceived the paradise narrative as an outline of saintly life in general, at least as accepted in the ascetic circles within the traditions here considered. Second, they construed it as a landmark in relation to which saints of different times and places can authenticate their own experiences. I realised, furthermore, that these understandings entailed a contextual approach to the adamic experience, which was conditioned by the very circumstances of the interpreters and the intended readership of their writings. Beyond the possible antecedents in the Second Temple and pre-Nicene traditions, the interpretation of Adam as a holy man was made possible foremost by the holiness of the interpreters themselves.

3

There is a renewed interest among recent scholars, in identifying the undisclosed agendas behind the early Christian ascetical texts. Cf. Rebecca Krawiec, ‘Asceticism’ in ed. Susan Ashbrook Harvey and David G. Hunter, The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Studies (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008) 764-85 esp. 773. 175


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Together with bringing to the fore this neglected tradition of Adam’s sanctity, my primary purpose is to prove that in addressing either the image of God or the breath of life in Genesis, the authors and the texts reviewed herein took holiness as hermeneutical criterion. Correlatively, exemplar in a saintly series and not an exceptional character. Furthermore and related, I aim to show that this approach, hagiographical in nature, had an inbuilt hortatory dimension – insofar as it was meant to inspire the readers towards embracing a similar lifestyle, namely, the life of holiness. Here I take on Rapp’s note that the actual purpose of a hagiographer is to make the readers saints.4 Without this constituting a goal of the present study, I hope moreover that the above elements will make plain that there is more to the patristic approaches to the paradise narrative than a drawing of symmetries between the primal man and the recommencement of the human race in Christ.5 Before turning to the Alexandrine and Athonite witnesses of this tradition, I have to clarify several more aspects. First, when speaking of ‘Adam’ herein I refer both to the mysterious character made in the image of God (Genesis 1) and the one who experienced the divine breath of life (Genesis 2), which, following the fathers mentioned above, I see as one. Second, in most of the texts analysed in what follows this complex character is taken both as one human being and as humankind – an aspect abundantly illustrated by the cases analysed below, and elsewhere

4

Claudia Rapp, ‘The origins of hagiography and the literature of early monasticism: purpose and genre between tradition and innovation’ in ed. Christopher Kelly, Richard Flower and Michael Stuart Williams, Unclassical Traditions, vol. 1: Alternatives to the Classical Past in Late Antiquity, Cambridge Classical Journal, Supplementary Volume 34 (Cambridge University Press, 2010) 119-30 esp. 130.

5

For the customary Adam-Christ rapports, see e.g. Robert L. Wilken, ‘Exegesis of Alexandria’ Church History 35:2 (1966) 139-56, and Daniel Keating, ‘The Baptism of Jesus in Cyril of Alexandria: The Re-creation of the Human Race’ Pro Ecclesia 8:2 (1999) 201-22.

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in tradition.6 The main particularity attached here to the concept is that whether taken as a person or a group, Adam is construed as shaped by the Maker in order to reach perfection in virtue and, above all, to commune with God and be divinely transformed within that experience. In other words, called to a holy life. As already pointed out, my presentation shall follow a reverse chronology, thus beginning with the more recent witnesses before addressing those that are increasingly remote in time. St Silouan the Athonite A modern representative of the philokalic tradition and a hesychast, St Silouan the Athonite was acknowledged by the Ecumenical Patriarchate, in 1987, as an “apostolic and prophetic teacher” worthy of the company of the “holy and divine men”; in other words, a Church father.7 His fascinating autobiographical writings take the reader by surprise in that they frequently and reverently refer to Adam and the paradisal experience. This uncommon form of devotion, to my knowledge both unparalleled within the Christian tradition and usually unnoticed by the explorers of St Silouan’s writings,8 concerns me in what follows. St Silouan construed Adam as a holy man, indeed a hesychast saint,

6

Cf. Peter C. Bouteneff, Beginnings: Ancient Christian Readings of the Biblical Creation Narratives (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008) 14-16, 25-26, 44-46 etc.

7

My various attempts to retrieve the Patriarchal act of canonisation in the Cuviosul Siluan Athonitul, , revised fourth edition with an introductory study and translation

8

The only exception that I know of is the work of Jean-Claude Larchet, Saint Silouane de L’Athos (Paris: Cerf, 2001), which I could consult in its Romanian version, , trans. Σοφία, 2003) esp. 174-75. 177


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of his own spiritual journey. He was convinced,9 for instance, that like many other saints the paradisal ancestor strayed only for a while from the spiritual path, to which he returned through the gates of repentance and humility.10 As we shall discover within this study, this positive appraisal of the paradisal ancestor together with the perception of the adamic experience as common are not entirely new; unique about St Silouan’s approach, however, is that alongside the traditional meditation on the ancestor’s experience, it entailed recurrent conversations with the latter. The chapter ‘Adam’s Lament,’ which mainly consists in a dialogue between our saint and the forefather,11 contains supplications such as these: O Adam, sing unto us the song of the Lord, that my soul may rejoice in the Lord and be moved to praise and glorify Him as the Cherubim and Seraphim praise Him in the heavens, and all the hosts of heavenly angels sing to Him the thrice-holy hymn.12 O Adam, our father, tell us, your children, of the Lord. Your soul knew God on earth, Knew paradise, too, and the sweetness and gladness thereof, And now you live in heaven And behold the glory of the Lord.13 9

His convictions were ultimately founded on his personal experience. See for this Hilarion Alfeyev, St. Symeon the New Theologian and Orthodox Tradition Athonitul: între Între 5-49, 34-5; Sister Magdalen, ‘St Silouan, A Modern Athonite Saint’ in ed. Dimitri Conomos and Graham Speake, Mount Athos, the Sacred Bridge: The Spirituality of the Holy Mountain (Bern: Peter Lang, 2005) 123-40 esp. 133.

10

See St Silouan the Athonite, Writings 1: ‘Yearning for God’ in Archimandrite Sophrony, Saint Silouan the Athonite, trans. from the Russian by Rosemary Edmonds (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1991) 270, 271. All references to the writings of St Silouan are to this edition.

11

Writings 18: ‘Adam’s Lament’ 448-56 esp. 452-56.

12

Writings 18: ‘Adam’s Lament’ 451.

13

Writings 18: ‘Adam’s Lament’ 452. Slightly altered.

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Such entreaties and prayerful conversations with Adam, together with the latter’s portrait as a holy person in St Silouan’s writings, challenge the customary understanding of the ancestor as typifying the path of the ungodly. The fact of the matter is that our Athonite father consistently disregarded the standard interpretation of Adam, namely, as a sinful and unwholesome person whose actions caused cataclysmic aftershocks for humankind and the creation. The passages quoted above show the belief of St Silouan that after experiencing the divine glory in this life (“your soul knew God on earth, knew paradise, too”) the ancestor remains for evermore in the presence of God (“now you live in heaven and behold the glory of the Lord”). It is precisely due to his participation in the divine fellowship that Adam’s “song of the Lord” has the power to stir one to doxology in the company of the celestial hosts. For this same reason, of all the saints our Athonite father seems to have chosen Adam as both criterion and spiritual guide – as illustrated by the plea “tell us, your children, of the Lord.” Furthermore, and interestingly, the plural subject of this plea points to the fact that St Silouan took the experience of Adam as paradigmatic for the quest of any seeker of sanctity. Thus, for him the fall was the ancestor’s temporary lapse from grace and glory, completely free of juridical connotations14 – a state of existential impoverishment which Adam dramatically resented and which only the saints could fully comprehend, given their similar experiences. For instance, Adam appears as having shed sorrowful tears for the loss of God’s vision, a vision which amounted to experiencing eternal joy, “[w]eeping, Adam cried to God: My soul yearns after You, O Lord, and I my soul may rejoice again.”15 Typically, St Silouan accompanied such references to Adam by evoking the saints that happened to lose the holy grace. In his words, “the soul which has known God through the Holy Spirit but has afterwards lost grace experiences the torment that Adam 14

Whilst without referring to juridical connotations, still Archimandrite Sophrony reduced the saint’s teaching about Adam to the responsibility for sin. See his ‘The Staretz’ Life and Teaching’ in Saint Silouan the Athonite 9-259 here 121.

15

Writings 1: ‘Yearning for God’ 278. Slightly altered. See also 18: ‘Adam’s Lament’ 448, 450. 179


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suffered.”16 This kind of general statements, which relativise the standard view that the adamic experience was exceptional, are supplemented by very personal notes: “I, too, have lost grace and call with Adam: ‘Be merciful unto me, O Lord!’”17 Looking more closely at the rapports between St Silouan and Adam, one discovers that our Athonite father took Adam’s journey as anticipating his own experience whilst being convinced that The complementarity, if not identity, of the two experiences is so perfectly rendered that when reading the notes of the Athonite saint one cannot easily tell of whom they speak, Adam or Silouan? The story of Adam is that of Silouan as much as the story of Silouan is that of Adam; somehow, Silouan was Adam redivivus. As such, the Athonite saint established a hermeneutical bridge between his own experience and that of the ancestor.

16

Writings 18: ‘Adam’s Lament’ 448. See also 5: ‘On Grace’ 326. Without mentioning the torment of the saints, St Basil the Great already pointed out that whilst ever present in them the Holy Spirit is not always obvious to them. Cf. On the Holy Spirit 26.16-19, in Basile de Césarée, Sur le Saint-Esprit, introduction, texte, traduction et notes par Benoît Pruche, Sources chrétiennes 17, deuxième édition entièrement refondue (Paris: Cerf, 1968) 460. For a similar yet more detailed account, see St Diadochos of Photiki, Λόγος ἀσκητικός, διῃρημένος εἰς ρ᾽ κεφάλαια πρακτικὰ, γνώσεως, καὶ διακρίσεως πνευματικῆς, in Φιλοκαλία τῶν ἱερῶν νηπτικῶν συνερανισθείσα παρὰ τῶν ἁγίων καὶ θεοφόρων πατέρων ἡμών ἐν ἠ διὰ τῆς κατὰ τὴν πράξιν καὶ θεωρίαν ἠθικής Φιλοσοφίας ὁ νοῦς καθαίρεται, φωτίζεται, καὶ τελειούται, vol. 1, second edition (Ἐν Ἀθήναις: Ἐκ τοῦ Τυπογραφείου Παρασκευὰ Λεώνη, 1893) 140-64 here 159. For a detailed analysis of this topic in St Silouan and other Church fathers, see Larchet, Dumnezeu este iubire

17

Writings 18: ‘Adam’s Lament’ 449. Cf. Larchet, Dumnezeu este iubire 35-36. Whilst the conversational approach of St Silouan is, as stated above, unique, Byzantine hymnography (with which our Athonite father was well acquainted, like any other Orthodox monk) offers a range of examples of personal idenGreat Canon St Andrew of Crete construes himself as reiterating the ancestral experience. Cf. Doru Costache, ‘Byzantine Insights into Genesis 1-3: St Andrew of Crete’s Great Canon’ Phronema 24 (2009) 35-50 esp. 38-44; Alexander Schmemann, Great Lent, revised edition (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1974) 64; Elizabeth Theokritoff, ‘Praying the Scriptures in Orthodox Worship’ in ed. S. T. Kimbrough, Jr., Orthodox and Wesleyan Scriptural Understanding and Practice (Crestwood: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2005) 73-87 esp. 84.

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This hermeneutical rapport, which takes holiness as a common denominator, offers important glimpses of the interpretive processes that lead both St Silouan and earlier fathers, such as those whose thinking is studied below, to interpret the paradisal events as typifying the experiences of the saints. In the light of St Silouan’s case, I propose that these authors were able to read Adam’s story as an account on holiness primarily due to their own saintly lives – or at least by having had the opportunity of contemplating the lives of certain holy people. This hermeneutical rapport seems to draw on the apostolic interpretation of the Scriptures – post hoc – in the light of the Christ event and the apostolic preaching about Christ according to the Scriptures.18 As the apostles construed the messianic dimension of the Old Testament from the vantage point of their experience with Jesus Christ, St Silouan and his traditional precursors recognised the sanctity of Adam due to known,19 or even their own, experiences of holiness. In what follows, I attempt a brief reconstruction of the story of Adam as rewritten by St Silouan. The latter presented the paradisal ancestor, along the lines of Genesis 2:7, as both created of the earth and linked to God through the Holy Spirit. In awe, he exclaimed, “[w]ondrous are the works of the Lord! Out of the dust of the ground He created man, and gave this creature of dust to know Him in the Holy Spirit.”20 Note in this passage the reference to the Spirit as mediating the knowledge of God and not as indicative of the soul’s insertion in a supposedly inanimate human body; the import of this reference will become obvious further down within this study. Whilst elaborating in the same parameters, the saint’s 18

For the complexities pertaining to Christ and the Scriptures in the apostolic hermeneutic, see e.g. John Behr, The Formation of Christian Theology, vol. 1: The Way To Nicaea (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001) 17-48, and John Breck, Scripture in Tradition: The Bible and Its Interpretation in the Orthodox Church (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001) 21-31, 33-44.

19

Interesting from this viewpoint, and as a possible antecedent, is St Neilos the Ascetic’s interpretation of Adam and Joseph, both important characters in Genesis, in monastic or ascetic terms. See his Λόγος ἀσκητικός πάνυ ἀναγκαῖος, καὶ ὠφελιμώτατος, in Φιλοκαλία τῶν ἱερῶν νηπτικῶν, vol. 1, 111-39 esp. 135.

20

Writings 1: ‘Yearning for God’ 273. 181


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earlier enthusiasm for the mystery of the earthling made participant in the divine life was curved by a realistic appraisal of the human condition: “without the Holy Spirit man is but sinful dust,”21 and we could recognise here an allusion to Genesis 3:19. By all accounts, alongside paraphrasing the Scriptures St Silouan reiterated in both instances, we shall soon discover, the traditional perception that the adamic experience entailed

facilitated by the gracious activity of the Spirit. In turn, this activity was beckoned by an ineffable sweetness. “It is sweet for the soul to be with the Lord: Adam tasted the sweetness of this bliss in paradise when he saw the Lord with open eyes.”22 This sweet and blissful vision constituted, however, but one aspect of the paradisal experience, which ultimately represented an event of unfathomable love. …the love of God is that sweet paradise in which our father Adam dwelt before the fall. O Adam, our father, tell us how your soul loved the Lord in paradise! This is past understanding, and only the soul that has been touched by the love of God can in part comprehend it.23

The above passage is of great importance for the scope of this paper. Whilst Adam did experience the love of God in paradise he experienced it as paradise, and so the same experience is at hand for all those who are aware of or “touched by the love of God,” namely, the saints. It is therefore safe to infer that our passage renders paradise as a metaphor of the transcendental experience of God’s love – an experience irreducible 21

Writings 1: ‘Yearning for God’ 281.

22

Writings 3: ‘On Humility’ 307. For other references to this mystical sweetness see his Writings 5: ‘On Grace’ 321 and 7: ‘On Repentance’ 346 etc. The rendering of God’s presence as sweetness in the hesychast tradition is not new. See e.g. St Diadochos of Photiki, Λόγος ἀσκητικός 33 (Φιλοκαλία τῶν ἱερῶν νηπτικῶν, vol. 1, 145) and St Hesychios the Presbyter, Λόγος ψυχοφελής, καὶ σωτήριος πρὸς Θεόδουλον περὶ νήψεως, καὶ ἀρετῆς ἐν κεφαλαίοις διῃρημένος 87-88, in Φιλοκαλία τῶν ἱερῶν νηπτικῶν, vol. 1, 82-101 here 90.

23

Writings 1: ‘Yearning for God’ 289. Slightly altered.

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to a single event in time and space. It follows that the story of Adam corresponds to that of any “soul” that has a grasp of God’s compassion. In the light of this evidence one can better understand the interplay of St Silouan and Adam, addressed above, whose stories overlapped. More relevant here is that the paradisal events are taken as typical for the life of holiness, which primarily consists in the participation of the saints in God’s love. St Silouan was profoundly convinced that the experience of divine love, mediated by the Holy Spirit, was accessible both to Adam and the saints of old, and remains so for all who wholeheartedly seek God. O Lord, send down to us Your Holy Spirit, for knowledge of You […] comes solely through the Holy Spirit, Whom in the beginning You gave to Adam, and after him to the holy prophets, and then to the Christian people.24

the mystical life – that knew and continue to know God in the Holy Spirit, an appraisal that seems to echo St Maximus the Confessor’s notion of a tradition of the saints directly initiated from above in the mysteries of the Kingdom.25 There is no room in St Silouan for the popular acceptance of the adamic experience as unique and impossible to replicate. More precisely, in suggesting the repeatability of this experience our Athonite father did not mean the inordinate number of those that ever emulated the failure of the ancestor; he meant the life of holiness that was ardently pursued by the ancestor as is pursued by all the saints after him. Whilst was therefore no different from that of any other saint after him. And in fact, we have seen, our Athonite father believed that in the story of Adam any saint could recognise features of his or her own journey. It comes as no surprise therefore that at times St Silouan rendered the paradisal 24

Writings 1: ‘Yearning for God’ 274. Slightly altered.

25

Cf. Ambiguum 41.2.1-5, in Maximos the Confessor, Church Fathers: The Ambigua, vol. 2, edited and translated by Nicholas Constas, Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: Harvard University Press, 2014) 102. 183


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narrative in standard monastic terms, namely, of the necessity of proving one’s spiritual fortitude through watchfulness and ascetic struggle. Adam’s soul was perfect in the love of God, and he knew the sweetness of paradise, but his soul was unpractised, and he did not when tempted by his wife.26

Unlike Job, Adam reached virtue and holiness without being able to stay the course in times of temptation; the fact that he was weak or inexperienced does not exclude however his acquiring virtues through ascetic efforts, as reiterated within philokalic tradition.27 That being said, relevant is that St Silouan’s remark echoes the recurrent exhortations to watchfulness that pervade The Philokalia,28 thus pointing to the ascetic dimension of this particular interpretive strand of the ancestral experience, a dimension bring this section to a close, it is noteworthy that St Silouan’s rendition of the adamic experience offers important hints as to how the saints read the paradise narrative. More precisely, St Silouan perceived the paradise narrative from the vantage point of his own state of grace, a state that, according to his own confessions, he could not maintain for too long and the experience of holiness – an experience of God’s love mediated by the Holy Spirit and which can be replicated anywhere and anytime. For all these reasons, the Writings of St Silouan are an inestimable source for the understanding of the earlier interpretive engagements with the paradise narrative, to which I must now turn. The object of the next section is a particular passage in perhaps the most celebrated Athonite father, St Gregory Palamas, which discusses a text from St Cyril of Alexandria. In analysing this passage, we shall rediscover features already encountered in St Silouan, which would suggest a traditional connection yet nothing of the latter’s daring devotion to Adam. 26

Writings 5: ‘On Grace’ 327.

27

Cf. St Neilos the Ascetic, Λόγος ἀσκητικός 135.

28

See e.g. St Isaiah the Solitary, Περὶ τηρήσεως τοῦ νοός 2 and 3, in Φιλοκαλία τῶν ἱερῶν νηπτικῶν, vol. 1, 17-21 esp. 17-18.

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St Gregory Palamas Acknowledged as the champion of Byzantine hesychasm, St Gregory Palamas was equally, in the words of Chrestou, “the great synoptic presenter of the views of the fathers.”29 His writings, indeed, abound in explicit patristic citations intended to illustrate the traditional roots of the hesychast theory and practice. Of interest is that in his On the Divine and Deifying Participation (= Part.),30 which discusses the virtues of the saints and the deifying gift of the Holy Spirit,31 Palamas included a passage from St Cyril of Alexandria. Just before addressing the Cyrilline text in question St Gregory either referred by name to or quoted from St Athanasius the Great,32 St Basil the Great,33 St John Chrysostom,34 the author known as

29

Cf. Panagiotes K. Chrestou, Greek Orthodox Patrology: An Introduction to the Study of the Church Fathers (Rollinsford: Orthodox Research Institute, 2005) 111. See also John A. McGuckin, ‘Gregory Palamas (1296-1359): Triads in Defense of the Holy Hesychasts’ in ed. Arthur Holder, Christian Spirituality: The Classics (London and New York: Routledge, 2010) 136-47 esp. 136, 141.

30

The original title is Περὶ θείας καὶ θεοποιoῦ μεθέξεως. The text utilised herein is that of Γρηγορίου τοῦ Παλαμᾶ ἅπαντα τὰ ἔργα, vol. 3, ed. Panagiotes Chrestou, Ἕλληνες Πατέρες τῆς Ἐκκλησίας 61 (Θεσσαλονίκη: Πατερικαὶ Ἐκδόσεις Γρηγόριος Ό Παλαμᾶς, 1983) 212-60.

31

For descriptions and analyses of this treatise, see Chrestou, ‘Εἰσαγωγή’ to Γρηγορίου τοῦ Παλαμᾶ ἅπαντα τὰ ἔργα, vol. 3, 49-73 esp. 60-61; Doru Costache, ‘Experiencing the Divine Life: Levels of Participation in St Gregory Palamas’ On the Divine and Deifying Participation’ Phronema 26:1 (2011) 9-25; Norman Russell,

was written, i.e. the controversy with Akindynos, together with a synopsis of St Gregory’s ideas at the time. See his 1938 book, Grigorie Palama, cu patru tratate traduse 1993) esp. chapters 7 and 8. For an historical reconstruction of the events but without reference to the treatise under consideration, see also John Meyendorff, A Study of Gregory Palamas, trans. by George Lawrence (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1998) 56-85. 32

Part. 8, 9, 12 (Chrestou 224, 228, 230-32).

33

Part. 3, 8, 12 (Chrestou 214-16, 226, 232).

34

Part. 12 (Chrestou 234). 185


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St Dionysius the Areopagite35 and St Maximus the Confessor.36 Turning to St Cyril’s wisdom at this particular instance, Palamas produced excerpts from the second chapter of Against the Anthropomorphites (= Anthrop.),37 which, commenting upon the paradise narrative in Genesis, speak about God breathing the breath of life upon the human person – the latter being designated as “animal” or “living being” (ζῷον).38 We shall see immediately that, together with the Alexandrine theologian, St Gregory rejected the interpretation of Genesis 2:7 as being about the making of the human soul, and that both fathers took the scriptural narrative as referring to the experience of holiness. Continuing the argument of the previous sections, the relevant passage from Part. reads as follows. Whilst refuting those who say that the divine breath (θεῖον ἐμφύσημα) became a soul for the human being, the divine Cyril expounds in greater detail the same [perception noticed in other fathers]. For in concluding forthwith his words, he said, “one understands that what was breathed upon (ἐμφυσηθέν) from him [i.e. God] undoubtedly belongs wholly to him or to his essence. Therefore, how could the Spirit from God be transformed into the nature of the soul39? At any rate, he [i.e. St Cyril] said, the living being received a soul by the ineffable power of God and inasmuch as it kept growing good and righteous, and in all virtue (ἀγαθὸν καὶ δίκαιον καὶ ἀρετῆς ἁπάσης), it 35

Part. 5, 7, 9 (Chrestou 220, 222, 226).

36

Part. 2, 11 (Chrestou 214, 230).

37

Anthrop. 2 (PG 76, 1081AB). The Cyrilline text available to Palamas was virtually identical to the one of PG 76. The writing in its entirety is found in PG 76, 1065-1132.

38

This designation is common in St Cyril’s writings. See for instance his Glaphyra or Polished Comments on Genesis (= Glaph.) 1.2 (PG 69, 20A), where the human being appears as a rational or thinking animal (ζῶον λογικόν). For a similar designation, see Commentary on John (= On John) 2.1 (on John 1:3233) in P. E. Pusey, Sancti patris nostri Cyrilli archiepiscopi Alexandrini in D. Joannis evangelium accedunt fragmenta varia necnon tractatus ad Tiberium diaconum duo, 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1872) vol. 1, 182.31-183.1.

39

The version of Anthrop. given in PG 76, 1081A includes here, before the question mark, the phrase ἢ καἰ νοῦς ἐγένετο (“or become the [human] mind”). Moreover, between the question mark and the new sentence, which begins with οὐκοῦν (translated above as “at any rate”), there are a few sentences in PG 76, 1081AB, covering almost ten lines, which St Gregory ignores.

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became like him [i.e. like God] (τῇ πρὸς αὐτὸν ὁμοιώσει)40 to the best of its ability. Furthermore, in being proven a partaker (μέτοχον) of ἡγιάσθη). This [latter aspect] is what it lost through sin.”41 Where are, then, those who consider the deifying gift of the Spirit (θεοποιὸν δωρεὰν τοῦ Πνεύματος) a created and natural imitation (μίμησιν κτιστὴν καὶ φυσικήν) – instead of a divine and ineffable, or an ineffably essential, energy [of God]?42

Neither this chapter nor in fact the whole writing provides a further reference to St Cyril; thus, the original context of the excerpts included in the above passage remains elusive. What matters is that St Gregory read the Cyrilline text as signifying the hesychast experience. Several elements within the above passage are of particular interest from this viewpoint. Before anything else, the excerpts from Anthrop. outline a tripartite the living being that received a soul; second, the ethical achievements pertaining to the likeness of God (cf. ἀγαθὸν καὶ δίκαιον καὶ ἀρετῆς ἁπάσης); ἡγιάσθη) and the participation (cf. μέτοχον) in the Holy Spirit. The fact that Palamas was fascinated by this passage should not come as a surprise. St Cyril presented therein a tripartite schema (although within the broader context of the relevant chapter this schema was further nuanced) that corresponded to the hesychast anthropology delineated by Palamas himself. For instance, both in the treatise of interest43 and elsewhere44 St Gregory advocated a triple schema referring to the sensorial, the rational and the noetic levels 40

In PG 76, 1081B the phrase is preceded by ἐν (“in”), which is missing in the version available to Palamas.

41

For the variant offered by Wickham, see Doctrinal Questions and Answers (= Doctr.) 2.7-9,18-22 at 190. See Cyril of Alexandria, Select Letters, ed. and trans. by Lionel R. Wickham (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983) 190.

42

Part. 13.8-22 (Chrestou 234).

43

Cf. Part. 14.5 (Chrestou 236).

44

Cf. One Hundred and Fifty Chapters 63.4-6. Robert E. Sinkewicz, Saint Gregory Palamas: The One Hundred and Fifty Chapters – A Critical Edition, Translation and Study Mediaeval Studies, 1988) 156. 187


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parameters of nature, the second to existential achievements in terms of virtue and knowledge, and the last one to the mystical experience.45 The similarity of the two patristic views, apart from their terminological variance, is unquestionable and it is doubtful that Palamas encountered

Another common element to both patristic interpreters is their understanding of the breath of life as experienced by a human being who reached a state of existential compatibility with God (cf. τῇ πρὸς αὐτὸν ὁμοιώσει), in the Cyrilline text, or a “created and natural imitation” (cf. μίμησιν κτιστὴν καὶ φυσικήν) of God’s way, in the Palamite comment; a state which refers to virtue. It is apparent that for both St Cyril and St Gregory the adamic experience of the breath of life was facilitated by the virtuous compatibility established between the human being and God. This understanding entails a distinction between nature/virtue and grace, or what was naturally achieved and what was supernaturally given within the paradisal condition.46

in the metaphor of the breath of life the culminating experience of obvious in the last line of the Cyrilline passage, which refers to the Spirit 45

Grigorie Palama 138. See also Costache, ‘Experiencing the Divine Life’ 1517 and idem, ‘Queen of the Sciences? Theology and Natural Knowledge in St Gregory Palamas’ One Hundred and Fifty Chapters’ Transdisciplinarity in Science and Religion 3 (2008) 27-46 esp. 40-44. 46

οἱ θεωθέντες) do not simply improve (ἁπλῶς βελτιοῦνται) their nature (τὴν φύσιν); they actually receive the divine energy (τὴν θείαν ἐνέργειαν) or indeed the Holy Spirit.” Part. 3.28-30 (Chrestou 214). Improvement refers to the virtues, which are achieved within shaw, Aristotle East and West: Metaphysics and the Division of Christendom A Study of Gregory Palamas 175-76. 188


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St Silouan dramatically depicted, we have seen above, as an existential impoverishment or, verbatim, the human being’s reduction to the state of “sinful dust.”47 Palamas described the same loss as removal of the divine inbreathing (θεῖον ἐμφύσημα) from Adam because of his disobedience.48 Elsewhere St Gregory referred to the same happening as the ancestors’ (προπάτορες) deprivation of “the luminous and living raiment of the supernal radiance” (τῶν ἐκ τῆς ἄνωθεν αἴγλης φωτεινῶν καὶ ζωτικῶν ἐνδυμάτων).49 This patristic consensus on the deifying activity of the Spirit as the content of the breath of life complements the Cyrilline ruminations, in On John, about the Spirit as gained and lost, which made the object of Keating’s analysis.50 The pneumatological take on the breath of life shows, moreover, that the two fathers, and St Silouan, construed the paradise narrative as addressing the spiritual remaking of a human being and not its natural making – a view that corresponds, furthermore, to St Gregory of Nyssa’s perception of the same scriptural account as sketching a “mystical anthropogony” (μυστικὴν … ἀνθρωπογονίαν).51 Irrespective of the immediate meaning of Genesis, therefore, it was not the making of man that primarily interested the fathers. It was the fact that, by becoming existentially compatible with through participation. The fact that this experience was variously expressed, namely, by the metaphor of the breath of life in Genesis, the pneumatological notes of St Cyril on the same metaphor, as well as the tradition of the saints that formed the object of Palamas’ own investigation,52 opens up interesting 47

St Silouan, Writings 1: ‘Yearning for God’ 281.

48

Part. 14.31-33 (Chrestou 234).

49

One Hundred and Fifty Chapters 46.1,5-6 (Sinkewicz 136). We shall see below that this vocabulary of ‘light’ in relation to the glory of the saints features in far earlier sources than the witnesses of the fourteenth century hesychasm.

50

Cf. Keating, ‘The Baptism of Jesus in Cyril of Alexandria’ 206.

51

On the Making of Man 30.33 (PG 44, 256B).

52

137-38, noted that precisely the experiences of the saints ultimately represented the object and source of Palamas’ teaching. 189


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avenues. Like with St Silouan,53 Palamas possibly perceived Adam as having experienced the same holiness – or rather the same Holy Spirit – that was and is attained by many others. This commonality was obvious to St Gregory to such an extent that he construed these illustrations as mutually clarifying. Indeed, the passage quoted above shows that he read the Cyrilline comments on the breath of life simply as endorsing the hesychast experience and, likewise, that his own articulation of hesychasm merely reiterated St Cyril’s understanding of the paradise narrative. It is not unsafe therefore to infer that St Gregory believed in the possibility of the same experience as being at hand in other times and places. Corresponding to the Athonite saying, “what matters is the manner, not the place,” this interpretation of the adamic experience as replicated through the centuries in the lives of the saints is by no means an isolated case. Indeed, whilst this interpretation draws explicitly on St Cyril of Alexandria, it actually reiterates a widespread early Christian perception of the paradise as regained within the ecclesial environment.54 That being said, in order to test the accuracy of the Palamite reading of St Cyril’s thoughts I shall soon turn to the relevant context from Anthrop. Before doing so, however, it should be pointed out that, except for St Silouan’s very personal notes, there seems to be complete agreement between the two Athonite fathers in relation to Adam as typifying the experience of holiness in general – an experience that can be replicated irrespective of one’s time and place. Could this agreement be taken as a clue that only the saintly theologians can read the paradise narrative in this fashion, and that if they so read it they are saints, too? The answer to this question may cast a surprising light upon the slandered personality of St Cyril, to whose perception of Adam I must now turn.

53

See St Silouan, Writings 1: ‘Yearning for God’ 274.

54

Cf. H. S. Benjamins, ‘Paradisiacal Life: The Story of Paradise in the Early Church’ in ed. Gerald P. Luttikhuizen, Paradise Interpreted: Representations of Biblical Paradise in Judaism and Christianity, Themes in Biblical Narrative (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 1999) 153-67.

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St Cyril of Alexandria In his pastoral letter to a suffragan bishop, Calosirius,55 St Cyril addressed the matter of a group of monks from Mount Calamon who were preaching that since human beings are created in God’s image it follows that God himself has to share somehow in the shape of our bodies.56 The letter, which prefaces Anthrop. in Migne’s Patrologia Graeca 67, contains a summary of the orthodox refutation of this “latest irreverence.”57 In brief, the letter dismisses any corporeality of the divine image and likeness58 on the grounds of God having no share in the biological features common to both humans and the animal kingdom;59 furthermore, being spirit and having no shape, God cannot be circumscribed or measured.60 It appears that in making these points St Cyril tacitly reiterated the opinions of the Origenist monks whom Theophilus – who ended up, at least for the eyes of the public, a supporter of the anthropomorphites – had previously exiled

55

Letter to Calosirius (= Calos.) (PG 76, 1065A-1077B). The critically edited text can be found, with a rendition into English, in Cyril of Alexandria, Select Letters, ed. and trans. by Lionel R. Wickham (cited above, n.41) 214-221. See also the notes of Wickham on the letter, ‘Introduction’ xxx-xxxi.

56

Calos. (PG 76, 1068A; Wickham 214.12-14). The monks believed “the divine to be in a human shape or form” (ὅτι ἢ ἀνθρωποειδὲς ἤγουν ἀνθρωπόμορφόν ἐστι τὸ θεῖον).

57

Ibidem (Wickham 214.15). Wickham (215) translates ἐσχάτη δυσσεβεία as “extreme blasphemy.”

58

Calos. (PG 76, 1068A; Wickham 214.17-18). Lit. “the likeness is not bodily, for God is incorporeal” (ἡ δὲ ὁμοιότης οὐ σωματική· ὁ γὰρ Θεός ἐστιν ἀσώματος). On the nuanced approach of St Cyril to the theme of the image of God, see John J. O’Keefe, ‘Incorruption, Anti-Origenism, and Incarnation: Eschatology in the Thought of Cyril of Alexandria’ in ed. Thomas G. Weinandy and Daniel A. Keating, The Theology of St Cyril of Alexandria: A Critical Appreciation (London and New York: T & T Clark, 2003) 187-204 esp. 199-200. We shall see below that by image and likeness St Cyril understood an existential state of compatibility with God, namely, the virtuous life.

59

Calos. (PG 76, 1068C; Wickham 214.22-216.2).

60

Calos unshaped” (ἄποσον γὰρ καὶ ἀσχημάτιστόν ἐστι τὸ θεῖον). 191


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from Egypt.61 Relevant here is that the views outlined in Calos. reappear identically within the treatise, which in addition addresses topical aspects of the anthropomorphite teaching, such as the difference between image and likeness,62 and the idea that human beings are created in the image of the image.63 This is not the place to discuss the whole content of the treatise. Before turning to the aspects of interest, it is noteworthy that, following Pusey,64 Wickham literarily dissociated the letter from the treatise and showed that Anthrop. is a later compilation of St Cyril’s two collections of answers to a deacon Tiberius65 (of which the most important here is the second one, Doctr.).66 of Calos. and the two series of answers to Tiberius, and thus, implicitly, the compilation known as Anthrop., in relation to their approaches to the matters at hand.67 That being said, given that St Gregory Palamas cited from Anthrop., I shall utilise herein the text found in Patrologia Graeca, which, 61

For an introduction to the circumstances of this affair and the relevant texts in Theophilus, see Norman Russel, Theophilus of Alexandria (London and New York: Routledge, 2007) 89-174. For more on the complexities of the anthropomorphite controversy under Theophilus, see Georges Florovsky, ‘Theophilus of Alexandria and Apa Aphou of Pemdje’ in Aspects of Church History (Belmont, Mass: Nordland Publishing Co, 1975) 97-129. For analyses of Cassian’s account of the same matters, see Florovsky, ‘The Anthropomorphites in the Egyptian Desert’ in Aspects of Church History (quoted above) 89-96, and Mark DelCogliano, ‘Situating Sarapion’s Sorrow: The Anthropomorphite Controversy as the Historical and Theological Context of Cassian’s Tenth Conference on Pure Prayer’ Cistercian Studies Quarterly 38:4 (2003) 377-421. For the reasons behind Theophilus’ apparent change of heart, with a reconstruction of the anthropomorphite position, see Golitzin, ‘The Vision of God and the Form of Glory’ 286-94 and idem, ‘“The Demons Suggest an Illusion of God’s Glory in a Form”’ 23-28, 29-30.

62

Anthrop. 5 (PG 76, 1086B-88C).

63

Anthrop. 6 (PG 76, 1088C-89B). Meijering noted that in fact this idea could tions on Cyril of Alexandria’s Rejection of Anthropomorphism’ Nederlands Theologisch Tijdschrift 28 (1974) 297-301 esp. 297.

64

Cf. Pusey, vol. 3, viii and 545-47.

65

Wickham, ‘Introduction’ xlviii-xlix.

66

The treatise can be found in Wickham, 180-213 (text and translation).

67

Wickham, ‘Introduction’ xxviii-xxxi.

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as pointed out earlier, is almost identical to the one that was available to the Athonite theologian. Turning to the second chapter of Anthrop.,68 from which Palamas excerpted the lines analysed above, we discover that among other matters it examines the divine breath in Genesis 2:7, which the suspected into a human soul or the vital factor within the human organism.69 Before considering this topic in detail, however, the chapter addresses hermeneutical aspects pertaining to a respectful approach to Genesis. statements, like the fact that God made all things, which do not pose over in silence70 and the readers receive through faith.71 Such hermeneutical precautions being taken, St Cyril proposed the following as a safe approach to the making of the human being. If we are to set a rule by considering [the matter] with the aid of human being, more precisely the body, from the earth, and that he animated it with a living and intelligent soul the way only he knew. Furthermore, he naturally (φυσικῶς) set into it the thrust toward every good deed and knowledge. This was clearly proclaimed by the blessed evangelist John: “He was the true light that illumines every human being that comes into the world.”72 The living being is born therefore with a natural penchant (φυσικὴν ... ἐπιτηδειότητα) toward the good. This is what the most-wise Paul will simply teach when writing, “We are his creation, made for good deeds, which God prepared for us beforehand to walk in them.”73 Nevertheless, the human being entrusts the controlling reins of its own conscience to the free choice, so that it runs as it wishes either toward the 68

Anthrop. 2 (PG 76, 1080B-81C). Cf. Doctr. 2 (Wickham 186.16-192.2).

69

Anthrop. 2 (PG 76, 1080AB). Cf. Doctr. 2 (Wickham 186.16-25).

70

Anthrop. 2 (PG 76, 1080C). Cf. Doctr. 2 (Wickham 188.11-12).

71

Anthrop. 2 (PG 76, 1080B). Cf. Doctr. 2 (Wickham 188.7).

72

John 1:9.

73

Ephesians 2:10. 193


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Adam’s Holiness: Athonite and Alexandrine Perceptions good or toward the opposite. On the other hand, implanted within nature there is an inclination toward all forms of goodness and kindness whatsoever, together with a desire to pursue goodness choosing the good] the human being arrives to be in the image and likeness of God,74 for the living being is made to become good and righteous. Moreover, [God] breathed (ἐνεφύσησεν) the breath of life into [the human being] for it to be a partaker (μέτοχον) of the Holy Spirit, which thus possesses the radiant marks of divine nature (λαμπροτέρους ... τοὺς χαρακτῆρας τῆς θείας φύσεως) within itself, and not just a reasoning being.75 This [breath] is the Spirit who is given by the Son to the reasoning creature and who shapes (διαμορφοῦν) the latter into the highest form (εἰς εἶδος τὸ ἀνωτάτω), namely, the divine one (τὸ θεῖον). Hence it is obvious that the Spirit was breathed neither in order to become [the human being’s] soul nor its mind, as some suppose.76

The passage continues with the lines cited by St Gregory Palamas within his discourse on the supernatural and uncreated character of the grace bestowed upon the saints, including Adam. Looking at the text and bearing in mind its interpretation by Palamas, we notice that the latter offered a very accurate summary of the Cyrilline teaching on the paradisal experience, which distinguishes the natural and supernatural elements pertaining to the edenic morphology of the human being, to which I must now turn. The text under consideration reveals the complexity of St Cyril’s anthropology, which unfolds by way of four aspects, namely, the natural 74

That the human being is created to be in the image and likeness of God, without the distinction of the two aspects, was apparently a common Cyrilline understanding. For instance, the two terms feature again without discrimination in his On John 2.1 (Pusey, vol. 1, 183.21-23). In making no distinction between image and likeness, St Cyril followed St Athanasius. Cf. Norman Russell, Cyril of Alexandria (London and New York: Routledge, 2000) 211, n.35.

75

Wickham’s text includes here the phrase “with an aptitude for doing good and right” (καὶ ἐπιτηδείως ἔχον εἰς ἀγαθούργιαν καὶ δικαιοσύνην). Cf. Doctr. 2 (Wickham 188.31-32; 189).

76

Anthrop. 2 (PG 76, 1080C-81A). Cf. Doctr. 2 (Wickham 188.13-190.6). The identical. This passage is passed over in silence within Russell’s overview of 191-204.

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constitution of the human being; the latter’s natural disposition toward the good; its capability of choosing freely and its virtuous exercise and a superior reshaping. Interesting from the viewpoint of theological anthropology, the passage is unequivocal in maintaining that all four aspects presuppose the divine activity: “the Maker of all moulded (ἔπλασε) the human being,” “animating (ψυχώσας) it with a living and intelligent soul”;77 “he naturally set into it (ἐγκατεβάλετο) the thrust toward every good deed and knowledge”;78 “he has produced it (πέφυκεν) in order to be good and righteous”;79 “he inbreathed (ἐνεφύσησεν) the breath of life for it to be a partaker of the Holy Spirit.”80 These theological nuances correspond to the overall and richly soteriological vocabulary of St Cyril in relation to creation and re-creation, as discussed by Wilken.81 More importantly, assessment regarding On John 2.1 that the Cyrilline teaching construed τὴν χαρισματικὴ κατάσταση τῶν πρωτοπλάστων).82 I shall return later to the What matters for now is that the broader context of the Cyrilline passage cited by Palamas displays a more detailed and nuanced view of the human existence than the ternary schema which we studied above. Having said this, when comparing the two outlines, namely, the threefold schema

element – i.e. nature – of the former. It can be safely surmised therefore that whilst the triadic outline summarises the quaternary schema, the latter 77

Anthrop. 2 (PG 76, 1080C).

78

Ibidem.

79

Anthrop. 2 (PG 76, 1080D).

80

Anthrop. 2 (PG 76, 1080D-1081A).

81

For a list of relevant terms in Glaph. and On John, see Wilken, ‘Exegesis and the History of Theology’ 143.

82

Στυλιανοῦ Γ. Παπαδοπούλου, Πατρολογία, Τόμος Γ᾽ Ὁ Πέμπτος Αἰῶνας, Ἀνατολή καί Δύση (Ἀθήνα: Ἔκδοσεις Γρηγόρη, 2010) 474. Lit. “the charismatic constitution 195


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displays the content of the former in a developed manner. As such, the structure of Cyrilline anthropology appears analogous to, if not building upon, other and far better known triadic patterns sketched in previous ages, typical for what Hadot designated as pyramide conceptuelle and système hiérarchique.83 Such patterns are, for instance, the Platonic pedagogical schema consisting in ethics, natural knowledge and the contemplation of the loftier aspects of reality; Clement’s and Origen’s curriculum of ethics, physics and epoptics; the Evagrian map (which builds on Origen’s perception) of the spiritual pursuit that refers to practical philosophy, natural contemplation and theological vision etc. Even more closely, the Cyrilline approach echoes the epistemology of Aristotle, which proceeds, at least according to the ancient editors of the Stagirite’s catalogue of writings, from the exploration of nature to ethics and then theology.84 For instance, to take on the last example, the Aristotelian natural knowledge corresponds in Cyrillian anthropology to what human beings are made of and their natural inclination toward the good; ethics to the appropriate exercise of free will in choosing the good (virtue, kindness, righteousness); of the virtuous human being. Similar to the views of St Gregory Palamas on the three levels of perception, addressed above, it is therefore very likely that Cyrilline anthropology followed the epistemology of the Stagirite. One way or the other, apart from the variations in ordering the items within the above frameworks, it appears that for both St Cyril and his cultural antecedents the human being appears as impossible to construe outside the complex, ternary pattern of nature, ethics and/or axiology, and the relationship with the divine.

83

Cf. Pierre Hadot, ‘Les divisions des parties de la philosophie dans l’Antiquité’ Museum Helveticum 36:4 (1979) 201-23 at 201, 206 etc.

84

For these and other ternary philosophical approaches yet without reference to St Cyril, see Hadot, ‘Les divisions des parties de la philosophie’ 203, 206207, 210-11, 212, 218-20, 222; Andrew Louth, The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition: From Plato to Denys, second edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007) 56-60; Bogdan Gabriel Bucur, Angelomorphic Pneumatology: Clement of Alexandria and Other Early Christian Witnesses (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2009) 18-24.

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To be more truthful to the spirit of the above text, the same fourfold anthropological schema can be likewise rendered as a double structure, which refers, on the one hand, to nature, free will and the virtuous or

or holiness. When he referred to the human capacity to “exercise virtues (especially goodness, righteousness, and holiness),” Meijering has not noticed this nuance.85 Nevertheless, we have encountered this double structure both in St Silouan’s reference to the moulding of the human being of earth followed by the bestowal of the Spirit,86 and in St Gregory’s 87 I propose that just like for the Athonite fathers, in St Cyril virtue, achieved within nature, and holiness, as a supernatural dimension, belonged to φυσικῶς) within the human makeup the drive toward a virtuous life, so that the human being displays a natural propensity (φυσικὴν ... ἐπιτηδειότητα) toward the good or virtue. When consistently pursuing this inclination, the human being reaches the state of being “in the image and likeness of God,” a state which for St Cyril, within this context and elsewhere,88 appeared as a task 85 86

Cf. Writings 1: ‘Yearning for God’ 273.

87

Cf. Part. 3.28-30 (Chrestou 214).

88

For a similar, yet not identical, reference to image and likeness as connected with the paradisal commandment and its upholding by the human beings, see St Cyril’s On John 2.1. Here, whilst the marks or “characters” (χαρακτῆρας) of the Spirit are “put into” (ἐνετίθει) the human being from above (Pusey, vol. 1, 182.29-31), the sense of these marks being in need of the human virtuous maintenance is inescapable (Pusey, vol. 1, 182.31-183.1-4). Cf. also the notes on this passage by Keating, ‘The Baptism of Jesus in Cyril of Alexandria’ 205206, repeated in idem, ‘Divinization in Cyril: The Appropriation of Divine Life’ in ed. Weinandy and Keating, The Theology of St Cyril of Alexandria (quoted above, n.58) 149-85 esp. 154; likewise, Papadopoulos, Πατρολογία, vol. in the image of God. For a different approach in St Cyril, see Glaph. 1.2 (PG 69, 20B), where the human being features as “truly an animal of good natural disposition and very much Godlike” (ζῶον ἀληθῶς εὐφυὲς καὶ θεοειδέστατον); 197


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to perform rather than a given. Of course, neither nature nor the virtuous achievements within its parameters are deprived of the gracious activity of God,89 as stated in the beginning of the passage under consideration and as pointed out above in terms of a theological and charismatic conditioning of interpretation of the breath of life as a metaphor of the supernal activity of the Holy Spirit. As signalled by the superlatives which accompany its description, the breath of life refers to an experience above nature that μέτοχον) in the divine life, and its lofty, Godlike reshaping (cf. εἰς εἶδος τὸ ἀνωτάτω, τοῦτ᾽ ἔστι, τὸ θεῖον) through which it receives the radiant features of God (cf. λαμπροτέρους ... τοὺς χαρακτῆρας τῆς θείας φύσεως).90 For St Cyril, therefore, the breath of life in Genesis 2:7 represented the metaphor of an experience not of this to the breath of the Spirit as engraving an immortal character within the human being, a mark which provides the latter with the possibility of transcending nature’s limitations.91 distinction of the two layers emerges with clarity within our text. It does so likewise within another setting where, however, St Cyril maintained somehow differently that the two aspects, namely, the biological life and the here, being like God appears as a given and not a task to perform or a goal to pursue. 89

Whilst the passage under consideration does not use the word ‘grace,’ the latter features in the related section from On John 2.1 (Pusey, vol. 1, 183.7).

90

Anthrop. 2 (PG 76, 1080D-1081A). Cf. Doctr. 2 (Wickham 188.30-190.4). See also On John 2.1 (Pusey, vol. 1, 182.27-28, 183.3-4), where the divine breath or the indwelling of the Spirit (cf. διὰ τοῦ ἐνοικισθέντος ἁγίου Πνεύματος) is again associated with the human being “having been sealed toward the divine image” (εἰς εἰκόνα τὴν θείαν κατεσφραγίζετο) and endowed with “resplendent features” (οἱ χαρακτῆρες λαμπροί).

91

See Glaph. 1.2 (PG 69, 20BC): Ἄγαλμα δὲ διαπλάσας ἐκ γῆς, ζῶον αὐτὸ λογικὸν ἀποτελεῖ, καὶ ἵνα τοὺς τῆς ἰδίας φύσεως ἀνατρέχοι λόγους, ἄφθαρτον, ζωοποιὸν εὐθὺς ἐνεχάραττε πνεῦμα· γέγραπται γάρ· Καὶ ἐνεφύσησεν εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον αὐτοῦ πνοὴν ζωῆς, καὶ ἐγένετο ὁ ἅνθρωπος εἰς ψυχὴν ζῶσαν (“He made a statue out of earth, completed it as a rational animal, and engraved within it directly an incorruptible and life-giving spirit so that it can exceed the principles of its own nature. For it is written, ‘and he breathed in his face the breath of life, and the human being was made into a living soul’.”).

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“features” of the Spirit, have their origin in the divine breath.92 Although, granted, this assertion introduces a tension within the perspective discussed above – which refers the divine breath to the supernatural life – no absolute chasm of contradiction separates the two passages. There is, indeed, a common ground shared by the two texts, namely, the theological vantage point of Cyrilline anthropology from the angle of which the distinction between natural and supernatural, together with all the layers within the human being and experience, ultimately refer to God. Before moving any further with this analysis, another point on the above is noteworthy. In operating with the distinction between what is natural, namely, the virtuous accomplishments, and what is above nature or irreducible to it, namely, the deifying grace, St Cyril proved to divinehuman experience, which entails precisely the aspects of virtuous likeness and divine participation, or union through grace. This concept of perfection was further considered, well into the Byzantine era, by such teachers of the mystical theology as the author known as St Dionysius the Areopagite,93 followed by St Maximus the Confessor94 and St Gregory Palamas.95 No wonder, therefore, the interest of the latter in the Cyrilline passage. 92

On John 2.1 (Pusey, vol. 1, 182.28-31). Here he was possibly following St Gregory the Theologian, who, in one of his most celebrated festal orations, formed matter” (ὕλης … προυποστάσης) the Logos put into it from himself (παρ᾽ ἑαυτοῦ … ἐνθείς) the “breath” (πνοήν and the image of God” (νοερὰν ψυχὴν καὶ εἰκόνα Θεοῦ). See Oration 38 On the Theophany 11.10-13, in Grégorie de Nazianze: Discours 38-41, introduction, texte critique et notes par Claudio Moreschini, trad. par Paul Gallay, Sources chrétiennes 358 (Paris: Cerf, 1990) 124.

93

See e.g. Ecclesiastical Hierarchy 1.3 (PG 3, 376A).

94

See e.g. To Thalassius 59.12-54 in Maximi Confessoris Quaestiones ad Thalassium II Quaestiones LVI-LXV, una cum latina interpretatione Ioannis Scotti Eriugenae iuxta posita, ediderunt Carl Laga et Carlos Steel, Corpus Christianorum Series Graeca 22 (Turnhout and Leuven: Brepols and Leuven University Press, 1990) 45-47.

95

See e.g. Part. 3 (Chrestou 214.28-30). 199


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Returning to St Cyril, in the light of the above it emerges that our Alexandrine father considered the paradisal experience a deifying event and that he construed Adam as a saint who reached the level of ‘theology’ or the divine participation – in which Palamas could discern typical features pertaining to the hesychast experience, such as the supernatural character of the union with God. Indeed, and apart from the variation introduced by the passage from his On John 2.1, discussed above, we have found that in interpreting Genesis 2:7 in Anthrop. 2 St Cyril refused to identify the divine breath with the source of either a biological existence or the virtuous life. Certainly, we have seen, St Cyril questioned neither the making of the human being by God nor that the Creator brought humanity to life and reason. Our text is clear on these matters, as proven by the statement that although in a fashion beyond comprehension “the Maker of all moulded (ἔπλασε) the human being, more precisely the body, from the earth, and animated (ψυχώσας) it with a living and intelligent soul.”96 Likewise, as noted above, our holy father was convinced that, whilst providing it with the capacity to freely choose its path in life, God conditioned humankind to seek the good.97 What mattered more for St Cyril, however, is that “reasoning” (λογικόν)98 What crowned humankind with glory were neither its intellectual prowess nor its ethical achievements – it was the bestowal by the Spirit of a gift above nature and irreducible to nature, theological par excellence, which consisted in both a share in the life of God and a divine refashioning of the 96

Anthrop. 2 (PG 76, 1080C). Cf. Doctr. 2 (Wickham 188.14-17).

97

The passage under consideration contains recurrent references to this natural conditioning of the human being on the part of God toward the good and/or righteousness: παντὸς ἀγαθοῦ πράγματος (PG 76, 1080C; Wickham 188.16); πρὸς τὸ ἀγαθὸν φυσικὴν ... ἐπιτηδειότητα (PG 76, 1080C; Wickham 188.20-21); τῶν ἀγαθῶν ἔφεσίν τε καὶ προθυμίαν, καὶ τὸ θέλειν ἐπιμελεῖσθαι ἀγαθότητος καὶ δικαιοσύνης (PG 76, 1080D; Wickham 188.27-28); ἀγαθὸν καὶ δίκαιον πέφυκεν (PG 76, 1080D; Wickham 188.30). There is also, of course, the reference to the need for the human being to choose between the good (τὸ ἀγαθόν) and its opposite (τὸ ἐναντίον) (PG 76, 1080D; Wickham 188.25-26). For further notes on God as source of the virtuous life in Anthrop 299.

98

Anthrop. 2 (PG 76, 1080D).

200


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human being. Illustrating this very understanding, in the Cyrilline reading of the paradise narrative, Adam, after committing himself to the good, or the virtuous path, experienced a divine remaking through a culminating participation in the life of God. Becoming a saint, a hesychast, Adam was shared this understanding of human dignity as irreducible to any natural condition and accomplishment. Another important aspect refers to the possibility that here St Cyril did not solely envisage the hesychastic experience of the characters in Genesis 2. Looking again at the passage,99 one notices that it knits together the past and the present tenses, alongside speaking alternately, on the one hand, of the paradisal human being (τὸν ἄνθρωπον, τὸ ζῶον) that God made, produced and ensouled (ἔπλασε, πέφυκεν, ψυχώσας), within which God set (ἐγκατεβάλετο) “the thrust toward every good deed and knowledge” and upon which God breathed (ἐνεφύσησεν) the breath of life – and on the other hand of the human being in general (πάντα ἄνθρωπον, ὁ ἄνθρωπος, τὸν ἄνθρωπον, τὸ ζῶον), which is born (τίκτεται) to do good or being made to be (εἶναι) “good and righteous,” yet who “entrusts (διοικεῖσθαι) the controlling reins of its own conscience to the free choice, so that it runs (τρέχειν) as it wishes,” having to choose rightly so that it becomes (γενέσθαι) what it is meant to be, namely, “in the image and likeness of God.” Obviously, St Cyril took the experience of the ancestors as typical for that of the entire

for the whole of humankind and as recapitulating all human beings.100 that accompany the Cyrilline analysis of the paradise narrative, namely, John 1:9 and Ephesians 2:10, of which the former refers to the experience 99

Anthrop. 2 (PG 76, 1080C-1081A).

100

For Christ as typifying and recapitulating humankind in St Cyril, see Wilken, ‘Exegesis and the History of Theology’ 143-44, 151, and Keating, ‘The Baptism of Jesus in Cyril of Alexandria’ 207, 210-11, 212. See also Keating, The Appropriation of Divine Life in Cyril of Alexandria, Oxford Theological Monographs (Oxford University Press, 2004) 33-35, where the author reiterates the same line of argument. 201


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of humankind as a whole whereas the latter to the experience of God’s people; one way or the other, both scriptural texts consider humanity in the plural, corresponding to the reference to humankind in general within the Cyrilline passage. Second, the possibility that the passage takes Adam as typifying the experience of holiness occurs through the ascetical component suggested by the text, with the human being having to grapple with the choice between the good and its opposite, and having to sustain its commitment to the path of virtue and righteousness – a struggle in which we recognise the features of both Adam and all the saints after him. Third, the adamic experience, of the established terminology and imagery for the glory bestowed upon the saints, an aspect already pointed out in relation to St Silouan the Athonite and St Gregory Palamas, and to which I shall return in the next section. Taking in consideration the aspects discussed above, one can epitomising holy life in general, and that he arrived at this interpretation by looking at Genesis through the lens of what was later called hesychasm; whence the interest of St Gregory Palamas in the passage from Anthrop. 2. An unexpected outcome of my investigation, to be further ruminated, is the impact of these discoveries on the current understanding of the AdamChrist typology in St Cyril, to which I referred only tangentially; it seems that a revisiting of this typological rapport, within the framework of St Cyril’s broader interest in the experience of holiness, is in order. What matters for the time being is that similar features, such as the criterion of holiness in the interpretation of the paradise narrative, appeared, wholly unsurprisingly, in the Alexandrine’s revered predecessor, St Athanasius the Great, and in the monastic tradition on which both theologians certainly drew. To these sources I must now turn. St Athanasius the Great and the Desert Tradition Earlier on I proposed that in alternating the past and the present tenses when it discusses paradise, the second chapter of Anthrop. portrays the experience of Adam in terms that are applicable to the general typology of holiness. 202


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Furthermore, I inferred that St Cyril understood Adam’s experience as one among many such occurrences, which later tradition, as represented by the Athonite saints, associated with hesychasm. In what follows, I turn to one of the most probable literary sources of this understanding, St Athanasius’ Against the Gentiles (= Gent.), which I shall consider together with the Life of St Antony (= Ant.) and the Apophthegmata or Sayings of the Fathers (= Apoph.). Any attempt to prove here the devotion of St Cyril for St Athanasius, which is extensively documented,101 would be futile. Since the latter represented for the former the very embodiment of tradition, it is very likely that St Cyril looked toward the great Athanasius for guidance even in matters regarding the adamic experience. In turn, the insight of St Athanasius in such matters largely drew on the wisdom of the desert102 (which had its roots deeply planted in older traditions, as repeatedly pointed out by Golitzin).103

101

See e.g. John A. McGuckin, St Cyril of Alexandria: The Christological Controversy, Its History, Theology, and Texts (Crestwood: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2004) 3; Russell, 191; idem, Cyril of Alexandria 5-6, 21, 41, 219 n.89, 235 n.44.

102

Cf. William Harmless, SJ, Desert Christians: An Introduction to the Literature of Early Monasticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004) 33-36. References to St Athanasius and his rapports with the desert ascetics in Harmless’ book are in fact ubiquitous. For earlier discussions of the same connection, with an emphasis on ecclesiastical politics, see David Brakke, Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism, Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995) 80-141, 201-65, and Uwe Kühneweg, ‘Athanasius und das Mönchtum’ Studia Patristica 32 (Leuven: Peeters, 1997) 25-32. Recently, Brakke expressed doubts in relation to the desert awareness of St Athanasius, Brakke, ‘Macarius’s Quest and Ours: Literary Sources for Early Egyptian Monasticism’ Cistercian Studies Quarterly 48:2 (2013) 239-51 esp. 240.

103

Cf. Golitzin, ‘“The Demons Suggest an Illusion of God’s Glory in a Form”’ 20-28, 33-37; idem, ‘Heavenly Mysteries: Themes from Apocalyptic Literature’ 176-80. 203


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Immediately after its prologue, Gent.,104 a complex writing of both 105 offers a series of stunning propositions, which may have inspired the Cyrilline approach to the experience as signifying holiness in general. For instance, the second chapter of the treatise106 “from the beginning” (ἐξ ἀρχῆς) or in the paradisal experience of Adam, as 107 and what someone contemplates “nowadays” (νῦν) in the lives of the saints (ἐν τοῖς ἁγίοις), namely, their complete strangeness to evil.108 This initial sentence of the chapter presupposes a kinship of Adam the reference to their commitment to the “good and most beautiful” God.109 We shall see below that alongside interpreting the scriptural narrative as signifying holiness, this presupposition reveals sainthood, particularly in 104

The edition utilised herein is that of Robert W. Thomson, Athanasius: Contra Gentes and De Incarnatione (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971).

105

Cf. E. P. Meijering, Orthodoxy and Platonism in Athanasius: Synthesis or Antithesis? Reprint with corrections (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1974) 107-108; idem, Athanasius: Contra Gentes – Introduction, Translation and Commentary (Leiden: Brill, 1984) 154-55; John Behr, The Formation of Christian Theology, vol. 2: The Nicene Faith, part 1: True God of True God (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2004) 168.

106

For comprehensive analyses of Gent. 2, with rich parallels to the Christian and classical literature, see Meijering, Orthodoxy and Platonism in Athanasius 5-9, and idem, Athanasius: Contra Gentes 15-20. For a detailed analysis of Athanasius, Outstanding Christian Thinkers (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1995) 40-44. For a summary of the adamic experience as sketched in Gent. 2 and parallels in On the Incarnation, see Russell, 179-80, and Behr, True God of True God 172-73. For a very brief consideration of the chapter alongside related Athanasian passages, see Bouteneff, Beginnings 122-23.

107

Gent. 2.27-29, 3.14-15 (Thomson 6, 8).

108

Gent. 2.1-2 (Thomson 4). See also the end of 5.23-26 (Thomson 14), which refers to evil as foreign to “the blessed Paul, the Christ-bearer man.” Neither place refers to evil in an ontological sense, as believed by Weinandy, very likely by assimilation with Gent. 7.14-16 (Thomson 18). Cf. Thomas G. Weinandy, Athanasius: A Theological Introduction, Great Theologians Series (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2007) 13.

109

Gent. 2.7 (Thomson 6).

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its ascetic or monastic form, as the vantage point for the whole Athanasian construct.

in a series of assertions which refer to both of them, namely, that God made (πεποίηκε) the human race through “his own Logos, our Saviour Jesus Christ,” in the very image (κατ᾽ ἰδίαν εἰκόνα) of God, for it to know its maker; that God structured (κατεσκεύασε) the human being toward (cf. πρός) God’s likeness (ὁμοίωσις) so that it can make sense of the world;110 that the above are graciously (cf. τὴν τοῦ δεδωκότος χάριν) and perhaps simultaneously bestowed111 upon the human being; that the grace of being in the image and likeness makes it possible for the human being to be 112 and that the human mind properly exercises its contemplative capability only when unhindered by the passions.113 Adam and the saints shared these marks of holiness, as suggested by the interplay of the past and present tenses, or what was “from the beginning” and what is experienced “nowadays.” Interestingly, and furthermore, this complex narrative that combines the Genesis account of paradise and elements of hagiography employs a rich scriptural and philosophical vocabulary of knowledge, representation and vision,114 terms that signify a gradual familiarisation with the divine. Three main stages are prominent, namely, the contemplation of things created, God’s providence in the universe and God’s eternity.115 These levels of 110

Gent. 2.7-10 (Thomson 6).

111

Gent which may suggest its employment as an alternative expression for the state of being in the image and likeness. It is possible that this utilisation of grace as an alternative expression determined Meijering, Athanasius: Contra Gentes 17, to speak of the simultaneity of image and likeness in the paradisal condition.

112


113


114

Cf. Gent. 2.6,9,11,12,16,18,21,26,31,33 (Thomson 6): ἐπίνοια, θεωρητὴν καὶ ἐπιστήμονα, ἔννοιαν καὶ γνῶσιν, φαντασία, Θείου γνῶσιν, θεωρεῖ, κατανοῶν, δυνάμει τοῦ νοῦ, ἡδόμενος, θεωρία and κατοπτρίζεσθαι. The display of this complex vocabulary on a single page is impressive.

115

Gent. 2.9-11,15-19 (Thomson 6). For some reason, in commenting upon this passage Meijering, Athanasius: Contra Gentes 17, refers only to the knowl205


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contemplation correspond to the portfolio of any saint, or, paraphrasing Meijering, any “Platonic mystic” and “Christian ascetic.”116 It appears therefore that St Athanasius deliberately presented the paradisal experience through the lens of the ideal Christian philosopher, the saint, a topic in which he was deeply interested, as likewise proven by Ant.,117 in line with his agenda of providing a Christian counterweight for the paradigm of the classical philosopher. St Athanasius did not bother to explain the distinctions, apparent in the text, between being created ‘in’ the image of God and being to remember that he must have considered these aspects as simultaneously and graciously constituted – an understanding later appropriated, to some extent, by St Cyril. The major variance between the two Alexandrine approaches consists in the different functions associated with the fact of being in God’s image and likeness. More precisely, where St Athanasius refers to knowing God, his providence in creation and the nature of things created, St Cyril, we have seen above, whilst not discarding the contemplative aspect,118 gives priority to righteousness, gentleness and virtue. All things considered, the Athanasian rendition of the paradise narrative as signifying the experience of holiness finds an explicit edge of the created beings. On a different note, it is very likely that whereas he quoted St Athanasius on another matter Evagrius borrowed from Gent. 2 his notion of the three stages of contemplation, which appear as such in his The Gnostic 48-49. Cf. Évagre le Pontique: Le Gnostique ou À celui qui est devenu digne de la science, édition critique des fragments grecs, traduction intégrale établie au moyen des versions syriaques et arménienne, commentaire et tables par Antoine Guillaumont et Claire Guillaumont, Sources chrétiennes 356 (Paris: Cerf, 1989) 186-91. 116

Meijering, Athanasius: Contra Gentes 17; idem, Orthodoxy and Platonism in Athanasius 5, 8-9 (here he uses the phrase “Platonic philosopher”). See also Brakke, Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism 146-47.

117

Cf. Arthur Urbano, Jr., ‘“Read It Also to the Gentiles”: The Displacement and Recasting of the Philosopher in the Vita Antonii’ Church History 77:4 (2008) 877-914. Without referring to philosophy, see Brakke, Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism 239-40, for a connection between the portrayal of Adam and that of St Antony.

118

See Anthrop. 2 (PG 76, 1080C).

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that to be in the image and likeness of God entails the perseverance of human beings in fellowship with the saints. Two sentences within Gent.

God, the demiurge of the universe and king of all, the one who exists beyond all nature and the human perception, for being good and most beautiful, created the human race in conformity with his own image (τὸ ἀνθρώπινον γένος κατ᾽ ἰδίαν εἰκόνα πεποίηκε) through his own Logos, our Saviour Jesus Christ. Furthermore, he structured (κατεσκεύασε) it (αὐτόν) [i.e. the human being] with reference to the likeness to him (διὰ τῆς πρὸς αὐτὸν ὁμοιώσεως) so that it can contemplate and know the [created] beings, and gave it also the concept and knowledge of his own eternity. These have been done so that, by preserving its integrity, it neither leaves the [true] representation of God one day nor abandons the company of the saints (ἵνα ... μήτε τῆς περὶ Θεοῦ φαντασίας ποτὲ ἀποστῇ, μήτε τῆς τῶν ἁγίων συζήσεως ἀποπηδήσῃ).119

For both humankind (cf. ἀνθρώπινον γένος) and a given human person (cf. αὐτόν),120 to respect the grammatical layout of the passage, the ultimate outcome of this association with God and the saints, referred to in the last line, is the fact of being granted “to live an immortal life, full and truly blessed” (ζῶν τὸν ἀπήμονα καὶ μακάριον ὄντως ἀθάνατον βίον).121 Whilst the chapter as a whole and this particular passage are very rich in meaning, only a couple of aspects are immediately relevant here. Noteworthy is, before all else, the alternating reference to the human race and an individual being, a play of plurals and singulars or general and particular categories that we have already encountered in St Cyril. The passage is so crafted, indeed, that its message can be applied not only to the character in the paradise narrative but likewise to all human beings that maintain their wholeness (cf. ταυτότητα)122 intact throughout history. Second, our text 119


120


121


122

Gent. 2.11 (Thomson 6). Lit. ‘identity’ or ‘integrity.’ 207


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points out that in remaining wholly in the image and likeness of God the human being can both maintain a proper representation of God (cf. τῆς περὶ Θεοῦ φαντασίας) and abide in the company of the saints (cf. τῆς τῶν ἁγίων συζήσεως).123 St Athanasius made no further comments on this mysterious fellowship of the saints, other than mentioning it once more within the same chapter; he must have taken it therefore as commonplace, perhaps for the reasons that shall soon become apparent. The second occurrence of the topic, further down in the same chapter, includes a reference to Adam by name whilst alluding to his experience as matched by those pure in heart. Let us look more closely at this passage. The Holy Scriptures refer to the one called Adam in the language as having from the beginning (κατὰ τὴν ἀρχήν) his mind focused upon God (πρὸς τὸν Θεόν) with an unembarrassed124 boldness, and as being set together with the saints (συνδιαιτᾶσθαι τοῖς ἁγίοις) in perceiving the intelligible things. He experienced these in that place τροπικῶς) designated as paradise. Thus, the purity of the soul (ψυχῆς καθαρότης) is in itself able to mirror (κατοπτρίζεσθαι) God, as the Lord says, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”125

As much as the previous one, this passage is puzzling on a number of levels. For instance, it takes for granted that Adam lived from the outset a God-centred life126 and that he gazed upon the invisible entirely like the saints and together with them – both these latter nuances being entailed

123

Gent. 2.12-13 (Thomson 6). Pettersen, Athanasius 37, refers to the company of the saints as a future reward for consistency in communion with God. In turn, Weinandy, Athanasius 14, altogether ignores this reference to the saints.

124

I borrowed here Thomson’s excellent rendition of ἀνεπαίσχυντος (Thomson 7). It is, of course, about a profound familiarity between the human being and God.

125

Gent. 2.27-35 (Thomson 6-8).

126

This assertion corresponds to the indirect portrayal of Adam as virtuous in Gent. 4.9-12 (Thomson 9-12).

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by the verb συνδιαιτᾶσθαι,127 translated above as “set together with,” which the company of the saints (cf. τῆς τῶν ἁγίων συζήσεως).128 This reiteration of the topic strengthens the suggestion, discussed above, that Adam and the saints display the same features of holiness. That said, there is something relationship between God and Adam, albeit more on the part of the former than the latter, but it nonetheless makes no mention of other human beings in paradise, let alone saints, other than Adam’s wife. One could legitimately saints. Was St Athanasius of the opinion that the story of the garden, which τροπικῶς),129 represents a metaphor that generally refers to the life of holiness or, in a more restrictive sense, a group of ascetics that reached a measure of perfection? The phrasing of the passage does not leave room for doubt, expressing the author’s views in factual terms, which give further substance to Brakke’s observation that the imitation of the saints and their company represent recurrent themes in St Athanasius.130 For the great Alexandrine, Adam was a saint who experienced the paradise of the spiritual life in fellowship with other saints and like them, with whom he shared the purity of the soul/heart; (saints) as angels, proposed by Meijering and Brakke.131 Incidentally, this evidence would require a reconsideration of the Athanasian sketch of the paradisal experience in the context of the established portrayals of Adam in early Christian literature.132 Returning to the association of Adam and 127


128

Cf. Gent. 2.12 (Thomson 6).

129


130

See Brakke, Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism 163.

131

Cf. Meijering, Athanasius: Contra Gentes 15; Brakke, Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism 161. But see Brakke, Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism 198, where no reference to angels is made.

132

For the representation of Adam as typifying the spiritual path in early Christian see Giulia Sfameni Gasparro, ‘Asceticism and Anthropology: Enkrateia and “Double Creation” in Early Christianity’ in ed. Vincent L. Wimbush, Richard 209


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the saints, would it be far fetched, therefore, to surmise that the purity of the forefather’s heart, as implied by the conclusion of the passage, was construed from the vantage point of the wholesomeness reached by the desert ascetics known to St Athanasius? In what follows, we shall discover that this appears as the most plausible explanation for the depiction of the adamic experience in Gent. 2, even though, as Golitzin has proven,133 literary antecedents of this depiction can be found in earlier rabbinic and pre-Nicene traditions. Whilst I do not discard the possibility for such antecedents to have been known to St Athanasius, for now I would say that – albeit very obvious in the desert representations of Adam – their

When it refers to the contemplation of God and the fellowship of the saints as pertaining to the paradisal circumstances of Adam,134 the Athanasian narrative echoes the classical quest for perfection as both emulation of the divine life by the philosopher and an experience that takes place in the company of other seekers of holiness.135 The relevance of this cultural parallel consists in that the philosophical quest undoubtedly shaped the Christian lifestyle of the monks in Egypt and Sinai,136 through Valantasis et al., Asceticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998) 12746 esp. 136-38. For a positive appraisal of the Athanasian Adam see Brakke, Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism 146-47. 133

See Golitzin, ‘Recovering the “Glory of Adam”’ 275-308.

134

This double aspect is referred to within both passages considered here. Cf. Gent. 2.11-13,29-31 (Thomson 6).

135

See Dominic J. O’Meara, Platonopolis: Platonic Political Philosophy in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005) 32-34. I am grateful to Mario Baghos for this reference. Regarding the philosophical quest for a noble life, see Pierre Hadot, ‘Forms of Life and Forms of Discourse in Ancient Philosophy’ (trans. by A. I. Davidson and P. Wissing) Critical Enquiry 16:3 (1990) 483-505 esp. 493-96.

136

See e.g. Les Apophtegmes des Pères: Collection systématique chapitres I-IX, texte critique, traduction et notes par Jean-Claude Guy, S.J., Sources chrétiennes 387 (Paris: Cerf, 2005) 7.6.2 at 338. See also, from the same timeframe, St Neilos the Ascetic, Λόγος ἀσκητικός 111-12. For the usefulness of “abiding and exercising in the company of the virtuous ones” (ἐν τῇ μετὰ τῶν ἐναρέτων διαγωγῇ καὶ γυμνασίᾳ), see St John Cassian, Περὶ τῶν ὀκτὼ τῆς κακίας λογισμῶν, in Φιλοκαλία τῶν ἱερῶν νηπτικῶν, vol. 1, 35-47, here περὶ λύπης (on grief) at 43.

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the medium of which, in turn, it must have conditioned the understanding of our Alexandrine father. It should not come as a surprise therefore that typical features of the philosophical life could be traced within the portrayal of Adam in Gent. 2, very likely in the guise of monastic asceticism, an approach which we have discovered likewise in St Silouan. In fact the chapter of interest is not the only text that shows St Athanasius borrowing from the ‘philosophical’ tradition of monasticism. For instance, and as pointed out earlier, his depiction of Adam in Gent. saintly ascetic,137 which he sketched in the vita of St Antony the Great.138 On monasticism as Christian exemplar of the philosophical life, see Samuel Rubenson, ‘Christian Asceticism and the Emergence of the Monastic Tradition’ and Bernard McGinn, ‘Asceticism and Mysticism in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages’ in ed. Wimbush, Valantasis et al., Asceticism 49-57, 58-74. See also Henrik Rydell Johnsén, ‘Renunciation, Reorientation and Guidance: Patterns in Early Monasticism and Ancient Philosophy’ Studia Patristica 55:3 (Leuven – Paris – Walpole, MA: Peeters, 2013) 79-94. 137

Athanase d’Alexandrie, Vie d’Antoine, introduction, texte critique, traduction, notes et index par G. J. M. Bartelink, Sources chrétiennes 400 (Paris: Cerf, 1994) 80.1-7 at 338-40. Cf. Brakke, Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism 253-65; Russell, 184; Urbano, ‘“Read It Also to the Gentiles”’ 910-12.

138

For overviews of the vita, see Brakke, Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism 201-65, with emphasis on the ‘political’ Athanasian reconstruction of the hermit’s legacy; Weinandy, Athanasius 129-32, where the hermit’s portrait is interpreted in the light of the New Adam, Christ; Behr, True God of True God 253-59, with emphasis on the ‘incarnational’ construction of the Athanasian spirituality of the body; William A. Clebsch, ‘Preface’ to Athanasius: The Life of Antony and the Letter to Marcellinus, trans. and intro. by Robert C. Gregg, The Classics of Western Spirituality (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1980) xiii-xxi esp. xiv-xviii, which takes the vita as mapping the trajectory of holiness within the context of St Athanasius’ Nicene theology; Robert C. Gregg, ‘Introduction’ to Athanasius: The Life of Antony and the Letter to Marcellinus 1-26 esp. 2-17, emphasising the spirituality of the Athanasian Antony, his rapports with Nicene orthodoxy and the enduring legacy of the vita. See Krawiec, ‘Asceticism’ 772, for St Athanasius’ interest in articulating a “coherent ascetic ideology.” For the status quaestionis in Antonian scholarship, see J. William Harmless, SJ, ‘Monasticism’ in ed. S. A. Harvey and D. G. Hunter, The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Studies (Oxford University Press, 2008) 493-517 esp. 498501. 211


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Albeit the term ‘philosopher’ occurs only twice in the biography of the saintly hermit,139 both times associated with paganism, the journey of St Antony follows the pattern of a classic philosophical hagiography.140 To begin with, Abba Antony learnt from other ascetics the ways of the virtuous life,141 and then, through a sustained practice of prayer and asceticism,142 progressed to the point that he was able to keep his mind “unshaken and calm,” undisturbed in its prayerful focus upon God (cf. προσευχόμενος τῷ θεῷ).143 many disciples in the ways of the desert.144 When the saint emerged from his fortress after twenty years of seclusion, he appeared to the witnesses as an accomplished philosopher or rather like one that bears the marks of full initiation, whose depiction required the suggestive means of the mysteric vocabulary.145 These features of the philosophical quest for holiness have become commonplace in later monastic literature, beginning with St Gregory of Nyssa’s portrayal of St Macrina as philosopher.146 Of relevance is that the portrait of Adam in Gent. 2 proposes very similar traits, such as the forefather’s purity (καθαρότης) and his “becoming free of things sensible and all bodily representation,” together with his capacity to join his mind 139

Ant. 72.2, 80.5 (Bartelink 320, 338).

140

Cf. Harmless, ‘Monasticism’ 498-99; Rapp, ‘The origins of hagiography’ 119-20; Urbano, ‘“Read It Also to the Gentiles”’ 894-902.

141

Ant. 3.3-4.12-20 (Bartelink 136).

142

Ant. 3.1.6-8,5.20-24, 51.1.1-2 (Bartelink 136, 272).

143

Ant. 51.4.13-14, 51.5.18-20 (Bartelink 274). Cf. Harmless, Desert Christians 90-93; Douglas Burton-Christie, The World in the Desert: Scripture and the Quest for Holiness in Early Christian Monasticism (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993) 214-15.

144

Ant. 14.5-7.19-33 (Bartelink 174).

145

Cf. μεμυσταγωγημένος καὶ θεοφορούμενος, “being mystically initiated and divinelyinhabited.” Ant. 14.2.6-7 (Bartelink 172).

146

Cf. Urbano, ‘“Read It Also to the Gentiles”’ 894. See also Stavroula Constantinou, ‘Male Constructions of Female Identities: Authority and Power in the Byzantine Greek Lives of Monastic Foundresses’ in ed. Lioba Theis, Margaret Mullett and Michael Grünbart et al., Female Founders in Byzantium and Beyond (Vienna: Böhlau, 2013) 43-62 esp. 43-44, 46, 48, and Morwenna Ludlow, ‘Macrina – in Life and in Letters’ in Gregory of Nyssa, Ancient and (Post)modern (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007) 202-19.

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with “things in heaven, divine and intelligible.”147 In all likelihood, the ascetic and prayerful Antony is the paradigm that inspired the account on the ‘philosophical’ Adam called to converse with God.148 Interestingly, in referring to the same event of St Antony’s exit from the fortress the Syriac version of the vita depicts the hermit as possessed of a countenance like that of an angel of light.149 In this regard, the Syriac rendition is even rapport between the glorious portrayal of St Antony and that of Adam in Gent. 2. It follows that Adam’s experience was construed – one way or the other – in the light of the desert life. But let us consider more closely the implication of St Athanasius that the paradisal experience, far from unique, was reiterated in the lives of the desert saints. Meijering already proposed that the last sentence of Gent. 2 represents a “general statement” that applies to any human being that lives in the image of God, not only Adam.150 More precisely, in his words, “Adam’s life and fall in Paradise are treated as both historical and timeless events: the Christian who realizes that his soul has been created in God’s image can live in the same way as Adam before the fall...”151 Thus, and to frame this idea within the passage under consideration, all human beings who reach the purity of the heart – anytime and anywhere – can see God as Adam did, even as they make sense of the adamic experience. In making 147

Gent. 2.17,19-21 (Thomson 6). See also Gent. 2.15-27 (Thomson 6), for the broader ‘Antonian’ portrait of Adam.

148

Cf. Gent. 2.14-15 (Thomson 6).

149

Cf. Tim Vivian, ‘Introduction’ to Athanasius of Alexandria, The Life of Antony – The Greek Life of Antony, The Coptic Life of Antony, and An Encomium on Saint Antony , and A Letter to the Disciples of Antony by Serapion of Thmuis, trans. by Tim Vivian and Apostolos N. Athanassakis, with Rowan A. Greer, intro. by T. Vivian, pref. by Benedicta Ward, SLG, and foreword by Rowan Williams, Cistercian Studies 202 (Kalamazoo, Michigan: Cistercian Publications, 2003) xxii-lxvi here xxxix.

150

Meijering, Athanasius: Contra Gentes 20.

151

Meijering, Athanasius: Contra Gentes 19. Rubenson indirectly endorsed this assessment in a recent essay on the formative purpose of Apoph. See Samuel Rubenson, ‘The Formation and Re-formations of the Sayings of the Desert Fathers’ Studia Patristica 55:3 (cited above n.133) 5-22 esp. 19-22. 213


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explicit reference to Meijering’s point,152 Behr rehearsed more recently this very understanding. Nevertheless, he shifted the interpretive scope by developing the idea from the angle of another work by our Alexandrine, On the Incarnation. Thus he asserted that the actual theme of St Athanasius was Christ as an illustration of what the proper human life is and not Adam as a type of the original life.153 Whilst this proposition, which operates along the lines of the standard Adam-Christ typology, is certainly valid when the chapter of interest is considered in the light of On the Incarnation, in its immediate setting the text conveys a different message. We have seen above that the point of reference for the paradisal events, or what was “from the beginning,” is the experience of (desert) saints like Antony, “nowadays,” or in the here and now.154 Of course, the saints are such through the grace of the Lord, and it is very likely that within the economy Christ155 points to both aspects, namely, that the saints reach perfection in Christ and that the same Lord is the source of the paradisal grace. That being said, it is inescapable that from the outset St Athanasius placed the entire discussion about Adam within a hagiographical, not christological, context, and that he perceived the paradisal experience through the lens of the saints of his own day. This approach was shared by the monastic sources of the time. Indeed, apart from the variance in vocabulary, the message of Gent. 2 does not essentially differ from that of the Apoph., which take the exploit instance, the systematic collection of the desert sayings contains the story of a certain Abba Paul who was able to handle asps and scorpions. When asked by some monks how did that grace come to him, he answered, “Forgive me, fathers. If one would acquire purity (καθαρότητα) all things would be submitted to him as they were to Adam in paradise (ὡς τῷ Ἀδὰμ

152

Cf. Behr, True God of True God 174.

153

Cf. ibidem.

154


155


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ὅτε ἧν ἐν τῷ παραδείσῳ) before he disobeyed the commandment.”156 The explanation offered by Abba Paul corresponds to the reference in our text to the “purity of the soul” that leads to the vision of God.157 This is but one example that might have determined the great Alexandrine to read the paradise narrative – post hoc – through the lens of the desert experience. Furthermore, it is very likely due to such references to Adam in the desert tradition, and possibly its older sources, that St Athanasius felt no need saint and as living in fellowship with the saints. He believed his reader to have been fully acquainted with this interpretation. As a matter of fact, the tradition of considering Adam a saint whose life epitomised the experience of holiness was very strong within the monastic milieus of Egypt, some of the desert ascetics, like Abba Pambo, being likened by the alphabetic collection of the Apoph. to both Adam and Moses. ἐδοξάσθη) as much as Moses’ when he [the latter] received the image of Adam’s glory (εἰκόνα τῆς δόξις Ἀδάμ). In the same way the face of Abba Pambo radiated like a lightening (ὡς ἀστραπὴ ἔλαμπε) and he was like an emperor sitting on his throne. Abba Silvanus and Abba Sisoes experienced a similar [divine] working158 (ἐργασίας).159

The passage displays the same ‘light’ imagery pertaining to the glorious portrayal of Adam in St Athanasius, which we already noticed in the articulation of holiness by St Cyril, St Gregory and St Silouan. Golitzin dealt with this very passage within his analysis of a range of apocalyptic

156

Les Apophtegmes des Pères: Collection systématique chapitres XVII-XXI, texte critique, traduction et notes par Jean-Claude Guy, S.J., Sources chrétiennes 498 (Paris: Cerf, 2005) 19.15.7-10 at 150. This story about Abba Paul features identically in the alphabetic collection. Cf. Apoph. Paul 1 (PG 65, 381A).

157


158

Lit. “were of the same working.”

159

Apoph. Pambo 12 (PG 65, 372A). Cf. Pambo 1 (PG 65, 368BC). For relevant passages on the other two ascetics mentioned in the text, see Sisoes 14 (PG 65, 396BC) and Silvanus 12 (PG 65, 412C). See also Joseph of Panephysis 6 and 7 (PG 65, 229CD). 215


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texts in the spiritual tradition of the fourth century,160 of which I retain the reference to the glory of Adam that was retrieved not only in Christ but also by his saints.161 I shall not venture into commenting on the content of the experience articulated by the above passage and its parallels in the Apoph., other than by pointing to the angelic face of St Antony in the Syriac vita, referred to above, as a possible correspondent.162 What matters here is that the adamic portrayal of Abba Pambo complements the interpretation of the paradise narrative in St Athanasius. In establishing the deifying experiences of Adam, Moses, Pambo, Silvanus and Sisoes as identical, the passage in the Apoph. makes plain, as much as Ant., the extent to which St Athanasius drew on the desert tradition to interpret the paradise narrative as signifying the experience of holiness in Gent. 2. To conclude this section, the similarities discussed above in terms of Adam’s appraisal as a saint, together with the grammatical plays of singulars and plurals, allow one to safely infer that in his interpretation of the paradise narrative St Cyril drew from St Athanasius, who borrowed, in although none of the passages discussed within this section deals with the breath of life, instead focusing on the theme of image and likeness. For both St Cyril and his sources, Adam achieved perfection, at least up until some point, like any other saintly philosopher or ascetic of the desert. Furthermore, through the intermediary of St Cyril this fourth century, Athanasian and monastic perception of Adam as a holy man reached the Athonite tradition, thus contributing to the Palamite articulation of the 160

Golitzin, ‘Heavenly Mysteries’ 179-80. See also idem, ‘“The Demons Suggest an Illusion of God’s Glory in a Form”’ 34-35. For a similar occurrence in the Macarian Homilies, see idem, ‘Recovering the “Glory of Adam”: Divine Light Traditions’ 280 and idem, ‘“The Demons Suggest an Illusion of God’s Glory in a Form”’ 38-42.

161

Cf. Golitzin, ‘Heavenly Mysteries’ 179; idem, ‘Recovering the “Glory of Adam”’ 301.

162

A possible indication as to what the angelic face of St Antony could have looked like appears to be given, indirectly, by Abba Sisoes. Cf. Les Apophtegmes des Pères: Collection systématique chapitres X-XVI, texte critique, traduction et notes par Jean-Claude Guy, S.J., Sources chrétiennes 474 (Paris: Cerf, 2003) 15.62 at 326-28.

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adamic experience as typically hesychastic and through the latter, possibly, monk could have taken St Athanasius’ reference to Adam as “brought into being in order to see God and be enlightened by him” (γέγονε μὲν γὰρ εἰς τὸ ὁρᾷν τὸν Θεὸν καὶ ὑπ᾽ αὐτοῦ φωτίζεσθαι),163 as integral to the hesychast or philokalic patrimony. I conclude this section by singling out, once again, adamic experience as having unfolded in the company of the saints – an interpretation which seems to have taken the paradise narrative primarily as a parable of the spiritual life in the desert. Concluding Remarks The patristic texts reviewed above show the existence of an interpretive strand within the ecclesial tradition, according to which, whilst indeed supernatural, the paradisal experience of Adam was by no means unique and exceptional. We have seen that St Athanasius and the Sayings of the Fathers hesychast St Silouan the Athonite, perceived the paradise narrative primarily as reporting on the maximal achievement of humanity in the virtuous perfection and divine participation – an experience available to each and everyone who takes this path. Of course, none of the texts examined above advances the hypothesis that what we read in Genesis is Genesis primarily as a hagiographic piece or a metaphorical account of the hesychast experience, which so rendered stimulates in the readers the yearning for this same experience. True, one of these texts displays the bewildering perspective of Adam as having achieved holiness in the company of other saints and that only by cultivating their fellowship could have the ancestor progressed on the path of godly life. The Athanasian passage in question is the only one that I know of, within mainstream 163

Gent. 7.27-28 (Thomson 18). For a brief synopsis of this feature in Athanasian anthropology, see Στυλιανοῦ Γ. Παπαδοπούλου, Πατρολογία, Τόμος Β᾽ Ὁ Τέταρτος Αἰῶνας, Ἀνατολή καί Δύση (Ἀθήνα: Παρουσία, 1990) 266. 217


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tradition, to address the paradisal experience in this sense. What matters here, however, is that this interpretive strand allows one to read Genesis in particular and the Scriptures in general as constituting a narrative about God’s people and not the origins and the historical trajectory of humankind – a narrative, to echo the argument of Rapp, that aims less at providing the readers with accurate data about the past and more at enticing them to reiterate the same experience. We have discovered, furthermore, that none of the fathers reviewed above felt the need to justify their respective constructs of Adam as a holy person. This tacit consensus of the Alexandrian and the Athonite saints in the contributions of Golitzin, Brakke and Gasparro, to which I referred in this study), even though, as noted from the outset, this tradition never reached prominence within the Church. In fact, one might wonder as to the reasons for which this approach remained, as it does today, marginal within the ecclesial milieus. I propose that this interpretation must have been subject to the disciplina arcani, being prevented from becoming widespread given the possibility of its misreading outside the tradition of the saints. Another way of addressing this matter is by considering both the authors and the targeted readership of the analysed passages. More precisely, these texts have been written within various monastic circles (e.g. the Sayings of the Fathers, St Gregory, St Silouan) or by authors under mainly if not exclusively for such environments. One thing is clear though, namely, all these passages are pervaded by a common thread – that of holiness as the theme of both authors and readers. Holiness, precisely, was the ultimate criterion in the exegesis of the paradise narrative in the Alexandrian and the Athonite traditions, which makes unavoidable the conclusion that whilst unveiling a different portrait of Adam, namely as a holy man instead of a wretched sinner, the analysed texts reveal something fundamental about the character of their authors. Only saintly persons can ultimately read the story of Adam as a report on holiness.

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