May 26, 2015 - In this paper I shall refer to a person whose life has showed in the most ... at the Metochi Seminary Meeting on 'The Concept of Love', on.
Love for the being from the beyond being: Saint Porphyrios of Kavsokalyvia on Divine Eros 1
Panagiotis Pavlos, Doctoral Research Fellow Department of Philosophy -‐ University of Oslo
There are two ways that grant access to the reality of the Orthodox Christian mode of being, the knowledge about life and its source. The one way expands through studying the infinite amount of primary sources we have been inherited from the Church fathers. Their thinking reveals an unprecedented spiritual richness and intellectual depth. Among the merits of this way belongs the privilege of encountering a way of thinking that expands far beyond the limitations of human reasoning, and the boundaries of the ontological categories. It is in this scope that cataphatic and apophatic discourse have been equally called forth to articulate a word on the origin and the source of divine eros. The other way prerequisites our involvement to the experiential sphere that offers the foundational ground upon which the aforementioned wisdom is flourishing. This way simply implies the participation in the life of Saints, which constitutes a genuine imitation of the life of Christ, and could be recognized as the ecclesiastical way of being. In this paper I shall refer to a person whose life has showed in the most distinct manner that the above two ways are mutually complementary, since they derive from the same source of divine eros. In this respect, it is a privilege to refer to a man who is no longer just a blessed ascetic figure of the Greek monastic life but also, since 2013, a declared Saint of the Orthodox Church. Indeed, Saint Porphyrios is neither a philosopher nor a theologian by profession but, as himself confirms, by παθὼν καὶ μαθὼν τὰ θεία. Thus, I consider himself as the most appropriate person to explicate how the goodness beyond being exceeds remoteness and enters into the spatially and timely being in order to redeem the beings by granting access to the One through Divine Eros. This presentation will substantially take into consideration the teaching of Elder Porphyrios on divine eros, as it has been exposed in the book: ‘Wounded by Love: The Life and the Wisdom of Elder Porphyrios’ 2.
1 This paper was presented at the Metochi Seminary Meeting on ‘The Concept of Love’, on Tuesday, May 26, 2015. The Seminar was organized by the University of Agder in Kristiansand of southern Norway and implemented in the Metochi Study Center of the University of Agder, in May, 23–30, 2015. The Metochi Study Center is located in a wonderful and of rich natural beauty place nearby Kalloni, a village of the island of Lesvos. 2 The title refers to the English publication of the book originally titled: Γέροντος Πορφυρίου
Καυσοκαλυβίτου, Βίος και Λόγοι, published in Greek in 2003, by the Holy Convent of Life-‐giving Spring, in Chania, Creta.
