THE WAY OF A SOLITARY
Love all men, but keep distant from all men.
I/64 (314) = PR 65 (457)
AMONG THE CHARACTERISTIC TRAITS of Saint Isaac the Syrian’s asceticism we shall look at in this chapter, we begin with his understanding of the ascetical life as one lived in solitude, far from the world and the passions. We shall explore his teachings on the renunciation of the world required of a Christian when he enters the ascetic way; on the love of God and neighbor; on stillness as one of the main conditions for achieving peace of the mind. While we will emphasize various aspects of monastic and solitary life, we shall also touch on some of Isaac’s more general ideas concerning christian life, in particular his teaching on the fulfillment of God’s commandments and the struggle against the passions. This survey should allow us to see Isaac’s individuality as an ascetical writer and to appreciate the originality of his approach to some key themes of christian asceticism.
1. SOLITUDE AND RENUNCIATION OF THE WORLD
The hero in Isaac’s writings is the ihidaya, the ‘solitary’ or, literally, ‘single one’. In Isaac’s day, this term (related to Hebrew yahid, ‘single’) was used to designate a solitary monk, as opposed to dayraya, a cenobitic monk. The initial meaning of the term, however, points much more broadly to the unity of a human person within himself and to his unity with God. Thus in the Peshitta, the term ihidaya was used as a title for Adam as created after the image of one God: ‘It was wisdom which preserved the ancestral father, the ihidaya, who had been created in the world’.1 In the New Testament ihidaya is first of all the epithet of Jesus Christ, translating Greek monogenes, ‘the Only-Begotten’. In syriac writings of the fourth century the term was already being used to refer to ascetics, those who are like angels in that they do not marry. A solitary is someone who lives in Christ, ‘the Only-Begotten (ihidaya) from the Father who gives joy to all solitaries (ihidaye)’, as Aphrahat says.2
Solitude is not for Isaac a synonym for celibacy and the eremitical life. It is first and foremost an experience of union with God. Most people find loneliness burdensome, taking it as a fully negative experience of isolation, abandonment, the absence of ‘the other’ with whom they might share the joys and sufferings of earthly existence. For Isaac, on the contrary, loneliness is an experience of the presence of God, who is closer to him than any friend and who always cares for him. ‘… God has never perceptibly shown his action except in a region of stillness, in the desert, and in places bereft of chance encounters with men and of the turbulence of their habitations’.3 If someone lives in the desert, far from people, one should be sure that there is with him a Guardian who will never leave him alone.4 The soul of the person who is separated from the world and leads the life of stillness is lifted up toward God: astonished, it is struck with wonder and remains with God.5
Solitude is the internal experience of living within oneself, of withdrawal into one’s inner person—a necessary action for uniting oneself with God. At the same time, it is the experience of renouncing the ‘other’, even a friend or a relative. It is, finally, an experience of withdrawal from the world and renunciation of it for the purpose of achieving union with God. Solitude can be painful, fraught with inner suffering, but without the experience of solitude one can never come close to the fullness of life in God.
Thus, according to Isaac, renunciation of the world for the sake of a solitary life in God is a necessary condition for entering upon the way to God. ‘Liberation from the material things precedes the bond of God’.6 Again, ‘No one can draw nigh to God save the man who has separated himself from the world. But I call separation not the departure from the body, but departure from the world’s affairs’.7 The ‘world’ in this context is ‘a collective noun which is applied to the so-called passions’.8 To go out of the world and to die to the world means to liberate oneself from passions and ‘the mind of the flesh’,9 that is, from everything bodily and material which puts obstacles in the way of the spiritual life.10 Love of the world is incompatible with love of God; one needs to liberate oneself from the first in order to acquire the second: ‘The soul that loves God finds rest only in God. First detach yourself from all external bonds and then you may strive to bind your heart to God, because unification with God is preceded by detachment from matter’.11
Renunciation of the world is a gradual process which begins with a desire to attain contemplation of God. Renunciation includes the discipline of both the body and the mind. There is a correspondence between the degree of one’s renunciation and one’s ability to enter the contemplation of God:
Blessed is the majesty of the Lord who opens the door before us, so that we may have no other wish save desire for him! For thus do we abandon all things and our mind goes forth in quest of him alone, having no care which might hinder it from the contemplation of the Lord. The more the mind takes leave of care for the visible and is concerned with the hope of future things, my beloved brothers,… the more it is refined and becomes translucent in prayer. And the more the body is freed from the bonds of worldly affairs, the more the mind is also freed from the same. … Therefore the Lord gave us a commandment that before all else a man should hold fast to non-possessiveness and should withdraw from the turmoil of the world and release himself from the cares common to all men. He said: ‘Whosoever forsaketh not his entire human state and all that belongeth to him, and renounceth not himself, cannot be my disciple’.12
This ideal of total renunciation of the world was embodied in practice in early eremitical monasticism. Because they wished avoid the struggle arising from the proximity of worldly things, the ascetics of the past withdrew into the desert:
… As long as a man does not remove himself from what his heart dreads, his enemy always has a point of vantage against him. … Because our ancient Fathers, who walked these paths, knew fully well that our intellect is not at all times in vigorous health, … they with wisdom considered the matter, and clad themselves with non-possessiveness as a weapon. … They have gone out into the desert, where there is nothing which can be an occasion for the passions. .. . I mean they would have no occasion for anger, lust, the remembrance of wrongs, and glory, and that both these and their like would be at a minimum by reason of the desert. For they walled themselves up in the desert as in an impregnable tower. Thus each of them was able to finish his struggle in solitude, where the senses find no help for assisting our adversary through encounter with hurtful things.13
Monks flee from the world, therefore, to avoid occasions of encountering the passions, sins, and sinful thoughts. But apart from this there is in eremitical monasticism a quest for a renunciation of people which in some cases leads a solitary to total rejection of any encounter with them. This flight, too, is undertaken for the sake of union with God: the solitary does not want anyone to distract him from God. Isaac has very strong words about the harm which may be done to a solitary through encounters with people:
O, how evil is the sight of men and intercourse with them for solitaries! … For just as the sudden blast of ice falling on the buds of the fruit-trees nips and destroys them, so too, contacts with men, even though they be quite brief and to all appearances done to a good purpose, wither the bloom of virtue—newly flowering due to the temperate air of stillness—which covers with softness and delicacy the fruit-tree of the soul planted beside the channels of the waters of repentance. And just as the bitterness of the frost, seizing upon new shoots, consumes them, so too does conversation with men seize upon the root of a mind that has begun to sprout the tender blades of the virtues. And if the talk of those who have controlled themselves in one particular thing, but who in another have minor faults, is apt to harm the soul, how much more will the chatter and sight of ignoramuses and fools …?14
Speaking of the necessity of fleeing the world and people, Isaac often cites as examples the ancient ascetics. Arsenius the Great, who was especially dear to him, observed a commandment given to him by God: ‘Arsenius, flee men and be saved’.15 Once, seeing a visitor approaching his desert, Arsenius ran away from him. ‘Wait for me, father’, the monk cried, ‘because I am running after you for God’s sake’. ‘And I for God’s sake am fleeing you’, Arsenius replied.16 On another occasion Arsenius fell down before a monk who came to see him, declaring: ‘I shall not get up until you have departed’. When an archbishop came to ask him for spiritual instruction, he answered: ‘Whenever you hear that Arsenius is found, do not draw nigh to that place’. Being asked by Abba Macarius about his reason for avoiding people, Arsenius replied: ‘God knows that I love you, but I cannot be with both God and men’.
The renunciation of people, Isaac taught, should be radical and absolute. Any bond of relationship, friendship, or love should be severed. The renunciation of relatives is a traditional theme in monastic literature. In developing it, Isaac refers to the example of a saintly monk who never visited his brother, also a monk. When the brother was about to die, he sent word to him, asking to come to bid him farewell.
But the blessed man was not persuaded, not even at that hour when nature is wont to be compassionate to other men and to overstep the limit set by the will. He said: ‘If I go out, my heart will not be pure before God… .’ And his brother died and did not see him.17
This refusal may seem cruel by contemporary standards, but it shows the degree of renunciation required of monks in early monasticism.
To achieve fullness in his life in God, a monk should be able to forget other people, to restrain himself from care about them and from acts of mercy:
If you wish to hold fast to stillness, become like the Cherubim, who take no thought for anything of this life, and fix in your mind that no one else exists on the earth but you and God whom you heed, even as you have been taught by the fathers who lived before you. Unless a monk hardens his heart and forcibly restrains his compassion so as to become distant from solicitude for all other men, either for God’s sake or for some material need, and he perseveres only in prayer during the times which he has appointed without having affection and concern for others enter his heart, he will be unable to attain freedom from turbulence and cares and to live in stillness.18
Though the point here is refraining from acts of mercy during times appointed for prayer, Isaac clearly considered the life of stillness higher than activity on behalf of people. He insisted upon the necessity of renouncing philanthropic activity, at least during certain periods of time.
2. LOVE OF GOD AND LOVE OF ONE’S NEIGHBOUR
How does this radical insistence on the renunciation of people correspond to the commandment to love one’s neighbour? Is this flight from people not a flight from Christ himself, who said: ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself’?19 Does this self-isolation not lead to a loss or an absence of love for people, to selfish indifference towards anyone except oneself?
Isaac would reply in the negative. On the contrary, he says, flight from people paradoxically leads to an increased love of them. The commandment to love God is universal and it embraces the commandment to love one’s neighbour:
The commandment which says, ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind’,20 more than the world, nature, and all that pertains thereto, is fulfilled when you patiently endure in your stillness. And the commandment that speaks of the love of neighbour is included within the former. Do you wish to acquire in your soul the love of your neighbour according to the commandment of the Gospel? Separate yourself from him, and then the heat and flame of love for him will burn in you and you will rejoice at the sight of his countenance as though you beheld an angel of light. And do you wish that those who love you should thirst for you? See their faces on fixed days only. Truly, experience is the teacher of all.21
We should emphasize here, for the sake of readers who find this attitude towards other people shocking, that Isaac was not here giving recommendations which would be universally applicable. His writings are addressed primarily to solitaries, and he is usually talking to a very specific readership. Moreover, he speaks only of his own experience as a solitary by vocation, and of the experience of other solitaries, those around him and those of past ages. At issue is the specifically monastic way of learning to love people by giving up all encounters with them.
Isaac is convinced that the main task of a Christian is the purification of his inner person: this is more important than contact with people or any activity on their behalf. Such activity is especially dangerous when the soul of a monk is not yet purified and the passions are not yet extirpated from it. There were many people, Isaac says, who were known for their deeds of philanthropy, but because they dwelt constantly in the world, with its passions and temptations, they failed to take sufficient care for their own souls:
Many persons have accomplished mighty deeds—raised the dead, toiled for the conversion of the erring, and wrought great wonders; and by their hands they have led many to the knowledge of God. Yet after doing these things, these same people who quickened others fell into vile and abominable passions and killed themselves, becoming a stumbling-block for many once their action was manifest. For they were still sickly in soul, and instead of caring for their soul’s health, they cast themselves into the sea of this world in order to heal the souls of others, but being yet in ill health, in the manner I have stated, they lost their souls and fell away from their hope in God. The infirmity of their senses was not able to confront or resist the flame of things which customarily drive the vehemence of the passions wild.22
Isaac does not reject good deeds. He simply points to the necessity of being spiritually healthy before going into the world to heal others. One can bring more profit to others when one is spiritually strong and has acquired experience of the inner life. External activity is no substitute for inner depth, not even an apostolic activity which is indeed very useful to others:
It is an excellent thing to teach men what is good and by constant care to draw them away from delusion and into the knowledge of life. This is the path of Christ and the apostles, and it is very lofty. But if a man perceives within himself that by such a way of life and continual communion with men his conscience is being weakened by seeing external things, his serenity is being disturbed, and his knowledge is being darkened, … and that while he seeks to heal others he is losing his own health and, departing from the chaste freedom of his will, his intellect is being shaken; then let him … turn back, lest he hear from the Lord the words of the proverb, ‘Physician, heal thyself’;23 let him condemn himself, let him watch over his own good health. Instead of audible words let his excellent manner of life serve as an education, and instead of the sounds of his mouth let his deeds teach others, and when he keeps his soul healthy, let him profit others and heal them by his own good health. For when he is far from men he can benefit them even more by the zeal of his good works than by his words, since he is himself sickly and in greater need than they of healing. For ‘If the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch’.24
The solitary, according to Isaac, must first heal his own soul and only then care for the souls of others. Inner life in God is more important than any philanthropic and missionary activity:
Love the idleness of stillness above providing for the world’s starving and the conversion of a multitude of heathen to the worship of God. It is better for you to free yourself from the shackle of sin than to free slaves from their slavery. It is better for you to make peace with your soul … than by your teaching to bring peace among men at variance. For, as Gregory the Theologian says, ‘It is a good thing to speak concerning the things of God for God’s sake, but it is better for a man to make himself pure for God’.25… It is more profitable for you to attend to raising up unto the activity of intuitions concerning God the deadness of your soul due to the passions than it is resurrecting the dead.26
This does not mean that Isaac disapproved of works of charity in general. He simply emphasized that these works are not the hermits’ primary task: they are more appropriating for laymen.27 Christians in the world should do charitable work; the hermits’ first task is to look after their own inner thoughts and purify their intellect:
For the fulfilling of the duty of love with respect to providing for physical well-being is the work of those in the world, or even of monks, but only those who are imperfect, who do not dwell in stillness, or who combine stillness with brotherly concord and continually come and go. For such men this is good and worthy of admiration. Those, however, who have chosen to withdraw from the world in body and in mind,… should not serve in the husbandry of physical things and visible righteousness. … Rather, by mortification of their members which are upon the earth—after the apostolic utterance28—they should offer God the pure and blameless sacrifice of their thoughts, the first-fruits of their husbandry, and also the affliction of their bodies by their patient endurance of perils for their future hope. For the monastic discipline rivals that of the angels. It is not right for us to abandon this celestial husbandry and to cleave to material things.29
Speaking outside the context of the eremitical life, Isaac emphasizes the necessity of good deeds done for the sake of one’s neighbour. He objects to the words of a certain monk who says that ‘monks are not obliged to give alms’: only that monk, Isaac says, is not obliged to do so who ‘possesses nothing upon the earth, who earns nothing for himself among material things, who in his mind clings to nothing visible, and does not endeavour to acquire anything’.30 Cenobitic monks are not released from the necessity of giving alms and performing acts of philanthropy for their neighbour. As for hermits, they cannot give alms, but they must have mercy, which should be revealed not so much in good deeds as in prayer which takes in the whole world. At the same time deeds cannot be avoided, especially if the situation requires immediate action for the sake of someone who is suffering:
‘Blessed is the merciful man, for he shall obtain mercy’,31 not only in the hereafter, but also here in a mystical way. Indeed, what mercy is greater than this, that when a man is moved with compassion for a fellow man and becomes a partaker in his suffering? Our Lord delivers his soul from the gloom of darkness—which is the noetic gehenna—and brings her into the light of life, thus filling her with delight. … And when it is in your power to deliver the iniquitous man from evil, do not neglect to do so. I do not mean that if the affair is far removed from you, you should go and throw yourself into the work of this sort, for deeds of this kind do not belong to your way of life. If, however, the affair is placed directly into your hands and is within your power,… then take heed to yourself, lest you become a partaker of the blood of the iniquitous man by not taking pains to deliver him. … Instead of an avenger, be a deliverer. Instead of a faultfinder, be a soother. Instead of a betrayer, be a martyr. Instead of a chider, be a defender. Beseech God on behalf of sinners that they receive mercy.32
Even hermits, whose task is not to perform good deeds, should act as deliverers and defenders of people in some situations. In general, they should strive to obtain love of their neighbour as an inner quality, to acquire a universal merciful love towards every human being and every creature. Through being merciful they may heal their own souls, Isaac says, making an important addendum to his own opinion that good deeds should not be performed before one’s soul is healed. While good deeds cannot heal the soul of the person doing them, the inner mercy does heal his soul:
Let the scale of mercy always be preponderant within you, until you perceive in yourself that mercy which God has for the world. Let this our state become a mirror wherein we may see in ourselves that likeness and true image which naturally belong to the Divine Essence. By these things and their like we are enlightened so as to be moved toward God with a limpid intellect. A harsh and merciless heart will never be purified. A merciful man is the physician of his own soul, for as with a violent wind he drives the darkness of passions out of his inner self.33
This universal love about which Isaac speaks cannot be obtained by deeds of philanthropy or, in general, by human effort: it is a gift which we receive directly from God. Isaac’s teaching on how the love of neighbour is acquired can be outlined as follows:
This term is borrowed by Isaac from the Macarian Homilies, John the Solitary and other syrian writers.34 The theme of ‘luminous love’ is developed by Isaac in Chapter X of Part II:
A person who has stillness and converse of knowledge will easily and quickly arrive at the love of God, and with the love of God he will draw close to perfect love of fellow human beings. No one has ever been able to draw close to this luminous love of humanity without having first been held worthy of the wonderful and inebriating love of God.35
The scheme offered by Isaac is therefore different from the one we find in the First Epistle of John: ‘He that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?’36 According to Isaac, one should first love God whom he does not see and by means of this love draw near to the love of his neighbour whom he sees—or in this case whom he also does not see because he has deliberately withdrawn from seeing him. To acquire the love of one’s neighbour by means of good deeds is as impossible as acquiring the love of God by means of the love of neighbour:
To come from the toil and struggle with the thoughts to the luminous love of humanity, and from this to be raised up to the love of God—is a course impossible for someone to complete in this life, right up to the time he departs from the world, however hard he struggles. On the basis of the commandments and by discernment, it is possible for someone to control his thoughts and to purify his sensibility with respect to [others], and he can even perform good towards them. But for him to attain to a luminous love of humanity by means of struggle, I am not persuaded to admit as possible: there is no one who has attained this, and none who will attain it, by this path in life. Without wine no one can get drunk, nor will his heart leap with joy; and without inebriation in God, no one by the natural course of events will obtain the virtue that does not belong to him, nor will it remain in him serenely and without compulsion.37
At issue here is a special and the highest form of love of one’s neighbour, which Isaac calls ‘luminous’ and ‘perfect’ and which is a gift from God. It does not belong to human nature and is therefore not a natural love of human beings, domestic animals, birds, wild animals, and so on, which we encounter in some people;38 it is a supernatural love which is born from ‘inebriation’ in the love of God.39
The ‘luminous love’ of neighbour is that sacrificial love which makes one like God, who loves sinners and righteous equally:
In the case of the person who has been deemed worthy to taste of divine love (ḥubba alahaya),40 that person customarily forgets everything else by reason of its sweetness, for it is something at whose taste all visible things seem despicable: such a person’s soul gladly draws near to a luminous love of humanity, without distinguishing [between sinners and righteous]; he is never overcome by the weakness to be found in people, nor is he perturbed. He is just as the blessed Apostles were as well: people who in the midst of all the bad things they endured from the others were nonetheless utterly incapable of hating them or of being fed up with showing love for them. This was manifested in actual deed, for after all the other things they accepted even death so that these people might be retrieved. These were men who only a little bit earlier had begged Christ that fire might descend from heaven upon the Samaritans just because they had not received them into their village!41 But once they had received the gift and tasted the love of God, they were made perfect in love even for wicked men: enduring all kinds of evils in order to retrieve them, they could not possibly hate them. So you see that perfect love of fellow human beings cannot be found just as a result of keeping the commandments.42
Taking the Gospel’s teaching about the two greatest commandments as his base, therefore, Isaac offers his own interpretation. He sets out his own path for attaining to the love of God and neighbour. But this path is not for the majority of people who live in the world: it is only for those who have chosen solitude as a way of life, who have renounced the world and who draw near to God by means of life in stillness.
Living far from people and remaining internally alone, one can and must show love to others:
Rejoice with the joyous and weep with those who weep;43 for this is the sign of limpid purity. Suffer with those who are ill and mourn with sinners; with those who repent rejoice. Be every man’s friend, but in your mind remain alone. Be a partaker of the sufferings of all men, but keep your body distant from all. Rebuke no one, revile no one, not even men who live very wickedly. Spread your cloak over the man who is falling and cover him. And if you cannot take upon yourself his sins and receive his chastisement in his stead, then at least patiently suffer his shame and do not disgrace him. … Know, brother, that the reason why we must remain within the door of our cell is to be ignorant of the wicked deeds of men, and thus, seeing all as holy and good, we shall attain to purity of mind.44
The luminous love of neighbour is born from the heart that is purified and the mind that dwells in stillness and is totally freed from worldly affairs.
3. STILLNESS AND SILENCE
What is the ‘stillness’ (šelya), of which Isaac so often speaks? It is a deliberate denial of the gift of words for the sake of achieving inner silence, in the midst of which a person can hear the presence of God. It is standing unceasingly, silently, and prayerfully before God. It is withdrawal from every activity of word and thought in order to attain to stillness and peace of mind.
And this is the definition of stillness (d-šelya): silence (šelyuta) to all things. If in stillness you are found full of turbulence, and you disturb your body by the work of your hands and your soul with cares, then judge for yourself what sort of stillness you are practising, being concerned with many things in order to please God! For it is ridiculous for us to speak of achieving stillness if we do not abandon all things and separate ourselves from every care.45
Isaac identifies two types of stillness: outward and inward. Outward stillness consists in keeping the tongue and mouth silent; inward is the silence of the intellect, peace of thought, stillness of heart. Inward stillness is higher than outward, but when inward stillness is lacking, the other is useful: ‘If you cannot be still within your heart, then at least still your tongue’.46 Inward stillness is deepened by outward stillness; and the ascetic should always strive after the second in order to achieve the first:
Love silence above all things, because it brings you close to fruit that the tongue cannot express. Let us force ourselves to be silent and then, from out of this silence is born something that leads to silence itself [i.e. inner silence]. God grant you may perceive some part of that which is born of silence! If you begin with this discipline, I know not how much light will dawn on you from it. Do not infer, O brother, from what is said of that wondrous man Arsenius, that when the fathers would visit him and the brethren come to see him, and he would sit with them and remain silent, and in silence let them go—do not infer, I say, that he did this completely voluntarily, except at the beginning, when he forced himself to it. After a time a certain sweetness is born in the heart out of the practice of this labour, and it leads the body by force to persevere in stillness. … Silence is also a way to stillness. … When Arsenius found that it was often impossible, because of the place of his abode, to be far withdrawn from the proximity of men and from the monks who settled in those parts—then by grace he learned this way of life: unbroken silence. And if out of necessity he ever opened his door to some of them, they were gladdened only by the mere sight of him; but conversation with words, and its employment, were rendered superfluous between them.47
An experience of silence as the absence of words is an experience of participation in the life of the world to come. As Isaac says, ‘silence is a mystery of the age to come, but words are instruments of this world’.48 Outward silence brings inner fruits, whereas failure to guard the tongue leads to spiritual darkening:
If you guard your tongue, my brother, God will give you the gift of compunction of heart so that you may see your soul, and thereby you will enter into spiritual joy. But if your tongue defeats you,… you will never be able to escape from darkness. If you do not have a pure heart, at least have a pure mouth … 49
The nature of inner stillness will be discussed specifically in Chapter VII, where the subject will be ‘stillness of mind’, one of the highest states of spiritual progress. For the moment we confine ourselves to pointing out the various inner fruits of the ‘life of stillness’, that is, the eremitical monastic life. Isaac deals with this question in a letter he sent to an anonymous friend. In it Isaac collects testimonies on the fruits of stillness from the ascetics of his time. These testimonies point to different fruits of the life of stillness; in particular:
The life of stillness and silence leads to the awakening within the person of that ‘hidden man of the heart’ of which Saint Peter speaks.51 This process develops proportionately to the degree of mortification of the outward person, who exists amidst the struggles of this world:
Stillness, as Saint Basil says, is the beginning of the soul’s purification.52 For when the outward members cease from their outward activity and from the distraction caused thereby, then the mind turns away from distractions and wandering thoughts that are outside its realm and abides quietly within itself, and the heart awakens for the searching out of deliberations that are within the soul. And if purity is nothing else save forgetting an unfree mode of life and departing from its habits, how and when will a man purify his soul who, actively of himself or through others, renews in himself the memory of his former habits …? If the heart is defiled every day, when will it be cleansed from defilement? But if he cannot even withstand the action upon him of outward things, how much less will he be able to purify his heart, seeing that he stands in the midst of the camp and every day hears urgent tidings of war …? If, however, he should withdraw from this, little by little he will be able to make the first inner turmoils cease. … Only when a man enters stillness can his soul distinguish the passions and prudently search out her own wisdom. Then the inner man also awakens for spiritual work and day by day he perceives the hidden wisdom which blossoms forth in his soul. … Stillness mortifies the outward senses and resurrects the inward movements, whereas the outward manner of life does the opposite, that is, it resurrects the outward senses and deadens the inward movements.53
Isaac is very consistent in emphasizing the priority of inward over outward activity. At the same time, he makes readers aware that without outward silence of tongue, senses, and thoughts, one cannot achieve inward stillness of mind. So ‘the silence for all’ becomes the first law of the spiritual life. Without this a person is unable, not only to reach the state of perfection, but even to begin on his pathway to God.
4. A MONASTIC WAY TO GOD
Isaac the Syrian regards the christian life as a way whose goal is union with God. Borrowing Saint Paul’s metaphor,54 Isaac uses the image of a runner in the stadium to describe how the human intellect moves towards that spiritual enjoyment of Christ which is the crown of the solitary life.55 Sometimes spiritual life is compared with sailing in the sea.56 But much more often it is described as an ascent by ladder,57 a very traditional image in christian literature.58 According to Isaac, this ascent is endless, as its aim is the unbounded God:
The limit of this journey is so truly unattainable that even the saints are found wanting with respect to the perfection of wisdom, because there is no end to wisdom’s journey. Wisdom ascends even till this: until she unites with God him who follows after her. And this is the sign that the insights of wisdom have no limit: that wisdom is God himself.59
The only way of ascent to God known to Isaac through experience was the monastic and eremitical life. It is therefore not surprising that his ascetical recommendations were addressed primarily to monks, even though many of them are universally applicable. The beginning of life with God is described as making a covenant (qyama) to separate oneself from the world:
For when a man comes unto God, he makes a covenant with God to separate himself from these things. And these are the things I mean: not to look on the face of a woman; not to look on magnificent things or magnificent persons and their luxury, nor on elegant persons and their clothing; not to behold the society of men of the world, nor to hear their words, nor to inquire concerning them.60
The question is not so much of monastic vows as of the inner determination to renounce the world and everything worldly, to withdraw completely from human society.
The ‘covenant’ with God is one of the most prominent themes in syriac proto-monastic literature. It was given a particular development by Aphrahat, who mentions an ascetic group within the Syrian Church, ‘the covenanters’ (bnai qyama), literally ‘sons of the covenant’.61 These lay people’s life was no different from that of other syrian Christians, except for their vows of virginity, poverty, and service to the parish community.62 At a later time the notion of ‘covenant’ was transferred to syrian monasticism, which developed the ascetical aspirations of the ‘covenanters’. In particular, the idea of the separation of the ‘chosen’ from others, which loomed large in the spirituality of the ‘covenanters’, received its full development in the later monastic tradition to which Isaac belonged.
In the latter, monasticism sets itself apart from the rest of humanity; the monks regard themselves as a society of the chosen ones:
By this the sons of God are set apart from the rest of mankind: they live in afflictions, but the world rejoices in luxury and ease. For it is not God’s good pleasure that those whom he loves should live in ease while they are in the flesh. He wills rather that, so long as they are in this life, they abide in affliction, in oppression, in weariness, in poverty, in nakedness, isolation, want, illness, degradation, buffetings, contrition of heart, bodily hardship, renunciation of relatives, and sorrowful thought. He wants them to possess an aspect differing from that of the rest of creation, a habitation unlike that of the rest of men, and to live in a solitary and quiet dwelling, unknown to the sight of men and bereft of every gladdening thing of this life. They mourn, but the world laughs; they are sombre, but the world is joyous; they fast, but the world lives in pleasure. They toil by day, and by night they compel themselves to ascetic struggles in straitness and weariness.63
Even within christian society monasticism plays a very special role. It is a kind of small church within the Church. Thus every monk should be blameless in his life and a good example for people living in the world:
The monk (ihidaya, solitary) ought in his appearance and in all his actions to be a sight of stimulation to those who see him, so that by reason of his many virtues, which shine forth like sun-beams, the enemies of truth, when they look upon him, will involuntarily confess that the hope of salvation which the Christians have is firm and unshakeable, and from every side will run to him as to a refuge … For the boast of the Church is the monastic way of life.64
Monastic way of life is an unseen martyrdom undergone for the sake of receiving the crown of sanctification.65 It is ‘taking up the cross’ and thus incompatible with seeking ease: ‘The path of God is a daily cross. No one has ascended into heaven by means of ease …’66 Taking up the cross means participating in the suffering of Christ: ‘O straggler, taste within yourself Christ’s suffering, that you may be deemed worthy of tasting his glory. For if we suffer with him, then we are glorified with him. The intellect is not glorified with Jesus, if the body does not suffer together with Jesus’.67 The whole earthly life is perceived by the monk as a self-crucifixion:
As long as you have hands, stretch them out to heaven in prayer, before your arms fall from their joints, and though you desire to draw them up, you will not be able. As long as you have fingers, cross yourself in prayer, before death comes to loose the comely strength of their sinews. As long as you have eyes, fill them with tears before that hour when dust will cover your black clothes …68
The way to God is different for each individual monk, but the starting point is the same for everyone: asceticism that includes prayer and fasting.69 Isaac ascribes an important role to fasting and other means of disciplining the body:
Fasting, vigil and wakefulness in God’s service, renouncing the sweetness of sleep by crucifying the body throughout the day and night, are God’s holy pathway and the foundation of every virtue. Fasting is the champion of every virtue, the beginning of the struggle, the crown of the abstinent, the beauty of virginity and sanctity, the resplendence of chastity, the commencement of the path of Christianity, the mother of prayer, the well-spring of sobriety and prudence, the teacher of stillness, and the precursor of all good works. Just as the enjoyment of light is coupled with healthy eyes, so desire for prayer accompanies fasting that is practiced with discernment. … And the Saviour also, when he manifested himself to the world in the Jordan, began at this point. For after his baptism. … he fasted for forty days and forty nights.70 Likewise all who set out to follow in his footsteps make the beginning of their struggle upon this foundation.71
Fasting should accompany spiritual activity. Bodily labour, according to Isaac, precedes the labour of the soul, which, in turn, precedes all spiritual activity:
Works performed with the body precede those performed with the soul. … The man who has not performed bodily works cannot possess the works of the soul, since the latter are born of the former as the ear of corn comes from a naked grain of wheat. And the man who does not possess the works of the soul is bereft of spiritual gifts.72
Mortification of the body is conducive to spiritual renewal of the soul: ‘To the same extent that the body dries up and grows feeble … so the soul is renewed day by day and flourishes through progress towards God …’73 But there is no profit in bodily labours if they are not accompanied by ‘inward ministry of mind’ or if a monk restricts his spiritual life to them. The monk who relies only on external ascetical efforts is like the Pharisees, whom Christ condemned:
The constant limitation of hope which is a feature of merely an outward ministry belongs to the immature and jewish way of thinking of those who boast on their fasts, their tithes, and the length of their prayers, as our Lord says,74 not possessing inwardly any thought of spiritual awareness or right reflection on God to adorn their interior state with an increase of hope.75
In a classical pattern derived from such earlier writers as Evagrius Ponticus and John the Solitary, the monastic way to God is divided into the three stages of spiritual advancement. Following this scheme, Isaac writes:
The stages through which man advances are three: the beginner’s stage, the intermediate, and that of the perfect. In the first stage all a man’s thinking and recollection is held within the passions, even if his mind is directed toward good. The second is a kind of midway point between passion and the spiritual state: both thoughts from the right hand and those from the left move equally within it, and light and darkness never cease from welling forth.
The third stage is characterized by the revelations of divine mysteries, when God opens his door to a monk for his perseverance in labours.76
Accordingly, there are three different types of spiritual labour, each corresponding to a certain stage of spiritual advancement:
The manner and aim of spiritual labour is not the same for the initial stage as for the intermediary one or for the concluding stage. The initial stage involves labouring with a great deal of recitation and simply ‘treading out’ the body by means of laborious fasting. The intermediary culminating point lessens the amount of all this, exchanging persistence in these for persistence in other things, labouring on spiritual reading and especially on kneeling. The culminating point of the third stage lessens persistence along the lines of the previous stage, labouring instead on meditation and on prayer of the heart.77
This does not mean that it is only the beginners who should keep fasting, the intermediate who should read the Scriptures, and the advanced who should pray. The same types of spiritual activity are accomplished by ascetics at all stages throughout their whole life. At the beginner’s stage, however, the accent on bodily labours is characteristic; at the stage of perfection the inner activity of mind is more suitable:
It is not that each of these culminating points completely leaves behind the labours characteristic of the previous stage; rather they make an alteration in the aim and manner in which they are performed … To the middle stage belongs the recitation of the psalms and the labour of fasting; but this is not done without discernment or in an impetuous way, as happens at the initial level. Likewise, even at the perfect culminating point, there is reading and the labour of kneeling and psalmody—but more important than them is persistent meditation on God’s providence (mdabbranuta)78 together with hidden prayer, seeing that there is no longer any need for a great quantity of the former, since after only being occupied with them for a short while, a person is seized by, and remains in wonder.79
In the pages that follow we shall speak about various aspects of the inward activity of the mind, discussing separately different sorts of prayer and such mystical phenomena as ‘wonder’ and contemplation. In the meantime, let us draw some brief conclusions on the way to God Isaac describes. It is a way of ascent from an outward activity of the body to the heights of inward contemplative activity when one is deemed worthy of mystical ‘wonder’ and union with God. To attain this, one must first renounce the world and be alone with God. One must achieve the inward stillness of mind and heart which is born of the outward silence of the mouth and of solitude. The renunciation of the world and life in solitude do not mean a denial of the love of one’s neighbour: on the contrary, by means of this renunciation and withdrawal a person participates in the love of God, which becomes the reason for the awakening within him of the ‘luminous love’ of his fellow human beings. In short, the life of the solitary Isaac describes moves from outward asceticism to inward contemplation of God; from silence of mouth to stillness of intellect; from solitude to union with God; from outward activity for the sake of people to the ‘luminous love of humanity’.
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1. Wisdom of Solomon 10:1. Cf the Palestinian Targum in syriac translation: ‘Behold the first Adam whom I created is single (ihiday) in the world just as I am single in the heights of heaven’; quoted from AbouZayd, Ihidayutha, 269. See also Brock, Luminous Eye, 112.
2. Demonstrations 6,6. For more general discussion of what solitude meant in the syriac tradition see Griffith, ‘Monks’; Idem., ‘Asceticism’.
3. I/72 (355) = PR 72 (531).
4. I/54 (270–271) = PR 53 (386).
5. I/3 (16) = PR 3 (20–21).
6. I/1 (7) = PR 1 (7).
7. I/1 (3–4) = PR 1 (2).
8. I/2 (14) = PR 2 (18).
9. Rom 8:7.
10. I/2 (15) = PR 2 (19).
11. I/4 (29) = PR 4 (40).
12. I/63 (302–303) = PR 63 (437–438). Cf Lk 14:33.
13. I/73 (358–359) = PR 78 (536–538).
14. I/19 (99) = PR 16 (131–132).
15. I/44 (218–219) = PR 41 (309–310). The stories related are taken from Apophthegmata, see Arsenius 37; 7; 13; 1, et al.
16. I/21 (112) = PR 18 (153–154). Cf Palladius, Lausiac History 2.16.
17. I/44 (220) = PR 41 (312).
18. I/21 (112) = PR 18 (153).
19. Mt 22:39.
20. Mt 22:37.
21. I/44 (220) = PR 41 (312–313).
22. I/4 (32) = PR 4 (46).
23. Lk 4:23.
24. I/6 (57) = PR 6 (89). Cf Mt 15:14.
25. Gregory Nazianzen, Oration 31.2. This quotation is absent from the east syrian version.
26. I/4 (32) = PR 4 (45–46).
27. I/54 (270) = PR 53 (385).
28. Cf Col 3:5.
29. I/21 (109) = PR 18 (147–148). This distinction between the ‘solitaries’ and ‘other people’ may remind one of the distinction between ‘the perfect’ and ‘the righteous’ in the Liber Graduum. According to the Liber, the perfect should be like angels, who do not clothe the naked, do not feed the hungry, do not take care of their brothers; see Liber Graduum, col. 751.
30. I/21 (110) = PR 18 (148–149).
31. Cf Mt 5:7.
32. I/64 (313–314) = PR 65 (456–457).
33. I/64 (312) = PR 65 (455).
34. See Brock, Note 1 to II/10, 34.
35. II/10,33–34.
36. 1 Jn 4:20.
37. II/10,35.
38. II/10,35.
39. The theme of ‘inebriation’ is discussed in Chapter VII below.
40. This phrase is especially characteristic of John the Solitary: see Brock, Note 1 to II/10, 36.
41. Cf Lk 9:54.
42. II/10,36.
43. Cf Rom 12:15.
44. I/51 (247) = PR 50 (349–350).
45. I/21 (112) = PR 18 (154).
46. I/51 (247) = PR 50 (350).
47. I/64 (310–311) = PR 65 (450–452).
48. I/65 (321) = PR 66 (470).
49. I/48 (236) = PR 46 (334).
50. I/65 (320–321) = PR 66 (468–470).
51. 1 Pt 3:4.
52. Letter 2 (to Gregory of Nyssa).
53. I/37 (173–175) = PR 35 (243–247).
54. Cf 1 Cor 9:24–25.
55. II/10, 40.
56. I/21 (112) = PR 18 (225).
57. I/2 (11) = PR 2 (12), et al.
58. It is enough to recall The Interpretation of the Beatitudes by Gregory of Nyssa and The Ladder by John Climacus.
59. I/37 (163) = PR 35 (225).
60. I/37 (169) = PR 35 (235).
61. See Griffith, ‘Monks’, 141ff; Nedungatt, ‘Covenanters’, 191ff.
62. AbouZayd, Ihidayutha, 101.
63. I/60 (293–294) = PR 60 (424–425).
64. I/11 (77) = PR 11 (119). This view of monasticism was characteristic in the whole Christian East of seventh and eighth centuries. It was even stronger in Byzantium, where monasticism, because of this view, received the leading role within the Church, especially in the post-iconoclastic epoch. In the Ladder by John Climacus (ch. 26) we find words which correspond to what Isaac says about monks: ‘Angels are a light for monks, and the monastic life is a light for all men. Therefore let monks strive to become a good example in everything’.
65. I/37 (173) = PR 35 (242).
66. I/59 (290) = PR 59 (418).
67. I/36 (161) = PR 34 (222).
68. I/64 (315) = PR 65 (459–460).
69. Cf II/31,1.
70. Cf Mt 4:1–2.
71. I/37 (171–172) = PR 35 (238–240).
72. I/4 (29) = PR 4 (40–41).
73. II/24,3.
74. Cf Mt 6:16; 21:13,23.
75. II/24,5.
76. I/12 (79–80) = PR 12 (121–122).
77. II/22,1–3.
78. The syriac term mdabbranuta is equivalent to the greek oikonomia, which signifies the divine providence and economy concerning humanity. It is also used to refer to the salvific and redemptive activity of the Son of God and his death for salvation of humankind.
79. II/22/4–6.