Alfeyev, Hilarion. The Spiritual World of Isaac the Syrian. Cistercian Studies Series 175. Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications. 2000. 321 pp. Hb, 40.95; pb. 20.95.
Dana R.
Miller
Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute
George A. Kiraz
James E. Walters
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Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute
2002
Vol. 5, No. 1
For this publication, a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
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copyright.
https://hugoye.bethmardutho.org/article/hv5n1prmiller
Dana R. MILLER
Alfeyev, Hilarion. The Spiritual World of Isaac the Syrian. Cistercian Studies Series 175. Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications. 2000. 321 pp. Hb, 40.95; pb. 20.95.
https://hugoye.bethmardutho.org/pdf/vol5/HV5N1PRMiller.pdf
Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies
Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute, 2002
vol 5
issue 1
Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies is an electronic journal dedicated to the study
of the Syriac tradition, published semi-annually (in January and July) by Beth
Mardutho: The Syriac Institute. Published since 1998, Hugoye seeks to offer the
best scholarship available in the field of Syriac studies.
Syriac Studies
Isaac the Syrian
Isaac of Nineveh
Ishaq of Nineveh
Alfeyev
File created by XSLT transformation of original HTML encoded article.
[1] Isaac the Syrian,
or Isaac (Ishaq) of Nineveh, was a remarkable writer in a
remarkable but largely neglected tradition of East Syriac
writers. Many civilizations have experienced lamentably brief
periods of intellectual florescence, golden moments, where
great works of genius were produced: fifth and fourth century
Athens, first century BCE Rome, the Song dynasty in China,
Elizabethan England, to name a few. The reasons why these
moments occurred are very difficult to discover, perhaps
because of the great complexity of historical, sociological,
and cultural factors at work. But mankind is much the richer
for their having occurred. Isaac stands at the head of an
intellectual florescence of the Syriac speaking culture in the
seventh and eighth centuries of what is now Iraq, Iran, Kuwait,
and Qatar. His writings had such irresistible force that within
about one hundred years after his death many of them had
crossed the nearly impenetrable (for Easterners) political and
theological divide between Eastern Christianity and Western
(that is, Byzantine and Roman) in Greek translation. It is a
credit to mankind, I think, that works of genius eventually
gain widespread recognition, even when they are imbued with
cultural expression and concerns that may seem foreign to
many.
[2] The
complete works of Isaac are only now becoming available in
translation, and so we should welcome Alfeyev’s
introduction to Isaac’s thought. Alfeyev’s method
is quite straightforward. He divides what Isaac writes into
various subjects, e.g. prayer, humility, faith and knowledge,
contemplation, and then adduces many passages where Isaac is
allowed to express his views on these subjects. The result is
that the reader obtains a rather good idea of these views and
some taste of Isaac’s forceful style of writing. Perhaps
this is the best method to use for an introduction to such a
writer, but I feel it risks giving the impression that Isaac is
a systematic writer. I think it can be argued that Isaac is a
systematic thinker in the sense that his many views on many
aspects of what is called the “spiritual” life (I
use quotation marks because “spiritual” seems to
have as many meanings as there are users of the term) are
consistent with one another, but he does not treat his subjects
in a systematic fashion. For the most part it is not the
internal logic of the view that determines the course of his
discussion, but the wealth of his personal experience and
psychological insight. So reading Isaac is like venturing into
the mind and life of a rather astonishing person. What one
finds is not a carefully ordered treatment of subjects but a
collection of views invested with the power of experience.
[3] Alfeyev
seems to assume that we, readers living in the twenty-first
century, will be able to make sense of and find interesting
what Isaac writes about what he, as an ascetic of seventh
century Persia, thinks is of greatest possible importance.
Alfeyev seems to think that discussions of prostrations, rivers
of involuntary tears, and awestruck states will attract our
attention and we will not think that we are witnessing a form
of lunacy. I mean to say that his introduction does not attempt
to bridge the enormous gap between how ordinary people now
think and lead their lives and how ancient Christian ascetics
did so. There are, no doubt, deeply religious people nowadays
who will not find Isaac’s thought-world foreign, but such
people are few. What about the rest of us? This complaint is
part of a larger one. Alfeyev’s introduction does not
attempt to stand outside the ascetic tradition in order, for
the reader’s benefit, to provide critical assessment of
Isaac’s writings. Alfeyev tells us what Isaac
says, but not why and not how we should approach this foreign
world. Isaac himself makes no efforts in this direction, but
there is an evident reason for this. His books were meant for
fellow ascetics, for people who devote their every effort to
being physically and mentally disassociated from the world we
know and to being physically and mentally joined to another,
very different world. It is a kind of accident that we can pick
up a copy of Isaac as we idle away hours in a local bookstore.
I doubt very much that Isaac ever foresaw this and I am
uncertain whether or not he would be pleased. But since this is
our present reality, it would seem appropriate for an
introduction to explain things which Isaac had no need to
explain.
[4] So that
my complaint not seem vacuous I shall briefly sketch a possible
interpretative position that could help to form a bridge from
our world to Isaac’s. Take the analogy of a tightrope
walker. Thanks to years of training the tightrope walker is
able, slowly and carefully, to walk on a rope stretched high
above the earth. He regulates every movement, every breath,
guards every thought from distraction and fear. The slightest
wrong motion, which on the ground would have no negative effect
at all, may cause sudden death, while speedy correction of tiny
mistakes brings strong feelings of relief, joy, and hope. So
the tightrope walker, when on his or her rope, lives, one may
say, in a different physical and psychological world than we
do, one subject to different laws. Why must this be the case?
Because human beings do not naturally walk on ropes; to do so
is to push our meager abilities to their absolute limit. The
ascetic closely resembles a tightrope walker: he or she does
what human beings are not naturally suited to do. To accomplish
this requires enormous psychological and physical effort and
considerable training by others. This life at the extreme, as I
think it may be appropriately termed, has its own dangers, its
own laws, its own joys and fears. These are dictated largely by
the kind of life it is (that is, complete concentration on the
exercise of one of the mind’s faculties, its
“spiritual part”) and how human psychology works.
Isaac just assumes he is talking to ascetics (tightrope
walkers), and is telling them, among other things, that if you
see x and y, then prepare yourself for z.
For example, “If you gain the grace of God and are deemed
worthy to revel in the divine vision of God’s judgments
… prepare yourself, yea, arm yourself against the spirit
of blasphemy” (Isaac I.4.33)
The references to Isaac's text in English
translation are based on Alfeyev's scheme of reference, which
has the volume number (the first translated by Dana R. Miller
and the second by Sebastian P. Brock), followed by the chapter
number and the page number. Vol II references have in addition
a paragraph number after the page number.
. This instruction probably
means little or nothing to most of us. We might even think that
if Isaac is right, it shows that his version of the
“spiritual life” is a kind of mental derangement.
But we are not living at this particular extreme, or likely at
any extreme; we do not know what is needed to remain alive and
sane at this extreme. If we would like to know, at least
vicariously, we should read Isaac, ever bearing in mind what he
is and what we are.
[5] In
general, Alfeyev does not try to explain Isaac’s views,
but there are at least three exceptions that I noticed. Isaac
is not a theological writer; he just assumes a particular
christological position, that of the Church of the East, and
works within this framework, making few, if any, christological
statements. But christology, even today, is the source of the
divisions among the Eastern Churches and so Alfeyev tries to
situate and explain Isaac’s christological framework.
This is helpful. But one would have wished for further
discussion. For example, one might inquire whether or not the
theological viewpoint of the Church of the East had any
influence on Isaac’s ascetic views. I myself doubt that
it did—apart from recommending the reading of certain
patristic authors rather than others—, but if that is
right, it seems to me to be a fact that says something
significant about the nature of Isaac’s approach to the
“spiritual” life.
[6] Second,
Alfeyev gives a good treatment of what he calls “life in
God,” that is, Isaac’s various discussions of the
highest “spiritual” states (e.g. contemplation,
wonder), which, for Isaac, constitute the goal and achievement
of ascetic life. Here Alfeyev helpfully mentions the Evagrian
tradition which Isaac continues. In fact, it is clear the
Alfeyev has thought a good deal about this subject and I
suspect the reader would wish to have been made privy to more
of his thoughts on this, because what he says is insightful.
Even so, I would like to question one claim that Alfeyev makes
in the course of his discussion of “stillness of
mind.” Here he asks, reasonably enough, “Is that
complete cessation of intellectual activity which Isaac calls
‘stillness of mind’ a migration beyond the borders
of personal existence, a complete loss of personal
self-awareness? No” (220). On what basis does Alfeyev
answer “no”? He goes on to quote Isaac: “As
soon as the governance and stewardship of the Spirit rule the
intellect... then a man’s nature is deprived of its free
will and is led by another guidance... and is not able to
direct the movements of the mind” (I.23.118; cited
ibid.). That someone is deprived of free will and cannot direct
the movements of his or her mind strongly suggests that there
is a significant loss of personal self-awareness. Perhaps this
loss is not “complete,” but it seems to be a loss
of the most important aspect of personhood, a cognitively
directed will. Alfeyev then claims rather dogmatically that
“on the contrary, in the stillness of mind there is an
intense personal communion between a human person and a
personal God” (221). Isaac never says such a thing, so we
need an argument why this is entailed by what Isaac does say.
No such argument is provided. One might argue, for example,
that the christology of the Church of the East, more than all
other christologies, emphasizes the survival of the human
person when it is united with the Divine, and so if Isaac were
to some degree guided by this christology when writing, it
would be likely that he would deny that the person is lost
while under the influence of the Spirit. But this argument
would only demonstrate a likelihood and I suspect that Isaac is
guided here by personal experience rather than by theological
commitment. So what did Isaac think about this oft-discussed
question? I do not think there is an easy answer. It is not
even clear what Isaac would understand by the term
“person,” thanks, to be begin with, to the subtle
East Syrian distinctions between parsopa and
qnoma.
[7] Finally,
Alfeyev devotes the last chapter of his book to Isaac’s
startling claims about God’s justice (“do not call
God just” [I.51.250]), love, and the abolition of hell.
This is the only properly theological subject Isaac discusses
and here, rather uncharacteristically, he does so in the form
of a protracted argument. Alfeyev, following his method, lets
Isaac speak for himself, but he also goes at some length to
explain Isaac’s position, perhaps partly in an attempt to
make it seem less controversial. His treatment is good, but
because Isaac presents an argument, it seems to me that the
reader should have been presented more explicitly with the form
of the argument, that is, what the premises are, how they are
plausible, and how they entail the conclusion. This is, after
all, a very significant claim. Furthermore, the fact that Isaac
resorts to rational argument is quite interesting. It is rather
clear, I think, that Isaac is not being philosophical, he is
not, as Socrates says, “following the argument”
(Phaedo 107b7). Isaac has become convinced of the truth
of his claim not by argument but by some other means, but
because the claim is controversial, he sets out an argument for
our sake, so that we might be persuaded. And persuaded
we should be.
[8] In
connection to the discussion of hell (gehenna) I have one
further complaint. Alfeyev says, I think incautiously, that
“gehenna is a sort of purgatory rather than hell”
(290). I see no reason for such a suggestion. To say that
gehenna is a kind of purgatory suggests precisely what Isaac
wishes to deny because it assumes that the suffering of the few
that are committed, however briefly, to gehenna makes them
better, cleanses them. As far as I can see Isaac never claims
that punishment is necessary for certain beings, or that
suffering is somehow a good, be it an intermediate good. What
Isaac does claim is that gehenna is a “matter of
mercy” like the Kingdom (II.39.172.22; quoted p.291.) and
that it is part of God’s eternal plan. Why this is the
case Isaac does not claim to know, but intimates only that
perhaps it is a kind of pretext for a further manifestation of
God’s “immense grace that, like an ocean, knows no
measure” (II.40.177.13).
[9] But
putting aside the small complaints just elaborated, I think
that Alfeyev’s book is a good and useful introduction to
Isaac’s thought. We should wish that he will say more in
future._______
Notes