On the Mystical Life: The Ethical Discourses, Vol. 1: The Church and the Last Things

Publication Data: Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1995
Format: softcover
Number of Pages: 193
Dimensions (l × w × h): 18.4 cm × 12.7 cm × 1.4 cm
ISBN: 0‒88141‒142‒6

   
St Symeon The New Theologian
Translated from the Greek and introduced by Alexander Golitzin

Volume 1 of On the Mystical Life: The Ethical Discourses
Number 14 of Popular Patristics Series

“The Ethical Discourses represent St Symeon’s single most sustained attempt to set out for a wide readership his thought on the two issues that moved him throughout both his public and private life: first, the direct experience of God in Christ as the heart of the Good News which is offered to the believer in this life and, second, its corollary, that there are those, like Symeon the Pious and our Symeon himself, who have experienced this same reality and, with it, all the charismata afforded the Apostles and great saints of the past. The Gospel is never a ‘deposit’ for him, never something to be looked back toward. It is always contemporary, continually renewed in the Holy Spirit, and one may, rather must, live in it now just as fully as the holy ones of old. The latter enjoy no special privilege. The Apostles and saints are not ‘envious.’ Their experience should be ours as well. Both they and we, modern Christians, partake of a single new reality, the Church, which is the body of Christ and presence here-below of the world to come.”
—“The Ethical Discourses: Date, Type and Content”

CONTENTS

The Ethical Discourses: Date, Type and Content
   On the Translation
   Acknowledgements
Prologue
FIRST ETHICAL DISCOURSE
   Introduction
   Adam and the Creation of the World
   On Adam’s Transgression and Exile
   On The Incarnation of the Word
   Creation Made New
   The Ultimate Splendor of Creation
   How the Saints are United to Christ
   How the World Above Must Be Filled
   The Fore-Ordained
   On the Mystical Marriage of God
   The Saints Conceive in Themselves the Word of God
   Called to the Wedding Feasts
   On Searching Out the Mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven
SECOND ETHICAL DISCOURSE
   Introduction
   On the Saying “Those Whom He Foreknew, the Same He Also Predestined”
   All Who Have Been Baptized into Christ are Foreknown and Predestined by God
   Recapitulation of What was Said in the First Discourse
   On the Flood and the Contents of the Ark
   Two Other Worlds
   A Dramatization of the Nations and of Israel
   The Church of Christ is a New World, and Faith in Him a New Paradise
THIRD ETHICAL DISCOURSE
   Introduction
   The Ineffable Words Which Paul Heard
TENTH ETHICAL DISCOURSE
   Introduction
   On the Fearful Day of the Lord and the Future Judgement
FOURTEENTH ETHICAL DISCOURSE
   Introduction
   On the Feasts and Their Celebration
Index of Scriptural References
Index