On the Mystical Life: The Ethical Discourses, Volume Two: On Virtue and Christian Life

Publication data: Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1996
Format: softcover
Number of pages: 189
Dimensions (l × w × h): 18.4 cm × 12.7 cm × 1.3 cm
ISBN: 978‒0‒88141‒143‒0

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

Volume 2 of On the Mystical Life: The Ethical Discourses
Number 15 of Popular Patristics Series

“The present volume continues and completes the translation of the Ethical Discourses of St. Symeon the New Theologian (949-1022), sometime abbot of the Monastery of St. Mamas in Constantinople, and perhaps the most remarkable and influential mystic to appear in the history of the medieval Byzantine Church. [...]What made him unique in virtually all the literature of the Christian East was the open and emphatic appeal to his own, personal experience. He was the first and, so far as one can tell, the last in the long history of Byzantium to insist on the use of the first person singular—‘I’—in order to affirm the ancient emphasis of the Eastern Church on the aim of the Gospel as ‘deification,’ theosis: ‘God became as we are in order to make us even as He is Himself,’ according to the formula of St. Irenaeus of Lyons at the close of the second century. St. Symeon not only agreed, but added that he had himself experienced this truth, and indeed had seen with his own eyes the light of divinity given him by the grace of the Holy Spirit in Christ.”
—“PREFACE”

CONTENTS

Preface
FOURTH ETHICAL DISCOURSE
   Introduction
   On the Graces and Gifts Disclosed Within
   Dispassion (Apatheia)
FIFTH ETHICAL DISCOURSE
   Introduction
   On Those Who Say That They Possess the Holy Spirit Unconsciously
SIXTH ETHICAL DISCOURSE
   Introduction
   On Dispassion and a Virtuous Life
SEVENTH ETHICAL DISCOURSE
   Introduction
   On the True Servants of God
EIGHTH ETHICAL DISCOURSE
   Introduction
   On the Love of God and Faith
NINTH ETHICAL DISCOURSE
   Introduction
   That True Knowledge Comes From Purity and the Grace From on High
ELEVENTH ETHICAL DISCOURSE
   Introduction
   On the Life-Giving Death of Jesus God Which Occurs in the Perfect
TWELFTH ETHICAL DISCOURSE
   Introduction
   On the Saying of the Apostle: “Redeeming the Time, Because the Days are Evil” [Eph 5:16]
THIRTEENTH ETHICAL DISCOURSE
   Introduction
   On the Saying of the Apostle: “The First Man Was From Earth, of Dust; The Second Man, the Lord, is From Heaven” [I Cor 15:47]
FIFTEENTH ETHICAL DISCOURSE
   Introduction
   On Withdrawal [Hesychia]
Index of Scriptural References
Index