Classic Christian Patristics ☦️

“And being thence admonished to return to myself, I entered even into my inward self, Thou being my Guide: and able I was, for Thou wert become my Helper. And I entered and beheld with the eye of my soul (such as it was), above the same eye of my soul, above my mind, the Light Unchangeable. Not this ordinary light, which all flesh may look upon, nor as it were a greater of the same kind, as though the brightness of this should be manifold brighter, and with its greatness take up all space. Not such was this light, but other, yea, far other from these. Nor was it above my soul, as oil is above water, nor yet as heaven above earth: but above to my soul, because It made me; and I below It, because I was made by It. He that knows the Truth, knows what that Light is; and he that knows It, knows eternity. Love knoweth it. O Truth Who art Eternity! and Love Who art Truth! and Eternity Who art Love! Thou art my God, to Thee do I sigh night and day. Thee when I first knew, Thou liftedst me up, that I might see there was what I might see, and that I was not yet such as to see. And Thou didst beat back the weakness of my sight, streaming forth Thy beams of light upon me most strongly, and I trembled with love and awe: and I perceived myself to be far off from Thee, in the region of unlikeness, as if I heard this Thy voice from on high: “I am the food of grown men, grow, and thou shalt feed upon Me; nor shalt thou convert Me, like the food of thy flesh into thee, but thou shalt be converted into Me.” And I learned, that Thou for iniquity chastenest man, and Thou madest my soul to consume away like a spider. And I said, “Is Truth therefore nothing because it is not diffused through space finite or infinite?” And Thou criedst to me from afar: “Yet verily, I AM that I AM.” And I heard, as the heart heareth, nor had I room to doubt, and I should sooner doubt that I live than that Truth is not, which is clearly seen, being understood by those things which are made. And I beheld the other things below Thee, and I perceived that they neither altogether are, nor altogether are not, for they are, since they are from Thee, but are not, because they are not what Thou art. For that truly is which remains unchangeably. It is good then for me to hold fast unto God; for if I remain not in Him, I cannot in myself; but He remaining in Himself, reneweth all things. And Thou art the Lord my God, since Thou standest not in need of my goodness.”

Saint Augustine of Hippo “The Confessions” Ch. X

“…we are all of us as in a dark house in the middle of the night. If at night and in a dark house, a precious pearl happens to fall in the midst of people, and all become aware of its existence, every one would strive to pick up the pearl, which will not fall to the lot of all but to the lot of one only, while one will get hold of the pearl itself, another one of a piece of glass, a third one a stone or a bit of earth, but every one will be happy and proud that he is the real possessor of the pearl. When, however, night and darkness disappear, and light and day arise, then every one of those people who had believed that they had the pearl, would extend and stretch their hand towards the light, which alone can show what everyone has in hand. The one who possesses the pearl will rejoice and be happy and pleased with it, while those who had in hand pieces of glass and bits of stone only will weep and be sad, and will sigh and shed tears.”
- Bishop Timothy of Seleucia (780-823) “Dialogue with Caliph Al-Mahdi”

“Yesterday the Lamb was slain and the door-posts were anointed, and Egypt bewailed her Firstborn, and the Destroyer passed us over, and the Seal was dreadful and reverend, and we were walled in with the Precious Blood.  To-day we have clean escaped from Egypt and from Pharaoh; and there is none to hinder us from keeping a Feast to the Lord our God—the Feast of our Departure; or from celebrating that Feast, not in the old leaven of malice and wickedness, but in the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth, carrying with us nothing of ungodly and Egyptian leaven.
Yesterday I was crucified with Him; today I am glorified with Him; yesterday I died with Him; to-day I am quickened with Him; yesterday I was buried with Him; to-day I rise with Him.  But let us offer to Him Who suffered and rose again for us—you will think perhaps that I am going to say gold, or silver, or woven work or transparent and costly stones, the mere passing material of earth, that remains here below, and is for the most part always possessed by bad men, slaves of the world and of the Prince of the world.  Let us offerourselves, the possession most precious to God, and most fitting; let us give back to the Image what is made after the Image.  Let us recognize our Dignity; let us honour our Archetype; let us know the power of the Mystery, and for what Christ died.
Let us become like Christ, since Christ became like us.  Let us become God’s for His sake, since He for ours became Man.  He assumed the worse that He might give us the better; He became poor that we through His poverty might be rich; He took upon Him the form of a servant that we might receive back our liberty; He came down that we might be exalted; He was tempted that we might conquer; He was dishonoured that He might glorify us; He died that He might save us; He ascended that He might draw to Himself us, who were lying low in the Fall of sin.  Let us give all, offer all, to Him Who gave Himself a Ransom and a Reconciliation for us.  But one can give nothing like oneself, understanding the Mystery, and becoming for His sake all that He became for ours.”

Saint Gregory Nazianzus; Oration 45:III - VI (First Paschal homily)

"As we are therefore beginning this sacred season, dedicated to the purification of the soul, let us be careful to fulfill the Apostolic command that we cleanse ourselves from all defilement of the flesh and of the spirit (IICor. 7:11), so that restraining the conflict that exists between the one and the other substance, the soul, which in the Providence of God is meant to be the ruler of the body, may regain the dignity of its rightful authority, so that, giving offense to no man, we may not incur the contumely of evil mongers. With just contempt shall we be tormented by those who have no faith, and from our wickedness evil tongues will draw weapons to wound religion, if the way of life of those who fast be not in accord with what is needed in true self-denial. For the sum total of our fasting does not consist in merely abstaining from food. In vain do we deny our body food if we do not withhold our heart from iniquity, and restrain our lips that they speak no evil."

- St. Leo the Great; ‘Lent, the Season of Purification’

“In the following passage the serene soul is compared with a
mirror, one of the metaphorical designations beloved with the
Eastern mystics : Also this I advise thee, o my brother, that
in all thy dicipline the scale of mercy be preponderant ; through this thou wilt perceive God's mercy for the world. Our own state becomes to us a mirror in which we behold the true Prototype in those things which naturally belong to that Essence. By these things and the like we become illuminated so as to be in motion unto God, with a serene mind. A heart wicked from of old, cannot become serene. More frequent than serenity is the term purity, which is also used in connection with the mirror. Isaac tells how Pachomius had asked from God the gift, that he could do without sleep. Then this gift was granted him, as he had asked, for a long time. And because his heart was pure - the sight
of his soul having been purified through vigils and solitude.”

- Saint Isaac of Nineveh; Six Mystical Treatise of Saint Isaac of Nineveh (Book One; 31:4)

“Of the kingly office one kind is divine, -- that which is according to God and His holy Son, by whom both the good things which are of the earth, and external and perfect felicity too, are supplied. "For," it is said, "seek what is great, and the little things shall be added." And there is a second kind of royalty, inferior to that administration which is purely rational and divine, which brings to the task of government merely the high mettle of the soul; after which fashion Hercules ruled the Argives, and Alexander the Macedonians. The third kind is what aims after one thing -- merely to conquer and overturn; but to turn conquest either to a good or a bad purpose, belongs not to such rule. Such was the aim of the Persians in their campaign against Greece. For, on the one hand, fondness for strife is solely the result of passion, and acquires power solely for the sake of domination; while, on the other, the love of good is characteristic of a soul which uses its high spirit for noble ends. The fourth, the worst of all, is the sovereignty which acts according to the promptings of the passions, as that of Sardanapalus, and those who propose to themselves as their end the gratification of the passions to the utmost. But the instrument of regal sway -- the instrument at once of that which overcomes by virtue, and that which does so by force -- is the power of managing (or tact). And it, varies according to the nature and the material. In the case of arms and of fighting animals the ordering power is the soul and mind, by means animate and inanimate; and in the case of the passions of the soul, which we master by virtue, reason is the ordering power, by affixing the seal of continence and self-restraint, along with holiness, and sound knowledge with truth, making the result of the whole to terminate in piety towards God. For it is wisdom which regulates in the case of those who so practise virtue; and divine things are ordered by wisdom, and human affairs by politics -- all things by the kingly faculty. He is a king, then, who governs according to the laws, and possesses the skill to sway willing subjects. Such is the Lord, who receives all who believe on Him and by Him. For the Father has delivered and subjected all to Christ our King," that at the name of Jesus every knee may bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.'
Now, generalship involves three ideas: caution, enterprise, and the union of the two. And each of these consists of three things, acting as they do either by word, or by deeds, or by both together. And all this can be accomplished either by persuasion, or by compulsion, or by inflicting harm in the way of taking vengeance on those who ought to be punished; and this either by doing what is right, or by telling what is untrue, or by telling what is true, or by adopting any of these means conjointly at the same time.”

- Saint Clement of Alexandria; Stromata (book 1, chapter 24)

Q. If the Creator made all the forms which fill out the world in six days (cf Genesis 1:31-2:2), what is the Father doing henceforth? For the Savior says, My Father is working even now, just as I am working (John 5:17). Is he therefore speaking of a preservation of what he had once created?

R. God, as he alone knew how, completed the primary principles (λόγοι) of creatures and the universal essences of beings once for all. Yet he is still at work, not only preserving these creatures in their very
existence (το είναι) but effecting the formation, progress, and sustenance of the individual parts that are potential within them. Even now in His providence He is bringing about the assimilation of particulars that might unite creatures' own voluntary inclination to the more universal natural principle of rational through the movement of these particular creatures towards well-being (το ευ είναι) and make them harmonious and self-moving in relation to one another and to the whole universe. Rather, one and the same principle shall be observable throughout the whole universe, admitting of no differentiation by the individual modes according to which created beings are predicated, and displaying the grace of God effective to deify the universe. It is on said, My Father is working even now, and I am working. The Father the basis of this grace that the divine Logos, when he became man, approves this work, the Son properly carries it out, and the Holy Spirit essentially completes both the Father's approval of it all and the Son's execution of it, in order that the God in Trinity might be through all and in all things (Eph 4:6), contemplated as the whole reality proportionately in each individual creature as it is deemed worthy by grace, and in the universe altogether, just as the soul naturally indwells both the whole of the body and each individual part without diminishing itself.

- Saint Maximos the Confessor; On God’s Preservation and Integration of the Universe

He went up from there to Bethel; and while he was going up on the way, some youths came out of the city and jeered at him, saying, “Go up, you baldhead! Go up, you baldhead!” And he turned around, and when he saw them, he cursed them in the name of the Lord. And two she-bears came out of the woods and tore forty-two of the boys. From there he went on to Mount Carmel, and thence he returned to Samaria.
2 Kings 23-25

Now according to the letter, dearly beloved, we are to believe, as we mentioned above, that blessed Elisha was aroused with God’s zeal to correct the people, rather than moved by unwholesome anger, when he permitted the Jewish children to be torn to pieces. His purpose was not revenge but their amendment, and in this fact, too, the passion of our Lord and Savior was plainly prefigured. Just as those undisciplined children shouted to blessed Elisha, “Go up, you baldhead; go up, you baldhead,” so at the time of the passion the insane Jews with impious words shouted to Christ the true Elisha, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” What does “Go up, you baldhead” mean except: Ascend the cross on the site of Calvary? Notice further, brothers, that just as under Elisha forty-two boys were killed, so forty-two years after the passion of our Lord two bears came, Vespasian and Titus, and besieged Jerusalem. Also consider, brothers, that the siege of Jerusalem took place on the Paschal solemnity. Thus, by the just judgment of God the Jews who had assembled from all the provinces suffered the punishment they deserved, on the very days on which they had hung the true Elisha, our Lord and Savior, on the cross. Indeed, at that time, that is, in the forty-second year after the passion of our Lord, the Jews as if driven by the hand of God assembled in Jerusalem according to their custom to celebrate the Passover. We read in history that three million Jews were then gathered in Jerusalem; eleven hundred thousand of them are read to have been destroyed by the sword of hunger, and one hundred thousand young men were led to Rome in triumph. For two years that city was besieged, and so great was the number of the dead who were cast out of the city that their bodies equaled the height of the walls. This destruction was prefigured by those two bears that are said to have torn to pieces forty-two boys for deriding blessed Elisha. Then was fulfilled what the prophet had said, “The boar from the forest lays it waste, and the beasts of the field feed on it,” for as was indicated, after forty-two years that wicked nation received what it deserved from the two bears, Vespasian and Titus.
Saint Caesarius of Arles “Sermon 127.2”

Come, true light. Come, eternal life. Come, hidden mystery. Come, nameless treasure. come, ineffable reality. Come, incomprehensible face. Come, everlasting exultation. Come, unfading light. come, trusty expectation of all who are going to be saved. Come, awakening of those who sleep. Come, resurrection of the dead. Come, Might One who always creates, who re-creates and who transforms all things by his will alone. Come, invisible and untouchable, and in every way intangible. Come, You Who always remain immutable, and Who at every hour are wholly unaltered, and are coming to us who lie in hell, You Who are above the heavens. Come, most beloved name repeated again and again, a name entirely forbidden for us to speak or to know the very person You are, the kind of quality. Come, eternal joy. Come, imperishable crown. Come, purple of our great God and King. Come, crystalline cincture set with gems. Come, unapproachable sandal. Come, royal purple robe and truly autocratic right hand! Come, You Who separated me from everyone and made me alone on the Earth. Come, You Who have become desire itself in me and Who made me desire You, the utterly unapproachable one. Come, my breath and my life. Come consolation of my dejected soul. Come, my joy, and glory, and endless luxury.
I think You because You have become one spirit with me, unmixing, unmoved, immutable God over all things, and because You yourself have become the all in all for me, utterly inexpressible food, and utterly without expense, food that is endlessly overflowing the lips of my soul , and gushing out in the fountain of my heart, garment flashing forth and burning up the demons, purification through incorruptible and holy tears that wash me out, tears that You give freely to those who You visit. I thank You because You have become an unfading light and an unsetting sun to me, You Who have nowhere to hide, Who fill the universe with your glory. For You have never been midden from anyone, but we always hide ourselves from You, not wishing to come to You. For where would You hide, You Who nowhere have a place of rest? Why would You hide? You Who never turn away anyone at all, and You do not turn from anyone of them. And so now Master, dwell in me and inhabit me, and remain continually, and inseparably in me your slave, until my death, Good One, so that I also may be found both in my departure and after my departure in You, Good One, and I shall reign with You, God over all things!
Remain, Master, and let me not be alone, so that when my enemies come, always seeking to devour my soul, when the find You remaining in me, they shall flee entirely, and shall have no strength against me, when they see you Who are more powerful than everything , seated within the home of my humbled soul. Verily Master, When You remembered me, when I was in the world of my ignorance, and You yourself picked me out, and separated me for the world, and set me before the face of your glory. So now also keep within, always standing upright and immovable in your dwelling with me. So that watching You continually, I the corpse may live; and holding You, I, a poor hired man, will always be rich, even richer than all kings; and eating and drinking You, and every hour being vested wit You, I will be reveling in unspeakable holy things. For You are every good, and every glory, and every enjoyment, and to You glory is fitting, You the Holy, Consubstantial and life-giving Trinity. The Trinity in Father, and Son, and Holy Spirit venerated, and proclaimed, and worshiped and served by all the faithful now, and always forever and ever. Amen.

St. Symeon the New Theologian “The Mystical Prayer.”

As far as I am concerned I have never spoken out against Greeks
or any others. In my view, good men are satisfied to know and to proclaim as well as they can the truth itself as it really is. As soon as anything has been manifested for what it assuredly is by the norm of truth and has been spotlessly established, anything else, anything even with the semblance of truth, will be refuted as alien to and unlike reality, as specious rather than authentic. It is therefore superfluous for someone expounding the truth to enter into dispute with this one or that one, for each says that his own bit of money is the real thing when in fact what he has may be a counterfeit copy of some part of the truth. And if you refute this one, then another one and, again, someone else will eagerly argue about it. Once an argument has been properly established because of its own truth, once it stands firm and unrefuted against the counter-arguments of all others, then everything which is not completely in harmony, with this will be overthrown by the direct unshakable presence of truth. This, I believe, is a sound principle and therefore I have never wished to embark on controversies with Greeks or with any others. It is enough for me first to know about the truth and then to speak appropriately of what I know. And may God grant me this! But you say that the sophist Apollophanes reviles me, that he is calling me a parricide, that he charges me with making unholy use of things Greek to attack the Greeks. It would be more correct to say to him in reply that it is the Greeks who make unholy use of godly things to attack God. They try to banish divine reverence by means of the very wisdom which God has given them. I am not talking here of the beliefs of the hoi polloi who in their materialistic and impassioned way cling to the stories of the poets and who "serve the creature rather than the creator.” No, I am talking of Apollophanes himself who makes unholy use of godly things to attack God. This knowledge of beings, which he rightly calls philosophy and which the divine Paul described as the "wisdom of God”, should have led true philosophers to be uplifted to him who is the Cause not only of all beings but also of the very knowledge which one can have of these beings.

Saint Dionysus the Areopagite “Seventh Epistle (to Polycarp)”

The Cause of things good is One. If the Evil is contrary to the Good, the many causes of the Evil, certainly those productive of things evil, are not principles and powers, but want of power, and want of strength, and a mixing of things dissimilar without proportion. Neither are things evil unmoved, and always in the same condition, but endless and undefined, and borne along in different things, and those endless. The Good will be beginning and end of all, even things evil, for, for the sake of the Good, are all things, both those that are good, and those that are contrary. For we do even these as desiring the Good (for no one does what he does with a view to the Evil), wherefore the Evil has not a subsistence, but a parasitical subsistence, coming into being for the sake of the Good, and not of itself.

- Saint Dionysus the Aeropagite “The Divine Names” (Chapter 4; section 31)

“Do not be surprised at all if both things—the death of the firstborn and the pouring out of the blood— did not happen to the Israelites and on that account reject the contemplation which we have proposed concerning the destruction of evil as if it were a fabrication without any truth. For now in the difference of the names, Israelite and Egyptian, we perceive the difference between virtue and evil. Since the spiritual meaning proposes that we perceive the Israelite as virtuous, we would not reasonably require the firstfruits of virtue's offspring to be destroyed but rather those whose destruction is more advantageous than their cultivation.”

- Saint Gregory of Nyssa “The Life of Moses”

“You are wisdom, uncreated and eternal,
the supreme First Cause, above all being,
sovereign Godhead, sovereign goodness,
watching unseen the God-inspired wisdom of Christian folk
Raise us, we pray, that we may totally respond
to the supreme, unknown, ultimate, and splendid height
of your words, mysterious and inspired.
There all God's secret matters lie covered and hidden
under darkness both profound and brilliant, silent and wise
You make what is ultimate and beyond brightness
secretly to shine in all that is most dark.
In your way, ever unseen and intangible,
You fill to the full with most beautiful splendour
those souls who close their eyes that they may see.
And I, please, with love that goes on beyond mind
to all that is beyond mind,
seek to gain such for myself through this prayer.”

The Prayer of Saint Dionysus

“For God is good—or rather, of all goodness He is Fountainhead, and it is impossible for one who is good to be mean or grudging about anything. Grudging existence to none therefore, He made all things out of nothing through His own Word, our Lord Jesus Christ and of all these His earthly creatures He reserved especial mercy for the race of men. Upon them, therefore, upon men who, as animals, were essentially impermanent, He bestowed a grace which other creatures lacked—namely the impress of His own Image, a share in the reasonable being of the very Word Himself, so that, reflecting Him and themselves becoming reasonable and expressing the Mind of God even as He does, though in limited degree they might continue for ever in the blessed and only true life of the saints in paradise. But since the will of man could turn either way, God secured this grace that He had given by making it conditional from the first upon two things—namely, a law and a place. He set them in His own paradise, and laid upon them a single prohibition. If they guarded the grace and retained the loveliness of their original innocence, then the life of paradise should be theirs, without sorrow, pain or care, and after it the assurance of immortality in heaven. But if they went astray and became vile, throwing away their birthright of beauty, then they would come under the natural law of death and live no longer in paradise, but, dying outside of it, continue in death and in corruption. This is what Holy Scripture tells us, proclaiming the command of God, “Of every tree that is in the garden thou shalt surely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil ye shall not eat, but in the day that ye do eat, ye shall surely die. “Ye shall surely die" - not just die only, but remain in the state of death and of corruption. You may be wondering why we are discussing the origin of men when we set out to talk about the Word's becoming Man. The former subject is relevant to the latter for this reason: it was our sorry case that caused the Word to come down, our transgression that called out His love for us, so that He made haste to help us and to appear among us. It is we who were the cause of His taking human form, and for our salvation that in His great love He was both born and manifested in a human body. For God had made man thus (that is, as an embodied spirit), and had willed that he should remain in incorruption. But men, having turned from the contemplation of God to evil of their own devising, had come inevitably under the law of death. Instead of remaining in the state in which God had created them, they were in process of becoming corrupted entirely, and death had them completely under its dominion. For the transgression of the commandment was making them turn back again according to their nature; and as they had at the beginning come into being out of non-existence, so were they now on the way to returning, through corruption, to non-existence again. The presence and love of the Word had called them into being; inevitably, therefore when they lost the knowledge of God, they lost existence with it; for it is God alone Who exists, evil is non-being, the negation and antithesis of good. By nature, of course, man is mortal, since he was made from nothing; but he bears also the Likeness of Him Who is, and if he preserves that Likeness through constant contemplation, then his nature is deprived of its power and he remains incorrupt. So is it affirmed in Wisdom: "The keeping of His laws is the assurance of incorruption. “And being incorrupt, he would be henceforth as God, as Holy Scripture says, ‘I have said, Ye are gods and sons of the Highest all of you: but ye die as men and fall as one of the princes.’”

Saint Athanasius the Great; “On the Incarnation” (Chapter 2)

“Therefore both He Who was formed in the Virgin’s womb, according to the word of the prophet, is the servant, and not the Lord (that is to say, the man according to the flesh, in whom God was manifested), and also, in the other passage, He Who was created as the beginning of His ways is not God, but the man in whom God was manifested to us for the renewing again of the ruined way of man’s salvation. So that, since we recognize two things in Christ, one Divine, the other human (the Divine by nature, but the human in the Incarnation), we accordingly claim for the Godhead that which is eternal, and that which is created we ascribe to His human nature. For as, according to the prophet, He was formed in the womb as a servant, so also, according to Solomon, He was manifested in the flesh by means of this servile creation. But when they say, “if He was, He was not begotten, and if He was begotten He was not,” let them learn that it is not fitting to ascribe to His Divine nature the attributes which belong to His fleshly origin.”

Saint Gregory of Nyssa “On The Faith” to Simplicius.

“(T)he more that we soar upwards the more our language becomes restricted to the compass of purely intellectual conceptions, even as in the present instance plunging into the Darkness which is above the intellect we shall find ourselves reduced not merely to brevity of speech but even to absolute dumbness both of speech and thought. Now in the former treatises the course of the argument, as it came down from the highest to the lowest
categories, embraced an everwidening number of conceptions which increased at each stage of the descent, but in the present treatise it mounts upwards from below towards the category of transcendence, and in proportion to its ascent it contracts its terminology, and when the whole ascent is passed it will be totally dumb, being at last wholly united with Him Whom words cannot describe. But why is it, you will ask, that after beginning from the highest category when one method was affirmative we begin from the lowest category where it is negative? Because, when
affirming, the existence of that which transcends all affirmation, we were obliged to start from that which is most akin to It, and then to make the affirmation on which the rest depended; but when pursuing the negative method, to reach that which is beyond all negation, we must start by applying our negations to those qualities which differ most
from the ultimate goal.”

- Saint Dionysus the Areopagite; “Mystical Theology” Chapter III.