Light is primary. We might say that it is supra-primary. God made it first, and then He created the periodic table of first things.
"Let there be Light," God said (Gen 1:3). Then on the fourth day,
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God made two great lights: the greater light to rule the day,
and the lesser light to rule the night. (Gen 1:16) |
From the Divine light of the first day proceeded time, space, every element, and the laws of physics. It permeates everything and is present everywhere. It alone has power to endue with that holy stirring we call life:
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In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God ....
All things were made by Him; and without Him was not any thing made that was made. In Him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not .... That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. (Jn 1:1-9) |
Truly, without Him is nothing (Jn 1:2). But with Him nothing shall be impossible (Lu 1:37).
He envelops everything, and He is the essence of everyone. To be alienated from God is to be alienated from yourself. St. John the Theologian describes union with God to go far beyond mere person-to-person embrace:
| You, Father, are in Me, and I in You .... (Jn 17:21) |
And this inter-penetration Jesus characterizes as knowledge:
| The world has not known You, but I have known You .... (Jn 17:25) |
Vladimir Lossky writes that our order of knowledge (epistemê) is limited to the material world. The order of knowledge associated with God (gnôsis) we call revelation (Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1957). The former is acquired through the mastery of facts, which anyone might undertake regardless of one's state of soul. The latter comes through spiritual relationship with God: deep, personal, subjective, and intimate. We do not accomplish it, but God blesses us with it in the purity of our souls.
| "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." (Mt 5:8) |
He blessed us as trusted souls with revelation. The state of the soul is primary as one enters into this relationship.
It is this second kind of knowledge which Jesus describes as union with the Father when He says, "the Father and I are One" (Jn 10:30). And it is this gnosis which describes Jesus' union with His flock:
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"I am the good shepherd; and I know My sheep, and am known by My own.
As the Father knows Me, even so I know the Father ...." (Jn 10:14-15) |
The actual Greek word spoken is γινώσκω / ginóskô which is the verb form of gnôsis.
We might say that epistemê is the knowledge we acquire by the light of the fourth day. It has to do with the world made of molecules, atoms, and subatomic particles.
But no electron microscope .... for that matter, no microscope which shall ever be invented could detect the things of gnôsis, which has no material being. Gnôsis can only be revealed through Uncreated Light, which is the substance of God. The Divine order of knowledge is above and beyond and apart from the material world, which we say is composed of matter. You see, God made the material world external to Himself. It is a self-enclosed box. And it is important to understand the material world as a delimited, self-enclosed space, unable to demonstrate any connection outside of that box to absolute reality.
Let's go to first principles here. If matter can only be defined in terms of mass, and mass can only be defined in terms of matter, then where is the "hard linkage" between this relational closure and what we might call "physical reality"? There is none. Is this not just a word game?
But the order of knowledge expressed as gnôsis is all about connection with ultimate reality. It can only be revealed through relationship with the Father. Since the radiance of the Father is only-pure .... "perfect," Jesus says (Mt 5:48), this order of knowledge can only known by attaining perfection:
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".... that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that
You sent Me. And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: I in them, and You in Me that they may be made perfect in one ...." (Jn 17:21-23) |
Today, we celebrate St. Gregory Palamas, who (inspired by the writings St. Gregory of Nyssa) gave us a vocabulary and Heavenly concepts to apprehend this Divine level of experience. He said that the light seen on the summit of the Mount of Transfiguration, called Tabor Light, was an instance of this Uncreated Light. This light emanates from God and surrounds all those who enjoy intimacy with God. While visible light is associated the Divine energies — God's operations upon the phenomenal world — Uncreated Light is associated with God's ousia, or essence — His Inner Life.
Do you see? God's energies are His operations upon the physical world. His Uncreated Light can only apprehended by our participation in His Inner Life.
On the Mount of Transfiguration, John, James, and Peter lose consciousness in the overwhelming radiance of Uncreated Light. They cannot assimilate it. It washes over them in their state of not-knowing. Their inner state is as yet epistemê. But Moses and Elijah, already participating in God's ousia, are present to the Ultimate Reality and are able to have Divine fellowship with Jesus as Jesus rests securely in the Father's ousia, which He shares by nature. We affirm in the Creed that Jesus is of the same ousia as the Father's.
This sort of theology goes to the heart of what Holy Orthodoxy is. Lossky continues,
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In a certain sense all theology is mystical ....
The eastern tradition has never made a sharp distinction between mysticism
and theology; between personal experience of the divine mysteries and the
dogma affirmed by the Church. The following words spoken a century ago by a
great Orthodox theologian, Philaret of Moscow, expresses this attitude perfectly:
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But if mystical theology characterizes the heart of the East, the theology of the Latin West has found its proper home in the head, in the mind. At the time of the Great Schism, Roman Catholic theology had already taken its decisive turn toward rationalism as anyone who reads, say, St. Bernard of Clairvaux's The Four Degrees of Love has found. I expected to immerse myself in a subtle reflection on love — human love rising to the heights where Divine love takes over — I instead found myself in the midst of a technical demonstration of logic.
With the recovery shortly thereafter of Aristotle's Organon (his six books on logic and dialectic), this captivity of the Roman Church was complete. For the next thousand years, the Latin West was committed to the technology and ever-more-refined sub-technologies of highly rarefied logic. From Scholasticism to Thomism and thence through to the twentieth-century stranglehold of Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange (called "Sacred Monster of Thomism"), Western theology has been dominated by rationalist philosophy.
It is too bad that the liturgical fallout from Vatican II has sent up such a dust storm, for the primary motivation for convoking the Second Vatican Council, claiming such Fathers as John Henry Newman and Henri de Lubac, was intended to stop the tyranny of Scholasticism.
No wonder the Scholastic philosopher Barlaam of Calabria (d. 1348) should have been so annoyed at speculations concerning Uncreated Light of St. Gregory Palamas (d. 1357). Even the phrase irritated him. So he aimed his rationalist weapon of Scholasticism at the humble monk of Mt. Athos supposing he would easily obliterate both him and his Uncreated Light. In the bifurcating technology of dialectic, Barlaam perceived that by proposing two Divine substances, Gregory and the Hesychasts had fallen into polytheism. But Gregory, who was also well-educated in Greek philosophy, did battle with Barlaam at six synods held in Constantinople, ultimately triumphing over him in 1351.
Barlaam, who had claimed communion with the Eastern Church, was anathematized by these synods and promptly departed for the Roman Catholic Church, which appointed him Bishop of Gerace. He was a champion of Roman thought as so they make him a bishop.
Rejecting others, they live in one-person domiciles. Rejecting marriage, they opt for single-parenting. They drive in one-person car pools and go to the movies by themselves, even viewing them in home theaters. You see, they can't stand to hear anybody else's different opinion. And the ideology which holds this world of solitaries together? What is that? It is personal desire .... and a penchant for rejecting all rules that would make society safe from unbridled desire.
Recently, it is reported, one-quarter of all Americans have rejected religion because of its teachings on sexual morality. Their language has become increasingly more aggressive as it seeks to reverse common-sense meaning. They contend that protecting young children from ruinous chemicals and life-altering mutilation through surgery is a form of sexual abuse.
Truly, this is pandemonium. And it has all arisen from twisted thinking and brains overheated from dopamine. Do not forget that in the main homosexuality and transsexuality is about sex. People practicing homosexuality or fantasizing about becoming a different gender are no different than anyone else except that they have permitted a particular desire to rule their lives. Having sex with someone of the same gender does not make you "a homosexual." Homosexual is something you do, not something you are.
What of the people of God? What do their lives look like? They seek the sanctuary of holy marriage for the sacred love they share. They offer self-sacrificing love as the basis for raising families. They have thrown out their televisions and downgraded their telephones. Those who choose to lay down their lives for the Kingdom of God share Apostolic life-in-common. They forgo private property preferring to share their blessings and their burdens. They gather several times a day in prayer. And they aspire to relationship with God. That's the talk around convents and monasteries and hermitages. They seek to know God and to be known by Him. And the first condition of aspiring to this gnôsis is to empty oneself of all personal desire.
One world is ruled by a mind committed to materialism, devoid of morality. The other world is committed to God. This world is thoroughly moral, where democracy has no role to play. That was the lesson of Eden: the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil belongs to God alone. We will not take a vote on what constitutes an immoral act.
In the end, God is all there is. And, of course, at the end of life we must each stand before Him. In a sense, we must each ascend the Mount of Transfiguration. Either we will be filled with Uncreated Light, which is God Himself, or we will be overwhelmed by His radiance and consigned to the lower regions where things make more sense to our benighted minds. That is, each of us is in the position of the Apostles. In being sent into the world, either we will embrace the world and consent to its ways (usually in the name of "empathy" or "compassion" or "not judging anybody"), or we will remain committed to God and God's ways. The Lord has invited each of us into His Uncreated Light. Indeed, He has enjoined all to be His friends .... if we obey His commandments (Jn 15:14). It all comes down to this crossroads. It's a "yes" or a "no." It's an "on" or an "off." There is no middle position. Are we friends of God, or are we not?
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.