Theoria

I've recently stumbled upon what is in my opinion, a well-written wikipedia article, on the topic of theoria (click on the image to go to the article). Here's an excerpt:

Theoria (Greek θεωρία) is Greek for contemplation or perception of beauty as a moral faculty (OED). From within Eastern Orthodox theology it is "the vision of God" and theoria then also takes on a number of meanings that pertain to union with God (theosis), (theo-) and holiness, the quintessential goals of Christianity (see the Philokalia). The love of beauty, transcending the love of wisdom, manifesting in the love of God (theophilos). The vision of God being the culmination of Theophilos through hesychasm. The word has its origin in the Greek language as being akin to the word theory, or speculation as in "Beauty shall Save the World". This expression of the idea comes from a religious gnosiology perspective (rather than say, a scientific or cultural one), that apperception through faith in God (action through faith), leads to truth through our contemplative faculties.^[1] It is used to express the experience of life as "one who watches a play or activity", the state of "being" is defined as spectator. Hence it means to focus ones attention exclusively to one thing and separate that object (by focus) exclusively, Beauty or God being the object of focus. The act of experiencing and or observing is through the nous or "eye of the soul". Matthew 6:22-6:34

Readings

I've finished the following books in the last while:

Early Christian Attitudes toward Images - Steven Bigham

From the Orthodox Research Institute:

For all iconophiles, that is, those who accept the dogma of the Seventh Ecumenical Council, but especially the Orthodox who claim that the icon has a sacramental and mystical character, it is naturally disquieting to hear the claim that the early Christians were aniconic and iconophobic. If this claim is true, the theology and the veneration of the icon are seriously undermined. It is, therefore, natural for iconophiles to attempt to disprove the thesis according to which the early Christians had no images whatsoever (aniconic) because they believed them to be idols (iconophobic). It is equally natural for iconophiles to want to substantiate, as much as this is possible, their deep intuition that the roots of Christian iconography go back to the apostolic age. This study weakens the notion and credibility of the alleged hostility of the early Christians to non-idolatrous images, providing a more balanced evaluation of this question.

I found this book to be informative, both in terms of presenting some of the historical texts involved in the debate, and by delving into some contemporary archeological discoveries which shed new light upon various theories. The next book on icons which I plan on reading is: Images of the Divine: The Theology of Icons at the Seventh Ecumenical Council - A. Giakalis


The Monk of Mount Athos - Archimandrite Sophrony

An excerpt from the book:

What does the Christian understand by sin?
Sin is primarily a metaphysical phenonemon whose roots lie in the mystic depths of man's spiritual nature. The essence of sin consists not in the infringement of ethical standards but in a falling away from the divine eternal life for which man was made and to which, by his very nature, he is called.
Sin is committed first of all in the secret depths of the human spirit but its consequences distort the whole individual. A sin will reflect on a man's psychological and physical condition, on his outward appearance, on his personal destiny. Sin will, inevitably, pass beyond the boundaries of the sinner's own life to burden all humanity and thus affect the fate of the whole world. The sin of our forefather Adam was not the only sin of cosmic significance. Every sin, secret or manifest, committed by each one of us, has a bearing on the rest of the universe.

This was an exceptional book, although a scant 124 pages in length. This book is packed with profound insight into the Orthodox mind as acquired and lived by St. Silouan (click on the photo to read more about him).

Blog Readings

Here's an excerpt from an interesting post by the Ocholophibist at Energetic Procession:

Very much inferred in all this is the notion that to be in the presence and love of the Word is to be free, but to chose corruption means to be instantly bound to the determinisms of death. If we choose death, we choose the patterns and cycles and cosmic consequences of death. Though I am no scholar of St. Athanasius, it seems to me that it is consistent with his line of thought to believe that the cycles of death and corruption that we witness in the universe are brought about because of man’s choosing of corruption. Only we male and female persons are the likeness and image of the Word. We men and women are the mediating microcosms of the cosmos, and the rest of the material cosmos is bound to the determinisms we introduce, or to the freedom we introduce (that being relative freedom, for only God is completely free - our freedom resting in mimetic contingency upon God). In this manner we either bless or we curse the entire cosmos in our own volitional acts to either preserve our likeness through constant contemplation of the Word (a restoration and preservation now made possible through Holy Baptism and the Mysteries) or to choose that which is corruptible.

There are also some worthwhile comments associated with the post.

Readings

Here are a couple of books I've recently completed:

The Beauty of the Infinite - David Bentley Hart

From the book:

One moves in God's infinity only if one moves upon surfaces. To be raised up eternally into glory, to be deified, is to traverse every series of being in such a way as to see God's beauty expressed in each, in endless variety. Sin, violence, cruelty, egoism, and despair are the discords that disrupt the surface, but always as privation, a failure of love; they are no part of being's deep music, but only shrill alarms and barren phrasings, apostasies from music altogether. Evil, for all its ineradicable ubiquity, is always originally an absence, a shadow, a false reply, and all violence falls within the interval of a harmony not taken up, within which the true form of being is forgotten, misconstrued, distorted, and belied. This is not to imagine being as a music without dissonances, but as one without ultimate discords for the soul that turns its motion toward God's all-embracing eternal order of love, seeking to recover the theme of this love and articulate it anew forever.

An interesting book, in spite of my inability to fully penetrate, let alone master, the dense layers of philosophical prose and nomenclature. A variety of reviews can be found online, or purchased from various journals; however, seeing that I'm not entirely satisfied with any of the free ones, I'll defer recommendations.


Unseen Warfare - as edited by Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain and revised by Theophan the Recluse

From the book:

This book, which profits the soul, is justly named 'Unseen Warfare'...For it teaches not the art of visible and sensory warfare, and speaks not about visible, bodily foes but about the unseen and inner struggle, which every Christian undertakes from the moment of his baptism, when he makes a vow to God to fight for Him, to the glory of His divine Name, even unto death. (It is of this warfare that the book of Numbers speaks allegorically: 'Wherefore it is said in the book of the wars of the Lord' [Numbers xxi. 14].) It speaks of invisible and incorporeal foes, which are the varied passions and lusts of the flesh, and of the evil demons who hate men and never cease to fight against us, day and night, as the divine Paul says: 'For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places' (Eph. vi. 12)
This book teaches that the warriors who take part in this unseen war are all who are Christians; and their commander is our Lord Jesus Christ, surrounded and accompanied by His marshals and generals, that is, by all the hierarchies of angels and saints. The arena, the field of battle, the site where the fight actually takes place is our own heart and all our inner man. The time of battle is our whole life.

I enjoyed this book; it was quite practical, and more accessible than the heavier ascetical works within the Philokalia collection of writings and St. John's Ladder.

Icons

I've stumbled across an interesting article on icons. Here's an excerpt:

When the baptised person has entered the seemingly insignificant door of his heart, he finds himself in Paradise, in the open space where Christ walks with his disciples. He is transfigured, and sees things otherwise unseen. As St. Maximus wrote, one pure in heart experiences "a change in his senses and passes from the flesh to the Spirit. The Spirit brings about a transformation of his sensible energies and strips away the veils of passions from the intellectual faculty" ( 10). And again, "In Christ, those who were baptised become light in light, and they know the one who begot them " Then the iconographer paints those whom he has seen with his own spiritual eyes. Then he paints not images of images, but an image taken from the living prototype. Certainly he will receive the physical likeness of the saint from existing icons, but these icons he experiences sacramentally, not as a replacement for the real thing, but as a sacramental bearer of the very person depicted. He meets the saint personally in Christ through the Holy Spirit, just as Peter, James and John met Moses and Elijah on Mount Tabor. The outer likeness he receives from the Spirit through icons, and the "inner" likeness, the personal relationship with the saint, he receives from the same Holy Spirit through purity of heart. In that way the physical likeness which the iconographer receives through icons is not something exterior to his life in the Spirit, because the Spirit who has guarded this likeness through icons is the same Spirit who fills his heart with light.