I'm going to skip rapidly through and I'm going to touch a couple of central texts, which is kind of a shame because it's so rich. Reading Irenaeus is really like rediscovering something that's been lost for a long time, because he was in eclipse for most of the period of formation of our Western theology, the Western Church. I was reading in the altar, he says that since the 4th century he sort of disappeared, and somebody like Erasmus in the 16th century could talk about his resurrection, but he really didn't get brought much into it even then. This is not just something about Irenaeus, which is kind of a general thing, because there are certain dimensions in his thought which had never fully been integrated into our Christian theology, and which are almost always broadening or deepening dimensions. And things narrowed down from him, and they never caught his universality, and never captured

[01:08]

his kind of simplicity and breadth again. So there's really something there to find, and when you read it, it's like you're reading it for the first time. Question from the audience. He has a typical kind of a reactionary one, doesn't he? He's tough. He's saying all these words. It's all a pleasure to be with you. Yes. Because he gets upset when he sees himself in a series of steps and stuff. And what are those human steps? Steps. And he's always looking at the stage. So the idea of looking at the left and right proponents of the left scale of the right sort of things. Which is the way he's looking. Exactly. And cross-brinded and also mershed, because he quotes Irenaeus in his book on the body of Christ. Irenaeus had always gone on in those. Then they complain that he's either thinking in a fuzzy way, because he hasn't got the

[02:12]

clarity that he has to last his life, or he's using his imagination, like he should be using it if he's using it. Exactly. And he's writing. I forget what it was, but he's thinking it is imagination, that's not, it's kind of inferiority, I think so. Let me read you a little bit, something from Olivier Cremant. This is from his book, Sources, which is an anthology of the fathers. In fact, it's an anthology of their mesticism. Now, I'll do this clumsily, but it's worth getting. Pyrenees, above all, has developed a vigorous theology which puts the accent on the reality of the incarnation, and hence on the reality of the flesh. On the unity of the two testaments, Old Testament, New Testament, and the positivity of history, Cremant is very good synthetically. In fact, I think he's the person who's best been able to present this thought in our time. He's got a book called Christ, the Earth of the Living, in French, Francois' book, which is marvelous.

[03:13]

And I have to look at it again to see, does he quote Pyrenees much? I think a lot of his thought comes from that, even if he doesn't say so. See, this business about the Earth goes underground not long after Pyrenees, and it doesn't surface again into general view until the Russians, about 100 years ago or so. And then people like Teilhard and so on that we've been talking about. And then the Vatican, too, it begins to come. We're going to find that the Earth is a central thing in Pyrenees. And when we get into book five on the resurrection, it turns out that what he's doing, he's writing a theology of the Earth, and man as Earth. You remember that in the Bible, Adam, Aramah, means Earth and it means man. And the two alone stick with Pyrenees, even though he's not a Hebrew. Okay, the positivity of the history. The word and the spirit are the two hands of the Father with which he creates, guides, attracts, and completes or perfects humanity. History thus appears as an immense process of incarnation.

[04:18]

Okay, when we talk about the Earth and we talk about the word, and those are the two cardinal points for Pyrenees, and we talk about the positivity of history, we're talking about history as an incarnation of the word in the Earth, which is man. So there's a cosmology right there because it's an incarnation of Christ in the universe, in the world, in creation. By coming into the center of it, which is the human person, which is man. Time is an experiment, an apprenticeship of communion for God wishes to deify man, but without destroying his liberty. Time permits man to habituate himself to receive God. It permits God to habituate himself to dwell in man. And now he's practically quoting an answer, but he doesn't give a reference. Pyrenees does not dramatize the fall. You notice, Pyrenees doesn't make a big, tragic deal out of the fall, out of sin. And here, if you compare Pyrenees, for instance,

[05:21]

with Saint Augustine and with later Western theology, there's an immense difference between the two. It would be interesting to compare Pyrenees with Augustine on a couple of accounts. First of all, the relative importance that they attach to the fall, to sin, versus this notion of growth, the positivity of training of man by God in Irenaeus. Secondly, the conception that they have of history. There's a very positive conception for Irenaeus without that kind of dramatic dualism that I think you find in the Western B2Cs, in the modern study of B2Cs. And thirdly, what is the image of God and what does that make of the human person? Because for the image of God, for Irenaeus in other words, it's the body, and that really amazes us. We're not ready for that, that the body of the human person should be the image of God. And then the likeness is sort of all of the more spiritual development, right up to the being filled with the spirit of God, being transfigured with God. For Augustine, the image is a psychological one.

[06:26]

It's a psychological trinity. I think the images of which he's most content in the end are the psychological trinity, memory, intellect, and will. And Augustine begins us on an introspective path, which we're still on, whereas Irenaeus is the opposite. Now, the two no doubt complement one another. I shouldn't be unfair. But note to what it would do if you lost that first perspective of Irenaeus. The simple physicality and the fact that you don't find God by analysis, you don't find him just by going inside, but actually God picks you up, body and soul, into his spirit, into himself. So it's a theology of assumption, a theology of information. In the sense that he's talking about the body, I don't know if he's seen it. He's recognizing that Christ came as a true man in flesh, but he's also talking about the concept that it's not an isolated individual, the body. It's Christ living in the body, and also

[07:26]

the body of the church, the unity of the church, and then the mystical body. So it's inconceivable. It's possible. Do you agree with that? Oh, very much, yes. It's never an isolated Christ. That for him is inconceivable. In fact, he would be the last theologian, I think, to consider Christ as isolated. Whenever he talks about the body, whenever he talks about Christ, he's talking about all man is one. For all man is one. In fact, he was the first one, after St. Paul, to hit on this notion of the first and second Adam, and the first and second Eve, and the first birth, and the creation of the second birth, and so on, that whole thing. So it's never isolated. OK, man, an infant, still unconscious, has allowed himself easily to be deceived. That is the scent in the garden. There's kind of an infantile experience. It is necessary for him to make the experience of death in order to become conscious of his finitude, his finiteness, and to open himself voluntarily to God, the only one who gives life.

[08:28]

All is a dimension of incarnation. Everything is a dimension of incarnation, as Paul used to say. The Word never ceases to descend towards humanity, into humanity, into history, to model his own body. So he's making his own body out of earth, out of man, out of the cosmos. The alliances become defined. Those of Adam and of Noah, cosmic alliances. That of Abraham and of Moses, historical alliances. So many aspects of the Word. And all recapitulates itself in Christ, the definitive Adam, pan-human, as married as the new Eve. As he said, there's never an isolated person in Christ. And sometimes we consider Christ so much in this person, it's important to have that one-to-one relationship with him. You see where that goes if you lose the cosmic background, if you lose that generality. And it becomes very, very weak in philosophy, it becomes very kind of puny. We become isolated from this other thing.

[09:30]

Both dimensions are essential. The one-to-one personal relationship with Christ. But if you lose that cosmic dimension, we get ourselves into a ghetto, a fallacy. Question from the audience Well, there is. But the direct thing there is between nature and the first creation and Christ and the second creation. The incarnation and the second creation. That's the direct comparison. I think he makes the other comparison in other words. Not true. Because Eve is not connected with the old church. From now on, the Christic head communicates to all its members the power of the vivifying spirit at work in the church which witnesses and intercedes for the salvation of the whole of humanity. Through trials and persecutions there matures, there ripens under the Christic sun. The sun which is the word, the logos.

[10:33]

The harvest of history. And this will be, in the first place, the reign of a thousand years. He's a millenarist. There's always a knock-in for this too. People just regret all this because that thousand year reign of John's apocalypse on earth is in his teaching. It's kind of an accidental point, a secondary point. It shouldn't prejudice the value of this stuff. That reign of a thousand years, we'll get into that later. There's a reason why he puts that in there. Of which the apocalypse speaks. Concrete transfiguration of the earth of which the miracle of Cana constitutes the sign and the abbreviation. So, Clément, as I say, is synthetic too and he's confessed a whole lot. I should type this out for you and give it to you because it's kind of precious. Okay, last time we were treating Book 4, Chapter 20. And let's go on with it. I'll read you very quickly and then we'll go on.

[11:35]

There are three things I'd like to do. First is this theology of vision, theology of light, which is focused in this Chapter 20. In fact, that's the major text that Vlasky uses. Remember? In the Vision of God. I think you have it. There are pages of Vlasky's Vision of God, page 30-37. Secondly, this notion of the education of man, which also comes up in Book 4 towards the end. It's the last couple of chapters. Then, as we move into Book 5, the last book of his work, I'd like to switch over to this focus of theology of earth because that's where it doesn't end. Theology of earth. Yeah. In other words, man is earth and the resurrection of the flesh in man... You see, at one end you've got this creation, which is the molding of the clay of earth to make man. That's poet. That image is always in the mind of everyone.

[12:36]

At the other end, you've got the resurrection of the body in which everything is just filled with this light, which is the glory of the Father, and transfigured in that light. And somehow, through and in the flesh of Christ, the risen, transfigured flesh of Christ, we participate in that light of the Father and we're given life by it to render incorrupt, immortal by it. So, it runs between those two things, and they're both earth on the axis of the earth. And the reason why I want to insist on this is because it's been lost and it's been an important force to recover. Starting out quite a minute, the agnostics who had a kind of balloon or spiritualized theology, he grounds it. But he doesn't have to really stretch it out of shape or ground it because that's the way it is in the Scriptures. Okay. We're on page 480 or something. Let me just review what's already happened

[13:38]

in chapter 10. First of all, the notion of the creation of man by the two hands of God, the Word and the Spirit. And implicit in this, and very present, is the fact that man is earth, that he's clay. And that the image and likeness of God may give more than that, but he's still life. The Word made flesh. In the Incarnation, Christ attains a sovereignty over the kind of fulfilling of everything that's in the earth. Then there's a very strong expression here, which we're going to come back to later. It's on the bottom of 488 in the left-hand column. He's talking about the Incarnation but also the Transfiguration and the Resurrection, which are really one thing. He himself being made the first begotten of the dead, and that all things as I have already said, might behold their King. It's wonderful when he doesn't just say all people, all men, he says

[14:38]

all things. And that the paternal light, see, he sees the Father somehow as being experienced somehow as light. And the final experience of God, the one which gives immortality, is that knowledge of the Father, which he refers to as the paternal light, that the paternal light might meet with and rest upon the flesh of our Lord and come to us from His rich, splendid flesh. So somehow our flesh is vivified by the light of the Father in His flesh, so directly through His Incarnation. And you get the idea here that the vision of God that we're amazed is not simply a subject-object vision of some kind. That's much too crude. It's not some kind of dualistic vision somehow being penetrated by the light which is God and participating also in this consummated Incarnation. Life and light. It's not one or the other. It's life and light. It's both of them, and

[15:39]

it's not the light outside of you. It's inside of you by virtue of the Incarnation. That the paternal light might meet with and rest upon the flesh of our Lord and come to us from His resplendent flesh. Now immediately he comes to mind the image of the Transfiguration. And he does comment on that in this chapter 20. And that thus man might attain to immortality having been invested with the paternal light. Invested with the light. Penetrated. Not only clothed but soaked with the light. Invested. Invested. It's that and it's more interior, more intense too. I haven't got the Greek word for that. You know what they did in the last two books of Irenaeus? They turned the whole thing back into Greek because there isn't any Greek manuscript of it. So they took the Latin and the Armenian. This is one of these marvelous labors of scholarship at one time. And they translated the whole thing back into Greek. From two pretty faithful translations. They could tell because they agreed with one another for the Latin and the Armenian. It was very useful.

[16:39]

Because then you can get a pretty good, make a pretty good guess at the word that he actually used. I don't know. We can find out. Let's see. This is number two, right? Okay. Okay, the French and the Latin, they've got paternalumine. I'll read you the thing. Erut ben carnum domini nostri or cora paterna lux. Now this is, see this is the direct thing is the Latin. Let me work it into the Greek with the help of the Armenian. Surrounded by the light of God. Surrounded by the light of God. Et acarnae eis rutila veniat in nos. Rutila could be radiation or ray I suppose. Doesn't necessarily mean one ray or one beam. Radiation. Yeah, radiation. Et sic homo

[17:42]

veniat in incorruptile incorruptibility. Circumdatis paternalumine. So it means surrounded or enclosed. Yeah, but filled, however with that word circumdatis, filled is only to infer that, but it's not in the word. It means surrounded. And they've got perylepthes in the Greek. And enveloped. Enveloped is good in French. Enveloped is much better. Luckily in the French they can select a good word because they took care of it. What's the root of that word? Usually Pyreneus' language needs to be taken in a full sense. He doesn't use things in a narrow sense. He uses them in a generous sense. And so we're entitled to kind of feel

[18:43]

those depths in. It's deliberate because it is a kind of deliberate. Okay. Next thing we want to touch here. Those three stages of revelation. He talks about God, remember, being unknowable in his greatness and known in his love. Now what does that mean? That's a peculiar phrase and it can mislead us. I think what it means is that you can't grasp God from your side. He reveals himself in his love. And he reveals himself through a loving, that is gratuitous revelation of himself rather than being grabbed by our might, our power, our desire. It comes from him. Then it means a second thing which is that the love itself is the very vehicle or channel or medium of his communication to us in the deepest level. Okay? That is the love enables him to communicate with his interior living somewhere. Remember how St. Paul says the love of God is poured out in our hearts? I think he means that too. It's not that we only know his

[19:47]

love, we don't know his greatness. That's not it. Because we don't know his love any more than we know his greatness in a sense. We don't know either of them fully, comprehensively. Okay, there's this, in number 5, there's this very rich section which we have to give a little attention to. Is that in section 5? Yeah, it's in, it's on page 489 in the left-hand column. You have to use colors on there, the black and white doesn't do, so I've got lots of pink there and a little gold. Let's see what's going on here. For man does not see God by his own powers, but when he pleases he is seen by man by whom he wills, and when he wills and as he wills. And then these phases, prophetically through the Spirit, adoptively through the Son, which means in our time, as we are, as we are adopted, and somehow experiencing the word, and by that experience, knowing the Father. And we're seeing God,

[20:48]

so notice how he uses the word seeing, he carries it back over things that we wouldn't even call seeing. When he says see, you can equate it with know, but then it takes on a very concrete meaning, finally at the end, because he's concrete, he doesn't think in abstract terms. So knowledge for him is in the vision, and it's a light that one sees. Yeah. The biblical language doesn't, it abhors abstraction, whereas Greek thought tends to love abstraction. And so we continually return to the earth and the things of the earth, the things that have been made by God in order to, in some way, become vehicles of our knowing him. Oh yeah, it's pure Scripture. He hardly ever introduces another term that doesn't come out of Scripture. So they have a lot of trouble saying, seeing whether there's anything original at all in our knows. He's transparent in that. He shall also be seen paternally in the kingdom of heaven.

[21:52]

The Spirit truly preparing man in the Son of God, notice, in the Son. I didn't look up the original, but that could be important. Because the idea is that our preparation is the incarnation of the Word, and it's our being born in the Son. It's not just being educated in the Son of God. The Son leading him to the Father, while the Father too confers upon him incorruption for eternal life, which comes to everyone from the fact of his seeing God. So this is the richest number, I think, on this theological vision that there is. Those who see the light are within the light and partake of its brilliancy. Now notice here, it's not just a subject object vision, not something outside yourself. To see the light is to participate in the light. And we saw that already when he's talking about seeing adoptively to the Son. It's a participation in the Son, making Satan feel it. Partake of its brilliancy, so

[22:53]

somehow the light radiates even from them. This is going to come up again later on. Even so, those who see God are in God and receive of his splendor. And the immediacy of the metaphor, the image of life to God is very close to it. He could say one as well as the other. But his splendor vivifies them. The light of God gives life. Now he doesn't quote it right here, but you know, if you had to get that from the Scriptural Gospel, probably you'd think of it. Yes, and yet, that's what we've done. We don't know what we're doing, but we're doing the same thing. And then, so it's not very clear to see. Right. And also, in John's prologue, that in him was light, and the light was the life of man. So the light and the life are somehow one. And those are both, for John, those are both the logos. Those, therefore, who see

[23:57]

God do receive light. These things are very simple, but you can still go one way. So, now this is the explanation of the incarnation. He rendered himself visible that he might vivify those who receive and behold him through faith, even though they don't see him glorified. It is not possible to live apart from life. The means of life is found in fellowship with God. The fellowship with God is to know God and to enjoy his goodness. Men, therefore, shall see God, that they may live, being made immortal by that sight, and attaining even unto God. And then, he goes on at length later on about the prophets, and how they saw God, and how they didn't see God. This quaternity tends to come back again and again. He's got these patterns and sequences of three, and sometimes of four. I'm fond of the ones of four, like this one here. Over in the right-hand column. Thus, therefore, was God revealed, for God the Father is shown through all these operations, the Spirit indeed

[24:59]

working in the Son's ministry, while the Father was approving, and man's salvation being accomplished. Man is the fourth term in this history, this passage. All things learn through his word that there is one God, the Father, who contains all things and grants existence to all. The first time you see that, you think it's an accident. All things. It must mean all men, or all men who know Christ. It means all things. It comes up again in the next page. For this reason did the word become the dispenser of the paternal grace, for the benefit of men, for whom he made such great dispensations, revealing God indeed to men, but presenting man to God. Now, that was a problem for me. Now, why should the word have to present man to God? Because you know what I think it is. He presents man to God himself. See, God knows us in that special way. He knows us paternally, insofar as we are in the word,

[26:01]

insofar as we are in the Son. It's not like the Son has to go and tell him about us. The Lord is presenting redeemed man to God. In himself. In himself. He recapitulates us. Yeah. In God we are broken. We are something in the Father. Yes. Which surprises us, because we don't know what to make of that further process. We're so used to putting Christ right there, having everything here already. Yes. If they feel that Christ somehow is an opaque Christ who doesn't admit man to the mystery but the universality and freedom of that mystery has been the test of Christ.

[27:03]

And very often Christ is evidence for Christians. Yes. Okay, now up at the top of 490, the left hand column. I'm just touching some points because you can't hear me. This famous phrase, which in fact is the best known saying of Irenaeus, the best known text of Irenaeus, for the glory of God is a living man and the life of man consists in beholding God. There's a whole lot in that which will come out as we as we go on. How does he where does he recast that passage? I don't get a real sense that that English got over very well. Well, it's pretty good actually. The Latin is, this is on page number number 7 at the end. I thought I saw

[28:11]

a different translation, but consistently beholding God, I thought I saw something like that. Enjoy the goodness of God. Oh, no, it's quite simple. It's one of those compressed expressions. Here's the Latin. Gloria in em Dei, vivens homo. No, the glory of God is a living man. So man's life is the glory of God. It's marvelous. It's so positive. Vita aeternum, eternominus visio Dei. See, it's reciprocal. The glory of God is the life of man, or a living man, to put it even more intimately. And the life of man is the vision of God or is to be enveloped in that paternal light, as you read before, enveloped in that light of the Father. See, that's where it ends. Now, he's not talking about the flesh there. He's not talking about earth. But for him, that living man is living earth, is living flesh. It's very important that it's in front of him. It's not just the spirit. That's what Heschel says, too.

[29:27]

The reason, at least the corollary of the expression of those images is that you are the image of God. What does that mean about our life? It means that our life, as we live it, is supposed to image, express God, rather than our finding God in some distinct thing. So it leaves you with the freedom and the necessity, as it were, to reproduce God in your own life. Like Jesus said, be perfect as you're having your Father be perfect, okay? Because that's the only image you're going to find. So the image turns out to be not some circumscribed thing that you look at and grab and put in your pocket, but it turns out to be your life as you live it in freedom and creativity. Insofar as you know God through the spirit and know therefore what God wants you to be. That's in the line of Irenaeus' thought. It's in the same line. Okay, now here is the recurrence of that thing that was surprising a few minutes ago. For if the manifestation of God which is made by

[30:29]

means of the creation affords life to all living in the earth, what is it? What lives in the world lives by the manifestation of God. Much more does that revelation of the Father which comes through the Word give life to those who see God. Much more does the Word. So he's saying as if there are these different phases in the manifestation of God and even life on earth before it knows Christ or even before perhaps it's rational or human exists by some kind of manifestation of God. Now Lossky talks about that. Let me read something from Lossky. This is on his page 34. We see here the rough draft of an ontology which Saint Irenaeus does not develop. That is a kind of theory of being and how being exists and how life exists. The existence of created

[31:29]

being depends on a participation in God. We don't think of him as being a philosopher. We don't think of him as being a metaphysician, but he is. It's a kind of concrete metaphysics. He doesn't bring in an escapade of conceptual machinery. He just stays very close to the things themselves. A participation which is affected by a certain kind of vision. Irenaeus continues, for the glory of God is the living man while the life of man is the vision of God. Therefore, if the manifestation of... So, we could go on about that. I just leave it as a kind of puzzle. I think it's important. It's a complex. It's a complex experience of knowing something else. It's a kind of

[32:35]

... It's a kind of ... [...] It's the end of our culture, which we've really not been happy about, exactly what I feel like, and so we feel it's up to you what's happening to you. More than you do, if you want to live up to it. That's part of it. That's part of it, yes. I know there are people who are like that. That's why it's strange to me that we still wear the French, because we wear it at all. I mean, in my day, I'm wearing it because I don't want to stop doing it. I think it seems that in true love, it's never ending, it's ever deepening,

[33:38]

and I think this kind of, what we might talk about in our relationship with God, in true love, it's never ending, it's ever deepening. That's what I was trying to say, from that participation, and the last time, that's when marriages all across the world have fallen apart, because there's nothing deeper that's opening to it. I guess, in this one sentence we're looking at here,

[34:44]

I mean, the distinction between the two manifestations of God in the world, one being Adam and the other being Christ, it seems like. What sentence is that, Larry? The work of manifestation of God, which is made by the music of creation, where it's like... The end of 7. The end of 7, right. It seemed like he was making a distinction there, sort of two levels of God's manifestation around the world, and I was wondering whether, he uses the word logos in the second, but not in the first part of God's manifestation, and I'm wondering whether that's something that's peculiar to Irenaeus, because I think of Saint John as having the logos as being right there at the beginning. Okay, well, so does he. He means a new revelation, a new manifestation of the logos here on the second level, because if you look back at the very first number in that chapter of Irenaeus,

[35:45]

you see that the hand of God is the logos in which all things are created, not only man but all things. So it's very definitely there at the outset. But this is a new level of manifestation of the logos to the rational being, as it were, to the human being who is capable of knowing him through the mind. The logos is always there, and whenever there's any manifestation of God, in fact, he insists that it's the logos that manifest God, that the Father is invisible and he's always known through the Word. How that relates to that paternal life, I don't know exactly. I think it relates insofar as when we know the paternal life directly, we're in the Word, and that's why it's immortality for us, because we're in the Son. I don't know really how to get this together, except here's one hint, is that everything lives by the representation and the manifestation of God insofar as it lives from some reflection of God.

[36:47]

The love that Barbara was speaking about a moment ago intensifies our life. It makes us feel more ourselves. It brings us sort of onto another level of life, because we have beheld the image of God in the eyes of another person. And because we've beheld that image of God, a manifestation of God reflected in the other person, we have experienced it in ourselves. Now, it's true even on a more simple level. Consider the sun, which is in some way the archetypal symbol of God, the cosmological symbol of God, which gives life to everything on earth. Now, I'm not saying that that's the only way in which this is true, but I think it's another kind of analogy which points us in the right direction towards understanding, towards getting towards the analysis of life. And somehow, those things which give us life are the reflections of God. Man is able to obtain that life actually through his mind,

[37:50]

you call it intelligently or intelligently, by reading those, by knowing those in another way. But somehow it's true even on a lower and lower and simpler level that this gift of life itself is a manifestation of God, because if you go down and down to the most simple life, it's like very simple meditation. And life itself, what's life? Life is an imitation of God, isn't it? Life is a manifestation of God, not only a gift of God, but somehow it's something that's trying to be like God, the very movement of life. Now, he talks about three degrees of vision, but we could make them four degrees of vision. He talks about the prophetic vision, the vision of adoption, and the vision of the Father in the age to come, but we've already got this first, call it cosmic, level of vision in all living things. Yes.

[38:56]

Yes, all created things in some way. Their existence in some way itself. See, we're not able with our mind really to get down to those levels, but their existence is some kind of an imitation of God. You know, the scholastics would have a way of saying that too, that their being is a participation of God, and say very simply that that simplicity doesn't carry the concrete force always. In fact, it kind of concocts... Well, St. Thomas Aquinas would say that the existence of all beings is a participation in the existence, the essay of God, and that's an enormously rich and powerful statement, but when we study that fact of life, it doesn't actually... Unless we work with it, then that prevents this amplification. Okay. Where are we? Number eight.

[40:01]

How the prophets saw God, and how they didn't see God. Just to sum this up, he keeps using the expression that the prophets saw God, but they didn't see God clearly and directly, the paternal light, as you would say. What they saw was God in figures, and in similitudes, likenesses. And he goes on and on, showing how that happened. Now, you have to watch Ernest, because you'll think he's just proving a point, and meanwhile, with his very illustrations, he's teaching you something else. The selection of the examples that he gives, and the images that he gives, is very important, and they're the texts that he uses. And so it is here. He starts talking about how the prophets saw God, and they saw God even by what they did. You see, here again we get this thought beginning to permeate things. So they see God in the way that they live their lives. They see God in what they say. They see God in what they do. You see how deep that notion of vision is here. And so far as they're permeated with that light, that's probably not going to come up. Now, he uses the example...

[41:07]

It's always the word, the word that you're dealing by, to them and in them. The word spoke to Moses, appearing before him, just as anyone might speak this time. This is number nine. Moses wanted to see him openly, but God said, Stand in the deep place of the rock, and with my hand I'll cover you. This is at Sinai, remember? And my splendor will pass before you, and you'll see my back parts, but my face you shall not see. Two facts are signified. First, man cannot see God in the earth. Secondly, through the wisdom of God, man shall see him in the last times, in the depth of a rock, that is, in his coming as a man. The depth of a rock. In the earth. We have to keep a hold of that metaphor, because it's going to come up again and again and again. Here it's a rock. Later it'll be a stone. Later it'll be the earth. It follows by the word. The next one that he quotes is Elijah and Caleb. Between the two he talks about the transfiguration. And for this reason,

[42:08]

did he, the Lord, confer with him face to face on the top of a mountain, Elias being also present as the Gospel relates. That's a transfiguration. So this is not just a kind of casual instance that he picked up. It's central in his whole argument. And here we see that very transfiguration and that very theology of vision reaches its people. Now, Lossky takes off from that, because Lossky, in his book The Vision of God, is writing largely about that Byzantine theology of vision, which ends up, concludes with the Hesychast, with Gregory of Alamos. I want to use Lossky a little bit here, because I think it's important to show the importance of it, to excuse the digression. For Saint Irenaeus, the third stage, the vision of the Father, the vision possessed by the Blessed, this is page 35, is expressed in the appearance of Christ transfigured by that light, which is the source of the incorruptible life of the age to come. And somehow we're to live by participating

[43:09]

in that transfiguration, or division. The Word was made flesh so that all exists could see its King, and also so that the light of the Father might fill the body of our Lord and through his body come to us, so that man might arrive at incorruptibility, being clothed in the light of the Father. Let's have a quote of that before, he brings it in here. The theme of Christ's transfiguration reappears constantly in the writings of the Byzantine theologians. It will be the keystone of their doctrines of the vision of God, that is, the light of taking itself from Palamas, related to the prayer of the heart. And Saint Irenaeus, this theme appears for the first time, so far as I know, in a doctrinal context, which connects it with the vision of the age to come. So for him it's a historical thing. Also it is for Palamas. That vision is a prophetic vision of the end. But that gets lost in between. And this is very important, because it's kind of a crossroads here, whether you go the way of history, the kind of scripture, or whether you go the Greek way, a kind of analytical, psychological, dualistic kind of dualism,

[44:12]

which splits the intellect, which knows God from the different hands. And most of the tradition that we're going to be looking at later on follows that track. So it's important for us to make that kind of a landmark here for Palamas, for future reference. Q. Father, I mean, the Pope in Palamas is extremely careful in his advice to retain the doctrine, the doctrine of the sleep, rather than just to maintain the beauty of the sacred life, the sex of the sacred life. A. Yes. That whole distinction... Q. He's very, very careful. In most, actually, A. The whole distinction between the essence and the energy is very careful. He's trying to say that God is unknown and known at this moment, and is known in the light of the transfigured Christ, at some point, which is also experienced in our place. Now, the beautiful thing about Palamas is its sacramentality. That is, it comes back to earth. It comes back to earth in spite of the fact

[45:12]

that this is a very, I think, esoteric discipline, as it has clearly. It comes back to earth because it's in our bodies, through baptism in the Eucharist, that we are one with the transfigured Christ. And therefore, we pursue this light in our hearts. That's what he said. Q. I understand that in the passage earlier, you and I, I know you talked about being interested in the last times when you got up to the rock. That is, in his coming as a human. Is there an equation there between the last times and the coming Q. Last times are the whole time from the time of the incarnation of Christ, isn't it? That's the way that the prophets would speak, and so Irenaeus just picks it up. So, last times is everything from the coming of Christ on, no matter how long it may be. Q. It's interesting from our point of view that two millennia later, we should perceive

[46:13]

perhaps that there is another way in which the wisdom of God is expressing itself out of the rock in a new way, perhaps. That's right. He hardly had time to look back upon that in his time. Q. Thank you very much. Q. The image depth of the rock in the back, that means that it moves in the image depth of the cave, in the cave, to Elijah through the small stone walls he was in in the cave. Now, Irenaeus quotes the same passage about Elijah in the cave, but he doesn't mention the cave. He skims through it and quotes the parts that are pertinent to his argument, the thing about the earthquake and the fire and then the still, the small voice. And he makes the contrast there between all that violence and then the still, the small voice which is a kind of incarnation from the gentle coming of Jesus which is a deal between the gentle actual action of the spirit that's liberfy him from inside rather than smashing on and on and that's what I'm going to say. ... ...

[47:13]

Yes, it's good to stay with the concrete language because then we can follow Irenaeus the way he uses it. There are a lot Now, Irenaeus's notion of the millennium is connected with this whole thing, because he felt that it was appropriate for the just, after their death and resurrection, to live on this earth for a thousand years with Christ, in order to become habituated to the light of God. So that was to be a kind of further training course for them, in learning how to carry that weight of the glory of God into the world, in the vision of Christ, where he lives, as he lives in the Kingdom on this earth. Now, we'll pick that up later when we get into the book part, because it's all connected with his notion of the importance of this earth, you see, and not throwing anything away. Everything is recyclable. So it's not like you leave the earth behind, you destroy it and run somewhere else. I was wondering, given his whole approach to theology, I wonder if, like, he, I don't

[48:25]

really know how to put it, but he talks about the millennium, whether or not he is talking in a literal sense. You have to read it to see. The last, about the last five chapters of Book Five, where he talks about that. Now, the thing is that he's insisting against an allegorical interpretation, so it's pretty different. He wants to interpret it literally. But I don't think he insists on the thousand years, perhaps, but what he does insist on literally is the earth, and this very earth. He says it's important, it's appropriate that the earth on which the martyrs suffered should be the earth on which they later lived with the glory of God, that kind of thing. It's very definite. And he says you must not allegorize this. So, obviously, he's got somebody in mind who's fighting him. But, you know, I think there's still a lot there, there's a lot of truth. And then we've abstracted this. First, we allegorized it in the abstract, so it wasn't on a biblical concrete miscomputed.

[49:27]

Let me try to just make this connection from Losky. Now, this is at the end of his book. The last chapter is called The Palamite Synthesis, okay? And there we see, coming out boldly, the importance of Irenaeus once again. I said that Irenaeus was eclipsed in the West, okay, from the time of... Manuel talks about Gregory the Great looking for a manuscript of Irenaeus to send to somebody. He couldn't find one. He couldn't find a text of Irenaeus. And yet, St. Augustine and others at that time knew it. But he disappeared from the general, the main line of tradition, it seems. It only came up in the 16th century, and only really in our time. He's the most quoted father, at least, in Vatican II, aside from St. Augustine. Irenaeus. Yeah. So he reemerges in the time of Vatican II, and that's not just an accident. Now, in the East, what takes over? The Greek or Platonic theology of contemplation takes over,

[50:32]

and so Irenaeus' sort of holistic approach is lost. His holistic theology is lost. And this is what Lasky is writing about. It's surprising to find an Orthodox writer doing this, because remember, he's from the Russian tradition, and the Russians find the earth once again. And the Greeks tend to let go of it. They go up in an equestrian palace of contemplation. The Russians come back down to the ground again. He's talking about, of course, the theology of Palamas, and he builds a bridge between Irenaeus, and the bridge goes right over all the intervening theology, which is largely the Byzantine theology he's writing about, the beautiful Byzantine theology of origin, and he becomes Byzantine, a human that grows out of it, the origin of ideas, and all of those are the primitive mysteries, and the whole thing. And he comes back down onto Palamas, and much of that intervening tradition, he says, was intellectualist and Platonist,

[51:33]

and split the human being. He split the intellect, which is on the level of God somehow, into no God, and the rest of the human being. That's his thesis, which I can testify to. I'll read you a few of his work. See, the contemplation of Palamas, of the Hesychast, is very concrete. It's the light of Tabor in the flesh, of the Trench of Eucharist. This shows us the true nature of Hesychast contemplation, and also the place through the St. Gregory of Palamas theology, which crowns a long tradition of struggle to surpass the Platonic dualism of the perceptible and intelligible sense and intellect, matter and spirit. Precisely because God transcends created being, because he is in its essence absolutely inaccessible. Not just relatively. It's not like you can only reach God with one of your faculties. But this is very difficult, because when you say this, then you have to come around from another side, and say, well, the intellect can no God. He reveals himself to the intellect.

[52:35]

He also reveals himself to the body, to the senses, and everything. It's not that partition in man that makes a difference. And yet, faith is illegal. Because there is no co-nature between the divine and the intelligible, made up of the angelic and human spirits. God makes himself known to the whole man. Were it not for this, we could speak of a purely sensible, or purely intellectual vision. And then he talks about two schools of mysticism, in the East. One is the intellectualist mysticism, of origin, especially by this, my whole life. And the other is the sense mysticism, like of materialism, and the people that go up in the ceilings. Who else is in that line? Especially in Catholicism. In Catholicism, there's a view that they can't go from one side to the other, that the body is the intellectual problem, and they would have to find the factors. I wonder if they had this deeper sense

[53:38]

like you and me. They may have, and they may not have articulated it. They were simple people, so I couldn't really articulate it. You've taken my thought away from me. This whole battle about originism in the desert, originism between the monks, had a lot to do with that, between the Greeks who tended to have a more sophisticated and sort of, kind of abstract, intellectualized concept, and the simple Catholic monks who conceived man for the day. You're looking at it. Yes. Yes. Since the line of demarcation

[54:49]

passes between the created and the uncreated, and not between the perceptible world and the world of intellects conceived as related to that line, it does it between the created and the uncreated, and so it does have to come from his side, and when he does, he can touch the whole of you, not just your intellect, not just one faculty. So the analytical approach, where you spend all your energy trying to find out how man is put together, you know, and which faculty it is that has God, that's a typically Greek approach. That's not it. Now, notice the kinship between that and the Gnostic approach. The Gnostic idea is that you've got this spark in you, a spark in the man. A Greek theologian might say, well, that's fancy, but then they could have a faculty or something. Well, there's something in it, there's a truth to it, but the truth on the other side, the truth of the totality, knowing God, being touched by God, there's something about that point of the soul, about that spark in the soul. The whole tradition, the whole mystical tradition,

[56:01]

subsequently, does believe in something like that. The trouble is that the other is forgotten, so the body is forgotten. It's Neoplatonism, more likely, but then there's experience there, too. I think a lot of that is in your experience. When you talk about, if you read Eckhart Tolle, about the point within the person, Eckhart Tolle, I think it comes from one's brain. And they find a kind of Neoplatonic tradition within Christianity, to attach it to some dissonant language to express it, but it's really there. That's right. Neoplatonists have a much better vision of

[57:01]

the physical world than they do of their own bodies, and so, as you're saying, it's your own experience that the body is this beginning and end and this beginning and end. But what I'm saying is that perhaps the Judeo-Christian itself possesses the kind of imperative of that. Especially in St. Paul, when St. Paul picks it up and talks about the battle between the spirit and the flesh. A crude understanding of that gets carried over into a dualism between body and spirit. Then you're in trouble. The spark, the divine spark. ... ... ...

[58:09]

... [...] There's a very strong tradition of that in the West. A little more, I'm trying to get back and make this connection with Irenaeus before we quit. Some of Lasky's lavish praise of Irenaeus. So on one side you've got a sense mysticism, on the other side you've got an intellectualist mysticism. A platonic escape, as he says. Maybe a little more harsh than mysticism. The spiritualization of the human being as he is transformed into nous, into intellect, is with origin and evagria. Non he does en. In Alamos, we are very far here from the Alexandrian sprituality. Origin, climate of Alexandra and so on. And evagria. But are still very close to St Irenaeus. The old anthropology gives way to a positive asceticism. Not one of negating or going beyond. If the body must share with the soul

[59:13]

the ineffable blessings of the age to come it is certain that it must participate in them as far as possibly possible. possible from now on. For the body itself also experiences divine things. When the passionate forces of the soul find themselves not put to death but transformed and sacrificed." That's from Kalamassa, but he's connecting that directly to the Ayanas, and there's positivity in Kalamassa. He who participates in divine energy, Kalamassa again says, becomes in some way light in himself. Remember that passage we just read in number 5 of Chapter 21? Becomes in some way light in himself. He is united to the light, and with the light he beholds with all his faculties all that remains hidden to those who do not have his grace. Participation in light, physical. That's very simple to think of yourself as being in light, rather than searching for some way in yourself. For the pure in heart see God, who as light dwells in them and reveals himself to those

[60:16]

who love him, to his well-beloved. The same uncreated light, that's Kalamassa's phrase, communicates itself therefore to the whole man, making him live in communion with the Holy Trinity. It is this communion with God in which the righteous will finally be transfigured by light and will themselves become as resplendent as the sun. We'll find that coming up a little later in the Ayanas, which constitutes the attitude of the age to come. Thus under a new form we discover again the thought of Saint Irenaeus, the progressive vision revelation composed of three stages. Before Christ, after the Incarnation, and after the Provision. And right at the end. After several centuries we find ourselves confronted again by the vision of Christ transfigured through whom the Father communicates in the Holy Spirit the light of his inaccessible nature. A vision of God which we encountered at the outset of our study in the work of Saint Irenaeus, and then which disappeared roughly in all of that intervening time. So we're returning to it again, recapitulating.

[61:21]

In the work of Saint Irenaeus, father of the Christian tradition, disciple of Polycarp and also disciple of Saint John, the one who said no one has ever seen God, the son alone who is in the bosom of the Father, has manifested unto us. That's at the end of Lasky's book, chapter 9, the vision of God. Okay, let's see if we've gotten out of the woods here before we quit. Chapter 20 is one of the richest chapters in the whole of Irenaeus, one of the most concentrated, and in it is the core of his theology of vision of life. The Father is invisible, and then all of these manifestations of the Father through the Word. Now, the choice of his... He goes through these various manifestations and revelations of the Word in the Old Testament, and his choice of examples is very important once

[62:24]

again, because he could have chosen from a hundred, maybe a thousand, but the ones that he picks up are these. That is, Jesus as the Son of God in the furnace with the three boys, remember, in the fiery furnace in Babylon. One of them, the fourth, is like the Son of God, like the Son of God. Then the stone in Daniel, remember, that is broken off from the rock and comes down and knocks down the statue and kills the whole earth and marvels the whole earth. It fits right into this earth notion of Christ and man. Thirdly, the Son of Man in the crowds in Daniel. Fourthly, the Son of Man glorified with his face as the sun in the book of Revelation. The earth and the sun in this transfiguration. Then the Lamb, and then the Lamb was also the rider of the white horse, and his name is the Word of God, once again in the Apocalypse. See, those are carefully selected in line

[63:25]

to present this Word in a certain way, the Word that manifests in the Father. Then also, later on, he talks about the prophets and how they, in their lives and in their actions, saw, as he says, God. They saw God in what they did, they saw God in these figurative things that they did. And he brings in three women here. The wife of Hosea, the wife of Moses, who was an Ethiopian woman, and finally Rahab. A very interesting way he uses these three. Obviously, he's very carefully selected. Once again, he could have chosen a hundred, but he chose those three, who all represent the Church in some way. The Church of sinners or the Church of the Gentiles, in two cases. And he speaks, maybe he's the first one to use this expression, which he does almost impressively. For this reason, by means of the marriage of Moses was shown forth the marriage of the Word, the marriage of the

[64:28]

Word. Do you know anywhere else you find that? Remember, that's what you find in the interpretation of the Song of Songs, writing a lyric, and going all the way up to the German cross. But the bridegroom in the Song of Songs is the Word of God. That's in number 12, right down at the bottom of the left-hand column. And then he's got this charming exegesis of the whole thing of Rahab. The three spies represent the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Spying out the Promised Land. And you know, there's a kind of truth behind it. It's a game that's played, but there's a truth behind it. And then the scarlet thread. He really wondered about the scarlet thread. What was it? The scarlet thread which meant the Passover. You see, the blood of the Lamb, the blood of the Lamb. Scarlet thread, thread woven of wool, wool comes from the Lamb, the blood of the Lamb, the Passover. The scarlet

[65:30]

thread which meant the Passover and the redemption and exodus of the people from Egypt. So, somehow attached to that line of salvation, which is God's economy. How beautiful. I don't know of another exegesis like that. I haven't read much about it. It's beautiful. Next time, let's go to that next text on our list, which is chapter 26, number one, on page 496 and 497. And then to the last two chapters in book four, chapters 38 and 39, page 521 to 523, in which he talks about this whole education process. Then after that we'll go to book five and try to wind up with Irenaeus' Theology of the Earth. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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