The Divine Energies in Eastern Christian Mystical Thought

In an earlier post David lay down this challenge: “By using the language of the icon I hope and pray that Ian can in some way realize this idea of the Sacred Heart as the centre of divine light and energy: the light and energy of the love of God .”  This reminded me of the profound spiritual experiences of some of the mystics of the Eastern Church, such as St Simeon the New Theologian and the hesychasts such as St Gregory Palamas. ‘Divine energy’ and ‘light’ are both crucial terms which have a powerful and precise meaning within the theological thought of the eastern churches, especially in the teaching of the hesychasts about the idea of deification, originally found in the early Church Fathers.

This got me dusting down one of my favourite books, one of the very few I still retain from my time as an undergraduate: Vladimir Lossky’s ‘The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church' (1957, James Clarke, ISBN 0 227 67536 3), in particular chapter four, 'Uncreated Energies'.

How can we say that God is unknowable yet revealed? The answer which the eastern churches give is to say that God in His essence is unknowable and unknown, but that in His energies He makes Himself known and is known. The energies are not creations but of the nature of God, and proper to each Divine Person of the Holy Trinity. “This distinction is that between the essence of God, or His nature, properly so-called, which is inaccessible, unknowable and incommunicable; and the energies or divine operations, forces proper to and inseparable from God’s essence, in which He goes forth from Himself, manifests, communicates, and gives Himself. ”(p.70) This exterior manifestation is what theologians call God’s economy, His oikonomia.

Lossky quotes St Basil: “It is by His energies that we say we know our God; we do not assert that we can come near to the essence itself, for His energies descend to us, but his essence remains unapproachable”. Epistle 234 while St John Damascene writes ’all that we say positively of God manifests not His nature but the things about His nature”. He uses such images as ‘movement’ or ‘rush of God’ to describe these Divine Energies. Many Fathers from Pseudo Dionysius onwards speak of ‘rays of divinity’ penetrating the created universe.  St Gregory Palamas uses the phrases ‘uncreated light’, ‘grace’ and divinities’:  “The divine and deifying illumination and grace is not the essence but the energy of God…a divine power and energy common to the nature in three.”  It is through these divine energies that creation is formed and sustained, and directly experienced by those who enter deeply into the process of sanctification as a mystical experience.

This provides, I think, an interesting context in which to understand Theilhard’s mystical experience and to give a more profound theological context for his talk about energy and creation. Here is an excerpt in which he describes something of his friend’s mystical experience of the Sacred Heart:

“First of all I perceived that the vibrant atmosphere which surrounded Christ like an aureole was no longer confined to a narrow space about him, but radiated outwards to infinity. Through this there passed from time to time what seemed like trails of phosphorescence, indicating a continuous gushing-forth to the outermost spheres of the realm of matter and delineating a sort of blood stream or nervous system running through the totality of life.

“The entire universe was vibrant! And yet, when I directed my gaze to particular objects, one by one, I found them still as clearly defined as ever in their undiminished individuality.

“All this movement seemed to emanate from Christ, and above all from his heart. And it was while I was attempting to trace the emanation to its source and to capture its rhythm that, as my attention returned to the portrait itself, I saw the vision mount rapidly to its climax.” (From Hymn of the Universe, published in 1961 by Harper & Row)

His friend then explain another such experience with the Exposed Host in the monstrance. Reflecting on all of this Theilhard makes this observation: ‘As I listened to my friend my heart began to burn within me and my mind awoke to a new and higher vision of things. I began to realize vaguely that the multiplicity of evolutions into which the world-process seems to us to be split up is in fact fundamentally the working out of one single great mystery; and this first glimpse of light caused me, I know not why, to tremble in the depths of my soul. But I was so accustomed to separating reality into different planes and categories of thought that I soon found myself lost in this spectacle, still new and strange to my tyro mind, of a cosmos in which the dimensions of divine reality, of spirit, and of matter were also intimately mingled.’

Interestingly, the concern of the Orthodox about Western theology about the nature of God is that they break things up into, effectively, cause and effect, tending to see a greater distinction between theology and mysticism while the Orthodox don’t have such heavy demarcations.  Lossky explains things well. These energies are not creations but ‘outpourings of the divine nature which cannot set bounds to itself, for God is more than essence’; that ‘flow eternally from the one essence of the Trinity’ Lossky p73. “The energies might be described as that mode of existence of the Trinity which is outside of its inaccessible essence”. Though the energies ‘penetrate everything that exist’ they are intrinsic to God’s nature and do not exist because of creature. Language here is very inadequate and we have to be careful about it. “We are dealing with a strictly concrete reality of the religious order”p.76

Orthodox critics of western theology declare that any the real distinction of energies from essence becomes ‘a derogation of the simplicity of God’ which implies polytheism and ditheism. The definition of God as pure act limits God by His essence, implying that that which is not essence does not belong to the divine being.  Palamas makes the following criticism: if you recognise the divine essence and its created effects which have the divine essence as its cause, then given how Western theology understands essence as created rather than Divine, you end up either relegating the glory of God and the light of the Transfiguration to the status of creation or deny the distinction and have to identify the knowable and the unknowlable, the incommunicable and communicable, the essence and grace. Either way deification is impossible.

This may misunderstand the western handling of the working of grace, but it is only fair to say that the Eastern theology of deification is much more profoundly worked through and the issues concerning the nature of God and His relation to Creation handled in this context which gives it a very Christo-centric rather than Causal feel.  God simply IS, and all that is in being comes from that reality. Contemplation is of the One who Is and deification is a reality experienced in the actual life of the Church and its members. “In deification we are by grace…all that God is by nature, save only identity of nature” cf St Maximus.  This is different from the union of the two natures of Christ which is hypostatic, and different from the union of the three Divine Persons of the Most Holy Trinity which which is substantial.  ‘It is union with God in His energies, or union by grace makes us participate in the divine nature, without our essence becoming thereby the essence of God’p.87

While there is a firm distinction between God and His creation, nevertheless there is a clear sense of continuity without rupture between God and His creation. “In the order of the economic manifestation of the Trinity in the world, all energy originates in the Father, being communicated by the Son in the Holy Spirit” p82 The Trinity dwells in us by means of that in itself which is communicable…by the energies which are common to the three hypostases…by grace-for it is by this name that we know the deifying energies which the Holy Spirit communicates to us.”p.86

Here we have, I think, a good theological model for understanding the ideas of  energy perceived mystically by Theilhard, and a context which puts it deep within the mystical tradition of the Christian Church, especially that of the east.  This is important, iconographically, because this art form has been profoundly influenced by this theological mysticism, especially hesychasm. Icons of the Transfiguration, as well as such luminary saints as St Seraphim of Sarov and St Simeon the New Theologian have already begun to explore how we can represent this divine energy at the heart of all creation, emanating from the very nature of God in Himself.

Consecration to the Sacred Heart and the Evolution of the Public Space

I am new to the thinking of Theilard de Chardin, and David your own thinking about the public space. I have a lot of ideas ruminating having read some of your ideas, and here is an example. I am not sure if I am understanding you correctly, or completely accurate about the teaching of Leo XIII but post this in the hope of generating some reflections and corrections

When Pope Leo XIII consecrated the world to the Sacred Heart, lamenting the rejection of religion in public life, echoing the encyclical Rerum Novarum with its tentative warming to the ideas of democracy and social justice, his Holiness saw ‘religion’ as the Roman Catholic religion, a hierarchical institution with which states once had formal relationships but which was increasingly excluded as a power broker which could determine the developments of society. Yet, at the same time, the Pope was addressing the vastly changed world of the late 19^th century , which was unrecognisable compared to society just a century earlier. Empires, industrialisation, rise of democracy, the ideas of socialism and Communism, the beginnings of mass education, railways and a vast array of technological gadgets all contributed to the emergence of the world which Pope Leo addressed.

Now we live in a very changed world from that of Leo XIII, much as the world of the late 19^th century was radically different from the world a century before that. Globalisation places the religions alongside each other, competing views of truth and the way in which the social sphere should be organised. At times there are overlapping areas of agreement, but there are often fundamental differences. At the same time, the officialdom of religions no longer have the same control over their adherents, with mass communication enabling every shade of opinion to be shared and aired. The public space is no longer a place dominated by authorities, of which the Church hierarchy was one, and where the outrage was about the exclusion of the hierarchy from the public square. Rather it is a place dominated by the advertising industry, the media and business. Religion, in this context, is removed to the periphery, and the absolute claims of each religion relativised.

We can see this in European airports. Shopping malls dominate, alongside food halls. Chapels are there but tucked away, and no longer not even multi-denominational but multi-faith. Christians pray in the same space as Muslims, Hindus alongside Buddhists, Sikhs equal to pagans. Diluted, marginalised, stripped of any truth claim.

The art and architecture of these spaces reflects this nebulous religiousity, blandly called ‘spirituality’. Devoid of any images of meaning, except at the most subjective level, ones which can be interpreted as each believer thinks fit, the authority of faith communities obliterated and its challenge to the wider public space neutered.

Therefore, to make specific religious imagery, infused with theology and designed to speak to and inform the beholder (which is the purpose of iconography) is a fundamental challenge to the contemporary status quo. It raises the question, how does an image of the Sacred Heart ‘read’ as public art? Is it simply to be reduced to an item for personal piety or can it, should it, have a public role, even a revolutionary one? What did it mean for the world to be consecrated to the Sacred Heart, and what place did that consecration have in the way in which modern society has ‘evolved’?

A view from a pew

Yesterday was the feast of the Presentation of the Lord. It is also the day when candles are be blessed for use in the Church: it is literally Candle Mass day. After mass, we had what I think is one of the great forms of prayer and devotion in the Catholic Church, the Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. It was wonderful to see so many people there. This is, of course, a devotion which is closely associated with the Sacred Heart. Indeed, as Paul VI said: ‘"The Blessed Sacrament is the Living Heart of each of our churches and it is our very sweet duty to honor and adore the Blessed Host, which our eyes see, the Incarnate Word, Whom they cannot see." I have to confess that although the adoration of the Blessed Sacrament was something I did in my youth it was not something a favored as an adult. But over the years that has changed. It struck me yesterday that when the Blessed Sacrament is exposed in the monstrance it looks very like the image of the heart of Jesus glowing with radiating light. And appropriately we sang ‘Sweet Heart of Jesus’ at the beginning of the adoration. Teilhard wrote a beautiful story/reflection about the adoration of the Blessed Sacrament and it is worth reading (HERE in his HYMN OF THE UNIVERSE) . Having undergone radio-therapy I used to feel that the adoration of the Blessed Sacrament and having radio therapy were two sides of the same kind of experience. In the adoration you expose yourself to the Sacred Heart of the energy of divine love (as Teilhard would have it) and in radio therapy you are exposed to the energy of radiation. In the former you are exposed to the divine energy at the centre of the cosmos, and in the latter the powerful energy of matter itself. Of course, Teilhard got there before me in his essay on the cyclotron! ( In his book Human Energy.) (Again , worth reading.) So now Ian, I think I see the Sacred Heart in terms of the monstrance. Is that helpful? Not being a theologian or student of world religions I have no idea if this idea we find in the adoration is common in other faiths and in particular in other Christian – especially Orthodox – traditions? But in my mind I think the image of the Sacred Heart and the Monstrance converges. And of course, the great surprise of Pope Benedict's visit in September 2010 was the vigil in Hyde Park and the moving sense of peace and devotion which spread out accross the park and through our television screens. A demonstration of the power of the adoration of the Blessed Sacrament as a devotion.

A book recommendation

This book is online - via google books and explores very much the areas which David and myself are looking at. Go HERE to read a preview.

Tea and talk.

Today Ian and I had our first meeting – in the National Gallery over a nice cup of tea - to discuss the Sacred Heart project. In a short time we covered a good deal of ground. I explained that my interest and devotion to the Sacred Heart was the result of a spiritual experience, but that this also had considerable intellectual consequences in enabling me to formulate ideas which I have on public policy and the relationship between faith and reason in the public square. This will all have to be unpacked in due course. But one thing which became apparent as we talked was that during a recent illness I came to realize that God does not stand outside our pain looking in: he is inside with us and sharing our pain. This is why the Sacred Heart is such a powerful visible symbol of the invisible power of the energy of divine love. As a result of my illness I finally got the whole point of the cross. By pointing to His heart Jesus is reminding us that he suffered for us and suffers with us. The image of the Sacred Heart is therefore the complete embodiment of the love of God: it is about light and love but it is also about dark and pain. It is an image which is asking us to respond to God’s love : it is an image which is supposed to challenge us to live by placing our trust completely in that love. We agreed that this was a good starting point for the project.

Traditional image of Sacred Heart

If you google an image of the Sacred Heart you get a return of 1,220,000 images. Here are just a few to look at. These are the images which are most familiar to Catholics throughout the world.

Teilhard was not a great fan of these kind of images, and yet as his great friend and promoter of his ideas during the second Vatican council Cardinal Henri de Lubac noted: “More and more ,for Teilhard, the Heart of Jesus was the ‘fire’, bursting into the cosmic milieu, to ‘amorize’ it. He always carried a picture of the Sacred Heart in his breviary, a link between the invocations he had been taught and those which he now found better nourishment for his prayer. He turned his eyes towards its rays, carrying radiance to all parts [of the universe] ..Thus the concept which was so dear to him and that in the end was supreme in him, of the ‘universal Christ’ was born from ‘an expansion of the Heart of Jesus’ A succinct account of his ideas was found written on both sides of a picture of the ‘radiant heart’ of Jesus which was on his desk. On the front are the words: ‘The God of Evolution’; ‘The Christic , the Trans-Christ’ and Jesus – the Heart of the World, Essence/Motor of Evolution. And amongst the words on the back we find his description of the Sacred Heart as :
The heart of evolution;
The heart of matter;
The golden glow;
The essence of all energy;
Heart of the world’s heart;
Focus of ultimate and universal energy;
Heart of Jesus, heart of evolution, unite me to yourself.

In a letter to Jeanne Mortier he notes where he departs from the conventional interpretation of the Sacred Heart, and suggested that it offers a way forward in meeting the challenge of ‘bringing Christ of today’ to the world of today’:
“You can see it as a suffering ‘Heart’ that needs to be ‘consoled’. Or you can see it as a centre of energy that creates and drives the world: it suffers, indeed, but it is even more a fire, the only fire that can keep in motion a universe that has become reflective.”
Teilhard saw it as a fire that could bring the Christ of today to the world of today. The Sacred Heart was a image for the Christianity of the future as much as of the past. By using the language of the icon I hope and pray that Ian can in some way realize this idea of the Sacred Heart as the centre of divine light and energy: the light and energy of the love of God .

Contrasting images

I thought it might be useful to have these two on the blog to illustrate Ian's point in his earlier blog.