Ignatius Brianchaninov

What is the Absolute? Does God exist?

God is known through humility and prayer, not through speculation

A personal GodStated explicitly

Ignatius Brianchaninov places God within the frame of Orthodox faith, Trinitarian and creator, and devotes his work not to proving him but to showing how one comes to him. In the Ascetic Essays the way to God is prayer, and its measure the states of prayer through which one who prays steadily advances. The precondition is to recognise oneself as fallen: what belongs to man impoverished by the fall is to pray, as what belongs to a beggar is to ask. He warns insistently against spiritual delusion, which consists in imagining God or feeling him according to one's own fancies; whoever believes himself free of delusion is in the greatest delusion of all. Ignatius's God is therefore personal, but hidden from pride and accessible only to humility, repentance and attentive reading of the Fathers.

Who am I? Is there a true self?

A created, immortal and fallen soul, incorporeal only in comparison with God

A created, immortal soulStated explicitly

Ignatius Brianchaninov starts from the Orthodox doctrine of the created, immortal soul, but stresses its fallen condition: in the Ascetic Essays and the Word on Man he insists that human nature has been damaged by falsehood since the fall, and that we all live in some degree of delusion about ourselves. In the Word on Death and in his letter on why he called the soul ethereal he held a disputed thesis: that souls and angels, compared with God, the only absolutely incorporeal spirit, possess a subtle corporeality, so that after death the soul keeps a form resembling that of the body. Theophan the Recluse replied to him. What matters to him is practical: to know oneself as fallen is the condition for the self to be healed by grace.

Why do we suffer?

Fallen nature suffers; accepting sorrows is drinking the cup of Christ

Separation from GodStated explicitly

Ignatius Brianchaninov places the origin of suffering in the fall: human nature, damaged by falsehood, lives in a state of sickness that shows itself in the passions, death and delusion about oneself. In his essays he distinguishes several states of human nature with regard to good and evil, from the fallen natural state to the one renewed by grace. In the face of afflictions, his teaching is that of the Fathers he collected on patience in sorrows: they are not sought, but accepted as permitted by God, with thanksgiving and without murmuring, because they heal pride. In The Cup of Christ he presents sufferings as the cup the Lord drank first and offers to his disciples. He rejects every explanation that turns pain into energy or an impersonal law: it is a matter between the fallen creature and its God.

What happens after death?

The soul passes the aerial trials and awaits judgement: death is prepared for

Eternal life and resurrectionStated explicitly

Ignatius Brianchaninov devoted a specific treatise to the question, the Word on Death of 1862, later enlarged with a supplement. There he sets out, relying on the Fathers and the lives of the saints, that after death the soul, separated from the body but keeping a subtle form, passes through the aerial trials, in which the fallen spirits accuse it of its sins, and receives a particular judgement that determines its state until the resurrection and the last judgement. His intention is not to feed the imagination but to awaken sobriety: the memory of death is for him one of the Christian's fundamental exercises, because it undoes the illusion of an endless earthly life. His teaching on the aerial trials provoked debate within Russian Orthodoxy itself.

How is liberation or salvation attained?

Christ saves us; man brings repentance, humility and keeping the commandments

Through grace and loveStated explicitly

In the Word on Salvation and Christian Perfection, Ignatius Brianchaninov holds that salvation is the work of Christ, received through faith and baptism and kept or recovered through repentance. What falls to man is not to earn it but to dispose himself: to recognise his fall, weep over his sins, keep the Gospel commandments and pray with attention. He warns sharply against the opposite path, that of one who seeks lofty spiritual states, visions or consolations before being purified: it is the way of delusion, which mistakes one's own imagination for grace. That is why he advises his contemporaries, who in his view lack true elders, to be guided by reading the Fathers and by prudent counsel. Perfection is God's gift to the humble.

Is a teacher necessary?

True elders are lacking: one must live by counsel and be guided by the Fathers

Helpful but not indispensableStated explicitly

Ignatius Brianchaninov knew in his youth the elders of the tradition of Paisius Velichkovsky and corresponded with the elders Leonid and Macarius of Optina. Yet his diagnosis of his own age is sober: authentic elders, bearers of the Spirit, have almost entirely disappeared, and surrendering oneself unreservedly to an inexperienced director is dangerous, because it can lead both into spiritual delusion. He therefore proposes, in The Arena: An Offering to Contemporary Monasticism, life by counsel: to be guided by Scripture and the Fathers, whose reading he considers indispensable for making their thought one's own, and to consult experienced brethren prudently, without depending blindly on anyone. The human teacher helps, but the sure authority lies in the Gospel as interpreted by the saints.

Is the world real?

The created world is good; the «world» to be rejected is that of the passions

A good and real creationInferred from their doctrine

Ignatius Brianchaninov affirms the goodness of creation, but his attention centres on the distinction, classic in ascetic writing, between the world as God's work and the world as the sum of passions that draw away from him. A former military engineer, he knew the science of his time well, and in the Word on the Sensory and Spiritual Vision of Spirits he holds that reality is not exhausted by what the senses perceive: around the human being there are spirits, angels and demons, which fallen nature does not see and which rarely manifest themselves. He warns, however, against the desire to see such realities, which he regards as a gateway to delusion. The visible world is real and good, but it is only part of creation, and fallen man perceives it in a limited way.

What is love?

True love is born from keeping the commandments, not from emotion

Love of God and neighbourStated explicitly

In the Ascetic Essays, Ignatius Brianchaninov devotes chapters to love of neighbour and love of God, and his teaching is characteristically sober. He distinguishes natural love, mixed with passion, preference and attachment, from the spiritual love taught by the Gospel, which sees in each person the image of God and loves it in God. This second love is born not from feeling or exaltation, but from keeping the commandments, from humility and from prayer; whoever seeks to feel an ardent love before being purified risks mistaking for love an emotion of fallen nature. Love of neighbour is the path to love of God, and both culminate in a gift God grants to the humble.

Are we free, or is everything determined?

Free but wounded by the fall, man must surrender his will to God

Real free willStated explicitly

Ignatius Brianchaninov affirms human freedom with Orthodox tradition, but stresses how much the fall has damaged it: the will of natural man is inclined to evil and deceived by delusion, so that its freedom, without grace, tends to choose badly even while believing it chooses well. That is why his ascetic teaching insists on renouncing one's own will and surrendering to God's, by keeping the commandments. In The Judgements of God, written in his last years, he reflects on the providence that governs human events, painful ones included, and advises submitting to it humbly instead of judging it. That surrender, however, is a free act: no one can be saved without willing it, and personal responsibility never disappears.

Why meditate or pray?

Prayer is what belongs to fallen man: asking with attention and humility

Friendship with GodStated explicitly

For Ignatius Brianchaninov the way to God is prayer, and the measure of the way travelled is the states of prayer into which one who prays steadily gradually enters. His starting point is the fallen condition: what belongs to the beggar is to ask, and what belongs to man impoverished by the fall is to pray. The soul of every exercise is attention, without which prayer is dead; that is why he teaches enclosing the mind in the words of the prayer, and recommends the Jesus Prayer said slowly and attentively. He warns strongly against seeking sensations, images or mystical warmth, in which he sees the gateway to spiritual delusion, and prefers humble, repentant prayer to any psychophysical method practised without guidance.

Can reason know the ultimate?

Fallen reason deceives itself; it must be formed by the Gospel and the Fathers

Scripture and reasoningStated explicitly

Ignatius Brianchaninov, trained as an engineer, does not despise natural reason, but considers it damaged by the fall: the human mind is exposed to delusion and tends to take its own constructions for truth. It therefore cannot be the judge of revelation. The remedy is to form it with the Gospel, to which he devotes chapters of the Ascetic Essays, and with the writings of the holy Fathers, whose thought and spirit he urges making one's own through assiduous reading. With equal firmness he advises keeping away from books on Christianity written by false teachers, and judges severely works such as the Imitation of Christ, which he regards as the fruit of delusion. Reason, healed by humility and guided by tradition, can understand revealed truth.

Withdraw from the world or transform it?

Monk means solitary: inner solitude is the condition of prayer

Withdraw in order to findStated explicitly

Ignatius Brianchaninov chose monastic life against the will of his family and of Nicholas I himself, who had destined him for military engineering, and he lived for monasticism, to which he devoted The Arena: An Offering to Contemporary Monasticism. His ideal is solitude: monk means solitary, and whoever has not gathered himself within is not yet a monk, even if he lives in the remotest monastery. That solitude is above all inward, which is why he also wrote a rule of attention to oneself for one living in the world, showing lay people how to guard mind and heart amid their occupations. But he does not trust the world: he sees it as a place of distraction and delusion, and considers withdrawal, outward when possible and inward always, the condition of the encounter with God.