Theophan the Recluse

What is the Absolute? Does God exist?

God is the Trinitarian Lord with whom the Christian lives in active communion

A personal GodStated explicitly

Theophan the Recluse writes not as a philosopher but as a bishop and spiritual director. In the Outline of Christian Moral Teaching he starts from the God of Orthodox faith, one in three persons, creator and provident, and derives all of moral life from him. In The Path to Salvation he defines Christian life as zeal and strength to remain in active communion with God through faith in Jesus Christ, with the help of grace and by fulfilling his will. God is for him someone who listens: in one of his letters he affirms that there is no interval between prayer and its hearing, provided the prayer comes from the heart. The question of God's existence barely concerns him; what matters is how he is found, and his answer is the prayer of the heart, attention and the sacraments of the Church.

Who am I? Is there a true self?

Body, soul and spirit: the spirit is the power that seeks God

A created, immortal soulStated explicitly

Theophan the Recluse develops a tripartite anthropology that fills the first letters of What Is Spiritual Life and returns in the Outline of Christian Moral Teaching. The human being has a body, a soul with its faculties of thinking, willing and feeling, and a spirit, the power God breathed into him, which shows itself as fear of God, conscience and thirst for God. When the spirit governs, soul and body live in order; when the psychic or the carnal dominates, the person is scattered. In his controversy with Ignatius Brianchaninov, set out in The Soul and the Angel Are Not Body but Spirit, he maintained that the soul is purely spiritual, without any subtle matter. The true self is a created, immortal soul that is realised by turning to God from the heart.

Why do we suffer?

Passions arise from turning away from God; sorrows are medicine for the soul

Separation from GodStated explicitly

Theophan the Recluse explains suffering within Orthodox ascetic anthropology. In The Path to Salvation he describes the man who lives without God as one ruled by passions, which arise from egoism and branch out into the pursuit of pleasure, greed and vainglory; that state is in itself restlessness and pain, even if the one inside it does not perceive it. Conversion begins when grace awakens the sinner and makes him see his state. As for outward afflictions, his letters of spiritual direction treat them as medicine and as a cross: God permits them to heal, humble or purify, and bearing them patiently unites the Christian with Christ. In his homilies on the cross he distinguishes the cross of sorrows, that of the struggle against the passions and that of obedience to the divine will.

What happens after death?

Death opens the particular judgement; one must live preparing for it

Eternal life and resurrectionStated explicitly

Theophan the Recluse teaches Orthodox eschatology without altering it: after death the soul appears at a particular judgement and awaits, in a state of anticipated joy or of pain, the resurrection of bodies and the last judgement, after which comes eternal life. In his commentary on Psalm 118 he also records the tradition of the trials the soul passes through on leaving the body. His main interest is pastoral: in his letters of direction he recommends keeping death in mind, not as terror but as a reminder that orders life and stirs vigilance, and he consoles the bereaved by recalling that prayer for the departed reaches them. In his last letters, secluded at Vysha, he speaks of his own end with serenity and asks for prayers.

How is liberation or salvation attained?

Grace awakens the sinner; yet without his effort there is no salvation

Through grace and loveStated explicitly

The Path to Salvation, Theophan's most widely read book, describes the whole itinerary in three moments: conversion, purification and perfection. Everything begins with grace, which awakens the sinner asleep in his passions and makes him see his state; but grace does not act without the person's free decision, who must repent, confess, receive communion and take up the struggle against the passions. Hence the title of one of his writings, Without Effort You Will Not Be Saved. Christian life is defined as active communion with God through faith in Christ, with the help of grace and by fulfilling his will, and its centre is the prayer of the heart. This is the Orthodox doctrine of synergy: salvation is a gift, but a gift welcomed through constant labour.

Is a teacher necessary?

A spiritual father, the sacraments and the Fathers: guidance lies in the Church

Community and traditionStated explicitly

Theophan the Recluse was, during twenty-two years of seclusion, spiritual director by letter to hundreds of people, and his whole work is an exercise in guidance. He recommends having a spiritual father, confessing and receiving communion regularly and submitting one's inner movements to his judgement, especially in prayer, where lack of direction exposes one to errors. But he knows experienced guides are scarce, and that is why he translated and enlarged the Philokalia in five volumes and edited Unseen Warfare: so that the Fathers may guide whoever has no elder at hand. The authority is not that of a charismatic master, but that of the Church's tradition, to which he himself submits and in whose name he counsels, adapting his advice to each correspondent's situation.

Is the world real?

God's good creation, which the Christian uses without clinging to it

A good and real creationInferred from their doctrine

Theophan the Recluse teaches the Orthodox doctrine of creation without speculative elaboration: the world is God's free work, good, sustained by his providence, and the human being holds a central place in it as a creature endowed with spirit. In his Outline of Christian Moral Teaching created things appear as means the Christian must use with gratitude and measure, not as ends; the danger lies not in the world but in the attachment that turns it into an idol. When his letters speak of the world as something to turn away from, they mean the passions and customs estranged from God, not material creation. In his commentaries on Saint Paul he also takes up the hope that the whole of creation, which groans, will be set free with the children of God.

What is love?

Love of God and neighbour, born together from a heart warmed by grace

Love of God and neighbourStated explicitly

Theophan the Recluse places love at the centre of the Christian morality he sets out in his Outline: the double commandment of love of God and neighbour sums up the whole law, and the other virtues are its forms. But, as a master of the prayer of the heart, he insists that such love is not manufactured by will: it is born when grace warms the heart, and that is why attentive prayer is its root. In his letters he is very concrete: love of neighbour is exercised in patience with one's household, in not judging, in almsgiving and in humble service, and whoever claims to love God without loving those close by deceives himself. His four homilies on prayer describe prayer itself as the rising in the heart of feelings of humility, gratitude and self-surrender, which are already forms of love.

Are we free, or is everything determined?

Grace awakens, but the decision to turn to God belongs to the person

Real free willStated explicitly

Theophan the Recluse sets out in The Path to Salvation a psychology of conversion in which freedom holds a decisive place. The sinner lives asleep in his passions and would not wake by himself; grace shakes him, shows him his state and offers him the possibility of change. But at that moment everything depends on the person's decision: he can accept the awakening and set out, or fall asleep again. Once the decision is made, the struggle continues daily, and freedom must be exercised against the inclinations that keep pulling backwards; hence the title of his writing Without Effort You Will Not Be Saved. In the Outline of Christian Moral Teaching he defends freedom as the condition of all morality: without it there would be neither merit nor guilt.

Why meditate or pray?

To stand before the Lord with the mind in the heart, conversing with him

Friendship with GodStated explicitly

Prayer is the centre of Theophan the Recluse's work. In his Four Homilies on Prayer he calls it the first task of Christian life and the breath of the spirit: where there is prayer, the spirit lives; where there is none, there is no life in it. He defines it as the rising in the heart of reverent feelings towards God, humility, self-surrender, gratitude, praise, contrition. His most famous formula, repeated in the letters of What Is Spiritual Life, is to stand always before the Lord with the mind in the heart, to bring back thoughts when they wander and make them stay in the cell of the heart conversing with the sweetest Lord. Through his translation of the Philokalia he became the great Russian popularizer of the Jesus Prayer and hesychasm for monks and lay people alike.

Can reason know the ultimate?

Scripture, read with the Fathers, guides a reason that must descend into the heart

Scripture and reasoningStated explicitly

Theophan the Recluse was professor and rector of the St Petersburg Theological Academy, and devoted his years of seclusion to commenting on all of Saint Paul's epistles and translating the Fathers: his work is that of an interpreter of Scripture within the Church's tradition. Reason has a legitimate role in it, that of understanding and ordering what is revealed, and he himself wrote a systematic Outline of Christian Moral Teaching. But he distinguishes between rational knowledge about God, which can remain in the head, and living knowledge, which is given when the mind descends into the heart and unites with it in prayer. His letters warn against the rationalism that submits revelation to reason's judgement and against sects that interpret Scripture outside the Church.

Withdraw from the world or transform it?

One can live in the world with the mind in the heart, before God

Contemplation in actionStated explicitly

Theophan the Recluse spent his last twenty-two years secluded in the monastery of Vysha, but explained that he did not shut himself away for extreme ascesis, but to devote himself to books without hindrance and serve the Church in another way. From his cell he directed hundreds of lay people by letter, and much of his work is written for them. What Is Spiritual Life and How to Attune Oneself to It consists of letters to a young woman living in society who wishes to lead a Christian life without becoming a nun, and his answer is that it is possible: it is enough to keep the mind in the heart before the Lord amid one's occupations, to fulfil faithfully the duties of one's state and to order the day around prayer. What must be abandoned is not the world, but its passions.