“This life has been given to you for repentance, do not waste it in vain pursuits”
An excerpt from the superb biography of St. Paisios, Elder Paisios of Mount Athos by Hiermonk Isaac regarding St. Isaac the Syrian and how he was not a Nestorian, a misinformed opinion held by too many.
One day, sitting at the bench outside of Stavronikita, the Elder was visiting with pilgrims, among whom was a high school teacher of theology. The theology teacher, repeating a popular Western error, claimed that Abba Isaac the Syrian was a Nestorian. Father Paisios tried to persuade him that Abba Isaac was not only Orthodox but also a saint, and that his Ascetical Homilies possess great grace and strength. But the Elder’s words were in vain: the theology teacher stubbornly insisted on his views. The Elder left for his hermitage, praying and so sad that he was in tears.
When he had come to a spot on the path near a large plane tree, something happened to him. These words, “something happened”, were the only description he gave us of the incident, not wanting to reveal the exact details. According to one testimony, he saw in a vision the choir of the holy fathers passing before him, and one of them, stopping, said to him, “I am Isaac the Syrian. I am completely Orthodox. The Nestorian heresy was indeed present in my region, but I fought against it.” We are not in a position to endorse or to reject the reliability of this witness. We know for certain only that the Elder experienced a supranatural occurrence that confirmed with perfect clarity the holiness and total Orthodoxy of Abba Isaac.
The Elder had the Saint’s Ascetical Homilies by his pillow, and he studied them constantly. For one six-year period, it was his only spiritual reading. He would take one line and call it to mind frequently throughout the day, studying it in a deep and practical way – “like animals chew over their food,” as he put it. As a blessing, he distributed a selection of the homilies in order to encourage their study. “Studying the Ascetical Homilies of Abba Isaac the Syrian,” he once wrote, “will help you a lot, because it helps us understand the deeper meaning of life. Whatever kind of complex a believer might have, big or small, the Homilies help him get ride of it. There are a lot of vitamins in Abba Isaac, so a little study transforms the soul.”
Elder Paisios of Mount Athos by Hieromonk Isaac, The Holy Monastery of Saint Arsenios the Cappadocian (2012), pp. 225-226.
*As a side-note, Blessed Elder Joseph the Hesychast also greatly loved Abba Isaac and frequently read and contemplated his Asectical Homilies.
matushka constantina
thank you for the reminder! Donald Sheehan and Scott Cairns also loved St. Issac… Sheehan’s essays in his book “Grace of Inncorruption_ are (in the words of an Abbess I spoke to about them last year) ‘very deep’… and very wonderful. I so appreciate this post, as it is reminding me of the Lenten reading that I hope to do!!!
*Incorruption (I meant to write!)
His theology and faith is fully Orthodox, but he was not in communion with the Orthodox. He was in communion with the Assyrian Church of the East, which was not in communion with the Orthodox. All this vision of St. Paisios proves is there are Orthodox Christians outside of the visible boundaries of the Orthodox Church, which would seem to undermine the point of assuring us St. Isaac was Orthodox.
123,
While the claim you make is common, it is nevertheless erroneous. I would encourage you to read this seven part article by Protopresbyter John Photopoulos, translated by John Sandidopoulos. This article demonstrates that Abba Isaac was a member of the Orthodox Church, and that this is what St. Paisios meant when he said Abba Isaac was “completely Orthodox”.
I would like to call attention, in particular, to Part Three, where the authour describes how Abba Isaac the Syrian gets confused with another Isaac who lived 100 years later.
http://www.johnsanidopoulos.com/2014/09/abba-isaac-syrian-unjustly-accused.html
Thanks for the link. I look forward to reading it.
My initial reaction is that every other scholar in the world understands the proof to show “St. Isaac the Syrian” was not another Isaac and that he was a member of the Church of the East – that is, all those without a confessional motivation to prove he was a member of the Orthodox Church (and St. Paisios’s vision correct) so as not to undermine other confessional commitments. That includes the author of the extensive Translator’s Epilogue on this point appended to the original hardcover version of “The Ascetical Homilies” published by Holy Transfiguration Monastery, then part of ROCOR and never a friend to ecumenism.
Hi 123,
I’m glad you brought up the HTM article. It raises the point that whether one identifies Abba Isaac the Syrian with Isaac of Qatar or not, in either case the church he belonged to was not what we mean today by the Church of the East, i.e., Nestorian. Rather, as I understand the HTM article (online at http://htmp.org/ascetical-homilies-links-and-d.html for anyone interested), the “Persian church,” as the article terms it, had not definitely adopted Nestorianism as the clear and official dogmatic position, i.e., become a “separate church with a separate hierarchy from the Orthodox,” nor definitely severed its communion with the official Orthodox Church of the Byzantine Empire. I confess it’s been a while since I read the article so I won’t try to reproduce the details of why they suggest this. Check out the article for those interested.
But we find parallel examples throughout history of people remaining faithful even when the hierarchy around them has gone into heresy and is encouraging its full adoption. For example, after the “union” Council of Lyons in 1274 or Florence-Ferrara in 1439, there were many objectors (and “not very many”, at times) who rejected the decisions of their ruling hierarchs and emperors, and who still considered themselves Orthodox despite the new “official” realities after those councils had taken place. When, though, did the clergy or faithful under the Patriarch of Constantinople “cease to be Orthodox” after 1274 or 1439? Did St. Mark of Ephesus cease to be Orthodox, who while he cut commemoration, did not set up some kind of “alternate” true Orthodox hierarchy with a new Patriarch of Constantinople being elected by him and the few others who remained faithful? Instead, as a conscious objector, living under a church hierarchy that now predominately (and officially) ascribed to heresy, he carried on ministering to his flock while avoiding communion with unionists, and teaching against them in various ways–some louder, some less so. Could the HTM article be pointing to something similar with Abba Isaac, especially if he felt he could not remain a bishop due to the necessity of intercommunion/interaction with other parties of bishops/laity whom he felt had ceased being Orthodox by the heresies they espoused and their unwillingness to live what he considered the Orthodox spiritual life?
Just a thought.
I didn’t write the HTM article and have not extensively traced the history of the Church of the East, so I can only speculate based on the article’s content. But they seem to be arguing pretty clearly that the church “in” the East was not yet what we today call the “Church of the East.” Rather, Abba Isaac was a lingering voice of Orthodoxy (a more “moderate voice” as the article terms it) and that–like another St. Mark of Ephesus under the unionists–he was struggling to live and keep the faith, despite the views of the dominant climate around him. That would also seem to be the clearest reading of the saint’s own words to St. Paisios when he said: “The Nestorian heresy was indeed present in my region, but I fought against it.”
In Christ,
Fr Matthew