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| Saint Sophrony the Athonite. |
The Lord said
to Pontius Pilate, 'I came into the world, that I should bear witness unto the
truth', to which Pilate replied sceptically, 'What is truth?':"
and convinced that there could be no answer to the query,
did not look for one, even from Christ, but went out to the jews.
Pilate was
right. There is no answer to the question WHAT is truth? if we have in mind the
ultimate truth at the root of the whole existence of the world.
But if
Pilate, meaning Primal or Axiomatic Truth, had phrased his question as it
should have been phrased - if he had asked WHO is truth? he would have received
the answer that, a little while previously, Christ, foreseeing Pilate's query,
gave at the Last Supper to his beloved disciples, and through them to the whole
world: 'I am the truth'.
Science and
philosophy set themselves the question, WHAT is truth?, whereas Christian
religious perception always considers truth as 'WHO'.
Scientists
and philosophers not infrequently look upon Christians as unsound day-dreamers,
whereas they themselves stand on firm ground and so label themselves positivists.
In a curious way they do not realise all the negativeness of truth as WHAT.
They do not understand that authentic Truth, absolute Truth, can be only 'WHO',
never 'WHAT', since Truth is not some abstract formula, some abstract idea, but life itself.
In fact, what
could be more abstract, more negative than truth as WHAT? And we notice this
tremendous paradox throughout the history of the human race, starting with
Adam's fall. Enchanted by his reasoning mind, man lives, intoxicated as it
were, so that not only 'positive' science and philosophy, like Pilate, pose the
question, 'WHAT is truth?' but even in the religious life of mankind we find
the same great delusion, with people continually seeking truth as 'WHAT'.
They reason
that if they can arrive at the truth they seek as WHAT, they will be possessed
of magic power and become unrestrained masters of being.
If man in his
religious life adopts the course of rational research, his approach to the
world will inevitably be pantheistic. Every time the theologising mind essays
of its own strength to know the truth about God, whether or not it understands,
fatally it falls into the same error in which science and philosophy and
pantheism are sunk - intuiting truth as 'WHAT'.
Truth as
'WHO' is never arrived at through reason. God as 'WHO' can be known only
through communion in being - that is, only by the Holy Spirit. Staretz Silouan
constantly emphasised this.
The Lord
Himself spoke of it thus:
'If a man
love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come
unto him, and make our abode with him ... The Comforter, which is the Holy
Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things'.
Orthodox
ascetic experience rejects the course of abstract contemplation. Whoever
restricts his thinking about God to abstract contemplation of Good, Beauty,
Eternity, Love and so on, is on the wrong road. The one who only strips himself
of all empirical forms and conceptions has also not found the true path.
Orthodox
contemplation of God is not abstract contemplation of Good, Love and the like.
Nor is it a simple withdrawal of the mind from all empirical forms and
conceptions. True contemplation is given by God through His coming into the
soul. The soul then contemplates God and beholds that He loves, that He is
good, magnificent, eternal; sees Him celestial, ineffable. But in the abstract
nothing can be contemplated.
Imagination
plays no part in true spiritual life, which is wholly concrete and positive. Genuine
concourse with God is to be sought solely through personal prayer to the
Personal God. Real spiritual Christian experience is communion with God
absolutely free, and so does not depend only on man's efforts and will, as is
possible in non-Christian (pantheistic) experience.
Reference:
Saint Silouan
the Athonite. Archimandrite Sophrony(Sakharov). 1991.