THE PERSON IN THE ORTHODOX TRADITION   o  ·   1     2     3  ·   4  ·   5  ·   6   © Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos   THE HUMAN PERSON ACCORDING TO THE HOLY FATHERS The theology of the person Person and man Contemporary interpretations-analyses of the person The asceticism of the person The value of considering the asceticism of the person Person and eros Person and freedom Person and social problems Conclusion   [ BACK ] THE HUMAN PERSON ACCORDING TO THE HOLY FATHERS

As I begin to take up the topic “the human person according to the holy Fathers”, I am reflecting on the gravity and the responsibilities of it. We are dealing with a delicate problem but one that is essential for our time. It is delicate because it has many aspects and extensions to things which have to be faced with responsibility and discretion. Yet it is necessary for our time, because there are numerous religious, philosophical, political and social systems which have a distorted teaching about man, because they regard him as a simple biological monad and nothing more. I want particularly to emphasise all the hinduistic systems, all the religious interpretations concerning man which are coming to us from the East and have turned man into a simple biological monad, not seeing him as a person.

In spite of sensing the crucial and delicate nature of the topic, I shall undertake to formulate some thoughts, because it is essential for our time. Both our spiritual integration and the development of a true spirit of humanity depend on how we stand on this subject. All the religious, political and social principles can be sustained on this proper foundation.

It must be said from the very beginning that the holy Fathers used the term ‘prosopon’, (person), first and foremost in referring to God, and particularly the three Persons of the Holy Trinity. A whole process had to be gone through in order to arrive at the formulation that the Triune God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are particular Persons-Hypostases, but have a common essence or substance. The common substance does not remove the particularity of the Persons-Hypostases, and the Persons-Hypostases do not remove or break the oneness of the substance.

In ancient Greece the word ‘prosopon’, which now means ‘person’, had more the meaning of the mask which the actors used to play different roles on the stage. There is a whole history surrounding the development of the mask into a person. Through a long process the word that was used to mean ‘mask’ finally came to mean not simply something that one puts on, but what makes one a real human being1.

The holy Fathers did this work chiefly in the fourth century, in their effort to confront various heretics who, in using Greek philosophy, were distorting Christ’s teaching about the Persons of the Holy Trinity. Thus we can say that real orthodox theology is experiential and ascetic, while dogmatic theology is mainly “polemic”, which means that the Fathers applied various terms from philosophy, not in order to understand and increase or improve the orthodox faith, which is revelation, but in order to express it in the terms of their time and to protect it from various distortions.

In what follows I would like us to take a look at how the holy Fathers came to apply the term ‘Prosopon’ to the Trinitarian God.

Various philosophising theologians, in their attempt to clarify the relationship between the Father and the Son, ended in a variety of dangerous and heretical teachings. In opposition to the gnostic polyarchy there developed two ‘monarchian’ parties: the patropaschites and the adoptionists. The former teach that the Son is identical with the Father, while the latter deny the divinity of the Son or Word. The heresy of the patropaschites was shaped and developed further by Sabellios, who maintained that the Christian God is one, but at times He took on a different prosopon, a different mask. So in the Old Testament he is presented as Father, and in the New Testament as Son and in the period of the Church as Holy Spirit. In reality Sabellios was identifying the substance with the hypostasis. This teaching overturns and distorts the revealed truth about the Trinitarian God. And if it had prevailed, it would have had dreadful consequences for theology, the Church and for man’s salvation2.

The holy Fathers confronted this heresy, which confused the hypostatic characteristics of the Persons of the Holy Trinity and in effect broke up the Trinitarianness of God. I should like to refer briefly to the teaching of st. Basil the Great on this subject so as to show the process by which the theology of the person was settled.

In his texts Basil the Great refers many times to the teaching of Sabellios. He writes that Sabellios regarded God as one, but transformed by different masks: “...that the same God, though one in substance, is transformed on every occasion according to necessary circumstances, and is spoken of now as Father, and now as Son, and now as Holy Spirit”3. Thus the persons of the Trinitarian God are really without substance, they lack ontology. Commenting on this, Basil the Great observes: “For not even Sabellius rejected the non-subsistent representation of the Persons”4. Also in other texts of Basil the Great we can find this teaching of Sabellius which regards the person as a mask which is not connected with the hypostasis5.

Basil the Great, however, is not content simply to present the teaching of Sabellios, but he refutes it and at the same time expresses the revealed truth in the terms of his time. In what follows I should like us to look at the theological views of Basil the Great relating to the Person of God.

He writes that just as anyone who does not accept the common essence falls into polytheism, so also anyone who discards “the distinction of hypostases”, is led to Judaism6. We as Christians believe in the Triune God, who has a common essence and distinct hypostases. But in order to reach this point and express himself as perfectly as possible, Basil the Great does two very important things.

First he separates the essence (ousia) from the hypostasis. Until then the essence was identified with the hypostasis, and this still appears also in the dogmatic formulation of the First Ecumenical Council. Basil the Great says that the essence or nature is what held is common in the Trinitarian God and that the hypostases are the particular ways of being of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. On this subject he says: “substance and person have the distinction that the general has with reference to the particular; for example, just as ‘a living creature’ has with reference to ‘a particular man’. For this reason we confess one essence for the Godhead, so as not to hand down variously the definition of Its existence, but we confess a person that is particular, in order that our conception of Father and Son and Holy Spirit will be distinct and perfectly clear to us”7. Making this distinction was a great effort, and I might say that it was a great “revolution”, which finally prevailed, thanks to the great influence of the personality of Basil the Great.

Secondly, Basil the Great identified the hypostasis with the person. Thus while until that time ‘person’ had meant something “unreal”, the mask, from the time of Basil the Great, and thanks to his own efforts, the person has acquired ontology and substance. The person is identified with the hypostasis, and is not something abstract, it is not a mask. St. Basil the Great, Bishop of Caesarea, writes characteristically: “For it is not sufficient to enumerate the difference in the Persons, but it is necessary to confess that each Person subsists in a true hypostasis”8. Referring to the term ‘homoousios’, he says that it is the most suitable for expressing the relationship of the Son to the Father: “This term also sets aright the error of Sabellios; for it does away with the identity of person (‘hypostasis’) and introduces a perfect notion of the Persons of the Godhead”9. Thus the ‘prosopon’ - when identified with the hypostasis - which is the essence with the particular peculiarities - takes on great value, losing its impersonal and abstract character and acquiring ontology.

These two elucidations, that is to say the separating of the essence from the hypostasis and the identifying of hypostasis with person, were necessary in order to combat the heresies about the Trinitarian God. Anyone who identifies essence with hypostasis necessarily accepts the teaching of Sabellios. Basil the Great writes felicitously: “Those who say that substance and persons are the same are forced to confess different Persons only, and in hesitating to speak of three Persons, they find that they fail to avoid the evil of Sabellius, who even himself, although often confusing his notions, tried to distinguish the Persons by saying that the same Person changed its appearance according to the need arising on each occasion”10.

Since the fourth century, then, person has been identified with hypostasis, and essence with nature. These terms are suitable for expressing the dogma of the Holy Trinity. Of course we must add that they do not help us to understand the mystery of the Holy Trinity. As the expression “mystery of the Holy Trinity” bears witness, we cannot understand this great mystery with our reason, but we can formulate it in these terms, even though they are completely inadequate, and therefore we often use apophatic expressions. Thus we can understand logically the dogma about the mystery of the Holy Trinity and not the mystery in itself, which transcends human reason and is a subject of revelational experience.

However, I should like us to look at the meaning of the person in the teaching of St. John of Damaskos, who summarised the whole theology of the Church on this subject. We need to do this in order to be able in some way to understand the terms which the holy Fathers used to express and formulate as best they could the relationships between the Persons of the Holy Trinity. In particular we shall look at the meanings of ‘essence’ ‘nature’, ‘hypostasis’, and ‘person’ as they are interpreted by St. John of Damaskos.

“Essence’(ousia) is a thing which subsists in itself” and has no need of another for its existence”. Likewise essence is everything that subsists in itself “and does not have its existence in another - that is to say, that which is not because of any other thing”, nor has need of another to be formed, but which is in itself. Essence (ousia) gets its name from being. Therefore it exists of itself, it does not owe its existence to anything else.

“The nature of each being is the principle of its motion and repose”. The nature is identified with the essence, since, according to St. John of Damaskos, “it is nothing other than essence”. Thus it is from essence that nature has such a potentiality, which is to say its motion and repose.

The term ‘hypostasis’ has two meanings. Sometimes it means simple existence. In this sense the hypostasis is connected with the essence, and this is why certain of the Fathers have said: “the natures, that is to say, hypostases”. At other times it means “the existence of an individual substance in itself”, and it signifies the difference of one individual from the other.

It must be pointed out here that these two meanings are given by St. John of Damascus because in the early Church there were two traditions about the meaning of hypostasis. Alexandrian theology associated the essence with the hypostasis, while Cappadocian theology associated the hypostasis with the person. Thus we see that in the Creed as formulated by the First Ecumenical Council the word hypostasis was used in the sense of essence, while finally in the Second Ecumenical Council the teaching was given that the hypostasis is connected with the person and is distinct from the meaning of essence. We see this position also in the Cappadocian Fathers, but we must point out that it was accepted by Athanasius the Great as well. It is a fact that we have no change in theology, but only in terminology. Finally it prevailed that essence is to be associated with nature and hypostasis with person.

In any case, essence cannot subsist by itself, since formless essence does not subsist, while in the hypostases, or individuals, are found both the essence and the intrinsic differences.

A ‘person’ according to the teaching of St. John of Damaskos, is “one who by reason of his own operations and properties exhibits to us an appearance which is distinct and set off from those of the same nature as he”, that is to say a person is one who appears as somebody in particular among the many of his kind. And St. John of Damaskos mentions two examples to make it clear. The archangel Gabriel who appeared to the Panagia and talked with her, while he was one of the angels and belonged to a particular species, was at the same time a particular individual “distinct from the angels consubstantial with him”. That is to say, it is a matter of a particular individual who belonged to a choir of angels. Likewise we have the other example, that of the Apostle Paul. When the Apostle was speaking to the people, “while he was one among the number of men, by his characteristics and operations he was distinct from the rest of men”. While he was a man, at the same time he was distinguished from the other men by the particular gifts and merits which he had.

It must be emphasised that, according to St. John of Damaskos, hypostasis, person and individual are the same thing. At one point he says: “hypostases or individuals”, and in another place he says: “One should know that the holy Fathers used the terms ‘hypostasis’ and ‘person’ and ‘individual’ for the same thing”11.

From this brief analysis by St. John of Damaskos it appears that the essence is associated with the nature and the hypostasis is associated with the person. And yet it appears that essence or nature cannot subsist without the person or hypostasis. When we speak of hypostasis or person, we mean the essence or nature with its distinctive features. And of course, as we mentioned before, the teaching about the person was formulated by the holy Fathers with regard to the Trinitarian God in order to clarify the relations between the persons of the Holy Trinity, because of the appearance of various heretical doctrines, which falsified the teaching of the Revelation.

For man the holy Fathers mainly used the term 'anthropos'. They did not speak so much about a person, but about man. All the patristic passages refer to the great value of man, who has been created by God in His image and likeness, is the crown of creation and has a special purpose: to attain deification by grace. The term 'man' is scriptural and refers to the first chapters of Genesis.

St. John Chrysostom exclaims: "Man is God's profound animal". St. Gregory the Theologian says: "He fashions man a single living being out of both - the visible and the invisible nature". St. Gregory of Nyssa writes: "That great and precious thing, man". Basil the Great writes: "A man thou art, but the only one of the animals to be deified".

I could mention plenty of patristic passages in which it appears that when the Fathers speak of the crown of creation, God's most perfect work, they call him man.

But I must point out that when they call him man, they do not simply mean by this his biological substance, but also the presence of the Holy Spirit in him. St. John Chrysostom says: "For a man is not simply one who has a man's hands and feet, nor one who is merely rational, but one who practises devotion and virtue with confidence". One does not only have to be born biologically in order to be called a man, but must also have the Holy Spirit within one. Thus a living and real man is one who is "favoured" with the grace of God. Otherwise, he is a man dead to God and swayed by various passions, one is like the animals.

Despite the fact that in speaking of God the Holy Fathers call Him Person and in speaking of man they chiefly call him man, still the term 'person' in some cases is applied also to man. And of course this is by condescension, because they know that there is an enormous difference between God and man, between Creator and creature. God is uncreated, while man is created.

In analysing the subject of the person according to the teaching of St. John of Damaskos, we have already seen that in order to interpret the term 'person', the saint took two examples, one from the angels and the other from men. What St. John of Damaskos says is characteristic. He writes "A person is one who by reason of his own operations and properties exhibits to us an appearance which is distinct and set off from those of the same nature as he - like Gabriel... and Paul...". Of course these are taken as examples, but still we can say that they point to a reality.

In another case St. John of Damaskos ascribes the terms hypostasis and person to man. He writes: "Since men are many, each man is a hypostasis: Adam is a hypostasis, Eve another hypostasis, and Seth another hypostasis. And so on. Each man is a different hypostasis from other men, and each ox is a hypostasis, and each angel is a hypostasis. So they all have nature and form and essence and they have consubstantial hypostases, but they also have an individual and personal and partial hypostasis, that is to say, each of those contained in the same species". It is seen from this passage that man too is a hypostasis and, since the hypostasis is identified with the person, the term 'person' is applied to man as well.

We can dimly see that kind of correlation between man and person in some passages in Holy Scripture as well. In speaking of man's union and communion with God, the Apostle Paul uses the expression 'face to face' ('prosopon pros prosopon'). He says: "For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face (1 Cor. 13,12). If we think of this passage as referring to noetic prayer, that is to say, to illumination of the nous ("in a mirror dimly") and to deification, that is to say, to the vision of God ("face to face"), then we can understand that man can be characterised as a person, when he is united with God by deification and in the state of deification. Moreover he is also the real man. Furthermore, the Apostle himself, referring to a great trouble in Asia and to his deliverance with the help of God and the prayers of the Christians, says: "who delivered us from so great a death and does deliver us; in whom we trust that He will still deliver us, you also helping together in prayer for us, that thanks may be given by many persons on our behalf for the gift granted to us through many" (2 Cor. 1, 10-11).

Today we use to satiety the term 'person' and 'personality' for man. Special care is needed, because there are many person-centred systems which give this term an abstract character, limiting the ontology of man to this self in itself, to the person of man. Furthermore there are psychological schools which speak abstractly about man's personality and think that this means simply his freedom, which also approaches anarchy. However, in the orthodox teaching we believe that the ontology of man is to be found in his Archetype, in the God Who created him, since man is made in the image of God. Thus "biological existence does not exhaust man. Man is understood ontologically by the Fathers only as a theological being. His ontology is iconic".P. Perhaps since there is this danger, the term 'man' is emphasised more than the term 'person' by some of our contemporaries, who are afraid of the ill-timed and constant use of the latter term.

I think that we can use the term 'person' also for man with great care, when we make certain distinctions. One of these is that, as in the case of the term 'man', according to the Fathers we cannot simply apply it to all those who are living, but chiefly to those who partake of the purifying, illuminating and deifying energy of God, and so we can use the term 'person' to refer to those who are on their way towards deification by grace and are being deified. Just as "in the image" is potentially likeness and "in the likeness" is actually "image", so also man by his biological existence is potentially man and person. He will become a real man when he partakes of the uncreated energy of God. As God is Person, it means that man becomes a person when he unites with God.

Likewise today a distinction is made between the person and the individual. The term 'person' is used to mean the man who has freedom and love and is clearly distinguished from the mass, and the term 'individual' characterises the man who remains a biological being and spends his whole life and activities on his material and biological needs, without having any other pursuit in his life.

In the Fathers as presented by St. John of Damaskos there is no difference between individual and person. The holy Fathers identify person with individual. I think, however, that if we look at this view within the whole patristic teaching, apart from the verbal differences, we will find elements of truth. This means that we can use this distinction between individual and person when we wish to distinguish the man who is inspired by the grace of God from the other man who simply uses himself up with his material and biological needs.

The fact that we can apply the term 'person' to man as well, with the necessary explanations and distinctions which we have mentioned, is seen also in contemporary deified persons who, being partakers of the same revealing experience of the holy Fathers and having a patristic awareness, are using this term. They teach especially that it is at this point that the difference between Orthodoxy and the other confessions lies, as well as the difference between Orthodoxy and the other eastern religions.

One of them is Archimandrite Sophrony, who writes: "In the Divine Being the Hypostasis constitutes the innermost esoteric principle of Being. Similarly, in the human being the hypostasis is the most intrinsic fundamental. Persona is 'the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible... which is, in the sight of God, of great price' (1 Peter 3-4) - the most precious kernel of man's whole being, manifested in his capacity for self-knowledge and self-determination; in his possession of creative energy; in his talent for cognition not only of the created world but also of the Divine world. Consumed with love, man feels himself joined with his beloved God. Through this union he knows God, and thus love and cognition merge into a single act".

It can be seen from this excerpt that man is characterised as hypostasis-person, but in the sense that the person is the inner core of his existence, and is connected with his impulse towards God and his union with Him. We shall examine the ascetic dimension of the person, which nowadays is usually not examined, later in this chapter.

In all the works of Archimandrite Sophrony we see that God is Person and that the man who has communion and union with God is a person. In general, all our actions should have a hypostatic and personal character and all of us should travel the hypostatic way. But even obedience is a hypostatic experience, while love too is a communion of beloved persons.

All of this shows that the holy Fathers used the term 'Person' to point to the particular Hypostases of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But they more often use the term 'anthropos', man, for people. Yet there are some indications that the term 'person' is sometimes also applied to a man. But this must be done with special care, for it is possible to give a philosophical and abstract character to the term 'person'. Properly a man and a person is one who has passed from the image to the likeness. In the teaching of the holy Fathers, to be in the image is potentially to be in the likeness, and being in the likeness is actually the image. In the same way the man created by God and recreated by the Church through Holy Baptism, is potentially a person. But when, through his personal struggle, and especially by the grace of God, he attains the likeness, then he is actually a person. Therefore we maintain that ontologically all people can be regarded as persons, and even the devil himself is a person, but soteriologically we are not all persons, since we have not all attained the likeness.

Various person-centred and humanistic systems speak of the person, and various psychological schools refer to man's personality, which is free to make its choices. Contemporary theologians, having discovered that all these systems have an abstract use for the term 'person', have undertaken to give theological dimensions to the person and to look at man's life within this interpretation.

In fact, in speaking of the person, not only classical but also contemporary philosophy give it an ethical meaning and say that that which constitutes the human person is the self-existent coherence of the spiritual energies of each concrete self, that man is a person thanks to the natural constitution of his organism, and so forth. As has been aptly observed, "different definitions of the subject which the term 'person' expresses in itself have been offered from time to time, but no one has given them sufficient consideration". Therefore "the attempts that have been made to define the 'person' are limited and inadequate".

Of all the interpretations concerning man as a person which have been given from the theological point of view I can point to two of the most characteristic, which give two dimensions to the term 'person'. One is more theological-philosophical and the other is more ecclesiological. I use the term 'more' because they are not completely separate from each other, as there are elements of truth in both interpretations.

Professor Christos Yannaras expresses the first. He gives us the definition of the person and its dimensions in philosophical-theological language. He says that self-consciousness, on the one hand, and otherness on the other, are what differentiates one person from another. These terms are used by the holy Fathers. For instance the term 'otherness' is used by St. Dionysios the Areopagite and St. Gregory of Nyssa. Yannaras writes: "We all understand that what differentiates personal existence from every other form of existence is self-consciousness and otherness. We call the awareness of our own existence 'self-consciousness', the certainty that I have that I exist, and that it is I who exist, a being with identity, an identity which differentiates me from every other being. And this differentiation is an absolute otherness, a unique, distinct, and unrepeatable character which defines my existence". But since this self-knowledge and otherness are not products of thought but of many factors which are being investigated by contemporary psychology as well, therefore the way in which the ego is formed and matures "is nothing other than the relationship, reference. It is the potential which constitutes man, the potential to be opposite someone or something, to have one's face-toward someone or something, to be a person" (pros-opon) . Thus "we use the word 'person' to define a relational reality. The person is defined as a reference and relationship and it defines a reference and a relationship".

I think these are the central points of this analysis of the person. They chiefly emphasise two characteristic points, properties, of the person, such as self-knowledge and otherness. And to be sure, these cannot be interpreted apart from reference, apart from a going and moving towards some other person. This means that the person does not know aloneness. It is not my intention to make a greater analysis of these points or more generally of the term 'person' in this sense.

In an excellent study of his, Metropolitan John Zizioulas of Pergamus gives the ecclesiological dimension of the term 'person' and points out that it is not possible for us to see and interpret man as a person apart from his ecclesial basis.

Analysing the distinctive marks of the person, he specifies them as three. One is freedom. Indeed when we speak of freedom we do not mean it in the ethical and philosophical sense of the possibility of choice, but are referring to the lack of commitment to any given, even the given of existence. It appertains to the uncreated. The second element of the person is love, since "the only exercise of freedom in an ontological manner is love". The third distinctive mark is the "concrete, singular, and unrepeatable entity".

We should point out that even these three distinguishing features which constitute the person exist only in God, since only God is self-existent, has real love and is singular. Man can become a person and attain that which is uncreated by grace, love as ecstatic self-transcendence, and "ever well being", only through his relationship and communion with God. Thus "patristic theology considers the person to be an 'image and likeness of God'. It is not satisfied with a humanistic interpretation of the person". Therefore man is preserved as a person only in the experience of deification and in living the way of salvation.

At this point Metropolitan John analyses the ecclesiological dimension of the term 'person'. He sees man in two modes of existence. "The first is what may be called the hypostasis of biological existence, the other the hypostasis of ecclesial existence". By analysing this point and in particular by analysing the sacraments of Baptism and the divine Eucharist, he presents the truth that man is born as a person through the sacraments. And therefore "the concept of the person is indissolubly bound up with Theology".

We have said before that these two particular analyses do not differ radically from each other, but they express and interpret two sides of this great theme of how man actively becomes a person. At the same time these two aspects also present the ascetic side of the subject. Self-knowledge cannot be realised and lived without ascesis, but neither can the ecclesiological hypostasis come into being apart from ascesis. Furthermore "The ascetic character of the ecclesial hypostasis does not come from a denial of the world or of the biological nature of existence itself. It implies a denial of the biological hypostasis". Thus ascesis is essential for man's fulfilment and his journey from the image to the likeness.

Nevertheless, let me point out that today a great deal is being said about the philosophical-theological understanding of the person and about the ecclesiological dimension of the person, but there is not much talk about the asceticism of the person. I emphasise the word 'much' because there is mention, but I think not what there should be. The analysis which is being undertaken is certainly essential, but someone should stay with this aspect. If we do not give due emphasis to the ascetic dimension of the person, that is, to h o w man becomes a person, we cannot effectively help the people of today. I think that the holy Fathers, especially those called neptic, offer valuable teaching on this subject. If we refuse to look at it, we are rather making Christianity an ideology. Therefore in the following section we shall concern ourselves with this important side of the subject.

In speaking of asceticism we do not make it an absolute, and we do not make it independent of the sacramental life. The sacramental life cannot be understood without asceticism, nor can the ascetic life be understood without the sacramental. The rejection of asceticism, that is to say, of hesychasm, is the life proclaimed by the westernised Barlaam, and the rejection of the sacraments for asceticism is an attitude of life which the Massalians taught and lived. In Orthodoxy there is a close relationship between ascetic and sacramental life. But at this point we shall speak particularly about asceticism-hesychasm, because, unfortunately, it is being overlooked nowadays, with the result that we do not see the person fully.

We have said before that the person is the hidden man of the heart. Archimandrite Sophrony is epigrammatic and expressive when he writes: "Scientific and philosophical knowledge may be formulated, but the 'persona' is beyond definition and therefore incognisable from without, unless he himself reveals himself. Since God is a Secret God, so man has secret depths. He is neither the author of existence nor its end. God, not man, is the Alpha and Omega. Man's godlike quality lies in the mode of his being".

Therefore no one can define the person philosophically, but it is an object of revelation. And this revelation happens in the place of the heart. There man grasps that a change is taking place and that he is changing from a mask to a person.

The revelation and living of the person is also called man's rebirth. Man is given rebirth by divine grace and becomes a person, or rather it could be better formulated that the person is reborn from above. "The person is reborn from on High. An exquisite flower unfolds within us: the hypostasis-persona. Like the Kingdom of God, the persona 'cometh not with observation' (Luke 17:20). The process whereby the human spirit enters into the domain of divine eternity differs with each one of us".

The person transcends the earthly, for it is born of divine grace. It is not a revelation of man, but a revelation of God. "The 'persona' transcends earthly bounds and moves in other spheres. It cannot be accounted for. It is singular and unique".

To be sure, it must be added that the person is closely linked with the uncreated Light and love. "God reveals Himself, mainly through the heart, as Love and Light". The person cannot be understood without the revelation-vision of God and real love for God and man. The person does not know loneliness but he always moves in a relationship and lives this relationship. When a man discovers his heart by the grace of God, then he is truly and really a person.

This way in which the place of the heart, the core of man's existence - that which can be characterised as person - is discovered, is called hesychasm. It is the only method by which man is reborn spiritually. In using this method one can also be helped by the sacramental life of the Church; otherwise the sacraments work in a punishing way.

I had a conversation with someone who presented me with a problem that had been created for him by reading my books. He said to me: "On the one hand you speak of the person and on the other hand you are always writing about man's cure and hesychasm. How do these things go together?" I replied that at this point one can see the close relationship of the person with asceticism. If the person is not cured, if he is not moving from the image to the likeness, he cannot become a person. Anyway, the meaning of the person is not philosophical, but theological. And theology cannot be understood apart from experience.

Next I would like to analyse two ways by which the person is revealed, the inner world is revealed and man becomes a person in reality. These two ways are not opposed to each other, but they express and manifest the same thing from different sides.

The first way is to be found in man's attempt - inspired primarily by the grace of God - to free his nous from logic, the surrounding world and the passions. Since the fall, man's nous has been confused, and therefore it has to be freed. This constitutes true freedom. The liberation of the nous from logic is done through hesychasm. This means that the man struggles to rid himself of the things which bind him, he does obedience to a deified spiritual father, practises scientific prayer, that is to say he tries to do spiritual prayer unceasingly, sometimes with his lips, sometimes with reasoning, he is constantly sober, watchful not to let any tempting image from his thinking enter his heart; and this method is called therapy. Thus the man is cured and proceeds towards deification - he throws off the mask of the passions and becomes a person.

This method which is practised by the genuine hesychast is presented by St. Gregory Palamas. We shall look at the text as it is reported by St. Philotheos Kokkinos, who adapts it to the first, as he describes the way in which St. Gregory Palamas attained deification and gained experiences of the divine life.According to St. Gregory, the nous must be detached from things outside, from its diffusion among things created, and return to the heart. As soon as it has returned, it sees the "hideous mask from its wandering below". Seeing this ugliness, it tries to purify it with sorrow. When it has removed this ugly mask, the mask of the superficial man, then the nous enters the heart and there prays unceasingly to God "in secret". Thus he acquires noetic prayer. Then God gives him the gift which is called peace from thoughts. The peace offers him humility, which is what conserves every virtue. From peace from thoughts and humility come all the other virtues, in the midst of which is love. On the threshold of these is the prelude to the age to come, and there blossoms the ineffable joy that cannot be taken away.

Spiritual poverty is the mother of freedom from anxiety. Freedom from anxiety is the mother of attentiveness and prayer, and these two are mothers of mourning and tears. The tears purify the whole content of the hideous mask. It is only then that the way of virtue becomes easier and the conscience blameless. And from there comes the most perfect joy, and the grieving tear is changed to being very sweet, and prayer is changed to thankfulness.

Thus far all these are the gifts of betrothal, of the pledge. After this ascetic effort the liberated nous, surpassing the mind, all that is perceptible, and fantasy, presents itself deaf and dumb to God and is illuminated. The man who attains illumination of the nous becomes a real, natural man, entering into his true life's work and climbing the eternal mountain. And "what a marvel meets his view!" Without being separated from matter, he ascends by the ineffable power of the Spirit and thus "hears unutterable words and sees the invisible. And thereafter he can be and is completely held in wonder, even if he is away from there, and vying with the untiring singers of praises, he becomes another true angel of God on earth".

Then the nous attains the vision of the uncreated Light. To be sure, St. Gregory says that the Light is everywhere, but it does not shine in the same way on all. It is seen according to the man's purity of heart, but also according to the will of the God Who gives light. In any case, when a man's nous is illuminated, then "also many tokens of divine beauty are conveyed to the attached body as well".

Also coming from the vision of the uncreated Light is the habit of virtue, as well as inability or difficulty to move towards evil. From that comes man's theological word, his gift of miracles, foresight and insight. Above all, man acquires knowledge of all the future. The great benefit of this training is "the return of the nous to itself" and the return of all the powers of the soul to the nous and of God's energy to the nous, and through this the man comes back to that ancient and indescribable beauty.

In presenting to us the way in which the Panagia attained deification, St. Gregory Palamas at the same time analyses the path which man must follow in order to become a person. He says that in man, between nous and sensation, are imagination, reason and belief. Thus man has at his disposal, nous, imagination, belief, reason and sensation. Imagination, belief and reason originate from sensation. Imagination, belief and reason. But sensation is the irrational power of the soul and therefore cannot be lifted up and recognise God. Therefore it is impossible for anyone to recognise God and attain deification by the other powers of his soul and body. This can be done only by the nous, since it is the only organ with which man can recognise God. Through the ascetic method the nous breaks away from reasoning, the surrounding world and the passions, it enters the heart, unites in grace with the heart and then is lifted up to the vision of God. This results in man's cure, the deification of his whole being. And naturally in this way he becomes a person.

This method described by St. Gregory Palamas is what is called hesychasm - the only way for man to attain deification and become a person.

The second way in which the person is revealed does not differ distinctly from the preceeding, but it is complicated, because it has a different beginning and starting-point. It is analysed again by the holy Fathers of the Church, because the method of becoming a person is different. In what follows I shall describe some stages in this journey.

By God's good will the man suddenly and unexpectedly experiences a Pentecost, Revelation. We see this in the Apostle Paul, to whom Christ revealed Himself at the very time when he was persecuting Him. By His manifestation God contracts a personal testament with man. Then the man realises that God is not an abstract idea, nor some person of the past, but is a living being. He also realises that God is Trinitarian, one essence and three Persons, because he sees three lights. He sees the personal characteristics, the particular ways of being, because the Son is Light incarnate, the Father is a Light which is the cause of the other two Lights, and the Holy Spirit is a Light which has its source in the Father but is not incarnate. This revelation of God demolishes all the ideas which the man had previously about God, he sees his past falls, and acquires true repentance, brokenness, weeping, in deep humility.

God's Revelation makes a man's prayer hypostatic-personal. He does not pray to an abstract God, he does not simply do a meditation, he is not busy with the transcending of good and evil, with the categories of the so-called cosmic and ethical life, but he prays person to person. He takes up again the Psalmist's: "My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before the face of God?" (Psalm 42,3).

Such a relationship increases repentance, because in this situation one sees one's wretchedness under God's light. St. Gregory of Sinai says characteristically: "If we do not know what we were like when God made us, we shall not realise what sin has turned us into". St. Macarios of Egypt, referring to Christ's parable in which the widow lit a lamp and thus found her lost drachma, says that the same is true with man. "Truly the soul is incapable by itself of studying its own thoughts and discerning them. But with the divine lamp lit, the light dispels the darkness from the house. Then a person sees his own thoughts, how they have been covered by impurity and the mud of sin. The sun rises and the soul sees its loss and begins to revoke the thoughts that had been so mixed with dirt and squalor". St. Symeon the New Theologian says that if man does not see himself, he cannot be called a man, for he is an "ox" or a "beast".

In this state he develops an uncontrollable thirst for perfection. He wants to attain greater knowledge of God, for there is no end to perfection, no limit to virtue.

And naturally the rebirth of a man, the discovery of his heart, the finding of the hypostatic principle, results in his love for the whole world developing continually. And this is expressed by prayer and sacrifice for the whole world. His heart is aflame with love. Then the man oversteps the limited boundaries of his ego and from love and with love he enters into the hypostasis of the other. He lives the kenosis of Christ to a degree, and Christ's agony in Gethsemane. He weeps for the whole world. In the lives of many saints we see this sympathising heart which they had for all creation, even for the devil. This sacrificial prayer, which takes place within the experience of seeing the divine and discovering the person, is called a royal priesthood, and all who pray noetically have what is called spiritual ordination.

It is essential to look at the ascetic dimension of the person, because we cannot understand the person from the orthodox point of view in any other way. When anyone follows the concrete method used by the Orthodox Church, he can experience just what a person is. This aspect is also emphasised by Archimandrite Sophrony Sakharov in his recent book, and will allow me to make a reference.

Archimandrite Sophrony observes: "The Hypostasity of God escapes definition because it cannot be subject to any kind of determination. Not to be known rationally, it can be apprehended existentially and only in so far as God reveals Himself to man (cf. Matt. 11,27; Luke 10:22; John 17:26).

"In man too, image of the Personal God, the principle of the person is 'the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible... which is in the sight of God of great price' (1 Pet. 3:4). The created person is also beyond definition. Scientific and philosophical cognition can be expressed in concepts and definitions, but the person is being, not subject to philosophical or scientific forms of cognition. Like God, the persona-hypostasis cannot be thoroughly known from outside unless he reveals himself to another person".

What we can underline from this passage is that the person, whether in God or in man, cannot be expressed fully in philosophical and scientific terms, because it is beyond them. The person is revealed existentially. Therefore we can speak about the mystery of the person. The person himself reveals himself. And this is a matter of experience, revelation.

The fact that we realise that God is one essence and three persons is a matter of experience, of personal revelation. In other words, God Himself reveals Himself to man and offers him knowledge of Himself. The saints received the Revelation, reached Pentecost, experienced the uncreated words and understandings and later made this revealing experience known as best they could with created words and concepts, because it was needed for their time. Thus one cannot understand and experience the threefoldness of God by means of terms, in spite of their usefulness. It is a matter of experience. Therefore the Fathers came to the point of saying that God is Threefold, having one essence and three hypostases, but in fact He is neither a monad nor a triad, as we conceive and understand these things. It is essentially a matter of experience, of participation in Pentecost.

Archimandrite Sophrony presents one such personal experience: "The light which appears in man when he believes in Christ testifies to His Divinity. Our spirit accepts the Lord Jesus as immutable Truth, authentically Holy. And this eternal Light begets testimony within us identical with the teaching of Christ. In this Light we contemplate the Father. We apprehend this Light as the Holy Spirit. In it we see Christ as the only-begotten Son of the Father. In it we perceive the Oneness of the Three. Praying to this God, we live the One Being of the Three Persons. But we apprehend and relate to this Oneness variously: I approach the Father in one fashion; I pray otherwise to the Holy Spirit; I turn to Christ in a different manner. An especial spiritual feeling is associated with each that in no way detracts from their Oneness of being, with each Hypostasis of the Holy Trinity we have to a certain extent a differing relationship. Closest of all we know the Lord Jesus through His incarnation, His becoming man, and through Him we are led to First-Being, which is true God - the TRINITY, one substance and undivided".

In this passage we see that knowledge of the Triune God is a subject of revelation, of participation in Pentecost. By Revelation, as we have said, man sees three Lights, attains awareness of the common essence, of the Oneness of God, but also of the particularity of each Person. He sees clearly that the Father is Light, Who is the source of the other Lights, that Christ is Light incarnate, and the Holy Spirit is Light which proceeds from the first Light, but nevertheless is not incarnate, is not embodied. The knowledge which the deified have of the Threefold God is experiential knowledge. This knowledge passes into words and terms of the time, such as essence and hypostases or persons. Thus the terms essence and person cannot provide the true knowledge of God, but knowledge about God. Therefore we cannot speak about the mystery of the Holy Trinity, since the Holy Trinity as a mystery is incomprehensible, but we can speak about the knowledge of the doctrine concerning the mystery of the Holy Trinity.

This is the case with man as well. The term 'person', which is used also for man, cannot offer full knowledge of man, because it too is a mystery which is revealed to the understanding of experience. Archimandrite Sophrony makes the following observation in relation to this topic:

"When by a gift from on High it was granted to me to comprehend the ontological place of the principle of the 'persona' in Divine Being, everything naturally changed round and appeared in the opposite perspective; we are created beings; as 'personae' we are beings created potentially, not actually. I am not First-Being but a created image of Him. By the Gospel commandments I am summoned to actualise, to realise in myself, my personal likeness to God, as 'persona', to overcome the limitation of the individual, which can in no wise inherit the Divine form of being".

Here, among other things, are presented three great truths. One is that the revelation of God as Person, which is a gift of divine grace, also manifests the createdness of the human person. Within experience man sees his createdness, that he was made a person potentially in order to become one in action. The other truth is that man can become a person in action, that is to say, he can attain the likeness by keeping the commandments of Christ. The commandments of Christ refer to man's purification and to the illumination of the nous. And the third truth is that man must transcend the limits of the individual, because the individual, which constitutes a biological being, cannot attain the likeness, which means that man must change from an individual and become a person. And this happens through keeping Christ's commandments.

In another place Archimandrite Sophrony also sets out the way that one must follow in order to reach the Revelation of the mystery of the person. Since this text is very graphic and fluent, I shall quote it as it stands.

"Even if only 'in part', nevertheless, for the sake of the prayers of my father St. Silouan, the Lord revealed to me the mystery of the persona. Year after year I prayed prayers of despair. The Lord did not despise me, and descended in mercy even unto me. At first it was His gospel word that acted on me. This word, that proceedeth from the Father, took root in my hardened heart. My new life was born in suffering. To begin with, I was as it were suspended in the air, alone, outside the Church. I was completely ignorant then, but an invisible fire consumed me, and my soul in agony reached up to the Almighty to save me. Somewhere inside me a ray of hope appeared that overcame my dread of starting out on the painful path. This pain that I am trying to speak of is sacred for me. A strange miracle - the dolour in my heart brought moments of rapture to my spirit. I marvelled how God had created my nature able to endure suffering through which hitherto unknown depths of prayer were disclosed to me. There were times when, gripped by pain, in a whisper that yet cried aloud in wonder I would exclaim, 'Glory to Thee, all-wise Creator'. Prayer delivered me from the cramped prison of the world, and my spirit lived in the freedom of the infinity of my God. Without this suffering I could never have understood the love that the Lord spoke of when He said, 'The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me. But that the world may know that I love the Father, and as the Father gave me commandment, even so I do' (John 14:30-31).

And this extract is revealing, mainly for three reasons. First because it is a contemporary experience, and shows the common experience of the holy Fathers. Secondly, because it presents vividly the truth that the subject of the person is a mystery, which is revealed by God Himself through the prayers of the spiritual fathers. Thirdly, because the revelation of the person presupposes a deep pain. It is connected with a light, which burns the inner man and leads him by an impulse to search for God. It is related to burning prayer and ecstasy, and in general to man's rebirth and the acquisition of new life.

From all these things it is clear that without asceticism it is impossible for us to understand and experience the person, which is a mystery. The terms define something and point out a path, but they can never replace the experience. In spite of their usefulness, they are completely inadequate.

Thus by means of orthodox asceticism, which has its place within the framework of the Church and differs from every other asceticism, man can attain the hypostatic principle, he can follow the hypostatic path and do away with the "hideous mask from his wandering below" - he can really become a person. The person is not exhausted in philosophical definitions and theological analyses, but is experienced within suffering. A new being is born through suffering. Just as suffering is linked with biological birth, so also spiritual suffering is linked with man's spiritual birth.

It is essential and necessary to consider the asceticism of the person. If we do not look at the subject from this angle, we cannot have a good understanding of what the holy Fathers teach about it. Therefore the emphasis on the asceticism of the person is not a luxury for our life, but a necessity.

Without this orientation many dangers and great problems are created. We would not only not understand orthodox theology, but neither would we understand the contemporary problems which are arising every day.

In what follows I should like to look at three problems which are arising today and are creating numerous dilemmas, and which can be solved only if we look at the ascetic dimension of the person.

It is being emphasised today that the person is linked with love and that only as person can man have true and real love. We read that "Personal distinctiveness is revealed and known only within the framework of direct personal relationship and communion, only by participation in the principle of personal immediacy, or of the loving and creative force which distinguishes the person from the common nature. And this revelation and knowledge of personal distinctiveness becomes ever more full as the fact of communion and relationship achieves its wholeness in love. Love is the supreme road to knowledge of the person, because it is an acceptance of the other person as a whole. It does not project on to the other person individual preferences, demands or desires, but accepts him as he is, in the fullness of his personal uniqueness. This is why knowledge of the distinctiveness of the person achieves its ultimate fullness in the self-transcendence and offering of self that is love, and why, in the language of the Bible, sexual intercourse is identified with knowledge of a person".

There is no doubt that when man becomes person, as described by the holy Fathers, then true love also develops and is experienced. The person is linked with love. God is a person and He loves man. That is why St. Maximos the Confessor, following St. Dionysios, says: "Theologians call the divine sometimes an erotic force, sometimes love, sometimes that which is intensely longed for and loved. Consequently, as an erotic force and as love, the divine itself is subject to movement; and, as that which is intensely longed for and loved, it moves towards itself everything which is receptive of this force and love". Thus person cannot be understood without love, and true love cannot be understood without the existence of the true person.

It is possible, however, for us to understand the person philosophically and abstractly, and by extension also to understand love as sensual and biological. That is why at this point the necessity for asceticism must be emphasised. Besides, even the character of marriage is ascetic.

Sexual love as a biological need is characterised by two passions, which "destroy precisely that towards which the human hypostasis is thrusting, namely the person". The first passion can be called ontological necessity and the second passion could be called individualism and separation of the hypostasis. The first is connected with instinct and the second with death, since a man is born who is going to die. "All this means that man as a biological hypostasis is intrinsically a tragic figure. He is born as a result of an ecstatic fact - erotic love - but this fact is interwoven with a natural necessity and therefore lacks ontological freedom. He is born as a hypostatic fact, as a body, but this fact is interwoven with individuality and with death".

This means that only when man becomes a person does he preserve love. And, as we said before, essentially the person is a revelation, a manifestation of the place of the heart, a rebirth of man. It is with these presuppositions that the Fathers of the Church speak both of person and of love.

St. Gregory Palamas writes that just as God is Nous, Word and Spirit, the same is true of man. Man too, created by God in His image, has nous, word and spirit. The spirit that quickens his body is his noetic love, "which issues from the nous and from the word and possesses in itself both the word and the nous". From these things we see that so long as the nous is pure, so is the noetic love which is connected with it. And as far as that purity of the nous is a condition for man's cure and is connected with the whole ascetic effort which man puts forth, and as far as this is connected with man's rebirth, to that extent love too is not simply biological, but noetic.

St. Dionysios the Areopagite, who speaks about love, stresses emphatically: "real love is praised as appropriate to the divine". And of course there are a number of preconditions which determine true love. When the powers of the soul are moved according to nature and above nature, then they experience real love; otherwise sensual love develops, which is an idol, or rather, a falling away from real love. St. Dionysios says: "Others, however, tended naturally to think of a partial, physical and divided love. This is not true love but an empty image or, rather, a lapse from real love".

Consequently, love is linked with the person, particularly when the person has a theological infrastructure and interpretation, and not a philosophical and psychological one. The philosophical and psychological interpretation does not give us assurance that love is genuine.

All the holy Fathers move within this framework. St. Gregory of Sinai says that love is "a spiritual intoxication that arouses our desire". In analysing this topic he writes that there are two "spiritually ecstatic loves". One is within the heart and pertains to those who are still in the process of achieving illumination of the nous, and is connected with noetic prayer, and the other is ecstatic, which pertains to those perfected in love. Both loves, which are divine, "acting on the nous, transport it beyond the sense-world". Thus true love, which constitutes the person, is a liberation of the nous from the senses. And this is also called spiritual intoxication, because the senses too are detached from their involvement with visible things.

This is the extended meaning of love in the teaching of the holy Fathers of the Church. St. Niketas Stethatos connects spiritual longing and love for other people with humility, compunction and pure prayer. "Nothing so inspires the soul with love for God and love for one's fellow men as humility, compunction and pure prayer". Humility shatters the spirit, that is to say, it makes low the heart of man. Compunction purifies the nous and illuminates the eye of the heart, and pure prayer binds the whole man to God. About this St. Niketas Stethatos says: "Where there is love for God, spiritual labour, and participation in the unapproachable light, there too the soul's powers will be at peace, the nous will be purified, and the Holy Trinity will dwell within us".

All these things indicate that we can speak of true love, when we have a real person. And, as we said before, that man is a true person who participates in the purifying, illuminating and deifying energy of God. The person is closely linked with the rebirth of man, the discovery of the heart. It is just at that point that we can speak of love. Otherwise, there are the sensual loves, which St. Gregory Palamas aptly calls the empty image of real love, the lapse from real love, as St. Dionysios the Areopagite puts it.

Many people connect the person with freedom. No one can deny this reality. Furthermore, in the teaching of the holy Fathers, the image is closely connected with freedom, independence. And this is what characterises man.

Several errors are being made at this point as well. Freedom is taken in its moral and philosophical sense as a possibility of choosing good and evil. However, in patristic teaching freedom has a different meaning. The "gnomic will", that is to say the possibility of choice, is an indication of the imperfection of man's nature. Therefore man cannot have absolute freedom. Only God has freedom in the absolute sense of the word, since God is uncreated. No being which has a beginning and owes its existence to some other being is able to have absolute freedom, but it has freedom in a relative sense. "The authentic person as absolute ontological freedom, must be 'uncreated', that is, unbounded by any 'necessity', including its own existence. If such a person does not exist in reality, the concept of the person is a presumptuous daydream".

Thus since man has been created, he does not have absolute freedom. But within his limits he can, as far as possible, acquire absolute freedom, only when he is reborn in Christ, when he becomes a dwelling of the Trinitarian God and a Temple of the Holy Spirit, when, that is to say, he becomes a person. Then, by grace, he becomes uncreated, indeed he becomes fatherless, motherless and without genealogy".

Thus, in the patristic teaching and in the language of Holy Scripture freedom does not simply and only mean the possibility of choice and preference, but the possibility of the person determining his existence. And since by our biological birth there is no possibility of our living this out, therefore it is by spiritual birth, which takes place in the Church, that we acquire the real freedom. Moreover, it is by our own will that we seek this new birth, which is clearly higher than the biological one.

Because this rebirth is a revelation and experience of the person, we can also experience real freedom. However, neither the person nor freedom can be understood apart from the ascetic way. Freedom of the nous from logic and the passions, but also from the surrounding world, gives man the possibility of seeking the beauty of personal freedom.

There are some who think that all that is written about the person is philosophical-theological, and unrelated to modern life. They think that much ink is being poured out and much time and energy wasted on a theoretical subject at a time when so many social problems are waiting to be solved. Indeed they are asking anguished questions. They say: What meaning is there in all this talk about the person, when in our societies there is such inequality, such deep suffering, when we are living the nightmare of war, nuclear disaster and ecological destruction? When there is so much rape on all levels of our society, how is it justified to be occupied with such a topic?

It is obvious that those who maintain something of this sort are defenders of the social character of Christianity or are moved by other motives anyway. The fact is that they give priority to solving social problems. At all events, it is a fact that they are offering the solution to the social problems. I would like to record some thoughts in reply to these objections.

The teaching about the human person is an existential fact. When the Fathers busied themselves with theological topics, they did not do it out of philosophical interest, but because they were sure that distortion of the dogma about God seriously upsets the matter of man's salvation. Moreover, the dogmas are medicines which cure man and guide him to acquiring health. The same is true concerning man. Our occupation with the question of what is man, what is his ontology, what are his interpersonal relations, what is the depth of man's purpose, are topics which form the essential part of Christianity, but which also interest man directly. Moreover, the so-called existential problems have first place in contemporary life.

Analyses of the person are essential, because within this framework we can solve the social problems as well. A society cannot exist without man. Man is making our society and all the social institutions ill. A person who is ill creates various disturbances and is a divisive factor. The mask is what destroys the unity of society. If a man is not a real person, he cannot live in love and freedom. Societies automatically become dominated by tyranny and hatred.

I do not mean by saying this that we expect man to improve first, and society after that. But the struggles must go on in parallel, with priority given to the cure of man. Those who give priority to the social problems are unaware of the reality and are also possessed by a western notion of how these problems are solved. They are possessed by the illusion that the improvement of social customs will bring the improvement of man. But the reality is tragic. For peace and justice to prevail without man being cured, without his becoming true man, would reveal the whole tragedy of existence. And then no one would be able to cure him.

The Fathers placed great emphasis on man. He is the crown of creation, the microcosm in the macrocosm, the epitome of creation. It is through man that all the other problems are solved. To be sure, it is possible that they cannot be solved generally and objectively, but man, through his rebirth, is not limited by them, he transcends them and in fact solves them within the limits of his personal life. The problems do not touch him, they do not block his freedom. Man reborn, as a person, exists and lives in deep peace, apart from the existing social disorders. He loves, in spite of the tragicalness of human life. He comes out of the prison of the senses, and he transcends even death itself.

The holy Fathers attach great importance and weight to the inner purity of man, to the struggle to attain inner peace and inner freedom. This inner state of peace and freedom comes through hesychasm and is what can be called godly stillness. From the great number of patristic passages I shall select the teaching of Abba Isaac the Syrian.

The saint writes that carefree and Christlike hesychia "is a higher station than that of the almsgiver... Almsgiving is like the rearing of children, but stillness is the summit of perfection". He who has the care of many "is the slave of many". He who has forsaken all and cares only for the state of his soul "is a friend of God". There are many who concern themselves with the first work, but those who do the second, hesychia, are rare.

In another place Abba Isaac the Syrian is astonishing. He compares those who perform miracles and signs in the world with those who practise hesychia, who live in stillness, and he finds the latter superior to the former. Concretely, he writes: "Do not compare those who work signs and wonders and mighty acts in the world with those who practise stillness with knowledge. Love the idleness of stillness above providing for the world's starving and the conversion of a multitude of heathen to the worship of God. It is better for you to free yourself from the shackles of sin than to free slaves from their slavery. It is better for you to make peace with your soul, causing concord to reign over the trinity within you (I mean the body, soul, and the spirit), than by your teaching to bring peace among men at variance".

In what follows Abba Isaac explains the reason for this preference. He writes that many have accomplished mighty acts, raised the dead and toiled for the conversion of the erring, and have wrought great wonders; and by their hands they have led many to the knowledge of God. And yet after these things, these same men who quickened others, "fell into vile and abominable passions and slew themselves, becoming a stumbling-block for many when their acts were made manifest". And this was because, as he says while they were still sickly in soul, instead of caring for their souls' health first. And so, ill as they were, "they committed themselves to the sea of this world in order to heal the souls of others". Therefore they reached the point of losing "their souls and falling away from their hope in God". This means that occupation with social problems presupposes that a man has been cured, otherwise instead of solving problems, he creates still more. Likewise it seems that the solution of existential problems, which are literally tormenting man, has priority.

In the teaching of St. Gregory Palamas it is clear that all the social problems and all the irregularities proceed from the darkness of the nous. He says characteristically: "A nous which deserts God becomes either bestial or demonic, and after having rebelled against the laws of nature, lusts after what belongs to others and his greed finds no satisfaction; he dissipates himself in carnal desires, and he knows no measure of pleasure. He wants to be honoured by all, while dishonouring himself with deeds, and he wants everyone to flatter him and agree with him and co-operate with his opinions, and when this does not succeed (how could it?) he is filled with unrestrained anger. His rage and anger against those of the same race is like that of the snake. And he who was created in the image and likeness of God becomes homicidal and resembles the murderer Satan himself.

Here it seems that the darkening of the nous is connected with the fall from communion with God and with becoming like the devil, and this has terrible consequences for man's life. Since he is withdrawn from the laws of natural life, he is given over to greed, desires what is his neighbour's, pursues the satisfaction of carnal desires, without having any measure for pleasure, he desires the praise and honour of others, falls victim to the passions of flattery and of going along with the injustices and opinions of others, is angry and rages and on the whole is like the beasts and the devil. All these social consequences are a fruit and result of the darkening of the nous. This means that when man tries to be cured inwardly, when he struggles to concentrate his nous and turn towards God, then he is also freed from the tyranny of social problems, but he also helps definitively in the solution of these problems. Therefore it is a primary necessity for man to be cured inwardly.

The theology of man as a person can play an important part in contemporary society. To be sure, the person par excellence is God, but man too, as created in the image and likeness of God, can become a person. This is said with essential presuppositions. In fact, the true man and true person is the one who is deified.

But in order to reach this point it is necessary to live the asceticism of the person. The Fathers of the Church give great weight to this matter. The person cannot be understood apart from Christlike asceticism, since indeed Christian asceticism is closely connected with the sacraments of the Church. If we do not look at the ascetic dimension of the human person, then we fail to see the patristic teaching concerning the person, no matter how many patristic references we may use. The patristic passages must be used and quoted within the whole atmosphere which belongs to them. If we do not look at the spirit of the patristic words, we will not be able to understand them. Only the letter will remain.

The teaching about the human person will solve many problems which are arising every day. Love, freedom, the solution of social problems, anguish and insecurity, the eastern religions, dialogue, psychological phenomena cannot be cured and confronted apart from the patristic teaching about man and about the person. Therefore this reference to the person is a matter of life, the primary condition of orthodox theology and of orthodox pastoral work.

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