02 — The Life in Christ
St. Nicholas Cabasilas’s masterwork The Life in Christ (Greek Peri tes en Christoi zoes) is the most complete Byzantine treatise on the spiritual life as a life grounded in the Mysteries of the Church. In seven books it traces how Christ is begotten in the soul through Baptism, energized through Chrismation, and consummately united to the believer in the Eucharist — a sacramental mysticism in which the goal of human existence is union with the indwelling Christ and, through it, deification.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (lay theologian; the sacramental life)
Cabasilas wrote not as a monk prescribing ascetic technique but as a layman of fourteenth-century Thessaloniki and Constantinople for whom the whole of the Christian life is given and received in the sacramental economy of the Church. The Life in Christ therefore does not begin with the soul’s effort but with what Christ has done and continues to do through Baptism, the holy myron, and the Holy Table; the moral and ascetic life follows from the sacramental life as its fruit rather than preceding it as its condition. This section examines the structure and argument of the treatise and the theology of union with Christ that is its animating centre — the conviction, drawn from St. Paul and the whole Greek patristic tradition, that Christ does not merely assist the soul from without but lives within the baptized, assimilating them to Himself.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| The Sacramental Life | The structure and argument of The Life in Christ in seven books: the life in Christ begun here and perfected hereafter, communicated through the three Mysteries of initiation — Baptism (being), Chrismation (energy), Eucharist (perfection) — followed by the consecration of the altar, the life of virtue, and the dignity of human nature; Cabasilas’s grounding of the spiritual life in the sacraments rather than in ascetic method. |
| Union with Christ | The theology of the indwelling Christ as the goal of human existence (Galatians 2:20); the Eucharist as the most intimate union, in which we do not draw Christ to ourselves but are assimilated to Him as food is assimilated — reversed, so that He makes us into Himself; and how this union issues in deification (theosis). |
See Also
- The Layman Theologian — the lay author whose theology of the sacramental life The Life in Christ expresses
- The Explanation of the Liturgy — Cabasilas’s companion commentary on the rite that consecrates the Mysteries treated here
- Grace and the Sacraments — the doctrine of grace underlying the sacramental mysticism of The Life in Christ
- The Sacraments of Initiation: Baptism and Chrismation — the Mysteries of Books II–III in the wider dogmatic frame
- The Eucharist — the Mystery of Book IV, the perfection of the life in Christ
References
- Cabasilas, Nicholas. The Life in Christ. Trans. Carmino J. deCatanzaro. Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1974.
- Cabasilas, Nicholas. La Vie en Christ. Ed. and trans. Marie-Hélène Congourdeau. Sources Chrétiennes 355 & 361. Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1989–1990.
- Russell, Norman. The Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic Tradition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
- Spiteris, Yannis. Cabasilas: teologo e mistico bizantino. Rome: Lipa, 1996.