The Ascetical and Mystical Fathers

The second great river of patristic literature: not the dogmatic treatise but the word of life — the desert tradition of Egypt, Cassian who carried it to the Latin West, Climacus’ Ladder on Sinai, Isaac the Syrian whose Church of the East communion is treated honestly, Symeon the New Theologian, and Gregory Palamas. Dogmatic and ascetical patristics are one tradition: the same Fathers’ criteria of doctrine and holiness, applied to teachers of prayer.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

Overview

Alongside the conciliar Fathers runs a lineage whose genre is the apophthegm, the century of chapters, the ladder, the hymn — and whose subject is the purification of the heart and the vision of God. This section maps that lineage in two arcs. The first: Egypt (Antony, the Apophthegmata, Macarius, the Evagrian problem), Cassian the bridge to the West, and Climacus’ synthesis on Sinai. The second: the later mystical Fathers — Isaac of Nineveh, received by Orthodoxy from outside her canonical boundaries; Symeon, the “New Theologian” of conscious grace; and Palamas, in whom the mystical tradition was dogmatically vindicated. Existing collections — the Desert Fathers, the Philokalia, and the individual saints — are deferred throughout; this section supplies the connective map.

Files in This Section

File Description
the-desert-cassian-and-the-ladder.md The desert tradition and its literature (the Life of Antony, the Apophthegmata, the Macarian Homilies, Evagrius as ascetical problem case); John Cassian — Egypt translated for Gaul, and the “semi-Pelagian” label examined; John Climacus and the Ladder
isaac-symeon-and-palamas.md Isaac the Syrian: bishop of the Church of the East, saint of the Orthodox calendar — the ecclesial question and the Second Part dispute treated honestly; Symeon the New Theologian and conscious experience of grace; Gregory Palamas and the dogmatic seal on the mystical tradition

See Also