Symeon the New Theologian held that the direct experience of God as light is available now, that it is the point of the Christian life, and that a person who has not had it has not yet begun. He described his own experiences in the first person, which is unusual for a Byzantine writer, and he held that spiritual authority follows that experience rather than the office, which brought him into conflict with the church administration and into exile. He is one of only three figures in the Orthodox tradition given the title Theologian.
Facts
Life
Lifespan or Floruit Office HeldServed as abbot of the Monastery of Saint Mamas in Constantinople, where his insistence that direct, conscious experience of the divine light was open to any believer rather than reserved for a monastic elite brought him into conflict with church authorities and a period of exile. 1 Place of ActivityConstantinople, as abbot of the monastery of St Mamas, and later in exile across the Bosphorus 1 Publications
Notable PublicationThe Hymns of Divine Love and the Catecheses, which insist that the conscious experience of the divine light is available now and not only to the ancients 1 Attestation
Traditions Revering This Figure History
Historical NoteHe is one of only three writers the Eastern Orthodox tradition has given the honorific title Theologian, alongside the Apostle John and Gregory of Nazianzus of the fourth century, a rare designation reserved for those held to have written from direct experiential knowledge of God rather than from doctrinal argument alone. 1 Position Profile
Key TextHis own first person writings describing his experience of God as light are unusual for a Byzantine author and are the primary record of his teaching. 1 Status
Status Within the TraditionHe held that the uncreated light seen by Moses and by the disciples at the Transfiguration is the same divine light available to any believer today through prayer, a continuity between scripture and present experience that later Orthodox theology systematized as the doctrine of uncreated light. 1 Origins
Origin of the NameThe Orthodox tradition applies the honorific Theologian to only two other figures, John the Evangelist and Gregory of Nazianzus, so Symeon's own use of the title, adopted centuries after their era, is itself a claim about the rank of his spiritual authority. 1 Learn More
The Light, and the Insistence That It Is Available Now
Symeon writes about his own experience in the first person, in detail, which almost nobody in the Byzantine tradition did. He describes a light that is not a metaphor and not a symbol, filling him, addressing him, leaving him weeping and unable to say afterwards whether he had a body at the time. His Hymns of Divine Love are extraordinary in their directness, and in places their erotic frankness about union with God embarrassed later copyists.
The doctrine he built on it is the reason he was a problem. Symeon held that the conscious experience of the Holy Spirit is not an extra given to a few specialists in the ancient past but the normal condition of a Christian life, that a person who has not had it should say so honestly rather than assume it happened invisibly at baptism, and that anyone who denies it is possible now is calling the promises empty. He preached this to a metropolitan monastic audience, and it was heard as an accusation, which is roughly what it was.
His nickname, the New Theologian, was probably not a compliment when it was first used. The Byzantine church reserved the title theologian for John the Evangelist and Gregory of Nazianzus, and applying it to a contemporary abbot suggested pretension. It stuck, and has come to mean what it says.
The Quarrel With the Hierarchy
Symeon's spiritual father was a monk of the Studios monastery, also called Symeon, whom he regarded as a saint and whose feast he began celebrating in his own monastery on his own authority, with an icon and a liturgy. The elder had a reputation in the city that was not uniformly good, and this was provocative.
Stephen, a former metropolitan of Nicomedia and a considerable figure at the patriarchal court, took it up, and the ensuing conflict ran for years. Behind the argument about a cult lay a much larger claim that Symeon had made repeatedly: that the authority to bind and loose belongs to those who have received the Spirit, and that it follows spiritual attainment rather than ordination automatically. A monk without office who has seen the light may be a father to others; a bishop who has not may not. For an institutional church this is not a small suggestion.
He was tried by synod and exiled across the Bosphorus, where he founded another small community and continued writing. Some of the charges were later lifted and a return offered, which he declined. He died in exile in 1022, was canonised, and became one of the principal authorities of the hesychast tradition three centuries later, so that the monk the hierarchy removed is now read in the Philokalia by the church that removed him.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Belongs to Tradition
Related To
Symeon's insistence that the divine light is consciously experienced in this life is the position the hesychasts held and Palamas defended three centuries later.
Sources
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