The Friends of Mount Athos Book Reviews

Mount Athos the Sacred Bridge: The Spirituality of the Holy Mountain. Edited by Dimitri Conomos and Graham Speake. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2005. 250 pp. Paperback £29.00. ISBN 3-03910-064-5.

Conference proceedings are often dull as ditchwater – a series of disparate papers paying little more than lip service to a very general theme. Readers will be pleased that this collection emphatically does not fall into this category, a virtue stemming partly from the intrinsic coherence of its subject – the spirituality of the Holy Mountain – but especially from the quality of the contributions. The volume brings together a number of papers from the conference of the same name held by the Friends of Mount Athos in association with the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies at Madingley Hall, near Cambridge, in 2003. These are supplemented by two closely related papers given to AGMs of the Friends in 2001 and 2002. Taken as a whole, the book has the great value of reflecting the sheer variety of Athonite spirituality, albeit with understandable emphasis on the specifically Hesychast tradition. The reader will be struck by the way in which Athonite spirituality is consistently set within its broader theological, intellectual, and historical contexts. It is also in large part a scholarly work, with many of the essays being accompanied by substantial academic apparatus and representing major contributions to the field. Even at its most scholarly, however, it is never dry – thinking and feeling, head and heart, being kept united in the best tradition of Orthodox theology. Conversely, its less obviously academic contributions are always chock full of food for serious thought and material for emulation. The balance is well held.

The opening paper, by Metropolitan Nikolaos (Hatzinikolaou), paints a vivid and accessible picture of the distinctive features of Athonite life enlivened by many memorable anecdotes from his own experience. Fr Andrew Louth’s paper that follows is somewhat more explicitly theological in character. Beginning with the Athonite connections of St Gregory Palamas – an area shrouded in historical obscurity – Professor Louth proceeds via the intriguing figure of Theoleptos of Philadelphia to a wide-ranging consideration of the theological dynamics of the Hesychast controversy. He is particularly illuminating (no pun intended) on the East–West dimension, showing, for example, how the use made by certain Hesychast writers of Aristotle or the unipersonal Trinitarian models of St Augustine rules out any black-and-white perception of the controversy in terms of East versus West. He also makes some very penetrating observations as to the possible roots of the Palamite distinction between the essence and energy (or operation) of God in Dionysius the Areopagite’s conception of distinctions that unite – in other words as a way of simultaneously upholding both God’s utter transcendence and the reality of the experience of God himself vouchsafed to the saints. For all its theological complexity, however, Fr Andrew’s paper remains oriented upon the fundamental dictum of St Gregory Palamas (which it cites), namely that ‘It is not safe for those who do not know how to speak to God to speak about God.’ The experience of God in prayer must lie at the heart of any theology worthy of the name.

We are next treated to a masterly treatment of St Nikodemos of the Holy Mountain and the Philokalia. In this paper Bishop Kallistos (Ware) presents a rounded and insightful survey of the life and work of St Nikodemos, setting him skilfully within his historical and theological context (including some intriguing remarks concerning Nikodemos’s ‘recycling’ of a number of Catholic spiritual texts for an Orthodox audience). Bishop Kallistos probes deeply into the origins and nature of the Philokalia, demonstrating with inimitable precision and clarity its immense significance as a marker and (eventually) maker of a profound renaissance of Orthodox spirituality. In this sense the Philokalia can be seen as a kind of Orthodox response to the secular ‘Enlightenment’ and, sub specie aeternitatis, of far greater import than the French Revolution with which it was almost contemporaneous.

There follow two pieces by members of the monastery of St John the Baptist at Tolleshunt Knights, Essex – itself a sign of the ‘outreach’ of the Holy Mountain into the western world. Sister Magdalen furnishes an account of the life and teaching of St Silouan the Athonite that is palpably the fruit of long acquaintance with the saint. Fr Nicholas Sakharov goes on to explore the legacy of St Silouan in the thought of Fr Sophrony, the founder of the said monastery. Most interesting, perhaps, are the discussions of Fr Sophrony’s understanding of personhood and community, and of the implications of St Silouan’s injunction to ‘Keep thy mind in hell and despair not.’ Fr Nicholas also makes some very fertile suggestions as to the place of the theology of experience within the modern academy and demonstrates the close (but not uncritical) connections between Fr Sophrony and figures such as Nikolai Berdyaev and Fr Sergei Bulgakov.

The book closes with three treatments centred on two of the most influential elders of twentieth-century Athos: Elder Joseph the Hesychast and Elder Aimilianos of Simonopetra. Archimandrite Ephraim of Vatopedi takes Elder Joseph as a ‘universal image of holiness’, one whose prayer rose from humility and obscurity to become one of the driving forces behind the recent revival of Athonite monasticism. Archimandrite Elisaios fleshes out this story of revival with an account of the spiritual tradition of Simonopetra focused on the teaching of Elder Aimilianos. Elder Aimilanos’s life and teaching are further explored by Hieromonk Alexander Golitzin in the last paper of this volume, in which the author roots his own encounter with this grace-filled elder not only in the spiritual tradition of the Christian East (with Dionysius the Areopagite again looming large) but also in Old Testament and later Jewish conceptions of the self-revelation or ‘place’ of God in the world.

Of course one might bemoan the lack of any substantial treatment of figures such as Elders Gabriel, Païssios, or Porphyrios; but a book like this can clearly never be entirely comprehensive. One might also draw attention to the lack of any sustained critical voice: Athos has its detractors and f/Friends must surely be prepared not only to praise but also to point out frankly problems and deficiencies where appropriate. Again, in homage to the traditional craftsmanship still surviving on Athos, can one not hope that a book on such a subject would be produced in a more beautiful physical form, for example with stitching rather than simply glue holding the pages together and a more substantial cover (mine is already furled on first reading, but perhaps my reading has been too avid)? That said, the book is very well edited and laid out, with very few typographical errors. Minor gripes aside, this is a volume that offers a remarkable series of multi-layered perspectives on to the rich alter orbis that is Athonite spirituality. Indeed it is in itself a kind of bridge between Athos and the wider world – and one could hardly hope for more than that.

MARCUS PLESTED