Search Results

After providing a short biography of Isaac of Nineveh, the chapter proceeds by discussing the most important influences on his thinking. Of particular importance is the tradition of the East Syrian Church and the theologies of Theodore of Mopsuestia, Evagrios of Pontos and John of Apamea, as well as the Sayings of the Desert Fathers. After this some aspects of Isaac's own theology is presented, i.e. his understanding of God as love, pedagogue and present in the world in the form of providence. Isaac's view of the devil and the demons is also discussed. The purpose of this discussion is to give the reader a sense of Isaac's particular theological worldview.

This chapter shows that Isaac derives specific definitions for the ecstatic experience of wonder and astonishment from Syriac translations of two sources that were originally written in Greek: Pseudo-Dionysius’s Mystical Theology and a series of Evagrian texts. The first section of this chapter concludes that Isaac uses language from the first chapter of Pseudo-Dionysius’s Mystical Theology in order to establish a connection between language of light and darkness and the theme of the Shekinah, on the one hand, and wonder and astonishment on the other. The second section shows that Isaac explicitly equates either wonder or astonishment with two Evagrian technical terms—“solitary knowledge” and “purity of mind”—and two Evagrian concepts—the joy that occurs during prayer and angelic visitation.

This chapter demonstrates that Isaac’s moral psychology is both an explanation of how the heavenly mysteries affect the soul and a description of how the soul helps prepare the mind for the reception of the heavenly mysteries through wonder. In formulating his moral psychology, Isaac takes bits and pieces from a number of currents already within his own tradition: he uses John the Solitary’s “three degrees” as an explanation for moral failing in the soul; he uses Evagrius’s tripartite (i.e., Platonic) theory of the soul in order to describe the constitution of the soul; and finally, he uses language borrowed from the Syriac translations of the Pseudo-Dionysian and Pseudo-Macarian corpi in order to explain how loving desire (eros) aids the soul in contemplation. Finally, Isaac’s unique contribution is his account of the soul’s impulses, which work to counteract the negative effects of the bodily senses.

This chapter examines Isaac’s synthetic account of wonder and astonishment, which makes use of all the source material discussed in the previous three chapters. According to Isaac, the human soul is capable of processing material sensations with temporal reasoning, but it cannot process spiritual forms of knowledge. Since spiritual insights are immaterial and cannot be understood through temporal reasoning, the soul enters into a state of uncomprehending astonishment when it receives spiritual insights from divine revelation. The mind, by contrast, is capable of comprehending spiritual insights through wonder. The transition from astonishment to wonder represents the moment when a person moves from soul to mind and begins to comprehend the mysteries of the future world through ecstasy. Once people understand the mysteries of the future world, they begin to live the heavenly way of life while remaining in the material world.

This chapter shows that the primary source for Isaac’s eschatology is John the Solitary’s depiction of the life of the future world. According to John, transformation in the future world represents the fulfillment of God’s promise of future glory and forms the basis of the hope that should define the life of the monk. Isaac’s selection and use of the same Pauline biblical phrases used by John, such as “hope to come,” “way of the new life,” and “inner man,” together with John’s non-biblical serpent analogy reveals Isaac’s dependence on John’s eschatological formulations. The main difference between John and Isaac is that while John encouraged monks to obtain knowledge of the future world in order to provide them with hope amidst their current struggles, Isaac explicitly states that perfect Christians can experience the transformation of the future world while still in this world.

This chapter shows that Isaac derives his conceptual framework for the concept of ecstasy, along with the technical terms wonder and astonishment, from sources that were originally written in Syriac. In particular, both Ephrem and John the Solitary situate wonder and astonishment within the framework of the future world, which means that Isaac’s desire to frame wonder and astonishment in terms of the mind’s ability to wander into heaven and acquire knowledge of the future world demonstrates his dependence on a trajectory of thought that arises from these two authors. Isaac, however, offers the distinct contribution of describing this connection between wonder and knowledge of the future world with the language of itinerancy. According to Isaac, perfect Christians obtain heavenly knowledge during the moment of prayer, when their minds become itinerant and wander into heaven in order to receive a pledge of the heavenly mysteries from the Holy Spirit.

This chapter considers the theological milieu that informs Isaac’s protological narrative, which in turn, informs his eschatology. Isaac’s protology is influenced by the infantile Adam tradition begun by Theodore of Mopsuestia, but preserved in the extant Syriac tradition by Narsai. According to both Theodore and Narsai, God intentionally created Adam in a mortal state so that Adam could pursue immortality through a process of maturation from infant to adult. Isaac repeats this position and cites Theodore as a source, but he also adds a unique ascetical component from Pseudo-Macarius. In particular, he says that the bodily labor assigned to Adam as a consequence of the fall has become the primary means by which human beings undergo the maturation process. Since the time of Christ, this bodily labor has taken on the form of monastic asceticism, which Isaac describes with “cultivation” language inspired by the Syriac version of the Pseudo-Macarian corpus.

The conception and development of wonder and astonishment is one of Isaac’s most influential contributions to Syriac theology. The conclusion briefly points to areas where further study will reveal the depth of influence that Isaac’s use of the terms wonder and astonishment have had on later Syriac authors. In particular, the conclusion examines areas where Isaac’s conception of wonder and astonishment influenced two eighth-century East-Syriac authors who had recourse to his texts: John Dalyatha and Joseph Hazzaya. First, this chapter points out that John and Joseph follow Isaac in connecting wonder with the cessation of impulses. In addition, John Dalyatha manifests a linguistic dependence on Isaac with his use of the constellation of the terms astonishment, wonder, silence, and limit, while Joseph Hazzaya depends on Isaac in connecting wonder with both study and tears.