T&T Clark Handbook of Pneumatology by Daniel Castelo;Kenneth M. Loyer;

Author:Daniel Castelo;Kenneth M. Loyer;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780567667403
Publisher: Bloomsbury UK

Chapter Eighteen

Eastern Orthodox Perspectives

Marcus Plested

The Eastern Orthodox tradition has consistently been particularly alive and responsive to the distinct person and ministry of the Holy Spirit. A typical instance of its distinctive pneumatology may be seen in the life and teaching of the early nineteenth-century Russian hermit St. Seraphim of Sarov. In conversation with his spiritual child Nikolai Motovilov, Seraphim declared that the summit and purpose of the Christian life is the acquisition of the Holy Spirit: “in this consists the true aim of our Christian life, while prayer, vigil, fasting, almsgiving and other good works done for Christ’s sake are merely means for acquiring the Spirit of God.” Seraphim delves deep into Scripture and the church fathers to convince his disciple that the indwelling of the Spirit in the human heart is indeed the utmost fulfillment of the promises made by the Savior. Motovilov remains unsure what this all means in practice and so Seraphim, in a striking and almost unparalleled move, quite literally extends the mystical experience of the Holy Spirit to his disciple, enveloping both in an overwhelming vision of God as light.1

In claiming the acquisition of the Spirit to be the goal and apex of the Christian life, Seraphim was consciously echoing a call made some 1,400 years earlier by the author of the Macarian homilies. These homilies, dating to the late fourth century, constitute one of the fullest ever explorations and expressions of the role of the Holy Spirit in the life of the baptized Christian and have remained a constant source of inspiration ever since—even through all the centuries of seemingly interminable debate about the filioque. In what follows, I shall attempt a survey of some of the distinctive emphases and insights of Orthodox pneumatology going back in the first instance to the fourth century and the Macarian Homilies. This chronological framework is of course somewhat arbitrary in that Orthodoxy traces its pneumatology back not to the fourth but to the first century and indeed well beyond that (cf. Gen. 1:2). But the fourth century has the advantage of serving not only as the time in which the divinity of the Spirit was formally proclaimed, but also as a period in which we can begin with some caution to speak of a distinctive and profoundly experiential pneumatology emerging within the Greek East. It is this experiential tradition of pneumatology that I shall focus on in what follows.

The Macarian Homilies have traditionally been ascribed to St. Macarius the Great of Egypt, the disciple of St. Anthony and the founder of the famed monastic community at Scetis. This ascription has since been shown to be mistaken. The actual author was, rather, the leader and spiritual guide of a network of monastic communities located in south-eastern Asia Minor or northern Mesopotamia, who wrote and preached between roughly 370 and 390 ad. The author (known as pseudo-Macarius or Macarius-Symeon, hereafter simply Macarius) composed a monumental collection of works addressed to an ascetic audience preoccupied with the pursuit of the vision and experience of God.

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