If there is often a tendency to belittle the importance of those dogmatic data which determined all the subsequent development of the traditions of both Churches, this is due to a certain insensitivity to the dogma itself, which is regarded as something external and abstract. We are often told that only the spiritual disposition is important, that the dogmatic difference does not change anything. Nevertheless, spiritual life and dogma, mysticism and theology are inseparably linked in the life of the Church. As for the Eastern Church, as we have already said, it does not make a particularly clear distinction between theology and mysticism, between the sphere of general faith and the sphere of personal experience. Thus, if we want to speak of the mystical theology of the Eastern Tradition, we cannot speak of it except within the framework of the dogmatic teaching of the Orthodox Church.

Before proceeding to our topic, it is necessary to say a few words about the Orthodox Church, which is still little known in the West. Father Congar, in his book Chretiens desunis (Divided Christians), in the pages devoted to Orthodoxy, in spite of all his efforts to be objective, nevertheless remains dependent on the bias of certain views on the Orthodox Church: "At the same time, the West," he says, "on the basis of an Augustinian ideology at the same time developed and definite, demands for the Church its inherent vital and organizational independence, and in this respect conducts the foundation of a line of very positive ecclesiology, the East in practice, and sometimes even in theory, admits in the social and human reality of the Church the principle of political unity, a principle that is not religious, particular, and not truly universal" [4]. For Father Congar, as well as for the majority of Catholic and Protestant authors who have spoken on this subject, Orthodoxy appears to be a federation of national Churches based on political principles, that is, the Church of a state. Only without knowing the canonical foundations and history of the Church can one take the risk of such generalizations. The idea that the unity of any local Church is justified by a political, ethnic or cultural principle is considered in the Orthodox Church to be a heresy that has a special name: phyletism [5]. It is the territory of the Church, the land consecrated by a more or less ancient Christian tradition, that is the "base" of the metropolitan district, governed by an archbishop or metropolitan, with its own bishops for each diocese, who meet from time to time in council. If metropolitan districts unite and form local Churches under the jurisdiction of a bishop, who is often called a patriarch, then again the community of local church traditions, a common fate, as well as convenient conditions for the convocation of a council are the main reasons for the formation of these large jurisdictional districts, the territory of which does not necessarily correspond to political boundaries. The Patriarch of Constantinople enjoys a certain primacy of honor and is sometimes a judge in disagreements, although the totality of the Universal Church is not within his jurisdiction. The Local Eastern Churches were in approximately the same relationship with the Roman Apostolic Patriarchate, the first see of the Church before its division and the symbol of its unity.

Church unity expresses itself in the communion of local Churches, in the acceptance by all Churches of the decisions of a local Council, which thereby acquires the significance of an Ecumenical Council, and, finally, in exceptional cases, this unity can be manifested by the convocation of a general Council. The catholicity of the Church, far from being the "privilege" of any one throne or one particular ecclesiastical center, is realized rather in the richness and diversity of local traditions, which unanimously bear witness to the one truth, to that which is preserved always, everywhere and by all. Inasmuch as the Church is catholic in each of its parts, each of its members, not only clergymen but also laymen, is called upon to confess and defend the truth, opposing even bishops if they fall into heresy. A Christian who has received the gifts of the Holy Spirit in the sacrament of chrismation cannot but be conscious of his faith. He is always responsible for the Church. Hence the sometimes turbulent and turbulent aspect of church life, characteristic of Byzantium, Russia and other countries of the Orthodox world. But these are signs of religious vitality, of the intensity of spiritual life, which deeply affects the entire believing people, united by the consciousness that they form a single body with the church hierarchy. Hence the invincible force thanks to which Orthodoxy passes through all trials, all disasters and upheavals, always applying itself to a new historical reality and proving to be stronger than any external conditions. The Orthodox Church, although it is usually called Eastern, nevertheless considers itself to be the Universal Church. And this is true in the sense that it is not limited to the sphere of a certain culture, the heritage of the Hellenistic or any other civilization, or any forms of culture characteristic only of the culture of the East. However, the term "Eastern" says too much at once: the East is more diverse in the cultural sphere than the West. What do Hellenism and Russian culture have in common, although Russian Christianity is of Byzantine origin? Orthodoxy has become the leaven of too many and different cultures to be regarded as the "cultural form" of Eastern Christianity: these forms are different, but the faith is one. Orthodoxy has never opposed national cultures to a culture that could be called specifically Orthodox. That is why his missionary activity could develop so amazingly: the Christianization of Russia in the tenth and eleventh centuries, and then the preaching of the Gospel throughout Asia. By the end of the 18th century, Orthodox missionaries reached the Aleutian Islands and Alaska, then moved to North America, creating new dioceses of the Russian Church outside Russia and spreading Christianity in China and Japan. Anthropological and cultural differences, from Greece to the Far East, from Egypt to the Arctic Ocean, do not disturb the homogeneous character of this spiritual family, which is very different from the spiritual family of the Christian West.

Orthodoxy is distinguished by a great variety of forms of its spiritual life, of which monasticism remains the most classical. However, in contrast to Western monasticism, Eastern monasticism does not consist of many different orders. This is explained by the very understanding of the monastic life, the goal of which can only be union with God with a complete renunciation of the life of this world. If white clergy (married priests and deacons) or lay brotherhoods can engage in social affairs or devote themselves to some other kind of external activity, it is a different matter for monks. A monk takes monastic vows primarily in order to engage in prayer and inner work in a monastery or skete. Between the coenobitic monastery and the solitude of a hermit who continues the tradition of the desert fathers, there are several intermediate stages of monastic life. In general, it could be said that Eastern monasticism is of a purely contemplative character, if the distinction between the two paths, contemplative and active, had the same meaning in the East as in the West. In reality, however, in the Eastern Church, both paths are inseparable from each other: one path is inconceivable without the other, for ascetic perfection, the school of inner prayer, is called spiritual work. If monks sometimes engage in physical labor, it is mainly for ascetic purposes: to crush the disobedience of nature and to avoid idleness, the enemy of spiritual life. In order to attain union with God to the extent that it is realizable in earthly life, constant effort or, more precisely, unceasing vigilance is necessary, so that the integrity of the inner man, the "unity of heart and mind," in the language of Orthodox asceticism, would oppose all the intrigues of the enemy, all the irrational movements of fallen human nature. Human nature must change, must be transformed more and more grace-filled on the path of its sanctification, which is not only spiritual sanctification, but also bodily, and therefore cosmic. The spiritual feat of a kinovite or anchorite living far from the world, even if it remains invisible to everyone, has significance for the whole world. Therefore, monasteries were revered in this way in all countries of the Orthodox world.

Large centers of spiritual life were of exceptional importance not only in church life, but also in the field of politics and culture. The monasteries of Sinai and Studite near Constantinople, the "monastic republic" on Mount Athos, uniting monks of all nations (including the monks of the Latin Church before the division), other major centers outside the Byzantine Empire, such as the monastery of Tarnovo in Bulgaria and the great Lavras of Russia - the Pechersk Lavra in Kiev and the Trinity-Sergius Lavra near Moscow - were the strongholds of Orthodoxy, schools of spiritual life, the religious and moral influence of which was enormous for the Christian education of the newly converted peoples [8]. But if the monastic ideal so captivated human souls, then monasticism itself was not the only form of spiritual life that the Church offered to the faithful. The path of union with God can be followed in all conditions of human life and outside of monasteries. External forms may change, monasteries may disappear, as they have almost disappeared now in Russia, but spiritual life continues with the same intensity and finds new ways of self-expression.

The exceptionally rich Oriental hagiography, along with the lives of the holy monks, cites many examples of spiritual perfection achieved in the world by simple laypeople, people living in marriage. It also speaks of strange and unusual ways of holiness, of "fools for Christ's sake" who commit absurd acts in order to hide their spiritual gifts from the eyes of others under the repulsive guise of madness, or, rather, to break free from the bonds of this world in their deepest and least acceptable sense for reason - to free themselves from the bonds of their social self [9]. Unity with God is sometimes expressed in charismatic gifts, as, for example, in the gift of spiritual guidance from the "elders." Most often these are monks who have spent many years of their lives in prayer, who have withdrawn from the world into seclusion, and at the end of their lives have opened the doors of their cells wide open to everyone. They have the gift of penetrating into the innermost depths of the human conscience, discovering in them sins and difficulties, of which most often we ourselves do not know, they support downcast souls, instructing them not only on the spiritual path, but also guiding them on all the paths of life [10].

The personal experience of the great mystics of the Orthodox Church is most often unknown to us. With rare exceptions, in the spiritual literature of the Orthodox East there are no such autobiographical accounts of one's inner life as those of St. Angela of Foligno, Henry of Suso, or St. Thérèse of Lisieux in her The Story of a Soul. The path of mystical union with God is almost always a mystery between God and the soul, which is not revealed to outsiders, except to the spiritual father or some disciples. If anything is made public, it is only the fruits of this union: wisdom, knowledge of the Divine mysteries, expressed in theological or moral teaching, in the advice and edification of the brethren. As for the innermost and personal experience, it is hidden from all eyes. It must be admitted that mystical individualism appears in Western literature rather late, around the thirteenth century. St. Bernard of Clairvaux speaks directly about his personal experience very rarely: only once in the "Homily on the Song of Songs", and then, following the example of the Apostle Paul, with a certain shyness. There had to be some kind of division between personal experience and the common faith, between personal life and the life of the Church, so that spiritual life and dogma, mysticism and theology, would become two different spheres, so that souls, not finding sufficient food in the theological Summa, would eagerly seek stories of individual mystical experience in order to plunge back into the spiritual atmosphere. Mystical individualism remained alien to the spiritual experience of the Eastern Church.

Father Congar is right when he says: "We have become different people (des hommes differents). We have one and the same God, but we are different people before Him and cannot think in the same way about the nature of our relationship to Him" [11]. But in order to judge this spiritual difference correctly, we would have to consider it in its most perfect terms, in the types of saints of the West and the East after the division. We would then be able to realize the close connection that always exists between the dogma professed by the Church and the spiritual fruits that it produces, for the inner experience of the Christian is realized in the circle delineated by the teaching of the Church, within the framework of the dogmas that form his personality. If a political doctrine taught by a political party can form speculation to such an extent that different types of people appear, differing from each other in certain moral and psychic characteristics, how much more can a religious dogma change the very mind of the one who professes it: such people are different from those who have been formed on the basis of a different dogmatic concept. We could never understand the spirituality aspect of any life if we did not take into account the dogmatic teaching that underlies it. One must accept things as they are, and not try to explain the difference in spiritual life in the West and in the East by ethnic or cultural causes, when it is a question of the most important reason, the difference of dogma. Nor is it necessary to convince oneself that the question of the procession of the Holy Spirit, or the question of the nature of grace, is of little importance for Christian teaching as a whole, which supposedly remains more or less the same for both Roman Catholics and Orthodox. In such fundamental dogmas it is precisely this "more or less" that is important, for it gives a different inclination to the whole teaching, presents it in a different light, in other words, it gives rise to a different spiritual life.

We do not want to engage in "comparative theology," much less to renew confessional polemics. We limit ourselves here only to the fact that, before proceeding to an overview of some aspects of theology that lie at the basis of the spiritual life of the Eastern Church, we state the very fact of the dogmatic difference between the Christian East and the West. It is up to our readers to decide to what extent these theological aspects of Orthodox mysticism can help us to understand a spiritual life alien to Western Christianity. If, while remaining true to our dogmatic positions, we could reach a mutual understanding, especially in what distinguishes us from each other, this would certainly be a surer way to unity than one that passed by these differences. For, in the words of Karl Barth, "the union of the Churches is not created, but revealed" [12].

Chapter II: Divine Darkness

The problem of the knowledge of God was radically considered in a small work, the very title of which is significant: ??????????????????????? "On Mystical Theology". This remarkable work, which was of such exceptional importance for the entire subsequent development of Christian thought, belongs to the unknown author of the so-called "Areopagiticus", a person who for a long time was taken for a disciple of the Apostle Paul - Dionysius the Areopagite. But the defenders of this opinion had to take into account one strange circumstance: nothing had been heard of the Areopagitica before the beginning of the sixth century, that is, for almost five centuries; they were not referred to or mentioned by any church writer. They were first announced by the Monophysite heretics, who tried to rely on their authority. In the next century, St. Maximus the Confessor snatched this weapon from the hands of heretics, revealing in his commentaries or "scholia" the Orthodox meaning of Dionysius' works [13]. From that time on, the Areopagitica enjoyed indisputable authority in the theological tradition of both the Eastern and Western Churches.

Modern critics, who cannot come to any agreement about the true personality of pseudo-Dionysius and the time when his works were written, are lost in a variety of hypotheses [14]. The fluctuations of critical studies between the third and sixth centuries show how inaccurate the information concerning the origin of these mysterious works is still today. But whatever the results of all the investigations, they can in no way detract from the theological significance of the Areopagiticus. From this point of view, it is not so important to know who was their author; the main thing in this question is the Church's judgment on the content of the works themselves and how she uses them. After all, the Apostle Paul says, referring to the Psalm of David: "A man hath testified somewhere" (Heb. 2:6), thereby showing to what extent the question of authorship is secondary when it comes to a text inspired by the Holy Spirit. What is right for Holy Scripture is just as correct for the theological tradition of the Church.