Tradition in St. John of Damascus,Knowledge and Truth

This is part of three of my essay on the worldview of John of Damascus.

 The Damascene on Knowledge and Truth

In this vein we shall turn to our primary subject, the prefatory letter and introductory chapters of the Dialectica. In these texts we recieve a sense of how the Damascene conceives his task. Fr. Florovsky has described the Damascene's thought well when he describes it as a “dogmatic code”.1 To understand this code we shall first discuss the saint's conception of knowledge. In the first chapter of the Dialectica, he declares, “Nothing is more estimable than knowledge, for knowledge is the light of the rational soul,” and he goes on to clarify what he means by knowledge by defining it as “ the true knowledge of things which are.”2 We are not however immediately capable of all knowing. In order to discern truth from falsehood it becomes necessary to have a teacher, and to be taught by, “the Teacher in whom there is no falsehood” who speaks with “the voice of Him who is the wisdom and power of God the Father,” who alone is infallible. So knowledge, for the Damascene, is trained in us by listening to the Word of God, Who reveals the mysteries of God, man, and the world to us, and by this knowledge we become filled with light.

In addition to this light of knowledge however, the Damascene reveals another prerequisite to true knowledge, to the perception of the surpassing light. This is purity of heart. “Let us approach” he proclaims, “with attention and in all sincerity, and  proceed without letting the spiritual eye of our soul be dulled by passions,...”3 Our soul must be pure in order to perceive the light and goodness of the Truth. The saint references the Lord's own saying, “If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!” (Matt 6:23) If the mind, which is the eye of soul, be filled with the darkness of sin, how can it be relied upon to see? So the saint makes clear the ascetic prerequisites to the work of knowledge, especially since all Truth is God's own. He also makes reference to this when he discusses his reluctance to undertake his work on the Fount of Knowledge, comparing himself to Moses, who feared to speak to the people, “then how am I, who am defiled and stained with every sort of sin,... and who have purified neither my mind nor my understanding that they may serve as a mirror of God and His divine reflections...?”4 While this is, of course, tropaic rhetoric, he utilizes this device in order to show the seriousness of that task he has undertaken; "to be a mirror of divine truth, to reflect the light of the Godhead."5 He is stating his weakness in order not to lead his reader into thinking his reflection is a perfect one, and further to confirm in his audience the necessity of the “mirror” being clean in order to reflect the divine light. In the light of both his idea of knowledge and of the necessity of purity, we can examine his program.

We have observed above that this program is made the most explicit in the Prefatory Letter to Cosmas, bishop of Maïuma. The passage in question is as follows:

"First of all I shall set forth the best contributions of the philosophers of the Greeks, because whatever there is of good has been given to men from above by God,... If however there is anything that is contrary to the truth, then it is a dark invention of the deceit of Satan and a fiction of the mind of an evil spirit,... In imitation of the method of the bee, I shall make my composition from those things which are conformable with the truth and from our enemies themselves gather the fruit of salvation. But all this is worthless and falsely labeled as knowledge I shall reject. Then, next, after this, I shall set forth in order the absurdities of the heresies hated of God, so that by recognizing the lie we may more closely follow the truth. Then, with God's help and by His grace I shall expose the truth- that truth which destroys deceit and puts falsehood to flight and which, as with golden fringes, has been embellished and adorned by the sayings of the divinely inspired prophets, and the divinely taught fishermen, and the God-bearing shepherds and teachers- that truth, the glory of which flashes out from within to brighten with its radiance, when they encounter it, them that are duly purified and rid of troublesome speculations. However as I have said, I shall add nothing of my own, but gather together into one those things which have been worked out by the most eminent of teachers and make a compendium of them..."6

There are several points that should be emphasized at the outset. First, the saint's notion of truth is, like his idea of knowledge, external “coming from above”. Second that he views this truth as having an absolute character, indeed a personal one, being coterminous with God Himself, as he displays in calling heresy “hated of God,” and error an “invention of the mind of an evil spirit,” and which is implicit when he describes truth as making the pure radiant.  This is further emphasized in the Dialectica when the saint makes Christ necessary as the teacher of truth to the, as yet feeble, mind.7 Third, we see that he chooses his material in such a way that it is “conformable to the truth,” and that he aims to show the lies of heresy to “ more closely follow the truth.” Lastly we should notice that this truth, revealed from God, has been “embellished”, or elucidated and clarified, by those who have lived holy lives. These persons are closely associated with the writers of the sacred scriptures. He enumerates the prophets and fishermen, the writers of the Old and New Testaments, and he adds to their number the later shepherds and teachers, the saintly bishops and theologians. So we see he aims at applying a consistent standard, namely conformity to a received external truth which is absolute and personal, to all information from the outside, the works of the philosophers and human reason. This standard is received by purifying oneself and listening closely to the divinely inspired teachers in scripture and the fathers, but foremost by being instructed by God Himself. This is how he means to supply “nothing of [his] own” while still enumerating those “things which are”. Having discussed the method, it is important next to see it in action in how the Damascene treats his sources.

1. Florovsky, Fr. Georges Vasilievich. The Byzantine Fathers of the Sixth to Eighth Century. Vaduz: Büchervertriebsanstalt, 1987. Ch.7
2. John of Damascus. Saint John of Damascus, Writings. Translated by Frederic H. Chase, Jr. Vol. XXXVII. Washington, D.C.: CUA Press, 1970. Pg. 7
3.John of Damascus, Writings Pg. 8
4. John of Damascus, Writings pg. 4
5. This is known as the modesty trope, in which the author downplays his own skill. This writer does not believe this to mean the saint was speaking "rhetorically" in the negative sense. St. John likely believed in his own insufficiency as well as writing it according to to the rules of style. The saintly men of times past felt that, even in their deficiency, they could, and indeed were bound, to contribute what they had in order to be good stewards of the talents given them. In the opinion of this writer it is unhelpful to read the Holy Fathers as if, because they write according to convention, that they therefore lack sincerity in their writing.
6. Emphases my own, John of Damascus, Writings pgs. 5-6
7. John of Damascus, Writings pg. 8