6. THE FATHERS ON SPIRITUAL KNOWLEDGE

The cure for ignorance, say the Fathers, is spiritual knowledge.  What is spiritual knowledge and how do we get it?  Let’s start with defining knowledge first, since spiritual knowledge is evidently a kind of knowledge.

Knowledge is short for knowledge of truth.  We can also say truth instead.   When we say knowledge, we emphasize the fact that knowledge of truth is something we somehow have in us.  When we say truth, we emphasize that what we know is somehow verifiable outside of us.  Let’s take a few examples to make this clear.

If I say that a dog is a barking quadruped and someone asks me to verify that I know about dogs, I can take him to a dog and prove that my private conception of dogs corresponds to the reality of dogs in the world outside my mind. 

If, however, I say that a cat is a quadruped that barks, then I do not know about cats, since I cannot take a skeptic to a cat that will bark on demand.  My private conception of cats is not verified by any barking cats outside my mind.

It would seem to follow that spiritual knowledge is knowledge of spiritual things, but St. John begins by saying that spiritual knowledge is not “knowledge alone.”¹  He says that spiritual knowledge is “the practice of virtues.”²  This is why we had to discuss what virtue is first in our last post, so that “the practice of virtues” would refer to something specific, that is, the performance of the commandments.  St. John goes on to say, “We should make every effort to manifest our faith and knowledge through our actions.”³  He is implying of course that we should not make every effort to manifest our faith and knowledge through words.

St. Maximus identifies just what happens when we act and think as if spiritual knowledge is knowledge alone:  “spiritual knowledge that is not put into practice does not differ in any way from illusion.”⁴

In the same way, St. Mark the Monk tells us to “understand the words of Holy Scripture by putting them into practice” and not to “expatiate on theoretical ideas.”⁵  This is why we find that the saints and the elders often read the Bible and seek help from others in understanding the Bible but are not found conducting Bible studies as we in the West understand them. 

We may easily look elsewhere for additional corroboration of this practical view.  In David Mitchell James' A Psalter for Prayer, the prayer before reading the Psalms asks God to “direct my heart to begin with understanding and to end with good works this divinely inspired book.”⁷  The prayer further begs of God that the reader be “prepared for the doing of the good works which I learn.”⁸ 

In short, the Fathers insist that when it comes to spiritual knowledge, it is all about practice. 

We next define more positively what spiritual knowledge is. 

ENDNOTES

1.  The Philokalia, tr. G.E H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard and Kallistos Ware, vols. 1-4 (London:  Faber & Faber, 1979-1995; reprint, New York:  Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1983), 1:125.

2.  John Rickaby, The First Principles of Knowledge, 4^th ed. (London:  Longmans, Green & Co., 1901), p. 2.

3.  Palmer, 1:302.  

4.  Ibid. 

5.  Palmer, 2:257.
6.  Palmer, 1:116.

7.  David Mitchell James, A Psalter for Prayer, 2^nd ed. (Jordanville, New York:  Holy Trinity Publications, 2011), p. 53.
8.  Ibid.