International Journal of Orthodox Theology 5:1 (2014) 189

urn:nbn:de:0276-2014-1080

Teofan Mada

Love and Knowledge in the Patristic

Tradition

Abstract
The Eastern Church Fathers underlined the specificity of the
christocentrical knowledge as know-
ledge in and by love that is a
knowledge of love which binds the
one who knows and the one who is
known. In love and by love, one can
discover the way of Truth and of the
real knowledge. In this knowledge,
love appears truly as the bound of
fulfillment. Also, this characterization
of love, as the bound of fulfillment,
refers to the wholeness of knowledge
through love, in which knowledge
becomes an event or an open and
partakable fact. In this way, Archim. Dr. Teofan Mada,
knowledge becomes a reality which is Administrativ Vicar of the
Orthodox Archbishopric of
dynamic, open and relational, instead
Arad, Assist. Prof. of
of a closed process, oriented towards Patristics at the Faculty of
the self or external to man. Of course, Orthodox Theology “Ilari-
it is neither strictly human, nor on V. Felea” of “Aurel Vlai-
exclusively divine, but a divino- cu” University of Arad,
human reality. Saint John the Romania
190 Teofan Mada

Evangelist stated the principle of Christian knowledge: „And

this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God,
and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent” (Jn. 17:3). This phrase
points out that the essence of knowledge is a spiritual,
relational divino-human fact, which identifies itself with life and
asserts life, so that both can be united with God's love, in Jesus
Christ. The main characteristic of the neotestamentary
knowledge is the coincidence between knowledge and love.

Keywords

Love, Knowledge, Communion, Participation, Eastern Fathers,

Patristic Theology.

1 Introduction

It is not easy nowadays to talk about love, truth and eternal

realities, because the logic of our times tells us that there is
nothing irrevocable: everything changes, everything passes and
this happens very quickly. “To change”, meaning to be modern,
has become, in many cases, the password, the most inspiring
exercise of freedom and in this way, our contemporaries are
often inclined to think that it is impossible for them to make
final decisions, which would pledge them for all their life, with
implications for eternity. But which is the right way to use
freedom? Is it true that in order to be happy we should be
content with little, fleeting, momentary joys, which, once ended,
leave bitterness in one's heart?
But this is not the true freedom, we cannot obtain happiness
this way. Each of us is created not to make short-term and
revocable choices, but final and irrevocable ones, which give life
it´s full meaning. We can see this in our own life: we would like
every beautiful, happiness-giving experience to be endless. God
 Love and Knowledge in the Patristic Tradition 191

has created us out of love, for love and destined us to eternity,

and He placed in the heart of each of us the seed of a spiritual
life which may accomplish something beautiful, wonderful and
deathless.1 We are invited to have the courage of the final,
eternal choices and to live them with fidelity and devotion.
God calls us to a particular offering of our own self. He invites
us to make his love visible in history. Not only are the human
beings looking for God; God Himself has set out to look for us.
Starting with the Incarnation, something astonishing happens:
the type of salvific communion with God changes radically and
the body becomes the tool of Salvation: „And the Word became
flesh”, wrote John the Evangelist, and Tertullian, a Christian
author of the IIIrd century, stated: „Caro salutis est cardo”, the
body is the basis of Salvation2. The fact that He Himself became

1 According to the Orthodox patristic conception, the spiritual life, being

the life of Jesus Christ “in the Holy Spirit”, is in its essence, since now
an eternal life, in which salvation is to be found. Consequently,
spiritual life and salvation are exactly the same thing. See Rom. 5, 17-
21; 6. 4, 8, 11, 22, 23; 8, 1-17. John 3, 34-36; 5, 24, 40; 6. 53-58, 63; 17,
2-3; 20, 30. I John 1,2; 4, 9; 5. 11, 20. S. P. N. Joannis Chrysostomi,
Homiliae LV in Acta apostolorum, 13, 8, in: J-P. Migne (ed.), Patrologiae
cursus completus (Tomus LX, Paris: Garnier Fratres, 1862), p. 519. S.
Gregorii Theologi, Oratio XX, 5, in: J-P. Migne (ed.), Patrologiae cursus
completus (Tomus XXXV, Paris: 1857), p. 1069. S. Joannis Damasceni,
Ad Colossens 3, 1-4, in: J-P. Migne (ed.), Patrologiae cursus completus
(Tomus XLV, Paris: 1864), p. 897 BC. Paul Florenski, The Pillar and
Ground of the Truth: An Essay in Orthodox Theodicy in Twelve Letters
(Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2004), p. 264:
„spiritual life is the salvation and the gift by our Lord Jesus Christ.”
2 Q. S. F. Tertulliani, De carnis resurrectione, 8, 3, in: J-P. Migne (ed.),
Patrologiae cursus completus (Tomus II, Paris: Garnier Fratres, 1879)
p. 806. In the Virgin Mary, as V. Lossky correctly puts it, humanity has
assented for the divine Logos to become flesh and to dwell among the
people (Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, Crestwood, New York:
St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1998, p. 126); kenosis, the assumption
of manhood, the adoption, the hypostatic union and its theosis are
realized by and in the Virgin Mary (concerning the work of the Virgin
Mary in the act of Incarnation, see Νικόλαος Καβάσιλας, ”Εἷς τόν
Εὐαγγελισμόν τῆς Ὑπεραγίας Δεσποίνης ἠμῶν καί Ἀειπαρθένου
192 Teofan Mada

man and descended to the abysses of human existence, to the

night of death shows us how much God loves man, His creature.
Drove by love, God has set out towards us. God is looking for
us.3
And even if man forgets about his Creator, the living and always
true God doesn't stop being the first to call the man to the
mystery-meeting of prayer.4 It is a proof of love from the
faithful God, Who is always the first within the prayer, and
man's action is always an answer to Him.5 As God reveals
Himself to the man and also reveals the man to himself, the
prayer appears as a mutual call, a moment of living the
communion. By means of words and acts, this experience
involves the heart also, the whole being who exists through
love.6 According to Tertullian “the one that we worship is a
unique God”. And he continues, using the antitheses and
paradoxes that are specific to his language: “He is invisible,
though we discern Him; whom we cannot touch, though
represented to us by His Spirit; and incomprehensible, though
we come to some imperfect ideas of Him by the

Μαρίας”, in Νικολάου Καβάσιλα, Ἡ Θεομήτωρ. Τρεῖς Θεομητορικές

Ὁμιλίες. Κείμενο, Ἀθήνα ἔδ. Ἀποστολική Διακονία, 1995).
3 If Adam's fall had not happened, God's Word would have incarnated
from the bottom to the top, that is by man, through the work of
sanctification Cf. Georges Florovsky, The Byzantine Fathers from sixth
to eighth century, (Vaduz: Büchervertriebsanstalt, 1987), p. 228.
Concerning the cosmic dimension of the divine event of Christ's
Incarnation, see Hans Urs von Balthasar, Liturgie Cosmique (Paris:
Aubier, 1973), p. 203 and the next ones.
4 Cf. Archim. Sophrony, We Shall See Him as He Is (Essex: Stavropegic
Monastery of St. John the Baptist, 1992), p. 312.
5 Cf. S. P. N. Joannis Chrysostomi, Homiliarum in Mattthaeum, Homil.
LXXXII, 4, in: J-P. Migne (ed.), Patrologiae cursus completus (Tomus
LVIII, Paris: Garnier Fratres, 1862), p. 742. See Π. Χρήστου, Ελληνική
Πατρολογία (Thesaloniki: Pournara, 1989, 4 tome), pp. 302-303.
6 Cf. Jürgen Henkel, Deification and Ethics of Love in the Work of Father
Dumitru Stăniloae (Sibiu: Deisis Publishing House, 2003), p. 91.
 Love and Knowledge in the Patristic Tradition 193

help of our senses and thus He is evident and immense!”7. God

loves all human beings. He meets the restlessness of our hearts,
the disquietude of our questions and of our quests with the
disquietude of His own heart, which makes Him accomplish the
final act for us: the Crucifixion. The disquietude towards God,
the fact of being on our way towards Him, in order to know Him
better and to live in Him must not die in us8.
In this sense, we should always remain disciples. “Seek His face
always” urges us the author of Psalm 105, 4. In this regard,
Augustine commented: God is so mighty that He is always
infinitely greater than all our knowledge and all our being. The
knowledge of God is never consumed. During all the eternity we
can, with an increasing joy, continue to seek for Him, in order to
know Him and to love Him forever more. “Our heart is restless,
until it repose in Thee”, said Augustine at the beginning of his
“Confessions”.9 Yes, man is restless, because all that is temporal
is too little. The specificity of knowledge expresses essentially
the union between the one who knows and the one who is
known. God – as the Church Fathers say – has concluded a
sacrum commercium, a sacred exchange: He assumed what was
ours, so that we could get what was His, becoming like God.10 St.

7 S. Clementis I, Apologeticum, 17,1-2, in: J-P. Migne (ed.), Patrologiae

cursus completus (Tomus I, Paris: 1857), p. 375 AB.
8 S. Maximi Confessoris, Capita Theologiae et Oeconomiae III, 37 , in: J-P.
Migne (ed.), Patrologiae cursus completus (Tomus XC, Paris: Garnier
Fratres, 1863), p. 1083. See also, S. Dionysii Areopagitae, De divinis
nominibus, Tomus prior, 4, 15 , in: J-P. Migne (ed.), Patrologiae cursus
completus (Tomus III, Paris: Garnier Fratres, 1857), p. 713): “Love,
whether we speak of Divine, or Angelic, or intelligent, or psychical, or
physical, let us regard as a certain unifying and combining power”.
9 S. Aurelii Augustini, Confesiones, I, 1, , in: J-P. Migne (ed.), Patrologiae
cursus completus (Tomus XXXII, Paris: Garnier Fratres, 1877) p, 659.
10 Time is offered to man as space for his participation to eternity, time is
a mean of continual advancement towards holiness (Cf. S. Maximi
Confessoris, Ambiguorum Liber, in: J-P. Migne (ed.), Patrologiae cursus
completus (Tomus XCI, Paris: Garnier Fratres, 1865), p. 1153 and the
next ones. See Vl. Lossky, „Théologie Dogmatique”, in Messager de
194 Teofan Mada

Gregory of Nyssa clearly expresses the purpose of our

preoccupations, the supreme aim to which our life is directed:
not wasting our life with futile things, but finding the light
which allows us to discern what is really useful11 finding this
supreme divine good thanks to which the “imitation of the
divine nature” is possible.12

2 The Relationship between Knowledge and Love

2.1 The Biblical Perspective

The Old Testament revealed us that God is together with us,

living and holy.13 What does the New Testament add to this
sublime image? Our answer could be: it gives it a heart! And
this heart is the statement: “God is love”. In the Christian belief,
love comes from God and moreover, God Himself is Love: “God
is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them” (1
John, 4, 16). To say that God is love means the same as to say

l’Exarchat du Patriarche russe en Europe Occidentale, 1964, pp. 211-

2012).
11 S. Grégoire de Nysse, Homélies sur l'Ecclésiaste, 1, in : Françoise Vinel
(ed.), Sources Chrétiennes 416 (Imprimerie Paillart, Picardy, 1996), p.
106-146.
12 S. P. N. Gregorii, De Professione Christiana, in: J-P. Migne (ed.),
Patrologiae cursus completus (Tomus XLVI, Paris: Garnier Fratres,
1858), p. 244 C.
13 Admitting the essential character of love, the Christian faith accepted
what represented the core of Israel's faith and, at the same time, it
conferred to this core a new depth and a new extension. In fact, the
faithful man prays every day with these words taken from The Book of
Deuteronomy, in which he knows that the quintessence of his life is
included: “Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one! You
shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul
and with all your might.” Jesus united the commandment of loving God
and loving your neighbour from The Book of Leviticus, making them
one commandment: “thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself”. (Lev.
19,18; cf. Marc. 12, 29-31).
 Love and Knowledge in the Patristic Tradition 195

that God loves. Even the prophets had announced that Jahweh
was a loving God, but none of them had gone so far as to say
that “God is love”. What did Jesus of Nazareth bring new, so that
this qualitative leap could take place? Nothing but: “For God so
loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever
believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John, 3,
16). In the meeting of Christ and in the mutual love, we
experience in us the same life of God, who stays in us with His
perfect, total, eternal love.
Nothing is greater to man, a mortal and limited being, than to
take part in the loving life of God. Therefore, God takes care of
the world not because He is loved, but because He loves the
world and He has always loved it, from the very beginning. The
words of St. John the Evangelist (1 John, 4, 16) express very
clearly what makes up the essence of the Christian life and
faith: the Christian image of God and, consequently, the image
of man and of his approach to eternity. Besides all these, in the
same verse, St. John the Apostle offers us a synthetic formula of
the Christian existence: “We have come to know and trust the
love that God has for us”. We have come to trust the love of God
– in this way, the Christian may express the fundamental choice
of his life. The Church Fathers showed us that love was the
quintessence of the Christian life, in which the two Evangelic
commandments of love are not to be lived as moral categories,
precisely because they don't have a relationship only with a
certain “moral part” of the man and of his existence, but they
fully cover his whole human existence, in the personal reality,
as well as in the social dimension. In this sense, we have to
highlight the fact that the “first commandment” of loving God
underlines all the main criteria and all the spiritual possibilities
of the human existence: “Love the Lord your God with all your
heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with
all your mind.”
The “second commandment”, of loving one's neighbour, having
exactly the same value as the first, expresses the same meaning,
196 Teofan Mada

but with other words: “Love your neighbour as yourself” (Mat.

22, 37-3)14.
The two commandments of Christian love are summed up,
eventually, in the one and only love for Jesus Christ, fully Man
and true God15, as Saint Paul the Apostle put it (Philippians, 8, 2,
8, 39), and, following him, the whole patristic tradition .16
Loving God and loving one's neighbour are inseparable, they
represent a unique commandment, a unique confession or a

14 Some people believe that perfection lies in the roughness of life, other
see it in prayer, others in the frequent reception of the Holy
Communion, others in Christian and merciful deeds, but they are
wrong, because perfection lies in the love of God with all one’s heart
and this is visible in the love of the neighbour, because God wants love
and not sacrifice. Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or
sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister,
whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen (cf. 1
John, 4, 20). But this understanding does not exclude at all the love of
God as something impossible; on the contrary, in the overall context of
the First Epistle of John, this love is explicitly demanded. The
unbreakable bound between loving God and loving one’s neighbour is
stressed here. Both refer to one another so tightly that to affirm the
love of God becomes a lie if man is blind to his neighbour’s needs or,
even more, if the hates him. We should rather interpret Saint John’s
verse in the sense that loving one’s neighbour is a path for meeting
God too, and closing the eyes to the presence of one’s neighbour means
to become blind as to the presence of God. In short, every man takes
part in the act and in the event of the Christian love, which is in fact
unique, unitary and indivisible. It is precisely for this reason that the
first commandment does not exist without the next one, nor the
second without the first, both imply themselves mutually - see I John 4,
19-21 and 5,2; S. Maximi Confessoris, Capita de Charitate, 1, 13 in: J-P.
Migne (ed.), Patrologiae cursus completus (Tomus XC, Paris: Garnier
Fratres, 1863), p. 964.
15 Dumitru Stăniloae, Iisus Hristos sau restaurarea omului (Craiova : Ed.
Omniscop, 1993), p. 154. Father Dumitru Stăniloae states, according to
the tradition, that after the Incarnation, the Logos has no longer a
divine life, separated from the human one.
16 See, for example, S. Maximi Confessoris, Capita de Charitate, 1, 57 in: J-
P. Migne (ed.), Patrologiae cursus completus (Tomus XC, Paris: Garnier
Fratres, 1863), p. 972: “The law of Christ is love”.
 Love and Knowledge in the Patristic Tradition 197

unique truth. But both exist out of the providential love of God,
who loved us first. Therefore, it is no longer the question of a
“commandment” prescribing us something external and
impossible, but, on the contrary, it is all about an experience of
love, given from my being, a love which, by its nature, must be
consequently shared with the others. Love grows and exists by
love. Love is divine because it comes from God and because it
unites us with God and, by means of this unification process, it
transforms us into a godly “we”, which surpasses our divisions
and makes us one, until the end when God will be “all in all” (1
Cor. 15, 28).
In the Saint Gospel of John it is underlined that Christ is the
truth, the life, the love, the word and, being all these, He is
implicitly the source of the unique knowledge. Saint John the
Apostle, when transmitting Christ's last sermon to His Apostles
(John, 13, 1), which includes the famous words “I am the way
and the truth and the life”, stated the principle of the Christian
knowledge: “Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the
only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (John, 17,
3). This sentence points out that the essence of knowledge is a
spiritual, relational divino-human fact, which identifies itself
with life and asserts life, so that both can be united with God's
love, in Jesus Christ.
In another passage, Saint Paul the Apostle points out very
clearly the way in which one must understand the text of the
Epistle to the Galatians, 4, 9, when he writes the first Epistle to
the Corinthians, 8, 2-3: “Those who think they know something
do not yet know as they ought to know. But whoever loves God
is known by God.” No doubt that the aim of Saint Paul the
Apostle, when writing these words, was not to depreciate or to
relativize the whole knowledge itself, he only wanted to express
the truth according to which knowledge depends intrinsically
on love. His intention was to present love as the unique and
fundamental criterion of the Christian knowledge. Therefore,
Saint Paul the Apostle may be considered one of the first
198 Teofan Mada

thinkers who outlined this specificity sui generis of the identity

between love and knowledge.

2.2 The Patristic Perspective

By analyzing the definition “God is love”, successive curtains are

drawn, on larger and larger backgrounds, so that eventually
there comes an infinite background which is the Holy Trinity.
Let us try to approach it through the stanzas of Gregory the
Theologian, who writes:
“Among the great billows of the sea of life,
here and there whipped up by wild winds...
one thing alone is dear to me, my only treasure,
comfort and oblivion in my struggle,
the light of the Blessed Trinity”.17

There is no love without loving a being or a thing, there is no

conscience which is not conscientious of something or of
someone. Who does God love, since He is love? Man?... Yet, in
this case, we cannot say that He has always been love, through
Himself, but only starting with a few millions of years before.
But before all these, what else was God, if not love? Does He
love the material universe? But then He has been love only
starting with a few thousand millions of years before. This is
not enough either. The answer is the Holy Trinity!18 Gregory the

17 S. Gregorii Theologi, Poemata historica, Quae spectant ad alios, 1, 15,

in: J-P. Migne (ed.), Patrologiae cursus completus (Tomus XXXVII,
Paris: Garnier Fratres, 1862), p. 1250.
18 At the origin of the existence of the world lies the boundless love of the
Holy Trinity, all that exists in it are expressions, manifestations, gifts of
Her perfect, superabundant love. See Dumitru Stăniloae, Spiritualitate
şi comuniune în Liturghia Ortodoxă, (Craiova: ed. Mitropoliei Olteniei,
1986), p. 11. What is being accomplished by the Christian faith in a
Trinitarian God makes possible to overcome the partial differences
between people and allows the existence of unselfish love and the
communion of people. Our creation implies a personal, real
 Love and Knowledge in the Patristic Tradition 199

Theologian makes the light of the Holy Trinity shine, protecting

the faith proclaimed at the Council of Nicaea: a unique God, in
three equal and distinct Persons – the Father, the Son and the
Holy Spirit, - “one glorious orb unites the triple rays”19.
Therefore, Gregory, guided by Saint Paul (1Cor. 8,6), always
affirms that “For to us there is but One God, the Father, of
Whom are all things, and One Lord Jesus Christ, by Whom are
all things; and One Holy Ghost, in Whom are all things”.20 God is
eternal love between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
According to Dionysius the Areopagite knowledge is the one
which unites “the one who knows and the one who is known”.21
Also Saint Maximus the Confessor will express the same thing.22
Before them, Saint Gregory of Nyssa transmitted this truth
using the following words: “The one who owns knowledge is
the one who has lived it (…) because in his life, he has
transposed God’s word into acts and has made it his being.
Knowledge is its transposition into being by the one who owns
it.”23 This truth is supported by other Holy Fathers as well, such

participation in the life of God. “Since, then, God, Who is good and
more than good, did not find satisfaction in self-contemplation, but in
fits exceeding goodness wished certain things to come into existence
which would enjoy His benefits and share in His goodness” (Ιωάννης ο
Δαμασκηνός, Έκδοσις Ακριβής της Ορθοδόξου Πίστεως (Thessaloniki:
Pournara, trans. N. Matsouka, 2009), p. 29.
19 S. Gregorii Theologi, Poemata historica, Quae spectant ad alios, 1, 32,
in: J-P. Migne (ed.), Patrologiae cursus completus (Tomus XXXVII,
Paris: Garnier Fratres, 1862), p. 512.
20 S. Grégoire de Nazianze, Discours 39,12, in Paul Gallay (ed.), Claudio
Moreschini (ed.), Sources Chrétiennes 458 (Paris: Cerf,1990), p. 172
21 S. Dionysii Areopagitae, De divinis nominibus, VII, 4, Tomus prior, 4, 15,
in: J-P. Migne (ed.), Patrologiae cursus completus (Tomus III, Paris:
Garnier Fratres, 1857), p. 872.
22 S. Maximi Confessoris, Capita Theologiae et Oeconomiae VII, 91 in: J-P.
Migne (ed.), Patrologiae cursus completus (Tomus XC, Paris: Garnier
Fratres, 1863), p. 1388.
23 S. P. N. Gregorii, Episcopi nysseni, Opera quae reperiri potuerunt omnia,
I, 44 in: J-P. Migne (ed.), Patrologiae cursus completus (Tomus I, Paris:
Garnier Fratres, 1863), p. 1265 şi S.P.N. Gregorii, Episcopi nysseni,
200 Teofan Mada

as St. Basil the Great24, St. Symeon the New Theologian25, St.
Diadochus of Photiki26, and St. Gregory Palamas27.
According to them, love is the perfect method, as well as the
ideal way to knowledge, love being the sum of life and work of
all the virtues, including the authentic knowledge. Love is
synonymous with forgiveness, charity and philanthropy, love
being the reason why God has created the world and has
become Man. Love is the ground of the Incarnation of the Word,
that is of the unification of man with God . By His Incarnation,
Christ has created the structure in which man's salvation will
take place – the Church which, as an eternal reality, becomes a
universal mystery (καθολικόν μυστήριον)28.
Together with the Incarnation of the Son of God, the Church
becomes the mystical Body of Christ.29 Therefore, without this
visible Body, that is without the Incarnation itself, the Church
would have been a reality in potentia and not a reality de facto.
We can belong to Christ and be with Christ only in communion
with Christ as a whole, head and body, in the full life of the
Church, animated by its Lord. Only in it, thanks to God, the Holy
Scripture is a living and topical Word. Without the living subject

Opera quae reperiri potuerunt omnia, I, 46 in: J-P. Migne (ed.),

Patrologiae cursus completus (Tomus III, Paris: Garnier Fratres, 1863)
p.176.
24 S. P. N. Basilii, Homiliae in Hexaemeron, 1, 8, in: J-P. Migne (ed.),
Patrologiae cursus completus (Tomus XXIX, Paris: Garnier Fratres,
1857), 20C.
25 Συμεών Ν. Θεολόγου, Άπαντα τα ευρισκόμενα (Thesaloniki: ed.
Zagoreou, 2004), p. 132.
26 Diadochus of Photiki, On Spiritual Knowledge XVI SC5, Philokaly I, XIV
(Astir Publishing House, 2008), p. 238.
27 Γρηγορίου του Παλαμά, Συνγράματα, vol. IV (Thessaloniki: ed. Oikos
Kyromanos, 1998), p. 141; vol. I (Thessaloniki: ed. Oikos Kyromanos,
3rd edition, 2010), p. 430.
28 Γ. Φλωρόβσκυ, Το Σώμα του ζώντος Χριστού (Thessaloniki: Pournara,
1972), p. 39 and the next ones.
29 „The Church is the work of the Incarnation od Christ, it is the
Incarnation itself.” S. Bulgakov, The Orthodox Church (New York: St.
Vladimir’s Seminary, 1997), p. 8.
 Love and Knowledge in the Patristic Tradition 201

of the Church embracing the ages, the Bible disintegrates into

often heterogeneous writings, thus becoming a book of the past.
In the present time, the Bible is eloquent only where „the
Presence” is – where Christ stays forever our contemporary: in
the Body of His Church. Yet, the Christian faith is not a „religion
of the Book”: Christianity is the religion of God's Word, not a
written and mute word, but an incarnate and living Word.
The words of Saint Maximus the Confessor show us to which
extent the Church Fathers identified knowledge and love. In his
writing, Centuries on theology and economy, this Father states:
“God and man are exemplars of each other. Man's ability to
deify himself through love for God's sake is correlative with
God's becoming man through compassion for man's sake.
And man's manifestation through the virtues of the God who
is by nature invisible is correlative with the degree to which
his intellect is seized by God and imbued with spiritual
knowledge”30.
According to the text above of Saint Maximus, the patristic
method and the criterion of correlative knowledge of God and
man are offered through love. I love, therefore I know. If Saint
Maximus calls God's manifested love “compassion for man's
sake” and the love of God means man's participation to it, this
doesn't essentially change the matters concerning knowledge31.
In Saint Maximus' work, as well as the works of other Fathers,
we often come across such passages: they contain the principle
of the patristic knowledge and we can find them since the
beginning of Christianity, for example at Saint Paul the Apostle
etc. Thus, we can mention the well-known, but somehow
paradoxical phrase of Saint Paul the Apostle in the Epistle to the
Galatians 4, 9: “But now that you have come to know God, or

30 S. Maximi Confessoris, Capita Theologiae et Oeconomiae VII. 74, in: J-P.

Migne (ed.), Patrologiae cursus completus (Tomus XC, Paris: Garnier
Fratres, 1863), p. 1380. Capita Theologiae et Oeconomiae III, 27, in: J-P.
Migne (ed.), Patrologiae cursus completus (Tomus XC, Paris: Garnier
Fratres, 1863), p. 1189.
31 Ibidem.
202 Teofan Mada

rather to be known by God”. The paradox of this statement lies

in the fact that, according to the Apostle, human knowledge
granted by God is determined by the a priori knowledge that
God has of man! In this way, Saint Paul the Apostle wishes to
underline a very natural fact for all the Christian faith: the living
and personal manifestation of God in Jesus Christ and man's
living communion with Him. Saint Gregory of Nyssa tries to
define more accurately: “In fact this likeness to the divine is not
our work at all; it is not the achievement of any faculty of man;
it is the great gift of God bestowed upon our nature at the very
moment of our birth”.32
Therefore, to the soul “the question is not to know something
about God, but to have God in you.”33 For the rest, carefully
observes Gregory, “deification means purity, it means liberation
from the passions and the removal of any wrong thing: if all
these are in you, God is truly in you.”34
In this way, God is not and could never be for us any kind of
“object”, not even the “object of knowledge”, because God is
“pre-eminently the subject”, He is always and everywhere a
true and living Person. This is why the existence and possibility
of knowing the personal God are not realizable without a free-
loving communion with Him, without the personal-loving
union, as long as the one who knows dissociates knowledge
from the one who is known. For the orthodox spirituality,
which knows by loving and loves by knowing, it is easy to
understand that there can be no relationship and no union of
man with God outside freedom, beyond any outer, physical,
moral, intellectual, rational or any other type of necessity. Such

32 S. Grégoire de Nysse, Traité de la Virginité, 12, 2 in: Michel Aubineau

(ed.), Sources Chrétiennes 119 (Paris: Cerf, 1966), p. 408-410.
33 S. P. N. Gregorii, De Beatitudinibus, 6, in: J-P. Migne (ed.), Patrologiae
cursus completus (Tomus XLIV, Paris: Garnier Fratres, 1863), p. 1269
C.
34 S. P. N. Gregorii, De Beatitudinibus, 6, in: J-P. Migne (ed.), Patrologiae
cursus completus (Tomus XLIV, Paris: Garnier Fratres, 1863), p.
1272C.
 Love and Knowledge in the Patristic Tradition 203

a relationship of freedom expresses a desired state, that is an

event which is possible only by love. The manifestation and the
revelation of God to the world has happened by and with the
initiative of the divine part, thanks to the love God has for the
world, “because He first loved us” (John 4, 10 and 19), as Saint
Paul the Apostle said (in Gal. 4, 9), when he drew our attention
to the fact that God is always the one who makes the first move,
even when it comes to the divino-human Christian knowledge.
Knowledge cannot happen and nobody could have approached
it except by the loving union between God and man, because it
does not manifest itself as one-sided love, but as mutual,
sacrificial love, creating union a mutual communion, without
which it would have been one-sided compulsion or tyrannical
domination.

3 Love as Principle of Knowledge

The fundamental principle of life in general is giving life. The

human being who lives egocentrically loses or ruins his life.
Without love, life becomes barren, dull and empty.
Consequently, this axiom of living becomes eventually identical
to the criterion of love. Basically, love means to abandon the
egocentricity of self-love: not to focus our life on ourselves –
how I will be, what will happen to me -, but to gaze in the
direction You, the Eternal Other – towards God and towards the
others that He has sent to me.35

35 See Αποφθέγματα των αγιών Γερόντων, English edition Discourses and

Sayings, transl. E. Wheeler, (Cistercian Publications Kalamazoo, 1977),
pp. 138-139: Abba Dorotheus used the image of a compasses to
describe the way in which our relationships with the other people
influence our relationship with God: “Suppose we were to take a
compass and insert the point and draw the outline of a circle. The
centre point is the same distance from any point on the circumference
(...). Let us suppose that this circle is the world and that God himself is
the centre; the straight lines drawn from the circumference to the
204 Teofan Mada

And this ground of love, which defines the action of man,

identifies itself with the mystery of the cross, with the mystery
of death and resurrection that we find in Christ. Man can
accomplish love, because: he is created in the image of the God-
love and is loved by God, therefore he loves in the full aspect of
his potentialities36. Love implies a path of growth, which is

centre are the lives of men.” In order to come near to God, men have to
progress on the circumference towards the centre of life: “The closer
they are to God, the closer they become to one another; and the closer
they are to one another, the closer they become to God (...). This is the
very nature of life. The more we are turned away from and do not love
God, the greater the distance that separates us from our neighbour”. .
36 Saint John the Chrysostom says that the knowledge of God is innate to
man. The spiritual vocation is innate to man:S. P. N. Joannis
Chrysostomi, Ad Homilias in S. Romanum Martyrem, 2,1, in: J-P. Migne
(ed.), Patrologiae cursus completus (Tomus L, Paris: Garnier Fratres,
1862), p. 611; See Χ. Ν. Μπούκη, Η ουσία της Θρησκείας κατά τούς
Καππαδόκας, Tessaloniki, 1967, p. 13; W. Pannenberg, Gottesgedanke
und menschliche Freitheit, Göttingen, 1972). The natural religiosity is
underlined more by the “optimist” spirit of the Old-Testamentary
theology. See S. P. N. Joannis Chrysostomi, Ad Eos Qui Scandalizati Sunt.
Lib. Unus, in: J-P. Migne (ed.), Patrologiae cursus completus (Tomus
LII, Paris: 1862), p. 497; cf. John. 16, 33; see: Π. Δημητροπούλου,
Ορθόδοξος χριστιανίκη ηθική (Athens, 1974), pp. 8ff See: S. P. N.
Gregorii, De hominis opificio, Scripta exegetica, in: J-P. Migne (ed.),
Patrologiae cursus completus (Tomus XLIV, Paris: Garnier Fratres,
1863), p. 201: Our proto-parents Adam and Eve had the innate
capacity of knowing God (Theognosias, capax Dei), since the rational
“power” of God's image worked naturally. (. The Church Fathers
interpreted this innate religiosity as the dynamic inclination of our
whole being towards the divine Archetype (Origen), the unbroken
aspiration of our spirit towards God (St. Basil, St. Maximus), the human
love which aims at the divine love (St. Augustine, St. Gregory Palamas):
cf. N. Nησηώτη, Προλεγόμενα είς την Θεολογικήν Γνωσιολογίαν
(Athens, 1978), p. 78. Consequently, there are, in the human mind, a
priori, ideas, principles of knowing God. N. Α. Mατσούκα, Δογματική
και Συμβολική Θεολογία, Tessaloniki: Pournara, vol. 1, p. 154: “Even
man's soul is endowed with common meanings and final, divisible,
syllogistic powers”. See: S. P. N. Gregorii, Episcopi nysseni, Homilies on
Ecclesiastes, I, 44, in: J-P. Migne (ed.), Patrologiae cursus completus
(Tomus I, Paris: Garnier Fratres, 1863), p. 624 C.
 Love and Knowledge in the Patristic Tradition 205

never finished and completed, but it changes during life,

matures and precisely for this reason, remains faithful to
itself.37 In fact, love is not ready-made and beautiful, but it
grows, to call it that way, we can learn it slowly, so that it may
contain ever-more our forces and it may open our way to a
correct life. To Dostoevsky's question: “Which beauty will save
the world?”, the answer is: the creative beauty of God's love38.
A great neptic Father, Saint Diadochus of Photiki wrote in his
work, “Gnotic Chapters”, that “He who loves God consciously in
his heart is known by God, for to the degree that he receives the
love of God consciously in his soul, he truly enters into God's
love”39. Therefore, Abba Diadochus joins knowledge and love,
concerning man's relationship with God in and by love, as well
as beyond the transcendency of this love relationship, directly
linked to the personal knowledge of God.
This is not only the basis or the starting point in knowledge, but
also the end on any other form of shared knowledge. This
happens because the knowledge of Truth is granted together
with the personal knowledge of God, by experience or by living,
so that in the end, the knowledge of God's truth may offer
eternal life and true joy.
The experience of the saints proves the fact that without God,
the knowledge of Him is not possible, because man is not
endowed neither with those necessary characteristics, nor with
the capacity of knowledge, physical or metaphysical, by means
of which he could know God implicitly and personally, thus
arriving to the true knowledge of Him. Man can get to know God
only if He wants this and He makes Himself known. But God
proved us by His economical revelation that He shows Himself

37 S. Maximi Confessoris, Capita de Charitate, in: J-P. Migne (ed.),

Patrologiae cursus completus (Tomus XC, Paris: Garnier Fratres,
1863), p. 964.
38 Федор Достоевский, Идиот (Издательство: АСТ, Москва, 2010), p.
161.
39 Diadochus of Photiki, On Spiritual Knowledge XVI SC5), Philokaly I, XIV
(Astir Publishing House, 2008), p. 238.
206 Teofan Mada

to people only in love and by freedom. God revealed His free,

freeing and unlimited love, showing Himself to the man and to
the world and He expects from the man, as well as from the one
who knows, the same unlimited and unconditioned love. This
loving, unlimited reciprocity of the love between God and man
is implied in the words of the Saint Apostle (Gal. 4,9 and I Cor.
8,3).
The character of the knowledge by love contained in the words
of Saint Paul the Apostle: “But now that you have come to know
God, or rather to be known by God” and: “But if anyone loves
God, he is known by Him” is very clear. But these words express
mainly the new biblical and Christian content of the notion of
knowledge as experience and love, that is, in essence, the
relational and communional character of knowledge. The
relational character of knowledge expresses mainly the reality
of the communion and union act which bounds the one who is
known and the one who knows. Didymus of Alexandria wrote
the following about the neotestamentary content of science and
knowledge:
“The meaning of the word ‘knowledge’ is double: on one
hand it means to know; on the other hand is means to unite,
to blend the one who knows and the one who is known.
According to the first meaning, God knows everybody, not
only the marked ones. According to the second meaning, God
knows only the rightful ones: ‘The Lord knows those who
are His’ (II Tim. 2, 19), and he ignores the sinful ones (…)
Because the wicked one is not known. The one who stopped
sinning and who was not known before is known now. This
is in perfect accordance with the apostolic word: ‘But now
that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by
God, how is it that you turn back again to the weak and
worthless elemental things, to which you desire to be
enslaved all over again?’ (Gal. 4, 9). When people ignore God,
 Love and Knowledge in the Patristic Tradition 207

they are ignored by Him too, and those who know God are
known by Him too.”40
These words highlight the special character and the method of
the patristic knowledge. Man and knowledge are not defined
autonomously, but in relationship, by communion with God and
other people. Already by the act of knowledge and recognition,
man is considered from the point of view of knowledge as
unity.41 As an act of personal and relational knowledge, it is not
mainly a capacity of accumulating notions or ideas, but mostly a
relationship and mutual loving communion between living and
personal beings. Such knowledge becomes in the heart a living
reality: it is not only a theory, but a force of life, a life-changing
union of love.
The knowledge of Christ is not only a thought, but love which
opens the eyes, transforms man and creates communion with
Christ the Word, who is truth and life.42 In this communion,
which is unflawed knowledge and love, the perfect Christian
attains the contemplation, the union with God. In other words,
for the patristic understanding, knowledge arises from the
union and from the life of the communion, from the “kinship”
and “familiarity” existing between the one who knows and the
one who is known, as Saint Cyril of Alexandria highlights.
Following the words of Saint Paul the Apostle43, he adds that in
this act of mutual knowledge “we, the ones adopted by Him are
called His people (…) because Christ wanted to receive us into

40 Didymus of Alexandria, Expositio in Psalmos , in: J-P. Migne (ed.),

Patrologiae cursus completus (Tomus XXXIX, Paris: 1863), p. 1264.
41 In almost all the languages of the world, the word “knowledge” seems
to indicate a community knowledge, that is implying the participation
of more than one person to the act of knowledge.
42 Cf. Ioan I. Ică jr., “Sfântul Maxim Mărturisitorul despre iubirea agapică”,
in Mitropolia Ardealului 33 (1988), nr. 1, p. 37–59.
43 “Members of God's household” (Ephes. 2, 19)
208 Teofan Mada

all that are His.”44 The path to the visible unity of all the
Christians dwells in prayer, because, fundamentally, the unity is
not “built” by us, but “built” by God, it comes from Him, from the
trinitarian mystery, from the communion of the Father with the
Son in the light of the Holy Spirit. Our life should be open to the
divine grace, and it should become a daily invocation of God's
grace.

4 Conclusions

To the orthodox ethos, knowledge in not and inductive, abstract

and theoretical act, but it represents the living encounter
between the one who knows and the one who is known.
Therefore, knowledge does not mean to invent, to create, to
elaborate, to discover or even to conceive a notion or a system
of notions able to explain everything, “illuminating” or calming
man's conscience. The unique aim of a real knowledge or its
unique content is that man, as Christian hypostasis can meet
face to face the living and shareable Truth. He can attain with
his whole soul, his whole heart and his whole conscience the
level of the personal encounter of the true and living God by
Jesus Christ, who already is a perichoretic relationship.
Authentic Christian knowledge means the beginning of a new
life: love in union with Jesus Christ, Who is known and at the
same time remains transcendent. The living and true God never
becomes “object”, He always remains “Subject”, as the human
being does, otherwise. Thus, for Clement of Alexandria, the
moral-spiritual element has the same importance as the
intellectual element on the way to perfection,. The two go
together, because one cannot know without loving and cannot
love without knowing. The likeness of God and His

44 S. P. N. Cyrilli Alexandriae Archiepiscopi, Comentarium in Evangelium

Joannis, in: J-P. Migne (ed.), Patrologiae cursus completus (Tomus
LXXIII, Paris: 1864), p. 1045.
 Love and Knowledge in the Patristic Tradition 209

contemplation cannot be accomplished only by rational

knowledge: for them, a life in accordance to Christ is necessary,
a life in accordance to Christ's truth. Therefore, love must
accompany the intellectual knowledge, just as the shadow
accompanies the body. We end our paper by quoting a few
sentences from the famous “Prayer to the Paedagogus”, by
which Clement of Alexandria finishes his “Paedagogus”:
“Be gracious, O Instructor, to us Your children, cause all of us
Your peace, having sailed tranquilly over the billows of sin,
may be wafted in calm by Your Holy Spirit, by the ineffable
wisdom, by night and day to the perfect day; and praising
thank the Alone Father and Son, (...) Instructor and Teacher,
with the Holy Spirit, Amen!”45

45 Clementis Alexandrini, Paedagogus 8, lib. 3, 12, 101, in: J-P. Migne

(ed.), Patrologiae cursus completus (Tomus VIII, Paris: 1857), p. 679
BC.