The Philokalia, Volume 4

The Philokalia, Volume 4 is a work by G. E. H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, and Kallistos Ware (trs.) (1995).

Core claims

• Volume 4 of the Philokalia reveals that the tradition’s most radical claim — that contemplative union with God is accessible to laypeople, not only monks — is carried most forcefully by St Symeon the New Theologian, whose autobiographical catechesis functions as a phenomenology of grace that dismantles the authority-gatekeeping structures of institutional religion from within the institution itself.
• St Gregory of Sinai’s treatment of discernment between authentic spiritual experience and demonic delusion constitutes the most sophisticated diagnostic psychology in the entire Philokalia — a taxonomy of inner states that parallels and in some ways surpasses Jung’s distinction between ego-inflation and genuine encounter with the Self.
• The volume’s composite authorship (texts by the New Theologian spliced with those of Symeon the Studite and Nikitas Stithatos) demonstrates that the Philokalia is not an anthology but an editorial argument — St Nikodimos constructed a lineage of transmission that privileges the spiritual father-disciple dyad as the primary vehicle of psycho-spiritual transformation, prefiguring the modern analytic relationship by five centuries.

Related questions

• How does St Symeon the New Theologian’s account of grace irrupting prior to ascetic preparation challenge or confirm Jung’s concept of the Self’s autonomous eruption into ego-consciousness as described in Aion?
• In what ways does Gregory of Sinai’s taxonomy of spiritual delusion (prelest) parallel or diverge from Edward Edinger’s account of ego-inflation and the ego-Self identity in Ego and Archetype?
• Can the Philokalic concept of the spiritual father-disciple relationship, as constructed editorially in Volume 4’s composite texts, illuminate Winnicott’s notion of the holding environment and its role in facilitating genuine psychic transformation, as developed in Playing and Reality?

See also

• Library page: /library/ancient-roots/philokalia-volume-4/

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