HESYCHASM TRADITION IN THE CONTEXT OF METROPOLITAN SOUROZHKY ANTHONY’S ANTHROPOLOGY INTEGRITY

Abstract

The article is devoted to the topic of the Hesychasm’s influance on the anthropology of the eminent church hierarch metropolitan Anthony Sourozhky (Bloom). In particular, it is proved that metropolitan Anthony himself practiced hesychasm and based his own spiritual experience substantiated the main positions of the man’s theological doctrine. It has been emphasized on the fact that the main purpose of human hesychastic practice is to acquire a state of worship. The hesychastic experience of intelligent prayer involves the individual experience of the deed, the spiritual practice of man’s deification by combining the energies of man with God’s energies, when all levels of anthropostructure are coordinated with each other with intention to an absolute transcendental purpose. The mystical experience of Jesus’ prayer is thus restored to the lost anthropological integrity that is made possible in the higher stages of prayer practice, such as personal integrity, unity of mind, soul and body, and union with Divine energies. This article focuses on the fact that Bishop Anthony builds his isychast-anthropological views on the basis of the doctrine of the inner man.This doctrine has a profoundly highlighted personalistic meaning and comes to the fact that man, as an individual, is a post-Eden, carnal person whose nature is wounded by sin. And the inward man is the finding in himself the Image of God, the plunging into himself, and the contemplating in himself spiritual depths by expressing in the Biblical language - it is to see in himself the Kingdom of God, God Himself. This position is in line with the Christian anthropology of wholeness, in which the ultimate goal is the attainment of the state of deification, that is, the transformation of man through the realization of the completeness and perfection of human nature in the meeting of human and divine energies. The main idea of Christian anthropology is the doctrine of the image of God in man, where the origin of the personality comes from the expression of this image. It is on the path of worship (which is the key idea of Byzantine theology and, at the same time, the moral ideal of Christianity) that the spiritual nature of man is revealed.