St Symeon the New Theologian and Orthodox Tradition

Book excerpt: This book is a study of the mystical nature of tradition, and the traditional nature of mysticism, and of St Symeon as both a highly personal and very traditional ecclesiastical writer. The teachings of St Symeon (late tenth to early eleventh century) created much controversy in Byzantium and even led to a short-lived exile to Asia Minor. For the first time in modern scholarship St Symeon's attitude to Scripture and to church worship, his relations with his spiritual father, Symeon the Studite, and the Studite tradition in general are examined. Separate chapters are dedicated to Symeon's cycle of daily reading, to his attitude to hagiographical literature, to his trinitarian theology, ecclesiology, anthropology, and mysticism. Special attention is also paid to the links between Symeon and preceeding authors such as Gregory Nazianzen. In this book Dr Alfeyev aims to redress the balance existing in the modern scholarly approach to Symeon and, more generally, to the Byzantine mystical tradition. By examining Symeon from within the tradition to which both he and the author belong Dr Alfeyev breaks new ground in original research.