On Purity of Heart and Soul

by St. Paisius Velichkovsky

(Originally found in The Orthodox Word, May-June 1965)

PURITY OF HEART, mind, and soul is attained by a life of much labor, through spiritual effort—for the heart is purified by sorrows, by the most difficult spiritual and bodily virtues: by hunger, thirst, vigils, and other means... From filthy, passionate desires are born bodily passions, that is, lust. But from purity of soul and fasting with prayer, the mind is purified of filthy thoughts and fantasies. Through purity of mind the soul is liberated front its passions and is enlightened, and from purity of soul comes mental sight. Unless we have purity of heart, mind, and soul, that is, passionlessness, the demons venture to enter into us, they disturb us and display in us deception (prelest) in place of truth. For only by a pure heart, soul, and mind may the Mental Sun be contemplated.

One must apply oneself with special diligence to fasting and unceasing prayer, so that prayer may descend to the depths or the heart and purify it from the passions of the soul and body and enlighten the soul, bringing delight, assuagement, and joy, and driving away filthy thoughts and mental fantasies. When in such a way a man's heart, mind, soul, and body are purified, grace comes to dwell in him; the door is closed to demons and passions, and he begins to sense a spiritual sweetness. As long as the natural movements of the body are undiminished and arouse in the heart sinful pleasure and prevent the bodily senses from being purified in this life; as long as the mind has not been liberated from dark, filthy fantasies and the soul has nor been delivered from passions, —for so long will the sweetness of grace fail to be awakened in a man, and he will not perceive the Divine in his soul.

The beginning of purity is non-acquiescence to sin of mind, and its end is mortification, a being dead to sin of body. Impurity of the heart consists of lustful pleasure and sinful excitement in the heart, impurity of the body, of a falling into sin in act. Impurity of mind consists of filthy thoughts; and impurity of soul, of various passions of the soul, when the soul loves something immoderately and is beguiled by it.

If a person labors with his body and achieves certain virtues, but neglects the ordering of his heart, does not fervently devote himself to mental activity (mindfulness) and does not concern himself with sobriety of soul then he is like someone who gathers with one hand and scatters with the other, for bodily labors are only the beginning of the spiritual path, while internal sobriety of the heart, activity of the mind,[1] and an ordered soul are its end. Bodily labors without internal ordering and mindfulness are like dry leaves. Therefore we neither reach perfection nor receive grace if we do not know where to begin the spiritual life, what constitutes its middle and its end, and in what consists the essence and foundation of the virtues; and until we realize this we shall continue at one and the same time to labor and to undo the results of our labor. Understand, O man, where the spiritual life begins, whence the virtues arise, and through what it is that the passions find easy entry into us; and then your soul will be soon enlightened. Bui without this beginning you will be sowing seed into the sea, and it will always be wasted.

[1.] I.e., the Jesus Prayer (trans. note)

Expiation, Blood & Atonement

by Fr. Patrick Henry Reardon

Among the biblical concepts supporting St. Paul’s theology of atonement, one of the most important, surely, is that of expiation. What does the Apostle mean when he writes: “God set forth [Jesus Christ] as the expiatory in His blood” (Romans 3:25)?

Although this is the only time St. Paul uses the noun hilasterion, I believe that the full context of his epistles, along with the Old Testament substratum on which they depend, provides the correct and adequate meaning of that term.

If I seem to belabor an obvious point–that we should go to the Bible for enlightenment on the subject of expiation– let me say that I do so from a sense that some readers of Holy Scripture in recent centuries either have not done so, or have done so inconsistently. They have borrowed misleading ideas from elsewhere.

In classical and Hellenistic Greek, the verb “to propitiate” (hilaskomai), when used with a personal object, normally signified the placating of some irate god or hero. It is a curious fact that since the rediscovery of ancient Greek literature in the West, beginning from the Renaissance, there has grown a strong tendency to impose this pagan meaning of “expiation” on the teaching of the Bible.

Understood in this way, Paul is presumed to teach that Jesus, in His self-sacrifice on the Cross, placated God’s wrath against sinful humanity. That is to say, the purpose of the shedding of Christ’s blood was to propitiate, to assuage an angry Father.

Let me say that this interpretation of the Apostle Paul is very erroneous and should be rejected for three reasons.

First, this picture is difficult to reconcile with Paul’s conviction that God Himself is the One who made the sacrifice. How easily we forget that the Cross did cost God something. He is the One that gave up His only-begotten Son out of love for us. It was Jesus’ Father

“who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all” (Romans 8:32).

Sacrificial victims are expensive, and in this sacrifice the Father Himself bore the price. He gave up, unto death, that which was dearest and most precious to Him. In the death of Jesus, everything about God is love, more love, infinite love. There is not the faintest trace of divine anger in the death of Christ.

Second, in those places where Holy Scripture does speak of propitiating the anger of God, this propitiation is never linked to blood sacrifice. When biblical men are said to soften the divine wrath, it is done with prayer, as in the case of Moses on Mount Sinai, or by the offering of incense, which symbolizes prayer. Because blood sacrifice and the wrath of God are two things the Bible never joins together, I submit that authentic Christian theology should also endeavor to keep them apart.

Moreover, when the Apostle Paul does write of God’s anger, it is never in terms of appeasement but of deliverance. At the final judgment, when that divine anger, far from being placated, will consume the realm and servants of sin, Christ will deliver us from it, recognizing us as His faithful servants (1 Thessalonians 1:10; Romans 5:9). There will be not the slightest hint of appeasement at that point.

Third, the word hilasterion, which I have translated as the substantive “expiatory,” seems to have in Paul’s mind a more technical significance. In Hebrews 9:5, the only other place where the word appears in the New Testament, hilasterion designates the top, the cover, of the Ark of the Covenant, where the Almighty is said to throne between and above the Cherubim. In this context, the term is often translated as “mercy seat,” and it seems reasonable to think that this is the image that Paul too has in mind.

On Yom Kippur, the annual Atonement Day, the high priest sprinkled sacrificial blood on that hilasterion,

“because of the uncleanness of the children of Israel, and because of their transgressions of all their sins” (Leviticus 16:16).

Therefore, by saying that God “set forth” (proetheto) Jesus as the expiatory, or “instrument of expiation,” for our sins, Paul asserts that the shedding of Jesus’ blood on the Cross fulfilled the prophetic meaning and promise of that ancient liturgical institution of Israel, reconciling mankind by the removal of the uncleanness,

“their transgressions of all their sins.”

The Cross was the supreme altar, and Good Friday was preeminently the Day of the Atonement. The removal of sins was not accomplished by a juridical act, but a liturgical act performed in great love:

“Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma” (Ephesians 5:2).

Loving both the Father and ourselves, Jesus brought the Father and ourselves together by what He accomplished in His own body, reconciling us through the blood of His Cross.

In the Bible,

“the life of the flesh is in the blood” (Leviticus 17:11).

The victim slain in sacrifice was not the vicarious recipient of a punishment, but the symbol of the loving dedication of the life of the person making the sacrifice.

This sacrificial dedication of life is the means by which the sinner is made “at one” with God.

Such is the biblical meaning of expiation and the proper context in which to interpret Paul’s teaching on the sacrifice of Christ.