About St. Symeon the New Theologian

About
St. Symeon the New Theologian

Picture of St. Symeon the New Theologian St. Symeon the New Theologian is an Eastern Orthodox saint. He lived from 949 to 1022 in the Byzantine Empire (now part of Turkey). While presiding as abbot over St. Mamas Monastery in Constantinople, he delivered a number of sermons which stressed that Christianity only becomes meaningful when the living Christ is encountered personally. Since many individuals of his day felt that this was either impossible or was only possible during the apostolic era, St. Symeon felt compelled to share his personal experiences of Christ. As he puts it:

There are many who harm those who hear them by saying that nobody can be like {the fathers of the church}, or in his deeds attain to what our great fathers achieved, or be found worthy of the spiritual gifts that were granted them. Their unbelief compels me, unwilling as I am, to say the things I never wanted to say, and so to proclaim publicly the reality of God's love for man in order to reprove the slothfulness and carelessness of those who make those claims.
("Symeon the New Theologian: The Discourses", p. 126)

Despite the controvery which his teachings stirred up, St. Symeon asserted again and again that what he was teaching was no different than what the Holy Scriptures and the fathers of the church had taught from the beginning. As he says:

You, on your part, must see and test that which we say. If we have views different from those of the apostles and of the holy God-inspired fathers, if we speak contrary to what they said, if we fail to repeat what the Holy Gospels say about God, then let me be anathema from the Lord God Jesus Christ. Let it fall on me if we do not enkindle in enveryone that life-giving energy and gift which is in these [writings] (yet lamentably extinguished, as far as men are able, by foolish reasonings) and fail to point to the light that already is shining, as we establish and assert all things from the Holy Scriptures themselves and clearly demonstrate.
("Symeon the New Theologian: The Discourses", p. 354)