Parker’s Reviews > Divine Eros: Hymns of Saint Symeon the New Theologian > Status Update

I can only hope that if and when I ever have difficulty with my congregation, that Jesus will do for me as he did for Symeon: Grant me a vision in which he warns, point-blank, that anybody who won't obey my words (to the death, even!) is essentially forfeiting their salvation.

The longer I read these poems, the more convinced I am Symeon's visions were mere dreams or hallucinations at best.

"And if you reject my commands and you are vexed by them,
and you consider it a shame and a dishonor
to suffer and to lay down your soul for my commands,
then why do you ask to learn how you must be saved,
and by what practices you may befriend Me?
And why do you call Me your God?
And why do you stupidly think you believe in Me?
For I willingly suffered these things for your sake."

Gotta say Symeon's theological reasoning is nowhere near as strong as his eastern forefathers like Gregory of Nazianzus or Athanasius.

In hymn 34 he claims that our present union with God must be perceptible with the senses. That has to be the case because either we're united with the immortal (which we would obviously see/feel) or else God must become mortal through union with us.

At times, Symeon's prayers sounds to me like the bits and pieces I've encountered from other mystical traditions (primarily Islamic and Buddhist). I get that I'm very much a post-enlightenment Westerner, but I really don't see the appeal. Anyway, the similarities (especially with the excerpts of Islamic mysticism I've read) make me think the whole endeavor is more fleshly than its practitioners would like to admit.