Logos of Glory: Wisdom of Heraclitus

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The Logos of glory unveils yet wisely veils the Name of God.   It reveals God in his Name ‘I AM,’ but does not profane it, because Logos veils the Name from profane scrutiny. Wisdom discerns what the Logos reveals by hallowing the Name so the Kingdom comes.   The Logos unveils glory by purifying the heart with uncreated fire, illumining the heart in uncreated light and glorifying the heart as flame of uncreated fire.  Prophetic oracles in ancient times say no names personally name God except God’s Holy Name ‘I AM.’  The Logos in all is the only one who reveals the Name ‘I AM,’ but he is common to all and has been from the beginning.  Wisdom alone discerns what the Name reveals, which is God, his wisdom in the midst, his glory transcending all created attributes.  The living flame of Spirit-filled Logos names what no names name but the one Name names, so as to make known what no worldly knowing knows but wisdom has always loved and known.  From Heraclitus,  the desert learned to love apophatic paradox so that by veiling what it unveiled, it safely unveiled what it veiled.  Desert wisdom does not veil or unveil the Logos, as if it was bound by binary double binds, but gives a sign, that we may turn and see.   Signs do not describe glory as destination but indicate the direction.  Unity is indicated by ‘no confusion’ and difference is indicated by ‘no division.’  Fulfilling the Oracle’s injunction: ‘Know thyself,’ the Name shows the way, by unveiling truth as life and un-concealing what truth remembers.   Apophatic Logos is uncovered when seers search out who speaks when the Logos says: ‘All; One.’

Desert elders, agreeing with Heraclitus, tell us to listen not to their opinions but to the Logos, veiling as Name the One who unveils glory.   As ever-present ‘I AM,’ the One who was and who is to come unveils ‘All: One.’  The Logos of glory loves the wisdom of this apophatic logic, which by contradiction agrees, being complete and incomplete, timeless and temporal, gathering together what is flying apart.  Logos sings wisdom songs that are in tune with wisdom and out of tune with sophistry, discovering  unexpected harmony by hearkening to what is nearly always unheard.  The way up and the way down differ as ascent to the One in contrast to descent of the One, but both ascent and descent embrace one and all.  Yet glory calls for a Logos that uncovers unity in difference and confirms difference in unity, curing confusion and division by restoring sound unity and conserving whole difference.  Thus, glory sees what opinion overlooks, that ascent and descent are mysteriously one.  The desert prefers this seeing, the praxis of theoria, to new theories, turning round into the timeless Logos of wisdom rather than running out after the latest opinion like the sophists.  Obedience to the Logos in the desert is not subservience to arbitrary opinions, nor is hearkening to the Logos confused with hearing dissipating logismoi.  

Saint Antony said that true self-knowledge is knowledge of God.  Saint Macarius said this Logos of glory is fire that purifies, illumines and glorifies the saints.  The Logos is forgotten when self-interest clings to private opinions.   So elders sever to unite and deny to affirm, in order that the eye of the heart may awaken to what garrulous opinions forget.  The Sage of Ephesus spoke in enigmatic aphorisms that have baffled rational understanding ever since, but he left his indelible mark on the wisdom embraced by the desert and is still present whenever wisdom cuts through knotted opinions and leaps over mountains of prejudice.  Saint Clement of Alexandria is one of our main sources for surviving fragments of Heraclitus, Clement who taught Origen, who inspired Basil and both Gregories, Evagrius and Denys.   Heraclitus bequeaths oracular prophecy and poetic aphorism to the desert through this enigmatic wisdom transmission, placing paradox above dialectics whilst perceiving divine dialectic beneath paradox.

The Logos of glory measures what is incommensurable so as to discern what is incomprehensible.  The Logos balances what is disproportionate by holding to stillness at the storm’s heart.   The Logos with God is the Logos who as God unites what is scattered, through whom many are forever one.  The Logos of glory is not clever invention or a consensus of clever opinion but primordial, common coherence co-inhering in all through all.  The relativity of differing opinions does not plunge desert seers into relativism because the Logos common to all tells the truth.  Hounded from cities, solitaries gathered in the desert, turning deserts into cities, welcoming wisdom home as Logos.   Hearkening to this Logos, wisdom agreed with the Name that ‘I AM’ is one.  When wisdom hearkens to the Logos, opinion (doxa), turns inside out and outside in.  Doxa, meaning opinion, is turned right round into DOXA, meaning glory, discerning glory opening to glory in holy glorification.       

It was the Logos of Heraclitus that discerned glory where only opinion had been, turning Greek doxa, which meant opinion, into Biblical DOXA, uncreated glory in the Greek Bible, the Septuagint.  Glory gathers what private opinions scatter, bearing paradoxical witness to the whole that is not yet whole, because completeness, though eternal as glory, is incomplete in time.  Glory in time is past or future revelation intimated in the fleeting present.  Glory as timeless glory embraces glory to come and glory’s lost paradise, restoring both glories as glory in present glory’s endless circulating presence.  So glory’s  eternal coherence is neither just moving nor at rest, neither fixated nor dissipated, because glory can handle difference in unity without confusion and unity in difference without division.  The Logos of glory affirms the timeless in time by denying the separation of eternity and time, so wisdom is able to hold open what deaf opinions overlook.  Hearkening to the Logos of glory, the desert stands steadfast in wisdom, to veil, so as to unveil the saving Name.  With Heraclitus and with Clement, wisdom reveres Logos: ‘I AM: All:One.’