Chalcedonian Christian wisdom lives and abides within Christ’s own unconfused indivisibility, the unconfused indivisibility of his divine-humanity, the unconfused indivisibility of his union with the Father as the Son, the unconfused indivisibility of the Spirit’s witness to the unconfused union and indivisible communion of the Father and the Son. This is the ineffable wisdom of the Song of Songs, the wisdom of the Bridal Chamber and the Holy of Holies, the unconfused indivisibility of wisdom and glory that purifies and illumines seers, deifying the saints. In the language of Eastern wisdom, Christ’s unconfused indivisibility is a thrice-holy, non-dual form of non-dual non-duality, a thrice-hallowing Tantric kind of Tantric Tantrism, because the Holy of Holies at its heart is the Bridal Chamber, which sings the Song of Songs as its unceasing wisdom song, recalling the Odes of Solomon as its earliest wisdom hymns. This is the unconfused indivisibility that the Beloved Disciple, as the Apostle to the Apostles, bequeathed as resurrection to the whole Church, the Mystical Marriage that lies at the heart of the Fourth Gospel and the Book of Revelation. But just as fear thought Christ was deluded and deceived by satanic confusion when he revealed the Name, ‘Before Abraham was, I AM’ (John 8:58), so fear demonises the unconfused indivisibility of Christ and condemns the Beloved Co-companion as a whore. Love, on the other hand, has always known that the Chalcedonian wisdom of unconfused indivisibility is not idolatrous confusion, that love’s union and communion is not satanic deception as fear fears, or demonic delusion as terrified terror insists.
Christophanic Chalcedonian wisdom sings the Song of Songs as its wisdom song, giving voice to the mysteries of the Bridal Chamber, uncovering ineffable ways to express Mystical Marriage, which is the ineffable mystery at the heart of the Song of Songs, the wisdom of the Beloved Disciple at the quintessential heart of the Church. But for fear’s sake, love’s wisdom was repressed, the glory of unconfused indivisibility was re-veiled, although it remained the hidden heart of all Christ’s revelatory unveiling. Fear needed to condemn the wisdom of love and the mysteries of the Song of Songs, so when fear’s fears predominated, fear excluded wisdom, except in the hidden recesses of the desert, concealed in caves beneath the mountain of transfiguration. Here, the Bridal Chamber is still recognised for what it always was. The Holy of Holies is still remembered for what it actually is. In Spiritual Canticles and Hymns of Love, saints sing their wisdom songs of unconfused indivisibility, renewing wisdom’s union and communion in Christ within Christ’s own ecstatic union and communion. Seers were mindful of the gap that had opened up between wisdom’s wholesome union with glory on the one hand and terror’s shallow confusions, spawning fear’s narrow divisions, on the other. Mindful of this gap, seers and saints were forever bridging it, or leaping over it, because that is what love loves to do whenever it is condemned to hell by fear.
The wisdom of love is Christ’s wisdom, the Wisdom and Word of the Father, the wisdom of unconfused indivisibility in Holy Trinity, the wisdom of unconfused indivisibility in the incarnate Son, the wisdom of the Holy of Holies as a Bridal Chamber and a Song of Songs. This Chalcedonian wisdom of ‘no-confusion’ and ‘no-division’ is the Cherubic wisdom that sings a Cherubic Hymn as it enters the Holy of Holies, conjoined with the Seraphic fire of wisdom’s living flame of love, singing God’s thrice-holy Song of Songs. A Seraphic stigmata pierces the heart with a holy wound of love. This wound is love’s ecstatic union of Cherubic awareness and Seraphic presence, filling the Holy of Holies with the effulgent fragrance of Mystical Marriage, the hidden union of wisdom and glory. The cherubic throne is a Seraphic chariot enthroning Bridal mysteries in the midst. The fragrance of divine myrrh conjoins with deified human nard, here, where fear releases into love. Christ is this wisdom and this love, as the Spirit bears unceasing witness in every heart, the moment hearts awaken. But fear cannot afford to lose control, so clings to its confusions and separations, unaware that the idolatry it condemns out there in others, is the unconscious idolatry that is concealed within itself. Christ mirrors fear’s delusions so fear can become aware of them, turning them right round as image unveiling likeness, as love gently weening fear off fear, wooing fear to embrace unselfish love. This, too, is the wisdom of Christ’s Song of Songs, his Bridal Chamber curing fear with love.
The glory of grace is always a mystery of the Song of Songs, always a Bridal Chamber, always a Holy of Holies that hallows saints with Christ’s unconfused indivisibility. Wisdom discerns the glory of this grace, turning glorification into Mystical Marriage. The Beloved Disciple saw and handled this love, love that bears witness to its Eternal Gospel in every generation. Mystical Marriage still conceals the identity of the Beloved Disciple, concealing who was married at the marriage in Cana, revealing the Bride descending from heaven, the New Jerusalem. Song of Songs mysteries are inherently ineffable, intrinsically apophatic, irreducibly symbolic and imaginally co-creative, because this is who Christ is and this is what Chalcedonian Christophany actually means. The Bridal Chamber has always embraced the sacred gaze, the holy kiss and the hallowing embrace. That is why so many saints wrote inspiring commentaries on the Song of Songs. That is why so many saints wrote hymns of love and spiritual canticles inspired by the Song of Songs. It is also why the sacraments are all Song of Songs mysteries, why union and communion are always unconfused and indivisible. Christ is his Song of Songs and his Beloved Disciple, though hidden, is the faithful and true witness to how things really are, unconfused and indivisible.
The Holy of Holies is in the midst, uncreated light enlightening all, uncreated glory deifying all. No-one is shut out of the embrace of the gaze of ‘I AM,’ or excluded from the kiss of grace, or deprived of the hallowing embrace of the Name. Christ did not impose another religion but came to save all through God’s Name. The wisdom of this unconfused indivisibility is Catholic and so wholesome in its wholeness, Apostolic and so universal in its witness to love’s Eternal Gospel, Orthodox as the doxological expression of Christ’s gaze, his kiss and his saving embrace. The Holy of Holies does not dither or waver in the radiance of its uncreated light. The Bridal Chamber does not hesitate or argue with regard to the uncreated glory of its Eternal Gospel. It bears witness as costly martyrdom in every generation, careless of reputation, free from self-interested concerns. Love loves, because love loves, not because it conditionally calculates that love is to be preferred. All dissipating passions are loves that fall short of the glory for which loves long. What kills as venom cures as medicinal theopathy. This is the wisdom of the Song of Songs, the glory of the Bridal Chamber, the radiance of the Name that indwells the Holy of Holies.
Unconfused indivisibility is hallowing glorification, infusing Holy Orthodoxy with Christ’s divine-human wisdom of love, inspiring self-emptying glorification with thrice-holy glory. At once both divine and human, timeless and in time, the grace of Christ is a timeless embrace of both the timeless and of time, an infinite and finite love that neither confuses nor divides. Timeless completeness is omnipresent and unconditional as it liberates conditioning into unconditioned freedom. Christ is the union of unconfused and indivisible conjugal mysteries that are both timeless and yet temporal in their ineffable unfolding. His Song of Songs embraces awareness and presence at the heart of every perception, purifying and illumining the heart. Every heart is proof of this union and its awakening is evidence of this communion. Wisdom discerns the glory of this grace, the gift of union whose fruit is this communion. The gaze is timeless, as is the kiss and the embrace, love’s salutation which consecrates all human eros as an icon of uncreated grace.
The Song of Songs teaches the heart to read everything as symbolic translucence, to see divine likeness in every transfiguring image, to interpret creation with an uncreated eye. Chalcedonian wisdom, or unconfused indivisibility, is therapeutic theopathy capable of healing dissociated eroticism and fulfilling the enormous human investment of creative energy in popular love-song. The history of romantic love undergoes a profound paradigm shift whenever the Song of Songs inspires golden renaissance, from the twelfth century Cistercian renaissance of St Bernard to the sixteenth century Carmelite renaissance of Saint John of the Cross, to the Russian Orthodox spiritual renaissance of the silver age. Wisdom renaissance breaks in, not as a temporal phenomenon, but as a timeless theophany pregnant with uncreated creativity, shattering time. The sacred embrace includes both gaze and kiss when the Holy of Holies draws near as a Bridal Chamber, singing Christ’s thrice-holy Song of Songs. Unconfused union and indivisible communion centre in the heart of Christ’s wisdom and glory, unveiling his ineffable love, transforming everyone and everything as it turns and discerns the glory of love, love hallowed and healed in the Spirit, love whose glory is unconfused and indivisible, restored through the Son to the Father.