The Experience of Abandonment by God in Syriac Christian Ascetical Theology

In his classic work The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, the Orthodox theologian Vladimir Lossky criticizes Western ascetical theology for its teachings on the Christian experience of feeling abandoned by God. Targeting Western writers on the spiritual life such as John of the Cross, Lossky insists that feelings of abandonment by God are “never thought of by the mystical and ascetical writers of the Eastern tradition as a necessary or normal stage” of the spiritual life, and he alleges that this teaching is the result of “generally distorted dogmatic vision” in the Christian West, particularly an erroneous Christian theological anthropology.¹

Yet despite Lossky’s polemic, there is also a significant strain of spirituality in the Christian East that speaks of the experience of abandonment by God. Indeed, some Eastern Christian writers take this theme much further than John of the Cross, insisting that this is not merely a subjective experience, but rather that the indwelling Holy Spirit truly departs from the Christian at certain times during one’s spiritual life, and that this abandonment is a normal part of spiritual growth. The recovery of such writings could therefore play an important role in the spiritual direction of Christians, especially those from Eastern Christian churches. It can be important for Christians who feel that they have been abandoned by God to know that this experience is normal, and that it is far from being an aberrant development of the early modern West, having been attested to by writers in a diversity of Christian traditions from very early in Christian history. The different interpretations of this experience that are articulated by various Eastern Christian authors can also be a resource for Western Christians who are searching for a greater diversity of understandings about what this experience is, why it happens, and what the appropriate response to it should be.

This essay will explore the theme of abandonment by God as it was discussed by several Eastern Christian writers of late antiquity. While the primary focus will be on writers from the traditions of East and West Syriac Christianity, given the interrelationship of Greek and Syriac Christianity in late antiquity, those Greek writers who seem to have influenced the development of Syriac thought will also be considered. These authors give different accounts of this experience, and many of them also emphasize that there are several different kinds of abandonment by God that Christians may experience. It is therefore important for those who find themselves in such a situation to discern which kind of divine abandonment is being experienced, and thus what the appropriate response to it should be. Very often in contemporary Western Christianity, the phrase “dark night of the soul” is tossed around uncritically to cover any and all experiences of spiritual dryness, depression, emptiness, or despair, stretching the term far beyond what John of the Cross ever intended it to encompass. In addition, therefore, to showing that the experience of abandonment by God is also to be found within the Christian East, this essay hopes to demonstrate to both Eastern and Western Christians that there may be a variety of different experiences of abandonment by God, which have different causes and which therefore demand different responses from the person who experiences them.

DIVINE INDWELLING AND DIVINE ABANDONMENT

It is important to clarify at the outset that none of these authors claimed that God ever ceases to care providentially for the Christian, even during those times of perceived “abandonment by God.” Indeed, for most of these writers, the experience of abandonment is precisely intended by God as a way to bring Christians to spiritual maturity, and is therefore a form of God’s pedagogical care. When these authors speak of divine abandonment, therefore, what they actually mean is something far more specific, which is the departure, or in some cases the concealment, of the Holy Spirit, who dwells within each baptized person.

The belief that each Christian is a temple of the Holy Spirit is drawn from 1 Corinthians, where Paul informs the Christians of Corinth that their bodies are temples of...