JOHN CLIMACUS

The memory of St. John of Sinai is celebrated twice a year. This is a permanent date of April 12 (March 30), and a moving celebration, depending on the date of Easter, on the fourth Sunday of Lent. The Ancient Church knew other days of his memory. This is evidence of the epochal significance of St. John for the Universal Church.

Like another Church Father of that era, John of Damascus (675–749), who codified and systematically presented the foundations of Christian dogma, John left behind a systematic overview of Orthodox asceticism. By the name of this work, “Stairway to Heaven”, “Paradise Staircase”, “Ladder”, John of Sinai went down in history as John of the Climacus.

Thus, the two Johns, John of Sinai and John of Damascus, became the theological poles of classical orthodoxy, in the doctrine of asceticism, as biblical morality was then interpreted, and in the field of dogma. The era of patristics was ending. A new religion was emerging, Islam, which, like Christianity, declared its globality and universality. The worldview of the Church Fathers, which was based on the conviction that the whole world would soon become Christian, was critically shaken.

“And I will give to my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy […]. These are the two olive trees and the two lampstands standing before the God of the earth,” it is written in the Apocalypse (Rev. 11:4). The two great teachers were united not only by the relative community of the era and geographical region. Like John of Damascus, much has been said about John of Sinai. But almost no exact biographical information has been preserved about him.

So even the time of life of John Climacus is not known to us. Researchers of his works talk about three possible dating options for his biography. It turns out that the life of the Sinai abbot could belong to three different eras.

1. If we follow the first dating option - he was born around 525 and died in the Lord in 595 or 605, then John Climacus would be a contemporary of Pope Gregory of Rome (540–604). The Apostle of England Augustine of Canterbury (+604), and even the Emperor Flavius ​​Peter Sabbatius Justinian (483–565), who went down in history under the name Justinian the Great, could also have been contemporaries of John. This dating is most likely too early.
2. The second option, according to which the year of the birth of John should be considered 579, and the death of 649, makes John the contemporary of the Muslim prophet Muhammad (571–632) and the first, righteous Caliphs of Islam (632–661). Moreover, the ladder would witness the Arab conquest of Syria, Palestine and Egypt (634–640). This dating is apparently optimal.
3. The third (+680), the latest dating option, turns John Climacus into a contemporary of Maximus the Confessor (580–662), into a hero of the faith of the Monothelite disputes, as well as into a witness to a number of important victories of the Umayyad Caliphate over the Eastern Christian, that is, the Byzantine Empire with its capital in Constantinople. Such late dating seems to be one of the unlikely options.

It is surprising that each of these supposed eras of John’s life was truly a turning point. Like us, the Abbot of Sinai was a man of Apocalyptic Times.

According to a life compiled by one of his disciples named Daniel, John began his monastic journey in Sinai when he was about 16 years old. Four years later, at the age of 20, he took monastic vows. For 19 years he lived in a community, and then 21 years in solitude, first under the guidance of Elder Martyrius, and then he himself became a mentor to a student named Moses. At the age of 60, he was elected abbot of the monastery on Mount Sinai.

From hagiographic information we know that he had a brother named George. Subsequently, he also became abbot, but survived John by only one year. We do not know how many years John led the monastery.

We do not know how many years John led the monastery. But it was during his abbotship that he wrote “The Ladder” and other works, from which the manual “To the Shepherd” has come down to us. In essence, this is an instruction to abbots of monasteries. It is known that the abbot of the neighboring Raithu monastery, southwest of Sinai, also named John, approached him with a request to write “The Ladder.” It was he who persuaded the Sinai abbot to write an ascetic work. John Climacus yielded only “for the sake of obedience”.

Perhaps this is just a pious figure of speech, but perhaps John really did not intend to write anything. It is also likely that the plan to systematize the ascetic heritage of his predecessors for a difficult transitional time seemed so grandiose and sovereign to his contemporaries that they saw this decision as the will of grace.

It is important to understand that in those ancient times Mount Sinai was a whole community of monasteries, similar to the modern Mount Athos. It was a genuine City of God, a monastic republic. Many monasteries in Sinai practiced various forms of communal life, where ascetics lived in monasteries, hermitages and various forms of hermitage. In the figurative language of that time, there were “a thousand monks” in Sinai. This number is, of course, a symbol, but in itself for that era it represented a significant demographic value.

“The desert,” as the place of residence of the ascetics was called, was not just a natural area with a harsh climate, sparse vegetation and the absence of communications and roads, but also, a kind of topographical symbol of the ascetic Divine City, in which the power of the demonic presence of evil spirits, which was previously characteristic of such places was defeated by the power of the Risen Christ. Thus, the place of life and feat of the monks who left the world “alone before God,” as the word itself is semantically translated, became the true topos of the Epiphany of the Risen One, the place of the real presence of the Church, as the life-giving communion of those saved by the faith of the true Heavenly Ladder (cf. Rom. 10:7) - Lord Jesus Christ. The authority of “The Ladder” as an ascetic work is evidenced by a significant number of manuscripts and commentaries.

The life of John is rich in semantics. The forty years of his monastic life before his election as abbot undoubtedly recall the wanderings of the biblical people in the desert. John, as the New Moses, wrote down spiritual instructions on the tablets of the Ladder. He chose monastic life at a young age, and therefore was alien to any secular wisdom. He received his knowledge from God, from great spirit-bearing elders, and experienced what he wrote in his own colossal spiritual experience. If not John himself, then his disciples who wrote down his life were apparently contemporaries of the Muslim prophet Muhammad.

According to Islamic tradition, Muhammad was not literate. He received the content of his sermon directly from God. According to the logic of Islamic tradition, it was devoid of any admixture of human knowledge. It is possible that, under the influence of similar ideals, John’s disciples presented his life in such a way as to show that his life and instructions were inspired by the method of grace. In his written works and instructions, he remained outside of alien worldly knowledge.

This is a kind of archetype of sacred illiteracy, which is also found on the pages of the ancient biblical Scriptures. “And Moses said to the Lord: O Lord! I am not a man of speech, and so I was both yesterday and the day before, and when You began to speak to Your servant: I am slow of speech and tongue-tied” (Exodus 4:10). It is no coincidence that legend likened John to Moses, and his life emphasized that he spent his entire life on the Mount of Epiphany Sinai.

The very content of “The Ladder” testifies to the deep theological knowledge of its author. This work is characterized by a precise, consistent orthodoxy. From time to time, ascetic instructions are interspersed with polemical references to “Origenist heretics” and other errors. It is emphasized that distortions of dogma have a fatal effect on spiritual life.

The Ladder contains many philosophical insights and even hidden quotations from the works of the pagan Stoic Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius (161–180). The book of John is replete with similar characteristics. It is also rich in purely everyday, practical knowledge, information from jurisprudence and Roman law. Finally, the prologue of the Ladder and his other work “To the Shepherd” contain direct borrowings from the “Pastoral Rule” of Pope Gregory the Great (540–604).

In Orthodox tradition, he is called Gregory the Dialogist and is considered the author of the Presanctified Liturgy, a liturgical service remarkable in its ascetic and biblical power. This means that John and Gregory knew about each other, and John read and studied the works of the Roman bishop.

It is obvious that in the Sinai monasteries of that time it was simply impossible to acquire such knowledge and receive such an education. The closest center of education and culture at that time was Gaza. According to several historians, the genuine biography of John, different from his life, looked different.

Based on the “Ladder” itself, it is possible to restore some probable details. some restoration. Most likely, John was formerly a lawyer, barrister, or teacher in Gaza. It is possible that he was married before he left for Sinai. He began his monastic life at the age of forty. It is known that the Muslim prophet Muhammad, being about 40 years old, received the first revelation of the Koran.

Most likely, John was formerly a lawyer, barrister, or teacher in Gaza. It is possible that he was married before he left for Sinai. He began his monastic life at the age of forty. It is known that the Muslim prophet Muhammad, being about 40 years old, received the first revelation of the Koran. This was the time of the emergence of a new religion that claimed universality. The new reality, completely unknown to the previous era of patristics, still seemed incredible.

John’s work was becoming prophetic. In essence, he recorded in writing the experience of spiritual and ascetic life of previous centuries to once and for all preserve it from oblivion. It is possible that if in the issue of “sacred illiteracy” John’s disciples decided to follow the generally accepted ideal and reproduced a certain general biblical archetype of that time, characteristic of the Middle East, then in the chronology and description of his life, they considered it necessary to present it in such a way as to distance themselves from the incomprehensible ideal of a vocation in adulthood, which was known to them from the tradition of Islam, which was then being formed.