Introduction to the Writings of Saint Peter of Damascus in the 'Philokalia' (St. Nikodemos the Hagiorite)

By St. Nikodemos the Hagiorite

Our Venerable Father Peter, who served as Bishop of Damascus, lived during the reign of Constantine Copronymus in the year 775. Having first lived ascetically as a monk and anchorite, he lived with such non-possessiveness that he did not even have a book of his own, as he testifies of himself. However, taking books from others, I mean the Old and New Testaments, the great teachers of the Church and all the other Neptic and God-bearing Fathers in general, he showed such diligence that, studying day and night the law of the Lord and drinking from their life-giving waters, he showed himself truly to be like a tree that is tall and heavenly, according to the Psalmist (Psalm 1:3), planted by these springs of waters of the Spirit. With one difference: the tree bears its fruit in a single season; the other tree, however, namely the Venerable Peter, does not do the same, but remaining continuously and relentlessly sturdy, in every season it bears spiritual fruit that is beautiful to the sense of sight, sweet to the sense of taste, fragrant to the sense of smell, which satiates every sense of body and soul with the immortal and fragrant sweetness they emit.

On Reading the Works of St. Dionysius the Areopagite (St. Peter of Damascus)

By St. Peter of Damascus

(A Treasury of Divine Knowledge, Bk. 1)

For should anyone preach anything contrary to God’s intention or contrary to the nature of things, then even if he is an angel St Paul’s words, ‘Let him be accursed’ (Gal. 1:8), will apply to him. This is what St Dionysius the Areopagite, St Anthony and St Maximus the Confessor affirm. For this reason St John Chrysostom says: ‘It was not the Greeks but the Holy Scriptures that transmitted these things to us. There is no contradiction when Scripture says about a certain person both that he did not see Babylon as a captive and, elsewhere, that they took him to Babylon with the rest. For one who reads attentively will find it said about this same man in another part of Scripture that they blinded him and in dm condition took him off as a captive (cf. 2 Kgs. 25:7; Jer. 52:11): Thus he went to Babylon, as the one writer says, but did not see it, as the other says.