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Divine ecstasy, the experience of communion with God, is portrayed within Gregory of Nyssa and Pseudo-Macarius' through images of flight and intoxication. A comparison of these two metaphors within the writings of Gregory Nyssa and Ps-Macarius reveals something of the complex relationship between the works of these two fourth century authors, and helps in locating Ps-Macarius within his own cultural milieu. This article will firstly examine the concept and use of the metaphor of "Sober Intoxication," before moving on to a consideration of the flight of the soul within the two authors.
SOBER INTOXICATION
The phrase "Sober intoxication" (vrj(pat,tos l), is an oxymoron that is based upon the distinction between the state of intoxication brought on by wine and a state of Christian perfection available through grace? There are two formative influences behind the use of the term; that of Philo, and Plato. Philo uses the term "drunkenness" to describe a state of ecstasy, in terms of both prophecy and mystical union,3 and specifically speaks of a place where the soul reaches communion with God, where "he is permeated by fire in giving thanks to God, and is drunk with a sober drunkenness." For Philo this drunkenness is the stage whereby the soul passes beyond the stage of seeking.5
Platonic influence can be seen in Plotinus, who speaks of the soul being stripped of wisdom in the "intoxication of nectar" within Socrates' discourse on love. Plotinus uses the phrase "intoxication" when he speaks of the soul completing her union with the "One." He asserts that the soul, in attaining the revelation of the presence of the divine, becomes one and is "happy": "a soul becomes again what she was in the time of her early joy,"16 and dismisses "even the act of Intellect she once so intimately loved."7 When the soul sees the Divine, there is the first grasping of the intellectual content of the vision, and second, an advancing and receiving of the divine, of the union with the "One."' This state is more elevated than that of contemplation, and is reached when the human intellect attains the vision of the source of the intelligible, the one-good, and, carried away by loving impulse, aspires to mingle with it, and ceases from all intellectual...