The mystery in the community. Isaac of Nineveh and his instructions

Abstract

When in one of the scenes in “The Karamazov Brothers” by F. Dostoevsky, the works of the mystic Isaac appear on the table, only few readers are aware that the history of Christianity has come full circle. The author from the Assyrian Eastern Church, recognised by his contemporary Church in Constantinople as a heretic, a Nestorian, becomes the moral and spiritual authority for the Orthodox clergyman. Is the mystic or a heretic? The history of Isaac’s texts, which made their way to the Orthodox Church through the anchor of orthodoxy – the community of the Mount Athos, is even stranger.