Introduction
In various secular academic circles, one may hear the slanderous accusation that St. Isaac the Syrian was a Nestorian. However, this has proven to be false by divine revelation as recorded in the life of St. Paisios the Athonite, which is presented below. Abba Isaac the great hesychast and much-wronged Saint, pray unceasingly for us!
“On another occasion, a theologian, who had studied in France, insisted that Abba Isaac was not Orthodox because he had served as a bishop in a Nestorian atmosphere. Father Paisios tried to help him understand that Abba Isaac is at the very heart of Orthodoxy, could not convince him, something which grieved him very a great deal. “I felt such immense pain,” he said, “had anyone struck me on the head with a hatchet, I would not have felt the pain I had felt over that.
Afterwards, an incident took place. Those incidents are why I have said that if one is deeply hurt over something, God will then inform him; pain forms the basis for God’s intervention. If the heart is in a lot of pain, God will provide precise information.” God had indeed precisely informed Father Paisios about that particular matter. In a vision, he saw hierarchs passing by before him, among them was also Abba Isaac, who turned towards him and said, “Yes, I lived in a Nestorian atmosphere; there were heretics in my province, but I was Orthodox, and I opposed them.” Afterwards, the Saint emphatically proclaimed, “Abba Isaac was an Orthodox Christian to the core!” He even explained how Westerners slandered Abba Isaac as not being Orthodox because he had cultivated hesychasm. That incident was why Father Paisios referred to him as “the wronged Saint”. And in the Menaion, in the Synaxarion for January 28, where the feast day of St. Ephraim the Syrian is listed, he had added, “And Isaac the great Hesychast and much-wronged Saint.””[1]
References
[1.] Saint Paisios. Saint Paisios the Athonite. Thessaloniki, Greece: The Holy Hesychasterion of the Evangelist John. 2018.
There is claims that the saint was an unversalist and that proof of this is found in his second treatise (found by Sebastian Brock)
There are some who accept that St Isaac was Orthodox in mind but accuse him of being part of the “church” that rejected Ephesus I, and therefore part of the Nestorian “Church” (although perhaps he fought against it within). I find it just as important to recognize that he was in communion with the Holy Orthodox Church at the time, and to reject such notions of his being in other ecclesial communions, as such people use this accusation to springboard the claim that deified people, true saints, can be “found & made” outside the bosom of the One True Church..