ABSTRACT
Patristic spirituality is the inheritor of two related but distinct traditions, the Hebrew and the Greek. Both of these had offered answers to the all important question, ‘How shall I come closer to God?’ This means not simply, How shall I find out more about him?, but also (or rather), How can I enter into a relationship with him? Although the two traditions are in many ways sharply distinguished from one another, they are at one on a central point. For the Psalms there can be no climbing the mountain of the Lord without purity of heart (Ps. 24:3) and for Plato there is no way of rising to the contemplation of the absolute Good, without living a good life (cf. above all Republic 6, 7). The two indispensible requirements for anyone wishing to approach and experience the divine are in both systems a good life and open mind or eyes. In both traditions God or the absolute is regarded as somehow distinct from the visible world and therefore inaccessible to the eyes of the body.
