This is fascinating!!

This post may help define nous THE BARN

Light of the East said:

Please read this Orthodox blog post and then answer my question, if you would be so kind

Why Jesus Had To Be Virgin Born - St. Maximus the Confessor Explains | MYSTAGOGY RESOURCE CENTER

What does the term "noetic" mean? Does it have to do with the "nous" of man? And please give me a proper definition of the word "nous."

This is a great article and one I am going to print out and study. I think it will answer a lot of questions for me.

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nous is the highest point of man's intellect, where he contemplates God directly. it's what makes us not animals. yes, noetic refers to the nous.

Light of the East said:

"While there was no noetic pleasure or pain in man before the fall, there was a noetic faculty towards pleasure, by which man could enjoy God ineffably."

Does this then mean that the natural state of man was intended by God to be one where we would not know either pain or pleasure as we do now, and would instead find only an ineffable pleasure in God? I assume then that this will be the state of redeemed man also.

You speak of the nous as "the highest point of man's intellect." Yet the whole point of argument between Barlaam of Calabria and St. Gregory Palamas was the idea that we use the intellect to experience God. Is there something you see that is beyond the intellect of the nous in the next world, by which we experience God? Would that be the same as what the Athonite monks experience when seeing (or experiencing) the Light of Tabor?

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to your first point, yes. man is supposed to seek true pleasure which comes from God. it is a pleasure beyond feelings.

as to Barlaam, Barlaam limited the intellect to say we can only know God through created means. the nous is a part of the intellect where man can contemplate God, but it's God's energies which illumine man.

What if in the next world, we contemplate God in man?

Light of the East said:

Is the nous a part of the created intellect or the spiritual intellect? Is there such a division between the fleshly intellect and the spiritual intellect, or am I bordering on some kind of dualist heresy?

Was it the nous that was darkened in man when sin entered the world through the Fall?

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the nous is created, and it was darkened when man fell. I think if you are making a distinction between fleshly and spiritual, it's more at what the intellect is directed at.

FireDragon76 said:

What if in the next world, we contemplate God in man?

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we do, in the Godman Jesus Christ.

Ah entre nous

Light of the East said:

So the nous is a single entity, not a "fleshly" nous and a "spiritual" nous. And there is also one intellect?

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the nous is not an entity. it's what makes us human. it's why we have a living soul and not just a soul (like an animal).

Light of the East said:

So the nous is a single entity, not a "fleshly" nous and a "spiritual" nous. And there is also one intellect?

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If I may, from the link posted earlier

A darkening of the nous that returns to the ways of the Gentile is forbidden.
Ephesians 4:17-24
This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye should no longer walk as the rest of the nations walk in the vanity of their mind, (nous)
being darkened in understanding (dianoia), estranged from the life of God by reason of the ignorance which is in them, by reason of the hardness of their hearts,
who having cast off all feeling, have given themselves up to lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greedy unsatisfied lust.
But you have not thus learnt the Christ,
if you have heard him and been instructed in him according as the truth is in Jesus;
namely your having put off according to the former conversation the old man which corrupts itself according to the deceitful lusts;
and being renewed in the spirit of your mind;(nous)
and your having put on the new man, which according to God is created in truthful righteousness and holiness.

We are to keep an unveiled spirit to live in communion with God. Where there is a closed nous, there is a closed spirit that God cannot shine light into. The dianoia is the instrument like the ear is to hearing and the heart is to the nous.

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Light of the East said:

Ahhhhhh......too deep. So what is the definition of the nous? It looks like someone is equating it with the mind.

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I'm not. we really don't have a definition in English. that's why most often I have heard it's the highest aspect of the intellect, where man contemplates God. the eye of the soul is another common phrase.