Orthodox Monasticism 21 — Evagrius on the Psychology of Man

To understand Evagrius’ asceticism we must first of all understand his psychology of man as he himself taught it.

Evagrius’ psychology is essentially Platonic, as understood through the lens of the Cappadocians and Clement of Alexandria—one might say neo-Platonic. Man is composed of a mind (Greek: nous) and an emotional part. The mind or nous is capable not only of reason but also of the direct spiritual sight of spiritual things—what the philosophers call intuitive cognition. What this means is that the mind of man not only can reason about things but also can directly see spiritual truths. When a man directly sees spiritual things he has spiritual knowledge. This is important, for the goal of Evagrian asceticism is the spiritual sight of God—a direct spiritual knowledge of God with the mind or nous. What Evagrius teaches is that this sight of God depends both on Grace (the Holy Spirit) and on a natural capacity in man for such knowledge (which knowledge is called in Greek gnosis).

Now the role of the emotional part of man is this. Every man is born with emotional tendencies to sin based on pleasures of the senses. We spoke about this in the last post. These emotional tendencies to sin, because they are connected to pleasures of the senses, tie a man down to his world of sense impressions. This is the ordinary world that we and you live in. The world of cups and saucers.

However, as we discussed in the last post, as long as man is tied down to the world of cups and saucers he cannot ascend to the spiritual sight of God. This is because the sense impressions of the cups and saucers block the spiritual sight of spiritual things, ultimately the spiritual sight of God.

So what to do? We must purify ourselves of our emotional tendencies to sin in order to free ourselves from our enslavement to the sensible world of cups and saucers. The result of this purification is not a freedom from emotion or an emotional emptiness, but an ordering of all our emotional drives to virtue, ultimately with the assistance and presence of the Holy Spirit. The offspring of this condition is Christian spiritual love for all men.

As we pointed out in the last post, this purification from our emotional tendencies to sin so as to free ourselves from the world of cups and saucers emphatically does not mean that we should enter into the world of fantasy. Quite the contrary. We must combat the world of fantasy when it intrudes on us. The world of fantasy presents itself to us as a temptation to a pleasure of the senses—an illicit pleasure of the senses—or else as a mistaken idea of reality, what the Greeks call plani or deception. The world of fantasy is the world inhabited by demons.

This understanding of human psychology is at the heart of the tradition of the Philokalia in the Orthodox Church. It is at the heart of St John of the Ladder’s ascetical theory; it is at the heart of St Hesychios’ hesychasm; it is at the heart of St Maximos the Confessor’s asceticism. Moreover, since this theory is at the heart of the tradition of the Philokalia in the Orthodox Church, it is at the heart of the practice of the Jesus Prayer in the Orthodox Church.

In other words, in the Orthodox spiritual tradition the foundation of the practice of the Jesus prayer is the psychology that we have just given a thumbnail sketch of.

It is interesting to note that this psychology differs in several important respects from the received psychology of Western Christianity as espoused by St Thomas Aquinas. First of all, St Thomas rejected the notion that man has a natural capacity for intuitive or spiritual cognition—except for the most elementary axioms of logic. Man’s mind, according to St Thomas Aquinas, is limited to the intellectual knowledge obtained from logical reasoning about propositions—all that scholastic building of intellectual systems is based on this view. Lest this seem a trivial point, that was exactly the objection of Barlaam, a proponent of Western Scholasticism, to Hesychasm; and St Gregory Palamas was obliged to defend the Orthodox notion of a direct intuitive sight of God, which direct intuitive sight of God could begin even in this life.

Moreover, there is an even more subtle difference between the psychology that underlies the Philokalia and the psychology of St Thomas Aquinas. This has to do with the nature of the emotional drives in man.

Following the received neo-Platonic psychology, both Evagrius and later St Thomas Aquinas (St Thomas formally following the neo-Platonic St Augustine but modifying St Augustine on the basis of his own Aristotelianism) agree that the two basic emotional drives in man are the desire and the temper.

But Evagrius and St Thomas Aquinas have a very different idea of the nature of these two emotional drives and the connections between them. St Thomas treats the basic emotional drive in man as desire and the temper as having to do with the difficulty of attaining one´s desire (i.e. I get angry when I can’t get what I want). Evagrius certainly recognizes that sort of thing but treats the temper as housing autonomous emotional drives that do not depend on the desire. For him the desire has to do with the desire for food or for sex and the temper has to do with the six other emotional drives we mentioned—anger, sorrow, avarice, sloth (accidie), vainglory and pride.

This is important because Evagrius’ asceticism is directly keyed to his psychology: because we have two basic emotional drives, desire and the temper, we have two basic tools to purify our emotional tendencies to sin: temperance and meekness. We exercise temperance to control the desire and we exercise meekness to subjugate the emotional drives related to the temper. This is the foundation of asceticism.

St Thomas´ psychology is quite different. Necessarily, then, a person brought up in Western Christianity who approaches the practice of the Jesus Prayer will be bringing with him, perhaps unconsciously, a quite different idea from the historical tradition of the Orthodox Church concerning ‘how a man is put together psychologically’.

It should be pointed out that Evagrius’ asceticism was taken up by St John Cassian, St Maximos the Confessor and St Isaac the Syrian. These are some of the leading lights of Orthodox monastic spirituality in the tradition of the Philokalia. This ascetical tradition culminates in the Hesychast controversy of the 14^th Century, where the Orthodox point of view is defended, as we said, by St Gregory Palamas against an essentially Thomist point of view defended by Barlaam. In the midst of the controversy were not only the issues that we all talk about nowadays but also the different psychologies of man that Barlaam and St Gregory each understood. It should now be clear why Evagrius’ psychology is important.

Orthodox Monasticism 20 — Evagrius Ponticus on the Inner Ascent 2

It seems to us that a basic problem in discussing the history of Orthodox monasticism is to convey why anyone should be interested. We have finished with Pentecostalism. However, we are left with a question: in this day and age, when, presumably, we could just as well be Pentecostalists as Orthodox monks, why would we become Orthodox, one, and, two, why Orthodox monks? Are we monks fools?

The significance of the inner spiritual ascent is that it is the Orthodox tradition’s answer to the question of what it means to be a Christian. In other words, the Orthodox Church does not teach that Pentecostalism is one way and Orthodox spirituality another way, choose what you will. The Orthodox Church steadfastly witnesses to a single way, that of the Orthodox Church: Orthodox spirituality. Now what we are discussing is the history of Orthodox monasticism: what does that have to do with Orthodox spirituality?

As St John of the Ladder puts it, the monk is the light of the layman and the angel the light of the monk. Orthodox spirituality was being defined in the period we are now discussing. In other words, the ascetics who were defining in the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Centuries what it meant to be an ascetic were defining the norm of Orthodox spirituality even for the Orthodox laymen of their time—and therefore even for the Orthodox monks and laymen of today. In discussing the history of Orthodox monasticism, what we are really discussing is what it means to be an Orthodox Christian. However, it is clear that the ascetics were well aware that a layman does not live like a monk—otherwise he would be a monk, not a layman. Still, it is worthwhile to consider this saying of Amma Synklitki:

II, 27. Amma Synklitiki said: ‘Many who were on the mountain but who were practising the acts of townspeople were lost. And many who are in cities but are doing the works of the desert are being saved. For it is possible being among the many to be a monastic in disposition; and being alone to live with crowds in the intellect.’[1]

It is also worthwhile to consider that when St Anthony the Great asked God if there was anyone who was his equal, he was sent by God to a layman in Alexandria, a shoemaker.

Therefore, when we discuss the inner ascent in Evagrius, we are not merely engaging in an intellectual exercise for the lack of anything to do: we are discussing what it means to be an Orthodox Christian.

Certainly in the case of Evagrius there are some aspects of his doctrine, for the most part not on the ascetical plane although impinging on it in places, which have been condemned by the Orthodox Church. We are not promoting those aspects of his doctrine; up to now we have avoided discussing those aspects because they are difficult to understand; and we will continue at least for the present to avoid discussing those doctrines.

However, the basic structure of the inner ascent in Evagrius took hold in Christian East and West, from Spain to Mesopotamia, through the writings of a number of great Christian ascetics, from St John Cassian in the West to St Isaac the Syrian in Mesopotamia, who based themselves on Evagrius.

What is that structure of the inner ascent according to Evagrius?

Basically it is this. A man born on the face of the earth is born with passions, which we can describe as emotional tendencies to sin. These passions are all based on pleasures of the senses, with the exception of one passion, sorrow, which withers all pleasure. These passions prevent the person from seeing the face of God.

In order to see the face of God, a man or woman must first be baptized into the Orthodox Church. That baptism restores the image of God in him or her but does not restore the likeness to God in him or her. The likeness to God is present when a person is permanently full of virtue through the presence of the Holy Spirit.

After baptism, the newly-baptized person is called to work on restoring the likeness to God in himself or herself. St Diadochos is the first writer, writing in the Gnostic Chapters about 450 AD, to discuss in detail the relation between this dynamic of restoring the likeness to God and the Jesus Prayer. That is, a disciple of Evagrius in 450 AD wrote a treatise discussing how the Jesus Prayer is connected to baptism and to the calling of the newly baptized Christian to restore the likeness to God in himself.

Now what does Evagrius himself say about this restoration of the likeness to God? Evagrius defines a spiritual journey to God in three stages. The first stage is purification. As we pointed out, as men born on the face of the earth we are born with emotional tendencies to sin. These prevent us from seeing the face of God, or, put another way, these prevent us from attaining the likeness to God that we are called to. When we are baptized these emotional tendencies to sin are weakened so that we can combat them more effectively but they are not eliminated. We ourselves must make a choice to combat them in our daily lives. This is the spiritual struggle of every Christian.

A person’s baptism does not completely eliminate his or her emotional tendencies to sin. The man or woman must every day through his or her free choice choose the road of virtue over the road of sin that his or her emotional tendencies to sin call him or her to.

Now those emotional tendencies to sin are these: gluttony, fornication, anger, sorrow, avarice, sloth (accidie), vainglory and pride. These obviously cover a much wider range of human behaviour than the merely sexual.

This spiritual struggle to restore the likeness to God entails that the person work on transforming these emotional tendencies to sin to emotional tendencies to virtue. This is the first stage of restoring the likeness to God in the person.

Evagrius talks in great detail about how these passions are combated. He pays particular attention to the ascetic’s thought processes. Usually before someone becomes an ascetic he lives in a coenobium, where he can learn the basics of combating the passions in his actions. The layperson applies this ascetical theory as best he can in the circumstances of his life, usually his married life: in the context of his wife and children. He concentrates on actions suitable to the layperson: almsgiving, justice in his social relations, regular attendance at Church, keeping the fasts and so on. However, each one of these three persons—the ascetic, the coenobite and the layman—is, according to Evagrius, basically doing the same thing: combating his passions.

That is the first stage of the spiritual journey, where the spiritual journey is what we earlier called the inner ascent of the personal Sinai, the personal Horeb. When a person has accomplished this first stage he is full of virtue. Evagrius remarks that Christian love is the offspring of the accomplishment of this first stage. That is, a person who has transformed the emotional tendencies to sin in himself to emotional tendencies to virtue is a man of Christian love. This is not something mechanical in the person’s actions (doing good deeds), but a complete transformation of the person emotionally, crowned by the presence of the Holy Spirit.

The second stage, in this day and age, very few attain to, even devout monks. This is the illuminative stage. After the person has been completely healed in his emotional drives, so that they are no longer directed to sin but to virtue, then the person begins to encounter in contemplation the ‘trace’ of God in creation. This trace of God in creation is the essence that each thing has that was created by God. Now this is not the rational discovery of the inner workings of things the way someone might do a philosophy or science course. This is an immediate direct encounter with the essence of a thing as that thing was intended by the Word of God to be when it was created. This is a very high state of spiritual attainment. The monk at this stage views a created object and ‘sees’ directly with the eye of his soul the essence of the thing as it was intended by God. In this, the monk is not praying but contemplating the trace of God in creation as he is viewing that creation. He will pray at another time of the day.

There is a further stage of the illuminative way where the monk begins to contemplate the angels, but this is a dangerous matter to talk about because of the danger of demonic deception.

The final stage is to enter into union with God in prayer. This is where the person both sees the face of God and completely restores the likeness to God in himself.

One of the very basic points in the inner ascent of these three stages as defined by Evagrius is that as the person ascends through the three stages he passes from the data of sense perception to what are called intelligible essences. This is a very difficult area, but basically what it means is this: In daily life, we perceive things with our senses: we see the computer in front of us and so on. As we proceed in the spiritual life, we have to leave the world of the senses behind and enter into the intelligible world of essences. Now it should be clear that this intelligible world of essences is very different from the world of fantasy. The Evagrian tradition is very clear that the world of fantasy is ultimately demonic in nature. In common language, to leave the world of the senses for the world of fantasy is to encourage a psychotic episode in ourselves. What we want to do is surpass the world of senses through purification of our emotional drives to sin so as to enter into the world of essences, from there to ascend through further purification to union with God in prayer. It is intrinsic to this spirituality that the intelligible world of essences is only attainable to those who are completely healed emotionally. The reason for this is that the emotional tendencies to sin, dependent as they are on pleasures of the senses, tie us to the world of the senses, preventing us from entering into the world of intelligible essences, thus preventing us from entering into union with God. It should be clear why Pentecostalist spirituality is preposterous in this context.

The ascent takes decades. Evagrian ascetical doctrine is directed to explaining how we should commence and practise this inner ascent. That is, Evagrius is laying down general principles and explanations about how to proceed along this spiritual road. Hence, spiritual practices which diverged from this theory would have to be treated with caution, lest they be a sign from the devil to overturn the Christian even before he started on the spiritual road. On this blog we ourselves have had this as our scope: in various ways to convey what we ourselves understand to be sound doctrine as concerns the spiritual life of the Orthodox man and woman, whether monk or layman.

This outline of the stages of the inner ascent is very similar to the doctrine in the West of St John of the Cross, with due allowance being given to St John of the Cross’ Roman Catholic background. The reason that the stages are so similar seems to be that St John Cassian introduced Evagrian ascetical doctrine into the West, where it was received into the Benedictine tradition and from there spread throughout Roman Catholicism (although there are certainly other independent formulations of the mystical ascent in Roman Catholicism).

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[1]Sayings of the Desert Fathers, Systematic Collection, Volume I. Introduction, Critical Text… †Jean-Claude Guy, S.J. 1993. Sources chrétiennes N^o 387. Paris, France: Les Éditions du Cerf.

Good Friday

(We originally wrote this on Good Friday, but we were dissatisfied with it and did not post it. We are now posting it.)

The reading from the Apostle for the Third Hour of Good Friday is this:

Brothers, while we were yet weak Christ died at the right time on behalf of impious men. For barely will someone die on behalf of a just man. For perhaps someone even dares to die on behalf of the Good. God recommends his own love to us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died on our behalf. Very much more, then, justified now in his blood, we will be saved by means of him from the wrath. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by means of the death of his Son, very much more, having been reconciled, we will be saved in his life. (Romans 5, 6–10.)

We have been discussing the rather authoritarian approach to the sinner of the Pentecostalist—and indeed of the Right Wing Evangelical. How does the Evangelical understand this passage?

Let us suppose that we are sinners walking down the street who encounter an Evangelical who is witnessing. What the Evangelical wants us to do is to be ‘born again’. This is a very complex affair which requires that we ‘repent’, get down on our knees and pray publicly to be reconciled to God in Jesus Christ (perhaps not on the street—later in a chapel). We are thus ‘born again’. From discussions with persons who have passed through Evangelicalism, we have the impression that sometimes there is a genuine experience involved, but more often than not there is not. Moreover, there is a rather high ‘lapse rate’—higher than one might at first think—of those who are born again.

The next thing is that the ‘born again’ has to accept an ideology. We use that word advisedly. The ideology is ‘sola Scriptura’: the inerrant literal truth of the Bible, both Old and New Testaments.

Next there is the need to be integrated into the community of believers. This is rather complicated, because it largely entails internalizing the Evangelical ideology and interpretation of Scripture.

If you don’t believe that Evangelicals have an interpretation of Scripture, you are very naïve. Part of the ideology, however, is that they have no interpretation, only the literal text. If you study Evangelical translations of the New Testament against the Greek text—especially the received text of the Patriarch of Constantinople, but even Nestle-Aland—you will see that there is far more interpretation of the text going on than is admitted, the interpretation being hidden in what purports to be a literal translation of Scripture.

However, here is where the whole issue of the rigid superstructure that we discussed in the previous post comes in. We have a person who is walking down the street, a sinner of some kind since all men are sinners. He encounters a witnessing Evangelical. He is persuaded to accept an ideology. He is pressured to accept the ideology as it is being taught by the group to which the person witnessing belongs. Woe to him if he does not. Part of the ideology is the private interpretation of Scripture—so long as it agrees with the group’s interpretation.

Moreover, the legacy of Luther, there is a doctrine of justification by faith, not by works. So there is no effort to cure the passions that are roiling the sea of the sinner’s unconscious. The belief superstructure—the Evangelical ideology—is imposed on this roiling sea of passion. This sets up a deep tension in the person’s personality: he has these drives (passions) that he can’t get rid of but that he’s not supposed to have; he is trying to internalize the group ideology. Enter Ted Haggard. That’s where we came in. Now add to this ‘ecstatic’ Pentecostal prayer meetings. The ‘ecstatic’ prayer meeting relieves the deep tension in the person’s psyche by allowing him to channel his unconscious passions into worship.

This is all very tedious.

Let us now look at how an Orthodox understands this passage. Orthodoxy is person-oriented. Persons meet persons. The first thing that an Orthodox person who practises his religion projects is himself: who he is. If he has love in his heart for others, God will manifest him to the other. The other will understand. This is a matter of deep speaking to deep.

Now the main thing in the case of an Orthodox conversion is for the sinner to meet God in the other, the Orthodox. God is love. As St Paul says, ‘God recommends his own love to us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died on our behalf.’ The sinner can only be converted to Orthodoxy if he meets love in the person of an Orthodox—even if that person doesn’t say a word of overt preaching.

Now in the case of lonely people, an unscrupulous man might manipulate this need for love by good interpersonal skills the same way that an encyclopaedia salesman manipulates lonely housewives and househusbands to buy needlessly expensive encyclopaedias.

However, most Orthodox don’t have such a militant, manipulative approach to witnessing their faith. They simply go about their business and who they are is manifest to the persons they meet.

Now the thing that a person who has met God in another Orthodox and who wishes to become Orthodox must do is meet God in a more direct way in the Orthodox Church. This is very difficult, especially in cases of Christians who belong to other denominations.

In our experience, Orthodoxy is a closed book to Westerners. They just don’t see anything in it. Anything spiritual, that is. The Orthodox seem to be hung up. Ritual. Dressing like the peasants. All that Tolstoy stuff. Whereas we Westerners have the truth…

The Westerner has the truth with his head. The Orthodox have the truth with their soul and body.

Now the norm in a conversion is to be baptized. It is baptism that gives us the Holy Spirit. It is baptism that gives us the reconciliation to God that St Paul is speaking of. Even St Paul believed that. It is in Orthodox baptism that we finally meet God in a definitive way, that meeting being consummated in our first Holy Communion after our baptism. We thus enter into life: ‘For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by means of the death of his Son, very much more, having been reconciled, we will be saved in his life.’

May all men have a good Easter season!
Orthodox Monk

Wherein We Respond to Two Comments

In our recent post ‘Pentecostalism and the Orthodox Tradition of the Philokalia’, we discussed certain aspects of Pentecostalism in relation to Orthodox worship and, especially, Orthodox spirituality. In what for our blog is a raging controversy we received two comments. They were closely linked in time, the one from Australia and the other from South Africa. The one comment, from Les Chatwin, says this:

Thank you for this post. As someone who would consider themselves pentecostal/charismatic you have presented some challenging thoughts. I have to confess that some of the ascetic practices you mentioned are very confronting but, as I process this post, I want to consider how much of this is my innate desire to “quick fix” religious experiences. I appreciate your honest in grappling with these issues.

The other comment, from Steve Hayes, says this:

I tried to comment on this yesterday, but Blogger would not let me, and kept timing out, so I wrote some comments in my own blog at Notes from underground: Orthodoxy as Boutique Religion?

We went to the post mentioned by Mr Hayes’ in his comment and read some of it, downloading it, we thought, for later, more mature, consideration off-line. But we made a mistake and didn’t have the text in front of us when we prepared the basic draft of this post, although we did have some of the posts by other bloggers on which Mr Hayes commented in his own post. We did reread Mr Hayes’ post before we made this post.

We rather prefer Mr Chatwin’s comment. Indeed, we went to his blog and looked at some of it. We were rather interested in Mr Chatwin’s discussion of ‘Altered States of Consciousness’, because, we think, the issue of valid and invalid Altered States of Consciousness is at the heart of an Orthodox discernment of the pentecostal/charismatic experience, as Mr Chatwin puts it.

When we looked at Mr Hayes’ post, insofar as it concerned us, we were struck by two things: First, Mr Hayes is an Orthodox with a background in Anglican/African Pentecostalism/charismaticism; and, second, he once got into trouble putting on a church service similar to the one at the New Life Church that we took such a dim view of. But when we reviewed Mr Hayes’ comments in his post as they refer to us, having reread our own post on which he is commenting, we wondered whether Mr Hayes had really read our post. Moreover, when we went to the other blogs that Mr Hayes was commenting on, especially concerning Orthodoxy the boutique religion, we were left rather cold: nothing spoke to us in the heart.

Let us begin with the comment we prefer, Mr Chatwin’s comment.

First of all, we got into this Pentecostalist thing by accident: we thought that things were getting rather tedious in our endless discussion of the history of Orthodox monasticism and wanted a change of pace. So we chose Ted Haggard—the day before he came out of his three-week intensive. Then, completely independently, someone commented on our post ‘Orthodox Monasticism 14 — The Charism of Discernment’, establishing to his own satisfaction a parallel between the religious experience of a great Orthodox Elder—considered by many a saint just 16 years after his death—and both a ‘Glory Fit’ in the Salvation Army and the ‘Toronto Blessing’. The fellow even gave us an address in Redding, California where we could all go to partake of the ‘Toronto Blessing’ in its newest form. Then we found out that the New Life Church, founded by Ted Haggard, had connections to ‘Third Wave’ Pentecostalism. So here we are talking about Pentecostalism and Orthodoxy without being an expert in the sociology of American religion.

Let us look at some of the issues raised by Mr Chatwin’s comment. He mentions our ‘challenging thoughts’. The way the thing evolved, we would treat as a unity our nine posts from ‘Coercive Christianity’ through ‘Pentecostalism and the Orthodox Tradition of the Philokalia’ to this post. If Mr Chatwin, or any other interested reader, has not read all those posts, then we would ask him to do so.

The next thing that Mr Chatwin says is this: ‘I have to confess that some of the ascetic practices you mentioned are very confronting…’ We are not at all sure what Mr Chatwin means. Let us look at the word ‘confronting’. When we ourselves speak in a general way of ‘coercive Christianity’, what we have in mind is the social organization of a church that is very authoritarian—described in detail, in the case of the New Life Church, in the Harper’s Magazine article we referenced in the post that Mr Chatwin is commenting on, and manifested in practice, we think, in the Overseers’ handling of Ted Haggard. This seems to be hinted at also in Mr Hayes’ own references to the discernment that was going on in the particular African charismatic churches that he discusses in his own post:

At Iviyo conferences, on the other hand, while there may have been 2000 people yelling and jumping and praying in tongues, there would be, out of sight, in the crypt of the church, or a school classroom, a group of about 20, mostly priests and nuns, praying all the time. If anyone claimed to have a revelation from God to give to the main meeting, they had first to take it to those who were praying, who might say that no, that was not a revelation from God, but a spiritual delusion (for which Orthodox Christians have a technical term, plani or prelest).

Some American charismatic leaders were aware of the dangers of this lack of discipline, and to counteract it, people like Derek Prince and others started the "shepherding movement" but this in turn led to excesses in the opposite direction.

In the context of such an authoritarian church social structure, there are confrontations between prophets or pastors, and sinners. These are personal. These can be very damaging to the sinner. These confrontations are essentially fascist, in precisely the sense that they do not respect the personal spiritual freedom of the sinner. These confrontations are coercive: they force the sinner to behave and act in certain ways, not through an organic evolution of his personality but through a rigid psychological superstructure of authoritarian belief imposed on a seething unconscious. We discussed this in the post ‘Coercive Christianity’. We attempted there to delve into the social psychology of this coercion.

Now the only ascetical practice that we as an Orthodox monk can conceive of that might be similarly coercive, or ‘confronting’, is obedience. After all, the Abbot has authority; his monks are under a vow of obedience. However, except in cases of extreme disorder, an Orthodox monastery does not function either like an army or like the Hitler Youth. It’s just not there. The reason is ecclesiological. The Orthodox Church is formed not by charismatics who think, rightly or wrongly, that they have the Holy Spirit and the Truth, nor by charismatic leaders in the sociological sense, where the leader may be an out-and-out charlatan—but by the mysteries of the Orthodox Church, what Westerners call the sacraments. This is important. (It is also a dimension that is completely lacking in the discussions of Orthodoxy and Western Christianity by Arturo Vasquez and his friends that Mr Hayes commented on.)

Now it is possible for a monk or a novice to land in a monastery where the Abbot is mixed-up and thinks that he is Napoleon or whoever. This is in fact written about by St John of the Ladder, who tells the story of a monk, Akakios, who was without reason routinely dealt physical blows by his Abba (Abbot). However, Akakios did go to an Elder with the charism of discernment and the Elder discerned that that was Akakios’ road. Indeed St John of the Ladder explicitly states that the Elder discerned that this way of life was for Akakios not in vain. Such a way of life is considered to be an imitation of Christ who was crucified. In this sense, since we are all called to the cross of Christ, we are all called to this sort of confrontation with our old man. Of course, in the case of Akakios, who is a recognized saint of the Orthodox Church, this was physical martyrdom.

In the case of other ascetical practices, where the ascetical practices are individual (for example, fasting), the monk is confronting himself in a spirit of obedience to his Abbot.

In the case of ascetical practices that are more socially oriented, for example enduring scorn at the hands of others, these are considered to purify the soul.

But to find instances in Orthodox monasticism of outright coercion of the conscience of the other in a rejection of his fundamental freedom as a human being who is an image of God—this is the sort of thing that causes the Church to intervene.

Moreover, if we may be so bold, Mr Chatwin, who has a deep spirituality, has an asceticism that would make most of us quake to consider: he suffers from depression. We would not suggest that Mr Chatwin avoid his medication or his doctors, quite the contrary: he is learning a very deep humility in confronting his illness medically with the help of Christ. And St John of the Ladder remarks that if you see someone reaching dispassion (the goal of the spiritual journey) in a very short time you can be sure that he went by the road of humility. All asceticism is really the carrying of the cross of Christ, Mr Chatwin.

In the particular case of Orthodox monastic asceticism, serious mental illness is considered to prevent the practice of all forms of monastic asceticism. And the reason should be clear.

To speak generally, obedience in the context of the mysteries of the Orthodox Church is not the same as an authoritarian, confrontational social organization.

Orthodox monastic obedience in particular is sweetened and tempered by the presence of the Holy Spirit in both the disciple and the master. And this presence of the Holy Spirit is intrinsic to the monastic calling: Orthodox monasticism was instituted not by man but by the Holy Spirit: St Theodore Studite treats the monastic tonsure as one of the mysteries (sacraments) of the Church.

In the broader sense of general Orthodox ecclesiastical obedience (of the priest to his bishop; of the layman to his parish priest or bishop; even of the wife to her husband), this obedience is tempered not only by a cultural tradition which is not authoritarian in the sense we are discussing but also by the very presence of the Holy Spirit in each of the members of the pair (priest and bishop; layman and priest; layman and bishop; wife and husband), the Holy Spirit entering into the relationship in the mystery (sacrament) establishing the relationship ecclesially (baptism, chrismation, ordination, marriage).

It is here that we wonder about the Pentecostalist spirit: the ecclesiology is prima facie disturbed, as is evident even from Mr Hayes' own defence of Pentecostalism.

Now we would like to turn to the issue that Mr Chatwin raises elsewhere in his blog, that of Altered States of Consciousness.

The problem is this. On Mr Chatwin’s blog there is a quotation from a fellow—evidently an anthropologist—who is observing Guatemalan charismatics who enter into trance states. The anthropologist thinks that the charismatics are encountering God: ‘Only here you can reach out and touch the face of the divine.’ The Orthodox would be a little more cautious.

This is a very complicated issue to deal with in a few words. Part of the problem is the dominant paradigm in American studies of religious experience, the so-called ‘Chicago School’. The Chicago School teaches that all religions are basically the same, merely different means to enter into states wherein we can all ‘reach out and touch the face of the divine’. What must be emphatically understood is that from an Orthodox point of view not all religious experiences are the same or even equivalent. This is not the sort of understanding that the Chicago School instils in its students.

Moreover, the Orthodox do not consider that the only interpretative options are ‘the emotional, the psychotic and the spiritual’. An Orthodox Elder would have no problem saying to someone:

1. That experience is emotional.

2. That experience is psychological.

3. That experience is psychotic.

4. The experience is from the Holy Spirit of the Living God.

5. That experience is neither emotional nor psychological nor psychotic; nor is it from the Holy Spirit of the Living God: that experience is demonic.

Although there are rough-and-ready external criteria in the Orthodox Church for discerning a spiritual experience (e.g. no one in the Holy Spirit curses Jesus Christ), in the Orthodox Church the criteria of discernment are not in the nature of things external. An Orthodox Elder does not have a handbook; he has the Holy Spirit. When an Orthodox monk discusses a spiritual experience with an Orthodox Elder it is not a matter of what the Elder’s teacher told him—although that sometimes plays a role—but of the Elder’s being himself able spiritually to ‘sniff out’ the spirit behind the monk’s experience.

A demonic experience is not necessarily unpleasant (at least in the beginning—the end is a different matter). ‘For even Satan is transformed into an angel of light.’ Hence, saying that an experience was demonic is not necessarily to say that it was subjectively unpleasant. It is to say that what happened—whatever the external manifestations might have been—was not an act of the Holy Spirit but of a fallen angel.

Moreover, it is not even out of the question that an experience with a demon would not only be pleasant but make the person who experienced it zealous for the practice of his religion, even Protestant or other Christian, as the person understood his religion after that demonic experience.

Of course that is what is in issue in the ‘Toronto Blessing’. No one doubts that the fellow who commented on our post ‘Orthodox Monasticism 14 — The Charism of Discernment’ experienced something pleasant and supernatural via the ‘Toronto Blessing’. No one believes that he was merely manipulated emotionally by a nasty fellow out to take his goods into thinking he experienced something supernatural when he didn’t. But was it the Holy Spirit of the Living God that the fellow experienced? Just the same as Elder Porphyrios? We think that it is highly likely that the man was deceived.

It is in this context that the Guatemalan charismatic trance experiences have to be considered. In the study of religion (particularly shamanism) ‘trance’ is actually a technical term with a specific content. One of the rough-and-ready Orthodox rules of discernment is that trance states are demonic. Orthodox spiritual experiences called ‘ecstatic’ in the precise sense of the Philokalia have a completely different character.

The problem of demonic deception is what is also in issue in Mr Hayes’ discussion of the African Pentecostalist/charismatic movements. He especially remarks: ‘The founders of the Iviyo movement, Bishop Alpheus Zulu and Canon Philip Mbatha, were not, as "Orthodox Monk" implies, demonised’—i.e. possessed by demons. How would we know, Mr Hayes?

Particularly interesting to us in this phenomenon is the interplay between the ‘anything goes’ worship for—excuse us, Mr Hayes—the masses, and the disciplined elite discernment team engaged in non-stop prayer and, it seems, authoritarian control of the ‘ecstatic’ masses. We find the interplay between the ‘ecstatic’ (in the sociological sense) Pentecostalist worship and the authoritarian church organization to be both very, very interesting and very, very revealing.

It should be understood that ‘ecstatic’ in the sense of the Philokalia has a completely different meaning from ‘ecstatic’ in the sociological sense. In the precise sense of the Philokalia, ‘ecstatic’ refers to the condition of the mind in certain cases that the Holy Spirit descends on the person and his mind temporarily loses certain functions in the act of being united to the Holy Spirit. In the case of the sociological meaning of ‘ecstatic’, it means ‘out of one’s mind, in an abnormal state of consciousness, freed from the usual norms of internalized social control’.

And here is where we wonder whether Mr Hayes understood our post. For what we contrasted to the dynamic tension between ‘ecstatic’ Pentecostalist worship and authoritarian church social structure was the inward ascent of the personal Sinai, the personal Horeb, in order to meet God in the gentle breeze of the Prophet Elias—and that in the context of the mysteries of the Orthodox Church. It is in the gentle breeze that the Holy Spirit descends upon the mind, perhaps causing the mind to enter into ‘ecstasy’ in the sense of the Philokalia.

In the case of ‘ecstatic’ Pentecostalist worship and authoritarian social control, recall that at the heart of the authoritarian social control is the imposition of a rigid psychological belief superstructure on a seething unconscious. But the ‘ecstatic’ Pentecostalist worship frees the seething unconscious from that rigid superstructure, at least for a time, so that the unconscious content can be acted out. Hence the dynamic interplay between the ‘ecstatic’ Pentecostalist worship of the masses and the disciplined and authoritarian control by the shepherding group. Moreover, members of the one group can oscillate in and out of the other. That is, in common worship a shepherd may enter into ‘ecstatic’ states where he loses for a time his disciplined discernment.

In the case of the ascent of the personal Horeb, what is involved is a calming of the person and the slow removal of the superstructure so that the unconscious can be encountered consciously, thus to be purified and emptied completely. The purification and emptying of the unconscious is considered in the Philokalia to be the presupposition of an authentic encounter with God in the gentle breeze. Hence, an ‘ecstatic’ experience in the sense of the Philokalia presupposes a complete purification and emptying of the unconscious whereas in the case of Pentecostalism it really means a freeing of the unconscious to do as it will.

Is it all the same, Mr Hayes? Does someone get there with Pentecostalist rock worship just the same as he gets there with the Jesus Prayer under the guidance of an Orthodox Elder? What weight do you assign to the witness of the Orthodox tradition?

Orthodox Monasticism 19 — Evagrius Ponticus on the Inner Ascent 1

In our last post, after we had discussed some differences between Pentecostalism and the Orthodox ascetical and spiritual tradition, we promised that we would continue with our discussion of Evagrius’ ascetical theory.

The Orthodox, and even the classical Roman Catholic, monastic tradition emphasizes the ascetical ascent of the inner Sinai, the inner Horeb, that we discussed in the last post. In the Orthodox Church, this ascetical ascent of the inner Sinai is defined theoretically by a number of ascetics, chief of whom is Evagrius Ponticus although he is by no means the only such ascetical theologian in the Orthodox Church.

To segue into this ascetical doctrine, let us first look at the use of music in liturgical worship. In Evagrius’ time, and earlier, there were still pagans in Alexandria. They used ‘wild music’ as part of their celebrations. In Chapter 71 of The Monk, one of Evagrius’ most important ascetical works,[1] Evagrius says this:

On the one hand, demonic songs set our desire in motion and put the soul into shameful fantasies; on the other hand, psalms and hymns and spiritual songs ever bring the mind to a memory of virtue, chilling our burning temper and withering our desires.

We could reflect on this remark in regard to the concept of ‘Christian rock’. Something’s wrong. ‘If it’s got a back beat you can dance to it.’ That is what the pagans were doing in Evagrius’ day and that is what Evagrius is commenting on: such music sets the desire in motion—yes, Virginia, the guitarist is very handsome—but psalms and hymns and spiritual songs chill our burning temper and wither our desires.

In an Orthodox monastery, the way the services are done is very important. This includes both the actual type of chant and its manner of execution. All those droning monks have a role to play in the formation of the monk in the monastery: the very music is bringing his mind to a memory of virtue—a memory of God—and cooling his temper and withering his desire. The chant is calming him down, making him more serene. He’s not about to go spinning around the monastery church like a whirling dervish or leaping up into the air. He’s not going to ogle anyone. The music and related theatre used in the worship of the New Life Church that we described in our last post are going to do just the opposite.

This is not a matter of the New Life Church’s having the Holy Spirit and the Orthodox Church’s not having it. This is something very basic: the liturgical music in each place has a different effect, an effect that was commented on by Evagrius in the late 4^th Century.

Nor is this a matter of our being a stick-in-the-mud who doesn’t know how to have a good time. What is at stake is the very notion of the spiritual life: what it means for the newly baptized Christian (in our case, the newly baptized Orthodox or the newly repentant Orthodox) to turn to God, to begin the upward spiritual ascent to God.

The first thing that Evagrius is saying is that our liturgical music has to calm us down. We have to slow down. Only then can we start to turn inward.

Now that doesn’t mean that we should all be obliged to listen to Western classical music ten hours a day. An Athonite Elder has remarked that while rock music is demonic, at its end Western classical music leaves you where you were before: only Byzantine chant is truly transforming.

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[1] Évagre Le Pontique. Traité pratique ou Le moine (Practical Treatise or The Monk). Tome I. Introduction. Tome II. Édition critique du texte grec… Antoine Guillaumont et Claire Guillaumont. 1971. Sources chrétiennes, N^os 170 & 171. Paris, France: Les Éditions du Cerf.

Pentecostalism and the Orthodox Tradition of the Philokalia

We really are out of our depth. We really know nothing about Pentecostalism and it would require a degree in religious doctrine and sociology to sort out the different currents in Pentecostalism, especially American Pentecostalism. All the currents have their own doctrines. All the currents have their own opponents. And the opponents are often just as off the wall as the currents they are opposing.

We do know that none of the Elders of the Orthodox Church has ever endorsed Pentecostalism. That is important for there are clearly charismatic elements in the Orthodox tradition of the Philokalia: an Orthodox Elder is normally revealed to the body of the Church through his gifts of clairvoyance.

In our post Plani, we presented and discussed a comment by one of our anonymous readers, a reader who compared the experience of Elder Porphyrios in receiving the Holy Spirit on Mt Athos at the age of 16 both to a ‘Glory Fit’ in the Salvation Army (about which we ourselves know absolutely nothing, never even having heard of such a thing) and to the ‘Toronto Blessing’. From our commenter’s point of view, these are all the same experience of one and same Holy Spirit.

In the case of the ‘Toronto Blessing’, we quoted extracts from an article by someone who thinks (from a educated Scots Baptist point of view) that the ‘Toronto Blessing’ is in error; and, certainly, if what the fellow is saying is not made-up hog-wash, the spirit of the ‘Toronto Blessing’ is a spirit of deception.

We have also been discussing the case of Rev Ted Haggard, where his own Church, the New Life Church, appears to be part of an informal grouping of Evangelical Churches which although not explicitly Pentecostalist are heavily influenced by Pentecostalism.

So are all those people flocking to Colorado Springs, the home of the New Life Church and allied groups, wrong? Why is the Orthodox Church—just getting by in numbers, thank you—right?

Let’s start with Rev Ted Haggard’s own New Life Church:

The band stood. A … man with a big, tenor voice … directed the musicians and the crowd, leading us and them and the choir as the guitarists kicked on the fuzz and the drummer pounded the music toward arena-rock frenzy. Two fog machines on each side of the stage filled the sanctuary with white clouds. Pod-shaped projectors cast a light show across the ceiling, giant spinning white snowflakes and cartwheeling yellow flowers and a shimmering blue water-effect. “Prepare the way!” shouted Worship Pastor Ross [Parsley]. “Prepare the way! The King is coming!” Across the stage teens began leaping straight up, a dance that swept across the arena: kids hopped, old men hopped, middle-aged women hopped. Spinners wheeled out from the ranks and danced like dervishes around the stage. The light pods dilated and blasted the sanctuary with red. Worship Pastor Ross roared: “Let the King of Glory enter in!” Ushers rushed through the crowds throwing out rainbow glow strings.[1]

No, this is not the dance scene in Sergei Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible, Part II. No, this is not a Sixties be-in or acid test. This is Christian worship at the New Life Church, Colorado Springs, Colorado, circa 2005.

So what’s wrong with that? People are enjoying themselves; they are off the streets; they believe in Jesus. What more do you want?

We would like to pose a question to sociologists of American religion: Is the New Life Church the flip side of the Woodstock Generation? Are the people flocking to the New Life Church in 2005 the same people who flocked to Woodstock in 1969, or perhaps their children? —As Eliot put it, ‘distracted from distraction to distraction’? Is the Religious New Right in the American polity just another fad in a polity periodically consumed by fads?

Lest anyone think that the worship described above was an isolated event, Worship Pastor Ross Parsley is now the Acting Senior Pastor of New Life Church, replacing under the watchful eye of the Overseers the fallen Senior Pastor, Ted Haggard, until a new Senior Pastor is found.

Anyone who has spent any time in an Orthodox church knows that the Orthodox Church has a passion for liturgy. But the Orthodox Church is so old-fashioned. There’s the deacon who’s been around for 2000 years intoning in one of the Eight Tones: ‘Let us pray to the Lord … For the peace from on High, for the salvation of our souls and for the well-being of the Churches of God…’ There’s the perpetual young mother with her perpetual babe in arms handing the babe over to her own mother so that she can light the perpetual votive candle. There’s the choir singing ‘Lord have mercy’ in response to the petitions of the deacon. There’s all that incense. It’s all so boring.

And all those middle-aged men standing round and looking so serious; all those people who don’t do anything. It’s all so stuffy! Whereas we could all be whirling dervishes if we could get rid of all that stuffiness!

And then the Orthodox monk gets hold of you and starts telling you about the Jesus Prayer. You’re supposed to sit still for hours every day with your head on your chest like this saying: ‘Lord Jesus Christ Son of God have mercy on me a sinner.’ And then maybe after fifty years you’ll see the Uncreated Light—whatever that is. Not even the Orthodox monk really knows what it is.

In the meantime, just down the street at the Pentecostal Church people are being slain in the Spirit. They are roaring like lions. Barking like dogs. They’re really happy! They’re experiencing God! They’re dancing in the Spirit! The music is fantastic! They’re having the time of their lives! And wow! that guitarist is really handsome too, isn’t he!

‘And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God and him whom you have sent, Jesus Christ.’ (John 17, 3.)

The key selling point of the Pentecostalist experience is that it is a replay of the day of Pentecost in Jerusalem. Just as God poured out his Spirit on the Apostles on that day, 10 days after Christ’s Ascension, so God is pouring out his Spirit on the willing today, right now. You too can hook into it. It requires no more than that you ask for an impartation, as our anonymous commenter wrote. Nothing is said about the purification that the Apostles experienced in their three years with Jesus (cf. John 13, 10), and nothing is said about the spiritual purification necessary in our own time—except for the necessary faith in the person imparting.

Here’s the rub. The Orthodox Church teaches us that we receive the Holy Spirit in Baptism, that we do not lose it except in cases of denial of Christ—for example by joining a non-Orthodox religious group. However, in us, the spark of the Holy Spirit that we received in Baptism is covered over by our passions and sins. To re-encounter consciously the Holy Spirit we have to make a long-term personal effort at our own personal spiritual purification, starting with a good confession. Alas, this is not the way of the American. The American wants the quick fix, the fast payoff, the easy buck.

While it is true that David danced before the Ark, there is no such tradition in Christianity whatsoever. There is nothing of the sort in the Biblical accounts in Acts of the descent of the Holy Spirit, not only on the day of Pentecost but even on the other occasions that St Luke recounts in Acts. No tap-dancing on the day of Pentecost. No Apostles hopping up and down like grasshoppers. No Apostles roaring like bulls. The Apostles spoke the praises of God and their hearers—Jews from all nations under Heaven—heard them each one in his own language. No one was howling like a wolf—neither an Apostle nor a hearer of an Apostle.

St Paul makes no reference at all to dancing in the Spirit when he is writing to the Corinthians about order in the Church, although he does address questions of order in the Church in relation to the lesser matter of speaking in tongues in the Church.

In the Third Book of Kings, after he has slain the priests of Baal and Jezebel hears about it and swears to kill him, the Prophet Elias (Elijah) goes to Mt Horeb. There he sits in a cave. God speaks to him and Elias replies:

And Elias said: ‘Being jealous, I was jealous for the Lord, the Ruler of All Things, for the sons of Israel have abandoned you. They have burned your altars and your prophets they have killed with the sword; and I am left all alone and they seek my life to take it.’ And he [the Lord] said: ‘You will go out tomorrow and stand before the Lord on the mountain. Behold! the Lord will pass.’ And behold! before the Lord a mighty and strong wind breaking mountains and crushing stones, but the Lord was not in the wind. And after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake, fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire, the voice of a fine breeze and the Lord was there. (3 Kings 19, 10 – 12.)

This is what Christian asceticism is all about. We come off the street in Denver, say, and we want to meet God. What the Orthodox Church is saying is that we have to go to the inner mountain: we have to ascend to the summit of our inner Sinai, like Moses; our inner Horeb, like Elias. This is an inner journey. It doesn’t matter if we run to Pike’s Peak, the Woodstock of the Evangelical-Pentecostalist movement. It doesn’t even matter if we run to Mt Athos, although there are certainly teachers there that teach this inner ascent. What matters is that we must above all turn inward. With the grace of God given in the Orthodox mysteries (sacraments). With the guidance of an Orthodox Elder who has made the journey. The ascent of Mount Sinai, the ascent of Mount Horeb, is an inner journey. ‘You then, when you pray, enter into your treasury and closing your door, pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will recompense you.’ (Matt. 6, 6.)

In the silence of a heart made pure, of a heart filled with the love of the Saviour, our mind—our nous—encounters the still small voice of God.

We must turn inward so that our mind—our centre of consciousness, our inward being, our inmost person—can enter into the cave of our heart and pray. This is the cave on Mt Horeb we must each one of us find inside himself. And in this prayer in the silent cave of our heart we encounter the Father and him whom the Father has sent, Jesus Christ: in this cave of our own heart, in the still small voice, we encounter eternal life: in this cave of our own heart we encounter the still small voice of the Holy Spirit.

We have already discussed the three stages of this inner journey, of this inner ascent: the purgative, the illuminative and the unitive stages. And as we have pointed out, Evagrius Ponticus is the great theoretician of this inner journey.

From the point of view of the Orthodox monastic tradition, worship at the New Life Church, a description of which we have quoted above, is the frenzy of lost souls far from a knowledge of the Father and of him whom the Father has sent, Jesus Christ; of souls far from eternal life. Moreover, the heavy rock music, the artificial fog, the psychedelic light show, the frenzied dancing, the manic leaping into the air, the spinning dancers—for an Orthodox Elder, these would be prima facie evidence of demonic possession in the worship of the New Life Church, not of the presence there of the Holy Spirit.

But the Orthodox way is hard work. As Eliot put it: ‘Teach us to sit still.’

In our next post we will resume our discussion of Evagrius’ ascetical doctrine in the series ‘Orthodox Monasticism’ that we have left in order to discuss, as it has turned out, Pentecostalist alternatives to Orthodoxy.

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[1] ’Soldiers of Christ’ by Jeff Sharlet. Harper’s Magazine, May 2005.