Evagrius Ponticus: The Making of a Gnostic (Routledge New Critical Thinking in Religion, Theology and Biblical Studies) [1 ed.] 9780754662655, 0754662659

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Evagrius ponticus A revered instructor of the eremitic monks of Nitria, Sketis and Kellia, Evagrius Ponticus is a fascinating yet enigmatic figure in the history of fourth-century mystical thought. This historical and theological re-evaluation of the teaching of Evagrius brings to bear evidence from the Greek and Syriac Evagriana. Focusing on Evagrius’ concept of perfection as the acquisition of spiritual knowledge, this book revisits current perceptions of  Evagrius’s thought and character by comparing and contrasting him with his contemporaries and predecessors, both Christian and pagan. Ideas of the three ‘Cappadocians’ and the author of the Macariana, as well as Stoic, Neo-Platonic and earlier Christian writers such as Alcinoos, Plotinus, Clement and Origen, are all explored. Konstantinovsky draws attention to a lack of uniformity in the fourth-century views on the origin of the soul, the body-soul relation, and the eschatological destiny of humankind.

ASHGATE NEW CRITICAL THINKING IN RELIGION, THEOLOGY AND BIBLICAL STUDIES The Ashgate New Critical Thinking in Religion, Theology and Biblical Studies series brings high quality research monograph publishing back into focus for authors, international libraries, and student, academic and research readers. Headed by an international editorial advisory board of acclaimed scholars spanning the breadth of religious studies, theology and biblical studies, this open-ended monograph series presents cutting-edge research from both established and new authors in the field. With specialist focus yet clear contextual presentation of contemporary research, books in the series take research into important new directions and open the field to new critical debate within the discipline, in areas of related study, and in key areas for contemporary society. Series Editorial Board: David Jasper, University of Glasgow, UK James Beckford, University of Warwick, UK Raymond Williams, Wabash College, Crawfordsville, USA Geoffrey Samuel, University of Newcastle, Australia Richard Hutch, University of Queensland, Australia Paul Fiddes, Regent’s Park College, University of Oxford, UK Anthony Thiselton, University of Nottingham, UK Tim Gorringe, University of Exeter, UK Adrian Thatcher, College of St Mark and St John, UK Alan Torrance, University of St Andrews, UK Judith Lieu, Terrance Tilley, University of Dayton, USA Miroslav Volf, Yale Divinity School, USA Stanley Grenz, Baylor University and Truett Seminary, USA Vincent Brummer, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands Gerhard Sauter, University of Bonn, Germany Other Titles in the Series: Pseudo-Dionysius as Polemicist The Development and Purpose of the Angelic Hierarchy in Sixth Century Syria Rosemary A. Arthur Anamnesis and the Eucharist Contemporary Anglican Approaches Julie Gittoes

Evagrius Ponticus The Making of a Gnostic

Julia Konstantinovsky Wolfson College, University of Oxford, UK

First published 2009 by Ashgate Publishing Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © Julia Konstantinovsky 2009

Julia Konstantinovsky has asserted her moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Konstantinovsky, Julia Evagrius Ponticus : the making of a gnostic. – (Ashgate new critical thinking in religion, theology and biblical studies) 1. Evagrius, Ponticus, 345?–399 2. Spiritual life – History of doctrines – Early church, ca. 30–600 I. Title 270.2’092 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Konstantinovsky, Julia. Evagrius Ponticus : the making of a gnostic / Julia Konstantinovsky. p. cm. — (Ashgate new critical thinking in religion, theology, and biblical studies) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7546-6265-5 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Evagrius, Ponticus, 345?–399. 2. Spiritual life—History of doctrines—Early church, ca. 30–600. I. Title. BR65.E926K66 2008 270.2092—dc22 [B] 2007052596 ISBN 9780754662655 (hbk)

Contents Abbreviationsvii Prefaceix Map – 4th-century Lower Egypt xi Introduction1 1 Evagrius in situ: the making of a gnostic 11 Knowledge through mental faculties in relation to spiritual knowledge 27 2 3 Natural contemplation versus knowledge of God’s essence 47 4 The intellect’s vision of light 77 5 Christology 109 6 The last things 153 Conclusion179 Bibliography Index

185 199

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Abbreviations ACO CPG CSCO DC DS GCS JTS OCA OCD OCP PG PL PS PO REG RHT SC SCNAC TU VC

Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum Clavis partum graecorum Corpus scriptorium christianorum orientalium Dictionnaire catholique Dictionnaire de spiritualité Griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten drei Jahrhunderte Journal of Theological Studies Orientalia Christiana Analecta Oxford Classical Dictionary Orientalia christiana periodica Migne, Patrologia graeca Migne, Patrologia latina Patrologia syriaca Patrologia orientalis Revue des études grecques Revue d’histoire de texts Sources Chrétiennes Scriptorum christianorum nova et amplissima collectio Texte und Untersuchungen Vigiliae christianae

NAEBK

The publisher apologises to readers of the ebook edition but it has not been possible to reproduce a small amount of Syriac characters that was printed in the font SertoJerusalem in the ebook edition. In instances where this has been removed the abbreviation NAEBK has been inserted.

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Preface My first acknowledgement is offered to the Arts and Humanities Research Council for the three-year major funding support without which this research would not be possible. I should like to express my sincerest thanks to Dr. M. J. Edwards, Christ Church, Oxford University, for his wholehearted guidance, assistance and encouragement throughout my work on this project. A special debt of gratitude is owed to the Community of St John the Baptist, Essex, for their unwavering support throughout the years of this research and at every stage of it. I also benefited from gracious advice and assistance of the Right Reverend Dr. Kallistos Ware, Metropolitan of Diokleia, and Dr. S. Thomas, University of Kent. Revd. Dr. A. Meredith, Heythrop College London, and Dr. M. Ludlow, University of Essex, offered many important insights, which have been incorporated in this book. I would also like to thank Dr. S. Brock and Dr. D. Taylor at the Oriental Institute, Oxford University, for their invaluable help with Syriac citations. Prof. R. Sorabji, Wolfson College, Oxford, generously read and commented on Chapter 2 of the book. I wish to thank the Ashgate editorial team for treating my work with respect. Ann Allen, humanities editorial manager, was especially courageous and patient unravelling the enigma of the Syriac fonts. Finally, my deep gratitude goes out to my family and friends, especially Olga Helly and Revd. Stephen and Ana Platt. In recent scholarly debates concerning the history of fourth-century Christian monasticism the character and teaching of Evagrius Ponticus (A.D. ca. 345–399) have begun to play an increasingly important part. However, whilst studies about Evagrius’s Greek ascetic corpus have been plentiful, an holistic evaluation of Evagrius’s works, both ascetic and speculative, Greek and preserved only in Syriac translations, has hitherto been lacking. This monograph investigates Evagrius’s overarching idea, the soul’s graded ascent to perfection understood as spiritual knowledge, and how this idea defined Evagrius’s self-identity as a Christian gnostic. Bringing to bear on this central tenet evidence from the Greek and Syriac Evagriana, the monograph re-evaluates current perceptions of Evagrius’s tradition and originality by comparing and contrasting him, on the one hand, with his fourth-century contemporaries and on the other hand, with his predecessors. The former type of contextualisation is carried out by evaluating the views of the three Cappadocians and the author of the Macariana, while the latter by bringing to light common stock ideas, contained in Stoic, Neo-Platonic and early Christian writers, such as Philo, Alcinoos, and Plotinus, of the pagans, and Clement and Origen, of the Christians. The monograph draws attention to the fourth-century lack of uniformity regarding the views on the body/soul relation and the eschatological destiny of man. Since the study concentrates upon a reconstruction of Evagrius as a historical person by reference to his oeuvre, the theology and historical situation of Constantinople

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553, at which Evagrius was condemned, is beyond its remit. Although consideration is given to some of the rationale behind the 553 decisions, no judgement is passed regarding whether the 553 Synod was right or wrong.

4th-century Lower Egypt: monastic locations at the time of Evagrius

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Introduction Since the early 1900s, the importance of Evagrius Ponticus, a theologian and spiritual teacher of the Greek fourth-century, has been widely recognised. Yet, despite the assiduous researches of older critics such as W. Frankenberg, I. Hausherr, J. Muyldermans, and A. and C. Guillaumont, and the more recent fine work of scholars like G. Bunge, F. Kline, R. Sinkewicz and L. Dysinger, a picture of Evagrius’s oeuvre considered as a whole and understood strictly in terms of his own age is still lacking. The present book stands, at least in part, to fill this gap. (i) Evagrius’s conception of gnosis as the centre of the study The monograph concentrates upon Evagrius’s conception of gnosis, or the spiritual knowledge. It is Clement’s use of the concept and term of gnw=sij, in the sense of partaking of the life of divinity,1 that forms the basis of Evagrius’s understanding. Although an original theologian, in his conception of gnosis Evagrius was not unusual. In the broader fourth-century Christian milieu, gnosis was an accepted way of referring to the Christian goal. Evagrius’s idea fits this definition. Thus commenting on Jesus’s maxim in Matt. 5.8, ‘Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God’, Evagrius’s Letter 56 equates gnosis with blessedness: ‘… he declares them blessed not on account of their purity but by reason of the vision of God, because purity is the impassibility of the rational soul, while the vision of God is the true knowledge (gnw=sij) of the holy Trinity that is to be worshipped.’2 It is with this definition in mind that the term is used here. Yet, exactly what kind of gnostic (gnwstiko/j) does Evagrius suggest that we must make ourselves into? The successive stages envisaged by Evagrius as the path of the spiritual ascent answer this question. (ii) The scope and method of the book The complexity of the Evagrian question has to be pointed out. The reason for this is Evagrius’s historical connection to a huge issue in Late Antiquity, that is, the condemnation of Origen in 553. Evagrius accompanies Origen in the Constantinople 553 condemnations.3 Consequently, the modern Evagrian scholar is presented 1 Cf. Lilla, Clement of Alexandria, pp. 142 ff. 2 Greek text in Géhin, ‘Nouveaux fragments grecs des Lettres’, RHT 24 (1994). 3 It is true that the recognition of Constantinople 553 in the West was irregular and that no name is attached to the Synod’s fifteen propositions (see M. J. Edwards, Origen Against Plato, p. 3 and Crouzel, Origen, 269). At the same time, that Justinian’s targets in 553 were indeed Origen, Didymus, and Evagrius seems plausible, because the sixth-century controversies passed into history as ‘the Origenist disputes of the sixth century’ (see Diekamp, Die origenistischen Streitigkeiten im sechsten Jahrhundert und das fünfte allgemeine Conzil

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with two vast subjects: first, the matter of an historical assessment of the work of Constantinople 553; and, second, an equally broad issue of the patristic idea of heresy versus orthodoxy. While these issues are important, they could form the basis of several more monographs. Indeed, some of the difficulties previous Evagrian researches have encountered stem from their importing these issues into their Evagrian research without sufficient clarity in their chosen method, so that matters connected specifically with the age of Evagrius become entangled with issues from later centuries. By contrast, the scope of the present study is more modest. Its aim is to establish the lineaments of Evagrius’s theology in conjunction with his spiritual doctrine as it stood in his time. Consequently, although touching on the rationale behind 553 where relevant, the research takes a deliberate step back from an in-depth treatment of the theology of 553 and the sixth-century concept of orthodoxy. Instead, it attempts to evaluate some fourth-century and older material constituting Evagrius’s context, which task in itself might be a contribution to the debate on the sixth-century problem of Origenism. The monograph, then, examines Evagrius by a holistic method, where ‘holistic’ means keeping his doctrinal, mystical, and ascetical views together. The book uses the fourth-century and more ancient contexts to illustrate how normal and how eccentric Evagrius was by the standard of his time, while refraining from assessing Evagrius from the perspectives of later doctrinal developments. Yet, even the material pertaining to Evagrius’s own oeuvre is complex and necessitates selection. Although the threads this study traces are indeed fundamental for outlining Evagrius’s theory of gnostic ascent, they are not exhaustive. Themes to which full attention will not be given are, for instance, an in-depth treatment of Evagrius’s ethical and practical teaching,4 his idea of the meaning of the Scripture, as well as the role he assigns to angels and planets in disseminating spiritual knowledge. Even the themes constituting the subject-matter of the book’s chapters are treated extensively but not exhaustively. The focus of each chapter could itself become the subject of research in its own right. Themes such as Evagrius’s Lower Egyptian context and his subsequent influence in the Greek, Latin, and Syriac Christianities each constitute fascinating areas of researches that are different from the present one.

(1899); Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition, vol. 2 part. 2, pp. 385 ff). Richard in 1961 discovered in the National Museum at Ohrid the treatise on heresies by the priest monk George composed in the first half of the seventh century, that is, in the aftermath of Constantinople 553. Chapter 9 of the treatise is devoted to ‘the Origenists’, among whom Evagrius and Didymus are mentioned by name and in connection with Constantinople II (cf. George the hieromonk, De haeresibus ad Epiphanium (CPG 7820), 9. par. 16, in Richard, Opera minora. III, no. 62, pp. 262, 7–9). There is no doubt, therefore, that in seventh-century minds Evagrius was associated with the 553 condemnations. Consequently, there is a strong probability that Evagrius indeed was condemned by name in 553. 4 This is in part due to an extensive treatment of the subject by other scholars, notably A. Guillaumont and G. Bunge.

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(iii) The three-fold subject-matter of the book First, the book progressively describes Evagrius’s conception of reality as graded, gnostic, and such that the metaphysical and the physical are indissolubly locked together. The unity of the divine and the contingent means that the history of this present life is inseparable from the a¹rxai¿ and te/lh. This is why, when conceptualising his reality, Evagrius includes within his picture a discussion on the pre-existent and the final things, which lie outside of both the individual and collective human experience. Consequently, outlines of Evagrius’s protology and eschatology have a place in the present study. Second, culminating in the knowledge of the Trinity, the gnostic and graded nature of reality constitutes the spiritual knowledge that the ascetic must acquire to qualify as a gnostic. The subject-matter of the book, therefore, is an evaluation of what in fact is Evagrius’s step-by-step instruction for the making of a gnwstiko¯j, ‘a gnostic’. By ‘a gnostic’, Evagrius understands a person who has acquired proficient knowledge of divine reality and thereby has become transformed into the perfection to which Scripture points. Antecedent to this perfection, ‘a gnostic’ is one who possesses the knowledge necessary to set him or her on the right road towards perfection. Third, Evagrius is the author of what may be described as his ‘manual of divine ascent.’ The order of things is that one first knows and only then teaches what one knows. Evagrius’s oeuvre, therefore, is underpinned by the assumption that he himself is proficient in spiritual knowledge. His conceptualisation of the gnostic universe and the gnostic doctrine founded upon an abstraction from his vision of reality, therefore, are Evagrius’s own spiritual autobiography. Thus, Evagrius’s oeuvre, as a mirror reflecting ‘Evagrius the gnostic’, is an experiment in self-construction. In fulfilling its task, therefore, the book also adverts to the mirror-like characteristic of Evagrius’s writings, his instruction for the making of a gnostic mirroring his own progress in the building of himself to this end. The book, therefore, is an attempt to capture a consciousness and a point of view, as expressed not in personal reminiscences but in a teaching. (iv) Structure Chapter 1 has as its purpose the setting of Evagrius’s gnostic writings within their historical, theological, and biographical context. Besides presenting a brief biography of Evagrius and an account of the two major stages in his life, it lists the works attributed to Evagrius and offers their tentative chronology. It also introduces the question of the relation between Evagrius’s oeuvre and the retrospective condemnations of Constantinople 553. Chapter 2 evaluates Evagrius’s idea of the undistorted functioning of mental faculties as the initial stage of gnosis. Here the pivotal theme of the value of the body is introduced. It continues to be developed in subsequent chapters. There are two reasons for this: first, it is central both to Evagrius and other Late Antique writers;

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second, it also emerges as the crux interpretationis in Evagrian studies and stands in need of revision. Chapter 3 takes one a step further into the progress towards the gnostic perfection by illustrating, in its first part, a crucial distinction in Evagrius between the indirect spiritual knowledge obtained through natural contemplation and the more direct knowledge, termed ‘the knowledge of God’s essence’, which is not obtained via any created intermediary beside the human mind. The chapter’s second part explores the conception of the vision of God’s essence in Evagrius as compared with the Cappadocians. In its first part, Chapter 4 provides an account of Evagrius’s mystical theology of light and how this relates to the knowledge of God’s essence. The second part situates Evagrius’s theology of light within Late Antique context, comparing and contrasting Evagrius, on the one hand, with Plotinus, and on the other hand, with Macarius. Regarding the perceived Macarius/Evagrius dichotomy, while building on recent findings, the chapter attempts to define the relation further, focussing on the respective roles of Christ in the light-theology of the Macariana and the Evagriana. Chapter 4, then, prepares the ground for Chapter 5, which concentrates upon Evagrius’s conception of Christ. Since the subject of Christ’s role and identity has wide ramifications, Chapter 5 also completes an evaluation of Evagrius’s idea of pre-existence and corporeality. While the chapter’s first part evaluates Evagrius’s Christological material on its own merit, the second briefly situates his Christology within its fourth-century context. Chapter 5 is designed to provide a firm foundation for the focus of Chapter 4, an evaluation of Evagrius’s eschatology. This chapter ends the account of the research, as the eschatological stage ends Evagrius’s account of the spiritual ascent. Again, the chapter first evaluates Evagrius’s own thought, and then contextualises it. Thus regarding the structure of the individual chapters, Chapter 2 constitutes exclusively an account of Evagrius’s thought. By contrast, Chapters 3 to 4 first present Evagrian material, and then provide a context for Evagrius, which is both synchronic and diachronic, adopting a standardised method of contextualisation by which about one fifth of each chapter is dedicated to providing the background in which the originality of Evagrius’s thought may be assessed. (v) Some assumptions of the present-day scholarship of Late Antiquity One major source of myth-making in present-day Evagrian scholarship is the tendency of his Catholic5 and other6 critics to judge Evagrius not on the potency, consistency and purpose of his own thought but exclusively through the eyes of his ancient detractors, separated from Evagrius by a good 150 years. Integral to this approach is scholars’ tacit assumption that there existed a Late Antique Christian rule of faith containing a fixed set of beliefs and terminology. They then trace Evagrius’s 5 Scholars like A. and C. Guillaumont, I. Hausherr, and von Balthasar. 6 For example, E. Clark.

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heterodoxy to his divergence from this alleged rule of orthodoxy. Ironically, while following the ancients in holding Evagrius’s orthodoxy in suspicion, the problem some scholars have with Evagrius’s ideas7 is traceable to these critics’ very modern distrust of otherworldliness. Clearly, this latter bias is anachronistic, since the entire Christian Late Antiquity embraced dualistic views of the reality8 and saw itself as unworldly. A reverse, but no less questionable, assumption, of which present-day ecclesiastical historians are susceptible, is to project upon Christian Late Antiquity the kind of religious and doctrinal pluralism that is supposed to reign today.9 Consequently ancient denunciations of heterodox figures are traced purely to people’s inability to see this fact. In contrast with these diverse presuppositions, the present monograph intends to maintain a more nuanced and moderate position; namely, that, on the one hand, the rule of faith indeed existed at all times of the Christian Late Antiquity, and on the other hand, that the conceptual and terminological content of this rule was in some ways fixed and in others fluid. The content of the ancient Christian rule of faith, then, appears to have depended on the exact period, geographical location, and the specific nature of the particular article of faith under discussion. Regarding the latter factor, while some Christian tenets, such as the divinity, in some sense, of Christ,10 the numerical identity of Christ and the Logos, and the belief in God as the Trinity, appear from the inception of Christianity non-negotiable even within the variety of traditions, others, such as the origin and destiny of the soul, were not formulated with any degree of clarity until the sixth century and beyond. This is why up until the time of Evagrius, the view that the soul in some sense pre-existed matter and was superior to the body was universally acceptable. However, transformed into a dogmatic assertion, the belief in the soul’s pre-existence coupled with the assumption that the soul/mind is always the carrier of personal identity11 leads to a pre-existence of the soul of Christ and a Christology postulating a numerical distinction between the Logos and Christ. Hence, while the premise of pre-existence was tolerated, the corollary of a di-polar Christology of this kind, clearly, was not.

7 Again, Clark. 8 The term ‘dualism’ in relation to Late Antique Christianity is defined in Chapter 5. 9 This approach is discernible in L. Ayres, Nicaea and its Legacy. 10 Even Arius maintained that, although not the ‘true God’, the Son is nevertheless ‘God’ in some sense (Cf. Thalia, cited in Athanasius’s Contra Arianos I.5 and 6, proposition vi). See R. Williams, Arius, 95–101. 11 Thus, in the di-polar Christology of Gregory of Nazianzus, while Christ possesses a soul, the latter represents no personal identity distinct from that of the Logos. Cf. ‘o( Xristeìkaiì Lo/ge kaiì pa/qh tou= a¹paqou=j kaiì ko/smou pantoìj musth/rion ...’ (Oration 5.9, SC 247, p. 308), where the singular of the musth/rion suggests one single referent for both Christ and the Logos.

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(vi) Instances of the present-day Evagrian scholarship M. O’Laughlin12 broadly characterises the scene of Evagrian studies as follows. The scholars dealing with Evagrius’s ascetical works (for example Practicus, Antirrheticus, and De malignis cogitationibus) see in Evagrius a perfectly orthodox ascetical and mystical writer firmly rooted in the preceding Christian ascetic tradition and nourishing the one that arose subsequently. Those, however, that focus primarily on his dogmatic works (especially the Kephalaia Gnostica and the Letter to Melania) have seen Evagrius, although as mystical, as a dangerous esoteric and iconoclastic writer disguising his views disruptive of ecclesiastical structures by language fraught with enigmas. On similar lines, L. Dysinger rightly remarks, that few have tried to arrive at a unified picture of Evagrius and to approach his theology holistically.13 Both these scholars, however, are compelled, by the limited scope of their work, to follow this very trend. Taking this categorisation as a guide-line, here I will consider only a few instances of Evagrian scholarship, those especially representative of the one or the other strand of the consensus. Such scholarship is that of: A. and C. Guillaumont, E. Clark, U. von Balthasar, I. Hausherr, G. Bunge, and L. Dysinger. The contribution to Evagrian scholarship of Antoine and Claire Guillaumont has been fundamental. It was A. Guillaumont who discovered the unadulterated14 version of the Syriac Kephalaia Gnostica15 and proved that it was some of the propositions from this version that had stood condemned at the Fifth General Council. Having drawn attention to the problematic nature of Evagrius’s cosmological and Christological theories, A. Guillaumont also attempted to formulate the Evagrian problem: that in the eyes of Constantinople 553 Evagrius was heterodox on account of his theory of the pre-existence of souls, his Christology distinguishing Christ from the Logos, and an apokatastatic eschatology, all of which were a particular development of Origen’s ideas.16 The drawback of Guillaumont’s evaluations, however, lies in their apparent hermeneutic of hostility, which was mentioned above. His last monumental work,17 while seeking to mollify his criticism of Evagrius, fails to substantiate some of his interpretations of Evagrian texts. One of the reasons for this is, undoubtedly, the volume of the data cited. Consequently, some of his assumptions, such as the allpervasive Cappadocian influence upon Evagrius, prove contestable. G. Bunge has proved one of the most prolific Evagrian scholars of the last decades. In many seminal publications he has brought forward a sympathetic view on Evagrius, meant to redress the criticism levelled against him by critics like Guillaumont. Far from supporting Guillaumont’s estimation of Evagrius as an Origenist, Bunge – himself a modern anchorite – portrays Evagrius as a deeply Christian mystic and teacher, adding a warm personal touch to his picture. Using his excellent linguistic skills, Bunge has raised Evagrian scholarship onto an entirely new 12 ‘New Questions Concerning the Origenism of Evagrius’, 528–34. 13 Psalmody and Prayer in the Writings of Evagrius Ponticus, p. 5. 14 In the sense that its content has not been deliberately tampered with. 15 A. Guillaumont, Les Six Centuries des ‘Képhalaia Gnostica’ d’Évagre le Pontique. 16 See Guillaumont, Les ‘Képhalaia Gnostica’ d’Évagre le Pontique et l’histoire de l’origénisme chez les grecs et chez les syriens. 17 Un philosophe au désert Évagre le Pontique (2000), published posthumously.

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level by emphasising material other than the Kephalaia Gnostica, that is, Evagrius’s ascetic and mystical writings, which he interprets in the light of Evagrius’s Trinitarian theology.18 In distancing himself from Guillaumont, Bunge has also diverged from the findings of von Balthasar and Hausherr, both of whom engaged in a polemic with Bunge regarding the status of Evagrius mystical theology.19 There are a number of points to be made about Bunge’s approach to his subject-matter. First, Bunge does not address the question of Evagrius’s Origenism raised by A. Guillaumont, on the grounds that Evagrius never professed himself an Origenist and simply belonged to the Alexandrian current.20 Second, Bunge is unwilling to take a stance over the difficult Christological and cosmological issues in Evagrius’s thought. At the inception of his complex diagnostic of monastic akêdia,21 Bunge highlights the Christocentric nature of Christian monasticism.22 However, when dealing with the specifics of Evagrian thought, the controversial nature of Evagrius’s Christology and cosmology make it difficult, even for a favourable critic like Bunge, to present Christ as the heart of Evagrius’s schema of salvation.23 Rather than concentrating upon what is problematic in Evagrius’s doctrinal views, Bunge chooses to focus upon Evagrius’s views on the ascetic struggle and its consummation. In this his chosen conceptual framework and vocabulary are those of the twentieth-century existentialist debate. Bunge is clearly interested in existential issues such as ‘depersonalisation’, ‘alienation’24 and ‘reduction of man to himself’25 in modern political and social structures.26 He praises Evagrius for proclaiming the indestructibility of God’s image in man27 and opines that Evagrius’s optimistic belief in the inevitability of salvation for all was identical with the belief of the entire ancient Church. This is why, in Bunge’s view, Evagrius proclaims the ascetic’s despondency, akêdia, to be curable.28 The reason why Bunge finds no difficulty with Evagrius’s idea that all necessarily will be saved is that to him such a view is the manifestation of the entire ancient monasticism’s inordinate optimism:

18 See ‘The ‘Spiritual Prayer’: On the Trinitarian Mysticism of Evagrius of Pontus’. 19 See Bunge, ‘The ‘Spiritual Prayer’: On the Trinitarian Mysticism of Evagrius of Pontus’, 191–208; von Balthasar, ‘Metaphysik und Mystik des Evagrius Ponticus’, pp. 31–47; Hausherr, ‘Le Traité de l’oraison d’Évagre le Pontique (Pseudo-Nil)’, pp. 34–93 and 113–70, includes a French translation of De Oratione (pp. 42–93, 113–69). Reprinted with a minor addition as Les Leçons d’un Contemplatif (Paris, 1960). 20 Bunge, ‘Origenismus-Gnostizismus, zum geistesgeschichtlichen Standort des Evagrios Pontikos’, pp. 191–208, pp. 25, 42, 44, 47. 21 Akèdia: la doctrine spirituelle d’Évagre le Pontique sur l’Acédie. 22 Ibid., p. 33 (Christ is ‘en tout notre modèle’), pp. 35, 118 (on following Christ). 23 On p. 37 of Akèdia Bunge terms Evagrius’s idea on the final disappearance of evil (KG 1.40) as ‘controversial’, but says no more about the issue. 24 Ibid., pp. 42, 68. 25 Ibid., 42–3. 26 Ibid., p. 37. Earlier instances of this approach are Bultmann on the New Testament (1930s), and Jonas on Gnosticism (1940s). 27 Bunge, op. cit., pp. 37, 48–9. 28 Bunge, ibid., p. 93.

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Evagrius Ponticus Évagre, comme le monachisme ancien et l’Église primitive en général, est d’un optimisme inébranlable quant aux possibilités d’une victoire sur le male.29

Since Bunge does not postulate any significant difference between the speculative views of Evagrius and any other pre-modern thinker, he avoids the burdens of pondering upon the nuanced originality of Evagrius’s thought. Treating Evagrius’s demonology, the scholar’s work betrays the same postEnlightenment attitude of one armed with the findings of modern psychology. As far as Evagrius’s belief is concerned that demons and evil thoughts, logismoi, possess a dynamic reality outside the mind, Bunge is condescending toward an ancient ascetic’s personalisation of evil, finding it ‘un peu primaire’ and ‘grotesque’.30 Consequently, Bunge’s opinion of Evagrius exudes superiority: although displaying a certain naïveté characteristic of all ancient thinking, Evagrius’s oeuvre is nevertheless susceptible to an existentialist Kierkegaardian31 interpretation.32 Elizabeth Clark bases her thorough monograph,33 which provides a valuable description of the social networking of the Origenist controversy, upon some of the older views of the Evagrian scholarship.34 Thus, while she perceives Evagrius’s Triadological views as anti-Arian, she adopts the opinion, informing A. Guillaumont’s entire scholarship, that Evagrius was steeped in the views of the three Cappadocians35 – an opinion the present book revisits. In her assessment of Evagrius’s Triadology, Clark makes no mention of Evagrius’s markedly non-Cappadocian radical distinction between the Logos and Jesus Christ. One of Clark’s preferred focuses is upon Evagrius’s views on the images and the iconic cognition. In this context, the scholar numbers Evagrius among what she terms the anti-Anthropomorphites and links his views on the imageless prayer, the body, the Eucharist and eschatology to antiAnthropomorphite thought.36 Thus in his Eucharistic theology, Evagrius is said to hold ‘spiritualized and allegorised’ views, typical of the anti-Anthropomorphites.37 Despite this scholarly opinion, Evagrius invariably asserts the efficacy of grace in the Eucharist. Although he believes that the Eucharistic rites in themselves are imperfect, because they belong to the aeon of the material and temporal existence, 29 Ibid., p. 93. 30 Akèdia, p. 42. 31 Cf. ibid., pp. 68, 69. 32 Bunge equally operates within the existentialist framework with regard to Evagrius’s conception of the mystical union. See ‘Mysterium Unitatis. Der Gedanke der Einheit von Schöpfer und Geschöpf in der evagrianischen Mystik’, in Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie 36 (1989), pp. 449–69. 33 The Origenist Controversy. 34 Especially that of A. and C. Guillaumont. 35 Ibid., p. 63. 36 Ibid., pp. 64–5, as well as the whole of Chapter 2. Despite this, Anthropomorphism was perceived to be a deviation and a novelty, while anti-Anthropomorphism or nonAnthropomorphism was the norm that both Origenists and anti-Origenists upheld. It is important, therefore, not to make too much of anti-Anthropomorphism as a useful concept to collocate with Origenism. 37 The Origenist Controversy, 65. Cf. Evagrius, Letter of Advice, 157 ab, 157 ba, ed. Frankenberg, pp. 560–61.

Introduction

9

he affirms the real presence in the Eucharist. Evaluating Evagrius’s theology of imageless prayer,38 Clark suggests that the concept is invented by Evagrius. While Evagrius undeniably assigns particular importance to the intellect’s freedom from images, far from being his invention, imagelessness in prayer was considered the normal state of the mind by ascetics before, during and after Evagrius’s day and bears no straightforward connection with the anti-Anthropomorphism in Egypt. Regarding the image of God in man, it is an oversimplification to claim that all the anti-Anthropomorphites, including Evagrius, affirm the post-lapsarian loss of this image.39 Clark also suggests that forming mental images during prayer was likened to idolatry and was perceived akin to worshipping idols made by human hands. However, her assertion that ‘for the Anthropomorphites, humans retain the ‘image of God’ despite sin, and they likewise can form an ‘image’ of God in their minds; while for the anti-Anthropomorphites, neither claim holds,40 does not match the evidence. Clark’s account of Evagrian texts on cosmology and ascetic practices41 is descriptive of the source-material and useful. Luke Dysinger’s recent fine monograph42 advocates both a holistic and a sympathetic approach. As the work’s very title suggests, however, his approach is necessarily selective in that he evaluates the entire Evagriana through Evagrius’s Scholia to the Psalms. Whilst this effect is hard to avoid in his circumstances, when consistently applied, such a strategy may mislead regarding Evagrius’s own beliefs about his work. The reason for this is that, while Evagrius regards the Psalms as useful reading for everyone, the understanding of the mysteries of contemplation, of the divine light, and of the eskhata is for the more perfect alone. Consequently, relying on Evagrius’s opinions as expressed in his Scholia to the Psalms, one may be overlooking the fact that the treatises that Evagrius regards as the loftier ones express different views, at once more esoteric and more dear to the author’s heart. A more objective way, then, would be to regard Evagrius’s corpus holistically while also bearing in mind the exact spiritual level Evagrius assigned to each of his works. In view of the different viewpoints just outlined, what is still missing is an historical account of Evagrius that is disengaged from questions and ideas that stretch beyond anything that could have been conceived by Evagrius and his contemporaries. Thus the aims of the present book as announced at the inception of this introduction are all the more needful of being fulfilled. To this task we will now turn.

38 Treated below in Chapter 4. 39 The Origenist Controversy, pp. 73–5. 40 Ibid., p. 75. 41 Ibid., pp. 75–84. 42 Psalmody and Prayer in Evagrius Ponticus.

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Chapter 1

Evagrius in situ: the making of a gnostic Evagrius Ponticus believed that his was a life of true spiritual knowledge, or gnosis. It is his identity as a Christian gnostic or wise man that his works reveal. An evaluation of Evagrius’s conception of perfection as spiritual knowledge, therefore, cannot be disengaged from an account of his own choices in life that set him on the road to the gnostic proficiency he exhorts his audience to achieve. Do not one’s life choices enable one to instruct others how to become what one instructs them to be? In antiquity, one was only qualified to pronounce upon the life of eudemonia if one had trodden the eudemonic path first. Evagrius abides by this rule. What then were his choices and situation in life that initiated his progression towards the making of the gnostic that he became? How do these contrast with the choices he could have made but did not? Answering these questions will provide a prolegomenon that will prepare the ground for evaluating Evagrius as Evagrius and as a fourth-century figure on the basis of his writings. Since, however, commentators frequently assess Evagrius according to different criteria, such as the doctrinal traditions and the orthodoxy and heterodoxy criterion of the sixth century, the chapter will also set the scene for an understanding of how Evagrius came to be assessed in this manner, that is, in terms of the sixth-century Origenistic condemnations, rather than being evaluated in terms of himself and his fourth-century Sitz-im-Leben. (i) The sources The principal sources of information on Evagrius are the following. First, the biographical account in Chapter 38 of The Lausiac History of bishop Palladius of Helenopolis (ca.420) is fundamental.1 The Galatian Palladius, Evagrius’s friend, disciple and biographer,

1 Butler, The Lausiac History of Palladius, II (Cambridge, 1904), 1–278; Lucot, Palladius, Histoire lausiaque, pp. 266–81; a critical edition by Bartelink, Palladio, La Storia Lausiaca, pp. 193–202. The different redactions of The Lausiac History are the following. First, the shorter Greek redaction, considered to be the closest to the original, used by Butler. Of it there are two ancient (sixth century) Latin versions. Several manuscripts present Historia Lausiaca in a version slightly different from that used by Butler (see PG 34. 995–1260). Another redaction (‘the longer redaction’) exists in a Coptic Bohairic translation and is an amplification of earlier redactions. It is edited by Amélineau, De Historia Lausiaca, and by De Vogüé, ‘Les fragments coptes de l’Histoire Lausiaque: l’édition d’Amélinou et le manuscrit’. For the Syriac version see Draguet, Les formes syriaques de la matière de l’Histoire Lausiaque,

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spent about nine years of his life sharing his teacher’s desert life.2 Second, antedating Palladius’s account, is a chapter on Evagrius contained in the anonymous Enquiry About the Monks of Egypt.3 The latter is a first-hand account of a voyage undertaken by seven monks from Palestine in the winter of 394–395 to the principal monastic sites in Egypt. Third, Evagrius features in some of the Apophthegmata literature, as well as in the Church Histories of Socrates and Sozomen. Of the latter three sources, the Apophthegmata Patrum, as anti-Origenist in flavour, is scathing regarding Evagrius, whilst the accounts of both ancient historians are eulogistic. (ii) The early years Whilst the name ‘Evagrius’ is fairly common in the Eastern Empire in the third to fourth centuries,4 the subject of this study is the Evagrius whom Palladius calls ‘Ponticus’.5 Born around 345 in the town of Ibora in the diocese of Pont in Asia Minor,6 Evagrius was a son of the local xwrepi¿skopoj,7 who was also ‘a nobleman, of a noble birth, and among the first in the city’.8 In virtue of his nobility, his father’s ecclesiastical position of importance, and the proximity of Ibora to Basil’s family estate in Annisa,9 Anatolia, Evagrius10 came into contact with Basil of Caesarea and the two Gregories early on. (iii) The Cappadocian link – a formative connection? In attempting to explain Evagrius as a theological and cultural phenomenon, scholars11 have made much of Evagrius’s close biographical ties with the so-called and for the Armenian, Sarghisian, Srboy hawrn Ewagri Pontaswoy vark ew maténagrowtiwnk targmanealk i yownè i hay barbar i hingerord darow. 2 Cf., ‘My teacher Evagrius’, HL, ch. 23, Butler, II, p. 75.5. Cf. Draguet, ‘L’Histoire Lausiaque; une oeuvre écrite dans l’esprit d’Évagre’. 3 Historia Monachorum in Aegypto, existing in two redactions, the original one in Greek, and the other in a Latin translation by Rufinus and dating to early fifth century. See Festugière, Enquête sur les moines d’Égypte. Both the author and Rufinus knew Evagrius personally. 4 Thus, the Dictionnaire d’Histoire et de Géographie Ecclésiastiques, vol. 16, col. 101– 109, distinguishes seven persons known by this name. The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, vol. I, pp. 284–86, distinguishes seven others, who were civil servants between 260 and 395. 5 Historia Lausiaca, 38.2.1. 6 HL 38.2.9. 7 38.2.10. 8 As contained in some manuscripts, yet rejected by Butler and Bartelink. See Guillaumont, Un philosophe au désert, p. 26, n. 5. 9 On Annisa see Basil, Letter 14, and Gregory of Nazianzus, Letters 4, 5 and 6. 10 Probably from the age of thirteen, when, around 358, Basil retreated to his estate to establish monastic life there. 11 In particular, A. Guillaumont, N. Gendle, A. Golitsin, J. Dechow, G. Bunge, and C. Stewart.

Evagrius in situ: the making of a gnostic

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‘Cappadocian’12 theologians, especially Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nazianzus. The question, however, is to what extent Evagrius’s governing idea of ‘gnosis’ that characterises his mature work derived from them. There can be little doubt that Basil and Gregory of Nazianzus played a significant role in Evagrius’s early formation. Evagrius undoubtedly also encountered Gregory of Nyssa, both in Basil’s Cappadocian estate and in Constantinople, although no reliable record exists of their contacts. Although he never went to study at Athens, Evagrius was an educated man.13 He probably received some instruction from Gregory of Nazianzus. Commenting on the latter’s pedagogic role in the life of the young Evagrius, Sozomen avers that the latter ‘was formed as a philosopher (e)filoso/ fhse) and was taught the holy Scripture by Gregory, bishop of Nazianzus.’14 Basil and Gregory gave a start to what promised to be Evagrius’s position of importance in the Church. Whether Basil ordained Evagrius a reader and Gregory, a deacon, is a moot point, though it is probable.15 It was in accompanying Gregory that early in 37916 Evagrius travelled to Constantinople, whose bishop Gregory had become earlier that year.17 A letter by a certain Evagrius entrusting his young son of the same name to Gregory’s care, with the request to teach him ‘the fear of God and to despise the good things of this world’,18 is probably an avowal of a thriving mentorpupil relationship between the two theologians around the time of their journey to the metropolis. While in Constantinople their friendship apparently flourished. That Gregory remembered in his will19 a certain Evagrius for the latter’s ‘kindness’ and ‘friendship’20 may be indicative of this. From early 379 until July 381 then, 12 Although it is beyond doubt that there existed among the three highly cultured Cappadocian theologians closely interconnected familial ties, a unity of cultural background and a commonness of theological vision, the identicalness of their thought must not be overemphasised. 13 No information about Evagrius’s years prior to 380 or the exact nature of the education he received is available. Although he did not go to the university at Athens, his soaring career in Constantinople indicates that he was educated to a high level. Evagrius’s works likewise demonstrate the breadth of his education and culture: he undoubtedly received some kind of Classical training in grammar, rhetoric and philosophy (see Lackner, ‘Zu profanen Bildung des Euagrios Pontikos.’). His knowledge of Scriptures was exceptional. Of Christian writers, he knew Clement, Origen, and the Cappadocians extremely well. 14 HE VI.30 (PG 67.1384c). 15 HL 38.2.11–15. The ordination by Basil took place, probably, after 370, the year when Basil became the bishop of Caesarea, whilst the ordination by Gregory, in all probability, was done in Constantinople around 379–80 (on this see Evagrius’s Coptic life, Amélineau, p. 106; Socrates, HE IV.23; and Sozomen, HE VI.30). 16 Cf. A. Guillaumont, Un philosophe au désert, pp. 34–5. 17 See Socrates, HE IV.23 and Sozomen, HE VI.30. McGuckin, however, suggests that it was another Evagrius who was Gregory of Nazianzus’s deacon and whom Gregory had brought with him to Constantinople from Nazianzus: cf. St Gregory of Nazianzus, p. 277 n.263. 18 Letter 3 among Gregory’s letters, PG 37, 24 b. 19 Drawn on 31 May 381 in Constantinople. See Beaucamp, ‘Le testament de Grégoire de Nazianze’. 20 PG 37. 393 b.

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Evagrius was closely associated with Gregory, assisting him in his duties as the bishop of Constantinople. Later on, Evagrius was eager to emphasise the importance of Gregory’s influence upon his formative years. Thus, in the Epilogue to Practicus, composed after Gregory’s death,21 Evagrius entrusts himself ‘to the prayers and intercessions of the righteous Gregory who has planted me and of the holy fathers who now water me.’22 In the light of this evidence of friendliness it is, to all appearances, unexpected that as Gregory was leaving Constantinople in July 381, rather than following his mentor into exile, Evagrius stayed on in the metropolis in the service of its new bishop Nectarius.23 Yet evidence suggests that by the summer of 381 the relationship had come to an end. This evidences from the fact that practically no record of contact between the two men exists that postdates the 381 parting of the ways. The sole testimony of some connection is Evagrius’s Letter 46,24 possibly addressed to Gregory of Nazianzus and containing an apology precisely for lack of contact and a promise to fare better in the future. Nonetheless no evidence of further correspondence between them is available.25 Given that a substantial collection of Evagrius’s letters is extant,26 it is unlikely that the absence of any further written (or other) communication between him and Gregory is to be explained by the disappearance of relevant sources. It seems more probable that, for reasons of which one can only speculate, no other contact actually existed. The lack of personal connection with Gregory of Nazianzus in Evagrius’s later life is matched by a divergence between Evagrius’s mature thought and what is traditionally considered to be the views of the Cappadocian Fathers.27 The degree of agreement between the mature Evagrius and the Cappadocians is unremarkable and is restricted to the general area of agreement within the late fourth-century Nicene consensus. One need not have been the Cappadocians’ life-long friend and pupil to assert the equality of Persons within the Trinity, the presence of a human nous in Christ, and the unknowability of God – the tenets that, like all the theologians of the Nicene camp, Evagrius embraced throughout his life. In fact, it better grasps 21 Gregory’s death occurred around 390 according to Jerome (De vir. illustr. 117) and according to the Suida, the Byzantine encyclopaedia, Pars. 1a, Adler (ed.), p. 541, ‘in the thirteenth year of the reign of Theodosius’, thus making it 391. See McGuckin, Saint Gregory of Nazianzus, pp. 399–400. 22 Practicus 100, Epilogue. 23 Cf. HL 38.2.16. That Evagrius’s separation from Gregory at this point was a sensitive matter perhaps evidences from Palladius’s eagerness to present it as Gregory’s own decision rather than Evagrius’s disloyalty to his bishop. On Nectarius of Constantinople see Socrates, HE V.8 (PG 67.577b) and Sozomen, HE VII.8 (PG 67.1433a–6a). 24 Frankenberg, pp. 596, 24–9. Greek in Frankenberg, p. 597. The letter was probably sent soon after Evagrius’s arrival in Egypt (cf. Guillaumont, Un philosophe au désert, 38). It remains unclear why a letter addressed to Gregory was found among Evagrius’s and not Gregory’s correspondence. Was it in fact never sent? 25 Bunge’s view that Evagrius’s Letters 12 and 23 are also addressed to Gregory (Briefe, 177–8) is not entirely convincing. 26 Although mostly in a Syriac translation. 27 More on this divergence in Chapters 3, 5, and 6 below.

Evagrius in situ: the making of a gnostic

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the nature of evidence to present the relationship between the Evagrian and the Cappadocian systems in terms of contrasts of context, genre and purposes, rather than in terms of a dependence between the offspring and parent system. (iv) A metropolitan theologian: Evagrius’s doctrinal stance prior to departure from Constantinople What were Evagrius’s doctrinal views prior to his departure from Constantinople in 382? Evagrius the theologian was initially formed as part of the late fourth-century Nicene party. He was therefore an heir to crucial fourth-century Triadological and Christological developments as expressed in the Nicene Creed, the anti-Arian and anti-Apollinarian writings of Athanasius and the anti-Eunomian and anti-Apollinarian works of Basil and Gregory the Theologian. As Gregory’s deacon, at Constantinople Evagrius assisted his bishop in the latter’s polemic against the anti-Nicenes at the city’s sole Catholic church.28 Evagrius knew especially well Gregory’s Orations 36 and 38, delivered in Constantinople, respectively, at Christmas 379 and in November 380,29 as well as his Theological Orations (27–31), delivered in the summer and autumn of 380. Evagrius was at Constantinople during the 381 general Synod and its aftermath.30 He thus was fully familiar with the 381 Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed and the 382 Synodical Letter to the Western Bishops. In light of this, although throughout his life he considered the synodal definitions binding, it is striking that, in his Egyptian period, Evagrius was preoccupied with issues and formulated conclusions that were quite removed from the concerns and the nomenclature of late fourth-century imperial theology.31 (v) From metropolitan theologian to a desert wise man: a change of direction? What brought Evagrius to Constantinople in 379? His Letter on faith (Letter 63),32 written in Constantinople to friends left behind in Caesarea,33 explains his sudden ‘flight’34 from Cappadocia by his thirst for true spiritual knowledge. Shaken by the ‘unexpected event’ (probably Basil’s death35), Evagrius was seized by ‘some desire for the divine dogmas and the philosophy concerning them (po/qoj tij ... tw=n qei¿wn dogma/twn kaiì th=j periì e)kei=na filosofi¿aj)’.36 Eager ‘to overcome the evil within him’, and searching for ‘a Laban’ that would free him ‘from Esau’37 28 On Gregory’s struggle on behalf of the Catholic faith, both against the Eunomians and the Apollinarians, see his Oration 27. 29 As established by Gallay, La vie de Saint Grégoire de Nazianze, 252. 30 Cf. Historia Lausiaca 38.2. 31 See Chapters 3, 5, and 6 below. 32 CPG 2439. 33 This is the only extant Evagrius’s writing pre-dating his departure to Egypt. 34 Letter 63, Deferrari, p. 48. 35 Traditionally, on 1 January 379. 36 Letter 63, Deferrari, p. 48. 37 Cf. Gen. 31–3.

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and lead him ‘to the highest philosophy,’38 Evagrius claims that he attached himself to Gregory of Nazianzus, ‘a chosen vessel’ (Acts 9.15)39 and ‘the very mouth of Christ’.40 Thus, Letter 63 is an early (pre-382, the year of a crisis and Evagrius’s departure for Jerusalem) record from Evagrius himself that it was his longing for true ‘philosophy’ and spiritual direction, rather than the promise of a career, that brought him to the capital. However circumstantial, this is an early indication of Evagrius’s innate inclination toward a different, more inward and speculative, path than that of his brilliant rhetoric-loving mentors. The letter, then, is elucidating with regard to the sudden turn Evagrius’s outer life took in 382. Evagrius’s assistance to Nectarius, this paradigmatic uneducated bishop,41 and his proximity to the imperial court promised the still young deacon a high ecclesiastical office. However, owing to what appeared to be an unexpected chain of events, in 382 Evagrius’s life underwent an abrupt change of direction and geographical location. That year Evagrius became involved in a relationship with the wife of a high-ranking dignitary of Constantinople.42 Following a warning received from an angel in a dream, early in 382, Evagrius fled the capital for Jerusalem. There, at the monastery on the Mount of Olives, he received the monastic habit43 from the monastery’s founder Rufinus.44 Probably in the autumn of 38345 Evagrius left Jerusalem and travelled to Lower Egypt, first Nitria and, two years later, Kellia, where he led an exemplary ascetic life of obedience46 and renunciation. It is in the context of the Lower Egyptian ascetic tradition that Evagrius became what he is renowned for: a teacher of spiritual gnosis and himself a gnwstiko¿j. Evagrius departed this life at Kellia, at the relatively young age of 54, on the day of Epiphany and having partaken of holy gifts, having, according to Palladius, ‘in little time fulfilled many years’.47 The thrust of this important prosopographic detail is to point out that the holiness of Evagrius’s death in peace with the Church sealed the holiness of his life. Was Evagrius’s flight from Constantinople to Jerusalem and the Egyptian desert unpremeditated? The answer is in the negative. It is beyond doubt that, in choosing Jerusalem for his destination, Evagrius intended to become a monk either there or in Lower Egypt. The monastery of Rufinus, with its enthusiasm for Origen and its

38 Letter 63, Deferrari, p. 48. 39 Ibid. 40 Ibid. 41 See Gregory of Nazianzus’s satire of Nectarius in De vita sua, 20–39, PG 37.1031–2. 42 HL 38.3. 43 On the day of Easter, 383, which that year fell on 9 April. See Letter 22 to Rufinus (Frankenberg, p. 580). For the date of Easter in 383 see Grumel, Traité des études byzantines, I, 242. 44 That Rufinus tonsured Evagrius a monk is possibly indicated in Evagrius’s Letter 22 (Frankenberg, 580). Cf. Guillaumont, Les Képhalaia Gnostica, pp. 69–70, n. 92. 45 Guillaumont, Un philosophe au désert, 45. 46 On this see Socrates, HE IV.23 (PG 67,513c–16a). See also Guillaumont, ‘Le problème des deux Macaires dans les Apophthegmata Patrum’, p. 53; Bunge, ‘Évagre le Pontique et les deux Macaire’, pp. 215–27; 323–60. 47 Cf. HL, 38.13 and 38.1.

Evagrius in situ: the making of a gnostic

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known Egyptian and Alexandrian links,48 was of universal renown. Finding himself at a crossroads, therefore, it was an accepted identity that Evagrius chose. Of all the options available – the life of a married layman, the career of a theologian in the metropolis, following his mentor into exile, or the withdrawal (a)naxw/rhsij) to the Egyptian desert for a life of contemplation, Evagrius chose the last. No amount of determination would have enabled him to pursue this direction, had there been no established monastic culture in place in Lower Egypt. Neither was his choice a radical change of direction. The Constantinopolitan crisis only precipitated what had already been a contemplated path. As Letter 63 demonstrates, Evagrius’s image of himself as that of ‘a fugitive’ (fuga¯j)49 fleeing the temptations of the world in quest of ‘the highest philosophy’ had been formed prior to the perilous situation in Constantinople. From the start, there was something in Evagrius urging him towards the life of monastic quietness (h(suxi¿a) in an established place of asceticism. Moreover, while many in the fourth century aspired to ‘the flight from the world’ ideal,50 for Evagrius, this meant a life as part of the monastic culture of Lower Egypt and the intellectual orbit of Alexandria,51 rather than any other monastic milieu.52 This opened up a way towards a particular type of spiritual gnosis, towards which Evagrius had had previous inclination.53 In fleeing from Constantinople, then, he realised one of the choices that in the fourth century a Christian had and to which he had been inclined from a young age. In doing so, he was impelled by inner forces, among them, a different way of relating to the world that lends itself more naturally to the ‘desert city’54 rather than the intellectual climate of a metropolis. His interests eventually proved to be different from those of the Cappadocians. While they had dogmatic, rhetoric, polemic and Classical philosophical concerns, Evagrius was at once more narrowly and intensely interested in desert spiritual knowledge. While this particular mode of thinking was realised in his mature distinctive gnomic style, which can be contrasted with the discursive rhetoric of the writings of the Cappadocians, this only manifested the inclination that Evagrius had always had. Having made his way according to an already existing pattern, however, Evagrius 48 That is, Rufinus’s friendship with Didymus. Prior to establishing himself in Jerusalem, Rufinus spent six years in Alexandria as a pupil of Didymus the Blind, an admirer of Origen and the head of the Alexandrian catechetical school. On Rufinus’s monastic training in Didymus’s circle see his Apologia 2.12 (PL 21.595a). Didymus also maintained a cell at Kellia, see Historia Monachorum (Greek) 20.7.12. It is probable, therefore, that it was Rufinus who suggested to Evagrius Nitria and Kellia Egypt as a suitable place of withdrawal. 49 Deferrari, 48. 50 See Chapter 4 below. For Basil and Gregory of Nazianzus, this eventually meant withdrawing to their familial estates. 51 On the links of Lower Egyptian monasticism with Alexandria and the Catechetical School see Dechow, Dogma and Mysticism, 159 ff; and Rich, ‘Discernment in the Desert Fathers’, 12–15. 52 For instance, in Basil’s monastery in Caesarea. 53 Lower Egypt was universally known in the fourth century as the place par excellence of asceticism and holiness. Basil had first-hand knowledge of Lower Egypt, which he would have passed on to his associates, including Evagrius. 54 Cf. the title of Chitty’s monograph.

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did not just belong to the mould of Lower Egyptian monasticism but changed it by becoming, through making the intense theological distinctions that characterise his later works, a desert philosopher. (vi) Evagrius’s formation after 383: an Origenist among Origenists? Present-day scholars of Evagrius have viewed him as a systematizer of at least some strands of Origen’s thought.55 Attempting to define, at this point, the nature of the fourth-century Origenism is beyond the remit of this research. It is sufficient to point out that Evagrius’s contacts with several fourth-century admirers of Origen proved lasting and fundamental. Thus, the same collection of Evagrius’s letters that contains but one letter to Gregory of Nazianzus comprises several epistles to Origen’s admirers in Palestine, Rufinus, Melania56 and bishop John of Jerusalem.57 These contacts endured till Evagrius’s demise. It is to Melania that Evagrius’s important doctrinal Great Letter was addressed,58 while it is probable that his work On Prayer was intended for Rufinus.59 And it is at Melania’s and Rufinus’s monastery that Evagrius sought refuge when Theophilus of Alexandria attempted to ordain him bishop of Thmius and Evagrius, in true monastic fashion, refused.60 It was Rufinus who tonsured Evagrius a monk and the Origenist Palladius, rather than Gregory of Nazianzus, who assisted Evagrius at his deathbed. In Lower Egypt, Evagrius’s links with monks who in the Origenist crisis of 400 were singled out as leading figures – among them, the so-called Tall Brothers Ammonius, Euthymius, Dioscorus and Eusebius – are well attested.61 Given that Evagrius is a special focus of Palladius’s Historia Lausiaca, the fact that the work contains numerous enthusiastic accounts about devotees of Origen both in Palestine and Lower Egypt62 is both a tacit attestation of Evagrius’s friendly association with these figures and of Evagrius’s own admiration for Origen. In his extensive work on Origenism, Dechow’s contention is that Evagrius’s Origenism is traceable to the influence of the Cappadocians. In his younger years, 55 However, see Bunge, ‘Origenismus-Gnostizismus, zum geistesgeschichtlichen Standort des Evagrios Pontikos,’ 25–7, where, in an attempt of exoneration, he distances Evagrius from any association with Origen. 56 The Syriac verbal forms in the letters bearing the name of Melania in their title are indeed feminine, which suggests that the addressee was a woman. It could easily be Melania herself, since she was the most prominent female ascetic figure in both Egypt and Palestine and something of a spiritual mother to Evagrius. 57 Letters 2, 9, 24, 50, 51. 58 Vitestam suggests that the Great Letter was addressed to a man and never to Melania the Elder. See ‘Seconde partie du Traité’ qui passe sous le nom de ‘La grande lettre d’Évagre le Pontique à Mélanie l’Ancienne’, p. 5. This, however, does not refute but confirm that there was a tradition asserting Evagrius’s spiritual closeness to Melania. 59 Bunge, Evagrios Pontikos: Briefe aus der Wüste, 176–206. 60 Socrates, Historia Ecclesiastica, 4.23 (PG 67.521a); Bunge and Vogüe, Quatre ermites égyptiens d’après les fragments coptes de l’Histoire Lausiaque, Spiritualité orientale 60 (Bégrolles-en-Mauges, Abbaye de Bellefontaine, 1994). 61 Dechow, Dogma and Mysticism, pp. 177–81. 62 HL 2 and 38.

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Dechow speculates, Evagrius may have been involved with the type of Origenism that was characteristically theirs.63 After all, there was a direct familial connection between the Cappadocians and Origen. Basil’s grandmother Macrina the Elder was a disciple of St Gregory Thaumaturgus, himself a disciple and close friend of Origen. Steeped in his writings, the Cappadocians brought out a collection of Origen’s texts called The Philocalia. Evagrius would have imbibed this spirit of reverence for Origen and a particular way of reading him from them. Dechow’s conjecture regarding the origins of Evagrius’s acquaintance with Origen may well be correct. Nonetheless, the nature of Evagrius’s indebtedness both to Origen and the Cappadocians’s veneration of the Alexandrian is more complex than this. Evagrius’s thought is different from the type of Origenism that is professed, for instance, in The Philocalia. The material that Evagrius took from Origen was not what the Cappadocians treasured. Neither would the Alexandrian doctor himself have recognized the vision contained in the Kephalaia Gnostica and the Letter to Melania as identical with his own. If Evagrius was an Origenist, his was an Origenism of an original type. (vii) Evagrius as part of the later theological context However, Evagrius’s influence did not die with his death. In the sixth century, his texts became part of the doctrinal context of the 553 anti-Origenist condemnations. This in turn had the result that modern critics have often anachronistically assessed him according to the criteria of the sixth-century condemnations, the sixth-century orthodoxy/heresy issue, and the entire problem of Origenism. The manner in which Evagrius has been interpreted can be seen as part of a larger Dogmensgeschichte tradition. The question arises of whether interpretations should be restricted to Evagrius as himself and as a figure specifically belonging to the fourth-century Egyptian context, rather than any other. It is this double problem that has produced an ambivalence in Evagrius commentary until the present time. For this reason, the later condemnations need to be taken into account, if only to understand modern critical views, some of which this book feels obligated to revisit. (a) Evagrius in relation to the 400 anti-Origenist controversy In the year 400 the first Origenist controversy broke out in the Nitrian desert between the Anthropomorphists – a more rustic and fundamentalist group of monks, who seem to have attributed to God a bodily composition – and a more intellectualist group, who were inspired by the writings of Origen and refused to conceptualise about God as having a body. Evagrius’s name is not mentioned in connection with the controversy, although Guillaumont is of the opinion that its nature suggests that Evagrius’s writings provided a foundation for the position of the anti-Anthropomorphite group.64 It is only in 415, in Jerome’s Letter 133, that Evagrius is mentioned for the first time as a prominent Origenist. There Jerome identifies the Origenist leaders of the Lower Egyptian monasticism as 63 Dechow, op. cit., 177. 64 Guillaumont, Les ‘Képhalaia Gnostica’, p. 61.

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‘Ammonius, Eusebius, Euthymius, Evagrius himself, Or, Isidore, and many others …’.65 This information on Evagrius’s Origenist connections is especially telling, since it appears to be based upon Evagrius’s own lost history of the monks of Egypt.66 (b) Evagrius in relation to the 553 condemnation of Origenism The 400 controversy and other events eventually moved Emperor Justinian to secure Evagrius’s condemnation at the Fifth Ecumenical Council in 553. Although Evagrius is not mentioned by name in the Council’s 15 anathematisms, in the eyes of contemporaries, the 553 Council did indeed condemn Evagrius, together with Origen and Didymus.67 Since several of these formulations will have to be assessed below, it is appropriate now to cite all the 15 anti-Origenist anathemas:68 1)  If anyone asserts the mythical pre-existence of souls and the monstrous restoration that follows from it, let him be anathema. 2)  If anyone shall say that the creation of all rational beings was the incorporeal and immaterial intellects, without number or names, so that they formed a henad on account of the identity of essence (ou)si¿a), power, and activity and on account of their union (eànwsij) with God the Logos and knowledge; that they became sated (ko/ron labei=n) with the divine vision and gave themselves over to worse things, each one following his own inclinations, and that they assumed lighter or denser bodies and were called with respect to the fact that the difference of names exists … let him be anathema. 3)  If anyone shall say that the sun, the moon, and the stars are themselves part of the same henad of rational beings and that they have only become what they are because they have turned to what was worse, let him be anathema. 4)  If anyone shall say that the rational beings became cold in divine love and have been bound to dense bodies such as ours and have been called men, while those that have attained the lowest degree of wickedness have shared cold and dark bodies and have become and are called demons and evil spirits: let him be anathema. 5)  If anyone shall say that the condition (kata¯stasij) of the soul has arisen from the state of angels and archangels, and the demoniac and the human condition has come from the condition of the soul, and that from the human condition there would again be angels and demons … let him be anathema. 6)  If anyone shall say that the race of demons has a twofold manner of appearance, of which the one includes the souls of men and the other, the higher spirits who fell to this state, and that nonetheless one single intellect remained unmoved in vision and the divine 65 Letter 133.3.6–7. Cited in Dechow, op. cit., 180. 66 Ibid. 67 Cf. Introduction, n. 3. 68 ACO IV.1, 248–9. The Greek text and a German translation is in GörgemannsKarpp, Origenes, 824–30 (text) and 825–31 (translation). Also Diekamp, Die origenistischen Streitigkeiten, pp. 93, ll. 23–34.

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love, which, having become Christ and the king of all spiritual beings, leads the entire corporeal nature, the heavens, the earth, and what is in between … thus that the all-holy, consubstantial Trinity did not create the world … but that it was created by the intellect and demiurge (nou=j demiourgo/j) who existed before the world: let him be anathema. 7)  If anyone shall say that Christ is said to exist in the form of God and before all the ages was united to God the Logos and at the end of the ages emptied himself into what is human and showed mercy, as they say, on those who in multiform ways had fallen out of the henad and that to restore them he took the form of various bodies and acquired their names, by becoming all things to all (1 Cor. 9.22) … and became for men a man, and whoever does not confess that God the Logos emptied himself and became man: let him be anathema. 8)  If anyone does not say that God the Logos, consubstantial with God the Father and [God the] Holy Spirit, who was incarnate and became man, one of the Holy Trinity, is Christ in the proper sense but [says] instead that he is inaccurately so called because … of the abasement of the intellect (nou=j) that unites itself to God the Logos and which is called Christ in the proper sense, and further that the latter [=Logos] because of the former [=nous] is [called] Christ and the former [=nous] because of the latter [=Logos] is [called] God: let him be anathema. 9)  If anyone shall say that it was not the Logos of God [who] descended into hell in the flesh, endowed with a spiritual and rational soul, and as the same ascended again into heaven, but shall claim that it was the nous that has done this, that nous of which they impiously say that it is the Christ properly so called, and that he has become so through the knowledge of the monads: let him be anathema. 10)  If anyone shall say that the Lord’s resurrected body is an ethereal and spherical body, that the other resurrected bodies too will be like this, that, moreover, the Lord will shed his own body first and, in a similar way, the nature of all bodies will return to nothing: let him be anathema. 11)  If anyone shall say that the coming judgment means the annihilation of all bodies and that the end of the story will be the immaterial nature and in the future nothing of matter will continue to exist, but only the pure nous: let him be anathema. 12)  If anyone shall say that the heavenly powers and all men and the devil and evil spirits will be united unchanged to the divine Logos, like the nous itself, which they call Christ, which was in the form of God and emptied itself, as they say, and that the sovereignty of Christ will have an end: let him be anathema. 13)  If anyone shall say that Christ is in no wise different from other rational beings, neither according to essence, nor knowledge, nor power over everything, nor efficacy, but that all will be placed at the right hand of God, like their so-called Christ, and also will participate in their concocted pre-existence: let him be anathema. 14)  If anyone shall say that all rational beings will one day form a unity (e(na¯j), when the persons (u(posta¯seij) and numbers shall have disappeared together with the bodies, and that the end of the worlds and the laying aside of bodies and the abolition of names will follow the knowledge that concerns the rational beings, and that there will be an identity of knowledge as of persons (u(posta¯seij) and that in the mythical restoration

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Evagrius Ponticus (a)pokata¯stasij) there will be only naked intellects, as it was in their foolishly invented pre-existence: let him be anathema. 15)  If anyone says that the change (a)gwgh¿) of the intellects shall be the same as their earlier change when they had not yet descended or fallen, so that the beginning and the end shall be alike, and that the end shall be the true measure of their beginning: let him be anathema.

Propositions 5 and 10 bear little resemblance to anything found in Evagrius69 and consequently are of no interest here. Anathemas 6, 7, 8 and 9 possibly reflect elements of Evagrius’s Christology as contained in Kephalaia Gnostica, while anathemas 1, 2, 3 and 4 describe a protology, and anathemas 11, 12, 13,14, and 15, an eschatology that is consonant with some of Evagrius’s propositions, likewise found in Kephalaia Gnostica. The damning of Evagrius’s memory in 553 resulted in the expurgation of some of his more speculative treatises from the Greek tradition. Since, however, by the sixth century, many of his writings had been translated into Syriac and Armenian – the traditions unaffected by the decisions of Constantinople II – these works survived in these translations. Evagrius’s other works, ascetic rather than dogmatic, survive in Greek, although mostly in the attribution to Nilus of Ancyra. Subsequent ascetical writers, notably John of the Ladder, Barsanuphius and John, Abba Dorotheus, and Maximus the Confessor developed many of Evagrius’s themes, albeit without acknowledging their origin. This testifies both to the importance of the ideas that Evagrius expressed to subsequent generations and, to the eyes of the more attentive modern historian, the inadequate manner in which the faults of his oeuvre have been dealt with by 553. (viii) Evagrius’s works: a brief outline Evagrius’s works can be categorised according to their date of composition.70 Since the chronological order of his works to a degree corresponds to the stages in the life of Evagrius the gnostic and thus reflects the stages of his self-construction, an outline of his gnostic oeuvre in this order should accompany an account of Evagrius’s life. As pointed out above, Epistula fidei71 was probably written around 379 in Constantinople and is possibly Evagrius’s earliest published work. In line with the writings of Gregory of Nazianzus at that time, the Letter is a defence of the consubstantiality of the three Persons of the Holy Trinity against the Eunomians. That the Letter bears no traces of recurring peculiarities of Evagrius’s mature Christological thought72 indicates a date of composition prior to Evagrius’s flight 69 On the attribution of the 553 anathemas see Refoulé, ‘La christologie d’Évagre’. 70 For a relative chronology of Evagrius’s works see Dysinger, Psalmody and Prayer, 22–30. 71 PG 32.245268. Epistula fidei (Letter 63 = Basil, Letter 8), ed. and trans. by Courtonne, Saint Basile. Lettres vol. 1, pp. 22–37; English translation by Deferrari, Loeb 190, pp. 46–93. 72 For example, interpreting John 14.28, § 5 of the Letter suggests the identity of the person of the Son and of Jesus Christ.

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from Constantinople. Rerum monachialium rationes73 is also early, although belonging to Evagrius’s Egyptian context. Intended for monastic neophytes, it is predominantly concerned with external circumstances of the anachoretic life. It is the absence of Evagrius’s typical tri-partite classification of the spiritual life into praktikh¿, fusikh¿, and qeologikh¿ that suggests an early date of composition. Thematically diverse, Tractatus ad Eulogium74 is probably likewise early. Fundamental to the understanding of Evagrius’s thought is the trilogy of Practicus,75 Gnosticus,76 and the Kephalaia Gnostica. All three are composed in the typically Evagrian form of kephalaia. Whilst Practicus deals with the more practical stage of ascetic struggle, Gnosticus presents an account of a higher, properly spiritual, stage of knowledge. What Evagrius terms properly gnostic is the work that manifests the author’s own spiritual proficiency. It thus serves as a proof and a licence for Evagrius to teach others. A recapitulation of Evagrius’s dogmatic and epistemic thought, the Kephalaia Gnostica,77 completes the trilogy. The trilogy constitutes unfolding chains of typically Evagrian concepts and definitions, with the Practicus being the earliest and the Kephalaia Gnostica suggesting, on account of its esoteric quality, a late date. Based on Old Testament wisdom books – especially Proverbs – the three collections are thus about praxis, contemplation, and gnosis. Their aim is clearly anagogic, leading the soul, by praxis and contemplation, to the goal of gnosis. Since the book concentrates upon Evagrius’s concept of gnostic states, Kephalaia Gnostica, as a work dealing with realities that Evagrius considers ultimate, is obviously one of the present study’s more important sources. An exploration of the treatise at some depth is moreover much needed. To date Guillaumont’s work on the Kephalaia remains the only detailed study available.78 While not aiming at an exhaustive treatment of the Kephalaia, the present book will nevertheless focus closely upon its treatment of the themes of natural contemplation, the divine light, 73 PG 40.1252–64; Philokalia I. 74 PG 79.1093–1140. 75 A critical edition, French translation, and commentary was prepared by A. and C. Guillaumont, Traité pratique ou le Moine, SC 170 and 171 (Paris, 1971). An English translation was done by Bamberger, Praktikos and Chapters on Prayer, Cistercian Study Series vol. 4 (Washington, 1970). 76 Edited with a Greek re-translation from Syriac by Frankenberg, Evagrius Ponticus (Berlin, 1912), and from Armenian by Sarghissian, The Life and Writings of the Holy Father Evagrius (Venice, 1907). More recently, edited and translated by A. and C. Guillaumont, Le Gnostique ou celui qui est devenu digne de la science, SC 356 (Paris, 1989). 77 The entire work was preserved in two Syriac translations only, one (S1) significantly altering the original Greek text and the other (S2) more faithful to it. The most recent translations of both (into French) were achieved by A. Guillaumont, Les six Centuries des ‘Kephalaia Gnostica’ d’Évagre le Pontique, PO 28.1, No. 134 (Paris, 1958). 78 The scope of Bundy’s ‘The Philosophical Structures of Origenism’ (1992) is too limited for it to be an in-depth study. Dysinger’s valuable contribution to the evaluation of the Kephalaia Gnostica in his Psalmody and Prayer (199–211) has the drawback of being conducted through the theology of the Scholia to the Psalms rather than being judged on its own merit.

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the doctrine of Christ, and eschatology. In view of the importance of this work of Evagrius and the fact that the best rendering of it available at present is the Syriac S2 translation (with a few extant disparate Greek excerpts79), a note on how the S2 text is to be used here is necessary. This study uses both the Syriac text and Guillaumont’s French translation, checking the latter against the former. While the Greek original is, for the most part, lost, the S2 version of the Kephalaia is, according to Guillaumont, very reliable and faithful to the original.80 The assumption of this book therefore is that S2 is good enough for rendering sufficiently accurately the author’s original intention. This is despite the fact that, for all its closeness, S2 does not permit the restoration of the original Greek text or even all the core terminology. ‘A bird’s eye view’81 of Evagrius’s dogmatic system, the Letter to Melania,82 is a late work that provides a kind of code for the understanding of the more obscure passages of the Kephalaia Gnostica. Of Evagrius’s scholia the following are extant: Scholia on the Psalms,83 the Proverbs,84 Ecclesiastes85 and Job,86 probably composed in this order, because it corresponds to the books’ ordering in the Septuagint.87 Evagrius may also have written scholia on the Song of Songs, which are not extant.88 The scholia are difficult to date. Von Balthasar suggests that scholia on the Psalms were meant to adorn the Kephalaia Gnostica, thus linking the two works together.89 On the basis of this conjecture, Rondeau concludes that the Scholia on the Psalms were composed

79 The principal Greek fragments were edited by Hausherr, ‘Nouveaux fragments grecs d’Évagre le Pontique’, OCP 5 (1939), pp. 229–33; Muyldermans, ‘À Travers la Tradition Manuscrite d’Évagre le Pontique’, Bibliothèque du Muséon 3 (Louvain, 1933), pp. 74, 85, 89, 93; Muyldermans, ‘Evagriana. Extrait de la revue Le Muséon, vol. 42, augmenté de nouveaux fragments grecs inédits’ (Paris, 1931), pp. 38–44; and Géhin, ‘Evagriana d’un Manuscript Basilien, (Vaticanus Gr. 2028; olim Basilianus 67)’, le Muséon 109 (1996), pp. 59–85. 80 Guillaumont, Introduction to ‘Kephalaia Gnostica’, p. 5. 81 Parmentier, ‘Evagrius of Pontus’ ‘Letter to Melania’, p. 5. 82 Melania (Letter 64), Syriac text with Greek retroversion ed. and trans. by Frankenberg, Evagrius Ponticus, op. cit., pp. 613–19; and Vitestam, ‘Seconde partie du Traité qui passe sous le nom de ‘La grande lettre d’Évagre le Pontique à Mélanie l’Ancienne’, op. cit., pp. 6–29. German trans. by Bunge, Evagrios Pontikos: Briefe aus der Wüste (Trier, 1986), pp. 303–29. English trans. by Parmentier, ‘Evagrius of Pontus and the “Letter to Melania”’, pp. 2–38. 83 For this see Rondeau, ‘Le commentaire sur les Psaumes d’Évagre le Pontique’, OCP 26 (1960), pp. 307–348. 84 Scholia on Proverbs, ed. and trans. Géhin, Évagre le Pontique Scholies aux Proverbes, SC 340 (Paris, 1987). 85 Scholia on Ecclesiastes, ed. and trans. Géhin, Évagre le Pontique Scholies à L’Ecclésiaste, SC 397 (Paris, 1993). 86 Currently being edited by Géhin. 87 Géhin, Scholies aux Proverbes, SC 340, pp. 19–20. 88 Cf. Géhin, ‘Evagriana d’un manuscript basilien’, op. cit., pp. 59–85; 71–3. 89 Von Balthasar, ‘Die Hiera des Evagrius’, Zeitschrift für Aszese und Mystik 14 (1939), pp. 86–106, 181–206, p. 184.

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later than the Practicus and earlier than the Kephalaia Gnostica.90 On the basis of the pattern of overlaps of the texts from scholia and other Evagrius’s texts, Géhin concludes that the Scholia on Proverbs and the subsequent ones were written after the completion of the Kephalaia Gnostica.91 Dealing with eight principal spirits or vices, Antirrheticus92 is a list of brief Scriptural replies a monk can use in spiritual warfare. Finally, Columba Stewart has signalled the existence of another trilogy, On Prayer,93 De diversis malignis cogitationibus94 and Skemmata,95 possibly postdating the first trilogy. The logic behind this is that Stewart finds that the latter three works focus on more obscure and mystical themes (such as the intellect as ‘the place of God’96 and the sapphire light of the intellect) than does the former trilogy. Stewart thinks that these themes are generally absent from Evagrius’s earlier works or those intended for the beginners’ instruction.97 On the whole, it is reasonable to suggest that, together with the Kephalaia Gnostica and the Letter to Melania, the trilogy belongs among Evagrius’s latest works. Discovered by Paramelle in a Greek manuscript in the Benaki Museum in Athens, The Chapters of the Disciples of Evagrius98 concludes the survey. Because of the often repeated expression eÓlegen, the work appears to be a rendering of Evagrius’s oral instructions.99 Owing to the overall consistency of its material with that within the previously discovered Evagrius’s works, the work’s authenticity is beyond doubt.

90 Rondeau, Les Commentaires Patristiques du Psautier (IIIe – Ve siècles), I: Les travaux des pères grecs et latins sur le psautier. Recherches et bilan, in OCA 219 (Rome, 1982), p. 126. 91 Géhin, Scholies aux Proverbes, SC 340, p. 21 n. 1. 92 Syriac text with Greek introversion ed. and trans. Frankenberg, Evagrius Ponticus, op. cit.; Armenian text ed. by Sarghissian, S. Patris Euagrii Pontici uita et scripta (armeniace) (Venice, 1907), pp. 217–323; English: ‘Evagrius Ponticus, Antirrheticus (Selections)’, trans. by O’Laughlin, in Wimbush, ed. Ascetic Behavior, pp. 243–62; German: Prologue, trans. Bunge, ‘Evagrios Pontikos: Der Prolog des Antirrhetikos’, Studia Monastica 39 (Rome, Collegio Sant’Anselmo, 1997), pp. 77–105. 93 A French translation by Hausherr, Les leçons d’un contemplative, le traité de l’oraison d’ Evagre le Pontique (Paris, 1960); an English trans. Bamberger, op. cit.; an earlier English trans. from the Russian Philokalia by Kadloubovsky and Palmer in the Early Fathers from the Philokalia (London, 1954), pp. 129–43. 94 De diversis malignis cogitationibus, ed. and trans. by Géhin, Évagre le Pontique Sur les Pensées, SC 438 (Paris, 1998). 95 Skemmata (Capita cognoscitiva), ed. Muyldermans, ‘Evagriana’, Le Muséon 44 (Louvain, 1931), pp. 37–68, 369–83. 96 Cf. Deuteronomy 24. 97 Stewart, ‘Approaches to Early Monastic Prayer: The Case of Evagrius Ponticus’. 98 Kefa¯laia tw=n maqhtw=n Eu)agri¿ou, Suppl. CPG 2483. 99 Guillaumont, Un philosophe au désert, 148.

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(ix) Summation It was Evagrius’s choices and subsequent desert life that made him into the spiritual director that he was. This experiment in self-construction required the Egyptian desert as the particular Sitz-im-Leben toward which he gravitated from the start. The parting with Gregory of Nazianzus was no accident. What he found in Gregory was not somebody without experience. Yet Gregory’s nuanced rhetoric lacked the particular kind of austere intensity that Evagrius sought. The variety of Gregory’s styles and the breadth of his literary and theological interests did not satisfy Evagrius’s predilection for a more narrow yet intense preoccupation with distinctions. The end of their friendship corresponds to a divorce of Evagrius’s theology from the so-called Cappadocian theology as a whole. When the time came for Evagrius to become disengaged from the immediate influence of Gregory and Basil and he no longer felt obliged to meet the demands of others, in his desert dwelling in Kellia stage by stage he came into his own – the kind of the spiritual knowledge he had always felt he was called to acquire.

Chapter 2

Knowledge through mental faculties in relation to spiritual knowledge As a gnwstiko/j, the ideal Christian and the wise man, Evagrius is concerned with formulating adequate teaching about the acquisition of spiritual knowledge. He approaches his task by assessing successive stages of spiritual ascent culminating in the eschatological gnostic state. In doing so he employs series of images and definitions that postulate different kinds of knowledge and establish connections between them. Evagrius places knowledge through mental faculties at the lower end of the cognitive spectrum. This kind of knowledge subsumes sensory perception and the forming and storing in the mind of the concepts born out of external stimuli upon the organs of sensation. He assesses this kind of knowledge in relation, on the one hand, to secular learning that is divorced from virtue, and on the other hand, to spiritual knowledge proper.1 He eventually collocates knowledge through mental faculties together with divine grace and in opposition to demonic activity that causes the mind to suffer what Evagrius sees as the eight cardinal evil thoughts. Although but an elementary stage in the spiritual journey, undistorted sensory perception is integral to Evagrius’s broad gnostic schema, because it straightway introduces the fundamental question about the relation of nature and grace and lays the foundations for the rest of Evagrius’s discussion on perfection as knowledge. (i) Recent scholarship on the knowledge through mental faculties in Evagrius Evagrius’s ideas on knowledge through mental faculties proved a thorny subject with a number of scholars, because they include issues such as the value of the body and the role of images in the mind in the acquisition of knowledge. The scholarly attitude to the subject is epitomised in scholars like A. Guillaumont and more recently E. Clark. In her monograph on Origenism, E. Clark dedicates an entire chapter to Evagrius’s theory of ‘imageless Christianity’2 and his ‘radical anti-imagistic confession of God’.3 Her opinion on the question of ‘images’ according to Evagrius is based on 1 For these distinctions see especially Gnosticus 4 and 45, discussed in detail below, and Prayer 63. Kephalaia Gnostica I.63 both differentiates and assimilates the human beings’ acquisition of knowledge and skills through mental faculties as well as the purified mind’s attainment to spiritual knowledge. 2 The Origenist Controversy, chapter 2, pp. 43–84. See especially p. 66. 3 Ibid., 63.

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A. Guillaumont, who suggested that the anti-anthropomorphite controversy, which asserted God’s bodiless nature as well as the complete loss by the post-lapsarian man of God’s image, was fuelled by Evagrius’s ‘imageless’ theory of cognition as expressed in his treatise On the Thoughts.4 Despite the groundbreaking nature of Guillaumont’s work, there is little historical evidence for the conjecture that Evagrius was the ideologist behind the controversy.5 However, the opinion of Clark and Guillaumont that the theory of ‘imagelessness’ represents the core of Evagrius’s teaching deserves serious consideration. According to these scholars, the essence of Evagrius’s views on images is as follows: 1. Evagrius considered everything termed an ‘image’, whether an image of a material object stored in the mind, an article of art used in worship, or the image of God in man, to be one and the same thing and was to be eliminated. Evagrius, it is concluded, was a radical spiritual ‘iconoclast’.6 2. Since images and concepts are stored in the mind through bodily senses and mental faculties, this scholarly opinion demands the conclusion that Evagrius depreciated the physical universe, the body with its senses and natural cognition as destructive of spiritual knowledge. It is undisputed that Evagrius persistently admonishes his pupils to banish pictorial representations and thoughts from their minds during prayer. Just as the life of perfection is inseparable from that of practical virtue so highest spiritual awareness is not isolable from the purity of mind. The spiritual sequence of Practicus, Gnosticus and the Kephalaia Gnostica, together with On the Thoughts and Chapters on Prayer, dedicate numerous passages, at varying levels of spiritual complexity and enigma, to this subject. Thus, Evagrius avows: ‘Blessed is the intellect that at the time of prayer has attained to perfect freedom of forms (telei¿an a)morfi¿an)’.7 And again: ‘Blessed is the intellect that at the time of prayer has attained to perfect freedom of sensation (telei¿an a)naisqhsi¿an).’8 Spiritual prayer in which every thought and image is abolished is the door to higher forms of contemplation and ultimately to union with the divine reality. Since the mind’s freedom from thoughts and representations is what authenticates prayer, such freedom is a necessary condition for the attainment of mystical union. However, there is much more to Evagrius’s views on sense-perception and knowledge through mental faculties than what is expressed in his doctrine strictly about the highest level of contemplation and mystical prayer. Clearly what his writings admonish is to balance contemplation with other activities of the monastic life, such as the study of Scriptures, psalmody and daily tasks of hospitality and manual work. Neither does Evagrius recommend embarking upon the quest for higher spiritual knowledge, gnw=sij, to beginners, whom he encourages first to 4 Guillaumont, Les ‘Képhalaia Gnostica’, pp. 61, and 120–23. 5 Clark herself admits this in The Origenist Controversy, 44. 6 Clark, The Origenist Controversy, p. 84. 7 Chapters on Prayer 117. 8 Chapters on Prayer 120.

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become proficient in the fundamental exercises of monastic praxis, what Evagrius calls ‘the three renunciations’, first: ou)k e)/sti deì kth¿sasqai gnw=sin, mhì thìn prw/thn a)po/tacin kaiì deute/ran kai tri¿thn a)potaca¯menon.

Moreover, it is not possible to acquire knowledge without having [first] achieved the first, the second and the third renunciations.9

At the heart of this approach lies Evagrius’s understanding of the spiritual ascent as graded and gradual. The balanced and realistic view on the spiritual journey that he held clearly calls for more nuanced distinctions to be introduced into the assessment of his theory of images and sense-perception. (ii) Gradations of spiritual life Evagrius’s model of the spiritual progress from natural cognition purified by praxis to spiritual knowledge proper is intertwined with his consistent exposition of reality as graded. He believed that there are many successive and interrelated stages to the attainment of spiritual perfection. As stepping-stones to it, even the lowest sections of the journey are themselves in some sense gnostic because each one marks the presence of a measure of spiritual awareness in the soul. A variety of schemas for the gradations of reality and spiritual life is present in Evagrius’s works. The Letter to Anatolius 8 lists at least ten gradations of the spiritual ascent: The fear of God confirms (bebaioiÍ) faith; and continence in turn [confirms the fear of God]; perseverance and hope render [continence] unswerving (a)klinh=); from them passionlessness (a)pa¯qeia) is born; its offspring is love (a)ga¯ph); and love is the door of the knowledge of natures (qu/ra gnw/sewj fusikh=j);10 from it theology (qeologi¿a) and the final blessedness (e)sxa¯th makario/thj) take over (diade/xetai).11

While the three later divisions (the knowledge of natures, the knowledge of God and the final blessedness) unquestionably form part of the spiritual knowledge and can be termed gnostic, the ones that lead up to them, although not necessarily constituting spiritual knowledge proper, nevertheless mark the soul’s awakening to it. Consequently, the stages preceding the two final ones are also gnostic.12 9 Thoughts 26.17–19. 10 ‘Gnw=sij fusikh¿’ is synonymous with natural contemplation. In Evagrius’s schema it strictly belongs to the realm of spiritual knowledge proper and is be distinguished from knowledge through natural faculties. 11 Letter to Anatolius 8.47–51. 12 Despite this, for the sake of the clarity of exposition, elsewhere Evagrius contrasts the life of practical virtue and that of spiritual proficiency, or gnosis. See, Gnosticus 1: ‘Those at the level of practice (praktikoi¿) will comprehend the discourses on practice, while those at the level of gnosis (gnwstikoi¿) will see the things pertaining to gnosis.’ Likewise Anatolius 9.54.

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Practicus 1 famously defines Christianity as the doctrine and practical and spiritual living established by Christ, categorising it into a more succinct schema of only three successive levels: Christianity is the doctrine (do/gma) of our Saviour Jesus Christ composed of practical virtue (praktikh=j), natural contemplation (fusikh=j),13 and theology (qeologi¿aj).

This definition envisages Christianity as spiritual life embracing three ascending stages. The ascent begins with the life of practical virtue, praxis. This is transformed into the life of natural contemplation, or contemplation of natures, eventually crowned with theology, or the knowledge of God Himself. Nonetheless, all three stages of the spiritual life bear relation to spiritual knowledge proper, because all three concur in the one goal of the knowledge of God and the attainment of the right spiritual do/gma, itself a spiritual category. Elsewhere Evagrius condenses the idea of the many levels of the spiritual life into an even more concise bi-partite schema subsuming practical life succeeded by the life of spiritual proficiency, or gnostic life (tou= bi¿ou praktikou= kaiì tou= gnwstikou=).14 Clearly, the gnostic life in the bi-partite schema corresponds to the stages of natural contemplation and theology in the tri-partite model. (iii) The gradualness of spiritual ascent Evagrius the gnwstiko/j facilitates the learning process for his students by producing, in a number of his writings, terse and rigorously structured step-by-step manuals on how to progress in the spiritual life. Such is the previously mentioned trilogy of Practicus, Gnosticus, and the Kephalaia Gnostica. The ‘condensed and divided’ exposition matches the didactic purpose of the series: We are now setting out in detail the teaching about the life of praxis and the life of gnosis (periì tou= bi¿ou deì tou= praktikou= kaiì tou= gnwstikou=), not all the things we have seen or heard but only those that we have learnt from them [=the elders], in order to tell others too (a¹ll’ o(/sa kaiì aÃlloij ei)pei=n par’ au)tw=n memaqh¿kamen). We have condensed and divided (suntetmhme¿nwj dielo/ntej) the practical teaching (taÜ praktika¯) into one hundred chapters and the gnostic teaching (taÜ gnwstika¯) into fifty chapters in addition to six hundred ….15

The highly precise sequence of chapters and subjects within the trilogy reflects Evagrius’s fundamental belief that spiritual knowledge is attained gradually and in a precise sequence of stages. Thus Practicus, which treats of monastic praxis and is destined primarily for beginners, instructs on how the spiritual life consists of the

13 Chapter 4 below deals with the gnostic stage called fusikh/ or qewri/a fusikh/. It is concerned with the contemplation of the spiritual essences of created things. 14 For example, Letter to Anatolius 9.54. 15 Cf. Letter to Anatolius 9, serving as the Prologue to the Practicus.

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battle against a specific chain of passions16 and the acquisition of a precise succession of virtues. Thus faith is strengthened by the fear of God and ascetic abstinence; these in turn are confirmed by perseverance and hope, of which the freedom from passions (a)pa¯qeia) and charitable love (a)ga¯ph) are born. Love crowns the life of praxis and opens the door to the contemplative knowledge of the universe (gnw=sij fusikh/).17 In the story of the ladder of Jacob (Gen. 28.12–13) Evagrius sees an analogy to the progression from virtues to the contemplation of the universe: the spiritual progress is like the ascent upon an invisible ladder, which one mounts step by step.18 Together with On the Thoughts and Skemmata, Gnosticus and the Kephalaia Gnostica, which are intended for those spiritually more advanced, teach in greater depth than Practicus about the more advanced spiritual stages: the contemplative vision of the universe and the knowledge of God. The latter stage appears to be identical with the soul’s ‘final blessedness’19 and is thus the summit of the spiritual journey. In conjunction with the Letter to Melania, the Kephalaia Gnostica explains what Evagrius’s views on the mystery of the origins and the destiny of beings, which only the spiritually mature can fathom. However, if there is a distinct sequence to the spiritual ascent, one is meant to embark upon it at the journey’s very inception and without skipping the stages. This is where sensory perception and conceptual thought come into the picture. (iv) The soul, its parts, activity and nature20 Evagrius believed that in human beings sensation, while obviously having a bodily reference, is seated in the yuxh/ logikh/, ‘the rational soul’. The soul recapitulates the entire human being, matter and spirit, and in some sense is the locus of every kind of knowledge human beings are capable of. Platonically tri-partite,21 it consists of the intellect or mind (nou=j), also known as the rational part (the logistiko/n), the irascible part (the qumo/j) and the appetitive part (the e)piqumi¿a). When speaking less technically, Evagrius often equates the entire soul with human personhood. When using his terminology in a more specialised way, however, he unquestionably designates the intellect as the seat of human selfhood and the best and most sublime component of human nature. The multitude of the intellects was God’s first and best creation. The souls are nothing else but the intellects that fell away from their first spiritual height. But for 16 Like his predecessors, Evagrius employs the term pa¯qh, ‘passions’, in the technical sense of the opposite of virtues. Passions are the sinful leanings of the soul, which cause suffering and enslavement. 17 Letter to Anatolius 47–51. 18 Cf. Kephalaia Gnostica IV.43. 19 Letter to Anatolius 51. 20 Evagrius’s doctrine of the soul and of man is discussed in more detail in Chapter 4. Here introductory remarks about his psychology are offered. 21 For the Platonic background to the doctrine see Chapter 4. For the soul as tri-partite in Evagrius, cf., for example, Practicus 38, 78, 89, and as two-partite, consisting of the rational and the irrational parts, Practicus, 66 and 84. See Driskoll’s comment in Ad Monachos, pp. 8–9.

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this fall, there would be no souls: ‘There was an instant when … [the intellect] fell from its former rank and was called a soul’ and there will yet be a time when ‘the body and the soul will be raised to the rank of the intellect’ again.22 It is in the intellect that the image of God in man resides. ‘The intellect … is the image of God’.23 Moreover, Practicus 89, by using the appellation ‘the image of God’ simply as synonymous with ‘a human being’,24 points to the undoubted pre-eminence of the rational faculty in man: it summarises man’s entire identity and constitutes that in virtue of which one is properly human. Since the intellect is the seat of the divine image, it is this image that is the essence of humanity as God planned it when creating man. In view of this, the scholars’ claim cited above, that in his iconoclasm Evagrius announced a post-lapsarian destruction of the image of God, is unsubstantiated. Each psychic part enjoys dynamism proper to itself. Provided this activity is exercised without deviation from its norm, the entire rational soul functions according to its genuine nature, with the intellect governing the two lower parts and the entire soul ruling over the body. Evagrius thus describes what constitutes the proper operation of the soul: The rational soul acts according to nature (kataÜ fu/sin) when the appetitive part (toìe)piqumhtikoìn) desires virtue (th=j a)reth=j e)fi¿etai), while the irascible part (toìqumikoìn) contends for it (a)gwni¿zetai), and the rational part25 (toì logistikoìn) devotes itself to the contemplation of beings (tv= qewri¿# tw=n gegono/twn).26

Acting according to nature, the soul acquires righteousness, which is characterised by the harmony of all its parts: As for righteousness (dikaiosu/nhj), [its function] is to produce symphony and harmony (sumfwni¿an kaiì a(rmoni¿an) of all the parts of the soul.27

Understood as passionlessness, righteousness also constitutes the soul’s perfect state of health (telei¿a u(gei¿a).28 The soul’s natural and proper operation, then, is for its two lower components to be directed towards virtue. This in turn enables the ruling faculty to embark upon the contemplation of beings, which is the first degree of spiritual knowledge proper, leading towards the knowledge of God. Since such is the essence of the soul’s activity ‘according to nature’, this is the end for which it is created by God, who made the soul in His image. Tending toward virtue and spiritual knowledge, then, is the core of the soul’s characteristic of being in God’s image. An integral part of the rational soul, knowledge through mental faculties, then, also is meant to gravitate toward the selfsame goal of virtue and spiritual knowledge. 22 Melania 5. 23 Thoughts 19.11–12. ‘o( nou=j ... ei)kw/n e)sti tou= Qeou=.’ 24 Practicus 89.13–14. 25 That is, the intellect. 26 Practicus 86. 27 Practicus 89. 28 Thoughts 15.7.

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Practicus 57, despite engaging more generally with human nature rather than specifically natural cognition, legitimately belongs in a discussion about the latter. Thus 57.1–7 distinguishes ‘two peaceful states of the soul’,29 one of which originates from ‘natural seeds’ (tw=n fusikw=n sperma/twn) and is praiseworthy, while the other stems from the cunning withdrawal of the demons and is perilous. The former is ‘followed by humility with compunction and tears’, with ‘a boundless desire for the divine’30 and ‘immeasurable zeal for work’,31 while the latter, is succeeded by ‘vainglory with pride’, which, while other demonic attacks cease, alone ‘drag down’ the monk. Conceptually and linguistically, this is a passage with Stoic overtones: ‘the natural seeds’ being an important Stoic concept. It describes the cunning of lesser demons who, in order to deceive the intellect and plunge it into the power of the demon of pride, agree among themselves to withdraw behind the scenes thus creating a similitude of peace in the soul. By contrast, the true and lasting peace is born from a virtuous state of the soul and leads to further virtues. This latter kind of peace, Evagrius stresses, constitutes the normal state of the soul. The human nature, then, is categorised together with divine grace, so that it is the intellect’s natural property to be at peace and to long for things divine. Several presuppositions seem to underlie the passage above. The human nature retains the seeds of its original virtuous state; it is receptive of the action of grace; as its goal it desires greater virtue. One is both born into one’s nature and must grow into it. One’s true identity is not a mere given but something to be rediscovered and acquired through grace. By contrast, demonic activity manifests itself as alien both to the human nature and the divine grace and wages war against both. The human nature, then, including sense-perception, is collocated with grace but contrasted with the demonic activity. (v) The mechanism of sense-perception (a) ‘the world created in the mind’ Evagrius expounds the growing in the spiritual knowledge of the universe in terms of meditating upon ‘the world created within one’s reasoning faculty’.32 As one’s awareness of the universe becomes more spiritually refined, a miniature replica of it arises in the mind. It is this inner cosmos that the spiritually proficient soul eventually comes to contemplate.33 The subject-matter of this contemplation is the world of concepts, which the ascetic studies and learns to discern with regard to their usefulness. Sense perception is fundamental in the process of constructing the inner world. While the outer cosmos consists of things and bodies, the universe within

29 ‘du/o th=j yuxh=j ei)rhnikaiì katasta¯seij’. 30 po/qoj proìj toì qei=on aÃpeiroj. 31 spoudhì periì toì eÃrgon a)me/trhtoj. 32 KG V.42, ‘o¸ e¹n tvÍ dianoi¿# ko¿smoj ktizo¿menoj ...’. The Greek fragment is in Hausherr, ‘Nouveaux fragments’, p. 232. 33 Ibid.

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the reasoning faculty is made up of their representations. These are acquired via the receptivity of the bodily senses and are then processed by the mind. Evagrius thus describes the process: One ought to begin by expounding how the intellect by nature receives the representations of all sensory things and is stamped in conformity with them through the vehicle that is our body. Whatever the shape of the object, such of necessity will be the image that the intellect receives. This is why the representations of objects are termed ‘likenesses’, because the representations preserve the same shape as the objects. Therefore, just as it receives the representations of all sensory objects, in the same way the intellect acquires [the images] of its own vehicle34 … yet always with the exception of the face. For it is unable to form [the face] in itself, having never seen it.35 A)rkte/on deì e)nteu=qen tou= lo/gou o(/pwj o( nou=j pa/ntwn tw=n ai)sqhtw=n pragma¯twn pe/fuke de/xesqai taÜ noh/mata kaiì tupou=sqai kat’ au)ta¯ diaÜ tou= o)rganikou= sw/matoj tou/tou! o(poi¿a gaÜr aän ei)/h tou= pra¿gmatoj h( morfh/, toiau/thn a)na¯gkh kaiì toìn nou=n de/casqai thìn ei)ko/na! o(/qen kaiì o(moiw/mata le/getai taÜ noh/mata tw=n pragma¯twn t%= thìn au)thìn e)kei¿noij dias%/zein morfhìn! w/(sper ouÅn pa¯ntwn o( nou=j tw=n ai)sqhtw=n pragma¯twn de/xetai taÜ noh/mata, ou(/tw kaiì tou= i)di¿ou o)rga¯nou ... xwriìj deì pa¯ntwj th=j o)/yewj! tau/thn gaÜr e)n e(aut%= morfw=sai a)dunatei=, mhde/ pote qeasaÜmenoj ...

To Evagrius, therefore, the mind’s ability to receive through sensation images of physical objects and to become ‘imprinted’ by them like wax impressed with a seal is part and parcel of its normal functioning. To demonstrate this Evagrius especially emphasises the expression ‘by nature’: it is natural for the mind to acquire and store within itself images of things, including representations of one’s own body. The images stored in the mind are like the objects they are images of. This is why they are called o(moiw/mata, ‘likenesses’. Evagrius goes on to explain the usefulness of the ‘likenesses’ to the mind. Without the shapes and concepts stored within, the mind would find itself ‘deprived of all movement’.36 In its essence quick-moving and immaterial, it resorts to the images and concepts within to exercise its natural reasoning function. As the body moves on account of its members, so the intellect functions by displacing, combining and analysing the concepts. It ‘does everything internally. It sits down and walks, gives and receives, through thinking (kata dia¯noian)’.37 It carries out and says everything it wants through the ‘liveliness of the representations …’.38 Clearly, to the extent to which concepts and representations are integral to the mind’s function according to nature, the knowledge they bring to the mind is genuine and a stage in the acquisition of spiritual proficiency.

34 Evagrius’s usual way of designating the body. 35 Thoughts 25. 8–18. 36 Thoughts 25.18–28, ‘ou¹k aän poih/soi ti nou=j’. 37 Ibid., 25.21. 38 Ibid., 25.19–22.

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(b) Evagrius’s terminology for images and representations: eikones, noemata, homoiômata, logismoi, fantasiai The surveyed passage from On the Thoughts 25 employs some of Evagrius’s more common terms for representations in the mind. In general his psychological nomenclature includes terms such as eikones, noêmata, homoiômata, logismoi and fantasiai. Evagrius resorts to them to designate the different categories of epistemic building material in the mind. While the passage above treats of the good and natural representations, Evagrius’s writings also abound with the descriptions of pernicious and demonic images and thoughts. On the whole, noêmata and eikones are Evagrius’s terms for beneficial and constructive images, whereas logismoi and fantasiai are reserved for harmful, deceitful and demonic ones.39 The homoiômata, ‘likenesses’, in Evagrius’s vocabulary refers predominantly to the representations of material objects. By contrast, the noêmata, ‘concepts’, designate more broadly the representations of things material, immaterial, and even divine. The homoiômata, then, are a subcategory of the noêmata. ‘Simple thoughts’ (yiloi¿ logismoi¿)40 is the name for neutral thoughts, which are not tinted by demonic suggestions and or mixed with passion. Evagrius’ view is that, inasmuch as they transparently convey information, far from being deleterious, they are actually the building blocks of knowledge. The background for Evagrius’s theory of knowledge through images in the mind is, via Clement,41 the ideas traceable back to Aristotle’s On Interpretation.42 There Aristotle distinguishes between the affections of the soul, the spoken words and the written words, on the one hand, and the material objects themselves, on the other. Writing reflects speech, while speech conveys the affections of the soul. The relation of both written and oral language to the soul’s inclinations is arbitrary, for writing and speech are not the same among all men. By contrast, both the sentiments of the soul and the material objects that form the sentiments are identical for all. Therefore, in Aristotle, the affections of the soul are faithful likenesses (o(moiw/mata) of things. As such, they are indispensable for the soul’s knowledge of the world. Evagrius adopts a similar train of reasoning. Since the concepts in the mind are faithful likenesses of the things and objects in the world, the mind itself becomes a likeness of the cosmos it studies and contemplates.43

39 Some of the exceptions to this rule are: Practicus 30, which treats of beneficial

logismoi¿, and Practicus 42, describing pernicious noh/mata.

40 As in Thoughts 40.6. 41 Stromateis, VIII.23.1, where noh/mata are distinguished from o)no/mata and pra¯gmata. See Géhin, A. and C. Guillaumont, Évagre le Pontique: Sur les Pensées, p. 240, n.2. 42 See Aristotle on representations as similitudes of sensory objects: On Interpretation 16a.4–9. It is not known whether Evagrius was familiar with the treatise itself or merely its digests in other writers. 43 Although Evagrius does not use the term ‘microcosm’, the idea of man recapitulating within his soul the entire created universe is clearly present in his thought.

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(vi) When knowledge through mental faculties breaks down The acquisition of images is rooted in the intellect’s property of mobility (eu)ki¿nhton)44 and is the pre-requisite of its capacity to know. This mechanism of normal concept-formation, however, can break down. The fall left the rational soul fragile and unstable in its movement. Volatility makes the rational faculty easy prey to error through the neglect of good practices previously acquired. ‘In you life do not neglect (mhì a)melh/svj) your routine, instructs the gnostic, and do not insult (mhìkaqubri¿svj) impassibility having brought it low by means of a fattened body’.45 The soul’s erring occurs on two levels: that of perception and that of memory. In the first instance, the representations that reach the rational faculty via the senses cease to be simple and faithful likenesses of the objects perceived (yuloiì logismoi¿) and become tinted with passion. The passionate logismoi¿, Evagrius’s usual term for ‘intrusive thoughts’, proceed frenziedly to attack the mind with stirrings of anger and desire. In the second instance, the normal process of recollection, whereby memory brings images stored in the mind to the surface of consciousness, also becomes admixed with agitation. The mind’s acceptance of passionate suggestions instantly transforms it into a battleground where demons attack the mind by agitating its lower powers with evil thoughts and images. Their aim is to disrupt the soul’s access to reality and knowledge. (a) The eight cardinal thoughts Evagrius categorises these demonic onslaughts into the eight cardinal demonic thoughts (daimoniw¯deij logismoi¿), for which he is famed.46 His teaching on the subject is part and parcel of his systematization of the life of praxis preparatory to the life of gnosis proper. In his theory about the chains of demonic thoughts Evagrius is both a follower and a generator of a tradition. The eight tempting thoughts give rise to one another and affect the intellect. Practicus lists them as: gluttony, fornication, avarice, sadness, anger, despondency, vainglory, and pride.47 The chain can be reduced to three fundamental vices: gluttony (gastromargi¿a), the love of riches (filargi¿a), and the love of human glory (tw=n a¹nqrw/pwn do/ca).48 The chain of the evil logismoi¿, which leads to the death of the soul in the form of pride, mirrors the sequence of virtues leading to a¹pa¯qeia and spiritual knowledge. The source for both catalogues is, on the Christian side, figures like Clement49 and Origen.50 On the 44 Practicus 48.7; 54.1; 71.2; 76.5; 9.13. 45 Gnosticus 37. 46 For an overview see Guillaumont, Évagre le Pontique: Traité Pratique ou le Moine, pp. 63–84. Also Dysinger, Psalmody and Prayer, 118–9. 47 Practicus 6. 48 Thoughts 1. 49 Stromateis II.31.1. 50 In.Matt. 15.18, In.Ezech, 6.11, and Hom.Luke, 29. See also Harmless and Fitzgerald, ‘The Sapphire Light of the Mind’, p. 507. On Origen’s possible influence upon Evagrius’s

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pagan side, it is the Stoic tradition.51 This teaching influenced the Latin West, when this vice-list52 became, via Cassian,53 the foundation of the medieval seven deadly sins. In the Greek East, the schema was later utilised by John of Sinai and Maximus the Confessor, to be finally integrated into the tradition in John Damascene’s Eight Spirits of Malice.54 (b) The demonic contrivances as based on representations Evagrius warns that all demonic activity is representation-based. Demons are altogether unable to operate outside the realm of representations of material objects: All demonic thoughts introduce into the soul concepts of sensory things. The intellect is stamped by them and carries around within itself the shapes of those objects. Thus from this it recognises the demon that has approached …..55 pa¯ntej oi( daimoniw/deij logismoiì noh/mata ei)j thìn yuxhìn ai)sqhtw=n ei)sfe/rousi pragma/twn, e)n oiâj tupou/menoj o( nou=j taÜj morfaÜj tw=n pragma¯twn e)kei¿nwn e)n e(aut%= perife/rei kaiì a)p’ au)tou= loipoìn tou= pra¯gmatoj e)piginw/skei toìn proseggi¿santa dai¿mona ....

‘The demon that has approached’ is recognisable by the type of the concepts he forces upon the mind. The demon of incontinence manifests himself by tempting the e)piqumi¿a, ‘the desiring part’ of the soul, with grosser images of pleasing objects. By contrast, the demon of anger torments the soul’s qumo/j, ‘the irascible part’, with representations of past offenders and suggestions of revenge.56 The demon of vainglory and pride entices the upper-most part of the soul, the reasoning faculty itself. This kind of logismos forces itself upon the reasoning faculty when the cruder tempters, which wars against the lower parts of the soul, pretends to be vanquished. Their apparent defeat makes the thought of vainglory and pride ‘grow’.57 The thought of self-glorification is especially powerful, because it is ‘subtle’.58 On account of its cunning, it is especially hard to defeat.59 Whatever the actual concepts thus launched, systematization see Hausherr, ‘L’origine de la théorie orientale des huit péchés capitaux’, pp. 164–75. 51 On the idea that virtues generate one another, see, for example, Diogenes Laertius, VII.125: ‘They say that the virtues follow one another (a¹ntakolouqeiÍn a¹llh¿laj) and that the one who has one of them has them all’, in Arnim, Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta. 52 For recurrences and overlaps in Evagrius’s system of vices and impassioned thoughts see the Practicus 6–15, Antirrheticus (classifying 487 temptations into the same eight major categories), On the Eight Spirits of Evil, On the Thoughts and the Skemmata 41–3. 53 Institutes, 5–12; Conferences, 5. For the discussion see Stewart, Cassian the Monk. 54 On the Eight Spirits of Malice (PG 95.80a). 55 Thoughts 2. 56 Practicus 23 and Thoughts 17. 57 Thoughts 15. 58 Practicus 13. 59 Practicus 30.

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however, they all contain representations of physical things (taÜ ai)sqhta¯), which affect the mind by ‘stamping’ it.60 Even the subtler logismoi of vainglory and pride effect a ‘material’ imprint upon the mind, since they involve images of ‘glory from men’.61 A gross imitation and falsification of the immaterial divine glory, the ‘glory from men’ implies considerations of praise and material rewards by important persons. Material concepts thus constitute the impure thoughts’ very food: The … impure thoughts receive for [their] growth many kinds of material substance (pollaÜj ei¹j auÃchsin uÐlaj) and stretch themselves toward many objects.62

While this undeniably points to a causal link in the thought of Evagrius between evil and the presence of concepts in the mind, it is important to establish what kind of involvement with concepts this is. Evagrius is very clear that only some, and by no means all, concepts and images give substance to the demonic logismoi. Inasmuch as they produce in the intellect an obsessive involvement with objects in the outward world, these concepts are mixed up with what Evagrius calls ‘passion’. Such concepts, which destroy the peace, dispassion and objectivity of the mind, are falsified, rather than true, representations of reality. The intellect’s obsessive preoccupation with certain objects and situations to the exclusion of all else is what the assertion ‘the evil thoughts … stretch themselves toward many objects’ implies. The end result of the demonic assault is that the passions ‘drag the intellect down to destruction and perdition’,63 which lies in the soul’s turning away from what Evagrius implies to be its natural goal, God. Consequently, it is because of the pathological and unnatural character of such thoughts that Evagrius terms them ‘impure’64 and the intellect affected with them ‘sick’.65 (c) The spiritual warfare as empirically based This is where the gnwstiko/j, whom Evagrius implicitly likens to the soul’s teacher, physician and military commander, steps in. His own faculties are preserved in the orderly fashion and he has already attained perfect a)pa¯qeia, that is, a measure of stability and knowledge that protects his judgement from erring easily. He no longer wrestles within his soul with demons but contemplates and grasps the very fundamental principles of the spiritual warfare, its logoi.66 Possessing the fullness of knowledge of both the demonic ruses and the weaknesses of the soul, the gnostic is able to provide the weapon against the demonic attacks and a remedy for spiritual sickness. This weapon and remedy is constituted by the empirical knowledge of the 60 On the stamping of the intellect see Thoughts, 2.2; 4.1 ff; 25.10 ff.; 35.2 ff.; 41; 42.3ff. 61 Practicus 13. 62 Thoughts 36.1–2. 63 Thoughts 22. 64 Thoughts 22 and 36. 65 Cf. Practicus 54. 66 Practicus 36.8.

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spiritual warfare that the experienced teacher possesses. It is the oral and written doctrine that the teacher administers to his disciples about the causes of the struggle and the specific kinds of praxis to be undertaken in situations of demonic assault. The meticulous classification of the evil logismoi into a variety of schemata underlies the structure of several of Evagrius’s treatises. It is clear that this catalogue is largely based on Evagrius’s own observation. The purpose of the teaching, however, is quite far-reaching: it is to arm the pupils with their own expertise in demonic cunning and to encourage them to observe this cunning for themselves: Ei)/ tij bou/loito tw=n monaxw=n a)gri¿wn peiraqh=nai daimo/nwn kai th=j au)tw=n te/xnhn e(/cin labei=n, threi¿tw touìj logismou/j, kaiì taÜj e)pita¯seij shmeiou/sqw tou/twn, kaiì taÜj a)ne/seij, kaiì taÜj metemploka¯j, kaiì touìj xro/nouj, kaiì ti¿nej tw=n daimo/nwn oi( tou=to poiou=ntej, kaiì poi=oj poi¿% dai¿moni a)kolouqei=, kaiì ti¿j ti¿ni ou)x e(/petai! Kaiì zhtei/tw paraÜ Xristou= tou/twn touìj lo/gouj. Pa/nu gaÜr xalepai¿nousin e)piì toi=j gnwstikw/teron thìn praktikhìn metiou=si, boulo/menoi katatoceu/ein e)n skotomh/n$ touìj eu)qei=j t$= kardi¿#.

If any monk wishes to experience the cruel demons and to grasp their art, he should observe the [demonic] thoughts and note their intensification and diminution, and their interconnectedness, and their timing, and which demons produce what, and which demon follows which, and which does not come after which; and he should seek from Christ the inner spiritual principles of these things. They are extremely angry with those who approach the monastic praxis with more knowledge, for they wish to ‘shoot arrows in darkness at the upright of heart’ (Ps. 10.2).67

The subject-matter in this work of observation is always the soul, with its thoughts and the soul’s various reactions to them. The resulting understanding is thus also profoundly empirical. Consequently, although the demons use certain kinds of representations and thoughts in the mind as material for assault on the soul, warfare against them itself hinges upon empirical knowledge rooted in the operation of the senses and the deductive powers of the mind.68 (vii) The beneficial concepts of material objects As has been seen above, Evagrius opined that, among concepts, ‘some stamp our ruling part (toì h(gemonikoìn h(mw=n) and give it a representation, while others solely bring about knowledge without stamping the intellect or giving it a representation’.69 There are passages in the Scripture, Evagrius explains, which, like John 1.1, convey concepts about the divine things without using analogies from sensory data:

67 Practicus 50. 68 Nevertheless, the knowledge of the invisible battle, while being the sine qua non for a successful completion of the spiritual journey, is not the pinnacle of spiritual knowledge. In the eÃsxaton, when evil is manifestly shown to be non-existent, the soul’s military skills will become obsolete. 69 Thoughts 41.3–5.

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Evagrius Ponticus For [the verse] ‘In the beginning was the Logos and the Logos was with God’,70 while placing some notion within the heart, neither introduces a representation into it nor stamps it.71

Being wholly bodiless, God has no corporeal image for the mind to grasp. Therefore, Scriptural passages treating of God alone do not stamp the mind. There are also figurative passages, like Is. 6.1, which ‘in their form appear to imprint upon the intellect, while in their signification do not’.72 Finally, passages, like Matt. 26.26, which refer to material objects, such as the cup and the bread that Christ held and the words he uttered in instituting the Eucharist, treat of divine things by means of material concepts and thus stamp the mind. Such concepts, then, are beneficial for the soul and conducive to knowledge precisely because of their ability to instil edifying images from the life of Christ and salvation history in the mind. (viii) ‘On the Thoughts’ 17: the sheep- and wolf-like concepts The celebrated passage in On the Thoughts 17 sets out a complex analogy between the thoughts in the mind and either sheep or wolves. Evagrius thus establishes the stark contrast between the good and the evil representations: taÜ noh/mata tou= ai)w=noj tou/tou o( ku/rioj kaqa¯per pro/bata¯ tina t%= a)gaq%= poime/ ni t%= a)nqrw/p% pare/doke! “kaiì gaÜr, fhsi¿, suìn toìn ai)w=na e)/doken e)n kardi¿# au)tou=”, suzeu/caj au)t%= qumoìn kaiì e)piqumi¿an proìj boh/qeian, i(/na diaÜ meìn tou= qumou= fugadeu/$ taÜ tw=n lu/kwn noh/mata, diaÜ deì th=j e)piqumi¿aj ste/rg$ taÜ pro/ bata, kaiì u(poì tw=n u(etw=n kaiì a)ne/mwn polla¯kij ballo/menoj . . . .

The Lord entrusted the concepts of this age to man as a kind of sheep to a good shepherd. For it is said: ‘He gave the world to his heart’;73 to help him, He joined to him the irascible part and the desirous part, so that with the former he would put to flight the representations that are from the wolves, and with the latter he would cherish the sheep ….74

Here the antithesis to the images formed in the mind through sensation is not imageless knowledge; rather, to wicked images are opposed the beneficial images that are ‘the sheep’. The good shepherd tending his sheep and protecting them against the wolves in John 10 is part of the originating context for the passage. The mind’s function is to discern between the two kinds of concepts, so as to nurture the good, whilst doing away with the evil ones. The nurturing of the beneficial images is prescribed because of their peaceful and meek nature. Far from arousing confusion, distress and passion in the soul, they foster the spiritual contemplation of both the outer and the inner universes.

70 John 1.1. 71 ou) mhìn sxhmati¿zei au)thìn ou)deì tupoi=, Thoughts 41.3–5. 72 Thoughts 41.6–10. 73 Eccl. 3.11. 74 Thoughts 17.1–7.

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(ix) The relationship between sensory perception, logical demonstration and the logoi of creation That Evagrius believed the spiritual knowledge to be connected in a certain manner with undistorted natural sense perception is very clear from the relationship he establishes between sense perception, a)po/deicij, ‘demonstration’, and the contemplation of the lo/goi of beings. The link is explored at the outset of the important Chapter 25 of On the Thoughts, the bulk of which has been seen to treat of the workings of sense-perception and concept-formation: Those who, from the realities (e)k tw=n pragma¯twn), have contemplated some of the entities present in natures, have also constructed demonstrations (taÜj a¹podei¿ceij) from the things contemplated (e)k tw=n qewrhqe/ntwn).75

In these Evagrius’s lines, the a©podei/ceij, ‘logical demonstrations’, go back to the theory of the demonstrative syllogism which was widely employed in Late Antiquity in scientific discourses and was traceable to Aristotle.76 This was the method for the reasoned acquisition of scientific knowledge (e)pisth/mh) involving drawing an inference from something already known. The things already intuitively known, the premises, from which the conclusions were demonstrated, are to be true, universal and immediate. They also are primary (that is, such that there are no other premises prior to them), non-demonstrable and causative of the conclusions. Since the conclusions arrived at through reasoning from these premises are necessary facts – for scientific knowledge is only concerned with such facts – the premises from which the demonstration is conducted must also be necessary. The premises are not known from sense perception.77 Reverting to the passage just cited, ‘some of the realities present in natures’ appear to be what elsewhere in his oeuvre Evagrius terms the lo/goi of creation. These are the dynamic immaterial principles and raisons d’être of all created beings and objects. They are also traces of the divine interventions into the created order. Evagrius makes it clear that, in the antithesis to the objects themselves, their logoi, being entirely immaterial, are not subject to ordinary sense perception but belong exclusively to the domain of mystical knowledge. Consequently, the contemplation of the logoi is beyond the powers of one who still finds oneself at the level of monastic praxis rather than that of contemplation. At the same time, Evagrius also strives to ease the tension between spirit and nature by asserting that from its inception the contemplation of the logoi of things is ‘from the realities’. Although he does not open this up nor does he mention in the cited passage senseperception, from the overall subject-matter of On the Thoughts 25 it follows that ‘from the realities’ signifies the created physical things themselves, whose images are grasped by sensation. Dispassionate discerning of the shapes, colours and other physical characteristics of objects eventually leads to the mind’s discovery of their inner realities. There is a sense, then, in which the spiritual contemplation of the 75 Thoughts 25.1–3. 76 As expounded in An.Pr., An.Post. and Topica. 77 Cf. An.Post. I.1–3.

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logoi of beings commences with the physical observation of the world and the formation of concepts. This establishes strong common ground between undistorted sense-perception and spiritual contemplation: while sense-perception is surpassed by contemplation, the latter is impossible without the former. On the basis of this connection, and in view of the empirical nature of sense-perception, contemplation too is in some sense initially dependent upon empiric observation. The demonstrative syllogism is typically constructed from premises that are universally and intuitively known and eternally true. In Evagrius’s reinterpretation of the theory, probably via earlier Christian and Stoic routes, the logoi of beings, which are not known apart from God’s grace, seem to supply the premises for the kind of reasoning through which the demonstrative syllogisms are constructed. Evagrius thus posits a fascinating three-fold catenation: sense-perception gives rise to the spiritual contemplation of the logoi of beings, which in turn enables the formation of the demonstrative syllogisms, which give rise to scientific knowledge. On the whole, if there is place for a dichotomy between sensation and contemplation or nature and grace in his schema, Evagrius shows these incompatibilities to be reconciled at a higher spiritual level, by propounding a smooth transition within the intellect of the gnwstiko/j from the more physical to the more spiritual perception. (x) Secular learning versus spiritual knowledge: ‘Gnosticus’ 4.1–5 and 45.1–4 In a number of passages Evagrius emphatically78 contrasts secular learning with spiritual knowledge. Thus Gnosticus 4.1–5 distinguishes between knowledge ‘that comes from outside’ and knowledge that is ‘from the grace of God’ on the basis of the manner in which the two kinds of knowledge access their subject matter: H( meìn e)/cwqen h(mi=n sumbai¿nousa gnw=sij, diaÜ tw=n lo/gwn u(podeiknu/ein peira=tai taÜj u(/laj! h( deì e)k Qeou= xa¯ritoj e)gginome/nh, au)toyeiì tv= dianoi¿# pari¿sthsi taÜpra¯/gmata, proìj a(/ ble/pwn o( nou=j, touìj au)tw=n lo/gouj prosi¿etai! a)ntikei¿tai deì tv= meìn prote/r# o)rghì kaiì qumo/j ….

‘The knowledge that comes from outside’ (e)/cwqen) is Evagrius’s usual mode of designating secular learning.79 It does not necessarily depend on virtue and grace and is here contrasted with the knowledge that is grace-given. The difficulty of this enigmatic passage lies in interpreting the diaÜ tw=n lo/gwn. Clearly two interpretations are possible. First, the phrase can mean ‘through the immaterial spiritual principles’. Second, it can convey the sense of learning ‘through instructions or discussions (with teachers)’.80

78 By employing the antithetic construction meìn … deì. 79 Cf. e)k th=j eÓcwqen sofi/aj, in Sch.Ps.118.85 and Letter 63, 2.6. 80 Géhin’s distinguished translation in SC 356 favours the first interpretation and thus takes both instances of the term lo/goi to mean the same thing, namely ‘the immaterial spiritual principles of things’.

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If in both lines 1 and 4 the term lo/goi is taken to mean one and the same thing, ‘the immaterial spiritual principles’, we obtain the following sense: 1. The knowledge that reaches to us from outside strives to intimate the substances through the inner spiritual principles. By contrast, the knowledge that comes about from the grace of God presents the objects to the reasoning faculty directly,81 [so that] gazing at them, the intellect receives their inner spiritual principles, opposes the first; anger and irascibility …. Clearly, on this reading, the pivotal contrast of the passage is completely obliterated. Both kinds of enlightenment, the secular learning and the knowledge from divine grace, are based upon the mind’s grasping the immaterial principles of things, so that there is no real difference between the two. If, however, the lo/goi in line 1 are taken to mean ‘teachings’, the following translation is obtained: 2. The knowledge that reaches us from outside strives to intimate the substances by means of instructions/discussions. By contrast, the knowledge that comes about from the grace of God presents the objects to the reasoning faculty directly,82 [so that] gazing at them, the intellect receives their inner spiritual principles, opposes the first; anger and irascibility …. Even though on this construal one and the same term lo/goi signifies two different things, 2) is clearly preferable. A textual indication of a lack of parallelism between the two instances of lo/goi in the passage is that in line 1 the term stands unqualified, whereas in line 4 it is qualified by the pronominal au)tw=n. This suggests a dissimilarity of meaning between lines 1 and 4. An even stronger argument in favour of 2) is that it sharpens the focal contrast of the passage: that between the vastly differing dimensions of the two kinds of knowledge: indirect, which comes from outside, and direct, arising through empirical observation and God’s grace. On this interpretation, the following sense obtained:secular learning instructs about the world through teachings received from others.83 This learning is not first-hand experiential knowledge, nor does it concern itself with the inner spiritual realities of things. By contrast, God’s grace allows, first, our intellect and, second, our reasoning faculty to obtain first-hand experiential knowledge of the world. By gazing upon objects, the intellect grasps their inner spiritual principles. Faulty argumentation opposes secular learning; passions – knowledge through spiritual contemplation. Such reading of the passage seems to suggest both that the knowledge of the logoi is in some manner dependent on sense-perception and that, conversely, sensation is rooted in grace. This important observation paves the way for interpreting other, immaterial and non-sensory, kinds of knowledge in Evagrius. What is important 81 Literally, ‘having seen them for oneself’. 82 Literally, ‘having seen them with its own eyes’ (Lampe, A Patristic Greek Lexicon). 83 On this reading, ‘teachings received from others’ is implied, rather than spelled out, by the characterization of this kind of knowledge as ‘external’.

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at this stage, however, is to note that, in the passage above, Evagrius contrasts secular learning (in the acquisition of which he was engaged prior to his flight to the desert) with experiential first-hand cognition, rather than contrasting natural sensory perception with the spiritual knowledge through grace. In fact, sensory perception appears to be collocated here with the knowledge that is grace-given. Moreover, true scientific demonstration is to be distinguished from secular ‘outside’ learning described in Gnosticus 4: while the former is grace-given, the latter is not. Gnosticus 45.1–4 might be interpreted as in the very least not contradicting the interpretation of Gnosticus 4 offered above. While contrasting secular learning received ‘from men’ with God-given knowledge, the passage does not make a contradistinction between sensory perception as such and the spiritual knowledge: Diligent study and exercise strengthen the knowledge that comes from men (a)po£ a)nqrw/ pwn). … By contrast, righteousness, the absence of anger, and mercy [strengthen] the knowledge that is born in us from the grace of God (e)k Qeou= xa¯ritoj).

‘Knowledge that comes from men’ signifies the learning born through studying other men’s teachings rather than through first-hand experience. It is thus synonymous with the ‘e)/cwqen’ knowledge in Gnosticus 4. It is true, that the second half of Gnosticus 45 treats of the peak spiritual experience of light-vision, rather than about ordinary sensory perception. Nevertheless, mystical knowledge of this kind is also empirical, even if it exercises spiritual rather than bodily senses. In both passages the same term e)k qeou= xa¯ritoj, is employed, suggesting identical types of experience that comes about via sense perception. Consequently, Evagrius’s epistemology is characterised by these two broad categories: the secular knowledge received ‘from men’, that is, by word of mouth or from secular books, on the one hand, and on the other hand, grace-given knowledge, which begins with undistorted sense-perception. (xi) Concluding remarks While the theory of images and imagelessness is all-important for Evagrius’s epistemic system, the scholars’ claim that he advocates radical iconoclasm associated with an extreme depreciation of the body (and thus its senses) lacks foundation. This confusion has resulted from the scholars’ failure to draw proper and consistent distinctions between ‘simple thoughts’ and ‘impure thoughts’, between the concepts that stamp the intellect and those that do not, and between the instances when demonic involvement is present and those when it is absent. In Evagrius, images and concepts are the building blocks of knowledge. Sensation and conceptual thinking are an indispensable part of God’s plan for the human nature’s return to the knowledge of Him. Images and objects are thus not bad in themselves, because they do not necessarily disturb, excite and deceive the mind. It is only when the mind is thus manipulated that harm occurs. Only the images and desires associated with them that deceive and estrange from God are to be suppressed.84

84 Cf. Practicus 62.

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Moreover, since the mind’s perfect calm in front of the visions of objects in dreams85 is a mark of impassibility and spiritual progress, even dubious images can be seen as useful, because they supply testing mechanisms of the attainment of higher spiritual states. The spiritual knowledge of the logoi of beings is based upon dispassionate observation of the created universe. It is true that, at the level of perfect impassibility, the ascetic becomes receptive of more immaterial kinds of knowledge. One begins to experience states when not only passionate thoughts but all thoughts are abandoned in favour of imageless contemplation. Such spiritual attainment, however, is only true and lasting when ordinary concept-acquisition has been normalised through praxis.

85 Practicus 64.

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Chapter 3

Natural contemplation versus knowledge of God’s essence As it progresses in the life of praxis, the soul is gradually raised from merely external observation of things to the contemplation of their spiritual essences, the logoi. This is what Evagrius calls qewri¿a fusikh¿, ‘natural contemplation’. Just as in the Eucharist the physical bread and wine are sacramentally changed, so in natural contemplation the mind’s eye perceives the materiality of the universe become transfigured by grace. The universe is then revealed as the locus, at once physical and spiritual, of God’s graceful self-revelation. Through contemplation, the seeing mind interiorizes the cosmic drama, thus, from an observer, becoming a participant and finally the locus par excellence of God’s encounter with the universe. In this way the mind is transformed into the ‘true church’ of God, where the cosmic liturgy takes place. In this encounter, both the corporeality and immateriality of the universe and of man are inseparably intertwined. The idea of matter that emerges from this conception of natural contemplation is overwhelmingly positive. Matter is hallowed; it is spiritual; it is transformational. Like the Eucharist and the Scripture, the material universe is sacramental. Natural contemplation, however, is not the summit of spiritual knowledge. Evagrius instructs that it is to be distinguished from the perception of what he calls God’s very essence. Over the past few decades cursory remarks have been made about Evagrius’s views on these two contrasting states of spiritual awakening, the most extensive survey of relevant Evagrian material being Guillaumont’s posthumous monograph.1 Nonetheless, no comprehensive enquiry has been made into the exact nature of the relationship between the two kinds of gnw=sij. As the discussion of this chapter unfolds, various perspectives relevant to this fundamental contrast in Evagrius’s epistemology will be assessed. Evagrius’s view about the role of Christ in natural contemplation will be studied. It will become apparent, it is hoped, how Christ is the key that unlocks the mystery of the lower natural contemplation. Further on, attention will be given to Evagrius’s cataphatic and apophatic approaches. While several scholars have surveyed this matter, there is a lack of agreement about the precise nature of the functioning of these two elements in his system.2 Consideration will then be given to the so-called Cappadocian 1 Un philosophe au désert (2000). 2 On the lack of apophaticism in Evagrius, see von Balthasar, ‘Metaphysik und Mystik des Evagrius Ponticus’ (1939), Hausherr, ‘Le Traité de l’Oraison d’Évagre le Pontique (Pseudo Nil)’, (1934); ‘Contemplation’, DC; ‘Grands Courants’ (1935), Guillaumont, Évagre le Pontique: Traité Pratique ou le Moine, SC 171 (1971), p. 679. On the presence

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theologians as Evagrius’s possible background and influence in the question whether knowledge of God and knowledge of any kind is possible. Scholars have long sought to establish Evagrius’s strong dependence in this issue upon the Cappadocian antiEunomian writings. The sections below will investigate this claim. Demonstrating that Evagrius’s roots in this issue are not so much ‘Cappadocian’ as eclectic will result in a more accurate picture than hitherto achieved regarding both Evagrius’s sources and the scope of Cappadocian influences. (i) Differing levels of contemplation Evagrius envisages several stages of spiritual contemplative knowledge. While perfection is constituted by the spiritual knowledge of the Holy Trinity or God Himself (gnw=sij qeou=), one attains to it as a result of a laborious scaling up a succession of lower contemplative stages, of which natural contemplation makes the introductory stage. It is no easy task to systematise Evagrius’s doctrine of natural contemplation. As is generally the case with his oeuvre, Evagrius’s ideas about the degrees and substance of contemplation are scattered across his entire corpus, so that allowance has to be made for differing contexts. The difficulty is aggravated by Evagrius’s style of exposition, often constituted by series of riddles and allusions that are to be interpreted in context with his other (equally impenetrable) maxims. While in some definitions, Evagrius presents the reader with a fivefold contemplative ascent, in others he has a more generalised twofold distinction and lastly a quite complicated threefold distinction. Thus Kephalaia Gnostica I.27 contains the most extended presentation of the doctrine of contemplation. The entire edifice of qewri¿a consists of the five capital contemplations and the four orders of the logoi as the object of contemplation. Evagrius starts by defining the highest contemplative level, then descending down to the lower levels: Five are the capital contemplations, under which all contemplation is placed. It is said that the first is the contemplation of the holy Trinity, which is to be worshipped; the second and third are the contemplation of the incorporeal things and of bodies; the fourth and the fifth are the contemplation of judgement and of providence.

Sometimes Evagrius classifies spiritual knowledge more broadly into the contemplation of creation (qewri¿a fusikh/), on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the knowledge of God as such (gnw=sij qeou=). Finally, KG I.74 presents a tri-partite schema of spiritual knowledge, which Evagrius mysteriously terms ‘the light of the intellect’:

of apophaticism in Evagrius see: Bamberger, Evagrius Ponticus: Praktikos, Chapters on Prayer (1970), p. xc; Ware, ‘Nous and Noesis in Plato, Aristotle and Evagrius of Pontus: Evagrios Pontikos als Metaphysiker und Mystiker’, Diotima, 13 (1985), Golitsin, Et Introibo (1994), p. 323.

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The light of the intellect is divided into three: the knowledge of the holy Trinity, which is to be worshipped; the incorporeal nature created by it; and the contemplation of [the corporeal] beings.

Light is quintessential in Evagrius’s immensely rich barrage of the imagery for spiritual awareness and illumination. In this kephalaion Evagrius grades natural contemplation into the lower and the higher degrees, which he likens to two kinds of light, of differing intensity, both of which, however, fall below the brightest light of all: the knowledge of the Trinity. Evagrius’s other typical simile for knowledge, illumination and contemplation is that of restorative drink. Thus, echoing the complex symbolism of water and wine in Proverbs 9.2, as well as in John 2 and 4, KG V.32 presents the same contemplative gradation from a new angle: What the first cup contains resembles wine; this is the knowledge of the incorporeal beings. And that which is in the second cup has the sign of water, that is to say, the contemplation of the bodies. Of these two, the latter is the cup that Wisdom3 has mingled up for us.

Whilst betraying traditional Christological-Eucharistic overtones, with which patristic writers frequently associated the figure of Wisdom in the Wisdom literature, the kephalaion also highlights specifically Evagrian motifs about the two degrees of contemplative knowledge and Christ’s role in them. The point of this kephalaion appears to be that, whilst Christ-Wisdom plays a special role in instructing the mind about ‘the contemplation of the bodies’, he has no function in the imparting of the ‘knowledge of the incorporeals’. Whatever slight variations, throughout his corpus Evagrius’s preferred terminology for the levels of natural contemplation is: ‘the first natural contemplation’ (the prw=ta), corresponding to the knowledge of ‘the incorporeal nature’, and ‘the second natural contemplation’ (the deute/ra), which is the knowledge of the corporeal beings, in KG I.74 above. KG II.47 further sharpens the distinctions of I.74 above by affirming that the two levels of natural contemplation consist in meditating upon the logoi of things immaterial and the logoi of bodies, but that the knowledge of the Trinity is beyond contemplation of any kind. The lower degree of contemplation uplifts the mind towards a higher contemplative level, which in turn assists towards the knowledge of God. Illustrative of this gradation, KG III.61 announces: ‘Virtues reveal to the intellect the second natural contemplation, which makes it see the first; and the first, in turn, enables [the intellect] to see the holy Unity’.4 3 The capitalization signifies the personifications of Sofi¿a Qeou=, traditionally identified with the divine Logos and, in some sense, with Christ. This is to be distinguished from the wisdom of God and the wisdom of Christ understood simply as attributes of God and Christ. 4 Expounding Evagrius’s symbolism of the numbers four and five in the Kephalaia Gnostica, Guillaumont offers the following helpful systematisation: the secondary natural contemplation has as its object ‘the bodies formed of the four elements’, whilst the first natural contemplation, operating through the intellect’s five spiritual senses, focuses upon ‘the immaterial natures’. See Les ‘Képhalaia Gnostica’ d’Évagre le Pontique, p. 22.

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(ii) The δευτέρα and the �ρω½τα (a) The deute/ra The second natural contemplation begins with the external observation of the bodies. At some instant, however, the mind’s perception abandons the materiality of external shapes and their concepts in favour of the more spiritual vision of the things’ immaterial logoi.5 These possess something of a double identity, both as quasi-essences of beings themselves and reflections of God’s action upon beings. The insight that the logoi provide, then, is at once in-depth spiritual knowledge of creation and a measure of the knowledge of divine action upon creation. The Evagrian principle that some of the invisible divine characteristics are discernible through its effects upon the visible universe is rooted in a tradition that goes back to Scripture. Thus the ‘invisible things of [God]’, which are ‘clearly seen being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead’6 is what Evagrius thinks the logoi of creation reveal and what in some respect they are. (b) The prw=ta The object of the first natural contemplation is the logoi of the bodiless creation (taÜa©sw¯mata) or the intelligible creation (taÜ nohta¯). Thus KG V.57 instructs: Just as now we [first] perceive the sensible objects through the senses and later, having been purified, we also come to know their logoi, in the same way we will first see the realities themselves (au)taÜ taÜ pra¯gmata) and [then], having been purified more, we will also know the contemplation concerning them, after which it is possible to know even the Holy Trinity itself.7

Here ‘the realities themselves’ are contrasted with ‘the sensible objects’ and thus stand for the incorporeal beings. These will become revealed to the mind after it grasps the logoi of the bodies. ‘The contemplation concerning’ them appears to be the subsequent in-depth knowledge of their inner identities, the logoi. There is an important Christological angle to the subject of the two natural contemplations. KG III.24 and III.26 draw a clear distinction between, on the one hand, the primary and secondary contemplations and, on the other, the creative activities of God and Christ. KG III.24: The knowledge of the first nature is the spiritual contemplation which the Creator (NAEBK) employed in fashioning the minds alone; these are receptacles of His nature.

By contrast, KG III.26:

5 See KG V.57 cited below. 6 Romans 1.19–20. 7 The Greek is in Hausherr, Nouveaux fragments, p. 231.

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The knowledge that concerns the second nature is the spiritual contemplation which Christ employed in creating (NAEBK) the nature of bodies and the worlds from it.

Kephalaia III.24 and III.26 thus formulate an interesting set of metaphysical and epistemological principles. One of them is the assertion of two logically and metaphysically connected yet distinct creative acts, that of the incorporeal beings preceding that of the corporeal ones. When through the second and the first natural contemplations the human mind comes to know the created realities, this process is analogous to the primordial creative activities of God and Christ in fashioning, respectively, the immaterial and material beings. God and Christ create through the first and the second natural contemplations. The realities that in some sense are thought by God and by Christ become realised as creatures. Thus Evagrius conceives of God and of Christ as minds.8 A point to be gathered from the two kephalaia, however, is the contrast between the two creator-figures in them. ‘The Creator’ in III.24 is clearly juxtaposed with ‘Christ’ in III.26. While it is Christ who is responsible for the second, corporeal, creation, it is ‘the Creator’, who is not Christ, who is the fashioner of the first, incorporeal, one. Consequently, ‘the Creator’ of III.24 is best construed as God, whose powers are dissimilar – and superior – from those of the ‘Christ’ of III.26. (iii) The λóγοι as the inner identities of beings In Evagrius, the knowledge of the logoi of things amounts to a grasp of the inner natures and identities of beings whose logoi they are. Thus, in support of Evagrius’s own position in the matter of the logoi, Practicus 92 cites the great Abba Anthony, who considered the contemplation of creation (evidently in its logoi) an exercise in learning the very ‘nature of beings’ (h( fu/sij tw=n gegono/twn).9 The origins of Evagrius’s doctrine of the logoi are eclectic and difficult to trace back to definite sources or specific authors. However, one can find ideas about the logoi of things in Clement, Philo, and in Stoic milieu, which fertilised both the thought of Philo and that of Christian Apologists. In particular, the background for Evagrius’s idea of the logoi has a precedent in Stoic theories10 of the logos as phusis. In Stoic terminology, the terms logos and phusis are often synonymous 8 For the evidence of two creations see, for example, KG II.66 (cited in Chapter 5). That the first creation is outside time is intimated in KG VI.9, ‘If time is considered together with genesis and destruction, the genesis of the incorporeals is a-temporal, because no destruction precedes this genesis’. That the intellects were simultaneously brought into existence in the first creation is suggested in KG III.45, ‘One cannot say that one intellect is older than another’. 9 This Evagrius’s logion seems to point to a closer connection between Evagrius and Abba Anthony than is often assumed. On the possibility of these affinities see Rubenson, ‘Evagrios Pontikos und die Theologie der Wüste’ (1993), and O’Laughlin, ‘Closing the Gap between Anthony and Evagrius’ (1999). 10 On the Stoic background to the Evagrius doctrine see Guillaumont, Introduction to Practicus, pp. 20–24. Also Stewart, ‘Imageless Prayer and the Theological Vision of Evagrius Ponticus’.

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and expressive of the inner identity of a thing.11 In Stoics (notably in Cleanthes)12 one comes across the principle that one must live according to one’s inner logos.13 This is the same as to live in accordance with one’s nature. Thus in Zeno, one finds the injunction that one should o(mologoume/nwj zh=n, which seems to presuppose both ‘nature’ and ‘logos’.14 A similar idea, of living according to one’s nature, is expressed in Chrysippus.15 If passions (pa/qh) pervert one’s nature, to act according to a passion is to conduct oneself contrary to nature. Then, to live dispassionately is to conform to one’s nature and logos.16 The same near-synonymy of logos and phusis is obtained in Christian Middle Platonists. Clement’s conception of acting h(qikw=j te kaiì fusikw=j kaiì logikw=j,17 ‘ethically, naturally and rationally’, also suggests that ethical behaviour is, at the same time, one that accords with one’s nature, one’s principle of being and reason. Sin is both the soul’s ‘passion against nature’18 and disobedience to its logos.19 If Evagrius develops his theory of the logoi on these lines, then in his scheme the knowledge of the logoi of beings amounts to a very strong epistemological claim. This can be construed as in-depth knowledge of what the created realities are in themselves. Evagrius’s seminal conception of ‘ignorance’ (a)gnwsi¿a) appears to confirm this prima facie inference. Thus Practicus 87 maintains that, just like knowledge, ignorance is twofold. There is one kind of ignorance regarding created beings and a different kind of agnôsia altogether, one that qualifies the knowledge of God. Whilst the ignorance of the first kind has a limit, the second kind of ignorance is infinite because it concerns an infinite being. Leaving aside for the moment the question of the ignorance with regard to God, Evagrius’s view that the ignorance concerning creatures comes to an end amounts to the opinion that the knowledge of the universe is finite and the mind can become equipped to comprehend its totality. The knowledge of things in their logoi, then, presupposes a very high degree of cataphatic knowledge. Thus natural contemplation involves a distinctly optimistic epistemology regarding creatures: through the logoi, the mind comprehends their entire being.20

11 Spanneut, Le Stoicisme des Pères de l’Église, p. 241. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid., p. 242. 17 Strom. IV.163.3. 18 Paed. I.6.1. 19 Ibid., I.101.1–2; 102.1. 20 Larchet, Thérapeutique des Maladies Spirituelles, p. 768, designates the knowledge of things in their logoi as the knowledge of ‘leur essence spirituelle’. See also Guillaumont, op. cit., p. 290.

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(iv) God as a mind in Evagrius and his predecessors The conception of God as a mind that Evagrius utilises in his doctrine of natural contemplation occurs in other writers of Late Antiquity such as Origen, Clement, Philo, the Middle and Neo-Platonists, and ultimately Plato. Thereby Evagrius develops a common stock idea from the intellectual milieu of that age. The maxim that God is a ‘simple intellectual nature’ (intellectualis natura simplex), a mona¯j and e(na¯j, and an intellect (mens)21 is formulated at the very inception of Origen’s On First Principles.22 Himself a mind, God is the source of minds.23 In virtue of this, the created intellectual nature has a certain propinquitas, affinity, with God.24 In the Greek original, the term used for this idea is suggenh½, as in On First Principles.III.1.13.25 Evagrius, who was definitely familiar with Origen’s writings, in his metaphysical framework utilises the analogous idea of an affinity between God as the Mind par excellence and the created intelligences. In Stromateis V.16.3, Clement maintains that the divine ideas are the results of God’s thoughts or even His thoughts themselves: ‘The idea is the thought (e)nno/hma) of God’.26 Before him, Philo held the same view when, in De Opif. Mun. IV.17–19, he claimed that the architect, before actually building the town, has the patterns (tu/ poi) of each of the buildings in his soul.27 These tu/poi of Philo and the e) n noh/ m ata of Clement are the intelligible ideas in the mind of God that become the immaterial prototypes and patterns for the material creation. Both Clement and Philo would have obtained the conception of God as a mind from interpreters of Plato, many of whom thought that Plato’s immaterial ideas were resident in God as thoughts in His mind.28 Of the Neo-Platonics, later on, a very similar idea is found in Plotinus: together with its thoughts, the transcendent nous is the source of the existence of the ideas and of all things.29 21 P.Arch. I.1.6.150 ff. 22 It is true that, whilst He is a mind (nou=j/mens), Origen’s God is likewise beyond any mind and essence (e)pe/keina nou= kaiì ou)si¿aj) (C.Cels., VII.38.1–2). However, whether characterized as a mind or as beyond all minds, Origen’s God is ‘simple, and invisible, and incorporeal’ (ibid.). In line with the Christian tradition, Origen considers God to be above all minds in the sense that He is the ultimate subject and not an object. Yet, even when envisaged as supra-intellectual, there is no doubt that this God is capable of thought, love and compassion. Thus, whether conceptualized as a mind or as transcending all minds, Origen’s God invariably bears fundamental characteristics of an intellectual nature. 23 Ibid. 154. 24 Ibid., I.1.7.253. 25 For the idea of God’s affinity with the created intellects in Origen see also P.Arch. IV.2.7; IV.4.10; Exhortation to Martyrdom 47. 26 Strom.V.16.3 (III.336.8), Cited in Lilla, op. cit., 202. 27 ‘wÀsper e)n khr%= t$= e(autou= yux$= touìj e(ka¯stwn deca¯menoj tu/pouj’, De Opif. Mund. 18. Cited in Lilla, ibid. 28 Cf. Alcinoos, Epitome, IX.1.3; Galen, Hist. Phil. 25 and 427; Atticus in Eusebius, Praep. Ev., XV.XII.815: the ideas are ‘taÜ tou= qeou= noh/mata’. Yet Rich claims that Plato himself never described the ideas as the thoughts of God or as the content of a divine intellect. See ‘The Platonic Ideas as the Thoughts of God’, 123. 29 ‘hÄ dh=lon oÀti nou=j wÄn oÃntwj noei= taÜ oÃnta kaiì u(fi¿sthsin’. Enn. V.9.5.12–13.

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Enquiring further still, this particular interpretation of Plato may itself be the result of a conflation of different conceptions originating from a variety of sources. One such conflation appears to be the result of equating Plato’s transcendent ideas with the Stoic immanent spermatikoiì lo/goi, ‘the seminal principles’.30 Thus Philo places the Stoic immanent logoi within the Logos or the mind of God.31 However, the ultimate source for the hybrid idea Evagrius uses of a creator God whose thoughts are the rationale for creation, is impossible to trace. (v) Human intellect in natural contemplation: the idea of affinity Despite striving for consistency in the general lineaments of his vision, Evagrius is far from being rigidly systematic in his language and concepts. He seems to endow the human intellect with the aptitude for the second and at least potential capacity for the first natural contemplation, thereby introducing a bifurcated analogy. On the one hand, the contemplating human mind-soul is in some sense like God, who creates through the activity of contemplation. However, in contemplating the created minds, the human mind is also akin to the immaterial created objects of its contemplation. In both cases, the analogy is based on the fact that the things compared are both minds. In the first instance, it is the similarity between God’s creative work and man’s activity of contemplation that brings about an analogy between God and man. This correspondence, however, never amounts to an ontological proximity. It will be seen below that, in Evagrius, a similarity between two beings with regard to their activity and capacity for knowledge does not strictly amount to an ontological identity.32 In the second, however, a parallel is drawn between the contemplating soul-mind and the created minds the objects of its contemplation. For this correlation the term ‘kindred’ is used. The term seems to belong to a general stock of metaphysical ideas and terminology current in Late Antiquity. It has a Platonic provenance33 and is used by Christian and non-Christian thinkers alike in discourses about contemplation.34 At the level of the first natural contemplation the human intellect encounters created immaterial realities with which its own immateriality becomes kindred. Thus in KG V.73 Evagrius maintains: ‘The intellect is in admiration when it beholds the [immaterial] objects. It is not troubled in their contemplation but runs [toward them] as if toward kindred beings and friends.’ The Greek source for the Syriac ‘kindred’ found in this kephalaion is probably suggenh=j,35 which, in this context, designates a relationship of proximity between the immaterial intellect and the immaterial object of its contemplation. The subject 30 Cf. Rich, ‘The Platonic Ideas’, 125. 31 De Opif. Mund. V. On this see Bréhier, Les idées philosophiques et réligieuses de Philon d’Alexandrie, p. 97. 32 This general principle is at work in Evagrius’s doctrine of Christ. See Chapter 5. 33 The Republic VI.487a. 34 Cf. Gregory of Nazianzus, Or.28.12, where the mind engaged in contemplation is described as being preoccupied with things that are ‘kindred’ to it (suggene/si). 35 Guillaumont, Un philosophe au désert, 291, n. 1.

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and object of contemplation mutually shape one another and thus become in some sense ‘akin’. In the present context, where the analogy is drawn between the human mind and the immaterial created minds, the term ‘kindred’ actually points to a full ontological identity of numerically distinct beings. Evagrius appears to envisage one big class of beings to which all created minds, human, angelic, demonic and astral, belong. While being diversified numerically and according to the degree of their depravity, they are identical with respect to their ontological status. (vi) The logoi of providence and judgement Beside the first and the second contemplations, Evagrius also envisages what amounts to a third kind of qewri/a fusikh¿: the contemplation of the logoi of God’s providence and judgement. References to these are especially prominent in Gnosticus, Scholia on the Psalms, Scholia to Proverbs and to Ecclesiastes, and the Kephalaia Gnostica. Gnosticus 48 presents an elaborate definition of the contemplation of God’s providence and judgement: Exercise yourself within yourself at all times in the logoi about providence and judgement (touìj periì pronoi/aj kaiì kri/sewj … lo/gouj) …. And you will find the logoi about judgement in the diversity of the bodies and the worlds, while those about providence, in the dispositions (tro/poij) that lead us up from evil and ignorance toward virtue or knowledge.

As much else in Evagrius, entirely systematic conclusions regarding his theory of providence and judgement are elusive.36 It appears however that these are the logoi whose master is God par excellence since they especially concern the divine plan of sustaining and redeeming the fallen creation. Inasmuch as both the material and immaterial creation is fallen, the divine providence and judgement embrace the entire created universe, visible and invisible. Although these are no terminological inventions of Evagrius, the prominent role that providence and judgement play in his theory of natural contemplation is yet another testimony to his theological ingenuity. In fact the terminology is considered to be so unique to him, that for some scholars it constitutes an unmistakable mark of his authorship.37 This opinion is not entirely justified. Despite the unique degree of development that the doctrine received at his hands, Evagrius did not lack an initial source. His first inspiration for it appears to be Origen. On First Principles II.11.5.176–83 describes the fullness of knowledge that Christ will reveal to the believer as the knowledge of ‘the reasons (rationes) for all things that happen on earth’.38 Among these ‘reasons’ is ‘the judgement of the divine providence about

36 Thus Evagrius does not explain exactly how the contemplation of God’s providence and judgement relate to the contemplation specifically of the logoi of beings. 37 Cf. von Balthasar, ‘Die Hiera’, 104. Likewise Dysinger, Psalmody, 178. 38 P.Arch. II.11.5.147.

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each individual being’.39 Origen thus couples providence and judgement together while, in his love of definitions and analysis, Evagrius sometimes breaks them into two successive, if indivisible, stages. As Gnosticus 48 suggests, while God’s judgement precedes His providence, their contemplation reverses the order, with the logoi of judgement accessed first and those of providence later. Evagrius approaches the broader theme of God’s providence and judgement as encoded within the material and immaterial creation from different perspectives. Some of these envisage the created universe as God’s sacred book, God’s mirror, and, finally, God’s church, with the divine providence and judgement variously revealed in each of these. (a) Creation as God’s book The celebrated Scholion 8 on Psalm 138.16 uses a potent image of creation as God’s book. Creation is manifested as a source of gnw=sij on a par with Scripture: The contemplation of the embodied and bodiless beings is the book of God, in which the pure mind (nou=j kaqaro/j) comes to be written through knowledge. And in this book both the logoi of providence and of judgement (oi( periì pro/ n oiaj kaiì kri¿ s ewj lo/ g oi ) are written, through which book God is known as creator (dhmiourgo/ j), wise (sofo/ j ), provident (pronohth/j) and judge (krith/j). [He is] creator on account of the things that have come from non-being into being; wise through the logoi hidden in them (diaÜtouìj a)pokeime/nouj lo/gouj e)n au)toi=j); provident through the things contributing toward our virtue and knowledge; and moreover judge through differing bodies of rational beings, the diversified worlds and the ages that comprise them (diaÜ taÜ dia¯fora sw/

mata tw=n logikw=n kaiì touìj poiki¿louj ko/smouj kaiì touìj perie/xontaj tou/touj ai)w=naj).40

The entire creation, embodied and bodiless, is comprised in the book of God, who is its author. Through natural contemplation, the purified mind comes to know the rich multiplicity of the universe. In doing so, there is a sense in which the mind’s own true spiritual identity becomes known and realised. In becoming conformed to its true identity, the contemplating mind comes to be written in ‘the book of God’ too. It appears that, by studying the logoi of beings first, the mind then comes to an understanding of the principles of divine providence and judgement about them. Consequently these latter logoi seem to constitute something of a more general metaphysical category, inclusive of the logoi of the first and second natural contemplations. God’s providence and judgement is the God’s self-manifestation to creation. Just as Scripture, the book of creation is the locus where God has left traces of His acts. Through His acts God came to be named with the variety of names that the Scholion enumerates. As one diligently applies oneself to the study of Scripture, so must one persevere in scrutinizing the sacred book of creation. In fact absorbing the spiritual 39 Ibid. 40 Sch.Ps. 138.16(2).

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sense of Scripture and penetrating the sacred essence of creation are both termed ‘contemplation’ (qewri¿a). One meditates over the words of Scripture just as one contemplates the logoi of creation: ‘Nothing else delivers the soul from evil thoughts but the contemplation (qewri¿a) of the words of God [=Scripture] …’, maintains Evagrius.41 (b) Creation as God’s mirror God’s providence and judgement are also reflected within creation as within a mirror. Thus, KG II.1 speaks of the divine action being mirrored in created things: The mirror of the goodness of God, of his power and his wisdom, are those things that before from nothing became something.

Contemplating creation in its logoi, then, the human mind makes uses of the universe as of a mirror in which to discern God’s wisdom. In its turn, the soul is a mirror, too, in which the world is reflected (cf. KG V.64). The idea of the visible world and the soul as two polished mirrors reflecting divine actions is common in Late Antiquity. Gregory of Nyssa’s use of the mirror image for the human heart will be discussed below.42 (c) Creation and the soul as God’s church. Christ’s role as the priest and Ecclesiastes In another sense the universe is also a temple of God’s presence:43 God resides in the cosmos through the logoi of providence and judgement. The entire cosmos is the place of divine worship. Its essence is the encounter between the knowing intellect, the created beings and God. Creation thus becomes the instrumental cause for an event that is sacramental. In the course of this encounter things created uplift the intellect toward spiritual realities. Evagrius’s sacramental theology thus encompasses much more than the earthly liturgy performed by ordained clergy. The contemplation/knowledge of the logoi of creation and their destinies makes one’s entire life sacramental. Scholion 1 on Ecclesiastes 1.1 identifies ‘the church of the pure souls’ as the true knowledge of the ages and the worlds, of judgement and of providence (kri¿sewj kaiì pro/noiaj). Consequently, the spiritual knowledge characteristic of ‘the church of the pure souls’ embraces providence and judgement. The Ecclesiastes (whose name Evagrius derives from ekklêsia) is the one who gives birth to the knowledge of both. The Ecclesiastes is Christ. ‘The church of pure souls’ is not to be understood in any external sense. It is both the spiritual essence of the universe and the mystical inner chamber within the soul where the true worship of God takes place. Christ, 41 Sch.Ps. 118.92. 42 The metaphor of the mirror is prominent in Plotinus, Enn. IV.3.12. In him, however, the image of a mirror is rife with danger and seduction. 43 Sch.Ps. 83.3.1, however, points out that it is the contemplation of the bodiless creation only, the prw=ta, that is the temple of God.

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then, is the one who teaches the soul the contemplative knowledge about God’s providence and judgement as these principles are encoded within creation. Christ is also the archetypal Chief Priest who officiates at the cosmic liturgy within the soul and the universe. Christ, however, does not seem to be the one to whom the liturgy is offered. (vii) The creative wisdom of God and Christ The themes of God’s mirror, book and temple are inseparable from that of God’s wisdom. If the cosmos and the human mind are like God’s mirror, book and church, then the trace or reality of God that is reflected in the mirror, inscribed in the book and adored in the church of the creation is what Evagrius calls the wisdom of God. Perhaps ‘the wisdom of God’ is Evagrius’s other appellation for God’s activity of providence and judgement, through which God creates, conserves and saves the world. Like the divine providence and judgement, the wisdom of God reveals itself to the mind through the spiritual contemplation of natures. In fact, every created being is infused with the divine wisdom, since God made all things ‘in wisdom’.44 God’s creative wisdom is His primary agent power. Hence Evagrius’s analogy between the artisan and God. The artisan is known through his handiwork. In the same way God reveals Himself to the mind when the latter contemplates the creation. God is present in His creation in His wisdom. This is expressed in a somewhat circumlocutory way in KG I.14: You can see every art in the one who presides over it. As for the knowledge of the One Who is,45 you will find it in all these things – if our Lord made all things in wisdom.46

Evagrius’s sources for the idea of divine wisdom are multiple and inter-connected in a complex way. The wisdom of God as the primary creative power is found in the Jewish-Alexandrine philosophy. Thus Prov. 8.22, ‘ku/rioj eÓktise/n me a¹rxhìn o¨dw=n au©t ou= ei)j eÓ r ga au) t ou=’, and the Wisdom of Solomon 9.9, ‘kaiì metaÜ sou= h¸ sofi¿a h¸ ei¹d ui=a taÜ eÓ r ga sou kaiì parou= s a oÐ te e) poi¿ e ij toì n ko/ smon’ are both in some sense prototypical of Evagrius’s picture of the sofi¿a QeouÍ. ‘The manifold wisdom’ of God of Eph.3.10 unmistakably provides the background for Evagrius’s analogous conception of the divine manifold creative wisdom, which penetrates the entire universe and is the cause of its variety, harmony and beauty. God ‘is everywhere, because in all things that He made He is present through “His manifold wisdom”…’ (KG I.43). This element of Evagrius’s doctrine of God’s self-revelation in creation merits further elucidation, as here one is confronted with a technical distinction that seems original to Evagrius and is an integral part of his metaphysics. Among Evagrius’s key maxims on the creative wisdom as the power of God, found predominantly in the Kephalaia Gnostica, some treat of ‘the manifold wisdom’. This type of wisdom, 44 Ps. 103.24. 45 Cf. Ex. 3.14. 46 KG I.14.

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which is responsible for the variegated diversity of the cosmos, itself appears to be multiple.47 Other passages, however, describe different, unified, creative wisdom, ‘the wisdom of the Unity’.48 Consider the following kephalaia. KG I.43, in full: God is present in every place, yet He is not in a particular place. He is everywhere, because in all things that He made He is present through ‘His manifold wisdom’.49 Nevertheless He is not in a particular place because He does not belong to the category of beings.50

KG II.2: In the secondary natural contemplation, we behold ‘the manifold wisdom’51 of Christ, which he used in his creation of the worlds.

KG II.21: All that was made proclaims ‘God’s manifold wisdom’.52 Yet among all beings there is none that instructs about His essence.

KG III.11: The bodily nature has received ‘the manifold wisdom’53 of Christ. Yet it is not receptive of [Christ] himself. By contrast, the incorporeal nature both declares the wisdom of the Unity and is receptive of it.

Of these, some references to ‘the manifold wisdom’ are associated with ‘Christ’ (II.2 and III.11), while others with ‘God’ (I.43 and II.21). On the other hand, III.11 strictly assigns ‘the manifold wisdom’ to Christ, with ‘the wisdom of the Unity’ being contrasted with both ‘the manifold wisdom’ and Christ. How are these Evagrius’s data to be interpreted? The best reading, which is consistent with all these nuances, seems to be the following. While both Christ and God can be viewed as the source of ‘the manifold wisdom’, the one God alone is the origin of the unified wisdom. The only way to reconcile both these positions seems to be to postulate that, while Christ’s wisdom is restricted to the lower, variegated, gradation of wisdom, causative only of the created material diversity and associated with the second natural contemplation, God is the true source of all levels of wisdom, both the variegated and the unified kind, the latter, as the cause of the incorporeal minds, being associated with the first natural contemplation.54 47 KG I.43; II.2; II.21; III.11. 48 KG III.11. 49 Eph. 3.10. 50 The Greek is in Evagrius, p. 58. 51 Cf. Eph. 3.10. 52 Eph. 3.10. 53 Eph. 3.10. 54 In his excellent discussion of Scholion 8 on Psalm 138.16 on God’s providence and judgment (Psalmody and Prayer 178), Dysinger rightly observes that the wisdom of God

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(viii) God’s self-revelation through physical objects Evagrius thinks that the material creation is both opaque and translucent.55 It both conceals and reveals God’s action upon the world. When the mind is sufficiently purified, the opaqueness of objects is lifted and the spiritual principles concealed within shine through. These are the logoi of beings and the logoi of God’s providence and judgement about them. Inasmuch as the physical objects reveal something of the spiritual reality and of God’s action of grace upon the world, Evagrius does not have the duality of nature versus grace. Nevertheless, even proficiency in the contemplation of the logoi is powerless to lift up the mind all the way to God. While revealing something of the divine properties, the logoi of creation conceal God Himself. Material objects and their immaterial logoi forever remain mere intermediaries between the mind and God, because the mind thinks of them first and of God second and through inference. Natural contemplation, therefore, involves inevitable deferral and regress. It is a path to the Truth that breaks off …. Evagrius’s KG I.73, ‘… the contemplation of beings is the abundant mercy of God’,56 may be interpreted as an allusion to this fundamental principle. The knowledge to which natural contemplation gives rise is limited to ‘the abundant mercy of God’ and does not reveal God Himself. In the system of Evagrius’s definitions, to know ‘the … mercy of God’ is much inferior to knowing God Himself, just as coming upon a footprint does not in itself accord a vision of the one that left it. (ix) Direct and unmediated knowledge of God Evagrius forcefully asserts the possibility of different and higher knowledge: direct knowledge/seeing of God. He expresses this insight by using analogies with sensory perception, especially that of physical sight. Thus, with striking simplicity, Kephalaia Gnostica III.30 declares: The spiritual intellect is the seer (NAEBK) of the Holy Trinity.

The claim here is that in this kind of mystical perception there is no element of mediation between the mind and God as the object of knowledge. Unlike lower kinds of knowledge, it is obtainable through pure prayer to God alone and not through the

revealed in the logoi of providence and judgment is also the wisdom of Christ. However, that both God and Christ possess ‘the manifold wisdom’ cannot be regarded as manifestation of an identity of their activity and power and thus as proof that Evagrius’s Christ is strictly divine. Anticipating the discussion in Chapter 5, the contrast between the kinds of wisdom that God and Christ have corresponds to an ontological distinction between the Logos of God and Christ. 55 Cf. KG V.57. 56 ‘toì ... eàleoj kuri¿ou h¸ tw=n gegono/twn qewri¿a e)sti¿’. The Greek is in Sch.Ps. 67.4 (PG 12.1488c.)

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contemplation of beings. As Evagrius puts it, in pure prayer the mind communicates with God ‘without any intermediary’ (mhdenoìj mesiteu/ontoj).57 (x) God’s essence versus God’s wisdom On Prayer 3 cited above helps understand another paramount opposition in Evagrius’s schema, that between God’s creative wisdom and His ‘essence’ or ‘nature’. In Evagrius’s nomenclature, to know ‘God’s essence/nature’ is to gain unmediated knowledge of God, or the knowledge of God Himself. Consider the following texts: KG II.21 (already cited above) expresses this opposition. The Syriac S2 translation of II.21 employs the term kiono, which is the normal rendering of the Greek ousia or phusis used in the Triadological context to distinguish one common essence or nature of God from the three distinct divine Persons.58 The kephalaion compares and contrasts two successive stages of spiritual ascent. The first and lower one consists in knowing the manifold wisdom of God. It is superseded by a higher one, that of the knowledge of God’s nature. The distinction is further elucidated in KG V.51: He who beholds the Creator from the harmony of beings does not know His nature. Yet he knows His wisdom, by which He fashioned all things. I do not say ‘substantial wisdom’, but the wisdom that appears in beings, the one which the experts in this matter call ‘natural contemplation’. And if this is so, what is the folly of those who claim to know the nature of God!

While natural contemplation prepares the contemplating mind for the direct intuition of God, it is powerless to bring it about. ‘The nature of God’ is known through other means, which the kephalaion refuses to disclose. Instead it introduces the concept of ‘substantial wisdom’ (probably, sofi/a ou)siw/dhj in the original Greek), which elsewhere is rendered also as ‘substantial knowledge’. Finally, KG III.081 is especially succinct in formulating the same principle: The one who knows God knows either His nature or His wisdom, which He used when He created all things.

(xi) Evagrius’s apophaticism Were Evagrius to construe the knowledge of the divine essence as an exhaustively complete knowledge of God’s entire being, this mode of knowing would presuppose non-duality whereby the inquiring human mind would not be distinguishable from God. This would at once jeopardise the fundamental Christian ex nihilo doctrine of 57 On Prayer, 3. Cited in Ware, ‘Nous and Noesis in Plato, Aristotle and Evagrius of Pontus’, p. 161. 58 See Payne Smith, A Compendious Syriac Dictionary. The term kyono was used in Syriac to render the Chalcedonian definition of ‘one person in two natures’.

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creation, whereby God is wholly other in respect to the universe He fashions. On the other hand, if Evagrius’s concept of the knowledge of God’s essence is a way to suggest a mode of knowing God that, while profound and true, can never equal the perfection of knowledge, such knowledge claims are more moderate and not at variance with the traditional belief in the twofold nature of God’s revelation: that while we know something of God in His works, we also know that not everything of God is subject to inquiry. Evagrius’s position can be assessed on the evidence of the following concepts he uses: a) ‘substantial knowledge’, b) ‘infinite ignorance’ and c) God’s transcendence and inexpressibility. (a) ‘Substantial knowledge’59 Kephalaia Gnostica I.89 introduces the concept of ‘substantial knowledge’: The entire rational nature was naturally made in order to be and in order to be a knowing [nature]. God, however, is substantial knowledge. The rational nature has the opposition of non-being, and [its] knowledge [has the opposition] of wickedness and ignorance. Yet none of these things opposes God.

The passage juxtaposes the absoluteness of God and the limitations of creatures. ‘Substantial knowledge’ is strikingly identified with God’s perfect being. Consequently, ‘substantial knowledge’ stands for the perfection of knowledge and of being. Although created minds participate in some forms of the spiritual knowledge, their participation in it is an accidental characteristic and is subject to increase and diminution. It is clear that creatures are not ‘substantial knowledge’. Thus the concept of ‘substantial knowledge’ bears no relation to creation but describes God’s own being. There is, then, no manner in which the created rational nature can claim equality of being and knowledge with God. KG II.47 insists that the Trinity alone (NAEBK) is substantial knowledge. Nothing else can appropriately be characterised in this way. The passage also explicitly asserts the ontological chasm between creature and God: The Trinity is not placed together with the contemplation of the sensible and the intelligible beings. Neither is it numbered with the objects that exist, because [the sensible creation] is a composition and [the intelligible beings] are creatures. The Holy Trinity, however, is alone substantial knowledge.

Like KG I.89 above, KG I.1 and I.2 point out that in God there is no opposition because God is free from detachable characteristics. What language predicates of God refers to what God immutably is rather than what He temporarily has. Changeability characterises creatures. Evagrius thus maintains that created beings are utterly unlike the being of God:

59 ‘Substantial knowledge’ translates the Greek gnw= s ij ou) s iw/ d hj .

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KG I.1: To the First Good there is nothing opposed, because it is Good in its essence and there is nothing opposite to essential goodness.60 KG I.2: Opposition resides in the unions and mixtures of things, and the unions and mixtures are found in material objects. Opposition, then, is in created beings.61

KG I.3 develops the God-creatures juxtaposition further. The relationship that exists between them is founded upon their un-likeness: while God can be known by rational creatures, God always utterly surpasses them: KG I.3: Every rational nature is a knowing being, and our God is knowable. He dwells indivisibly in the things in which He dwells, rather like the artist is present in the work of art he has created. Yet He is not [this creation] and is more excellent than it because He exists substantially.62

KG III.12 touches upon the possibility for the created mind to attain to ‘substantial knowledge’ as to the mind’s highest perfection. Cumulative data63 suggests that this perfection is that of the last things. Yet even though the mind can be capable of ‘receiving’ substantial knowledge, the kephalaion is silent regarding the possibility of its becoming this knowledge: The perfect intellect is one who is able to receive easily substantial knowledge.

With regard to the capabilities of the perfect intellect, substantial knowledge is also designated as the ‘immaterial knowledge’ and as the ‘seeing’ of the Trinity. Like substantial knowledge, immaterial knowledge too is the Trinity itself. Thus we have in III.15: They say that the perfection of the intellect is immaterial knowledge and immaterial knowledge is the Trinity alone. It is clear, therefore, that in the perfection [of things] nothing of matter will remain. And if this is so, the intellect thenceforth naked will become the seer of the Trinity.

III.49 likewise testifies to the fact that substantial knowledge is obtainable by the intellect: The intellect will not be crowned with the crown of substantial knowledge unless it chases far from himself the ignorance64 of the two struggles.

Thus ‘substantial knowledge’ is about God’s very being, so that God is this knowledge. The term seems to be loosely synonymous with ‘God’s essence’. As its final perfection, the intellect may attain to it but can never become it. This is Evagrius’s way of saying that created minds can never become ontologically 60 The Greek is in Evagrius, p. 56. 61 The Greek is in Evagrius, p. 56. 62 The Greek is in Evagrius, p. 56. 63 Especially Evagrius’s eschatological passages assessed in Chapter 6 below. 64 Corrected by Guillaumont from ‘knowledge’ (in Syriac, ‘knowledge’ is spelt like ‘ignorance’ but without the negative prefix).

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indistinguishable from God. With regard to safeguarding God’s mysteriousness and unknowability, then, Evagrius does not differ from the Late Antique theologians such as Philo, the Apostle Paul and the Apologists, renowned for their apophatic approach. This important feature of Evagrius’s theological epistemology is further confirmed by another cautionary ‘device’, Evagrius’s conception of ‘the ignorance’ about God. (b) ‘Infinite ignorance’ Evagrius makes mention both of knowledge and of ignorance as characteristics of the created minds. Both knowledge and ignorance exist in relation either to other created beings or to God. In his theory of natural contemplation, Evagrius appears to be of the opinion that both the knowledge and the ignorance about creatures are finite: the dispassionate mind can accede to the perfect knowledge regarding creatures, whereby the ignorance regarding them will come to an end. The picture is different in what concerns the knowledge and ignorance about God. In passages such as KG III.64, Evagrius undoubtedly asserts the possibility of the knowledge of God: If among things that delight there is none sweeter than honey and the honeycomb65 and if the knowledge of God is said to be superior to these – it is clear that among everything on earth there is none that grants delight like the knowledge of God.

On the other hand, the Scholion on Psalm 144.3 seems to suggest that, while the contemplative knowledge of beings can be exhaustive, the mind can never exhaust all that there is to be known of God. Here God’s endless being and perfection is expressed by the term ‘substantial wisdom’, a near synonym of ‘substantial knowledge’: The contemplation of all beings is limited (pepera¯twtai); the knowledge of the Holy Trinity is alone without limit (a¹pe/rantoj), for [the Trinity] is substantial wisdom.

KG III.63 draws a parallel between the amount of knowledge and the measure of ignorance one can have with regard to a given entity: If one’s knowledge is limited, so is one’s ignorance. And if one’s ignorance knows no bounds, so does one’s knowledge.

Once again, this passage can be convincingly interpreted as postulating the finitude of created beings and the infinity of God. The knowledge of God remains forever inexhaustible. Even when, at the end of times, sin will no longer constitute an obstacle to the mind’s knowledge of beings and of God,66 this will not exhaust the substantial knowledge which is God. There will always be more of God to be known. In this sense, the mind’s ignorance with respect to God 65 Pss. 18.10 and 118.103. 66 Cf. the eschatological KG III.68: ‘Just as the first rest of God will reveal the diminution of wickedness and the annihilation of the gross bodies, so also the second [rest] will reveal the destruction of bodies (which are the secondary beings) and so the diminution of ignorance’.

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will endure. The knowledge of God will forever remain without bounds, because this is a characteristic of the uncreated. The seraphim, who are minds loftier than humans, cover their faces with two wings to signify that ‘they do not gaze with boldness upon things inscrutable’.67 This is because ‘the rule of spiritual contemplation is not only that we admire but also that we dare not search out everything …’.68 In a famous article ‘Ignorance Infinie’,69 Hausherr maintained that Evagrius’s concept of boundless ignorance bears no resemblance to the idea of mystical darkness concealing the transcendent God, which is prominent in champions of negative theology like Philo, Gregory of Nyssa and Pseudo-Dionysius. Lars Thunberg, while disagreeing with Hausherr on finer nuances of this Evagrian concept, is of one mind with him in denying the presence in Evagrius of the apophatic element.70 Any attentive reading of Evagrius, however, necessitates a re-evaluation of this critique: Evagrius’s conceptions of the boundless knowledge and the boundless ignorance regarding God are a potent way of affirming that God is transcendent, infinite and uncircumscript. Like Chrysostom’s vision of a ‘partial knowledge of God’, gnw=sij merikh¿,71 Evagrius’s ‘substantial knowledge’ and ‘infinite ignorance’ together help secure the ontologically unbridgeable divide between the uncreated God and the created world. Although creatures can come to the knowledge of God’s essence, they are unable to participate in it.72 (c) God’s transcendence and inexpressibility From his earliest writings, Evagrius maintained that God is incorporeal, formless, and without attributes. God is utterly removed from the sensible word and is not apprehended by the senses. God may be a mona¯j and an e(na¯j, yet He is above all number, for number is characteristic of bodies, time and space.73 Because He completely transcends all created categories, God is ineffable and indefinable. This is why, Gnosticus 27 admonishes: ‘… Never define the divine (toì qei=on). For definitions are [fitting] for [created] and composite beings (tw=n gegono/twn kaiìsunqe/t wn).’ Being neither, God is beyond definition of any kind. That God is so transcendent as to elude definition and conceptualisation presupposes that no being can come to know God fully as He knows Himself. (xii) Summary Evagrius, then, distinguishes two different levels of the knowledge of the divine. The first is the knowledge to which the intellect attains by contemplating the spiritual identities of created beings, the logoi. The entire created universe becomes 67 On the Seraphim, p. 373. 68 Ibid. 69 OCP II (1936), 351–62. 70 Microcosm and Mediator, p. 382 ff. 71 On the Incomprehensibility of God, Homs. I.95.174; II.383; III.333. 72 Cf. also Casiday, ‘Deification in Origen, Evagrius and Cassian’, p. 998. 73 Cf. De fide orthodoxa.

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transparent to the mind’s eye as God’s sacred book and God’s temple. As well as constituting the identities of created beings, the logoi also testify to God’s creative and economic power encoded in creation. Natural contemplation, then, also allows knowledge about God through His operations and traces within the universe. Akin to the bodily perception at its inception, natural contemplation involves a refinement and transformation of ordinary sensation into spiritual perception. The experience of God’s glorious and wise action travels through the purified senses and rests within the intellect. The intellect then becomes the ‘true church’ of God and a place of worship. Matter and spirit reach a point where they become almost indistinguishable, with the material universe seen as God-filled and transfigured. The second mode of knowing God, however, involves a vastly superior experience of Him, with the process of induction much curtailed. Evagrius terms this the knowledge of ‘God’s essence’ and an ‘unmediated’ experience. Such language signifies an experience not obtained through the mind’s reliance upon anything created but (anticipating Chapter 4 below) through its fixation upon and surge toward God alone. Christ’s role is fundamental in natural contemplation, where he performs the mediating role between God and the soul. It is in an act akin to the second natural contemplation that Christ created the manifold diversity of the universe. He is therefore the key that unlocks the secret of the second natural contemplation. In a more mysterious way, Christ likewise instructs the soul about the first natural contemplation. He is also the High Priest celebrating the cosmic liturgy upon the altar of the purified intellect. Christ, however, has no function in the soul’s knowledge of God’s essence. (xiii) Evagrius’s context Evagrius did not write about the knowledge of God in isolation. Numerous other thinkers in Late Antiquity focussed on the subject of knowing God through the perception of His operations in creation. In their treatment of this matter, some employed terminology, at least superficially consonant with that of Evagrius, of ‘God’s wisdom’ and ‘God’s essence’. In the fourth century, in particular, as theologians of different hues and allegiances theologised on how God manifests Himself, some elected to conceptualise God’s being in terms of His essence, His potentiality, and His actuality. The sections below will examine the relationship between Evagrian writings on the knowledge of God and some comparable texts and insights about the subject in the Cappadocian Fathers. While a survey of parallels between the Evagriana and other writings contemporary with and antedating Evagrius could be almost infinitely extended, the limitations of this study preclude this. The selections made for the present comparison are the most significant in terms of the treatment of this chapter’s subject.

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(xiv) The Cappadocians Over the past few decades scholars suggested that Evagrius’s distinction between God’s wisdom manifested in nature and God’s essence not revealed in nature at all is directly indebted to a conceptual distinction worked out by the three Cappadocian theologians in the course of the anti-Anomoean polemic in late 370s to the early 380s. In 1985 Gendle claimed that Evagrius’s ideas and terminology about the knowledge of God is based on the Cappadocian contrast between God’s unknowable ou)si¿a, ‘essence’, on the one hand, and God’s e)ne/rgiai and duna¯meij, His ‘operations’, and His ‘powers’, on the other.74 In 1994 Golitsin followed Gendle’s sway in maintaining that Evagrius indeed used the Cappadocian distinction between the divine essence and the energies – ‘which he chooses to call the Divine Wisdom (sofi¿a)’.75 In view of these claims, exactly how much Evagrius is indebted to the Cappadocians in these issues is a question worth investigating in some detail. (a) The Anomoean polemic The Anomoean polemic of Aetius and Eunomius was an exercise in the logics of theology. Theirs was a theologising that lay hold of a syllogistic style of rhetoric.76At least in the eyes of his shocked enemies, Eunomius claimed to know the essence of God as fully as God knows it himself.77 All there was to it was to know that God was an unbegotten substance, simple and eternal.78 This simple statement was accessible to anyone. Anyone could have a complete knowledge of God’s essence. That the essences of things were fully known appears to have been Eunomius’s premise that required no demonstration.79 Therein he was a follower of Asterius, who claimed to possess the knowledge of essences. The tool that Eunomius uses to allow anyone to know the essences is their names. For him the terms the Scripture uses fully and exhaustively convey the realities they stand for. The Father alone is the Unoriginate. The Son by contrast has an origin, as Scripture testifies. The difference in names shows the difference in essence between them.80 The difference is the most radical: the Son is unlike the Father with respect to the essence, although he is like the Father with regard to the Father’s activity.81 The Father alone is God, while the Son is a creature (ktisqei=j).82 Nothing that has an origin of some sort is God. The Son is unlike God’s essence, although he is like God’s potential and energy. 74 Gendle, ‘Cappadocian Elements in the Mystical Theology of Evagrius Ponticus’. 75 Golitsin, Et Introibo, p. 323. 76 Cf. Kopecek, A History of Neo-Arianism, p. 313 ff. 77 Eunomius, Fragment 2.3–6 (Vaggione 170), found in Socrates, HE IV.7 (PG 67.473 b–c). 78 Cf. Vaggione, Eunomius: The Extant Works, xiii. 79 Cf. Vaggione, Eunomius of Cyzicus and the Nicene Revolution, 252. 80 Liber Apologeticus, 12.3–4. 81 Liber Apologeticus, 22. Epiphanius declares about Aetius: ‘He dared to say that the Son is un-like (a¹no/moioj) the Father and that he is not identical to the Father according to divinity’ (Panarion, L.III.1.76). 82 Liber Apologeticus, 15.

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These formulations are born in the context of a coup of propaganda and, as such, may not be expressive of all the complexity of the Anomoean position. Nevertheless, it can, with reasonable confidence, be asserted that their tactics were governed by logical assessment of Scriptural texts. The sources of the Anomoeans were probably Plato’s Cratylus,83 the Middle Platonic theory of language, especially that of Alcinoos on the knowledge of essences,84 Aristotle’s theory of the syllogism, and his theory of predication as expounded in the Categories.85 Besides this, like Basil and the other Cappadocians, Eunomius displays signs of operating within Aristotle’s conceptual framework of essences (ou)si/ai), powers/potentialities (duna/ meij), and energies (e)ne/rgeiai). As in Basil, however, the Aristotelian distinction between the potentiality and actuality is often obliterated, so that ‘power’ is often used synonymously with ‘energy’.86 (b) Basil of Caesarea Basil’s response to Eunomius is a fascinating subject of inquiry in its own right. An in-depth study of Basil’s arguments in Against Eunomius, however, would take this discussion too far afield. We shall limit ourselves to a sketch of Basil’s lines of polemic. In response to Eunomius, Basil argues87 that all human knowledge is based on epinoia. This is not at all a process of invention but that of reflection. Through it we come to know that God is ungenerated. Yet epinoia does not allow the knowledge of the essences of things. Therefore the term ‘ungenerated’ is not indicative of God’s essence. God’s essence is incomprehensible.88 Epinoia operates by seizing upon the manifestations of things and discovers that they are varied rather than simple and unified. In his theory of epinoia Basil appears to apply to Christianity the theory that Diogenes Laertius ascribes to the Epicureans in Book X, sections 68 and 32, of his lives of the philosophers.89 Another source for Basil’s anti-Eunomian work is Aristotle. Basil’s knowledge of Categories 12a26–34, on privation as the deprivation of a naturally existent condition, has been noted by commentators.90 However, in his theory about the essences as distinct from their potentialities/energies and in his idea of ‘energetic’ knowledge Basil appears to be dependent on Aristotle’s theory of secondary essences and his distinction of potentiality and actuality.91 Basil’s theory of knowledge is ‘energetic’. It is Basil’s fundamental tenet that, to know an object, one can only know its external manifestations, properties, and energies. 83 Vaggione, op. cit., 239, n. 260. 84 Kopecek, op. cit., 321. 85 For Eunomius’s use of the Categories see Zachhuber, Human Nature in Gregory of Nyssa, pp. 46–48. 86 Cf. Vaggione, Eunomius of Cyzicus, 250–51. 87 Against Eunomius, I.6–7. 88 Kopecek, op. cit., 376. 89 Cited in Kopecek, op. cit., 376. Cf. Basil, Against Eunomius I. 9–10. 90 Kopecek, ibid., 378. 91 For Aristotle’s First Essence and Secondary Essence see Stead, ‘The Concept of Divine Substance’, in Substance and Illusion in Christian Fathers. Aristotle’s theory of Potentiality and Actuality see especially Metaphysics H and Q.

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One comes to know a material object by forming a concept of its manifestations to the senses. The manifestations provide an insight into the identity of the thing whose manifestations they are. Nonetheless, what the thing is in itself, its ou)si/a, ‘essence’, remains inaccessible to senses and therefore unknowable. Therefore, far from being fully expressive of an object’s essence, its manifestations fall short of even approximating it. At the same time, the knowledge that the manifestations and energies provide is a true knowledge. Basil thus exhibits traits echoing some Aristotelian insights in proclaiming an ‘energetic’ theory of knowledge, that is, knowledge on the level of manifestations and operations rather than knowledge on the level of ‘what a thing is in itself’. The latter, in Basil, is termed ‘essence’. Basil, however, puts an apophatic spin on Aristotelian conceptualisations through laying an especial emphasis upon the incompleteness and mystery of the ‘energetic’ knowledge. His key point is that all knowledge is ‘energetic’ and incomplete. The Christian antecedent for Basil’s theory of the knowledge of God and theological language is the Christian Middle Platonic tradition, especially Justin92 and Clement,93 who claimed that no name is expressive of who God is but they all reveal God’s du/namij, ‘power’.94 Evagrius’s epistemology differs from that of Basil even with regard to the knowledge at the level of natural contemplation. In his teaching about the knowledge of the logoi of things, which he all but identifies with the natures of things, Evagrius is not far from claiming knowledge of what things are in themselves rather than what they are in their manifestations. To him the knowledge of ‘what things are in themselves’ is finite, as is any ignorance regarding creation. By contrast, Basil, who proclaims only partial knowledge with regard to both creation and God, makes no use of the conception of knowledge through the logoi. To illustrate his epistemology, Basil cites Gen. 1.1–2 and declares that what would be knowable about the newly created earth would be its sensible manifestations: colour, volume, lightness, heaviness, and density. None of these, however, Basil insists, qualifies the earth with respect to its substance. Whoever wrote down the account of creation ‘refused to examine by curiosity the question of the substance of the earth’.95 The same principle holds good for rational creation. There are different senses to the word ‘knowledge’, Basil avers. When we claim to know a living person, it is the person’s qualities and operations that we know, not the person’s essence. ‘I know Timothy, says Basil, and I do not know him. … I am ignorant of his essence’.96 On the analogy with sensible knowledge, Against Eunomius I.14 asserts that God reveals himself to the spiritual senses of the intellect. Here Basil, like Evagrius, is dependent on Origen’s theory of the five spiritual senses. As with created things, it is God’s manifestations and powers in the created world that are known. How God is in himself, however, his essence (ou)si¿a), remains utterly beyond scrutiny. In the same Letter 235 Basil drives the point home. In God there is that which is knowable 92 Justin, 2nd Apology 5.6–6.3. 93 Clement, Stromateis 5.12. 94 Cf. Kopecek, op. cit., 378. 95 Against Eunomius I.13. 96 Letter 235, to Amphilochius.

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(toì gnwstoìn tou= Qeou=) as well as that which is unknowable. The unknowable about God is ‘beyond examination of any kind’ (a¹peri¿apton panti¿ ).97 This is also totally ineffable and is not to be the subject of human discourse. In a manner reminiscent of Evagrius, Basil’s Letter 34 lists the things that we know of God through creation: His ‘wisdom, power, goodness and providence whereby He cares for us, and the justice of His judgement (kaiì th£n pro/noian ... kaiì toì di¿kaion au¹tou= th=j kri¿sewj)’ – not, however, His very essence (ou¹k au¹thìn thìn o)usi¿an). There is thus, Basil asserts, a real distinction between the essence of God, which is one and simple – and God’s operations, which are multiple (ai( meìn e)ne/rgeiai poiki¿lai, h¸ deì ou)si¿a a¸plh=). It is from God’s activities that we know our God, but His substance itself we do not profess to approach. ‘For His activities (e)ne/rgeiai) descend to us, but His substance (ou¹si¿a) remains inaccessible.’ The only experience of the divine substance that is ours is the perception ‘of His incomprehensibility’ (h¸ aiÃsqhsij au¹tou= th=j a¹katalhyi¿aj). The Letter concludes on a striking Christological note: citing John 1.18 Basil points out that, in the Incarnation, it was likewise God’s power, not His essence, that was declared. Basil thus strongly implies that, of all the means of receiving the revelation of God, the Incarnation is by far the most potent. This is hardly surprising in view of Basil’s unified, God-becomeman, Christology. Consequently Basil’s manifestations-based theory of knowledge applies both the natural and the supernatural realms. This he is able to do in virtue of his unified concept of knowledge: provided human nature is cleansed and restored, there is a bridge between natural sense perception and spiritual experiencing of the divine. This is what enables him to draw, with such ease, parallels between the created and the divine. Evagrius is similar to Basil regarding the idea of the knowledge of God’s operations from creation. Spiritual knowledge grows out of the correct perception of things by the purified senses. On the level of natural contemplation, Evagrius, not unlike Basil, claims that it is impossible to know God’s nature from creation. What is known from creation is merely God’s wisdom, judgement and providence. Yet there is a divergence too. If Basil stresses that all knowledge is manifestation-based and incomplete, Evagrius seems to think that the knowledge of creation is based on the inner logoi rather than external manifestations of things, which the mind eventually grasps in their fullness, and that this knowledge is therefore complete and exhaustive. Evagrius’s divergence from Basil becomes very noticeable at the level of the knowledge of the divine. Here Evagrius is interested in asserting the reality of one’s contact with God Himself, which he expresses in terms of knowing ‘God’s essence’. (c) Gregory of Nazianzus Gregory of Nazianzus’s conception of the ineffability and the knowledge of God is formulated in his Five Theological Orations, composed in Constantinople in 380–81.98 The Nazianzen’s thoughts in these Orations are worth assessing in some detail since, in the view of many, Evagrius was especially close to Gregory and 97 Against Eunomius I.14. 98 See McGuckin, Saint Gregory of Nazianzus, especially pp. 277–88.

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was intimately familiar with the Theological Orations. Guillaumont goes as far as to suggest that Evagrius may have assisted in writing them down.99 The Orations are Gregory’s rebuttal of the Anomoean position. As Basil in Against Eunomius, Gregory too begins with the fundamental premise that, in an object, while its external manifestations are known, its essence or nature remains totally transcendent and ineffable. In Oration 27.3 Gregory inveighs against the Anomoeans for their unrestrained theologising. Things divine are best approached by silence.100 Citing Ps. 46.10, Gregory continues Basil’s line and intimates that, while some truths about God can be known, others are best left out of theological scrutiny.101 Gregory goes on to contrast oikonomia and theologia. In matters of God’s self-revelation, oikonomia, there is scope for investigation, but in the domain of God’s inner life, theologia, there is none. The mind cannot embrace that for which revelation is not given.102 Oration 28 continues to expound the subject of oikonomia as opposed to theologia. By contrast with the former, the latter is characterised as negative and partial. The proper subject of theologia, or theology, is the nature of God. This remains strictly beyond scrutiny. By contrast, Gregory interprets Scriptural names as not expressive of the Father’s and the Son’s essence. In some passages he treats these names as God’s creative acts, while in others as being merely analogies. Oration 28 presents a symbolic interpretation of Exodus 19–20 and Exodus 24, with Moses climbing the holy mountain to approach the divine presence. Like Moses, Gregory is ready to ascend the sacred height but even there expects to find the cloud that will preclude a full vision. The others have to keep at a distance, for drawing near is rife with danger.103 To attain to some vision of the divine, he abandons material things and concepts and withdraws into himself,104 and yet, like a new Moses, it is just God’s ‘hind-parts’ (qeou= taÜ o)pi/sqia)105 that he sees. Gregory’s emphasis is invariably upon the incompleteness and difficulty of the vision of the divine. Yet, as in Basil, the Incarnation is the prime source and vehicle of the knowledge of the divine. When he obtains a glimpse of something of God, Gregory does so sheltered, as Moses did behind the rock, behind the Incarnation of the divine Logos. What Gregory encounters is not ‘the first and pure nature free from mixture (ou¹ thìn prw/thn te kaiì a¹kh/raton fu/sin) … hidden by the cherubim’, but rather ‘the majesty and glory of God’ (megalopre/peia) manifested by creation.106 Even a very great man like Moses stands very far from God and ‘the perfect understanding [of Him] (th=j telei¿aj katalh/yewj)’. Gregory goes on to point out that it is only the few who have discerned the Creator from creation. But regarding the knowledge of God in Himself, in His 99 Un philosophe au désert, 338. 100 Oration 27.3 (PG 36.13). 101 Oration 27.4. 102 Oration 27.10 (PG 36.24–5). 103 Oration 28.2. 104 ‘geno/menoj a¹poì th=j uÀlhj kaiì ei)j e(mautoìn w(j oiâon te sustrafei¿j’, Oration 28.3. 105 Cf. Ex. 33.23. 106 Ibid.

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‘nature and essence’, as opposed to obtaining glimpses of His revelation that He has allowed to be perceived in creation, this is totally impossible.107 One may be able to come to know more of God in the age to come, for we shall know Him ‘even as we are known’ (1 Cor. 13.12). For the present, however, we have to content ourselves with ‘a small ray from the great light’.108 Even those elect persons, who, like the patriarchs Abraham and Jacob, or like the prophet Ezekiel, saw God, it is not God’s nature that they saw. None could boast the total vision of God. All knowledge of God is but partial.109 Like Evagrius, Gregory uses the analogy of the Sun’s light to express his idea of God’s self-revelation. God reveals Himself in creation as the Sun shimmers upon water. This glimmer of the Sun is its true reflection but it is not the Sun itself. In the same way, God’s revelation of Himself in creation is a true one, yet it is not God Himself that one contemplates. It is dangerous to gaze at the Sun itself lest one should be stricken with blindness. Similarly, God is ‘incomprehensible to the human mind’.110 Thus Gregory’s analogy of the Sun’s light is substantially different from that of Evagrius. Evagrius appears to lay especial emphasis upon God’s visibility and accessibility. By contrast, Gregory, while averring the realness of God’s selfrevelation, also warns, in the way Evagrius does not, that God is transcendent and impossible to grasp. The main thrust of the Orations is the via negativa approach to theologising. Even the knowable things about God are beyond our mental capacity and are only accessible in part. By contrast, Evagrius’s purpose is to formulate the gnwstiko¯j’s teaching about how knowledge is possible: creation is completely knowable from its logoi, and God is knowable directly ‘in His essence’. Nonetheless, as is the case with Basil, Gregory balances his via negativa approach with the cataphatic potency of his unified Christology. Gregory’s Christ is emphatically identical with the incarnate Logos. In his Christology, Christ’s human nature both shields and reveals God to the mind in the manner Evagrius’s Christ does not. (d) Gregory of Nyssa Gregory of Nyssa elaborates upon Basil’s metaphysics, epistemology, and the theory of theological language. Like Basil, Gregory is Aristotelian in the sense that he professes the theory of knowledge that, through many reinterpretations, may be traced to Aristotle’s principles of du/namij, ‘potentiality’, and e)ne/rgeia, ‘actuality’. As in Basil, in Gregory of Nyssa this provides a framework for conceptualising all knowledge as only possible at the level of powers and energies but not at that of essences. The fundamental principle remains that we recognise – and therefore define – the essences ‘by their energies’ or inseparable accidents (tai=j e)nergei¿aij taìj ou)si¿aj gnwri¿zomen).111 It is thus that man is defined as

107 Oration 28.13–16. 108 Oration 28.17. 109 Cf. 2 Cor. 13.2–3. Oration 28.20. 110 Oration 28.11. 111 Gregory of Nyssa, Against Eunomius I.420.12.

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‘the laughing animal’ – because no other animal is capable of laughter.112 Although the operations, or energies, of an entity provide true knowledge about the essence of the given entity, the essences and their energies are logically distinct.113 This is the case with God too. God is one but is known in a multiplicity of His operationsenergies. God’s operations and actions in the world and upon human beings become impressed upon the human mind. On the basis of this experience of God’s grace, the human mind invents names and appellations that convey the experience. This is how the multiplicity of the divine names comes about. One and the same God is simultaneously named on the basis of the variety of His operations-energies. In this way God is endowed not just with one but with many appellations, for ‘He takes the name according to each concept that is born in us from [the action of his] energy’.114 The very name qeo/j comes from a divine action-energy that has to do with seeing, ‘for we have believed that the divine is everywhere present and gazes (qea¯sqai) at all things’.115 Using du/namij, ‘power’ and ‘potentiality’, as a synonym of e)ne/rgeia, ‘activity’, ‘energy’ and ‘actuality’, Gregory likens the divine power/activity that is visible ‘through the logoi of foreknowledge and the wonders that are in creation’, to ‘some ray and warmth flowing from the nature of the Sun’, which allows one to worship its source.116 Yet the nature of God remains inconceivable (a¹perino/hton tou= qeou= fu/sin).117 What is the most potent theophany whereby the divine salvific powers reach down to men? The Incarnation, Gregory emphatically answers. It is this event that enables men even to touch that which is beyond apprehension: the divine nature.118 The last statement is intended to cause amazement and is a trope. Everywhere else in his writings Gregory is overwhelmingly apophatic when it comes to the divine nature.119 Nonetheless, the emphasis of Gregory’s theological epistemology is undoubtedly upon the Christ-event as the source par excellence of divine knowledge. The Beatitudes 6 is another classic source for Gregory’s views about the knowledge of God. Gregory holds that the Gospel maxim ‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God’ squares perfectly with the other: ‘No man has seen God at any time’.120 There is a real sense, Gregory believes, in which we cannot know God and another, just as real, in which we can. God really exists both in His nature and in His operations. It is the divine essence (ou)si/a) that surpasses every mental concept, and no human faculty has been found ‘capable of perceiving the incomprehensible’. There are, however three ways in which the invisible and incomprehensible can be both seen and apprehended. First, it is through the divine wisdom that appears in the universe. Similarly to Evagrius, Gregory uses the analogy 112 Ibid., I.421.13–15. 113 Ibid., I.420.3–4. 114 Against Eunomius II.353.8–12. 115 Ibid., 585.8–11. 116 Ibid., 81.17–23. 117 Ibid., 82.30. 118 Ibid., 419.27– 420.32. 119 See The Life of Moses for the imagery of divine darkness within which God conceals himself, as well as for the theme of the infinity of the knowledge of God. 120 John 1.18.

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of the artist revealing himself in his art. However, it is not ‘the nature of the artist’ that is seen, but ‘only his artistic skill, which he has left imprinted on his handiwork’. God’s wisdom is thus seen in His works, for they are all made wisely. Gregory’s theme of God’s wisdom radiating through his handiwork is comparable to the theme of divine creative wisdom in Evagrius. Second, God is known through the divine names with which the Scripture endows Him. ‘He may be contemplated in the things referred to Him’. Yet again these are expressive of God’s operations but not of His nature. ‘For He is invisible by nature (ou¹si¿a) but becomes visible in His energies (e)ne/rgeiai)’. It is God’s energies that are named and recorded in Scripture. Third and finally, the seeing of God by those pure in heart does not refer to seeing Him directly. Rather it means God’s presence within the purified soul. This is what is signified by ‘The kingdom of God is within you’.121 The purified mind is that which is designated as ‘the inner man’ or ‘the heart of man’. It is there that God’s image in man resides. As the iron from which rust has been removed regains its brightness, so the purified mind shines once more with the splendour of ‘the likeness of the archetype’. It will then see within itself as within a perfect mirror ‘purity, sanctity, simplicity, and other such luminous reflections of the divine nature, in which God is contemplated’. Gregory uses yet another Sun analogy, this time with the Sun reflected in a mirror. A polished mirror reflects the Sun no less than the Sun reveals itself. There are undoubtedly similarities between Evagrius and the Nyssen in what concerns the knowledge of God through God’s operations in nature. Their conceptions, both of which make use of the terms ‘essence’ (ou¹si¿a) and ‘wisdom’ (sofi¿a) overlap. Gregory’s idea that the soul knows about God’s gracious action by looking upon itself as upon a perfect mirror parallels Evagrius’s principle that the soul knows of the presence of God’s sanctifying grace in the universe when becoming aware of oneself as the perfect church in which God is worshipped. Both Gregory and Evagrius are very clear that this kind of theophany is that of God’s operations and not of God directly. Moreover, both theologians have a strong Christological dimension to their conception of the knowledge of God’s operations through nature and in the soul. Evagrius and Gregory agree that the knowledge of the divine operations through creation is focused and clustered around Christ. At the same time, Evagrius considerably differs from Gregory in a number of respects. Gregory does not distinguish between the lower and higher creative wisdoms or the lower and higher natural contemplations. Consequently, Gregory does not ascribe to Christ merely the lower wisdom and contemplation. His Christ is responsible not merely for the lower degrees of the spiritual knowledge but for the entire fullness of God’s revelation and salvation. Moreover, it is Christ, God incarnate, who is at the heart of all divine revelation in the soul. Thus, in Gregory, the knowledge of God in the pure soul is overtly Christological.

121 Luke 17.21.

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(xv) Conclusions There are thus both similarities and dissimilarities between Evagrius and the Cappadocians. Evagrius’s terminology and ideas, in some respects, overlap with those of Basil and the two Gregories. Similarly to the latter, Evagrius operates with the term ‘God’s essence’ to denote God’s very being, contrasting it with the term ‘wisdom’, which stands for God’s self-manifestations in the universe. Where natural contemplation/knowledge is concerned, Evagrius contrasts God’s creative wisdom, known through creation, with God’s essence, not knowable in this way. This distinction corresponds only in part with the Cappadocian contrast between God’s operations, known imperfectly through creation, and God’s essence, not known by any means at all. Regarding the knowledge of created beings themselves, Evagrius differs from the Cappadocians. He envisages the knowledge of beings in their logoi, which he claims fully reveal the inner identities of the things whose logoi they are. Evagrius thus postulates knowledge of beings, which is at once both spiritual and finite. By contrast, the Cappadocians aver knowledge of beings that relies not on grasping their innermost identities but on their external manifestations, the ‘energies’. This knowledge is never complete. In this sense it is infinite. According to Basil, knowledge of creation is as much based on apophasis as it is cataphatic. In his Theological Orations, Gregory of Nazianzus focuses upon the knowledge of God rather than that of creatures. Nevertheless, his treatment of the subject would be predictably on lines identical with those of Basil, since the two share the fundamental presupposition that things are known from their energies and that this knowledge is incomplete in that their essences remain unknown. The same applies to Gregory of Nyssa. Gregory’s idea of epectasis, the infinity of the knowledge of God and of the soul’s growth in this knowledge,122 is informed by the principle that all knowledge, both of God and creation, is the knowledge of manifestations and activities rather than of essences. Thus Gregory of Nyssa too conceives of the knowledge of created things as both inexhaustible and ‘energetic’. Evagrius, then, has a different conception of creation, whereby one receives the full knowledge of the inner identities of things. His epistemology of creation is vigorously more optimistic than that of the Cappadocians in terms of what one can actually know. Comparing Evagrius with the Cappadocians with regard to the knowledge of God’s essence is likewise a complex task. Here the divergence between their respective views appears even more glaring. In an apparent strange terminological inversion, Evagrius affirms that which the Cappadocians abjure: that God’s essence is knowable in a real sense. While undoubtedly aware of his early mentors’ essence-energies nomenclature, Evagrius insists on the very language they forbade. This indicates the independence of his theological position from the Cappadocian views and raises the question of whether it was some other influence, probably that of Rufinus and Melania, that proved decisive in the shaping of his mature views.

122 See especially his Life of Moses.

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Rather than coinciding, Evagrius’s ‘God’s essence’ concept merely overlaps with the corresponding Cappadocian one. In Evagrius, while ‘to know the essence of God’ signifies a true and direct encounter with God Himself, it does not suggest the grasping of the entirety of God’s being. It is in virtue of this that Evagrius is able to maintain the contrast between the created mind engaged in the knowledge of God’s essence – and God’s essence. Evagrius’s concepts of ‘substantial knowledge’, which God alone is but which created minds may aspire to attain to, of the infinity of both the knowledge and the ignorance of God, and of the transcendence and the indescribability of God are mechanisms to prevent pantheism. Evagrius’s conceptual and terminological nuances are thus subtly yet significantly different from those of the Cappadocians. In fact, the entire thrust of his theory of the knowledge of God is other than that of the Cappadocians. His purpose is to assert the attainability of a real experience of God in strongly cataphatic terms, whereas that of the Cappadocians is to warn against excessive enthusiasm in making epistemological claims in theology that are based on confidence in human rational powers rather than one’s mystical life in God. These dissimilar projects may reflect the different kinds of audience they were aimed at. The Cappadocian discourses are intended for the benefit of those who fall prey to Eunomius’s reductionist positivism. By contrast, Evagrius’s pithy maxims are directed at a small select circle of monastics leading an austere existence for the sake of a true knowledge of God. His purpose of reassuring his audience that their efforts will be rewarded explains the strong cataphatic streak in his epistemology. Whilst sharing some terms and ideas, then, Evagrius and the Cappadocians differ with regard to others or wield them differently. One possible diagnosis for this state of things is that the co-incidence of terms and concepts is just that: a coincidence. It stems from the fact that Evagrius and the Cappadocians shared the same intellectual universe and were nourished by broadly the same intellectual roots. Nonetheless, the shape that their respective systems eventually took reveals a large degree of independence from one another. This solution to the dilemma, while undermining scholarly stereotypes that tend to reduce the diversity of theological thinking in the late fourth-century East Mediterranean to Cappadocian influence, makes Evagrius much more interesting in that it clears a space for asserting his own creativity and originality. It also opens up avenues for a more complex and nuanced vision of his possible sources. In any case it is no longer tenable that the Cappadocian distinctions strictly served as the parent system for those of Evagrius. Using similar threads, different tapestries are woven. The Cappadocians and Evagrius may have belonged to the same intellectual world, in which the concepts of the divine essence, powers, energies, and wisdom were employed by many, yet they reshaped past models in different ways. The discussion will now move on to an area directly linked with the present one – Evagrius’s theology of light.

Chapter 4

The intellect’s vision of light The contemplative knowledge of ‘God’s essence’ replaces the contemplation of beings and banishes from the mind all preoccupation with creation. It is the ‘direct’1 knowledge/vision of the Creator Himself. At the same time, Evagrius speaks of the vision in this life of ‘the light of the blessed Trinity’2 also as of a peak spiritual experience. What is this light-theology and how does it relate to the ‘knowledge of God’s essence’? (i) Light-experiences: precedents in spiritual tradition While veiled accounts of theophanic experiences associated with light abound in the Christian literature of Late Antiquity, Evagrius is one of the few writers recounting their visionary experiences more directly. Possibly the only predecessor of Evagrius in the Christian spiritual tradition presenting an account of a vision of light from heaven is Luke recounting the conversion of Saul.3 When one turns to ascetic literature broadly contemporary with Evagrius and linked with fourth-century Egyptian monasticism, such as the Letters of Anthony, the Life of Anthony, the writings of Pachomius, and the alphabetico-anonymous collection Apophthegmata partum, there is substantial material there that demonstrates how close Evagrius’s thought was to this cultural milieu. Nonetheless, Evagrius differs from the above writings in this aspect: overt descriptions of states of grace are absent from them. The same conclusion applies to ascetic literature, East and West, that postdates Evagrius, such as Cassian’s Conferences, Palladius’s Historia Lausiaca, the Correspondence of Barsanuphius and John of Gaza and the Ladder of Divine Ascent of John of Sinai. Some of these latter works contain material reminiscent of the Evagriana.4 This concerns, for instance, detailed classifications of vices and virtues. Other material is the edifying lives of saints in which the virtues of humility and obedience are extolled and the importance of prayer stressed. None of these works, however, contain overt descriptions of luminous visions. Because of the explicit 1 Prayer 3: ‘ou¹denoìj mesiteu/ontoj’. 2 Thoughts 42.7. Also Skemmata 4; the Greek text is found in ‘Skemmata (Capita cognoscitiva)’, 3, Muyldermans, p. 15. 3 Acts 9.3–8. 4 At times this seems to be due to unacknowledged borrowings from Evagrius. Thus, Practicus 5 and 6 are found in John of Sinai, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, PG 88.744b and 872b–c, respectively. The latter chapter also appears in part in Cassian, Conferences 5.2, and in John Damascene, On virtues and vices, PG 95.92c–93a.

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character of his mystical accounts, Evagrius makes something of an exception in Christian literature of Late Antiquity. One ascetical Christian writer, however, who is generally contemporary with Evagrius and whose writings contain copious references to light-visions, ought to be mentioned. This is the author of the influential Macarian Homilies. Since he is also a theologian of light-mysticism, Macarius5 is an obvious figure with whom to compare Evagrius. While previous studies have provided comparisons of their respective spiritualities, the overall thrust of Evagrius’s light-theology is an aspect of his thought that has never been properly compared and contrasted with a corresponding material in Macarius. Regarding diachronical comparisons, the obvious thinker to compare and contrast Evagrius with is Plotinus. Plotinus’s writings abound in descriptions of mystical experiences and visions of light.6 Without purporting to trace Evagrian elements immediately back to Plotinus, it will be instructive to pay attention to the question to what extent Evagrius’s descriptions of unio mystica and of visions of light agree with Plotinus’s mystical accounts. Previous scholarship has attempted this latter contextualisation. Thus, in his article on Evagrius’s theology of light,7 Guillaumont claimed to have discovered profound similarities between the mysticism of Plotinus and that of Evagrius. In response to this, in a slightly later article, Bunge opined that Evagrius’s mysticism was genuinely Trinitarian in character and, hence, Christian.8 (ii) The experiential character of Evagrius’s accounts of light The essential question regarding Evagrius’s accounts of light-visions is whether these are to be interpreted metaphorically or as being based on some kind of experience. It is generally agreed that Evagrius was a theologian of experience and practice.9 Thus with regard to prayer, he points in the direction of experientialism: ‘If you are a theologian, you pray truly (a¹lhqw=j); if you pray truly you are a theologian’.10 The epithet ‘true prayer’ signifies an activity generating a knowledge that is both experiential and true. In Evagrius, the two presuppose one another. Since prayer is ‘the mind’s conversation with God’,11 true prayer enables the mind to have a firsthand experience of the divine reality itself as it really is. The knowledge that prayer brings about is to be distinguished, first, from fantasizing about things that do not really exist, and, second, from knowledge that is not experiential but is through hearsay of some kind. Since prayer is a vehicle of light-visions it follows that, like prayer, the visions are also experiential.

5 The author of the Macariana will be referred to as ‘Macarius’, without addressing the complex question of authorship. 6 Cf., Enn. V.3.17.27–37; V.5.7.23–35; V.5.8.1–9; VI.7.36.15–27; VI.9.9.56–9. 7 ‘La Vision de l’Intellect par Lui-même dans la Mystique Évagrienne’ (1985). 8 ‘The ‘Spiritual Prayer’: on the Trinitarian Mysticism of Evagrius of Pontus’ (1986). 9 Cf. Harmless, ‘The Sapphire Light of the Mind’, pp. 498–500. 10 Prayer 60 (PG 79.1180). 11 Prayer 3.

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Conversely, light-visions are an instance of gnostic states, any discussion of which necessarily involves a phenomenological approach, since to reach a gnostic state without experiencing it is an impossibility. Regarding natural contemplation, a lower stage of the spiritual knowledge, the necessary assumption is that it must be experienced by the knowing subject, because otherwise it cannot be the subject’s gnostic state. Despite its Scriptural basis,12 therefore, what Evagrius describes as the intellect’s vision of light, a higher state of spiritual perfection, should be interpreted as personal experience of some kind. The impression that Evagrius’s accounts of light-visions are experiences, is intensified when one notes that in many of these, the description of light points to the phenomenological dimensions of sense-perception,13 colour (sapphire), and physical location (around the head).14 (iii) Προσευχή as the highest form of address to God In Evagrius, light-experiences are especially associated with the activity of proseuxh¿, ‘prayer’. It is therefore essential to have a clear understanding of what Evagrius means by this term. This is not just any manner of addressing God but, in his vocabulary, the highest of its kind. Skemmata 27–30 lists four kinds of verbal addressing of God:15 prayer (proseuxh/); a petition through which one asks God to grant a favour (de/hsij); a vow one offers to God (eu¹xh/); and an intercession on behalf of another person (e)nteu/cij). Yet prayer (proseuxh/), alone is ‘the state16 of the intellect that comes about from the only light of the Holy Trinity’.17 Prayer alone is ‘the mind’s conversation with God’.18 Although the exact verbal formula in prayer remains unspecified, it is clear that, in Evagrius, the term points to a special kind of address to God, in which the goal is not something else, which God brings about, but God Himself. In prayer, it is God alone that the mind seeks. (iv) Characteristics of light-visions On the Thoughts 42 and the Skemmata 23 contain some of Evagrius’s most celebrated descriptions of light-visions.

12 For example, 1 John 1.5 ‘He is light and in him there is no darkness at all’; Ex. 24.9–11, and Ezek. 1.26. 13 Thus, Thoughts 42, and the Skemmata 23 and 42 use the language of ‘seeing’. Unless otherwise stated, all the passages from the Skemmata are cited from the version in cod. paris. graec. 913. 14 Cf. Skemmata 2; 4; 27. 15 Harmless, op. cit., 506, notes that Skemmata, 26–30, is in fact a Scholion to 1 Tim. 2.1. 16 ‘kata¯stasij’, a key theological term in Evagrius frequently designating the ontological status and/or the measure of spiritual proficiency of the created being in question. 17 Skemmata 27. 18 Prayer 3.

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On the Thoughts 42: The representations that stamp and leave an imprint upon our ruling faculty trouble the right eye,19 the one that at the hour of prayer contemplates the blessed light of the holy Trinity.20

Skemmata 23: The intellect will not see the ‘place of God’ (toìn tou= qeou= to/pon)21 within itself unless it has been raised above all the representations contained within objects. And it will not be raised above [them] unless it has stripped off all the passions that bind it to the material things through representations. It will put away passions through virtues, and simple thoughts through spiritual contemplation. Moreover [it will put away] this [contemplation also]22 – once the light has been manifested to it (e)pifa¯nentoj au¹t%= tou= fwto/j).23

Evagrius thus makes a strong epistemological claim that, during prayer, one may be confronted with a vision of light that is the very light of divinity. Prayer alerts the mind to God’s direct manifestation of Himself, in contradistinction from God’s selfmanifestation through creation or creation’s manifestation of itself. The light that one in some way registers during prayer reveals to the praying mind both God and one’s own self conversing with God. (v) Freedom from representations, passionlessness and ‘the place of God’ In Evagrius’s descriptions of proseuxh/ certain elements recur, while others vary. The crucial characteristic of proseuxh/ is that it is incompatible with any involvement with the world of created beings but focuses upon God alone. Thus, Skemmata 26 characterizes prayer as ‘destructive of every earthly representation (pantoìj e)pigei¿ou noh/matoj)’. The highly mysterious Skemmata 2 expounds the same principle: If one wishes to see the state of [one’s] intellect (kata¯stasij tou= nou=), let him deprive himself of all representations (pa¯ntwn tw=n nohma¯twn), and then he will see [himself] similar to sapphire or the colour of the sky. Yet to do this without passionlessness is of things impossible, for one needs the assistance of God, who breathes into him the kindred light (toì suggeneìj fw=j).24

19 That is, the intellect. 20 Thoughts 42. 21 For Scriptural background to Evagrius’s ‘place of God’ see Gen. 30.2, 50.19; Joshua 24.26; cf. Ps. 75(76).3; as well as Ez. 37.27 and Rev. 13.6. Paramount to Evagrius is Ex. 24.10 and 11, which contain the theophanic imagery of the sapphire stone and the heavenly colour. 22 Pace the translation of Harmless, op. cit., p. 525, and in favour of Géhin’s translation of Thoughts 40, which is a double of Skemmata 23. 23 Skemmata 23. 24 See also Skemmata 20, ‘… Having come to be in prayer [the intellect] dwells in formlessness that is called “the place of God”’.

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The passage urges the mind to strip itself of all representational content. The divesting of the mind will result in its seeing itself (what Evagrius terms its own ‘state’) as the colour of the precious stone sapphire or the illuminated sky.25 The intellect comes to see itself as irradiating light, after it is illumined by the light of God first. That at the time of the vision the divine light is ‘kindred’ with the intellect’s own luminosity points to an assimilation of the powers of the human mind to the action of God. This assimilation announces a genuine oneness with God, according to the principle that like unites with like. Practicus 64 asserts passionlessness as a prerequisite to prayer. Here the vision of light in prayer is regarded as proof of the soul’s dispassionate state: A proof of passionlessness is the intellect that has begun to see its own light ….26

Skemmata 23 cited above contains further cues to Evagrius’s theology of light. By contrast with Skemmata 2, it instructs about the ‘place of God’, rather than the intellect’s own ‘state’, as the object of the vision. Skemmata 23 also goes further in explaining the precise mechanism of the intellect’s liberation from all concerns about the created world as preparation for prayer. First, by practicing virtues, the nous is freed from images that provoke passion.27 Second, at the level of natural contemplation, it is raised from the perception of the external material forms to the contemplation of the inner truth of things. Finally, the mind becomes completely disengaged from the multiplicity of the universe’s forms and colours. To Evagrius, this constitutes the perfect passionlessness and calm of the mind. It is these successive abandonments, which the mind in search of prayer must undergo, that makes prayer ‘spiritual’,28 ‘pure’29 and ‘immaterial’.30 Only at the end of this ascent is the mind ready to see the light of the Trinity. Evagrius thus claims that the knowledge/vision of light is a way of knowing neither through the bodily senses nor by the means of any created vehicle. It belongs to a category apart from all other modes of knowledge. Skemmata 4 presents light-visions as a peak mystical state: The state of the intellect is a noetic peak (uÐyoj nohto/n), comparable in colour to the sky (ou¹rani¿% xrw/mati). The light of the Holy Trinity comes upon it at the hour of prayer.

To the praying mind, then, the light of the Trinity constitutes the mind’s ‘state’ and ‘noetic peak’. The light also marks the ‘place’ where God resides. The three locutions, ‘the state of the mind’, ‘the noetic peak’ and ‘the place of God’, are almost interchangeable. The mind in the ‘state’ of contemplating the divine luminosity is also 25 This description, however, contains a measure of contradiction, since the colour of sapphire itself is a representation of some kind. 26 Practicus 64.1–2, ‘A)paqei¿aj tekmh/rion, nou=j a¹rca¯menoj toì oi)kei=on fe/ggoj o(ra=n’. 27 As in Thoughts 17 cited above, the mind is freed from the intelligible ‘wolves’ and remains with only ‘the sheep’ to ‘feed upon’. 28 Prayer 28; 49; 62; 71; 101; 128. 29 Prayer 70; 72; 97. 30 Prayer 145.

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aware of itself as luminous and suffused with the sapphire hue. This light manifests the mind’s dispassion and a degree of ‘kinship’ (suggene/j) with the divine. (vi) The intellect’s three lights. God’s light as identical with ‘God’s essence’ The intellect is, by nature, capable of various degrees of luminosity. KG I.74 draws attention to the three kinds of light that the intellect possesses: The light of the intellect (NAEBK) is divided into three: the knowledge of the Holy Trinity, which is to be worshipped, the incorporeal nature created by it, and the contemplation of beings.

The three ‘lights’ are the three levels of the spiritual knowledge which are within the intellect’s grasp. The lowest, the ‘contemplation of beings’, is the second natural contemplation; the one directly above, which is the knowledge of ‘the incorporeal nature’, is the first natural contemplation; the highest of all is the knowledge of the Trinity. The intellect’s three lights, then, correspond to the three levels of the spiritual contemplation outlined in the preceding chapter. From KG I.74 it is clear that a similarity obtains between Evagrius’s conception of the first and highest light of the intellect, on the one hand, and the knowledge that Evagrius terms ‘of God’s essence’ and the ‘direct’ knowledge of God,31 on the other. As demonstrated above, Evagrius believes that the knowledge of ‘God’s essence’ is achieved without the intermediary of creation and ordinary sensation. Similarly, luminous prayer also focuses on God alone and presupposes the intellect’s freedom from disturbance of any kind. A resemblance thus seems to obtain between what Evagrius terms ‘the knowledge of God’s essence’ and the seeing of ‘the light of the Trinity’. The three-partite ‘light’ of KG I.74 can be interpreted as treating of ‘light’ purely metaphorically, that is, in the sense in which knowledge can be said to enlighten the mind. However, given the experiential nature of the bulk of Evagrius’s accounts of light-visions, the three lights in I.74 are better interpreted as three levels of firsthand experience of some kind. On this assumption, a link connecting Evagrius’s theory of the three levels of contemplation discussed in the previous chapter and his overall theology of light can be convincingly postulated. On the same assumption, the substance of Evagrius’s claim appears to be that at all three major contemplative levels – the two degrees of the natural contemplation and the knowledge of God in His essence – the mind perceives the contemplated reality as some kind of light. Conversely, Evagrius seems to suggest that not only the direct vision/knowledge of God in His essence but any instance of spiritual awareness may manifest itself as light. Thus, KG V.15 presents as luminous even the contemplation of created beings: Stripped of passions (nou=j paqw=n gumnwqeiìj), the intellect becomes all like light (oÐloj fwtoeidhìj), enlightened by the contemplation of beings (u(poì th=j qewri¿aj tw=n gegono/twn katalampo/menoj).32 31 See Chapter 3 for references. 32 Géhin, ‘Evagriana d’un manuscrit basilien’, p. 65.

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In the natural contemplation, then, the intellect becomes light-like by reflecting the light perceived as radiating from creation. Since in the natural contemplation it is the immaterial logoi of beings that one contemplates, these logoi are the source of creation’s luminosity. Similarly, KG V.42 characterises the intelligible creation as resplendent. Its light illumines the intellect during prayer at night, when the material light is absent. KG V.26, on the other hand, suggests that experiencing God, as opposed to knowing something about Him, presumably, from hearsay, manifests itself as a vision of light: It is not the same for us to see light and to speak about light. In the same way it is not the same for us to see (NAEBK) God and to understand something (NAEBK) about God.

On all this evidence, it can be claimed that Evagrius identifies ‘the knowledge of God’s essence’ with the vision of light during prayer. This appears to be his meaning in KG I.35: Just as light, when it reveals all things to us, has no need of another light through which it will be seen, so also God, when He reveals all things, has no need of [another] light through which He will be known. For in His essence He is light.33

It is true that the avowal that God in His essence is light may be relying on Scriptural passages for support.34 However, against the background of Evagrius’s descriptions of the light of prayer, Evagrius’s statement ‘in His essence He is light’ is suggestive of something of which the desert master had a first-hand experience. That Evagrius envisages the contemplation of God’s essence as some kind of light beheld by the intellect at the hour of prayer has passed unnoticed among the scholars of Evagriana. In his very last monograph, Guillaumont dedicated several pages to Evagrius’s pure prayer and the vision of light.35 However, he denied that the knowledge of God’s essence in Evagrius is to be identified with the light-visions of prayer.36 The reason for Guillaumont’s misinterpretation is twofold. First, he mistakenly takes Evagrius’s theory on seeing God’s essence to mean an exhaustive knowledge of God, which it is not.37 Second, it may be suggested that Guillaumont identifies Evagrius’s knowledge of God’s essence with the beatific vision of essence which comes about after the end of this present life.38

33 KG I.35. 34 Cf. 1 John 1.5: ‘God is light’. 35 Un philosophe au désert, pp. 302–306. 36 Ibid., pp. 304–305. 37 See Chapter 3 for the discussion of this subject. 38 An opinion that follows in the legacy of Aquinas. To Aquinas, the intellectual vision of the divine essence was impossible whilst the mortal body formed a barrier between God and the intellect. Guillaumont’s formation was in the aftermath of Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Aeterni Patris (1879), which declared Thomism to be the official Catholic philosophy.

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(vii) The role of each part of human composition in the vision of God While it is the intellect (nous) who is the ‘seer’ of God39 par excellence, there is a sense in which the entire man’s composition, mind, soul and body, help bring about and participate in the vision of God. (a) The soul and the intellect’s vision of God That in Evagrius the knowledge and light of the intellect are conditioned by the soul’s state of virtue is manifested by the fact that both Skemmata and On the Thoughts, the two works that contain the most extensive treatment of the subject of light, are also detailed manuals for the struggle against passions. The idea of the lower soul’s nurturing effect upon the intellect is expressed in Sch.Prov.258, where ‘the soul is the mother of the intellect (mhte/ra tou= nou=)’, because ‘through virtues, it brings the intellect to light (ei)j fw=j)’.40 The soul’s virtue is thus the sine qua non for the intellect’s possessing any of its three lights.41 In explaining how the state of the soul affects the ability of the intellect to access spiritual knowledge, Evagrius uses the twin pairs of terms: ‘virtue and knowledge’ and ‘malice and ignorance’.42 The first member in each pair causes the second. Thus, the soul’s virtue brings about the intellect’s knowledge, just as the soul’s malice generates ignorance within the ruling faculty. It is when the soul is virtuous that the intellect contemplates the intelligible realities.43 Conversely, when the soul acts against its proper nature and neglects righteousness, the intellect sinks into ‘ignorance’.44 (b) The body and the intellect’s vision of God In this life, the rational soul is inseparable from its body. Body and soul can be defined in terms of one another. In this world, the intellect requires to be in a body as a necessary provision for its existence: It is impossible for an intellectual nature to remain with the body outside [this] world. In the same way it is impossible for it to be outside the body while dwelling in [this] world.45

Likewise, to be a living body, the body needs be ensouled. As the body has five material senses, so the rational soul possesses five spiritual faculties.46 The two sets of senses are interconnected. 39 KG III.30. 40 Sch.Prov. 258.1–3. 41 Cf. KG I.4 above. 42 For example, Sch.Prov., 7 and 116, with both pairs, and 74, where ‘malice and ignorance’ alone is used. 43 Sch.Prov. 5. 44 Cf. Gnosticus 48.7. 45 KG VI.81. 46 Cf. KG II.35.

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Although clearly distinct,47 the body and the soul depend so much upon one another that there is a sense in which they are one and the same reality. In this framework Géhin remarks that the bodily parts or functions are envisioned by Evagrius as ‘metaphors of the parts of the soul’.48 To see the divine light, the intellect stands in need of purification. The body plays a role in this, because it helps the soul in the work of repentance and the practice of virtues. In particular, the intellect requires good concepts and thoughts for its initial nourishment.49 Inasmuch as ‘the nous grasps thoughts from the five [bodily] senses’,50 it depends upon the body for catharsis. In this sense, the body is the vehicle (oÃrganon) of the intellect51 and the life of contemplative gnosis is conditioned by the life of bodily praxis. Having helped to bring it about, the body also participates in the light-vision, since all human faculties are sanctified by the light. One sees the light with one’s body, soul, and intellect. The expression ‘the sapphire’ colour and the language of ‘seeing’ make it clear that one perceives the light with the very eyes of the body, despite Evagrius’s avowals that the light is ‘not sensible’. (c) The intellect – the seer of the divine light Nevertheless, in the vision of the light of God, body, soul and intellect are not equal partners. Evagrius insists that the vision of light is entirely immaterial. It is therefore the ‘immaterial’ (aÓu+loj)52 nous alone that is able to grasp it. In virtue of its immateriality, the intellect can unite with the ‘bodiless powers’ (h¸ tw=n a¹swma¯twn suna¯feia), which union naturally produces in it a similar, bodiless, disposition (e)k th=j o¸moi¿aj diaqe/sewj gi¿nesqai pe/fuken).53 This bodiless disposition comes to the intellect naturally because the bodiless realm (h¸ xw¯ra tw=n a¹swma¯twn) is its proper domain.54 While the lower soul acts through the members of the body and is thus tied up with material things, the intellect ‘exercises its proper function’ (e)nergw=n thìn oi)kei¿an e)ne/rgeian) and learns ‘its powers’ (taÜj duna¯meij) not through the bodily members but in a different, immaterial, way.55 It is when the intellect strives to imagine ‘nothing of the things of this world’ that it ‘has [its] strength’ (eÃrrwtai).56 It is likewise when contemplating the immaterial logoi of beings that it acts ‘according to [its] nature’ (kataÜ fu/sin e)nergei=).57 As spirit, the intellect operates through its own, spiritual, senses, and is engaged with spiritual, rather than material, 47 In some contexts, such as Practicus 35, the body and the soul are strongly contrasted. Practicus 35 establishes their dissimilarity with regard to their passions. 48 Géhin, Évagre le Pontique: Scholies aux Proverbes, p. 32. 49 Cf. Thoughts 17. 50 Cf. Skemmata 19. 51 KG VI.72. 52 Prayer 66 (PG 79.1181). 53 Practicus 56.5–6. 54 Cf. Practicus 61. 55 Practicus 61. 56 Practicus 65. 57 Cf. Practicus 86.

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realities: ‘In the same way as each of the arts requires a sharp sense befitting its subject, so also the intellect requires a spiritual sense (NAEBK) to distinguish spiritual things’.58 The Holy Trinity being the highest of all spiritual realities, the intellect alone has the power ‘to see and understand’ it.59 Practicus 49 remarks that the nous ‘is naturally made for prayer, even without this body …’.60 Scholion 42 on Ecclesiastes maintains that ‘the knowledge of God’ is seen as the intellect’s ‘food, drink … riches … light and life’.61 The intellect is the spiritual altar on which the spiritual sacrifice of pure conscience is performed.62 For this reason it is ‘the temple of the holy Trinity’.63 Consequently, of all the parts of human composition, the intellect alone has the immaterial capacity of receiving/ containing the Trinity: Of the contemplation of which the intellect is constituted nothing else can become constituted unless it too is a receptor of the Trinity.64

In another sense, however, the vision of light in prayer is beyond the power even of the intellect but comes about through the grace of God alone: It belongs to the intellect to have the knowledge of natures. Yet to know the Holy Trinity not only is beyond the power of the intellect, but it is the superabundant grace of God.65

(viii) The soul’s ‘optimum state’ and the intellect’s ‘exercise of death’ (a) The soul’s ‘optimum state’ For the intellect to soar to the immaterial heights of mystical vision, the lower soul must regain passionlessness first. What is rendered as ‘the optimum state’ (h( a)ri/sth eÐcij)66 and the ‘resurrection’67 of the rational soul is another name for the soul’s passionlessness. The soul’s ‘optimum state’ comes to fruition in one who ‘has established virtues in oneself and has become entirely mixed with them’.68 It is the soul’s throne, which ‘maintains’ the one upon it in a position that is ‘difficult to move or immovable (duski¿nhton hÄ a¹ki¿nhton)’.69 The soul in this state ‘remains unperturbed

58 KG I.33. 59 Cf. KG V.60. 60 Practicus, 49.7. 61 Sch.Eccl., 42.1–3. 62 Cf. KG V.53. 63 Skemmata 34. 64 KG III.69. 65 KG V.79. Cited in Larchet, Thérapeutique, p. 780. 66 Practicus 70. 67 Cf. KG V.22. 68 Ibid. 69 Sch.Prov. 18.16(184).

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(a¹ta¯raxoj diame/nousa)’.70 This, then, is a lasting condition, rather than a mere fleeting disposition.71 Consequently, the ‘optimum state’ of the soul guarantees its stable impassibility. This eventually activates the mind’s capacity for the spiritual knowledge and luminosity. In itself, however, ‘the optimum state’ is below both the spiritual knowledge and light. (b) The separation of the intellect from the body The activity that stirs up the intellect’s visionary capacity is the ‘separation of the rational soul from the body’ and the ‘flight from the body’. Practicus 52 encourages such separation for the sake of virtue: To separate body from soul is the prerogative of Him alone who has united [them]. But [to separate] soul from body, belongs also to one who struggles for virtue. For our Fathers call the withdrawal [from the world] (a¹naxw¯rhsij) an exercise of death and a flight from the body.72

The ‘flight from the body’ and the ‘separation from the body’ are metaphors for the ascetic way of life. In this context, the term a¹naxw/rhsij has a double meaning. It signifies, first, a physical withdrawal from what ascetics termed ‘the world’ and its occupations, which Evagrius accomplished when he fled from the capitals of Constantinople and Jerusalem to the desert of Egypt. More importantly, however, it indicates an ascetic ‘lifting up’ of the mind away from all considerations about created things for the sake of minding God alone. Practicus 66 slightly re-formulates the same principle in terms of the purified intellect’s oblivion both of the lower soul and the material creation: The intellect that with [the help of] God has accomplished praxis in the right manner (katorqw¯saj) and has drawn near to knowledge perceives the irrational part of the soul little or even not at all. Knowledge snatches him up to places on high (meta¯rsion) and separates him from sensible things.73

(c) The ‘exercise of death’ To convey the idea of the mind’s liberation from everything created and material, besides the metaphor of the mind’s separation from its body, Practicus 52 above also uses the trope of ‘the exercise of death’ (mele/th qana¯tou): For our fathers call the withdrawal from the world (a¹naxw¯rhsij) an exercise of death and a flight from the body.74 70 Cf. Practicus 67. 71 Cf. KG VI.21: ‘Virtue is the optimum state (eÐcij a¹ri¿sth) of the rational soul’, Hausherr, Nouveaux fragments, p. 231. 72 Practicus 52. Cited by Guillaumont in ‘La Vision de l’Intellect par Lui-même dans la Mystique Évagrienne’, p. 255. 73 Cf. Practicus 66. 74 Practicus 52.

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The separation from sensible realities including the body and the exercise of death render the intellect ‘immaterial’ and facilitate its movement within the immaterial reality of God: ‘… progress immaterial in the Immaterial75 – and you will comprehend’, assures Evagrius.76 The movement within the immaterial reality is towards greater union with the divine. (d) ‘The flight from the body’ and ‘the exercise of death’: a discarding of the body? In response to possible puzzlement77 it must be pointed out that neither the ‘flight from the body’ nor the ‘exercise in death’ stipulates a literal casting away of one’s psycho-somatic composition. The body and soul remain intact. In line with Plotinus,78 Practicus 52 expressly forbids suicide: to separate the body from the soul belongs to the Creator alone. Instead, Evagrius’s idea is that the cruder and more material attachments of the soul are pacified, sublimated and spiritualised. When this spiritual transformation occurs, the body and the lower soul cease to be a hindrance and become helpers to the mind’s spiritual quest. The welcome change all but enables one to refer to parts of the body as both physical and spiritual, so that the intellect can be said to have a bodily point of reference. The heart In many contexts,79 Evagrius practically identifies the intellect with the physical heart as the spiritual centre in man. Thus: God alone, who fashioned us, knows the intellect (toìn nou=n), and He has no need of signs to know that which is hidden in the heart (e)n t$= kardi¿#).80

This parallelism highlights the idea of a quasi-identity between the heart and the intellect as the seat of man’s spiritual identity. Like the intellect, the heart is man’s centre of purity.81 It is also the place where passionlessness ‘will dawn’ (a¹natelei=) in man, like the Sun rises in the east, to enable the praying intellect to see itself similar to a star (a¹steroeidh=).82 The spiritual heart, then, is the origin of the intellect’s passionless state and the dawn of its visionary capacity. The head The head too is a spiritual centre of man and is connected with the intellect. To establish this link, Evagrius makes use of a complicated analogy based on his 75 aÓu+loj t%= a¹u/l% pro/siqi. 76 Prayer 66. 77 As expressed by Hausherr in ‘Les grands courants de la spiritualité orientale’, OCP 1 (1935), 114–38. 78 Enn. III.65. 79 For example, KG VI.87; Practicus 47.7; 50.9; epil. 6; Thoughts 6.29–32 (the intellect is identified with the heart of Matt. 6.21); 17.3 ff. 80 Practicus 47. 81 Thoughts 36.11. 82 Thoughts 43.5–7.

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exegesis of Judges 16.19–21: the intellect is like the head of the body, while the soul’s virtues are similar to the hair of the head: The intellect is called the head of the soul, and the virtues are the sign of the hair. Deprived of it, the Nazarite will be separated83 from knowledge: he will be bound by his enemies and led away.84

As the head is the highest part of the body, then, the intellect is the supreme part of the entire man. As the Nazarite’s hair protected and infused him with vigour, so the virtues safeguard and strengthen the intellect. As the hair is close to the head, so the virtues are inseparable from the intellect. The head and the intellect are themselves closely and obviously associated, since Evagrius is very aware of the brain as one of the intellect’s prime locations.85 Finally, in KG VI.87, Evagrius asserts that the heart and the head both are one with the intellect. Furthermore, the head is specifically said to be the receptacle of God’s light: According to the word of Solomon, the intellect is connected with the heart. And the light that appeared to [the intellect] is perceived to appear from the head.86

Consequently, as the nous ‘flees the body’, ‘practices death’ and engages in formless prayer, the ascetic ‘remains a composite of body, soul, and spirit but, as body and soul are purified, the whole of him can be subsumed in the name of his highest part’87 – at least in his existence before the general resurrection.88 (ix) Remarks on the background to Evagrius’s psychology and anthropology (a) The hierarchical anthropology Evagrius was no inventor of the hierarchy of the human composition. Variations of this belief proliferated in Late Ancient writings, pagan as well as Christian. Without suggesting any direct dependence on Plato, the concept of the tri-partite soul goes back to a Platonic origin.89 Of Evagrius’s pagan antecedents, Alcinoos 83 From (NAEBK), ‘to separate’. 84 KG V.45. Cf. Judges 16.19–21. 85 Evagrius’s doctrine of the body is itself hierarchical. The parts of the body that are higher up are loftier and worthier than those beneath. Thus the head and the heart receive favourable mention as participants in the spiritual life. They are especially linked with the loftier virtues and the spiritual intellect itself. By contrast, the belly is the seat of lower, animal, stirrings of the soul. The role in the spiritual life of the lower bodily parts is not specified. 86 KG VI.87. 87 M. J. Edwards, ‘Origen’s Two Resurrections’, p. 506. Edwards’s revision of Origen’s anthropology applies equally to Evagrius’s theme of the flight from the body and exercise of death. 88 See Chapter 6 for a discussion about the last things. 89 As found, for example, in the Republic IV.440–44, Phaedrus 246–8, and Timaeus 69–73.

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embraced it. To him, the soul is tri-partite and the intellect is superior to the irrational parts. Like Evagrius later, Alcinoos pays particular attention to the location of the ruling principle in the head and that of the irrational parts in the lower parts of the body: Having constructed man and linked the soul to the body to rule over it (despo/sousan au¹tou=), the gods with reason placed the authoritative part of the soul in the head …. The rational part, the faculty of judgement, and of contemplation (toì logistikoìn ... kaiì toì kri=no/n te kaiì toì qewrou=n) are also found in this place. Yet they placed the

passible part of the soul lower: the irascible part [was allotted] at the level of the heart, the concupiscible at the belly ….90

Echoing Aristotle,91 Alcinoos goes on to liken the head to a citadel: as the ruler of a city resides in a citadel for protection and the exercise of his royal authority, so the intellect, the pre-eminent part in human beings, is located in the head, far above the inferior parts of both soul and body, with the purpose of governing them. This is how this state of things has come about. Having received from the first god the immortal human soul, the gods … added to this soul two mortal parts (du/o ... me/rh qnhta/). However, in order that the divine and immortal part (toì qei=on ... kaiì a¹qa¯naton) of the soul would not be soiled by mortal futility, they placed it at the top of the body in a kind of acropolis (e)piìth=j oiâon a¹kropo/lewj).92

While it governs the lower soul and the body, the intellect itself is guarded by the watchful senses as if by soldiers.93 This is why the senses are located in the head, so close to the ruling faculty. Evagrius’s comparison between the protective properties of the virtues of the soul and the hair of the head may seem strikingly similar and indicate Evagrius’s familiarity with the Didaskalikos. In Plotinus, the tri-partite hierarchy of the soul is likewise explicit. The name ‘animal’ (z%=on) is assigned to the parts of the soul that are ‘inferior’ on account of their being ‘mixed with the body’ (miktoìn meìn taÜ ka¯tw), whilst the upper psychic part, the rational soul, is termed ‘the true man’ (o( aÓnqrwpoj o( a¹lhqh/j). ‘For the true man coincides with the rational soul.’94 Evagrius may have employed insights of pagan philosophy in his cogitations about the human person. Yet he was not one of only very few Christian theologians to do so. Neither were those Christians who postulated di- and trichotomic anthropologies only marginally catholic. Such a view goes back right to the New Testament, in which many a text affirms the presence of a hierarchy of distinct metaphysical principles within the human composition. Thus, in the Fourth Gospel, Jesus Christ 90 Alcinoos, Didaskalikos 173.5–6; 9–12. 91 De part. anim. III.7.670. Philo and Cicero employed a similar head-acropolis analogy. For Philo, see De somn. I.32 and for Cicero, De nat. deorum II.56.140: ‘sensus in capite tamquam in arce’. 92 Didaskalikos 23.6 ff. 93 Didaskalikos 173.9–10, ‘wÐsper doruforousw=n toì h¸gemoniko/n’. 94 Enn. I.I.7.18–22, ‘sundro/mou gaÜr oÓntoj tou= a¹nqrw/pou t$= logik$= yux$=.’

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himself implicitly asserts the existence of the soul as an entity distinct from the body.95 Paul distinguishes in humans the spiritual realities of the inner and the outer man, as well as those of flesh and spirit.96 The trichotomic anthropology, consisting of body, soul, and spirit, is the subject of 1 Thess. 5.23. These distinctions always presuppose a hierarchy: as the true and more spiritual reality, the inner man and the spirit are superior to the outer man, the flesh, and the body/soul component. The soul itself exhibits a hierarchy of parts. Christian theologians posterior to the apostolic times but antedating the fourth century elaborated upon the same principle. Thus, Clement taught that the two lower, irrational, parts of the soul were inferior to the ruling principle, which, like many other writers, Clement terms toÜ h(gemoniko/n.97 The lower parts of the soul are programmed as it were to exercise the lower irrational activities of the e)piqumei=n, ‘to desire’, and the o)rgi¿zesqai, ‘to rage’. Both are associated with physical sensation and the body.98 (b) Virtue as the harmony of the soul The view, so prominent in Evagrius, that virtue constitutes the harmony of the lower psychic parts with themselves and with the highest principle, is likewise of a Platonic origin.99 A similar view is obtained in a Stoic and Peripatetic milieu.100 Alcinoos defines virtue as ‘a perfect disposition of the soul (dia¯qesij yuxh=j telei¿a kaiì belti¿sth)’ that presents a man ‘in concord and steadfast’ (su/mfwnon kai be/baion).101 Philo understands virtue in terms of the harmony of the soul and maintains that, ‘when well-harmonised’ (ei) kalw=j a¸rmoqei/h), the soul will produce ‘the noblest concord of the passions’ (thìn pasw=n a¹ri¿sthn sumfwni¿an).102 Yet, again, Evagrius also had respectable Christian predecessors that taught that virtue was the harmony and the concord within the soul. Thus, Clement asserted: ‘Virtue is a disposition of the soul that is in concord (su/mqwnoj) with the principle of one’s whole life (t%= lo/g% periì oàlon toìn bi¿on).’103 (c) The soul’s separation from its body and the exercise of death Evagrius’s urging that the rational soul should endeavour to flee from its body through virtuous living towards a communion with the intelligible realities and God appears to be part of the Late Antique theory of the o(moi¿wsij Qe%=, human beings’ 95 John 10.17, irrespective of whether the yuxh¿ is understood as ‘soul’ or ‘life’. 96 2 Cor. 4.16; Gal. 5.17. Cited in M. J. Edwards, op. cit., 88. 97 Clement, Strom. VI.135.3. 98 Strom. IV.136.1, cited in Lilla, Clement of Alexandria, p. 86. 99 Phaedo 93c3–7; 93e8–9; Republic IV.430e3–4, 443d6–e2, 444c–e; VIII.554e4–5; Laws II.653b6, II.659e2–3; III.689d5–7, and 696c8–10. 100 Witt, Albinus and the History of Middle Platonism (Cambridge, 1937), p. 89, points out that Alcinoos’s definition of virtue in Didaskalikos 182.13 ff. betrays Platonic as well as Peripatetic influences. 101 Alcinoos, Did. 182.13 ff. 102 Philo, Quod D. sit imm. 25. 103 Paedagogos I.101.2.

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becoming like God. This doctrine informs the writings of numerous authors of Late Antiquity, Christian as well as pagan.104 Whilst Evagrius does not seem to favour the expression ‘the likeness to God’,105 the idea that, by disengaging itself from the attachments to sensible realities, including its own body, the rational soul will grow to resemble the immaterial God and hence become better suited to approach Him,106 is undoubtedly a key point in Evagrius’s entire system. He couches the principle in terms of the soul’s sugge/neia, ‘resemblance’, or even ‘kinship’, with God. The ultimate origins of the belief in the soul’s resemblance with the immaterial and eternal realities seem to be Platonic107 and connected with the theory of the forms. Thus, in Timaeus 51d the forms are said to be ‘that which has not been brought into being and is not destroyed, which neither receives into itself anything else from anywhere else, nor itself enters into anything else anywhere. They cannot be perceived by the senses at all, and the role of understanding is to study them’. The forms are divine108 and are the causes of being.109 They both constitute the intelligible world and provide mediation between it and the world of matter. In Phaedo 80b the argument about the forms is extended to include the souls. Before their birth in the bodies, the souls are ontologically similar to the forms.110 After death the immaterial soul returns to that which is akin to it (ei)j toì cuggene/j), that is, the immaterial forms. Like the latter, the souls are ‘divine, immortal, intelligible, uniform, indissoluble, eternally the same.’111 The Phaedrus myth represents the world of the forms as being equivalent to the world of the undescended souls.112 The soul mediates between the eternal and the transient or perhaps between the forms and the body. Because the soul and the body are so dissimilar ontologically, the link between them is merely ephemeral. The soul’s perpetual desire is to separate and fly away from its body. The theme of the need for the soul to separate from its body is prominent in Plotinus. In his treatise on dialectics, he states that the philosopher is the one ‘who by nature is … winged and in no need of separation like the others (ou¹ deo¿menoj xwrhìsewj).’113 Philosophy is about separating the higher part of the soul from the beastly (or, for that matter, bodily) state; it facilitates the transition to the state of the ‘true man’:

104 See Merki, ‘O(moi¿wsij Qe%=’ (1952), Lilla, op. cit., p. 107. 105 The closest approximation to this is Practicus 56.5–6, in which the likeness of one’s spiritual disposition to that of the angels is called ‘o(moi¿a dia¯qesij’. 106 Cf. Prayer 66. 107 Cf. Theaetetus I.7.6.8; Phaedo 67c; Phaedrus 246c–248c. On the Classical idea of the flight of the intellect, see M.J. Edwards, in The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd edition, ed. Hornblower and Spawforth (Oxford, New York, 1996), p. 601. 108 Phaedo 80a3, b1. 109 Ibid., 100c. 110 Phaedo 84b. 111 Phaedo 80b. 112 See Stead, Substance and Illusion in the Christian Fathers, p. 175. 113 I.3.5.1–3. Cf. the Phaedrus myth 246c1.

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The beast (toì qhri¿on) is the body, which has been given life. But the true man is different [and is] clear of these affections (o¸ d¡ a¹lhqhìj aÓnqrwpoj aÓlloj o¸ kaqaroìj tou½twn).114

The theme of the exercise of death was subsequently developed by Middle Platonists, Stoics, and Neo-Platonists. It would be a misconception, however, to consider these doctrines as the property exclusively of the Platonising philosophers of Late Antiquity. The same beliefs are attested in the writings of prominent Christian theologians, such as Clement and Gregory of Nazianzus. Clement instructs about the exercise of death, the mele/th qana¯tou, in Stromateis V.115 Gregory develops the same subject in Letter 31, where he recommends both ‘the exercise of death’ and ‘the flight of the soul from its body’116 as an ascetical way of life. In this Letter, Gregory also draws the allegedly Platonic sw=ma-sh=ma, ‘body-grave’, analogy.117 Gregory thus asserts the principle, which is fundamental in Evagrius too, that to prioritise the life of the animal body is to consign oneself to an inferior existence as if within ‘a grave’; by contrast, to ‘flee’ or ‘to separate’ oneself from one’s body and to meditate upon death liberates the ascetic from passionate attachments to sensible realities and prepares such a person for the true and superior life marked by immortality. In both Evagrius and Gregory, the body not purified by passionlessness is regarded as a prison and a grave for the rational soul. In sum, the pre-eminence of the nous in man’s composition and the philosophical living expressed as the mind’s ‘flight from the body’ and the ‘exercise of death’ were no innovations of Evagrius. Rather, these views constituted developments of Classical, Late Antique, and earlier Christian traditions that at his time continued to coexist and were commonplace Christian tenets. As heirs to the same broad tradition, Evagrius’s contemporaries such as Gregory of Nazianzus and Macarius employed concepts and terminology reminiscent with those of Evagrius. While some details of the tri-partite terminology may have varied, the essence of the conception remained substantially unaltered from one fourth-century Christian thinker to another. With regard to earlier Christian tradition, Evagrius’s ‘intellect’ as the most spiritual part of man is largely identical with the ‘spirit’ in the apostle Paul.118 As for his alleged Platonism,119 if in his doctrine of the soul Evagrius was Platonic, so were numerous other figures of Late Antiquity, including Paul and Jesus Christ. Moreover, by the time of Evagrius, it had not been unusual for respected Christian theologians to have recourse to pagan philosophy in matters pertaining to soul and body, not yet pronounced upon by the Church. In doing so, however, the Christian

1.7.

114 I.1.10.7 ff. 115 Strom. V.11.67. 116 Letter 31, PG 37.68c. The exercise of death is also mentioned in Theological Oration

117 Ibid., The analogy goes back to the Cratylus 400.c.1, and especially Gorgias 493.a.3: ‘sw=ma e)stin h(mi=n sh=ma ...’. 118 Crouzel’s opinion that Evagrius ‘distorts [the trichotomy of body, soul, and spirit] … by confusing the Pauline pneuma with the nous’ is thus unjustifiable. See Crouzel, Origen, p. 87. 119 Crouzel, Origen, ibid.

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theologians transformed these ideas to serve their own, distinctly Christian, purpose. It was precisely on the grounds that the Church’s opinion on the matter remained undefined that Pamphilus endeavoured to excuse Origen’s speculation about the soul’s origin in On First Principles, Praeficio, 5.120 What the belief in the soul’s separation from its body meant was that, through ascetic effort, the body was to be controlled and its senses purified from inordinate obsession with the sensible things. It also implied the conviction that the life to come was infinitely more preferable than this present one and ‘the exercise of death’ was a preparation for the future blessings. Coupled with the idea of the soul’s pre-eminence over its body, in some Christian thinkers, this psychology and anthropology appears to be underpinned by a form of the belief in the soul’s pre-existence of its body. Although it was opposed by Peter of Alexandria121 at the turn of the fourth century, around the same time, Pamphilus maintained that the idea was not heterodox.122 The musings of the author of the Macariana might suggest that it continued to be undetermined at about the time of Evagrius. It is true that the belief in the soul’s initial fashioning as a mind and a subsequent descent on account of the cooling of love was attacked by Epiphanius123 circa 374124 and by Theophilus of Alexandria during the first Origenist crisis.125 However, while the latter postdates Evagrius’s demise, the former remains the only attack in his lifetime on this tenet possibly in the form that Evagrius embraced. No undisputed evidence exists of Evagrius’s awareness of the danger of heterodoxy on this issue. Uncertainty regarding the soul’s pre-existence persisted in some ecclesiastical circles into the beginning of the fifth century. Thus, between 400 and 401, in his Apology to Pope Anastasius, par. 6,126 Rufinus avows his ignorance regarding the matter. During Evagrius’s lifetime, then, the state of the consensus regarding the souls’ pre-existence was as follows. Whether the soul simply preceded its body in existence and was thus of a different and more sublime origin than the body, appears to have been undetermined. The young Evagrius probably did not know, in mid. 370s, that a bishop had pronounced it aberrant to trace the soul’s embodiment to a primordial transgression. Neither did there exist conciliar promulgations on the subject to steer Evagrius towards a view on the soul’s origin more acceptable to posterior Catholic opinion. (x) The nature of the light of prayer Evagrius considered the question of the nature of the light he perceived in prayer to be of especial gravity. After all, the devil himself ‘is transformed into an angel of

120 Apology for Origen IX; PG 17.604c–607a. 121 On the Soul. 122 Crouzel makes this point, op. cit., 209. 123 Panarion 64.4.5–8. 124 Dechow, op. cit., 80. 125 Jerome, Letter 96.17. 126 The Apology postdates the Origenist crisis of 400 and antedates the death in 401 of Anastasius I.

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light’127 and can trick the praying soul into believing the vision to be from God. This is why Evagrius felt it was imperative to receive spiritual advice from a gnwstiko/j more experienced than himself. Antirrheticus VI128 describes how, accompanied by Ammonius the monk,129 Evagrius travelled to Lycopolis to consult with the John whom Palladius knew as ‘the seer of Thebaide’.130 Having himself undertaken the journey from Kellia to Lycopolis, Palladius was able to relate that the trip required eighteen days. It was thus a major exertion. To embark on it, the only way-faring of the kind he is known to have accomplished, Evagrius must have considered the matter to be of supreme urgency. Evagrius’s query to John was ‘whether it was the nature of the intellect that was luminous and the light radiated from it, or whether it was something other, exterior to himself, that appeared and gave forth light.’131 Evagrius thus envisaged three possibilities. If the light was solely the luminous ‘nature of the intellect’, the vision would not have been of God Himself but of the created light of a human mind (Evagrius’s own mind) and thus was not salvific. If the light was ‘something other’, it could be divine and therefore salvific. Alternatively, it could be demonic and perilous to the soul. John was noncommittal but affirmed that the intellect cannot be illumined during prayer without God’s grace and without ‘being freed from the many enemies that strive to cause it to perish.’132 The question, left unanswered by John, Evagrius solved himself. (a) The light-vision as direct but partial knowledge of God In numerous passages, Evagrius insists that the light seen in prayer is ‘the light of the Holy Trinity’ and, therefore, divine. Yet, to know a reality through observing the light emanating from it is a phenomenological kind of knowledge which, as many thinkers would maintain,133 always remains incomplete. Thus, the vision of the light of the Trinity is equivalent to the knowledge of a manifestation of the divine life but not of the entire Trinitarian being. Nevertheless, although incomplete, the seeing of the light of the Trinity is a direct knowledge of God because, Evagrius claims, no created representation or bodily senses mediate this knowledge. That Evagrius believes that the knowledge of God forever remains in part was seen in the previous chapter. Thus, ‘the knowledge of God’s essence’, although unmediated, is still partial knowledge, in which the boundary between the human subject and the divine object of knowledge will be there for always. That ‘the knowledge of God’s essence’ and the seeing of ‘the light of the Trinity’ both constitute

127 2 Cor. 11.14. 128 Antirrheticus VI.16, Frankenberg, Evagrius Ponticus, p. 524.7–14. On John of Lycopolis see Historia Monachorum in Aegypto, 1, Festugière, pp. 9–35. 129 One of the Origenist ‘Tall Brothers’. 130 Palladius, HL 35. 131 Antirrheticus VI.16, p. 524. 132 Ibid. 133 Such as Philo, Justin, Clement, Origen, the Cappadocians, and Evagrius himself.

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direct but partial knowledge of God is a further point of convergence between the two accounts of knowledge. The light’s appellation as ‘the place of God’ is a reminiscence of Ex. 24.10 and 11. The Septuagint, which is the version Evagrius uses, differs from the Hebrew version in its markedly apophatic approach. Despite the Sinai revelation being a true theophany,134 Moses beholds not God Himself but merely God’s manifestation to him termed ‘the place of God’. Consequently, by ‘the place of God’, Evagrius signifies that, while the light of the vision is the light of God, it is not the entire divinity but God’s manifestation of Himself according to a measure. The resulting epiphany, therefore, is both partial and true. Being a contact with genuine reality, the vision enables the seer to share authentically in the divine life. Being partial, it accords merely a glimpse of what God is. (b) The light-vision is the intellect’s own light At the same time, Evagrius’s descriptions of light-visions present the contemplated light as organically one with the mind in prayer, rather than being extraneous to it. First, Evagrius insists that the brightness does not present itself at a distance from the person who prays. Instead, the light envelops the person’s very head or, more precisely, his or her praying intellect.135 Second, in a number of places, Evagrius actually points out that the contemplated luminosity is that of the contemplating intellect itself. Thus, when engaged in prayer, it is the intellect itself that becomes ‘light-like’ (fwtoeidh/j),136 ‘like a star’ (a¹steroeidh/j)137 and the colour of sapphire or heaven.138 Sometimes Evagrius simply states that the mystical light is the intellect’s ‘own’.139 Third, since all immaterial nature is gnostic and luminous,140 the light of prayer is a manifestation of the intellect’s own luminosity, with which, as an immaterial knowing creature, it is endowed by the Creator. Ever present in the recesses of the mind as a potentiality, the luminosity realises itself when man’s ‘ruling faculty’ reaches the state of perfect passionlessness. Evagrius calls this property of the intellect its ‘state’, kata¯stasij,141 or its ‘first state’.142 Although this is not spelled out, the latter phrase signifies the intellect’s pre-lapsarian state of purity, lost in the

134 The sapphire colour was a mark of theophanic visions in the Old Testament. Cf. Ez. 1.25–28 for God’s sapphire throne. 135 Sch.Prov. 258.3; Thoughts 30.16; 37.35. 136 KG V.15; Skemmata 12. 137 Thoughts 43.7. 138 Thoughts 39.1–4; Skemmata 2, 4, 27. 139 Practicus 64. 140 See the interpretation of KG I.47 above. 141 Cf. Skemmata 1. 142 Thoughts 23.11.

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fall but re-gained through praxis and passionlessness. Having re-entered its ‘first state’, the intellect also awakens to its ‘own’ primordial luminosity.143 (c) The light is both that of the intellect and of God All descriptions of light-visions combined, the cumulative impression one is left with is that Evagrius envisions a fusion of two distinct lights: the created luminosity of the purified mind and the uncreated eternal brilliance of God’s self-manifestation. Although distinct, the lights are ‘akin’. As pointed out above, one sense of this kinship is that it testifies to the mind’s progressive becoming God-like, a process other writers call ‘deification’. However, another nuance about the connection is that there is a generic relationship between the two: during prayer the light of the intellect is activated by the light of the Creator. KG III.52 can be interpreted in this sense: A rational nature is [like] the intelligible moon that is illumined by the ‘Sun of righteousness’.144

‘The Sun of righteousness’ being one of Evagrius’s chosen appellations of God, the sense of the logion is the contrast and relation between the luminosity of the intellect and that of God. The two are distinct. Nonetheless, the intellect draws its light-like quality not from itself but from the light of God. Just as moon-light is a reflection of the light of the Sun, so the intellect’s light is the mirroring of the divine creative light. The intellect unites with God through the mingling of the two lights. (xi) Evagrius and Plotinus In 1984, Guillaumont drew a comparison between Evagrius’s theology of light and Plotinus’s mysticism of the One.145 Guillaumont’s general thrust is that there are systemic similarities between the two sets of mystical accounts that run deep. (a) Plotinus as a philosopher of supreme experiences: the stream of consciousness style That Plotinus is a mystic is evinced from an account in Porphyry’s Life of Plotinus, according to which, his master experienced the sublime union (e¸nwqhÍnai) with the divine at least four times.146 Plotinus’s own accounts that treat of the soul’s preparation for and union with the supreme reality (the Intellect or the One) abound in the Enneads, so that a journey of the subject toward a mystical oneness, where the objective is inseparable from the subjective, can be seen as the leitmotif of the corpus. The stream of consciousness style of Plotinus consisting of long and 143 ‘toì oi)kei=on fe/ggoj tou= nou’, Practicus, 64, 1–2. See also Kephalaia Gnostica V, 42. 144 KG III.52. Cf. Mal. 3.20. 145 ‘La Vision de l’Intellect par Lui-même’. 146 Porphyry, De Vita Plotini, I.1–41, in Henry and Schwyzer, ch. 23, lines 15–18.

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seemingly rambling periods is indicative of his need to invent a language descriptive of an extraordinary flow of experience, rather than simply serving the purpose of naked philosophical speculation. Such, for instance, is Plotinus’s celebrated description in VI.7: But when the soul has good fortune, and it comes to it, or rather, being there already, appears, when that soul turns away from the things that are there, and has prepared by making itself as beautiful as possible and has come to likeness147 (the preparation and the adornment are clearly understood, I think, by those who are preparing themselves) and it sees it in itself suddenly appearing (for there is nothing between, nor are there still two but both are one);148 nor could you still make a distinction while it is present;… it does not still perceive its body, that it is in it, and does not speak of itself as anything else, not man, or living thing, or being, or all (for the contemplation of these would be somehow disturbing), and it has no time for them nor wants them, but it has been seeking it, and meets that when it is present, and looks at that instead of itself; but it has not even time to see who the soul is that looks.149

(b) The ineffable nature of mystical experience in Plotinus Some of the contradictions and ambiguities to which Plotinus’s writings give rise150 seem to suggest that the great philosopher writes from the perspective of a personal experience to which linguistic description can only approximate: ... one who speaks precisely should not say ‘that’ or ‘is’ [regarding the One]; but we run round [the One] outside … and want to explain our own experiences of it, sometimes near it sometimes falling away in our perplexities about it.151

Like Evagrius, Plotinus both focuses on the supreme experience and admits the inadequacy of language to express it: ‘the vision is inexpressible’.152 Such reticence is a hallmark of all mystical writing whereby, whatever the linguistic expression employed in the description of mystical states, it merely points toward the contemplated reality without exhausting it. It is moreover impossible to construct a complete description of a peak spiritual experience from within the experience itself, since the latter presupposes the loss of normal consciousness together with a sensation of the obliteration of the subjectobject distinction. The subject-object obliteration is an important motif in the Enneads.153 As Jaspers puts it:

147 ‘ei¹j o¸moio¿thta e¹lqou½sa’. 148 ‘ou¹deìn ou¹d¡ eÓti du¿o, a¹ll’ eÑn aÓmfw.’ 149 VI.7.34.8–22. 150 A. H. Armstrong describes the Enneads as ‘an unsystematic presentation of a systematic philosophy’. See Plotinus (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1966), Preface, p. xv. 151 VI.9.3.53–5. 152 VI.9.10.19: ‘du¿sfraston toì qe¿ama’. 153 For Plotinus, see, for instance, Enn. I.6.9.1.1 ff.; VI.9.10.12; VI.9.2.35; VI.9.11.8 ff.; IV.8.6.1.1 ff.

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In der Bewusstlosigkeit oder ‘Ueberbewusstheit’ des Unmittelbaren der unio sind Gegenstände und Ich verschwunden. Jede Bewusstheit von Etwas und von mir selbst ist aufgelöst. Die Subjekt-Objekt Spaltung ist nicht mehr.154

Since, in this state, the boundaries of the intelligible categories are destroyed, one can only attempt to express the state of the mystical union subsequently to the experience itself. Such a description, as posterior to the actual event and produced from within a different state of consciousness, when the normal discursive reasoning and the distinction between the subject and the object of vision have been restored,155 cannot be altogether adequate to the experience itself. Plotinus’s account in IV.8[6].1.1–10 of the soul’s awakening from the body to the mystical beauty of the self and the soul’s subsequent return ‘from intellect to discursive reasoning’ is well-known: Many times, awakened out of the body to myself and becoming outside all else and within myself, seeing a wonderful and great beauty,156 believing myself then especially to be part of the higher realm, having lived in act the best life and come to be one with the divine157 and established (e)mautoìn i(dru/saj) in it, reaching to that activity, having established myself above every other intelligible thing,158 then, after this rest in the divine, going down from intellect to discursive reasoning,159 I am puzzled how I could ever and now come down ….160

(c) Subjectivity in Plotinus As in Evagrius, Plotinus’s descriptions of experiences of the supreme reality include instances of subjectivity such as joy and light,161 as well as poetic and metaphoric elements such as ‘the choral dance’.162 Such components are common to poets and religious mystics alike and are another reason to regard Plotinus as a mystic. Like Evagrius, Plotinus fashioned his own symbolic language to point to experiences that language cannot contain. Of the array of Plotinus’s mystical themes, many are present in Evagrius: the soul’s turning away from the multiplicity of objects as preparation for higher states of consciousness; its likeness and oneness with the sublime reality; the sensation of a temporary suspension of the subject-object distinction; the freedom from bodily awareness. Consequently, Guillaumont is right in so far as he suggests that Plotinus’s language of union was a catalyst for the common stock of mystical imagery that Late 154 Jaspers, ‘Das philosophische Grundwissen und unser Seinsbewusstsein’, p. 231. 155 Cf. O’Daly, ‘The Self and the One’, pp. 82–3. 156 ‘qaumastoìn h(li¿kon ... ka¯lloj’. 157 ‘t%½ qei¿% ei¹j tau¹toìn gegenhme¿noj’. 158 ‘u(peìr pa=n toì aÓllo nohtoìn’. 159 ‘eiÃj logismoìn e¹k nou¤ katabaÜj.’ 160 The translation is O’Meara’s, slightly modified. See his Plotinus, p. 104. O’Meara rightly points out (p. 105) that the passage describes not the highest experience of all, that of the One, but an awareness of higher intellection. In Plotinus, there is a variety of experiences of union. 161 III.8.8, ‘oiâon xoroìj e¸chÍj #ãdwn.’ 162 VI.9.8.38.

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Antiquity employed.163 It would be misreading the evidence, however, to extend the Evagrius-Plotinus analogy too far thereby overlooking Evagrius’s distinctiveness. (d) The solipsism of Plotinus: a point of contrast with Evagrius In Plotinus, the self enters into union with oneself. The Enneads abound in passages where the self in the unio mystica comes to the fore and ‘grows in stature’. The image of the sculptor carving his statue out of a marble slab is an elaboration of the Phaedrus.164 Yet, Plotinus subtly re-interprets Plato,165 in whom the passage in question treats of the lover fashioning the soul of the beloved into the likeness of a god. In Plotinus, the image of the soul ‘never ceasing to work upon its own statue’ refers to the soul bringing itself to the realisation of its own beauty. The entire preparation for experiencing the sublime consists in a substantial amount of ‘positive thinking’ and the realisation of the self’s own worth: How then can you see the sort of beauty a good soul has? Go back into yourself and look; and if you do not yet see yourself beautiful, then, just as someone making a statue which has to be beautiful cuts away here and polishes there and makes one part smooth and clears another till he has given his statue a beautiful face, so you too must cut away excess and straighten the crooked and clear the dark and make it bright, and never stop ‘working on your statue’ till the divine glory of virtue shines out on you.166

This is the language of extreme self-concentration and self-possession rather than that of a relation with something extraneous to oneself. This suggests the conclusion that there is no other in Plotinus properly speaking. The self does not progress to the Intellect and the One by encountering them as objective realms; rather it arrives there by discovering oneself at different levels of contemplation. The Intellect and the One are subjective, in that they are the self’s states of consciousness. An attainment of unity with the divine, then, is equivalent to the entry into oneself,167 so that the itinerary to the One is a journey towards ever-greater narcissist inwardness.168 One can speak here of a radical withdrawal into oneself, an enstasis, rather than a departure into mystical realms beyond, an ekstasis. The self’s love for the One is thus autoerotic,169 suggesting an intense preoccupation with oneself. By contrast, in Evagrius, whilst there is an element of auto-contemplation in the sense that the purified nous beholds its own luminosity, autocentrism is never its final goal. The Trinity is the intellect’s ‘ultimate end desired’ (toì eÃsxaton o)rekto/n)170 both in eternity and in contemplative prayer, although the intellect’s own light is what enables the mind to be one with God. Consequently, while Plotinus describes 163 Guillaumont, op. cit., p. 260. 164 Phaedrus 25.2.d. Ennead 1.6.9.1 ff. 165 Cf. Harder, Plotins Schriften, I b, 381. 166 I.6.9.8–15. 167 VI.9.2.35. 168 Cf. Louth, The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition, p. viii. 169 Harder, op. cit. 170 Letter 63, Deferrari, p. 70.

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a solipsistic type of experience, Evagrius recounts states of union with a reality extraneous and objectively superior to oneself. Evagrius’s light-visions are the result of a synergy between the praying intellect and the Trinitarian action of grace. (e) The contrast between Evagrius’s and Plotinus’s conceptual systems Evagrius’s and Plotinus’s experiential dimensions are best approached holistically. This necessitates considering aspects of Evagrius’s and Plotinus’s respective conceptual systems. In Evagrius, the Trinity is the ultimate uncaused cause, utterly distinct from creation and immanent in it through grace. The combination of God’s otherness and immanence through the manifestation of grace enables the human mind to progress in the knowledge of God by contemplating God’s manifestation as light. The light that the intellect beholds in prayer is God’s action of grace made visible. The intellect’s union with God is realised through a mingling of two lights. The oneness, then, comes to pass on the level of the activity and manifestation of both the intellect and God and not on the level of the two essences. Consequently, while the divine and human lights co-inhere, God and the intellect remain distinct in their essences. By contrast, in Plotinus, there is no way of attaining to a union with the One that would be qualitatively different from a union with oneself.171 It is true that Plotinus claims that both the One and the experience of henôsis transcend consciousness. The self, however, is likewise transcendent to oneself. The argument in favour of transcendence, then, does not invalidate the inference that the henôsis in Plotinus is not the soul’s encounter with an exterior essence but a reaching toward one’s innermost depth.172 The unfathomable horizon of the soul’s (inward) journey, the One is not strictly distinct from the human self. There is no way in which the One can be really experienced at all, if ‘experience’ is understood in terms of a subjectiveobjective distinction. Since the One in Plotinus is not a personal God, there is no place for prayer addressed to the One and worship with which the One is to be worshipped.173 By contrast, in Evagrius, spiritual worship and prayer occupy a central place. This reflects the fact that Evagrius’s Absolute is the personal Triune God, with whom genuine communion can be established. The soul is united with God in an act of spiritual worship performed on the altar and in the temple of the intellect.174 In both thinkers, then, the experiential is inextricable from the conceptual. The key to orthodox theologising, according to Evagrius, lies in the genuineness of experience and ‘one who hasn’t seen God, cannot speak of Him’.175 This means 171 Cf. Gerson: ‘we and the One are not two, for then there would be a real relation. We and the One are one in so far as we recognise that it is virtually ourselves’, in Plotinus, p. 293, n. 50. 172 Cf. Enn. VI.911.38–41. See Trouillard, La mystagogie de Proclos, pp. 18–19. 173 It is true that in Platonic Theology, II.11, pp. 109–10 in Saffrey and Westerink (1974), Proclus says: ‘Let us, as it were, sing hymns to him (oiâon u¸mnh/swmen au¹to/n)’. Proclus (411–82), however, is over 200 years later than Plotinus (204/5–270). 174 Cf. KG V.53 and Skemmata 34, respectively. 175 KG V.26.

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that discourse about God properly arises from the experience of God, so that the experience warrants the discourse. Theologising, then, is rooted in the holiness of life and the verity of one’s contemplative states. Similarly, the static and solitary mystical experience Plotinus evokes is reflected in the language he uses in his passages about the One, such as the acclaimed flight ‘of the alone to the alone’.176 The reverse also holds true. The experiences of both Evagrius and Plotinus are dependent upon and are the contingent realisations of the conceptual systems that logically precede them. In the case of Evagrius, this is shown by his belief that the light of vision is Trinitarian and not that of Christ.177 In this respect, Plotinus and Evagrius share the view that experience alone cannot answer important questions about experience. Raw experience is not epistemologically sufficient: one needs a theory of cognition that focuses upon particular concepts of the ideal being that give rise to experience, rather than upon purely the experience itself. The comparison between Evagrius and Plotinus, then, must not be overworked, because both their dogmatic systems and their mystical experiences are of different kinds. While Evagrius is Trinitarian, Plotinus is solipsistic. (xii) Evagrius and Macarius Macarius is no less based on personal experience than Plotinus. Unlike Plotinus, however, he is a Christian and Evagrius’s contemporary. In modern scholarship it has become a convention to juxtapose Macarius and Evagrius. In 1935, Hausherr attempted to classify, in broad strokes, the main ‘currents of spirituality’ in Eastern Christian Tradition. Thus, he distinguished the ‘spiritualité intellectualisée’ of Evagrius of Pontus from the ‘école du sentiment ou du surnaturel conscient’ of Macarius.178 Orthodox scholars followed Hausherr’s sway. Lossky and Meyendorff both produced one-sided accounts of Evagrius and Macarius, also making use of Evagrian intellectualism versus Macarian affective mysticism.179 In an excessively black-and-white account, Meyendorff postulates an opposition between the Evagrian ‘Platonic terminology’ and the Macarian ‘biblical doctrine concerning man’.180 Recently this dichotomy between Macarius and Evagrius has been largely reversed by Plested’s contribution.181 Plested has shown many points of convergence between the two theologians, especially with regard to the alleged nous/kardia distinction. The sentiment of scholars that has endured, however, is that the two theologians present interesting possibilities of contrast and comparison. What is needed is to take

176 VI.9.11. 177 For Evagrius’s lack of Christocentricity see below. 178 Hausherr, ‘Les grands courants de spiritualité orientale’, OCP1 (1935), pp. 114–38. Hausherr affirms the same contradistinction in his later article ‘Contemplation chez les grecs et autres orientaux chrétiens’, DS 2.1762–1872. 179 Lossky, The Vision of God, p. 114; Meyendorff, A Study of Gregory Palamas, 137–8. 180 Meyendorff, ibid. 181 See Plested, The Place of the Macarian Writings, pp. 51–62.

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up the discussion where it has been left off and advance it, especially in the area of the two theologies of light. (a) Evagrius and Macarius as personalities The similarities and dissimilarities between the Evagriana and the Macariana invite a comparison between the personalities of their authors. Like Evagrius, Macarius was a Christian ascetic and a prolific writer. Unlike Evagrius, however, Macarius was never condemned by name.182 Internal evidence of the Macariana suggests that geographically the author belongs not to the Egyptian but to the Syrian milieu,183 to which Evagrius was unrelated. Nonetheless, Macarius’s thought was as much Hellenic as Syrian, which necessitates the conclusion that his education was similar to that of Evagrius. He was probably bi-cultural and possibly bi-lingual, in Greek and Syriac. In any case, like Evagrius, he was a native speaker of Greek. Like Evagrius, Macarius displays links with the Alexandrian tradition and the Platonic and Stoic philosophy.184 The Cappadocian connection There is a historical link between Macarius and the Cappadocians. Thus, the Macariana exhibits an important textual parallel with Gregory of Nyssa.185 Correspondences are also observable between Macarius and Basil186 with regard to the way both approach radical monastic tendencies: the Messalians, in the case of Macarius, and Eustathius, in the case of Basil.187 The Cappadocian connection is another factor that places Macarius in one intellectual universe with Evagrius. The dating of the Macariana The author of the Macariana states that he has known two persons who became confessors of faith during the last persecution before the peace of the Church came.188 182 This is despite textual correspondences found between his writings and Messalian doctrines. The fullest list of the Messalian doctrines is presented in John of Damascus’s De haeresibus, 80. It consists of propositions from Macarian writings. There is thus an undisputed relation between the ideas of the Macariana and those of the Messalian groups. For the fullest treatment of this relation see Stewart, ‘Working the Earth of the Heart’. 183 Internal evidence suggests that the author was familiar with and probably a resident of the Eastern Roman Empire, not far from Mesopotamia. Thus, Collection I mentions the river Euphrates (I.8.4.2, 14.26) as the principal river of the area. Likewise, wars between the Roman Empire and Persia are mentioned (Coll. II.15.46, 27.22). This may possibly refer to the 363 campaign in which Emperor Julian died. 184 See Plested, The Place of the Macarian Writings, chs. 2 and 3. 185 It is widely accepted nowadays that Gregory of Nyssa based his De instituto christiano upon Macarius’s Great Letter. 186 Cf. Desprez, ‘Les Relations entre le Pseudo-Macaire et S. Basile’, pp. 175–200, 201–7, 208–21. See also Plested, op. cit., ch. 3. 187 See Gribomont, ‘Saint Basil et le monachisme enthusiaste’, 123–44, also, Meyendorff, ‘St. Basil, Messalianism and Byzantine Christianity’, 219–34. 188 II.27.14–15.

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This, in all probability, places him within the fourth century. The relationship between Macarius’s Great Letter and De instituto christiano of Gregory of Nyssa gives further clues with regard to the dating of Macarius’s oeuvre. If one accepts that De instituto is genuine and that the Great Letter precedes De instituto, both works can be dated between 381 (Constantinople I) and 394 (the death of Gregory of Nyssa). Macarius, then, was a near contemporary of Evagrius. The theologians of light-mysticism Both Evagrius and Macarius are mystics of light, who maintain that God reveals Himself as light. Both present their theology of light as grounded in an experience, although Macarius shies away from overt descriptions of visions. Evagrius and Macarius alike construe light-visions received in prayer as analogous to Moses’s theophany on Sinai, although Evagrius’s preferred text is Exodus 24.10–11, on the colour of sapphire stone under God’s feet, while Macarius focuses upon Exodus 34.29–35, on the light that streamed from the face of Moses descending from the mountain.189 Employing different Scriptural passages does not prevent both theologians from stating the same point: that by contact with the light of divinity, the nous becomes aware of its own luminosity. Like Evagrius, Macarius asserts that, while it enlightens the entire man, the light of God especially sanctifies the soul/ intellect, making it God’s throne.190 The purified soul then shines like a polished precious stone.191 In a manner reminiscent of Evagrius, Macarius’s evokes Ezekiel’s vision.192 Even the palette of the vision is identical with Evagrius’s, with the colour of sapphire193 reserved for the throne of God’s glory. (b) The intellect – the highest part of the soul and the subject of light-vision Psychology and anthropology is where the two thinkers converge. While Evagrius favours the term ‘intellect’ over that of ‘soul’, Macarius gives preference to the term ‘soul’. By this appellation, however, he frequently means the highest part of the soul, the ruling faculty. The soul is the throne of God and the seat of God’s image in man.194 It is also the most precious part of man, in which immortality is found.195 The term ‘intellect’ is also present in Macarius. This is specifically the component that is in God’s image.196 However, in Macarius, the image of God extends more explicitly than in Evagrius to the entire man, body and soul, because the soul inheres in the entire body.197 It is fair to say, then, as his modern commentators delight in doing, that Macarius’s anthropology is ‘holistic’. 189 Cf. II.5.10. 190 Cf. II.1.2; II.6.5. Cf. Ezekiel 1.1 ff. 191 I.5.1. 192 Ez. 1.1. 193 Ez. 1.7. 194 II. 15.22. 195 II.15.22. 196 II.15.23. 197 II.4.9.

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(c) The hierarchy of realities At the same time, in Macarius we observe the same concern about the hierarchy of values as is found in Evagrius. Inseparable from this is the familiar form/content dualistic approach to reality – a tendency already observed in Evagrius. The visible present realities (taÜ paro/nta) correspond to the invisible realities of the age to come (taÜ me/llonta).198 Whilst in this age, the visible is the manifestation of the invisible, in the age to come the visible will pass away and be superseded by the invisible and spiritual.199 Moreover, similarly to Evagrius, there is a suggestion in Macarius that, while the visible ritual of the Church will come to end, it is the invisible soul that will endure.200 Collection III.3.1.4–5 admonishes that, in the age to come, a ‘release from the bodies will come to pass’ (lu/sij genh/setai tw=n swma¯twn). It is for this reason that, in this life, zealous ascetics despise fleshly intercourse (katafronou=sin koinwni¿aj sarkikh=j).201 (d) Prayer Macarius’s understanding of prayer is consonant with that of Evagrius. Prayer is the most important activity in the ascetic’s life. Prayer is sending the intellect to God202 and conversing with Him.203 Like Evagrius, Macarius insists that pure prayer ought to be imageless.204 Perhaps more than Evagrius, Macarius lays emphasis upon the feeling of the sweetness of prayer. As for the Israelites the consuming of the Paschal lamb was the pre-condition of reaching the Promised Land, so prayer is the ascetic’s passport to the land of the living and to communion with God’s grace. One must strive towards obtaining the sweetness of God’s grace in the fullness of experience (e)n ai)sqh/sei pa¯s$ kaiì plhrofori¿#).205 The delight of prayer to the soul is like the sweet taste of the Paschal lamb was to the children of Israel.206 Grace must be consciously experienced.207 (e) Grace as light; the Christocentricity of light-visions Like Evagrius, Macarius holds that the soul can be aware of God’s grace through visions of light. The soul becomes illuminated by the light of God:

198 I.52.2.2–3 and III.6.3.2. 199 I.52.1.1–4. 200 I.52.1.1–4. For Evagrius’s eschatology see Chapter 6. 201 III.6.3.1–4. 202 I.6.1. 203 II.56.6. 204 I.29.1.4; III.1.3.1. 205 II.47.7–13. 206 Cf. Macarius, Ibid. 207 II.1.12.

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However, while containing themes familiar from Evagrius, the passage manifests an important contrast with Evagrius. This is Macarius’s Christocentricity. The soul beholds the light of God when it is illumined by the glory of Christ. Consequently, Christ is God and is both the source and object of the contemplated light. Macarius’s focus on Christ is manifested in the fact that his favourite illustration for light-visions obtained in prayer is the account of the Transfiguration, an event that is notable by its absence from the Evagriana: As the body of the Lord, when he went up onto the mountain, was glorified and transfigured into the divine glory and infinite light, so also the bodies of the saints are glorified and resplendent. For just as the inner glory of Christ covered his body and shone forth, in the same way, on that day, the power of Christ which the saints [now] have within, will be poured out upon their bodies.209

Macarius, then, believes that the light encompassing the transfigured Christ was divine, as Christ is divine. The same divine light of Christ today illuminates the souls and even the bodies of saints. Whilst in this age this glory is not yet complete, in Christ’s second coming, ‘on that day’, the glory will shine upon the saints in its fullness. This glory is the glory of Christ. In another passage Macarius asserts that the divine light that the soul contemplates is the manifestation of Christ’s divine glory and dignity: The Lord shows himself to [the soul] in two aspects (e)n dusiì prosw/poij): with his wounds and in the glory of his light. The soul contemplates [his] sufferings, which he suffered on her behalf, and it also contemplates the dazzling (u¸pe/rlampron) glory of his divine light, transformed ‘from glory to glory into the same image’.210

Divine light illumining the nous and making it resplendent is of course a theme central in Evagrius’s accounts of prayer. Nonetheless, Evagrius does not explain his theology of light in terms of the glory of the divinity of Christ. He prefers to communicate his accounts of light-visions in Trinitarian as opposed to Christological terms.211 To sum up, the intellect/soul experiences creation, other rational beings and even its own knowledge as luminosity. The highest perfection of all, however, is when in 208 II.1.2. Translation in Louth, op. cit., p. 121. 209 II.15.38. Cf. Matthew 17.1–8; Mark 9.1–10. 210 III.3.3.2, cf. 2 Cor. 3.18. 211 It is true that Thoughts 15.15 speaks of ‘the light of our Saviour’, which we contemplate when we are raised (u¸you/menoi) in prayer. However, in Evagrius the term ‘Saviour’ is not primarily Christological and may refer to the Trinity. All the other accounts of light seen in prayer are overtly Trinitarian.

prayer the mind itself becomes all light, to behold the ‘light of the Trinity’. Evagrius is like Macarius, Plotinus and any other mystic, in that a discussion of his mysticism necessitates an assessment of his conceptual system. The experiential dimension proves inextricable from the dogmatic one. Evagrius believes that the discourse about God arises from what one takes to be an experience of God.212 What he says about the Trinity, then, in some way reflects what he believes to be his experience of the Trinity. The same holds regarding the language Plotinus uses about the One and Macarius in his discourse about Christ and God. Conversely, in all three, the experiences of God or of the Absolute are conditioned by the conceptual systems each thinker adheres to. Thus, while in Macarius the light of the vision is always Christocentric, in Evagrius, although Trinitarian, it is intentionally not that of Christ. It is therefore futile to disregard the spiritualities’ respective dogmatic systems in an attempt to concentrate upon experience alone.213 This point is further clarified in a treatment of Evagrius’s doctrine of Christ.

212 Cf. KG V.26. 213 Francis Kline is thus right when he suggests that Evagrius’s Christology is ‘a product of prayer and spiritual experience’. Kline, ‘The Christology of Evagrius and the Parent System of Origen’, 183.

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Chapter 5

Christology Despite his belief that the light of mystical prayer is not the light of Christ, Evagrius’s concern is undeniably Christian. The urgent question that presents itself in this chapter is: who is Evagrius’s Christ? Evagrius’s Christology is the focal point of a number of philosophical dilemmas. In particular, Christ is the key to three fundamental themes of Evagrius’s theological enterprise: the relation of the infinite and the finite, of the one and the many, and of grace and nature. Salvation for Evagrius is Trinitarian, in the sense that the Trinity is both the source and the ultimate reality of salvation. In itself, however, the Trinity is utterly transcendent. Since God is altogether immaterial, uncircumscript, and beyond any number,1 there is no way in which He can come into direct contact with matter. God directly2 creates only the immaterial creation. God uses Christ as his instrumental power for the fashioning of the bodies. Christ, then, ontologically mediates between the immaterial uncreated God and the materiality of creation. Without Christ’s mediation, the path to the Trinitarian God is closed. This is why Christ is the key to how God and the world relate in continuity consistent with irreducible difference. There is another reason for giving Evagrius’s Christology thorough consideration. The 553 condemnations of Evagrius were based upon a particular interpretation of his Christology. Of the fifteen anathemas of 553, anathema 9 is especially redolent of Evagrius’s ways of speaking about Christ and the Logos. There are at least two overlapping hermeneutics according to which Evagrius’s Christology can be interpreted. First, there is the historical hermeneutic of presentday scholarship by which Evagrius’s doctrine of Christ as he envisaged it is reconstructed from his works as far as possible and without removing Evagrius from his cultural milieu. Second, there is the retrospective interpretation based on the canon of orthodoxy of Constantinople 553. The latter was formulated on the basis of over 150 years of immensely fertile Christological discussions that culminated in the events of 431 and 451. Constantinople 553 retrospectively assessed Evagrius’s Christology from the perspective of the Church’s Christological position developed over a long period after his death. Older Evagrian scholarship, epitomised in the pioneering work of A. Guillaumont, chose to adopt the second hermeneutic based upon the canon of the 553 Council.3 1 Cf. Letter 63, Deferrari, p. 52. 2 Even this ‘directly’ has to be qualified: God the Father fashions the bodiless creation by the mediation of the Son and the Spirit (Cf. Melania, 5). 3 See also Refoulé, ‘La christologie d’Evagre et l’origénisme’.

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The drawback of this approach consists in failing to recognise that Evagrius’s writings were no polemic and were written for particular purposes in a context of their own and not as a contribution to the Cyril-Nestorius debate. The time has come to open up this once closed question and to consider Evagrius’s Christology on its own merit and within its own chronological bounds. At the very least, it ought not to be viewed from the vantage point of what Evagrius could not have possibly known: the decisions of Ephesus 431 and Chalcedon 451. The paedeia of the soul is Evagrius’s overruling concern. Although he was preoccupied with the right doctrine, his works were not doctrinal – Triadological or Christological – treatises meant for universal proclamation. They were intended for a small and exclusive ascetic audience and were not to be read without the guidance of a teacher, the gnwstiko¿j. Their subject matter is the soul’s ascent to contemplative states. Therefore, to do Evagrius’s Christology justice, it is best to acknowledge that his stance vis-à-vis Christ and God is in some sense ‘subjective’, taken from the point of view of the ascetical instruction about progress to perfect spiritual knowledge in the specific context of the Egyptian desert, rather than ‘objective’, from the point of view of a knowledge drawing exclusively on the common stock of Christological ideas and formulations deemed to be the norm in Late Antiquity. In his Christology, Evagrius is concerned to stress two things. The first is the unity of Christ with the Logos so that Christ’s composite being and his words and actions might be interpreted as a real expression of God in the world and thus be worthy of adoration. This is the case, despite the fact that this adoration is not static but variegated in gradations, from the more material in the beginning of the ascetic’s spiritual ascent to the more spiritual at its higher stages. Second, Evagrius is concerned to secure God’s transcendence from materiality and plurality. Christ is the power that activates this principle. Evagrius’s panorama of God and the world is presented in a series of symbols and images. While the Logos and the Spirit are the symbols of the Father, Christ is the symbol of the Logos. The body and soul of Christ are the disclosure and symbol of the mind of Christ, while the mind of Christ is the disclosure and symbol of the Logos. Bearing in mind the aforementioned points of interpretation, we shall proceed in our analysis by outlining Evagrius’s pivotal Christological themes, which will eventually amount to answering the question concerning the identity of Christ. These themes fall into three broad interconnected categories: what Christ is in relation to the soul and the universe, the ontological uniqueness of Christ, and Christ in relation to God. The second part of the chapter will extend the discussion to examining Evagrius’s historical context. (i) Christ vis-à-vis the soul The first angle from which Evagrius’s conception of Christ must be analysed is Christ in relation to the believing soul and the universe. Christ is many things for the soul. Within the bounds of natural contemplation, it is Christ who is the initiator, the teacher, and the key to the soul’s ascent. Christ both hides from and reveals himself to the soul. He conceals himself under a series

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of veils: the letter of Scripture, his flesh, the materiality of the Eucharist, and the materiality of the cosmos. As the soul progresses in the spiritual journey, Christ progressively reveals himself, beginning from a more material revelation and ending with a more spiritual one. In turn, the soul perceives Christ in a variety of functions: as its Physician, Pedagogue, Good Shepherd, Friend, Bridegroom, Saviour, Creator, Father, Mediator with God and, finally, a God. (a) Christ in the practical virtues and the Eucharist Practical virtues Christ first reveals himself in the practical virtues in the course of the soul’s struggle for passionlessness. When the soul’s apatheia has been perfected, that is, when concupiscence, anger, and pride – the sickness of the intellect, have been healed by ‘the physician of the souls’4 (the physician, again, being Christ), Christ reveals himself to it in a more spiritual and perfect way. The Eucharist Thus, in the Eucharist, Christ first appears to the soul in the solidity of the bread, which is the body of Christ and is more material, and only later in the liquidity of the wine, which is the blood of Christ and is the less material of the two elements. The partaking of the Eucharistic blood, therefore, is a more spiritual revelation and a greater blessing than the eating of the Eucharistic body.5 As the Eucharistic bread and wine spiritually contain the body and blood of Christ so, in turn, the body and blood themselves are spiritual containers and pointers toward the spiritual principles of virtue and knowledge.6 Just as the partaking of the Eucharistic body is inferior to the consuming of the Eucharistic blood, in the pairing of virtue and knowledge, the conferring of virtue is a more initial stage than the bestowing of spiritual knowledge. More generally, the metaphor for the acquisition of spiritual knowledge of beings is that of drinking, not eating.7 The partaking of the Eucharist mystically brings about Christ’s coming to the believer and the latter’s appropriation of Christ’s teaching. Consequently, sacramental realism is present in Evagrius’s concept of the Eucharist. In the earthly life, where matter symbolises and contains spirit, the Eucharist, and especially the Eucharistic 4 Cf. Thoughts, 3. 5 The conception of the Eucharistic blood as a higher spiritual reality than the Eucharistic body and, conversely, the association of higher spiritual virtues with the Eucharistic blood and lower ones with the Eucharistic body, are found as early as the second century. Cf. Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Trallians, 8, where faith (pi¿stij) is likened to the flesh (sa¯rc) of the Lord, and love (a¹ga¯ph), to the blood (aiâma) of Jesus Christ. 6 Schol.Eccl. 13 and 15.24–5. 7 Gnosticus, 47: ‘The intellect is purified when it has drunk spiritual knowledge’. Schol. Eccl. 42, however, asserts that the knowledge of God is the food and drink of the intellect. The symbolic classification of the Eucharistic body and blood into, respectively, more material and more spiritual is present throughout the Evagrian corpus. The body of Christ is the practical virtues, while the blood is spiritual knowledge, for example, in Monks, 118–19 and Sch.Eccl. 2.25.

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blood, remains an emphatically spiritual reality. The blood is ‘the contemplation of beings’ and ‘the one who drinks of it shall be made wise by it’.8 The partaking of the Eucharistic gifts, then, brings about a measure of spiritual knowledge, which in essence is similar to the contemplation of creation in its logoi. Christ is at the heart of the Eucharist in the same way as he is at the centre of natural contemplation. If his biographer can be trusted on this detail of the great teacher’s vita, Evagrius’s faith in the salvific power of the sacraments was sealed by his communicating on his deathbed.9 (b) The Physician of souls Christ bears the title of ‘the Physician of souls’ ( i© atroìj tw=n yuxw=n) in a great number of passages,such as Thoughts 3 and 10; Letter 42.1; 51.2; 52.4; 55.3; 57.3. He is termed ‘Physician’ in Letter 63.5. As the spiritual physician,10 Christ administers spiritual fa¯rmaka, ‘remedies’, to the soul. These are the ascetic disciplines.11 Every passible part of the soul requires a specific treatment. ‘But note here’, Evagrius admonishes in Thoughts 3, ‘how the physician of souls, through almsgiving (e)lehmosu/nhj) heals the irascible part (toìn qumoìn qerapeu/ei), through prayer he cleanses the intellect (diaÜ th=j proseuxh=j toìn nou=n kaqari¿zei), and again through fasting he quenches concupiscence (diaÜ th=j nhstei¿aj thìn e)piqumi¿an katamarai¿nei)’. In extreme situations radical treatment is needed and applied. Such is the intractable gangrene (dusi¿aton ga¯ggrainan) of pride, described in Thoughts 10. This comes about when the soul loses the ‘perfect hatred’ of demons. While the gangrene of the body is cured by surgery as a radical treatment, spiritual gangrene is treated by Christ’s cutting the proud soul away from himself. Like a physician who prescribes particular remedies for particular illnesses, ‘through abandonment (di’ e)gkatalei¿yewj),’12 Christ cures the soul. Christ is the ‘good Samaritan’ and physician of Luke 10.30, who restores to good health (ei)j thìn oi)kei¿an u¸giai¿nonta) the man who fell among robbers.13 To the soul still lacking passionlessness but aware of its sickness, Christ becomes the physician who nurses it back to the health of apatheia. Thus, Christ delivers the soul from the sickness of passions and the spiritual ailments caused by demons’ malice. Not only does Christ heal the ailing souls, but he also trains those that are in good health to act as physicians to others on his behalf. The wise monastic superior is another Christ to his spiritual children. He acts as the military general and curer

8 Cf. Gnosticus, 14. 9 See the biographical note above. 10 Christ as the physician of souls is treated at length in Dysinger, Psalmody, 4.1, pp. 105 ff. 11 Cf. Practicus, 38. 12 Thoughts, 10. The application of painful remedies to cure grave illnesses is a theme prominent in Origen. Cf. P.Arch. II.10.6.195–7. There, however, the role of the physician is attributed to God rather than Christ. 13 Letter 63, p. 64.

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of passions: ‘The wise abbot is [like] the military general and the physician of passions’.14 What, then, is the mark and essence of the healthy soul? Evagrius’s typical answer to this is likewise obtained in Thoughts 3, where it is embedded in his teaching about battling the intrusive thoughts and passions. Elaborating upon Col. 3.10–11, Evagrius defines the health of the soul as the emergence of ‘the new man’, who possesses impassibility, unification and universality, so that in Christ the divisions of ‘male and female and of Greek or Jew, circumcision or uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bond or free’ all become healed.15 Evagrius views these Pauline divisions in terms of the spiritual sickness and fragmentation of the human soul. They are healed in Christ and through Christ. The finale of this healing is that Christ becomes to the soul ‘all and in all’,16 thus filling all things and unifying them in himself. At the stage of praxis, then, there is a sense in which the soul’s spiritual health consists in configuring itself to Christ, so that Christ constitutes the soul’s perfect health, goal and telos. At the same time, anticipating the discussion that will follow, Thoughts 3 may legitimately be interpreted as also making another subtle point. Thus, developing Paul’s idea, Evagrius states that when the soul becomes whole in all its three parts, then ‘the new man’ is formed in it, ‘renewed after the image of Him that created him’.17 It was seen in Chapter 3 how, in a number of passages of the Kephalaia Gnostica, Evagrius maintains that, while Christ is the creator of the material orders, God is the overall Creator of all things. In view of this distinction between God the true Creator and Christ, Thoughts 3 may also be viewed as maintaining that it is ‘God the Creator’ in contradistinction from ‘Christ’ who constitutes the soul’s renewal and true health. Christ the physician of the souls heals them by restoring the image of God in them. It is thus God’s image and not Christ’s that the soul is ultimately configured unto. On this reading, Origen’s prominent theme of man being in the image of the image of God is not realised in Evagrius as man’s being in the image of Christ. (c) The Pedagogue of souls The theme of Christ as the Physician of the souls overlaps with that of him as the soul’s Pedagogue. Christ instructs the soul in spiritual wisdom, from basics to more sublime spiritual levels.18 Christ is the soul’s personified ‘instruction and wisdom’ (paidei¿a kaiì sofi¿a).19 To obtain it, one must ‘knock at the gate of knowledge to awaken the master of the house, who dispenses spiritual bread to those who request it’.20 14 ‘Strathgoìj pole/mou kaiì paqw=n i)atro/j e)stin e)pisth/mwn h(gou/menoj’, De magistris et discipulis 3. 15 Thoughts, 3.37–9. Cf. Col. 3.11. 16 ‘o( a¹nakainou/menoj kat’ ei)ko/na tou= kti¿santoj au¹toìn’, Thoughts, 3.39–40. Cf. Col. 3.11. 17 Thoughts 3.32–6. Cf. Col. 3.10. 18 Sch.Prov. 197. 19 Ibid., 202. 20 Letter 63, Deferrari, p. 69.

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Christ distributes his wisdom in a multiplicity of ways. His voice is heard in the Scriptures; he delivers his pedagogy to the soul in the partaking of the Eucharist; he instructs it about prayer; through the logoi of material creation, he introduces the soul into the natures of beings and God’s providence and judgement for them. Scriptures and Eucharist Through the Psalms, Christ educates the soul in the art of praxis.21 He instructs the soul about the sacrament of Scripture itself, introducing it to the spiritual sense of the Bible. Christ’s voice is perceived in a unique manner in the New Testament, in which he is present through his teachings and the events of his earthly life.22 Through the partaking of the Eucharistic body and blood, Christ educates the soul about his mystical sojourn among men.23 What is the essence and purpose of Christ’s ‘entire sojourn’24 as revealed in Scripture and the Eucharist? It is the realisation of the already familiar ethical and theological programme Evagrius is so fond of: ‘practical virtues, natural contemplation, and theology’.25 As was already seen,26 these three also constitute the very heart of Christianity, which is: ‘the doctrine of our Saviour Jesus Christ composed of practical virtue (praktikh=j), natural [contemplation] (fusikh=j), and theology (qeologi¿aj).’27 The same Letter 63, however, explains that, in this context, ‘theology’ does not stand for the ultimate fullness of knowledge, but merely makes the soul fit ‘for the contemplation of beings’.28 Prayer Christ’s guidance about prayer is another aspect of his pedagogy. The one who wishes to pray has the need of God’s help: ‘If you wish to pray, then it is God whom you need’.29 Christ teaches the ascetic to address in prayer God the Father, because it is the Father who is ‘adored in spirit and in truth’.30 Christ also stresses the necessity to pray constantly.31 Whilst teaching on prayer, however, the Christ of Evagrius does not instruct to pray to himself. The object of prayer, according to the teaching of Christ, is always God and not he, Christ. Admittedly, the absence of autocentrism in the teaching of Christ about prayer corresponds to the picture found in the Synoptic Gospels, where Christ never behaves explicitly as God, demanding worship.

21 For Christ in the Psalter see Dysinger, op. cit., 6.1, p. 152 ff. 22 Letter 63, Deferrari, p. 62. 23 Ibid. 24 Letter 63, Deferrari, p. 62. 25 Ibid. 26 Chapter 2. 27 Practicus 1. 28 ‘proìj thìn tw=n o)/ntwn ... qewri¿an paraskeua¯zetai’, Letter 63, Deferrari p. 62. 29 ‘Qeou= xrei¿a tou= dido/ntoj eu¹xhìn’, Prayer 58. 30 Prayer 58. Cf. John, 4.24. 31 Prayer 88. Cf. Luke, 18.4–5.

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Natural contemplation Referring to the metaphor of classroom learning, KG III.57 thus speaks of Christ’s pedagogy to the believers: As those who teach letters to children write them on tablets, so also Christ, in teaching his wisdom to rational beings, has traced it upon bodily nature.

In contemplating the material beings the ascetic mind is instructed in the manifold wisdom of Christ. Natural contemplation, then, is another aspect of Christ’s pedagogy of the soul. Moreover, this seems to be the key to all other manners and loci of Christ’s instruction, because they all seem to converge upon this supreme activity. All the aspects of Christ’s activity hitherto encountered seem to have natural contemplation as its foremost goal. On the basis of certain key passages in the Kephalaia Gnostica, Chapter 3 above already highlighted Christ’s function as the instrumental cause of the material creation, which he fashioned in the act of the second natural contemplation. It comes as no surprise, then, that Christ is the soul’s teacher specifically of this kind of natural contemplation, in contradistinction from the first natural contemplation. Although the purpose of Christ’s instruction about the logoi of the embodied beings is to lift the mind, the sensible to the intelligible, Evagrius maintains silence with regard to Christ’s possible role in the contemplation of the immaterial beings. How, then, does Christ relate to the world of intellects and the first natural contemplation? The explanation can be deduced from KG II.2: In the second natural contemplation, we behold the manifold wisdom of Christ32 which he used to create the worlds. Yet in the knowledge regarding rational beings, we have been taught regarding his person (NAEBK).33

Christ thus plays an exceptional role in teaching the second natural contemplation and revealing his manifold wisdom.34 As for the first natural contemplation, it reveals not Christ’s wisdom but his person. This suggests that Christ’s wisdom is manifold and is not found in the realm of the unified wisdom of the first natural contemplation. That through the first natural contemplation Christ is revealed in his person signifies that the realm of the immaterial beings is where he metaphysically belongs. He is first and foremost a created intellect. Being a member rather than the creator of the class, Christ is not qualified to teach about this level of contemplation. God, who created the intellects, is the sole instructor about them. All in all, as the soul’s teacher, Christ performs a multiplicity of tasks of instruction. All of these tasks, including theologia, however, converge towards one goal: to nurture the soul toward the second natural contemplation. 32 (NAEBK) 33 Guillaumont’s translation of (NAEBK), qnomeh, here is ‘substance’, which is misleading. See Les ‘Képhalaia Gnostica’, p. 61. The term signifies individual rather than generic existence, for example each of the three Persons of the Trinity. 34 Cf. Eph. 3.10. Here, however, it is God and not Christ who is the source of the ‘manifold wisdom’.

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(d) The duality of kingdoms, deaths, and resurrections At this point it is fitting to introduce another metaphysical contrast endemic to Evagrius’s system, that between the basilei¿a tw=n ou¹ranw=n, ‘the kingdom of heaven’ or the basilei¿a Xristou=, ‘the kingdom of Christ’, on the one hand, and the basilei¿a Qeou, ‘the kingdom of God’, on the other. This distinction stems from Evagrius’s reading of Matthew, Mark and Luke in a particular way to suit his Christological concerns.35 It broadly corresponds to the differentiation he draws between the contemplation/knowledge of the embodied beings (the second natural contemplation) as opposed to that of the spiritual beings (the first natural contemplation) and of God. Consequently Evagrius’s ‘kingdoms’ are spiritual and contemplative realms of varying advancement and intensity. As it progresses in the spiritual life, the soul advances from a lower spiritual kingdom to a higher.36 As he rules over the universe full of diversity, Christ introduces the soul to the universe’s contemplation. This contemplation (which is the same as the second natural contemplation) is constituted by the spiritual knowledge of material things and bodies. The physical nature of this kind of contemplation is probably the reason why Evagrius also calls it pa=san thÜn eÃnulon gnw=sin, ‘all manner of material knowledge’.37 Evagrius’s somewhat paradoxical identification of the ‘material knowledge’ with the ‘kingdom of heaven’ pivots on the figure of Christ, who both contains and rules over ‘all manner of material knowledge’ as over his ‘kingdom’38 and, to Evagrius, is closely identifiable with the kingdom of heaven he proclaims.39 The ‘kingdom of God’ is a spiritual dominion constituted by a higher kind of spiritual awareness: the ‘knowledge of the Holy Trinity’ (gnw=sij th=j a¸gi¿aj Tria¯doj).40 Exactly where the first natural contemplation falls within this schema is not wholly clear. It seems logical, however, to collocate it with the knowledge of God as part of what constitutes the immaterial knowledge of the ‘kingdom of God’. 35 Although immersed in the Bible, Evagrius does not hesitate to ‘bend’ Scriptural evidence to fit his categories of being and knowledge. Thus, in dealing with the subject of the spiritual kingdoms, on a number of occasions he endows Luke 17.21, ‘The kingdom of God is within you’, with Mattheian overtones by changing ‘the kingdom of God’ to ‘the kingdom of heaven’. See, for example, Scholion 6 to Ps. 134.2 and KG V.30. 36 The distinction between the kingdoms of God and of Christ is present in Origen, Prayer 25, where, similarly to the Evagrian scheme, ‘the kingdom of God’ designates ‘the blessed state of the intellect and the good order of sage thoughts’, and ‘the kingdom of Christ’, a lesser contemplative state of ‘words of salvation’ and ‘the fulfilment of the works of righteousness and other virtues’. Gregory of Nazianzus, although defining ‘kingdom’ in gnostic terms as ‘contemplation’ makes no distinction between ‘the kingdom of heaven’ and the ‘kingdom of God’: ‘toute/sti qeoìn o(rw/meno/n te kaiì ginwsko/menon … oÁ dhì kaiì basilei/an ou¹ranw=n o) n oma¯z omen’ (Or.40.45.40 ff.). 37 Letter 63, Deferrari, p. 70. 38 Ibid.: ‘Xristou= gaÜr basilei¿an fasi¿n eiånai pa=san thìn eÃnulon gnw=sin’. 39 Evagrius’s identification of the person of Christ with the kingdom of heaven corresponds with the identification of the person of the Logos ‘the Only-Begotten Son’ with the kingdom of God the Father. See Prayer 58. 40 Practicus 3.

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The ‘kingdom of heaven’ versus the ‘kingdom of God’ distinction is encapsulated in the already cited passage from the Letter 63: For they say that the kingdom of Christ is every material knowledge (pa=san thìn eãnulon gnw=sin). By contrast, [the kingdom of] God and Father is immaterial [knowledge] (aÃu+lon) and … the vision of divinity itself (au¹th=j th=j qeo/htoj qewri¿an).41

Slight variations of this usage are observable from one Evagrius’s text to another. Thus Sch.Ps.144.13 presents ‘the contemplation of beings’ (qewri¿a tw=n gegono/twn) as ‘the kingdom of God’ and Practicus 3 maintains that the knowledge of God is ‘the kingdom of heaven’. This may indicate that the stricter terminological uniformity42 observable in Evagrius’s more philosophical works is a result of a development and maturation of his thought. Terminological variations, however, do not cancel out the fact that on the whole Evagrius’s definitions are both consistent and form an organic feature of the Evagriana. This categorisation bears important implications for Evagrius’s Christology. It and Evagrius’s insistence that Christ’s dominion is the kingdom of heaven, the material knowledge and the second natural contemplation, seems to generate a deduction that Christ’s authority is in some sense limited to the material knowledge and extends no further. This appears to strengthen the prima facie hypothesis that it is God and not Christ who is the Lord of the first natural contemplation and the knowledge of God Himself. The contrast between the two successive gnostic kingdoms corresponds to the duality of deaths and of resurrections. Slain by sin, the soul undergoes the first dying. Christ raises the soul from this demise by imparting to it the second natural contemplation, which Evagrius also calls the qewri¿a pa¯ntwn tw=n ai)w/nwn, ‘the contemplation of all the ages’.43 The second death that the soul dies is the death of Christ, which comes about at one’s baptism and through the exercise of the practical virtues. By contrast with the first death and resurrection, it is God the Father who lifts the soul from it by conferring upon it the higher contemplation, that of Himself.44 Again, Evagrius’s categorisation between the resurrection from the death of sin to the lower contemplation, which is effected by Christ, and the resurrection from praxis to theologia, effected by God, seems to provide positive support for a metaphysical distinction between Christ and God. Thus Evagrius’s differentiation between the two kingdoms, deaths, and resurrections appears to point to a contrast between the kind of salvific knowledge that Christ brings about and the one that God Himself generates of Himself. While Christ is instrumental in the soul’s rising toward the knowledge of God, ultimately it is not Christ who accords it. The cumulative picture that emerges from all the above is that, in order to come to the knowledge of God the Father and God the Trinity, one is to reach beyond the particular gnostic stage that is the domain of Christ. 41 Letter 63, Deferrari, p. 70. 42 Cf. Harmless, ‘Salt for the Impure, Light for the Pure’, p. 519. 43 Cf. Thoughts 1–4. 44 Ibid.

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(e) The Friend and Guide of souls Having healed, instructed, and shepherded the soul, Christ becomes the soul’s Friend. Through spiritual friendship the soul comes to know the mysteries of Christ: At first, Christ shepherds [his] sheep as a shepherd. Yet now, he calls them as a friend [calls his] friends to table. For he says, ‘Henceforth I call you not servants, but friends’.45 The fear of God produces servants, but the knowledge of mysteries [produces] friends.46,47

The theme of spiritual friendship (pneumatikhì fili¿a) between the soul and Christ is extremely prominent in the Scholia to the Psalms and to Proverbs.48 The idea is based on the theme of friendship in John 15.14–15, ‘I have called you friends’, and of reconciliation in Rom. 5.10, ‘For, if when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by His life’. Sch.Prov. 189 describes spiritual friendship as a twofold power, comprising active virtues and contemplation. It has the property of unification, uniting all rational creatures – angels and men – together, and them to Christ: For spiritual friendship is virtue and the knowledge of God, by which we unite ourselves to the holy powers. Thus the Saviour also calls [his] servants friends, having once made them worthy of the greater contemplation.49

Christ as the soul’s Friend, then, accompanies and ministers to the soul both at the beginners’ stage of practical asceticism and at a more spiritual level of the second natural contemplation (here, ‘the greater contemplation’). In this way he is the saviour of souls. It is through the spiritual friendship with Christ that the soul succeeds in elevating itself each time from a more material to a more spiritual level. The process of elevation is accompanied by that of unification. Scholion 189 above points out that, in becoming friends of Christ, the righteous men are also united to the holy powers as part of the same process. KG IV.89 expands upon the manner in which Christ elevates the soul into the very highest spiritual levels: Who will narrate the grace of God? And who will investigate the logoi of providence and how Christ guided the rational nature (NAEBK) through the variable worlds towards the unification (NAEBK) of the Holy Unity (NAEBK)?

As the Guide of souls, therefore, Christ is instrumental in realising God’s providence by helping them to rise to union with God. Nevertheless, Christ performs this function within his own realm of the hierarchical worlds he created. This is the domain to which Evagrius assigns Christ’s authority and power. 45 Cf. John 15.14. 46 ‘dou/louj meìn poiei= fo/boj qeou=, fi¿louj deì gnw=sij musthri¿wn.’ 47 Sch.Ps. 22.5(2). 48 Cf. Sch.Prov. 68, 120, 143, 150, 157, 173, 189, and 304. 49 ‘ouÀtwj kaiì o¸ Swthìr fi¿louj kalei= touìj dou/louj poteì th=j mei¿zonoj au)touìj qewri¿aj kataciw/saj.’

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(f) Christ the bridegroom of the soul The soul’s mystical marriage to God is a traditional way in which early Christianity interpreted the Song of Songs and some of the psalms. Unlike other theologians, notably Origen and Gregory of Nyssa, Evagrius never produced a commentary on the Song of Songs. Nevertheless, the theme of the nuptials of the soul and cosmos with Christ is one of his Christological themes. Evagrius’s leading idea in his account of this theme is that Christ and the universe mutually reveal one another through the beauty that they share. Through an act of the second natural contemplation, the variegated wisdom of Christ50 fashioned the beauty and harmony of the material world. Verse 5 of Psalm 18, about the bridegroom’s coming out of his chamber, accords with the idea (which Evagrius expresses elsewhere) of Christ’s coming out of his pre-incarnate abode into the world for the purpose of the secondary act of creation. The beauty discernible in material creation is the revelation of Christ’s own beauty. In Scholion 1 to Ps.18.6, the mysterious bride, who mystically personifies both the embodied soul and the entire universe, is said to imitate the groom according to his beauty (kataÜ toì ka¯lloj mimi=tai numfi¿on). It is Christ who is revealed in the figure of the groom (w(j numfi¿oj e)sti o( Xristo/j).51 The pattern of creation’s harmony and beauty, then, is Christ’s own comeliness. The key to this pattern is Christ himself. The arrangement of the material creation is in the image of Christ. (g) Christ the Father of the soul The ideas of spiritual friendship and fraternity are connected with Evagrian theme of Christ as the soul’s (adoptive) Father. Spiritual brotherhood between holy men and angels exists in virtue of their filiation to Christ.52 The entire race of rational creatures, then, is united as brothers in their unity to their father, Christ. Evagrius defines spiritual paternity as the generating of ‘spiritual wisdom’ by the father in his adoptive sons.53 Inseparable from it is the theme of Christ as mediator. According to KG VI.28, the ‘father’ is the one who generates in the soul substantial knowledge. This is the same as the ‘spiritual wisdom’ of VI.51 and ‘the knowledge of God’s essence’ in other passages discussed in Chapter 3. Substantial knowledge is also the knowledge that the Holy Trinity is, and Christ fully has.54 KG VI.29 and 30 elaborate this definition by establishing that, in order to be a father, that is, to generate substantial knowledge in others, one must, first, be of an intellectual nature, and, second, be united, on the one hand, to the knowledge of the Trinity above, and on the other, to the contemplation that the rational beings below possess. Christ uniquely satisfies these criteria. At the top of the ontological ladder, Christ through the Logos is inseparably united with God. Although not consubstantial with the 50 For Christ as the wisdom of God full of variety see Chapter 3. 51 Sch.Ps. 18.6(1). 52 Sch.Prov. 162 and 169. 53 KG VI.51. 54 On substantial knowledge see Chapter 3.

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Trinity,55 in the present age at least, Christ’s knowledge of God is immeasurably greater than that of any other created intellect.56 At the bottom end, Christ is united to the entire creation, material and immaterial. Himself a created intellect,57 he is one with the intellects. As a creator-demiurge,58 he is inseparable from ‘the worlds, the judgement and the providence that are in them’,59 which he fashioned. He is also, in a sense, the creator-figure for the intellects because, as they received bodies, the intellects were, as it were, created anew. Christ, then, is composite. He is both created and creator with respect to the immaterial and material worlds, and united in a unique manner to the Trinity. In virtue of his very being then, Christ is the perfect mediator. Skemmata 1 corroborates this: Christ, as a Christ, possesses substantial knowledge; as Creator, the logoi of the worlds, as an incorporeal, … the logoi of the incorporeals.60

It is clear that no angelic being satisfies this double criterion. Christ alone is the perfect mediator and father of souls. The purpose of Christ’s mediation and fatherhood is to disseminate the knowledge of God. This he does: first, by teaching men to read the book of creation through the second natural contemplation;61 second, by enabling their passage from the second natural contemplation to the first, since the path to the latter is through the former; and third, by bringing about the knowledge of God’s essence, because this supreme kind of knowledge is unobtainable without proficiency in contemplation of the universe. This knowledge eventually brings men to union with the divine Unity itself, in the vision of divine light. Inasmuch as he raises rational creatures from the status of servants to that of his friends and adoptive children,62 Christ the father and mediator reveals himself as their saviour. Enabling the soul’s passage from the second natural contemplation to the first, to the contemplation of light, Christ brings together the uncreated and created wisdoms. In Christ, then, the harmonies of the universe and God cohere. In imitation of Christ’s paternity, human spiritual fathers too dispense wisdom. In general, all beings en route to salvation are called to spiritual fatherhood. The wicked alone are sterile, giving birth neither to ‘virtues’ (taÜj a¹reta¯j) nor ‘the right dogmas’ (do/gmata o¹rqa¯).63 Conversely, the postulant receptive to the teaching of Christ is called ‘a child’ (pai=j), because he ‘has preserved the teaching from his youth’. Such a one belongs to Christ (e)sti tou= Xristou=).64 55 KG VI.14. 56 Cf. KG III.2–3. 57 Sch.Ps. 44.8(7). 58 Cf. KG II.2; III.26; and IV.57. 59 Cf. Letter 6, Frankenberg, p. 570, 30–31. 60 Skemmata 1, Cod. Paris. graec. 913. 61 Cf. Sch.Ps. 138.16(8). 62 Cf. Sch.Ps. 22.5(2). 63 Sch.Prov. 273. 64 Cf. Scholion 32 to Eccl. 4.13.

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(ii) Christ as the Creator of worlds, ages, bodies, numbers, and names The theme of Christ as Creator is an important angle from which to interpret his figure. Evagrius’s universe is Christocentric. Since Christ is the fashioner of the fabric of the material creation65 and this creation is constituted by worlds, ages, bodies, numbers, and names, these entities are the essence of the creation by Christ. The entire material created order springs forth instantaneously, ‘in the twinkling of an eye.’66 (a) Worlds, bodies and names KG II.66 draws a clear distinction between the two creative acts that form the core of Evagrius’s cosmological vision, the intellectual creation by God and the material creation by Christ: The birth of the bodies does not reveal the coming into being of the intellects. Instead, it brings about the nature of names, so that the composition (NAEBK) of [bodies] manifests the difference in the rank of [names].

Regarding the second creation, the kephalaion points to the pivotal principle of its categorisation into a hierarchy of orders, or taxes. Simultaneously with bringing it into existence, Christ shapes matter into one coherent universe, which is ordered into a hierarchy and endowed with measure and names. The purpose of this universe is to provide for each intellect an orderly modus vivendi, exactly corresponding to this intellect’s capacity for spiritual knowledge. Each intellect receives a tailormade world, a stellar, angelic, or human body, a name, and a number suited to its manner of life. Since this ‘habitat’ is transparent to the divine uncreated action, the contemplation of it enables the mind, if it so chooses, to be united with this grace, which then begins to elevate it towards higher spheres of knowledge. The higher taxes, such as angels and stars, ensure the orderly functioning of the entire universe. Material creation is inseparably linked with providence and judgement. Citing Christ as the parent of the knowledge of providence and judgement, Scholion 1 on Ecclesiastes 1.167 links both providence and judgement with the birth of ages and worlds. The creator of the knowledge of providence and judgement in the soul, Christ is simultaneously the maker of the realities of providence and judgement themselves. The principle involved is that ontology corresponds to the true knowledge of it. Similarly, in Aristotle, while a properly constructed demonstrative syllogism generates true knowledge in the mind, the major premise is also the extramental metaphysical cause of the conclusion.68

65 See Chapter 3. 66 KG III.54 and 1 Cor. 15.52. 67 Cited in Chapter 3. 68 For definitions of the demonstrative syllogism, see Posterior Analytics 71b17, cf. 85b23, 92a36. That the premises are causative of the conclusion is stated in Post.An. 71b20–23.

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KG IV.89 cited above identifies the purpose of providence, judgement, and of the worlds as that of providing a kind of a spring-board that propels the soul to higher knowledge and eventually to the knowledge of God. However, while it is Christ who leads the soul through the varied worlds he created to upper spheres, the energising power behind the movement is the grace of God. The impression is that Evagrius is here drawing attention to the dissimilation between the roles of Christ and God: Christ’s role is instrumental rather than efficient. Unexpectedly, there are also passages that name God rather than Christ as the first cause of providence, judgement, bodies, and the worlds: When He created the intellectual beings, God was not in anything (NAEBK). When, however, He created the bodily nature and the worlds that are from it, He is in His Christ (NAEBK).69

The passage’s central idea fits the pattern whereby in creating all these multiple entities, Christ performs the instrumental rather than the properly causal role in the absolute sense of possessing the power of causality. It is God who is the ultimate Creator. God creates the intellects without an intermediary (and hence is ‘not in anything’). Yet He creates the bodies and the worlds by the intermediary of Christ (and thus is ‘in Christ’). (b) The bodies The bodies’ raison d’être Created by God’s and Christ’s providence and judgement, the ages and worlds are quasi-equivalent with the bodies. What is the bodies’ raison d’être? Cumulative evidence from Evagrian texts suggests the following picture. The bodies are part of God’s judgement and providence for the descended intellects. Like the ages and the worlds, therefore, the bodies serve the purpose of restoring the fallen intellects to their primary state of knowledge. The essence of the plan of restoration lies in giving the souls the possibility of being engaged in the restorative activity of contemplation: Contemplation is spiritual knowledge (NAEBK) of things that began to be and will be. It causes the intellect to ascend to its first rank (NAEBK).70

The tantum/quantum analogy Contemplation presupposes and requires existence. To return to contemplation, the intelligences need a comfortable bodily situation that is appropriate to their particular state of knowledge first. In keeping with his predilection for numerically accurate categorisation, Evagrius establishes a tantum/quantum analogy between one’s gnostic state and one’s body. The analogy constitutes the quintessence of God’s and Christ’s judgement for the intellects. The key term for this idea is precisely this, a¹nalogi¿a [th=j katasta¯sewj], ‘the analogy of one’s state’. Hence Evagrius’s hermeneutic of Matt.7.2, ‘With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again’: 69 KG IV.58. See also Sch.Ps. 138.16(2) cited in Chapter 3. 70 KG III.42.

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For it is according to [our] state (kataÜ a¹nalogi¿an th=j katasta¯sewj) that we also receive knowledge (kaiì thìn gnw=sin dexo/meqa), if [it is right to say] that with which measure we measure it shall be measured to us again.71

Other passages explicitly draw a parallel, or ‘analogy’, between the amount of knowledge one has, or one’s state, and one’s body: Judgement is the creation of a world that dispenses bodies to each intellectual being according [to its state] (kat’ a¹nalogi¿an).72

Here the correspondence is made explicit between God’s judgement, the creation of the world, or aeon, and the hierarchically ordered corporeality quantitatively directly proportionate to the hierarchy of gnostic states. An interlude: the body and the primordial fall The delicate question of Evagrius’s attitude to materiality has been touched upon at various points. Here is the place finally to dot the ‘i’s and cross the ‘t’s regarding Evagrius’s doctrine. We have seen that, while his modern critics73 malign his dualist anthropology and the devaluing of the body, Evagrius’s defenders74 assert his ‘holism’ and solid Biblical foundation. Here I argue a different position: that Evagrius’s views on embodiment and the origin of the soul are dualistic in what concerns the origin of the body and the body’s function in this present life, and in the context of eschatology, akin to a monism of a certain kind; that much (yet not all) of what he believed about the origin and role of bodies was part of a wider theological context that prevailed in fourth-century Lower Egypt75 and which he neither originated nor uniquely represented; and that this Egyptian context itself constituted one part of a kaleidoscope of Late Antique Christian ideas about corporeality, which were in some real sense dualistic and susceptible to interpretation in terms of pre-existence. The evidence from Evagrius surveyed immediately above suggests that Evagrius believed that the intellects pre-existed the bodies; that the hierarchical material diversity of the present age is the result of a second, material, creation, posterior to the first; that the material creation is the realisation of God’s judgement and providence, the purpose of which is to bring the rational beings back to contemplation; and that God’s judgement dispensed bodies to the intellects in the measure of their transgression. Does Evagrius have an explicit doctrine that the creation of the body is the result of a primordial fall? Even if the Evagriana contained no direct mention of such a fall into materiality, the beliefs in the pre-existence of souls established in the previous

71 Scholion 8 to Eccl. 2.10. 72 Sch. 275 to Prov. 24.22. 73 The earlier Guillaumont, Hausherr, and Clark. 74 Plested. 75 The persistence of the doctrine of pre-existence among the fourth-century Lower Egyptian monks was probably the occasion for Epiphanius’s polemic against this doctrine in his charge 2 in Panarion 64.4.5–8. See Dechow, op. cit., pp. 297–8.

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paragraph would necessitate an underlying assumption of some kind of primeval lessening of grace. But Evagrius does actually mention a specific point in the intellects’ existence that he terms ‘the Movement’. This suggests a primordial cataclysm that caused the intellects to slip, as it were, into matter. We will limit ourselves to two examples only. In KG III.22 the following definition of ‘the Movement’ is obtained: The first Movement of the rational beings is the intellect’s separation from the Unity that is in it.

While the end of the passage can be seen as a metaphor for the tribulations of one’s life on earth, its opening (‘the first Movement’) rather suggests a protological context of a pre-cosmic fall. The focus of a section of the Letter to Melania 6 is likewise the protology, just as the one directly following it is eschatological: ... there has been a time when, because of its free will, [the mind] fell from this former rank and was called a soul. And having sunk down even further, it was called a body. But in time the body, the soul, and the mind, because of changes of their wills, will become one entity.76

This exposition of the origin of the soul is reminiscent of a hypothesis expressed in On First Principles II.8.3.176–7 that the intellect (mens), having absconded from its ‘state and dignity’, ‘has become and is called the soul (anima/yuxh/ )’. This passage from Origen forms part of a treatise’s lengthy section about the origin and destiny of the soul, which suggests a speculation about the degraded ontology of the psyche rather than a metaphor for the vicissitudes of this life on earth. Consequently, whatever Origen’s overall doctrine on the origin of body and soul, the fall of the mind into the state of psyche is indeed conceived by Evagrius in terms of a pre-cosmic catastrophe. Does Evagrius trace the soul’s association with the body to this primordial calamity? That, according to Evagrius’s tantum/quantum analogy, the bodies are dispensed according to the measure of the intellects’ distance from God, has been seen above. In addition, other passages assert a correspondence between a mind’s distance from God and the kind of body it possesses. Thus, KGIV.65 figuratively attests to humans’ middle position between angels and demons with regard to men’s state of virtue and immortality: The entire rational nature is divided into three parts: life reigns over the first; death and life over the second; and over the third only death [reigns].

KG II.68 establishes a link between the heaviness of the bodies and their position higher or lower to one another and thus their respective distance from God:

76 Letter to Melania 6, Parmentier, p. 12.

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It is said that those with light bodies are high up, and those with heavy bodies are down below. And above the former are those that are lighter than they; and beneath the latter are those that are heavier.

If humans occupy the middle rank regarding their state of virtue, and if the heaviness of the body determines how high or low and thus how close or removed from God they are, it follows that men’s bodies are to be found in the middle of the postlapsarian material hierarchy of being and thus to be of medium weight or density. This is described in Scholion 2 to Ps. 134.6: As the heaven is the habitation of the holy powers, so the earth is that of men. For it is declared: ‘The heaven of heavens belongs to the Lord; but He has given the earth to the sons of men’.77 And just as the demons, our adversaries, inhabit what metaphorically is called the seas, in which ‘the dragon also was made to play therein’,78 so also the demons under the earth are in what is allegorically named ‘the depths’, to which they beseeched Jesus to send them.79 The precise knowledge of these worlds and the different bodies resides in the logoi concerning the judgement.

Inhabiting ‘the seas’ and ‘the depths’, the demons, clearly, are the lowest in the scale of being. This situation obtains in virtue of their wickedness and the resulting density of their bodies. Perched above ‘the seas’ and ‘the depths’ but beneath ‘the heavens’, the earth occupies a middle position within the universe. Human beings, then, who inhabit the earth, are lower than ‘the heavens’ (i. e. the angels) but higher than the demons. Consequently, men are nearer to God than the demons but more distant from Him than the angels. Because KG II.68 above establishes that one’s position on the gnostic hierarchy of being is directly proportionate to the heaviness of one’s body, it follows that men’s bodies are of medium heaviness and men belong to the medium ethical and spiritual rank, the demons are the lowest on account of their bodies being the densest, and the angels are at the top of the scale due to the etherial quality of their bodies. The heaviness of the demonic bodies corresponds to the ‘heavy/dense’ contemplation that the evil spirits have.80 It follows, therefore, that Evagrius indeed traces the soul’s union with the body to a primeval fall, whereby a lesser degree of fallenness produces lighter bodies, able to occupy a position nearer to God, and a graver transgression results in the genesis of heavier bodies located lower down and farther away from God. The body, then, is the product of the original fall. There is, however, a twofold ambiguity regarding Evagrius’s doctrine of the body. Thus, KG IV.62 suggests that those who denigrate the body (presumably any kind of body) ‘blaspheme against the Creator’. On this reasoning, are not all bodies, angelic, human, and (even) demonic, as resulting from God’s creative act, in some sense noble and a provision for a return to contemplation? Yet KG III.40 points out that, whereas the angels are endowed with 77 Ps. 113.16. 78 Ps. 103.26. 79 Cf. Luke 8.31. 80 Cf. KG VI.2.

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good bodies, the demons are given ‘evil bodies’. The answer is likely to be found in the fact that even the demons’ evil bodies contain a measure of goodness since in the eskhaton they too will be redeemed and transformed into good bodies.81 Second, the correspondence between the measure of primeval transgression and the body’s weight likewise appears to be subverted. As KG I.68 maintains, the angels are predominantly ‘intellect and fire’; men ‘concupiscence and earth’; while demons ‘irascibility and air’. Since air is hardly denser than earth or fire, it appears that the demons are not the heaviest after all. If this is the case, should not the entire causal link between the fall and the nature of the body be revised? This argument has been recently advanced with regard to a similar ambiguity in Origen.82 The problem of a causal link between the primordial transgression and corporeality in Origen remains outside the scope of the present research. Regarding Evagrius, however, the conclusion must be that, although the correspondence between one’s body’s physical topography and one’s state of knowledge occasionally breaks down, on the whole the principle holds. Corporeality is indeed traceable to the measure of the intellects’ fall. It is probable, therefore, that Evagrius considered cold air in some sense the heaviest element, especially if the heaviness and lightness are interpreted as spiritual rather than purely physical categories. Consequently, Evagrius’s evaluation of corporeality, as it exists in this present age, is complex. Directly traceable to the primeval transgression, corporeality and matter, in some sense, are punishments. In this respect, there is a measure of distrust of the body and matter. While the body in itself is not evil, a misuse of its functions, as leading to disaster, certainly is. Did not an incident in Evagrius’s own life lead to disastrous consequences in terms of a loss of his career? However, being in some sense a punishment and a liability, the body is also viewed as a positive means for the delinquent’s reformation and even sanctification. In this sense, the body, natural cognition, and matter are holy. They are transparent to God’s graceful action and as such are the means for deification. While it is traceable to the original transgression, therefore, as God’s provision for deification, the body is also blessed and holy. In response to modern critics who find Evagrius’s attitudes to the body scandalous and in need of an apology, the answer should be that so are the views of other Christian ascetical thinkers of Late Antiquity. In truth, can a fourth-century monk seriously be blamed for not exalting sexual intercourse and mortifying the flesh? Consequently, if Evagrius is to be taxed with denigrating the body in some (anachronistically modern) sense, the same would be true to say of every fourth-century Christian ascetic writer, despite all the complexity of the fourth-century theological scene. Polarities are inherent in the beliefs about God and the world, matter and spirit, and sin and virtue. Inasmuch as all ascetic discourse embraces the idea of the progress from the lower pole to the higher, a dualism is involved that is not to the taste of the modern mind. But, one might suggest, what others hold merely as a myth, Evagrius dogmatises and pushes to its logical conclusions. Thus, he vouches for the pre-existence of the soul of Christ. Even if he does, however, is not the task of the properly-critical modern 81 Ibid. 82 See Edwards, Origen Against Plato, 91 and Crouzel, Origen, 215.

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historian to evaluate his data in its complex dynamic rather than fitting the rugged edges to the Procrustean bed of pre-conceived notions? Is Origen Evagrius’s inspiration in the tantum/quantum analogy? That Evagrius knew Origen’s ideas on souls and bodies very well requires no proof, since Evagrius came from the theological household of Basil and Gregory, where Origen was closely studied and an anthology of his texts produced. Despite problems with establishing the text of Peri Archon, it is reasonable to believe that Evagrius’s theory of material multiplicity, in some details, draws on Origen. Although Origen may have not have traced corporeality to a primordial fall from grace,83 P.Arch. II.1.1 and 1.2 establish a correspondence between the diversity of the material world and the primordial choice made by the intellects. The world’s diversity consists: of rational and more divine natures and of diverse bodies, and besides these of dumb animals, that is, wild beasts and cattle, birds, and all beings that live in water, then second, of places, such as heaven or the heavens, and earth or water, but also of air, which is between the two, or that which they call aether; and also of all things that spring or grow out of the earth (ex rationabilibus et divinioribus naturis et ex diversis corporibus constet, sed et ex mutis animantibus, id est feris bestiis et pecudibus et avibus atque omnibus quae in aquis vivunt, tum deinde ex locis, id est caeli vel caelorum et terrae vel aquae, sed et ex eo qui medius est aere, vel quem aetherem dicunt, atque ex omnibus quae procedunt vel nascuntur ex terra).

Importantly, what causes this degree of diversity is: the variety and diversity of the motions and inclinations of those who fell away from that original unity and harmony in which they were at first created by God … (diversitatem ac varietatem motuum atque prolapsuum eorum qui ab illa initii unitate atque concordia, in qua a deo primitus procreati sunt, deciderunt …).84

In Origen, then, in a manner consonant with Evagrius, there is a direct correlation between the variety of the material universe and the movements of the intellects’ free choice. For Evagrius, Origen’s ideas would have provided foundations on which to build his own system. Origen further explains that, in order to bring the ‘variety of the intellects’ and the entire world ‘toward one perfect end’ (ad unum perfectionis finem), God first harmonises the diversity of their intentions and calls the intellects back ‘to one concord of work and endeavour’ (in unum … revocat operas studiique consensum) by the ‘ineffable art of His wisdom’ (per ineffabilem sapientiae suae artem).85 Thus the movement back to the ‘one perfect end’ begins with God’s first installing harmony into the diversity. Similarly, Evagrius proclaims that, before the intellects can rise again to their first taxis, they must be brought to order. The hierarchisation of the diversity of worlds, ages, and bodies serves this purpose. However, while in Origen the world’s 83 Cf. M. J. Edwards, Origen Against Plato, pp. 89–97 and 160. 84 P.Arch. II.1.1.9–26. 85 Cf. P.Arch. II.1.2.31–8.

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harmonisation is performed directly by God and His creative wisdom, in Evagrius Christ is the instrumental cause of the work, as God delegates. Consequently, while using Origen’s work, in his views on the creation of the body by Christ, Evagrius remains his own master. Christ and God as the authors of material creation Chapter 3 cited material demonstrating that God and not Christ is the intellects’ ex nihilo creator, whom He made in the act of the first natural contemplation. By contrast, Christ is the creator of the material diversity through the act of the second natural contemplation. The distinction is found in KG III.24 and 26, which were partially cited in Chapter 3 above: III.24: The knowledge of the first nature is the spiritual contemplation that the Creator used to make the intellects only; these are able to be receptors of His nature. III.26: The knowledge regarding the second nature is the spiritual contemplation which Christ used to create the nature of bodies and the worlds from it.

The two kephalaia may be interpreted in juxtaposition to one another and as contrasting the terms ‘the creator’ and ‘Christ’. The expression ‘to contain God’s nature’ (III.24) is a near synonym with ‘to know God’s essence/nature’. What is meant by both formulae is that the minds, when properly trained, are capable of sharing in God’s life. The latter kind of knowledge is the ultimate spiritual perfection, fully attainable only in the life to come but tasted already in this present age. In the traditional patristic idiom, it is termed ‘deification’. Given that, as a type of knowledge, the first natural contemplation concerns itself with beings susceptible of the highest contemplative knowledge and in whom God can manifest Himself without mediation, the first natural contemplation itself falls but one rung below the ultimate perfection. In turn, III.26 is about the knowledge that concerns the multiplicity of bodies and worlds. As a multiple type of knowledge, it is radically distinct from the first natural contemplation. Its object being the material natures, the second natural contemplation is not directly concerned with the receptacles of the divine manner of life, the minds. Consequently, this type of knowledge does not lead directly to a union with God. Since Christ is the source of the second natural contemplation it appears that he does not directly foster deification. Nonetheless, deification is impossible without Christ, because one can only ascend one rung of the ladder at a time. Unio mystica is unattainable without the contemplation of the intellectual nature, and this in turn is impossible without the contemplation of the bodies and their logoi. In this respect, although Christ is neither directly responsible for nor is the object of man’s ultimate perfection, he is instrumental in bringing it about. An idea similar to that of III.24 is expressed in III.32, where the ability to contain the divine Unity is equated with the bearing of God’s image and contrasted with the capacity to embrace God’s wisdom:

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The image of God86 is not he who is able to contain His wisdom. For thus the bodily nature would be the image of God. But he is the image of God who has become a receptacle of the Unity itself.

The wisdom of God here is the multiform wisdom of Christ by which he created the multiplicity of the universe. Consequently, Evagrius, here points out that while Christ creates the material universe, he is unable to imprint it with the image of God. The worlds, ages, and bodies, in themselves, do not reflect God’s image. (c) Numbers The number is another spiritual category in Evagrius’s universe, integral to the principle of harmony introduced by Christ. The mysterious KG II.75 points out the organic connection between the measure of Christ’s justice regarding rational creation and the number of the worlds he made: The judge judged those that were to be judged in proportion to the number of the worlds he made, and he who knew the number of the judgements also came to know the number of the worlds.

The judge here is Christ, who has assigned the category of number to all things as the quintessence of his act of judgement. To Evagrius, a universe en route to salvation is a universe catalogued and numbered. Thus the material cosmos steeped in the wisdom of Christ full of variety consists of four elements: fire, water, air, and earth.87 Matter, then, is not a¸plou=j, ‘uncomposite’, but is in this sense ‘numbered’. Neither is man, who consists of body and soul, a¸plou=j. Every created being, even if holy, is circumscribed (perigrapth/n) in number, space, and knowledge. This property makes it susceptible to change and therefore to evil.88 At the same time, number has a divine and gnostic quality to it. It was seen above89 that the logoi of the universe constitute a finite domain, knowable to the mind. It is the category of number that enables this knowability. All created beings that assert God’s and Christ’s authority accept being numbered and named. ‘God’s number (o¸ tou= qeou= a¹riqmo/j) with which [God] numbers [His] saints, indicates a particular spiritual and defined order.90,91 With this number Moses enumerated the sons of Israel.92 The number which God allocates to the intellectual beings denotes ‘the differences in the state of the stars’,93 and the names He assigns to them signify ‘different kinds of spiritual knowledge’.94 The spiritual knowledge is the ‘spiritual 86 (NAEBK) 87 Letter 63, p. 52. 88 Ibid. 89 Chapter 3 above. 90 ‘pneumatikh/n tina kaiì w(risme/nhn ta¯cin.’ 91 Sch.Eccl. 6. 92 Cf. Num.1.2. Ibid. 93 ‘katasta¯sewj aÃstrwn diafora¯j’. The stars are intellectual existences similar to angelic beings. 94 ‘diafo/rouj pneumatikaìj gnw/seij’.

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number’ (pneumatikoì j a¹ r iqmo/ j ) itself.95 The nations and the angels are defined by their respective numbers.96 By contrast, evil beings of this world are disorderly and have no number.97 Does not the Psalmist make this clear when he speaks of the reptiles as ‘things creeping innumerable’?98 ‘For how, Evagrius rhetorically exclaims, can spiritual number be given to things creeping upon their belly and working for pleasures? Solomon also warns that, whilst the ones wounded by evils are many (pollouìj), those killed [by them], are innumerable (a¹nariqmh/touj)’.99 The presence of a comparable theme is discernible in Origen. According to him, the subject matter of the divine number is developed in Numbers 1.1–4. To Origen, the deep spiritual meaning of this text is that nothing inferior merits enumeration. Women, slaves and males under twenty years old are not worthy of divine numbering (divinis calculis).100 No puerility or laziness (especially characteristic of women) deserves to be included before God in the holy and consecrated number (in sancto et consecrato numero).101 By contrast, the saints are all enumerated before God. Not only does the Lord establish the exact number of his disciples, but the very hairs of their head are numbered.102 Evagrius develops the theory of spiritual number further by pointing out that there is another sense in which something can be termed innumerable. The true meaning of the Prophet David’s declaration that God’s ‘understanding is infinite’103 is that God’s mind is beyond comprehension of any kind. God, therefore, is not subjected to the category of number.104 That all considerations of number and matter are banished from the way one theologises about the nature of God is a fundamental tenet of Evagrius’s theologia, observable already in his earliest Letter 63. In it, Evagrius maintains that the reason why this is the case is that the number pertains to quantity,105 which is characteristic of bodies.106 Every number signifies things that have a material (eÃnulon) and circumscribed (perigrapth/n) nature. Yet God is a nature that is both simple (a¸plh/) and uncompounded (a¹su/nqetoj). Despite being both a mona¯j and an e(na¯j, it is not delimited by any number.107 95 Sch.Ps. 146.4. 96 Cf. Sch.Eccl. 38.19 and Sch.Prov. 370.4. 97 Cf. ‘the strange and wicked woman’ of Proverbs7.5 and 24 that ‘has wounded and cast down many, and those whom she slew are innumerable’. (Cited in a modified form in Evagrius’s Sch.Eccl.6). Foreshadowing the Evagrius’s number symbolism are also other references scattered throughout Proverbs, for example, 29.16. Luke 13.23–4 also contributes to Evagrius’s idea. 98 Cf. Ps. 103.25. Cited in Sch.Ps. 146.4. 99 Ibid. 100 Hom.I.1.1.1–19 to Num. 101 Hom.I.1.3.28–42. 102 Cf. Matt. 10.30. Hom.I.1.4. 103 Ps. 146.5. 104 Sch.Eccl 6.12–15. 105 ‘o( gaÜr a¹riqmo/j e)sti tou= posou=.’ 106 Letter 63, Deferrari, p. 52. 107 Ibid.

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(d) Names Scholion to Ps. 146.4: ‘He calleth the number of the stars; he calleth them all by their names’, which was cited above, brings out the close association of numbers with names. Together with numbering, naming introduces harmony to the multiplicity of things. The intellectual beings desirous of spiritual knowledge willingly submit to the authority of Christ and God and accept being numbered and named. It is as though, in order to know, one must first accept to be known. Tidiness, order and harmony (not least the harmony of the thoughts in one’s mind) underlie all knowledge-acquisition. With the rest of the second creation, names sprang forth instantaneously: In the twinkling of an eye108 the cherubim were named ‘cherubim’, Gabriel ‘Gabriel’, and man ‘man’.109

That names as they appear in present-day human language are post-lapsarian and therefore integral to the second creation is maintained throughout the Evagriana. Thus the Letter to Melania 5 expressly states that ‘the plurality of names’ came ‘upon the mind as a result of the “Movement”’.110 Consequently, there is a twofold aspect to the names of created beings. As fashioned by God, they objectively exist on a par with the things they are names of. Beside this, they also exist, presumably as something akin to the noh/mata, in the human mind. In this second aspect, names enable the human mind to recognise the hierarchies within the multiform universe and the structural nature of the acquisition of knowledge. This awareness is the first step in the mind’s spiritual advancement. That names are so tightly linked with material things and the ranks of being points to their quasi-identity with these entities themselves. As the universe itself, the names are minutely classified according to the degree of knowledge they encompass. Moreover, as the outward shapes of material objects fall short of conveying their true identities, in the same way their names that spring to mind most readily are not the things’ real appellations. Just as it yields their logoi, expert contemplation of the universe also reveals the genuine names of beings. Names, then, are very like the logoi in that they too reveal the things’ true identities. While there is no elaboration of this principle in Evagrius, he appears to uphold a Cratylean theory of referential language whereby, far from being purely conventional, the names reveal what things truly are. There is thus an objective quality about names, so that they are envisaged as themselves being realities of some kind over and above the fact that they also refer to realities. There are likewise names that refer not to the created order but to God’s manifestations of Himself in creation. Some of these spring forth in the act of second creation and are thus providentially put in place by God for the need of fallen creatures. A longer passage from the Letter to Melania 5 contends that these titles will pass out of existence once the divine manifestations whose purpose is to respond to the diverse transgressions are required no more. While the divine aspects of being 108 Cf. 1 Cor. 15.52. 109 KG III.54. 110 Parmentier, p. 12.

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the Judge, Vindicator, Physician, and so on will remain as divine potentialities, the iniquities that once caused their actualisation will be abolished. So will be the divine names that constituted God’s response to the problem of sinfulness: Once the plurality and the names which came upon the mind as a result of the ‘Movement’, have been removed, then also the various names by which God is called, will be abolished. For necessarily arising from the variation among rational beings, due to the effects of His work and the way His providence operates, He is in a derived sense called a Judge – because of offenders, a Vindicator – because of sinners, a Healer – because of the sick, Someone who raises the dead – for the dead, Someone who slays and who repents – because of enmity and sin, and so on. Not that He does not have all these distinct roles, but those who required their existence are no longer.111

Other God’s names pre-exist ‘the Movement’. These are invented/created by God to designate the divine action toward the unfallen intellects. Thus KG VI.20 contrasts God’s pre- and post-lapsarian Scriptural names: Before the movement God was the Good, Mighty, Wise, Creator of the incorporeals, Father of the intellectual beings and All-mighty. After the Movement, He became Creator of bodies, Judge, Governor, Physician, Shepherd, Teacher, Merciful and Long-suffering; likewise the Door, the Way, the Lamb, the High Priest, with the other names that are cited for the sake of an example ….

Here the two sets of names describe the two manners of divine activity regarding intellectual creation which correspond to the two distinct creative acts, the first, of the unfallen minds and the second, that of the bodies. While the two manners of divine creation and revelation are distinct, a sole agent, God, effected both. Since the second series of names, designating God’s dealings with the post-lapsarian creation, are traditional Christological appellations, the passage contains a reference to Christ. What Christological picture emerges here? The passage is susceptible to two interpretations. If the sole agent of the divine activity which the passage describes is Christ, it follows that Christ is ontologically divine and is the focus of the entire divine revelation. If, however, the agent in question is the Trinity, the Father or the Logos, in contradistinction from Christ – the traditional Christological names properly belong to God and only by transference to Christ. Since elsewhere112 Evagrius makes it clear that Christ is not the author of the first creation, the second interpretation is the more plausible. Echoing KG IV.58 cited above, the present passage casts a new light upon the theme of Christ as creator: God is the supreme Maker of the universe, while Christ is a creator of a lower rank, a demiurge. Finally, there exists another class of divine names, more intimately one than any other with God’s very being. These are the names ‘Father’, ‘Son’ and ‘Spirit’. Like the realities they stand for, these titles always immutably are: ‘the names and the persons of the Son and the Spirit do not pass, because they have no beginning and no end.’113 111 Melania 5, Parmentier, p. 12, slightly modified. 112 See Chapter 3. 113 Melania 5, op. cit.

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Against the backdrop of his theory of names of God’s manifestations, Evagrius accounts for linguistic phenomena like the metaphoric meaning and homonymy. Not all the referencing that takes place in this present day and age is expressive of the very essence of things referred to. Man, for instance, is called ‘god’114 not in truth but kataÜ xa¯rin, that is, metaphorically and by grace. By contrast, demons are called ‘gods’115 kataÜ yeu=doj, ‘according to deceit’. God alone is called ‘God’ kat’ ou¹si¿an, ‘in substance’.116 While only the last appellation is faultlessly accurate, the first one is permissible for the specific purposes of a given discourse. This principle enables Evagrius throughout his corpus to apply one and the same name to different referents (for instance the divine titles in reference both to God and Christ), as well as a multiplicity of titles to one and the same referent (such as the various names consistent with the pre- and post-lapsarian state of creation used in reference to God). Such metaphoric and polysemous use of language is what constitutes the richness and the strange potency of Evagrius’s discourse. It considerably contributes to the quasi-poetic and rhythmic quality of the prose of his kephalaia genre.117 At the same time this enables him to wrap each idea into layers of enigmatic meaning intended for differing levels of the audience’s understanding. In the end, only he and a small circle of like-minded people118 will know which idea is expressed kataÜ xa¯rin and which kat’ ou)si/an. It will be seen below how in his theology of God, the Logos and Christ, Evagrius uses theological terms now in their proper, now in their metaphorical sense. Different kinds of referencing – kataÜ xa¯rin in some contexts and kat’ ou)si¿an in others. That Origen was strongly interested in matters of referential language and its relevance regarding the identity of God and Logos/Christ is well-attested in a number of places, especially in Book II of the Commentary on John. Thus Commentary on John II.17 points out the difference between God and the Son. The former is God in the true sense of the term, au)to/qeoj. There is but one God properly so called. By contrast, a being that is with God is divine through proximity with Him. Such a being, therefore, ought more properly to be called (kuriw¯teron aÄn le/goito) ‘god’ (qeo/j) rather than ‘God’ (o( qeo/j). The Son, then, is qeo/j rather than o( qeo/j or au)to/qeoj. However, only few are able to have for their God the God of the universe. Those that have not reached this spiritual height worship His Christ, the Son of God, as their God.119 There are likewise different senses of the term lo/goj.120 Thus, there is a logos who attaches himself to the true Logos of God, yet himself is not this true Logos. This secondary logos is Jesus Christ 114 Cf. Ps. 81.6. 115 Cf. Ps. 95.5. 116 Letter 63, p. 56. 117 The limitations of space prevent this chapter from extensive quoting. However, KG VI.27–32 can be cited here, in which Evagrius shifts the discourse from the theme of God the Father to that of spiritual paternity in Christ and in men, while using the term ‘father’ all along yet each time in a different sense. 118 Cf. Melania 1, Parmentier p. 8. 119 Cf. Com. Jn., II.27. 120 Cf. Ibid., II.32.

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crucified.121 Nonetheless, there is but one Logos in the proper sense of the term.122 It is not the plurality of logoi, or wisdoms, or justices that is called this in the full sense of the terms (kuri¿wj o)nomazo/menoi).123 As there only is one truth, one must know how to use a term properly124 and what is its proper sense.125 Consequently, Origen has a finely developed theory of the proper and extended sense of theological and biblical terms. Evagrius’s thoughts on the subject are very similar and are of crucial importance for the understanding of his idea of such key theological terms as ‘God’, ‘Logos’, and ‘Christ’. There is thus a notable difference between the view on referential language of Evagrius and the Cappadocians. For Basil at least, all language is a human institution and a construct. Whether they refer to things in the divine or created realm, names never express the full identity of a thing but merely its manifestation and that imperfectly. Such is the case with the very name qeo/j, as Gregory of Nyssa points out.126 Consequently, for the Cappadocians there never can be a name of God that would be kat’ ou)si¿an. By contrast, Evagrius conceives of referential language as expressive of the very essences of things. In this respect, just like the logoi, names are something that is God-given rather than humanly invented. In fact, the logoi of things, which are the focus of natural contemplation, are very similar to names. Like the logoi, the names of things, on a lower level, are given by Christ. This, in turn, raises an important question regarding the logoi as the spiritual identities of things. If the names and the worlds are to pass away, is this also the destiny of the things and their logoi, at least of those logoi that are immanent in things rather than in the mind of God? The honours are thus equally divided between Evagrius and the Cappadocians. Inasmuch as he maintains that there is a revealed quality about language, Evagrius manifestly diverges from the Cappadocians’ ‘energetic’ line and finds himself of an opinion similar to the essentialist view of Alcinoos’s interpretation of Cratylus. However, Evagrius is also profoundly biblical. His treatment of names echoes Gen. 2.20 where, bringing order to things, Adam names all animals. In that, he stands with God and exercises God-like authority. Regarding his theory of names, Evagrius also finds himself in the company of the Apologists. In his Second Apology, Justin Martyr thus explains the concept of God’s ineffability: For whatever name each of the angels has given to himself and his children, by that name they called them. But to the Father of all, who is ungenerated, no name is assigned, for by whatever name He be called, He has as His elder the person who assigns Him the name. But these words, Father and God and Creator and Lord and Master, are not names, but appellations derived from His good deeds and functions ....127

121 Ibid., II.33. Cf. I Cor. 2.2. 122 II.37. 123 II.38. 124 II.40. 125 II.44. 126 Cf. Against Eunomius II.585.8–11. 127 Justin Martyr, 2nd Apol. 5.6–6 (on the basis of ANF 1.90).

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Here Justin’s conception of the divine and other names are, at least in part, revealed by God. The true names of things are objectively present in God and can become revealed to the human mind. In the absence of such revelation, however, man can invent appellations for things. Yet these may not be their true names expressive of their very being but be based upon the impression that the objects make upon the human mind. Thus, the names of God that the human mind invents are established on God’s gracious action toward creation. Yet these are not God’s ontologically true names, which God alone knows. To utter someone’s true name is to possess this person’s being. Since no-one can possess God’s being, God’s true name remains hidden in God and is neither known nor utterable. (iii) Christ and the soul’s ultimate blessedness The celebrated definition of Christianity in Gnosticus 1 places Christ at the very heart of Christian perfection as the key to ‘the practikê, the physikê and the theologikê’. Of these three the last one, theologia, represents the highest perfection, the knowledge of God Himself. If this interpretation of theologia is correct, the logion depicts Christ as the dispenser of ultimate knowledge. As evidences from Letter 63 below, this would likewise make Christ the object and content of the ultimate knowledge and thus genuinely divine. A discussion about whether Christ constitutes man’s ultimate spiritual perfection and blessedness is found in Evagrius’s early Letter 63. Commenting on Mark 13.32, about the last day, Evagrius maintains: ‘If our Lord … is not the ultimate end desired (toì e/)sxaton o)rekto/n), then our Saviour does not know the perfection and the ultimate blessedness (toì te/loj kaiì thìn e)sxa¯thn makario/thta)’.128 To grasp Evagrius’s meaning here, the two clauses of the sentence are best swapped around: the Saviour’s is ignorant of the final perfection if and only if he is not the ultimate object of the soul’s desire. Two principles underlie Evagrius’s reasoning here. First, Christ’s ignorance of a spiritual truth would limit his authority: his authority would be insufficient for Christ to constitute the source of knowledge at this gnostic level. Second, as Evagrius points out, ‘God is said to know about Himself that which is, and not to know that which is not. For God is said to know justice and wisdom, being Himself justice and wisdom.’129 On this reasoning, Christ’s unawareness about the last day would preclude him from being the authentic author and essence of the last day’s revelations. More generally, Christ’s divinity founders upon his ignorance. Aware of this, a little further on Evagrius rejects this possibility and concludes that in fact Christ knew the day in which the last things would break in and that therefore Christ himself answers the gnostic riddle about the soul’s ultimate desire: ‘… our Lord himself is … the final perfection (toì te/loj) and the ultimate blessedness (h( e)sxa¯th makario/thj).130 The passages just cited express a high and strongly unified Christology, whereby Christ is divine and is virtually numerically indistinguishable 128 Letter 63, pp. 68–71. 129 Letter 63, p. 69. 130 Letter 63, pp. 68–70.

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from the Logos of God. As the incarnate Logos, it is Christ who is the soul’s ultimate blessedness, perfection and longing. Such is the picture of Christ obtainable from Letter 63, Evagrius’s first published work. In it, the titles ‘Son’, ‘Logos’, ‘the Lord’, and ‘Christ’ are used interchangeably.131 By contrast, citations from Evagrius’s later works evoke a different perception of Christ. Prayer 57 makes it clear that even the meditative stages above and beyond the contemplation of things and bodies do not constitute the soul’s ultimate perfection: Even finding itself above the contemplation of the bodily nature, the intellect has not yet seen … the place of God. It can in fact [still] rest at [the level of] the knowledge of the intelligibles and participate in their multiplicity.

The contemplation of both embodied and bodiless beings still relates to the multiplicity of creaturely estate. It falls short of the single-minded contemplation of the One Cause of being. ‘The place of God’, which is the contemplation of the Holy Trinity, lies beyond multiplicity of any kind: The multiplicity of created beings gives multiple informations, whereas the contemplation of the Holy Trinity is uniform knowledge.132

Consequently, multiple contemplations are not the blessedness to which the true gnwstiko¿j aspires. How does this relate to Christ? The overall impression from the entirety of Evagrius’s work is that he especially associates Christ with the lower orders of contemplation blighted with creaturely multiplicity. The soul having ascended beyond this spiritual threshold, Christ is no longer present as the soul’s guide. In the progression of spiritual life, then, Christ is not ultimate. It is a reasonable guess, therefore, that, in the works posterior to his early Letter 63, Evagrius no longer envisioned Christ as the soul’s e)sxa¯th makario/thj. The plausibility of this conclusion is enhanced once one considers evidence from Evagrius’s more dogmatic statements on the person of Christ, found predominantly in the Kephalaia Gnostica. The relatively late Letter to Melania evinces that, in later life, Evagrius was convinced of having a panoramic view of the entirety of being, created and divine, at his fingertips. It is also clear that he attached great value to consistency in drawing his distinctions and definitions. Consequently it is a reasonable guess that the theology of the Kephalaia Gnostica is identical with that found in the rest of his mature corpus. In view of this, there is a sense that Evagrius entire ontology would collapse should Christ be envisioned as the soul’s ultimate blessedness.

131 It is true that in this work, Evagrius does not go very deeply into the question of who Christ is but is more concerned with the Trinitarian status of the Son. Nevertheless, his working assumption in the Letter is that Christ simply is the Logos incarnate. 132 Letter 58, in Géhin, Nouveaux fragments grecs des Lettres, 143–4. We have seen in Chapter 5 that the contemplation of light is disconnected from any considerations about the created order.

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(iv) Christ as the soul’s God Despite this evidence of a subordinationist Christology, passages throughout the Evagriana refer to Christ as the soul’s God. Thus we have: ‘Christ is our God who shepherds us’133 and: ‘For our God is Christ’.134 How does Christ’s authority as the soul’s God square up with his function being circumscribed by the second natural contemplation? Scholion 2 on Psalm 126.1, ‘Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it; except the Lord keep the city, the watchman wakes but in vain’, is especially salient in this respect: Inasmuch as the soul is a house, it possesses within itself Christ as the Master of the house (oi)kodespo/thn e/)xei e)n e(aut$= toìn Xristo/n). If, however, it becomes a city, it possesses within itself Christ as the enthroned King (w(j basile/a kaqezo/menon e/)xei e)n e(aut$= toìn Xristo/n). If it also goes on to become a temple, it has within itself Christ existing as God (w( j qeoì n u( p a¯rxonta e/ ) x ei e) n e( a u$= toì n Xristo/ n ). Through praxis, it possesses him as the Master of the house (kaiì dia¯ meìn praktikh=j kta=tai w(j oi)kodespo/thn au)to/n); through natural contemplation, as the King (diaÜ deì fusikh=j qewri¿aj w(j basile/a); and again through theologia, as God (diaì qeologi¿aj w(j qeo/n). And the two of necessity follow the third, just as the first the second; yet the second and the third at present do not of necessity come after the first.135’136

This is a clear exposition of what Christ is for the soul. At the lower level of practical virtues, the soul is like a house that obeys Christ as its master. As the master of a house is in charge of the rules governing his entire household, so Christ keeps authority over his commandments, which foster the blossoming of the virtues in the soul. Through praxis, the soul receives a conception about Christ matching this level of spiritual advancement. As it progresses, the soul becomes like a traveller admiring a metropolis full of objects pleasing the eye. The metropolis is the entire created world; to marvel at its beauty is the activity of (second) natural contemplation.137 The king of the city is Christ himself, who created and now rules the diversity of beings. Here the soul receives and knows Christ through his activity as the world’s creator and sustainer. Finally, on reaching theologia, the summit of the spiritual ascent, the soul perceives Christ as its God and sees him fulfilling within it the divine function of the creator, judge and redeemer. There is a sense in which Christ reveals himself to the soul in all these functions. However, Evagrius’s point is that, while Christ performs the function of God, he is not God in the true sense of the appellation. The metaphysical principle, here involved, is that a sameness of function does not presuppose the unity of being. This is the meaning of the phrase above w(j qeo£n u(pa¯rxonta, ‘existing as God’. Christ reveals himself to the soul and indwells it 133 ‘o( Xristo/j e)sti qeoìj h(mw=n o( poimai¿nwn h(ma=j’, Sch. 7 on Ps. 47.15(1.3). 134 ‘o( deì qeo/j h(mw=n e)stin o( Xristo/j’, Sch. 1 on Ps. 49.2(2). See also PG 12.1449 and PG 27.229d-232a. 135 ‘kaiì t%= meìn tri¿t% e/(petai e)c a)na¯gkhj taÜ du/o, w/(sper kaiì t%= deute/r% toìprw=ton: t%= deì prw/t% nu=n ou)k e)c a)na¯gkhj toì deu/teron kaiì toì tri¿ton’. 136 Sch. 2 on Ps. 126.1. PG 12.1641–4. 137 Cf. KG V.29 cited in Chapter 3.

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‘as God’. Evagrius’s intention, however, is to distinguish technically between the self-revelation ‘as God’ and being God in the literal sense. This is an example of the use of the term ‘God’ kataÜ xa¯rin rather than kat’ ou)si¿an. Inasmuch as he is the manifestation and instrument of God’s action in the soul and creation, Christ can metaphorically be termed ‘God’. In his being, however, he is not God. Such nuances are of key importance for a proper understanding of Evagrius. The Scholion’s last sentence concerns logical presupposition. The stage of theologia presupposes natural contemplation and the keeping of Christ’s commandments. In turn, natural contemplation involves the acquisition of practical virtues. Yet, in this present life before the general resurrection, the acquiring of practical virtues does not presuppose natural contemplation and proficiency in theologia. Conversely, while Christ is the key to spiritual ascent, everything he does for the soul is brought about properly speaking by God, whose instrumental power Christ is. Consequently, even the domain of second natural contemplation and second creation, a particular sphere of the activity and revelation of Christ, is not the exclusive prerogative of Christ. It too properly belongs to God alone. Hence, Sch.Ps. 24.7(2) on the verse: ‘Remember not the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions: according to thy mercy remember thou me for thy goodness’ sake, o Lord’. When God remembers the rational soul, He dwells in it. … He resides (xwrei=) at first through the contemplation of beings (tw=n gegono/twn qewri¿a), and later also through the knowledge of Himself (kaiì diaÜ th=j gnw/sewj th=j e(autou=).

The passage yields the interpretation that, technically, it is God rather than Christ that is the ultimate focus of both levels of natural contemplation. The same is observable with regard to the Scriptural titles traditionally attributed to Christ. KGVI.20 cited above allocates the Scriptural names associated with Christ to God alone. (v) The uniqueness of Christ The preceding sections have prepared the ground for highlighting the uniqueness of the being and knowledge of Christ – another aspect under which Evagrius’s Christology is to be assessed. Even though Christ is not the soul’s ultimate blessedness, it is blindingly obvious that Evagrius’s Christ is not simply part of creation. Scholion 3 on Ps. 109.3 states that Christ is fashioned before Lucifer, thus before every created intellect. Fundamentally Christian and Scriptural in his intention, Evagrius is committed to the tenet that, in a very real sense, Christ is both divine and human: in a letter to a Palestinian monk he writes: ‘I have replied to your message, where you wrote that you live in the country that has received God “who made heaven and earth”.’138 The perfect mediator between God and the universe and the instrumental creator, Christ holds a unique position with respect to both the upper and lower ends of the metaphysical ladder. Out of familiar biblical images and Neo-Platonic concepts 138 Letter 25, Frankenberg, p. 582.7–11; cf. Ps. 113.23.

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Evagrius weaves a pattern of contrasts and definitions distinctly his own. Thus we have substantial knowledge, the knowledge of the Unity, the right hand of the Father, the inheritance and the heir, the trees of paradise and the holy chrism. These linguistic resources enable Evagrius to construct a uniquely new model of Christ’s deification. (a) Christ’s knowledge of the Unity KG III.2–3 explores Christ’s uniqueness in terms of the specialness of his knowledge of God in comparison to other intellectual beings. Thus KG III.3 states that in the present age no-one possesses greater knowledge of God than Christ: The Unity is what now is known only by Christ – whose knowledge is substantial.

In this present age prior to the eschatological consummation, Christ is the only rational being who has acceded to substantial knowledge, although every rational creature is called to possess it.139 Similarly KG III.2 describes Christ as ‘the one who alone has in him the Unity and has received the judgement of the rational beings’. It is in virtue of his unique knowledge of the divine Unity and special closeness to It that Christ is the one who reveals and brings about God’s judgement on the destiny of the world. Together with KG IV.27, Skemmata 5 expands the theme of Christ’s unique proximity to the holy Unity on the basis of the Gospel account of Christ’s baptism in the Jordan: Christ is a rational nature (natura rationalis) that has within himself that which is signified by the dove hovering over him (volante supra ipsum columba).140

According to KG IV.27, the dove is ‘the sign of the Unity’. Christ, therefore, stands apart from the rest of rational creation in that he enjoys an unparalleled proximity to the divine Unity. It is this proximity that constitutes ‘the sign’ of Unity upon Christ. Rather enigmatically, KG I.77 seems to point out that Christ’s especial proximity to the divine is due to his exceptional knowledge of the Unity: The body signifies the second nature; the soul the first; and the intellect is the Christ, who is united to the knowledge of the Unity.

(b) Christ’s anointing The knowledge of the holy Unity, then, is the sign of Christ’s exceptional knowledge and status, which takes him apart from other created minds. To possess the knowledge of the Unity is to be ‘signed’ by its grace. Grace is the vehicle by which wisdom and the knowledge of its source, God, is transmitted. An idea very close to that of the 139 On substantial knowledge see Chapter 3. 140 Skemmata, 5, Cod. Barb. Lat. 3024, Muyldermans, ‘Evagriana’, 22.

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divine ‘sign’ by grace is that of the divine anointing. This and the play on the title ‘Christ’ is another extremely prominent theme in Evagrius’s doctrine of deification. Yet, while all rational creation has an in-built capacity to become receptive of grace and thus ‘christs’, Jesus Christ possesses this quality in a unique manner. KG IV.21 expresses this as follows: The unction reveals either the knowledge of the Unity or the contemplation of beings. Now if Christ is anointed more than the others, it is evident that he is anointed with the knowledge of the Unity. For this reason he alone is said to be sitting at the right hand of his Father ….

(c) Christ’s knowledge of ‘the right hand’ The latter example represents a smooth transition to another set of Evagrius’s metaphors: Christ’s knowledge of the ‘right hand of the Father’ and Christ’s ‘sitting at the right hand of the Father’.141 Typically of his passion for methodical classification based on Scriptural phraseology, Evagrius introduces a series of nuanced contrasts expressed in terms of the above imagery. Throughout his corpus, the ‘right hand of the Father’ is the Son Logos. The Son is not to be confused with the ‘finger of God’, which is the Spirit. The all-important Letter to Melania formulates these crucial Evagrian definitions in unmistakable terms: … he who looks upon creation with understanding, perceives the hand and the finger of its Creator … And if you say to me: How can the hand and finger be equated with power and wisdom, that is to say, with the Son and the Spirit? Then listen to the Spirit of God who says: ‘The right hand of the Lord acts powerfully; the right hand of the Lord has exalted me’142 … This right hand and this power is the Son. And concerning the Spirit, listen to this: the Son himself said in his Gospel, ‘if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons’,143 according to another Evangelist he said, ‘… by the finger of God …’.144 So the ‘finger’ and the ‘wisdom’ denote the Spirit of God.145

The passage refers the appellation ‘Lord’ to God the Father and ‘the right hand of the Lord’ to the Son Logos. In his other works Evagrius expresses the unique proximity of Christ to the Logos by pointing out the unparalleled nature of Christ’s knowledge of the Son: Christ alone is seated at ‘the right hand of the Father’, the right hand being the Son Logos: The one who alone is seated on the right hand of the Father, alone has the knowledge of the right hand.146

141 Cf. Mark, 16.19. 142 Cf. Ps. 118.15 ff. 143 Cf. Mt. 12.28. 144 Cf. Lk. 11.20. 145 Melania, Parmentier, p. 9. 146 KG II.89.

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However, along with announcing that Christ is special, the passage also gives a foretaste of Evagrius’s crucial numerical, metaphysical and gnostic distinction between Christ and the Logos – a theme to be explored below. (d) Christ as the tree of life Evagrius’s favoured analogy for intellectual beings is that of trees. All intelligences, especially men and angels, are like living trees.147 As the trees plunge their roots in water that nourishes them, so the intellects, in order to live, must be immersed in the knowledge of God. Thus, KG V.67 reads: ‘If the intellectual natures are signified by trees and if these grow in water, knowledge is rightly called the spiritual water that flows from the source of life’.148 An intellectual nature, Christ too is like a tree: The holy water symbolises the Holy Trinity, while the tree of life is [the] Christ, who dwells there.149

Nevertheless, his is a special tree: the very tree of life that grew in paradise. Christ, then, is above all other minds in that he sustains and nourishes them with spiritual knowledge. Kephalaion 10 of the Chapters of St Nilus elaborates on this further: ‘Jesus Christ is the tree of life (cu/lon e)sti zwh=j). Avail yourself of him as it is fit – and you shall not die forever’.150 KG V.67 above likewise encapsulates Evagrius’s idea of Christ’s closest imaginable proximity to the Trinity. Christ ‘the tree of life’ has its roots directly in the holy water, which is the Trinity Itself. No other intellect enjoys a comparable position of nearness to the very source of being. A similar point is brought home in Scholion 2 to Psalm 88.7: No rational nature is like Christ. He … knew the contemplation of beings, yet he also knew the One who made all things. I mean Christ the Lord, who came to dwell with God the Logos.

Christ, then, is both a created intellect and a unique member of his class. Through his unsurpassable knowledge of the divine, Christ nourishes the life of other minds and in this sense is the source of their life. (vi) Christ and God The discussion will now proceed to obtain a better grasp upon Evagrius’s complex conception of the identity of Christ vis-à-vis the Logos and the Trinity. In his magisterial Les ‘Képhalaia Gnostica’ d’Évagre le Pontique et l’histoire de l’origénisme chez les grecs et chez les syriens, Guillaumont declares Evagrius’s 147 Cf. Augistine, De Genesi contra Manicaeos, II.IX.12–42. 148 KG V.67. 149 KG V.69. Cf. Gen.2.9. 150 Cod. paris. graec. 1055, in Muyldermans, Evagriana, p. 47.

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cosmology and Christology to be very incriminating indeed.151 In the beginning there was a henad made up of created intellects. These were fashioned by the nonnumerical God the Trinity and Unity that they might know Him through substantial knowledge. Jesus Christ is a created intellect and strictly is not divine. Due to the intellects’ satiety of contemplation, there came to be a ‘Movement’, whereby all minds fell and became ‘souls’. Jesus Christ, however, alone remained steadfast in contemplation. He dwells forever united with the Holy Trinity in a union of substantial knowledge, rather than that of being. It is through his unity with the Logos that the intellect called Jesus became uniquely anointed by the chrism of divinity and was called ‘Christ’. It is also through his union with the Logos that Jesus is called ‘God’. Once the intellects fell away from contemplation, it is Christ who, by his ‘wisdom full of variety’, performs the second creation, that of the ensouled bodies, and thus initiates the souls’ restoration to the original contemplation. After the general resurrection, Christ will reign on ‘the seventh day’ over the intellects. In ‘the eighth day’, however, his reign will cease. Then the multiplicity of worlds, ages, bodies, numbers, and names created by Christ will be no more. For his picture Guillaumont relies primarily upon textual evidence found in Evagrius’s Kephalaia Gnostica and the Letter to Melania.152 However, as was pointed out, rather than assessing Evagrius’s works on their own merit and within their own historical context, Guillaumont reads them through the hostile prism of the 553 condemnations of Origenism.153 Drawing especial attention to anathema 8, Guillaumont speculates that it is based on Evagrius’s ideas and terminology regarding the union of the Logos and Christ, who are so closely united as to be able to exchange among them the titles ‘Lord’, ‘God’, and ‘Christ’. Rather than directly challenging Guillaumont’s conclusions, this section will evaluate the difficult Evagrius’s passages in a new way. Although already considered in previous sections, the following question will now receive a more thorough treatment: Is Evagrius’s Christ numerically and ontologically identical with the divine Logos in the latter’s self-emptying state (kenw/sij)? Alternatively, if Christ is not simply the ‘Logos made flesh’,154 is he a created mind numerically and ontologically distinct from the second Person of the Trinity? (a) The anointing of Christ through his knowledge of the Holy Trinity There are passages in the Kephalaia Gnostica that, pace Guillaumont, can plausibly be interpreted as treating not about the archetypal Christ but instead about the soul assimilated to Christ by spiritual anointing. Consequently they are better explained not as Christological at all but as exploring the soul’s mystical journey to God. Thus they need not be construed as expressive of a divisive Christology in a sinister sense. One such passage is KG I.77: 151 Les ‘Képhalaia Gnostica’ d’Evagre le Pontique, pp. 37–9,103–19, and 151–9. 152 Cf. Les ‘Képhalaia Gnostica’, p. 37. 153 Les ‘Képhalaia Gnostica’, pp. 40–43, 123, and 143–59. 154 Cf. John 1.14.

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The body signifies the second nature; the soul the first; and the intellect is the Christ, who is united to the knowledge of the Unity.

Guillaumont’s opinion155 is that this logion is especially illustrative of Evagrius’s Christology and constitutes one part of anathema 8. However, restored to its context, the kephalaia I.74, I.75, and I.76, the cited kephalaion I.77 is better interpreted as a maxim on the soul’s progress toward the acquisition of spiritual knowledge. The ‘psychological’ interpretation of I.77 is further supported by the fact that, of the passages preceding it, I.74 is about the epistemological content of the intellect, which is constituted by its light, and I.75 asserts that the intellect’s contemplation of the corporeals and the incorporeals is the crown of the ascetic’s battle. In line with the present discussion, Dysinger aptly proposes that, placed in context, the logion is one of several logia that treat of the soul’s paideia and that as such KG I.77 represents a ‘symbolic analogy’ rather than ‘a theological definition’.156 It therefore cannot be regarded as a technical Christological statement. Instead it can be read as referring to the human intellect, which can be called a ‘christ’ [sic], ‘the anointed’ because, like the archetypal Christ, it is united to the knowledge of the Trinity. Other passages yield several layers of meaning and thus reverberate with both Christological and ‘psychological’ echoes: Christ is a rational nature who has in himself what is signified by the dove that descended upon him.157

Again, contra Guillaumont,158 the sentence need not be read as asserting the primordial creaturely status of Christ and consequently as negating his divinity. Instead, on one level, it can be interpreted as a treating of the sign of the divine anointing in the form of a dove that descended upon Christ when, in his manhood, he was baptised in the Jordan. Clearly there is a sense in which this Gospel account, whilst conveying a theophany, is also a manifestation of Christ’s humanity. Although in no need of baptism, Christ comes to be baptised of John like multitudes of other Israelites. He is baptised in the flesh. In this respect, the account of Christ’s baptism would be in line with the ‘lowly’ Gospel accounts like Christ’s human birth, circumcision, and growth in wisdom. There is a sense, then, in which Christ’s humanity was signed with God’s grace in the likeness of a dove at the moment of his baptism. On another level, the fragment also draws a parallel with any human soul that is signed with God’s grace as it progresses in virtue. The passage, then, allows multifarious interpretations in terms of the economy salvation and spiritual progress, which need not conflict with theologia.

155 Les ‘Képhalaia Gnostica’, 152. 156 Psalmody and Prayer, on the nous of Christ, pp. 197 ff. and especially p. 209. 157 ‘toì u¸poì th=j katapta¯shj e)p’ au¹toìn peristera=j shmaino/menon eÃxwn e)n e(aut%=’, Skemmata 5, Cod. Paris. graec. 913. 158 Les ‘Képhalaia Gnostica’, p. 153.

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(c) Christ vis-à-vis the divine Logos However, other passages cannot be straightforwardly interpreted as treating of Christ’s manhood in contradistinction from his divinity and of the believing soul that through the anointing of God’s grace becomes ‘a christ’. The more plausible interpretation for these is in terms of Christ’s ontology rather than the doctrine of the soul. One such passage is the already familiar KG V.69: The holy water symbolises the Holy Trinity, while the tree of life is [the] Christ, who dwells there.

In it, while Christ is ‘the tree of life’ for the believing soul, his own being appears to be nourished by the Trinity as by an extraneous source. If instead of the Trinity the reference were to the Father, then the passage could be construed as treating of the Father as the source of divinity for the two other divine Persons. Since, however, the entire Trinity is the source of Christ’s being, the interpretation suggests itself whereby in his entire being Christ stands in the creature/Creator relation to the Trinity. As a tree planted by a river is distinct in being from the river’s waters, is Christ, then, ontologically alien to the Trinity? The passage is, however, susceptible of an alternative interpretation. The tree in question is no ordinary tree but ‘the tree of life’. Gen. 2.9 and 3.22 are clearly conflated with Ps. 1.3, traditionally a messianic psalm. ‘The tree of life’ is moreover a traditional patristic way of referring to Christ, who is ‘the tree of life’ for the believing soul. The cross of Christ or, alternatively, Christ himself, who by his passion on the cross brings humankind to salvation, is commonly referred to in patristic sources as ‘the tree of life’. Consequently, the subject-matter of V.69 above may convincingly be Christ’s deified humanity rather than the eternally begotten divine Christ. The deified humanity of Christ nourishes the life of the faithful, while having no part in the Trinitarian being proper. KG VI.14 is especially revealing with regard to the identity of Christ, because it clearly asserts that, even when conceptualised independently from his flesh, Christ is not consubstantial with God: Christ is not connatural with the Trinity (NAEBK................). For he is not also the substantial knowledge. Yet he alone always inseparably has the substantial knowledge in himself. Christ, I say, is the one who came with God the Logos (NAEBK). In spirit he is the Lord. He is inseparable from his body and by union (NAEBK) he is connatural with the Father.

The opening may lend itself to an interpretation that does not disavow Christ’s divinity. The interpretation would run as follows: just as it is right to deny, as Athanasius did in Ad Epictetem, that Christ’s body is homoousion with the Trinity, it is surely Catholic to contend that, in his humanity, Christ is not connatural with the Trinity. Since God alone is the substantial knowledge,159 Christ’s humanity, being 159 Cf. Chapter 3.

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created, is not. In his divinity, however, Christ is the substantial knowledge. What in his divinity he is, in his humanity, Christ merely has. Therefore, it is right to maintain that, in his humanity, Christ has the substantial knowledge, which, in his divinity, he is. However, this interpretation flounders. Evagrius’s avowal, that Christ is ‘with’ the Logos, expressly suggests not the identity of subject between Christ and the Logos but rather a union of two distinct subjects. Furthermore, that Christ is said to come to the Father’s divinity via a union rather than by birth, presupposes an elevation from a previous lowly to a higher ontological status. When Evagrius speaks of Christ’s connaturalness with the Father by union, therefore, there is a sense that this is Evagrius’s choice of metaphor for the relation of adoption between the Father and the intellect called ‘the Christ’. One more point is to be made. Christ, according to Evagrius, is not the product of the incarnation. Existing before the incarnation, Christ properly so called is a created intellect that, in virtue of his closeness to the Logos, is anointed with grace to a special degree. That Christ comes on earth ‘with the Logos’ proves that Christ preexists his birth in a body. That he is not consubstantial with the Trinity, then, refers to his status as a created mind, and not to the body of his incarnation. KG IV.18 is a further passage that merits close attention: The intelligible anointing is the spiritual knowledge of the holy Unity. And Christ is the one who is united to this knowledge. And if this is so, Christ is not the Logos from the beginning, in the sense that the one who was anointed (NAEBK) is not from the beginning God. But that one [=the Logos] is the Christ on account of this one [=Christ properly so called], and this one [=Christ properly so called] is God on account of that one [=the Logos].

Due to linguistic correspondences, Guillaumont is convincing in his belief that the last sentence of the passage is reproduced in the closing of the anathema 8. Evagrius’s passage is susceptible of an interpretation in terms of an ontological distinction between the archetypal Christ – as distinct from the individual human soul/mind that becomes ‘a christ’ by spiritual anointing – and the divine Logos. It would be stretching it far to suggest that the passage is about the human soul/mind at all. The point of the anathema 8, then, is that the Christology under scrutiny is defective on account of the numerical distinction it draws between Christ and the Logos. Equally, Scholion 2 to Psalm 118.3, ‘For those who work lawlessness have not walked in his ways’, numerically juxtaposes Christ with the divine Logos: If ‘those who work lawlessness’ are not the ones who ‘walk in the ways’ of God, it follows that ‘those who work’ righteousness are those who will ‘walk in the ways of the Lord’. Therefore ‘the ways of the Lord’ are the contemplations of beings (ai( qewri¿ai tw=n gegono/twn) ‘in which we shall walk accomplishing righteousness’.160 However, if our righteousness is Christ, ‘for he of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption’,161 Solomon says well in the Proverbs that wisdom is ‘the 160 Cf. Ps. 14.2. 161 1 Cor. 1.30.

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Is Christ, then, an intellect who, at some point of his career, came to be united with the Logos? Evagrius is adamant that this is not the case. He asserts the closest possible union of Christ with the Logos by stressing that, although ‘there is a time164 when Christ had no body’,165 there is no logical moment ‘when God the Logos was not in Christ. For it is from his [=Christ’s] creation/becoming that God the Logos dwelt in him’.166 Despite the closeness of the Christ/Logos union, this is crucially a union of two distinct agents. That Christ is said to ‘have come to dwell with the Logos’ presupposes that, vis-à-vis the Logos, Christ possessed his own determination and thus was an agent in his own right. In general, Evagrius holds the view that the mind is the seat of personhood, be it in the Trinity, in Christ, or within the rest of the created intellectual realm. Christ being a mind, the Logos is to be distinguished from Christ in terms of individual personhood. However, within the person of Christ incarnate, the intellect Christ is to be distinguished from his ensouled flesh. (d) Evagrius’s doctrinal concerns as applied to the Christological union Throughout his life Evagrius remained acutely concerned about matters of doctrinal orthodoxy. Thus Disciples 150 admonishes that, while the downfall of practical virtue is to yield to passion, the sin of the spiritual perfection is to succumb to doctrinal error: When the intellect is within the representations of the objects of the world, it encounters passions, but when it is in contemplation, it runs into errors.167

What are the heresies Evagrius has in mind? The Exhortation to Monks, 45 (1237bc) clearly warns against Arianism and Anomoeanism: As he who abandons the direct path in a foreign land errs, not knowing where he goes, so does the man who does not believe in the consubstantial Trinity.

Within the Christological context, the two heresies Evagrius is wary about are Apollinarianism and docetism.168 Numerically distinct from the divine Logos, Christ 162 Prov. 8.22. 163 PG 12.1588. I therefore disagree with Dysinger’s translation (op. cit., p. 165), ‘And I call ‘Christ’ the Lord who, with the divine word [sic], has dwelt among us’, because it obliterates the juxtaposition between Christ and the Logos. 164 Literally, a ‘when’, (NAEBK) 165 KG VI.18. 166 Ibid. 167 Disciples 150. 168 While Refoulé is not mistaken in observing that Evagrius’s Christology in the Scholia to the Psalms ‘n’est ni arienne ni apollinariste’ (‘La christologie d’Evagre’, 241), it is more

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is not composite in the sense of being ‘the Logos become flesh’. He is, however, composite in that, in his earthly life, Christ is an intellect united to a body. The reality of Christ’s soul and body in his life on earth is asserted, for example, in Sch.Ps.108.20 and Sententiae ad virginem, 54. Thus, Sch.Ps.108.20169 refutes ‘the heretics’, presumably the Apollinarians, who ‘revile (lalou=ntej ponhra¯) the soul of Christ’, while Sententiae ad virginem 54 attacks docetism: ‘Our Lord was born without sin; he ate in truth and was crucified in truth. He did not appear to men as a ghost’.170 That Evagrius abjures Arianism, Anomoeanism, docetism and Apollinarianism is to be expected, according to the later fourth-century theological tide. By that time, these currents of thought had become the archetypal heresies for all to shun. With regard to the Christological union, in the absence of a standardised terminology for this concept, Evagrius deals with the problem of Christ’s relation to humanity and divinity in the manner best fitting his overall system. In constructing his Christological model he simultaneously takes precautions against the two fundamental heresies of his time, Arianism and Apollinarianism. While against the former he asserts the full divinity of the Logos, against the latter he proclaims the full humanity in Christ, complete with mind, soul, and body. He considers his task fulfilled when he also eliminates the danger of two Christs and two Sons: ‘He who proclaims “two Christs” or “two Sons”, is like one who calls the wise man and wisdom “two wise men” or “two wisdoms”’ (KG VI.16). Here Evagrius points out that Christ and the Logos belong to two absolutely different orders of being and are not subject to numerical addition. On the basis of all the evidence, one finds that Guillaumont’s appraisal of Evagrius’s Christology contains a legitimate concern about the identity of Christ. Despite his unique knowledge of the Trinity and his proximity to the Logos, in his ontological origin, Christ is from the beginning un-like God. Evagrius’s way of presenting the archetypal Christ is that he is ‘with’ the Logos and is united to the Father by the degree of his knowledge rather than by being. Evagrius asserts the difference of substance and subject between the archetypal Christ and the divine Logos. Although there is no evidence of an historical connection between Evagrius and the world of Theodore of Mopsuestia, Evagrius’s Christology appears to herald Nestorian motifs. The anathema 8 of 553, then, which disallows a metaphorical or veiled use of the appellations ‘Christ’ and ‘Logos’, can be plausibly interpreted as a reaction to a particular reading of KG IV.18. At the same time, Guillaumont is at fault in that he fails to account for Evagrius’s reasons for the picture of Christ that he avows. Evagrius’s overruling concern is to preserve God’s freedom from union and materiality. Consequently, the Logos is

accurate to state that Evagrius is actively anti-Arian and anti-Apollinarian in the entirety of his oeuvre. 169 Ed. Pitra, 108.19(1). 170 That docetists of some kind were present in fourth-century Egypt is proved by the 1945 discovery in the Upper Egypt of the Nag Hammadi documents. See Dechow, Dogma and Mysticism, 331. On fourth-century Alexandrian docetists see also Epiphanius, Panarion 26.17.8–9.

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prevented from touching material things without an intermediary. This intermediary is the created intellect Christ Jesus, through whom the Logos saves the world. (vii) Summary The present discussion has assessed the way Christ reveals himself to the soul and the universe, Christ’s uniqueness, and Christ’s person vis-à-vis God. Christ performs a multiplicity of initiating, instructing, healing, illuminating, and anagogic functions regarding the soul and the universe. He is the Physician, Teacher, Good Shepherd, Master of the lower death and resurrection, and King of the kingdom of heaven. He is also the soul’s Friend, Bridegroom, Father, and God. He is likewise the Creator of the worlds, ages, bodies, numbers, and names. He reveals the knowledge concerning himself and God in the Bible, the Eucharist, and the universe. Inasmuch as these functions of Christ serve the one purpose of bringing the soul back to the knowledge of God, the gnostic universe of Evagrius is centred around the mystery of Christ. While his function is to reveal spiritual knowledge, Christ’s domain is a spiritual realm that precedes the higher natural contemplation, being lower than it. Likewise Christ does not have a clear function with regard to what Evagrius calls the vision of God’s essence. Christ’s domain is that of multiplicity and materiality, where only lower degrees of contemplative knowledge are possible. Christ’s role regarding the soul, then, belongs within the sphere of practical virtue and the second natural contemplation. Both these levels are justly regarded as lower levels of spiritual gnosis. When the soul rises above these spheres, there is a sense that God takes over from Christ. In this sense, Christ is not the ‘ultimate blessedness’ of the soul. This is hardly surprising, since Christ is a created intellect. Nonetheless he is special among the intellects on account of the unique degree of his knowledge of the divine. This is why he is said to be created ‘before Lucifer’. The singular gnostic perfection of Christ results from the unique degree of his anointing with grace. Through this anointing, Christ’s knowledge of ‘God’s right hand’ (Evagrius’s favoured term for the Son)171 is the greatest of all and enables him to act as ‘the tree of life’ for the other minds. Christ is numerically and ontologically distinct from the Logos. It is therefore problematic to conceive of Evagrius’s Christ as ‘the Logos made flesh’.172 This difference of subject between Christ and the Logos is an especial concern of anathema 8 of 553. Entirely created, Christ is easily seen as not being ultimate in the sense that he is not the goal of deification. This Christological view is consistent with Evagrius’s conception of the divine light, examined in Chapter 4. While representing the highest form of contemplative knowledge achievable in this life, the light is not Christocentric in the sense that it is not Christ whom the mind contemplates. There is, then, substance to Guillaumont’s insights. His approach, however, is no longer a way forward in Evagrian studies. In focusing upon the incriminating passages in Kephalaia Gnostica, Guillaumont extracts them out of their context 171 Melania 5. 172 Jn.1.14.

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within this Evagrius’s work, the whole of the Evagriana and the fourth-century situation. Restored to their original context, some of the passages Guillaumont finds incriminating are easily shown not to be so since they are best interpreted as treating of the journey of the soul rather than of Christ. Regarding the passages that profess a divisive Christology, their significance is much exaggerated by Guillaumont, who presents them as a leit-motif for Evagrius’s entire Christology, thus overlooking the richness of the other material. Finally, Evagrius’s Christology appears in a much better light when regarded within its historical situation. First, at the end of the fourth century, while there had emerged standardised terminology of one nature/ essence and three Persons/Hypostases for the Trinity, there was no universally accepted terminology for the Christological union. Second, in the aftermath of the 381 condemnation of Apollinarius, while in the eyes of many Christological dipolarity of any kind and a stress upon the mind of Christ had an orthodox appeal, uni-polarity was regarded with suspicion.173 Since the questions that remain over Evagrius’s Christology are best addressed by situating them in their historical context, to this purpose we will now turn. (viii) Evagrius’s Christological context Although, to situate Evagrius’s Christology, only a few texts will be examined, these are crucial in that they were binding upon the entire imperial church. Of these texts, synodal decrees that Evagrius adhered to174 (the definitions of Nicaea and Constantinople 381, as well the 381 decree of Theodosius) will be examined first. These will be followed by Christological propositions of a synod that was not ecumenical but which in the late fourth century was considered important (Rome 377). Its proceedings were sufficiently well known to be used by Gregory of Nazianzus. Because of this, as well as in view of its early date (the council preceded by some six years Evagrius’s withdrawal to the desert), this Western synod may reasonably be adduced as relevant to Evagrius’s context.

173 Thus, visiting Jerusalem late in 381, Gregory of Nyssa, then at the pinnacle of his career, was accused of Apollinarianism (Cf. Nyssa, Letter 3, PG 46.1016b–c). To defend himself on this score, he spent the following winter anxiously composing the treatise Against Apollinarius. Just a few years on, however, in 386, Gregory stood accused, this time by Theophilus of Alexandria, of quite an opposite tendency – a divisive Christology (Cf. Nyssa, Against Apollinarius and To Theophilus of Alexandria, PG 45.1269–1277). There may, however, be an alternative explanation: in its admiration for Origen and abhorrence for Apollinarius, Jerusalem welcomed a certain kind of di-polar Christology, attributing to Christ’s nous a human personhood. By contrast, Alexandria was both suspicious of Origen and distrustful of Christological di-polarity of the kind Origen seemed to espouse. 174 On the early fourth-century transition from baptismal to synodal creeds as ‘tests of the orthodoxy of Christians in general’ see J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Creeds, 205 ff.

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(a) Nicaea I Although the first Council of Nicaea is not normally described as ‘Christological’, it has a clear Christological bearing. The well-known Nicene clause about the preeternal Son stipulates: And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten as the only Son … out of the substance of the Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father … who for us men and for our salvation descended and became flesh ….175

(b) Constantinople I The Nicene creed provided the basis for a corresponding formulation of Constantinople 381: And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten from the Father before all ages, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made, consubstantial with the Father, through whom all things were made, who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate of the Virgin Mary and became man ….

A detailed analysis of Kelly’s opinion that the two ‘are in fact two entirely different documents’176 is outside the scope of this book. What is significant is that the fourthcentury ecclesiastics did not hold this view but saw Constantinople I as repeating Nicaea. Consequently, inasmuch as Nicaea was held as a majority opinion at the time of Evagrius, it is legitimate to consider it too as Evagrius’s context. A comparison of the respective clauses about the Son in both reveals an identity of their theological intention in two ways. There is, first, the explicit affirmation of the Son’s divinity and equality with the Father conveyed by the o(moou/sioj t%= PatriÍ clause. Evagrius scrupulously adheres to both.177 Second, however, the two creeds can convincingly be interpreted as expressive of one and the same idea about the identity of Christ, irrespective of the Christological aspect being less pronounced in them than the Triadological one. Nonetheless, it may be argued that it is present, since Christ is mentioned in both. The presupposition that appears to be taken for granted in both creeds is the numerical identity of the preeternal Son with Jesus Christ. This is demonstrable by the fact that in both dictums the name ‘Jesus Christ’ is embedded within a phrase designating the pre-eternal Son, who is ‘the Lord’. Consequently, the ruling assumption in both is that Jesus Christ and the Son of God are numerically identical with one another. Jesus Christ, then,

175 As in Opitz, Athanasius Werke, p. 24. 176 Kelly, op. cit., 302. His opinion, that the differences between Nicaea and Constantinople I were so great that the latter is best regarded as an independent creed (Early Christian Creeds, chapter10), is unconvincing. Cf. Ayres, Nicaea and its Legacy, 267. 177 Cf. Evagrius’s use of the o(moou/sioj in Letter 63: ‘tauto/thta deì th=j fu/sewj o(mologou=ntej kaiì toì o(moou/sion e)kdexo/meqa’, Deferrari, 54.

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literally and not metaphorically is the Son of God, the Lord, and consubstantial with the Father. (c) Theodosian Code The identity of the subject between the Son and Jesus Christ likewise appears to be presupposed, although not specially drawn attention to, by the January 381 formula of Theodosius:178 That man shall be accepted as a defender of the Nicene faith … who confesses that Almighty God and Christ the Son of God are one in name, God of God, light of light, who does not violate by denial the Holy Spirit … that man who esteems … the undivided substance of the incorrupt Trinity, that substance, which those of the orthodox faith call, employing a Greek word, ousia.179

Kelly maintains that both ecumenical creeds and the emperor’s decree preparing for the synod of 381 were intended to be universally known and mandatory for all.180 There is no doubt that Evagrius knew all three documents and considered them immutable. However, whilst he unequivocally subscribes to the divinity of the Son and the use of ‘consubstantial’, he provides a convoluted interpretation of how Jesus Christ may be termed ‘the Logos’, whilst not actually being the Logos. Clearly, while adhering to the letter of the ecumenical doctrines overtly expressed, Evagrius felt no such obligation regarding articles of faith merely implied. (d) Rome 377 That tensions regarding the identity of Jesus Christ were present on the fourth-century theological front can be gathered from the Christological propositions of Rome 377. Their intention is to safeguard against the specific kind of di-polar Christology that postulates a numerical difference between Christ and the Son: 1) If anyone does not maintain that the holy Mary is the Mother of God (Qeoto/kon) he is separated from the divinity. 2) If anyone maintains that Christ has passed through the Virgin as through a channel (swlh=noj), without having been formed in her at once in the divine and human manner (qei+kw=j aàma kaiì a¹nqrwpikw=j) – divine, because it was without an human action, and human because it was according to the normal law of growth – he is likewise a stranger to God.

178 Prior to 381, while such positions most probably existed, no opinion expressive of a difference of persons between Christ and the pre-eternal Son had been brought to the attention of the pro-Nicene authorities. After all, Arius, Asterius, and Eunomius alike believed Jesus Christ to be the incarnate Son of God. 179 Theodosian Code, 16.5.6.2. See Pharr, The Theodosian Code. 180 Kelly, op. cit., 205.

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The propositions point out that it was God the Son that was born from Mary. Since she is the mother of Jesus Christ, the latter is numerically identical with God the Son. That the Christology of Rome 377 was at the very least viewed with approval by the Neo-Nicene coalition, is obtained from the fact that the 377 Christological propositions were reproduced by Gregory of Nazianzus in his Letter to Cledonius I (Letter 101, late 381), a dogmatic treatise in the form of a letter.182 Previously cited evidence suggests that the 377 Christological propositions are acceptable to Evagrius, provided that the clauses about the birth of God in nos. 1 and 3 are viewed metaphorically. Whilst Christ is born from the Virgin by nature, he is God not by nature but by transference. Proposition 2 would satisfy Evagrius on condition that the simultaneous divine and human formation of Christ in the Incarnation does not preclude Christ’s pre-existing his flesh. The conclusion from this brief contextualisation is that, in the fourth century, there appears to inhere a settled view that Jesus Christ is numerically identical with the Logos and one of the Persons of the Trinity. As a staunch pro-Nicene, Evagrius affirms the full divinity of the Logos. At the same time, he denies God’s direct involvement with matter and multiplicity, that is, the view that Christ is the Logos incarnate, because this would jeopardise God’s being ‘spirit’ (John, 4.24). Consequently, the Logos fashions matter through the mediation of a demiurge-like figure susceptible of materiality. Although here Evagrius may be departing from what in the fourth century was viewed as authentic Christian faith, such a Christ, by mediating between matter and spirit, still brings about redemption and salvation. Moreover, there is a unity to Evagrius’s Christ. Thus there is no perceived division in the image of the historical Jesus. Because the same names are ascribed both to Christ and the Logos, there is a sense that the two are to be worshipped together. Evagrius’s Christ, then, reveals the coming of God on earth. The full picture of Evagrius’s Christ, however, emerges in his eschatology. To this the discussion will now turn.

181 Mansi, SCNAC III, cols. 477–82, Greek col. 480. 182 The three Letters to Cledonius (101, 102, and 202) are transmitted not by the manuscript tradition of Gregory’s correspondence but by that of his Orations. This transmission goes right back to Gregory himself, who was the first editor of his correspondence (cf. Gallay, Les manuscripts des Lettres de saint Grégoire de Nazianze (Paris, 1957), p. 8.

Chapter 6

The last things (i) Eschatology as the key to Evagrius’s entire system Evagrius’s teaching on the last things demands close attention. One historical reason for this is the connection between his eschatology with the Origenist condemnations at Constantinople 553. On the basis of textual correspondences, it can be asserted beyond reasonable doubt that anathemas 11, 12, 13, 14, and 15 specifically target Evagrius’s eschatology. Because modern accounts of Evagrius’s doctrine of the last things have preferred to rely upon the 553 articles rather than assess his thought on its own merit, these Evagrius’s views remain elusive and in need of revisiting. Eschatology is central to Evagrius’s entire system in two distinct ways. First, Evagrius believes that the eskhaton is the stage of being at which the culmination of spiritual perfection will be achieved. The entire pleroma of the states of knowledge the ascetic experiences in his lifetime, the contemplation of the logoi, the knowledge of God’s essence and the vision of the divine light, inaugurate the fuller knowledge of the life to come. Consequently, the spiritual awareness one acquires after the completion of one’s life and the general consummation is the fulfilment of the spiritual knowledge one begins to experience already in this life on earth. The eskhaton announces the achievement of the ultimate blessedness after which no further spiritual stage is envisaged.1 The eskhaton, then, determines and seals the identity of things. Second, the knowledge about the last things, which the ascetic receives in his lifetime as the last stage of his instruction, is a sine qua non component of what constitutes the making of the perfect monk, the gnwstiko/j. The present assessment of Evagrius’s views on the last things will traverse much of the material that A. Guillaumont draws attention to in pp. 384–404 of his Un philosophe au désert Évagre le Pontique (2000). However, the interpretations of Evagrius’s ideas presented in this later monograph generally repeat the line Guillaumont took in his much earlier Les Six Centuries des ‘Képhalaia Gnostica’ d’Évagre le Pontique (1958). The novel element is Guillaumont’s attempt to mollify his critique of Evagrius’s eschatology by claiming its especial indebtedness to the eschatology of Gregory Nazianzen. Guillaumont, however, makes no attempt to solve the ensuing riddle of how Evagrius’s eschatology can at once be heterodox and rooted in teachings that were never suspected of any aberration. Nor does he explain in what way exactly Evagrius’s doctrine of the last things erred in relation 1 This finality does not preclude eschatological perfection from being dynamic and eternally increasing. The image of torrents flowing into the sea (an excerpt from the Letter to Melania cited below) sustains such an interpretation of Evagrius’s perfection.

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to the rule of faith in his time. Clearly what is needed is to take a fresh perspective on Evagrius’s material, especially regarding the following questions: Is his salvation universal in the sense of inevitable foreordaining or is it merely a hope? Is it literally incorporeal? Is it pantheistic? Finally, a valid assessment calls for Evagrius’s eschatology to be placed, both synchronically and diachronically, within its Late Antique context. (ii) Scriptural basis for Evagrius’s eschatology The passages that are especially central to Evagrius’s eschatological doctrine are 1 Cor. 15.24–8 and John 17.21–2. Col. 3.11 also has a place in the eschatological scheme, yet the situation it describes is of a lower eschatological order than that of 1 Cor. 15.28. The key ideas of 1 Cor. 15.24–8 that impressed Evagrius are: Christ’s universal reign and the subjection to him of all his enemies (v. 25); the laying down by Christ of his reign to the Father (v. 24); and the final subjection of the Son to the Father, so that God may be ‘all in all’ (v. 28). Col.3.11 refers to Christ’s universal reign whereby Christ becomes ‘all and in all’. In turn, John 17.21–2, ‘that all may be one’, and so on, is the pivotal passage for Evagrius’s idea of the final unification. (iii) The eschatological transformations as a graded reality As may be expected, Evagrius viewed the unfolding of the eschatological drama in terms of the final stages of the ascent to spiritual perfection. Like all the lower stages in his schema, the enactment of the last things is gradual. The eschatological transformations proper are preceded by two preliminary events. This is, first, God’s judgment in response to the ‘Movement’, which resulted in the creation of worlds, names, numbers and especially bodies. As KG III.51 puts it, ‘All the changes that came to pass before the age to come united some with good and others with evil bodies …’. As was described above in Chapter 5, this means that simultaneously with creating matter God also pronounced judgement upon the intellects in accordance with the measure of their loss of divine knowledge. The minds that retained the highest levels of contemplation were endowed with luminous angelic bodies and inhabited celestial realms. The intelligences that kept it, to a lesser degree, were provided with human bodies, forming humankind and populating the earth. Finally, those that lost the greatest amount of the knowledge of God were thrust into dark bodies and infernal regions and became demons. The second event preceding the general conflagration is God’s preliminary judgement which He passes upon every soul when at the end of life it separates from its body. From the moment of this judgement and until Christ’s second coming, the righteous souls sojourn on Abraham’s bosom, whilst the wicked lament with the demons in the fiery gehenna.2

2 Evagrius bases his idea of the preliminary judgement upon Luke 16.19–31, cited in Scholion 62 to Prov. 5.14; KG I.40; Letter 43 (Frankenberg, 596–7, 1. 4–7); Letter 59 (Frankenberg, 608–9, 1.23–6); and Thoughts 65.

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While there are numerous minute gradations within eskhaton, fundamentally, Evagrius envisages the eschatological age as comprising two stages. The evaluation of Evagrius’s ideas will proceed in the order of these stages. The first stage is inaugurated by Christ’s second coming, the general resurrection, and the last judgement.3 Having been purified by fire, the souls will rejoin their respective bodies.4 Hell will terminate. As all convert to the path of gnosis, the millenary reign of Christ will commence,5 Christ’s royal dignity gradually extending to include all rational beings.6 In the second eschatological age, jointly with the entire intellectual creation, Christ will occupy himself exclusively with the mystical knowledge of the Trinity and the Father.7 The primordial transition to material creation will be reversed because, following the judgement of Christ, material beings will change their form,8 to be altogether abolished9 at the sound of the last trump.10 Creation will return to its original, immaterial, state. Then all things will become one, so that ‘God will be all in all’.11 The immaterial intellects will unite with God and each other in a perfect henôsis.12 (iv) The first eschatology: Christ’s second coming; the end of evil and ignorance; the commencement of Christ’s reign Evagrius’s views upon the first eschatological age especially echo the early Christian millenarist eschatology found in Papias of Hierapolis13 and Lactantius14 and based on a literal interpretation of the Apocalypse 20–21 and on Enoch 4. (a) Christ’s second coming, the resurrection and the last judgement The first eschatological time begins with Christ’s second coming, the general resurrection and the last judgement. KG VI.7 links the general resurrection with the eschatological eighth day, the Old Testament circumcision on the eighth day, and the New Testament spiritual circumcision in Christ:

3 Cf. KG VI.7 and VI.74. 4 KG III.51. 5 Evagrius’s reference here is 1 Cor. 15.25, cited, for example, in Sch.Ps. 21.29 and Sch. Ps. 92.1(3). 6 Cf. Phil. 2.10, ‘that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow’ as the background to KG VI.27, Sch. 241 to Prov. 22.11–12 and Sch.Ps. 85.9(6). 7 KG VI.33 and VI.34. 8 KG I.26. 9 Ibid., cf. also KG III.66 and Letter 63.7. 10 1 Cor. 15.52. 11 Cf. 1 Cor. 15.28, cited in the Letter to Melania, Frank., 616, 20–24. 12 KG II.17, II.67; Letter to Melania, 6, Parmentier pp. 12–13. 13 Cf. Irenaeus, Adv.Haer. V.33.3–4. 14 Inst.div. 7.

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Evagrius Ponticus If the eighth day is the symbol of the resurrection and [if] Christ is the resurrection,15 then those circumcised on the eighth day16 are circumcised in Christ.17

The result of the last judgement by Christ will be an increase of spiritual knowledge in those standing judgement. This knowledge will be focussed on Christ: Christ will come before the judgement to judge the living and the dead,18 and he will be known after the judgement, if ‘the Lord is known by the judgement that he makes’.19 (KG VI.74).

Although Evagrius does not explicitly mention the bodily resurrection, the logic of the Scriptural concept of the resurrection demands the conclusion that Evagrius did not rescind the idea of the resurrection of the body. That in general the Origenist thinkers did not abrogate the resurrection of the body is seen from the story Palladius recounts about how Macarius the Egyptian ‘brought a dead person to life to convince a heretic who did not believe in the resurrection of the body’.20 Since, moreover, some kind of bodily shape, clearly, is retained in the provisional hell,21 it is reasonable to expect the soul to be resurrected together with the body in the general resurrection. Moreover, for the body to become glorified and then rarefied,22 it has first to be reinstated through resurrection. (b) The destruction of Christ’s enemies: the solution to the problem of wickedness and evil The first eschatology is marked by the disappearance of evil. Unanimously with other patristic writers, Evagrius considers God to be good, omniscient and omnipotent. Being good, God ‘is not the cause of evils (aiÃtioj kakw=n), He is the source of goodness (phghì a¹gaqwsu/nhj)’.23 At the same time, the existence of evil in the world is undeniable. Because the atheistic conclusion that the good God does not exist is ruled out, Evagrius comes up with an alternative solution to the problem. Not created by God, evil is caused by devious choices on the part of rational beings: ‘The Movement is the cause of evil …’,24 where ‘The Movement’ is a wilful deviation of the created intellects from the life of contemplation. Evagrius, then, affirms the

15 Cf. John 11.25. 16 Cf. Gen. 17.12. 17 Col. 2.11. 18 Probably a reference to the 381 Nicene-Constantinopolitan creed. 19 Ps. 9.17. 20 HL 17.11. Generally, fourth-century Egyptian ascetics’ opposition to teachings that denied the resurrection of the body do not give evidence of anti-Origenist views. Cf. Dechow, Dogma and Mysticism, p. 172. 21 Cf. the story of Lazarus, Luke 16.19–31 cited in KG I.40. 22 Cf. KG II.77. 23 Scholion 4 to Eccl. 13.4–6. 24 KG I.51.

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Classical and Neo-Platonist idea that freedom is the central cause of evil.25 The essence of evil is men’s voluntary ‘usage against nature’ of their soul-parts: If all evil [originates] from the intellect, the irascible and the concupiscible parts, and [if] it is possible for us to use these powers in a good or bad fashion, then clearly it is through using these parts against nature that evils befall us ….26

Inasmuch as the soul is God’s creation and is good, evil is the bad use of God-given good things. Consequently, evil is the distortion of the good and as such, a privatio boni. Since God did not create it, evil in the end will disappear and goodness will prevail. The principle at work here is: If ‘whatsoever things God has made, they shall endure for an eternity’,27 and [if] God did not make evil, then evil shall not endure for an eternity.28

Evil will be no more when all the enemies of Christ are ‘put under his feet’. Evagrius’s Scriptural basis here is 1 Cor. 15.25: ‘For he must reign till he has put all enemies under his feet’. How this is to happen, however, constitutes Evagrius’s originality. The defeat of Christ’s enemies will come about when all the wicked, including evil men, demons, and the devil himself, become righteous. The entirety of evil will then be destroyed. This is the sense of the Scholion to Ps. 21.29, ‘For the Lord’s is the kingdom and he rules the nations’: For ‘he must reign till he puts all his enemies under his feet’ [means the same] as if he said that all the unrighteous have become righteous,29 no longer capable of becoming earthy and mortal.30

The belief that the general resurrection is the commencement of eternal immortality is common to all patristic authors. Evagrius, however, goes a step beyond other Christian writers in that he explicates the immortality resulting from the general resurrection in terms of universal righteousness. His interpretation of the eschatological immortality in the Scholion above is that it is because they have embraced righteousness that the entire number of rational beings will, following the resurrection, be immortal. That the evil spirits will at the end of times reform is to be expected, because ‘it is not in their essence that the devils are evil’.31 Not being essential, their evil is not God’s creation and is ephemeral. Evagrius believes that the angels and the devils alike preserve their freewill intact. Before the general resurrection, each intelligence has the power to change its gnostic state through the exercising of their will: angels 25 Cf. Plato, The Republic 617e, ‘the cause lies with the one who chooses; the god is guiltless (ai)ti¿a e(lome/nou, qeoj a¹nai¿tioj)’; Plotinus, Enn. III.2.7, on Republic 617e, ‘The evil acts entirely depend on the souls that perpetrate them’. 26 KG III.59. 27 Eccl. 3.14: ‘ei)j toìn ai)w=na.’ 28 Scholion 17 to Eccl. 3.14. 29 ‘Pa¯ntej aÃdikoi gino/menoi di¿kaioi’. 30 ‘Gh/i+noi kaiì fqartoi¿’. 31 KG IV.59.

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can turn to evil, while demons embrace virtue.32 After the final resurrection, however, none will fail to choose the good, either on their own accord or following a spell of fiery purification. The eschatological conversion to righteousness involves every level within the composition of the soul: at the level of praxis, vice turns into virtue and, at that of contemplation, ignorance transforms into knowledge. Evagrius expounds this in his Scholion 1 to Ps. 43.3, ‘Thy right hand has utterly destroyed the nations’: For God utterly destroys (e)colotreu/ei) vice and ignorance, yet He plants virtue and knowledge. For every plant that God did not plant shall be plucked.33

In the eskhaton as well as in earthly life, virtue and knowledge form a chain of two consecutive stages of perfection that will replace wickedness and sinful ignorance. While wickedness and ignorance are destroyed, however, their bearers are preserved and turned to virtue and knowledge. The ‘plant to be plucked’ of Matt. 15.13, then, represents not the person of the evil-doer but the evil lurking in him or her.34 Scholion 355 to Proverbs 28.28 interprets the theme of the ‘destruction of the impious’ of Proverbs 28.2835 on similar lines as the Scholion to Psalm 43.3 above: If the ‘impious’ cease to be impious, they will become ‘righteous’. This is because at present ‘destruction’ signifies the disappearance of the impiety. This is how the Lord caused even the destruction of Matthew the Publican,36 by giving him the gift of righteousness.37

Through his conversion to the Lord Matthew the Publican ‘died’, in the sense that what was of the publican in him ceased to exist enabling him to become Christ’s disciple.38 The principle that God ‘destroys’ an evil-doer by separating him or her from wickedness and making them desire righteousness is succinctly summarised in Evagrius’s comment to Ps. 144.20, ‘The Lord preserves all them that love Him; but all the wicked He will destroy’: The destruction of the sinner is the separation of the rational soul from the entire life according to wickedness;39

32 Cf. Ad virginem, 54. 33 Sch.Ps. 43.3(1), cf. Matt. 15.13. 34 An instance of Evagrius’s imaginative interpretation of Scripture, this exegesis of Matt. 15.13 appears stretched, since ‘the plant’ of the parable is a concrete countable noun and is more obviously interpreted as denoting a particular individual, rather than an abstract phenomenon like evil. 35 ‘In the places of the ungodly the righteous mourn, but in their destruction (a¹pwlei¿#) the righteous shall be multiplied’. 36 Cf. Matt. 9.9. 37 Sch. 355 to Prov. 28.28. The punctuation follows that of Géhin’s translation. 38 On the perdition of Matthew the Publican in this sense see also Sch. 13 to Prov. 1.26. 39 Scholion to Ps. 144.20.

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and in his comment to Ps. 82.18, ‘Let [God’s enemies] be confounded and troubled for ever; let them be put to shame and perish’: This perdition signifies the destruction of vice and ignorance.40

Fundamentally, Christ occupies a prominent place in Evagrius’s first eschatological age, because the eschatological conversion to righteousness comes about as a free submission to him. Thus Scholion to Ps. 71.11, ‘All kings shall fall down before him; all nations shall serve him’, avers: If all the nations serve him, even those that desire war will serve him. And if so, every rational nature will serve Christ.41’42

The Scholion construes the ‘all kings’ and ‘all nations’ of Ps. 71.11 as the totality of Christ’s enemies, who in the resurrection will embrace his rule. (c) The transformation of bodies as the inevitable accession to knowledge The eschatological destruction of wickedness is accompanied by the transformation of the resurrected bodies into channels of knowledge. Cited in full, KG III.51 provides a clear example of this principle: All changes that came to pass before the world to come united some with good and others with evil bodies. Yet [the changes] that will come to pass after [the world] to come, will unite all beings with vehicles of knowledge.

The kephalaion brings the protological and the eschatological transformations together. While, in the beginning, some of the bodies that God fashioned for rational creation were ‘evil’ in the sense that they corresponded to their owners’ state of virtue and knowledge, at the end of times all bodies will be remoulded into glorious ‘vehicles of knowledge’, facilitating the newly converted spirits’ ascent to the summits of contemplation. KG III.40 specifies the moment when the last trumpet of the resurrection43 will blow as that of the disappearance of the evil bodies: The last trumpet is the commandment of the Judge who united rational beings with good or evil bodies. After this the evil bodies shall be no more.

This ‘commandment of the Judge’ may, of course, be construed as the annihilation of the evil-doers together with their dark bodies. However, in view of the previously cited passages, a better understanding is that the bodies of wickedness will be ameliorated and transformed into the ‘vehicles of knowledge’ of KG III.51. Consequently the evil-doers, whose depravity manifested itself even in the evilness of their bodily 40 Sch.Ps. 82.18. 41 ‘Douleu/sei Xrist%=’. 42 Sch.Ps. 71.11. 43 1 Cor. 15.52.

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appearance, will inevitably become saved through an increase of the amount of the spiritual knowledge they possess. By increasing in knowledge, the former malefactors will be able to reverse the ‘folly that removed them from God’ and in this way access salvation. Such is Evagrius’s explication of Isa. 40.5, ‘for all flesh shall see the salvation of God’: If the folly (eÓkstasij) that removed [them] from God is crushed, the foolish will again come to be pure and will approach God, for ‘all flesh shall see the salvation of God’.44

As everywhere in Evagrius, ecstasis here is contrasted with purity and knowledge, while being assimilated with vice and ignorance. Folly is cured by conversion to God, the source of knowledge. (d) The provisional character of hell and natural evil The previous discussion has prepared ground for the conclusion that, in Evagrius’s system, the torment of hell has a provisional and purificatory function. Hell’s action is reserved for demons and the souls of the dead who in their lifetime acted wickedly. Its purpose is to expurgate evil out of the evil-doer and in this way to restore him or her to righteousness and glory. In this respect (and this only), Evagrius’s hell resembles the Catholic purgatory. Hell, then, is God’s provision put in place in response to sin. Coming into existence with the appearance of secondary creation, it begins to pass out of existence as all rational beings are obligatorily restored to righteousness. Evagrius’s concept of natural evil endured in the course of one’s life closely resembles his idea of hell. Like hell, suffering in one’s earthly life has a restorative function. Several passages, some referring to the present life and others to the first eschatological age, deal with natural evil and with the torment of hell. Evagrius’s second Scholion to Ps.17.8–9 instructs that the fire that ‘burst into a flame’ from the face of God,45 is God’s punishment that ‘destroys wicked habits’ (taÜj ponhraÜj eàceij). This fire once consumed Matthew, in his state as a publican, and Paul, who was ‘a persecutor and a violent man’. Through it, Matthew and Paul changed from being sinners into righteous men. The transformation accomplished, the fiery torment ceased. Consequently, the fire was provisional rather than vindictive. The subsequent godly lives of Matthew and Paul bear witness that the transformation within them was a genuine and lasting change of heart. All suffering without exception, be it external punishment or self-inflicted ascetic practice, has a purificatory function. Thus, ‘Torment is ardent grieving that purifies the passible part of the soul’,46 while ‘impurity is destroyed either by praxis or by violent punishment.’47

44 Scholion 323 to Prov. 26.10. Cf. Isa. 40.5. 45 Ps. 17.8–9. 46 KG III.18. 47 Scholion 268 to Prov. 24.9–10.

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In the course of one’s life, purification is achieved either through practicing virtue or by enduring misfortunes. It is clear that for those consigned to hell after the terminus of their earthly life or kept there from the moment of their protological fall praktikh ¯is not an option. For such ones, the ‘violent punishment’ of hell performs the function of practical asceticism. Like praxis, the infernal chastisement purifies the mind of ignorance and ceases, once the purification is complete. Hell, therefore, is not eternal. It is true that Prayer 144 admonishes the monk to be mindful of ‘the punishment in the eternal fire’ (e)n puriì ai)wni¿%). However, Evagrius is careful not to disclose the loftier truths to the beginners. ‘May the highest discourse concerning judgement48 rest hidden from those of the world and the young …’, warns Gnosticus 36. Accordingly, Prayer 144 does not disclose to the beginner the true meaning of the term ai)w/nioj. What this notoriously imprecise term,49 in Evagrius’s view, really means is ‘lasting for a length of time’, rather than unto all eternity. Consequently, paradoxical as it may seem, inasmuch as natural evil and hell have the function of restoration to righteousness and eventual glory, to Evagrius they are God’s good restorative institutions which cease to be once their purpose of purification is fulfilled. (e) The eschatological end of evil and triumph of virtue The universal purification completed, the first eschatological time will see the final defeat of evil and the unconditional triumph of virtue. KG I.40 contains a key to Evagrius’s understanding of the place of moral uprightness in the soul: There was a time when vice was not and there will be a time when it shall be no more; yet there was no time when virtue was not, and there will be no time when it shall be no more. The seeds of virtue are indestructible ….

The kephalaion then cites the end of the parable about Lazarus and the evil rich man in Luke 16.19–31. As he lamented in the fires of hell, the rich man began to be concerned that his brothers should not enter his place of torment. To Evagrius the case of the rich man confirms the optimistic view of human nature: the seeds of compassion and love are incorruptible in the soul, because they constitute part of God’s plan for the creation of humankind. When humans were fashioned, ‘the seeds of virtue’ were found ‘naturally’ present in them, whereas ‘the seeds of malice’ were not.50 This is why even in hell one retains a vestige of virtue.51 It is because virtue is imperishable that the universal eschatological conversion will inevitably take place. At the same time, there is a fleeting quality to virtue. Virtue and practical asceticism essentially form a unity with the second, material, creation. In Evagrius’s

48 ‘o( periì kri¿sewj u(yhlo/teroj lo/goj’. 49 Cf. Crouzel, Origen, p. 206. 50 KG I.39. 51 Luke 16.19–31is also cited in Scholion 62 to Prov. 5.14 and Letter 59 (Frank. P. 608. 23–6). See also Thoughts 31.12–15.

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nomenclature, the clause ‘there was no time when virtue was not’52 indicates that virtue arose simultaneously with time and matter. As Evagrius puts it, virtue is ‘the daughter of names and means’.53 Then the state of things whereby ‘vice was not’54 in the post-lapsarian world is instantiated in the person of Christ, who alone retained his integrity and set an example of virtuous living to other intelligences. Consequently, the underlying meaning of the clause ‘there will be no time when [virtue] shall be no more’ is that virtue will endure until time exists but will cease when time is no more. Evagrius’s ascetic doctrine is based on a contrast between practical virtue and spiritual knowledge, with the latter essentially belonging outside of material creation. While virtue and praxis are centred upon the right exercising of the soul’s natural functions, knowledge hinges upon the operation of the immaterial intellect. Consequently, there is a sense in which, at the consummation of all things, the virtue of the newly converted resurrected spirits will finally give way to universal contemplative knowledge. (f) The co-heritance and equality with Christ The first eschatological time culminates in the entire intellectual creation’s partaking of Christ’s millenary reign. The assimilation of all to Christ is the focal point of this development: If [Christ] is ‘the King of kings’55 and ‘the Shepherd’ of the sheep56 the time will come when he will be merely a king, the sheep having acceded to the royal dignity.57

This is an assertion of an eschatological change in the relation between Christ and the human persons, whereby Christ’s authority with respect to human kind and their position of subordination will be dramatically altered. Christ will no longer be ‘the good shepherd’, since there will be no more ‘sheep’ to pasture. He will still remain ‘king’ of some sort. This might be a lordship over lesser kings. On the other hand, this may be a more radical modification whereby Christ finds himself simply one ruler among many, the former sheep having acceded to royal dignity on a par with Christ. This would denote an equality of status between men and Christ whereby Christ no longer holds the pre-eminence. In the former case, the eschatological assimilation to Christ is to be understood in the sense of men’s final salvation as deification in Christ in God’s kingdom. This kind of assimilation to Christ, understood as deification according to grace but not according to Christ’s divinity, is a perfectly traditional understanding of

52 KG I.40. 53 KG I.51. (NAEBK)‘means, way, resource, stratagem’, Payne-Smith Dictionary. Cf. the Greek po/roj. 54 KG I.40. 55 1 Tim. 6.15. 56 John 10.2. 57 Scholion 241 to Prov. 22.11–12.

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salvation as becoming ‘conformed to the image of [God’s] Son’.58 However, such an understanding of the assimilation to Christ would require the affirmation of the sameness of person between Christ and the Son. It has been observed that Evagrius’s system of ontological distinctions precludes such an identity. Consequently, the assimilation to Christ that Evagrius envisages is of the latter kind, whereby the intellectual beings become equal with Christ in the level of the knowledge of God, deification, and essence. Evagrius maintains that, by becoming kings equal with Christ, the intellects will be able to share in the inheritance of Christ.59 While passages in the Evagriana about co-inheritance with Christ can be convincingly interpreted as referring to higher levels of knowledge within the confines of this life, they are even more literally applicable to the first eschatological era. Scholion 2 to Ps. 36.18 defines ‘the inheritance of the intellectual nature’ as ‘the knowledge of God’. It has been seen above60 that KG IV.8 defines co-inheritance with Christ as sharing in the contemplation that Christ has. In Evagrius, equality in knowledge/contemplation frequently signifies an ontological equality. The thousand years of Christ’s reign, which he shares with the entire intellectual creation, can be interpreted as the situation of newly re-gained gnostic equality of all intellectual beings with Christ. As KG III.72 puts it, ‘The inheritance of Christ is the knowledge of the Unity. And if all become co-heirs with Christ, all will know the holy Unity …’. Here the all is an unambiguous affirmation of a universalist approach to the eschatological restoration, in the sense that all rational beings will be saved through sharing in the inheritance of Christ. ‘The inheritance of Christ’ is the unique mystical knowledge that Christ has of God. While in this age no-one aspires to have it as fully as Christ does,61 in the first eschatology, all intellectual beings will come into its possession. Christ, then, no longer stands out on account of the uniqueness of his knowledge. The intellectual beings’ assimilation to Christ will be manifested in the likeness of their new improved bodies with the glorious body of the risen Christ. This will come to pass when ‘“God will change the body of our humiliation into the semblance of the glorious body”62 of the Lord’, so that ‘“he will make us also unto the image of his Son”,63 if the image of his Son is the substantial knowledge of God the Father’.64 Bearing in mind the particular ontological status of Christ in Evagrius’s thought (Christ is not the Son but is united to the Son in a union of grace), the intellectual beings become ‘unto the image of the Son’ when they obtain complete equality with Christ. Despite his Pauline foundation in Rom. 8.29, therefore, Evagrius differs from Paul in maintaining that to be in the image of the Son is not the same as to be in the image of Christ. Evagrius’s conception of salvation, then, allows for the deified rational beings to be both ‘unto the image of the Son’ and identical with Christ in 58 Rom. 8.29. 59 Cf. Rom. 8.17. 60 Chapter 5. 61 KG III.3. 62 Cf. Phil. 3.21. 63 Cf. Rom. 8.29. 64 KG VI.34.

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knowledge and essence. Substantial knowledge makes Christ in the image of the divine Logos. Once they have acquired this knowledge, human beings too will be made into the image of the Logos. In this sense, therefore, Evagrius is Christocentric and Christian: salvation does not come but through Christ. In another sense, however, Evagrius’s Christocentrism is not absolute, since salvation is not Christ. (v) Christ’s submission of himself and his kingdom to the Father The first eskhaton becomes completed when Christ’s function of bringing about multiple knowledge of the cosmos ceases. Henceforth Christ will turn his undivided attention to the unified knowledge of God the Father alone: When Christ is no longer imprinted upon the manifold worlds and the diversity of names, he shall ‘be subject’ unto God the Father65 and shall delight in the knowledge of Him alone. [This knowledge] is not fragmented among the worlds and the increases of rational beings.66

As previously established, Christ is both the creator (albeit on God’s behalf) and the centre of the universe’s manifold diversity, his creative act encoded within the multiform cosmos. That Christ will no longer be ‘imprinted upon the manifold worlds’ suggests a reversal of the second creative act performed by him and by God and the dissolution of the rich tapestry of the universe. A further mark of the completion of the first eschatological era is Christ’s giving up his kingdom and submitting it to the Father: One day the wicked will remain wicked no more. After this reversal, the Lord ‘shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father’, so that ‘God may be all in all’.67,68

The intellectual beings’ equality with Christ and the latter’s entirely turning his attention to the Father signify that Christ’s function of uplifting the minds to God is now fulfilled. This is confirmed by the fact that, in the successive eschatological stages, Christ is no longer mentioned. The absence of Christ in Evagrius’s ultimate picture is clearly deliberate. (vi) The second eschatological stage: the suppression of bodies, worlds, names and numbers – an Evagrian doctrine? (a) The suppression of the body As maintained in Chapter 4 above, despite his perception of the ambivalence of the body, Evagrius asserts the body’s value and goodness. Its life is to be maintained 65 Cf. 1 Cor. 15.28. 66 KG VI.33. 67 Cf. 1 Cor. 15.28. 68 Scholion 118 to Prov. 10.3.

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even when one becomes entirely proficient in the life of contemplation. When he uses the language of the intellect’s separation from the body and the world as part of the life of asceticism, the separation is to be understood metaphorically. The mind strives to divest itself from the impressions of the sensible realities, including the awareness of one’s own body, in order to obtain a glimpse of something of the life of the immaterial Trinity. The question arises whether Evagrius embraced the view that in the eskhaton the mind actually becomes incorporeal in the sense of its entirely divesting of the body. The first eschatological age paves the way for the sublimation and unification of the rational beings and their knowledge. Following this, the second eschatology inaugurates further, more radical, transformation of the material creation. Although in the resurrection the grosser ‘evil’ body has already been shed in favour of the ‘vehicle of knowledge’, a further change occurs when the form of the body and of the entire material cosmos, what Evagrius calls ‘this world’, becomes altered.69 Thus, ‘If the human body belongs to this world and “the form of this world passes away”, it is clear that the form of the body70 will pass away’ (KG I.26). In the Pauline passages affirming that ‘the form of this world will pass away’71 and that ‘we shall be changed, for this corruptible must put on incorruption …’,72 the underlying presupposition is that, while some of the characteristics of the body and the world may alter, their identity in the eskhaton is preserved.73 In comparison, Evagrius’s picture of the world’s movement towards an eschatological spiritual renewal is more radical. A number of passages in the Kephalaia Gnostica unambiguously affirm the dissolution of the bodies and of matter in the second eschatological age: a belief not found in Paul. Thus, KG II.62 is quite unmistakable in proclaiming the eschatological removal of the bodies which will follow upon a certain final increase in the intellects’ contemplation: When the intellects have received the contemplation proper to them, the entire nature of the bodies74 will also be removed. Then the contemplation proper to [the bodily nature] will become immaterial.75

Were this pronouncement construed in terms of the ascetic’s life on earth, rather than in terms of eschatology, the clause ‘the entire nature of the bodies will be removed’ could be understood metaphorically, just as the expressions ‘the separation 69 Cf. 1 Cor. 7.31, ‘for the fashion of this world passes away’. 70 (NAEBK), from the Greek sxh=ma, which in all probability was the term used in the Greek original. Thus KG I.26 actually quotes 1 Cor. 7.31, ‘toì sxh=ma tou= ko/smou tou=tou’. 71 1 Cor. 7.31. 72 1 Cor. 15.52–3. 73 It is true that 1 Cor. 7.31 has an ethical rather than strictly eschatological context: one should not behave in a worldly manner, although one may also use the world without abusing it. At the same time, it can be argued that there is an eschatological ring to the text: one should behave ethically in view of the imminent end. 74 (NAEBK) 75 KG II.62.

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from the body’ and ‘the flight from the body’ are symbols for the ascetical way of life. However, the textual context of KG II.62, from II.59 to II.64, is unmistakably eschatological, with II.59 explicitly referring to ‘the righteous judgement’ of Christ. The latter phrase is a modified citation of 2 Thess. 1.5. Since the thrust of this Pauline epistle is eschatological, it makes good sense to interpret KG II.59, together with II.62, within the eschatological framework as well. KG II.77 specifically concerns itself with the last judgement announcing the abolition of the actual bodies, rather than merely of some bodily characteristics: The last judgement will not declare the transformation76 of the bodies, but it will reveal their abolition.77

KG III.66 links the eschatological trumpet with what he unmistakably terms ‘the destruction’ of the bodies: As the first trumpet announced the birth of the bodies, so the last trumpet will announce their destruction.

Here Evagrius creatively revisits 1 Cor. 15.52–3 on the last trumpet and the putting on of immortality. He solves the dilemma of the incorruptibility and immortality that come about with the general resurrection by removing what he believes to be the source of corruption and death, the body itself. That the last things will indeed do away with the body, albeit in two stages, is further explained in KG III.68: As the first ‘rest’ of God78 will reveal the diminution of wickedness and the disappearance of thick bodies, so also the second ‘rest’ will reveal the destruction of bodies, the secondary beings, and the diminution of ignorance.

The first transformation of bodies, then, is a change from a gross material state into a spiritual condition. The second one, however, is the downright abolition of the bodies. It is important to note that the end of the bodily nature does not signify the completion of the spiritual ascent. That ignorance is merely diminished rather than altogether eliminated suggests that for the intellectual beings there still exists a measure of progress toward still greater gnostic perfection. The bodies having been abolished, what remains of the intellectual creation is a multiplicity of bodiless intellects. Although Evagrius nowhere specifies this, these intellects will, according to the logic of his argument, include both the disincarnate Christ and the devil. While the devil will have become rid of his dark body, Christ will have shed his glorious body of the Resurrection. Nothing material and multiple is fit to enter ‘the uniform contemplation of the Holy Trinity’.79 76 (NAEBK) 77 (NAEBK) 78 Cf. Gen. 2.2. 79 Cf. Letter 58 cited in Chapter 5.

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(b) The dissolution of the rest of the secondary creation The nature of the bodies abolished, the entire rich fabric of the universe becomes dissolved: The abolition of worlds and names The destruction of worlds, the dissolution of bodies, and the abolition of names accompany the knowledge that concerns the intellectual beings, while the equality of knowledge as the equality of persons80 remains.81

What abides, then, is a multitude of created intellects, equal in the amount and quality of the spiritual knowledge they possess. The dissolution of number The dissolution of the multiplicity of the sensible creation is expressed in terms of the abolition of the category of number. Thus: KG I.7: ‘When those that exist together82 are removed, the number will also be removed. Once [the number] is removed, the principle that is in us83 and He in whom we must dwell84 shall become one.’85 KG I.8: ‘When He in whom we must dwell separated [from us], He generated the reality in which we exist.86 When, however, the principle which is in us becomes mixed,87 He will remove that which shall be removed, together with the number.’88

While the ‘principle within us’ is probably the ruling faculty or the intellect, kephalaion I.8 remains obscure about what the intellect becomes mixed with. What is fairly certain, however, is that in both kephalaia the focus is upon the eschatological removal of the body and the number. This is followed by the intellect’s progression towards the restoration of unity with God, in whom the intellect inheres. The dissolution of time Since ‘the movement of the bodies is temporal’,89 time is a ‘bodily’ category. Like the number, time measures and structures the processes that take place within the second creation. In accordance with this, Evagrius’s interpretation of Ps. 71.7, ‘till

80 (NAEBK) 81 KG II.17. 82 That is, the worlds and the bodies, cf. KG I.6. 83 The intellect. 84 That is, God. 85 The Greek is found in Frankenberg, Evagrius Ponticus, p. 53. 86 That is, the material universe and the body. 87 (NAEBK) 88 That is, the body. 89 KG II.87.

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the moon shall be suppressed’, announces the dissolution of time as a mark of the undoing of the entire sensible creation: When the moon has been lifted away (Selh/nhj a¹nairoume/nhj), time shall be removed (a¹nairei=tai xro/noj). And when time has been removed, the sensible world shall have an end (te/loj eÐcei o( ai)sqhtoìj ko/smoj).90

The downright disappearance of matter When KG I.29 describes the undoing of the entire palette of the multiform universe followed by the disappearance of material objects, this signals the destruction of the four fundamental constituents of matter and of matter itself: The colours, the forms and the numbers disappear together with the bodies. In the same way, together with the four elements, matter (NAEBK) also is destroyed ….91

The rationale that Evagrius presents for this radical development is that ‘… in perfection, nothing of matter will remain.’92 (vii) The final unification of naked intellects with each other and with God The preceding transformations were preparatory to the final unification of the created intellects with each other and with God in the perfection of gnw=sij. The question that arises at this point in the discussion concerns the final destiny of the intellects. This is the numerical diversity among the intellects themselves, on the one hand, and on the other hand, the distinction between each individual created intellect and God. The answer is contained in an important passage in the Letter to Melania which explicates Evagrius’s conclusions to the eschatological winding up of things: And do not wonder at my saying that in the unification of the rational beings with God the Father, they will be one nature in three persons, without addition or subtraction. For take the case of the visible sea, which is one in nature, colour and taste: many rivers of different tastes mix into it, but not only does it not get changed into their variations, on the contrary, without difficulty it changes them completely into its own nature, colour and taste; how much more then is this not the case with the intelligible sea, which is infinite and unchangeable, namely God the Father? When minds flow back to Him like torrents into the sea, He changes them all completely into his own nature, colour and taste. They will no longer be many but one, in his unending and inseparable unity, because they are united and joined with Him. And as in the fusion of rivers with the sea no addition in its nature or variation in its colour or taste is to be found, so also in the fusion of minds with the Father no duality of natures or quaternity of persons comes about: as the sea remains one in nature, colour and taste both before and after the rivers mix with it, thus the divine nature is one in three persons of the Father, the Son and the Spirit both after and before the minds mix with it. We observe something similar before the waters of the sea gathered in one place and the dry land 90 Sch.Ps. 71.7. 91 KG I.29. The Greek is found in Frankenberg, p. 75. 92 KG III.15.

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became visible: then the rivers were at one with the sea. But after they were separated from it, they became many and differentiated, each varying according to the taste of the land in which they appeared. Just so, before sin had made a separation between the minds and God in the same way that the earth separated the sea and the rivers, they were at one in Him, without distinction. But once their sin was apparent, they were separated from Him and became alienated from Him in taste and colour, in that each of them acquired the flavour of the body with which it was joined. Yet once the earth is taken away from the middle of the sea, the sea and the rivers are one without distinction. Thus also, once sin is blotted out from between the minds and God, they will be one and not many.93

The excerpt’s language of unification is a metaphorical elaboration of John 17.22, ‘that they may be one, even as we are one’, and 1Cor. 15.28, ‘God will be all in all’, the two standard Scriptural passages traditionally employed by patristic writers in discussion about the last things. In the passage Evagrius enlarges on his idea of the intellects’ eschatological unification with each other and with God. While previous chapters of this study discussed the maximum contemplative perfection of the soul in relation to the present life, the excerpt above treats of the ultimate confines of gnw=sij in all eternity. The source for Evagrius’s choice of metaphor for the intellects’ unification – the minds flowing back to Him ‘like torrents into the sea’ – remains unknown. Removed from its context, the sentence ‘He changes them all completely into his own nature, colour and taste’ can easily be construed as signifying a unification of the intelligible creation with God according to essence. Such a union, clearly, would result either in a change within the divine essence to admit a created essence and therefore division into the Godhead, or a change whereby creation becomes uncreated and thereby introduces additional persons into the Godhead bringing about a situation of pantheism. Taken in either of these two senses, it is clear that such a manner of union would be considered incriminatory by the standards of Late Antique Christianity, as contradicting the fundamentals of the Trinitarian faith. Evagrius, however, hastens to deny both these options. Despite the language of the change of nature, his doctrine is free from the idea of a collapse of the created beings into the uncreated God. The unity of three divine Persons is eternally intact. It follows that in the eskhata created beings continue to be as distinct from the Divine Being as they were in the stages preceding the general consummation.94 Chapter 3 above studied Evagrius’s views on the mind’s ‘knowledge of God’s essence’, with the conclusion that what Evagrius signifies by this term is the mind’s glimpse of something of the divine manner of life, rather than an absolute ‘insider’s’ knowledge of that life. In the same way, when speaking of the intellects’ change into the nature of divinity Evagrius wishes to convey the idea that the intellects acquire the divine modus vivendi, while remaining created in their essence. Consequently, Evagrius’s imagery of rivers mixing with the sea is to be interpreted as a metaphor and not as a defined dogmatic teaching. Construed on these lines, the passage above is not incriminatory. At the same time, it is noteworthy that, by affirming the creation’s 93 Melania 6, Parmentier, p. 13. 94 Refoulé’s opinion that Evagrius’s metaphysics lays the foundations of pantheism is faulty and stems from the author’s lack of familiarity with Evagrius’s entire system.

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‘change into the divine nature’,95 Evagrius once again terminologically diverges from the Cappadocian theological nomenclature, which forbids such declarations. Do the intellects remain distinct from one another? Despite the impression to the contrary which Evagrius’s depiction creates, the identity of the intellects remains intact. Evagrius’s underlying meaning seems to be that the diversity that will perish at this final stage is the remaining un-likeness and alienation to which the minds initially condemned themselves through sin. This evil diversity separated them not only from the contemplation of God but also from the love of each other. Therefore, the sentence ‘once sin is blotted out from between the minds and God, they will be one and not many’ is better interpreted in the sense that the minds become equal with one another in knowledge while in some sense remaining distinct personalities. This conclusion opens up possibilities for measured defence of Evagrius’s conception of the ultimate state of things. While Evagrius is clearly innovative in tracing the body’s origin to the first transgression and proclaiming the elimination of it in perfection, it is essential not to over-emphasise Evagrius’s heterodoxy. The scandal of the abolition of the body lies in the fear of the extinction of the person. It is normally understood that the necessary condition for personal existence is a particular modus vivendi and an oàroj delineating the boundaries between ‘I’ and the ‘non-I’. The body is often understood as providing such delineation. The suspicion, therefore, might be that Evagrius propagates an idea of the annihilation of the individual self. Such appears to be the interpretation of the Origenistic eschatology by the anathema 14 of Constantinople 553, which condemns the eschatological ‘identity of … persons (u(posta¯seij)’ by which it understands a merging of persons. However, a more careful examination shows that, with Evagrius, this is not the case. If one of the conditions of being in the body is for one person to be in one place at one time, Evagrius’s ‘naked intellects’ fulfil this condition in that, even in an existence where time and space do not apply, the minds remain circumscribed as distinct creatures in relation to one another and to God. God alone is limitless. Consequently, since the mind’s status as individual creatures is preserved and if the body is a mark of creature, it is possible to argue that Evagrius envisages some vestige of the body in final perfection. Even in the eskhaton, God alone is truly bodiless. Provided one allows a measure of plasticity to the idea of the body, the conclusion is that ‘the naked intellects’ retain some somatic characteristics. When carefully evaluated, Evagrius’s idea of an immaterial final blessedness is not entirely hostile to the fundamental concerns of orthodoxy. (viii) ‘Apokatastasis’: a clarification of the term It is essential, at this point, to dispel some myths about the meaning of the term ‘apokatastasis’, since Evagrius’s eschatological doctrine has been negatively labelled by his modern critics on account of this term being often indiscriminately used.96 In this they follow the bearings of the 553 anathemas against what was 95 Presumably, fu/sij in the Greek original. 96 Un philosophe au désert, pp. 389–90. Likewise Larchet, La vie après la mort, pp. 296–7.

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believed to be the generalised Origenist eschatology, which in reality appears to be an unspecified conflation of ideas from Origen, Evagrius, Didymus, and their sixth-century followers. The term ‘apokatastasis’ is used, for example, in the 553 anathema 14. Although Evagrius is not mentioned by name, some of the doctrines expressed in anathemas 12, 13, and 14, are reminiscent of his eschatological texts. Consequently, there is a reason to conclude that Evagrius was indeed their target. It is therefore incongruous that, while it is hard to find this term in the Evagriana, anathema 14 labels the eschatology it targets ‘apokatastasis’. The overtly pejorative slant that the term bears in anathema 14 reveals a semantic shift in the aftermath of the early fifth-century Origenist condemnations. In its new restricted sense, ‘apokatastasis’ came to signify exclusively an erroneous eschatology rooted in what was believed constituted the teachings of Origen. This comprised a logically necessary eschatological restoration of all rational beings, good or wicked, to a state of primordial immaterial blessedness. The history of the term, however, shows that in the Christian milieu prior to Origenist condemnations of A.D. 400 ‘apokatastasis’ was theologically and politically a neutral term. Acts 3.21, ‘the restitution of all things’, employs it to describe what will come to pass in the eskhaton. In subsequent Christian writings it was used as an umbrella-term to cover different Late Antique interpretations of 1 Cor. 15.28, ‘God will be all in all’. That at the end of the fourth century it was still a perfectly acceptable Scriptural way to refer to the events of the second coming, the bodily resurrection, the last judgement, and ‘God becoming all in all’ is proven by the fact that prominent Nicene theologians like Basil of Caesarea,97 Gregory of Nazianzus98 and Gregory of Nyssa99 freely employed it in their discussions about the last things. The term also had a broader, not strictly theological meaning. Thus, Gregory of Nyssa testifies that, in astronomy, it signified the return of light after an eclipse,100 whereas in medicine it was used to designate the return to health.101 In even more distant antiquity, the Stoics used the term to describe the idea of an infinite series of identical worlds, each successive world recreating the history of the preceding one. In this sense, the term is used by Clement, as in Stromateis II.VIII.37.6 and VII.X.65.5, and by Origen, in Commentary on John I.91, X.291, Against Celsus VII.3, and, probably, in the original Greek version of On First Principles II.3.5.199 and III.6.9.266–7;102 by Gregory of Nazianzus103 and Gregory of Nyssa.104 What is important to remember, however, is that, while different understandings of the end and the beginning of things had flourished, by Evagrius’s time no blame had been 97 De opificio hominis, 11.7. 98 Oration 30 (Fourth Theological Oration) 7. 99 Homilies on Ecclesiastes, I.296.16–18; In inscriptiones psalmorum II.14.155.6–12; De oratione dominica 4.1165c–d. 100 Contra fatum, Jaeger III.2, p. 35 ll. 7–16; PG 45.149c. 101 De oratione dominica, 4.1161a. 102 The term is probably behind the ‘restitutio omnium’ which Rufinus employs in his translation of Origen’s work. 103 Oration 27.31. 104 Hom.Eccl. I.296.16–18; De oratione dominica 3.1165c.

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attached either to the term ‘apokatastasis’ or to the idea of the end being as the beginning. Later fathers, however, came to believe that any identification between the first and last things was blameworthy,105 which suggests that they attributed this opinion to no-one else but the ‘heretical’ Origen and Evagrius who, it was assumed, perniciously conceived of the last things as replicating the first and, in any case, were heretics.106 These later theologians also came to see the term ‘apokatastasis’ in a more restricted sense, as denoting exclusively: first, the necessary restoration of all and second, an strictly immaterial return to an immaterial beginning.107 Ignorance was thus demonstrated of the fact that, on the one hand, the term had been widely employed as part of legitimate nomenclature and, on the other hand, that Evagrius had actually never used it.108 That modern historians should uncritically adopt the 553 unhistorical understanding of the term, which originally stood for the concept of an identical beginning and end, and of Evagrius’s involvement in this matter, is incongruous. (ix) Evagrius’s context For a proper understanding of the intricacies of Evagrius’s views, it is indispensable once more to place him in his historical context. (a) The Cappadocians Basil Similar as it is to Evagrius’s thought, in a number of fine details, Basil’s concept of hell (and, consequently, eschatology) is significantly different from that of Evagrius. In his Small Rules,109 answering a question on Luke 12.47–8 regarding the meaning of ‘many stripes’ and ‘few stripes’, Basil unambiguously states that both kinds of stripes refer not to the duration of punishment but to its varied intensity in eternity (diaforaÜn kola¯sewj dhloi=). For, argues Basil, if there is an end to the torment at some point, the eternal life also will have an end. The reason for this Basil’s conclusion partly lies in his reading of the parallelism in Matt. 25.46 between ‘the everlasting punishment’ and ‘life eternal’. In part, however, it reflects Basil’s belief that the source of both the punishment and the blessedness is one and the same: the divine action of grace. Punishment is not something specially and separately created for sinners. Basil’s succinct response to the problem merits an extended comment. 105 See anathema 15 of 553. 106 Early Christian thought embraced the idea that the last things will be just like the first. Thus, Jesus Christ speaks of paradise, which was man’s a¹rxh/ (cf. Gen. 2.8, ‘para¯deison e)n E)de/m’), as of the end and fulfilment of life (Luke 23.43, ‘Today you will be with me in paradise’). 107 553 anathemas 13 and 14. 108 This is another instance of Evagrius’s originality: using an acceptable theological concept, without employing the traditional terminology. 109 Small Rules, Question 267 (PG 31.1264c–5c).

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According to Basil, hell essentially is not a temporary provision that passes out of existence when God ‘becomes all in all’. Rather, it is an eternal condition that human beings choose for themselves and which becomes finalised at the moment of the last judgement. Subsequently to this moment, the destiny of the righteous in God’s kingdom and of the wicked in hell is irreversible. The eternity of hell involves a concept of humanity and its telos different from Evagrius’s idea of the rational beings’ innate goodness that persists no matter what. The rationale behind the idea of an eternal hell involves certain assumptions about the nature of evil. Like Evagrius, Basil supports the view that rational beings were all created good and are therefore innately ordered toward the good rather than evil. Created by God, it is the good and not the evil that constitutes their natural state of health. Evil, therefore, is a consequence of the faculty of moral choice gone awry. A single instance of a wrong moral choice lessens the natural disposition toward the good and redirects the created will toward further deviation from God’s original plan for it. A succession of faulty choices propagates a compulsion perpetuating an exponential multiplication of faulty choices. The further down this road, the harder it becomes for the disorientated faculty of will to resume its former direction God-wards. In the end the faulty disposition becomes irreversible. There is a moral threshold to volition which, once crossed, precludes the return to the good, because ‘badness’ has now become so ingrained as to constitute one’s identity. Consequently, not all evil-doers will maintain forever the capacity to part with wickedness and embrace the good. If hell is eternal, then, that ‘God will be all in all’ signifies that God will entirely transform all those who actively desire the transformation. The danger of an unfairly predestinarian conception of salvation is precluded by the fundamental assumption, which Basil without question upholds, that salvation is universal in the sense that God desires it for all and provides all with the means toward its realisation. Basil’s teaching on hell and eschatology sets the pattern for the two other Cappadocians. Gregory of Nazianzus As in Evagrius, in Gregory of Nazianzus, the idea of final perfection is based upon 1 Cor. 15.28 and John 17.22. The relevant text is found in the Fourth Theological Oration (Oration 30.6): ‘God will be all in all’110 at the moment of apokatastasis.111 Not the Father alone, when the Son has been completely absorbed into Him,112 as a light, attracted for a while by an immense fire then joines itself with it …, but the entire God (oàloj Qeo/j), when we shall no longer be many things as [we are] now, [when] by reason of movements and passion we bear within ourselves nothing of God or but little [of Him]; but [we shall be] completely God-like.113 We will become able to contain the entire and only God. This is the perfection (telei¿wsij) toward which we are hurrying. Paul himself testifies most forcefully [about 110 1 Cor. 15.28. 111 ‘e)n kair%= th=j a¹pokatasta¯sewj’, Acts 3.21. This is an example of how neutral the term ‘apokatastasis’ was to the fourth-century theologians. 112 ‘pa¯ntwj ei)j au)toìn a)naluqe/ntoj tou= Ui¸ou=’. 113 ‘oàloi qeoeidei=j’.

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Evagrius Ponticus it]: for what he says here of God in an undetermined manner, elsewhere he clearly defines as Christ.114 In what terms does he speak [of this]? There is there ‘neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bond or free, but Christ [is] all and in all’.115’116

A comparison between this passage and the Evagrian excerpt from the Letter to Melania cited above reveals a noteworthy dissimilarity. While both use 1 Cor. 15.28 as their key text, the two theologians interpret it differently. Chapter 5 of this book evaluated Evagrius’s use of Col. 3.11 in Thoughts 3. It was pointed out that the stage when Christ ‘will be all and in all’ for the soul designates spiritual perfection of some kind. It can therefore be interpreted as referring either to a supreme experience in this life, or to Christ’s eschatological reign. However, both in this life and the life to come, Christ’s role peters out at higher gnostic stages. Neither in this life on earth nor in the eskhaton is Christ ultimate. Consequently, Evagrius does not interpret 1 Cor. 15.28 in the light of Col. 3.11, because to him this would signify a gross confusion of two different, if successive, gnostic levels. This brings us back to the already laboured point that Evagrius does not envisage the ultimate perfection in Christological terms. By contrast, Gregory clearly does. The text above evinces the fact that, to him, the fulfilment of the state of things whereby ‘God is all in all’ is Christ’s ‘being all and in all’. Consequently, Guillaumont’s view that ‘Évagre a pu être …, sur ce point [i. e. eschatology] plus directement influencé par Grégoire de Nazianze’,117 cannot be upheld. Gregory of Nyssa118 In his eschatology and anthropology, Gregory exhibits interesting parallels with Evagrius. Human nature was in the beginning created good. It was originally ‘unbroken and immortal’,119 but then ‘fell into sin’.120 The fall was the result of a faulty choice on our part. This choice occurred on account of the fundamental capacity for change, both for the worse and for the better, inherent in human nature: ‘we are our own parents, giving birth to ourselves by our own free choice in accordance with whatever we wish to be …’.121 When, therefore, God hardened the Pharaoh’s heart,122 the initial movement away from God was still on the part of man.123 This is because ‘we men

114 ‘safw=j periori¿zei Xrist%=’. 115 Col. 3.11. 116 Oration 30.6 (Fourth Theological Oration), ll. 31–44. 117 Un philosophe au désert, 390. 118 For a detailed treatment of Gregory’s eschatology see Ludlow’s fine recent monograph Universal Salvation. 119 Life of Moses, II.215. 120 Ibid., II.45. 121 Ibid., II.3. 122 Exod. 9.12. 123 Life of Moses, II.73–8.

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have in ourselves the causes of light or of darkness, since we place ourselves in whichever sphere we wish to be’.124 Similarly to Evagrius, Gregory is of the opinion that the resurrection is ‘nothing other but the restoration (a¹pokata¯stasij) of the original state (a¹rxai=on).’125 Like Evagrius too, by the apokatastasis Gregory means the restoration and the accomplishment of God’s original plan interrupted by the fall. It is in this sense that the end of things is like their beginning. As in Evagrius, the resurrection of the body is an important part of this plan. Yet Gregory diverges from Evagrius, in rejecting the opinion that in the resurrection there will be no body. On this point, Gregory is of the opinion that he disagrees with Origen.126 The eternity of the body is further upheld in Gregory’s Catechetical Discourse, 8.127 On the same lines, his De oratione dominica is unequivocal that ‘this earthly flesh shall depart from the soul to the heavenly place at the hour of the restoration of all things (e)n t$= a¹pokatasta¯sei tw=n pa¯ntwn)’.128 Crucially, however, Gregory’s visions of the eschatological paradise converge with Evagrius’s in understanding salvation as universalist in the sense of ‘universally inclusive’.129 In paradise, praise ‘will be ceaselessly offered fully to God with equal honour by every breathing creature (e)n pa¯s$ pno$=) forever’.130 Consequently, Gregory of Nyssa’s difference from Evagrius is hinged upon the different views the two theologians hold upon God’s first idea for rational creation: in the body, in the case of Gregory, and without the body, according to Evagrius. (b) Origen Although recent scholarship has maintained that Origen probably did not subscribe to the minds’ pre-existence and immaterial return,131 from the perspective of Evagrius’s reading of his oeuvre, it is safe to claim that Origen is an important influence upon Evagrius’s eschatology. Origen’s eschatological doctrine can be found, for example, in P.Arch. I.6; II.3.3; 4; 7; II.10.5; 6; III.5.4; 8; III.6.3; 6; and IV.23. Since an exhaustive analysis of Origen’s views on the last things lies outside the scope of the present research, here it will suffice to briefly survey only some passages and themes from On First Principles. Hell In his views on hell, Evagrius resembles Origen. In the P.Arch. I, Origen wonders whether in the consummation of things each person will be subjected to pain 124 Ibid., II.80. 125 Hom.Eccl. I.296.16–18. 126 Cf. De opificio hominis 28.229b; and Dialogus de anima et resurrectione 113b–c. On this see Daniélou, L’être et le temps chez Grégoire de Nysse, 206. Gregory attacks Origen’s views but does not mention his name. 127 Jaeger pp. 29–35. 128 3.1165c–d. 129 Ludlow, op. cit., p. 75. 130 In inscriptions psalmorum, I.9.116–18). Cited in Ludlow, op. cit., 73. 131 Cf. M. J. Edwards, Origen Against Plato, 160.

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according to his sins. Yet ‘the goodness of God will call back (revocet) all creation into one end only’, which, presumably, signifies a good end.132 The universal submission to Christ and God Evagrius’s interpretation of the 1 Cor. 15.25 submission to Christ and God likewise echoes passages from Origen. Thus, P.Arch. I.6.1 speculates about the submission to Christ as being universalist, in the sense that all rational beings will necessarily choose to convert by virtue of the attractiveness of God’s grace and their residual goodness and reason. Understood as God’s salvation, this submission is neither violent nor forced by God. Rather, it stems from the rational beings’ own reasoning power. All will be saved not because all are thus originally predestined or ultimately compelled, but because – Origen hopes – all as a matter of fact will come to see righteousness as preferable to wickedness. The passage, then, expresses the legitimate desire and a strong sense of probability that salvation will be universal because: first, it is offered to everyone with no-one being predestined to damnation and second, because all will eventually freely choose salvation. The identity between the end and the beginning In line with the Catholic rule of its time, On First Principles I.6.2.46 ff. points out that the end is always just like the beginning – a unity. ‘As the end of all things is unity, so also we must understand that the beginning of everything is unity’, according to John, ‘That they may be one in us’.133 Origen, then, offers an interpretation of the same Scriptural passage, John’s seventeenth chapter, that is Evagrius’s key eschatological text. Matter and the body in the eskhaton Evagrius’s views on matter and the body in the eskhaton, in some respects, resemble the ideas of P.Arch. II.3.3. Origen’s text speculates that, if it be true that that which is corruptible shall put on incorruption and that which is mortal immortality, and that death shall be no more (1 Cor. 15.53 ff.), this would mean nothing else but an abolition of the material nature insofar as sinful and mortal. ‘For it is upon such a nature that death could have an impact.’ As the material nature becomes progressively more refined, death will be absorbed and eventually destroyed. This is how 1 Cor. 15.55, ‘Death, where is thy sting? ... The sting of death is sin’, and so on, is fulfilled. Death and sin, then, are associated with matter in the legitimate sense that the mortality of the body is the corollary from the fall into sin.134 Nevertheless, what in Origen is expressed as a hypothesis, in Evagrius becomes a certainty. Moreover, whilst Origen’s overall sense is that, however much the body is refined and transformed in the apokatastasis, it still remains a body, Evagrius takes the body’s rarefaction further. Consequently, in Origen, the body is less of a fixed entity than in Evagrius. Origen’s conception of the body is that, whilst it can become spiritualised, it is never completely absorbed into spirit. This is true about 132 P.Arch. I.6.1.20–3. 133 John 17.21. 134 Cf. P.Arch. II.3.3, ll. 100–129.

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Evagrius also, yet it requires more inferential steps to arrive at a probability of this conclusion. In their respective eschatologies, then, Evagrius and Origen use identical Scriptural sources and provide similar interpretations for them. There is also little doubt that Origen was one of Evagrius’s sources. However, while using Origen as his inspiration, Evagrius remains a theologian in his own right, providing his own solutions to the specific problems that the life of the Lower Egyptian monasticism posed. (x) Summation In summation, all but one of the major stages in the eschatological transformation that Evagrius envisages are scripturally and traditionally warranted. Yet he imparts to each a particular angle which is his own. Evagrius’s hell is educatory and will terminate at Christ’s second coming. By contrast with Basil’s view, it is a provision set up by God’s mercy for the purpose of conversion. The final salvation and glorification are for all in the sense that the entire rational creation will voluntarily renounce the evil and chosen the good. The criticism can be laid at Evagrius’s door that this eventual change of heart is reminiscent of the reform which the dissident minds in Orwell’s novel undergo under torture in Room 101135 and that therefore Evagrius stands here in the breaking of the Christian tenet regarding the freedom of the love of God. This, however, would be an anachronistic criticism, since Evagrius’s anthropology is based on the respectable patristic idea of freedom not as deliberation, but as the mind’s in-built steadfastness in cleaving to the good.136 Admittedly, Evagrius’s particular application of this principle of freewill to his concept of hell is innovative. Hell, according to Evagrius, punishes in the sense of abetting this God-given faculty so the rational being can start anew. Christ’s universal reign is conceived in terms of extending his royal dignity in equal measure to all intelligences. This signals the newly found equality of knowledge of the entire rational creation with Christ. All will become ‘the co-inheritors with Christ’ and will come to know ‘the right-hand of God’, which is the Logos. In itself, this Evagrius’s idea is rooted in the traditional concept of anthropological maximalism as expressed in Heb. 3.14, ‘for we are made partakers of Christ’. However, in Evagrius, Christ’s handing his reign over to the Father marks the end of our ‘partaking’ of him. Here, Evagrius’s picture is in stark contrast with the eschatology of Gregory of Nazianzus. The latter maintains that human beings’ eschatological perfection is strictly Christ Himself, because Christ is God. Material being as it is perceived in 135 Nineteen Eighty-Four. O’Brien thus describes the effects of Room 101 to Winston Smith: ‘We are not content with negative obedience, nor even with the most abject submission. When finally you surrender to us, it must be of your own free will … We do not destroy the heretic because he resists us … We convert him, we capture his inner mind, we reshape him. We burn all evil and all illusion out of him; we bring him over to our side, not in appearance but genuinely, heart and soul’ (London, 1987), p. 267. 136 For a summary of this concept in Maximus the Confessor (cf. Opuscula 26.276c) see Louth, Maximus the Confessor, 60–61.

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this life on earth is, according to Evagrius, discontinuous with the final perfection. Here Evagrius stands in contrast with the mainstream tradition. Yet, since the gulf between God and the minds and the minds’ diversity remain, there is a sense in which some characteristics of the body continue into eternity. Did Constantinople 553 do justice to Evagrius? The answer is in the negative. Little effort was made to present his eschatology and protology so as to disentangle them from those of other thinkers. No comprehensive overview of the Evagriana was attempted. Allowances were not made regarding the ambivalent status of the Catholic rule of faith in matters of eschatology and the soul’s origin in the fourth century, even had the principle of an historical change of ideas been understood. Little sympathy was shown regarding the overall thrust of Evagrius’s intention. The reason for this treatment of Evagrius is that the participants of the Synod were not concerned with administering justice towards the person and oeuvre of Evagrius, Origen or Didymus. The 553 assembly was neither a present-day courtroom nor a conference of modern historians. The attention was given rather to the more urgent task of preserving the eternal Catholic tenets, as they saw them, untainted, so as to foster the right teaching of a unified faith. This manner of assessing Evagrius’s eschatology was clearly informed by assumptions about Catholic truth that belonged to their own age. Without questioning the value of these ideas about heresy and orthodoxy, a historical account such as the present one must recognise the diversity of theological opinions and agendas thriving in the fourth- to sixth-century empire, rather than evaluate one such viewpoint through another. It is true that Evagrius’s eschatology involves a perspective upon materiality and freewill that sound uncomfortable both to the ancient Christian and modern secular minds. However, it is important to build up an evaluation of these issues that will take into account Evagrius’s own intention regarding the type of audience that he had, as well as the state of the Christian consensus at his time. This approach reveals the positive aspects of Evagrius’s eschatology. The certitude that the body’s vulnerability to suffering in a harsh environment would eventually be eliminated, with the end result that grace would necessarily prevail over ‘this body of death’, was surely powerful solace to the desert ascetics. Even more comforting to Christian compassion was the firm promise that all those whom God created, no matter how wicked their choices, would eventually be pardoned and saved. From God’s point of view everything is arranged towards repentance, and not as a double arrangement in terms of punishment and reward. Evagrius’s eschatology, then, suited his audience well in that, in his milieu, it provided hope. Innovative in its conclusions, though traditional in its presuppositions, Evagrius’s eschatology is of interest to the student of monasticism over and above its controversial status.

Conclusion The purpose of this monograph from the beginning was to clarify Evagrius’s key idea of spiritual progress as ascent to knowledge and to open up avenues for further research in more than one area. Some of the domains to which this book contributes are: the study of the Evagriana as a whole in relation to the character of its author, the place of the fourth-century CE in the history of ideas, the discipline of patristics, and modern epistemological concerns. (i) Contribution to Evagrian studies: Evagrius as himself and as a fourthcentury figure This study’s approach has been to assess Evagrius as himself and as a fourth-century thinker, rather than through the eyes of his sixth-century adversaries. It is hoped that Chapter 1 has gone some of the way in correcting recent oversimplifications of key events and connections in Evagrius’s life. Its intention was to sketch a new intellectual and spiritual biography of Evagrius and to demonstrate how his particular choices and situations in life formed him as a desert monastic instructor and author of the Evagriana. In Evagrius the didactic purpose is inseparable from that of selfconstruction as a gnwstiko/j. At the same time, Evagrius’s spiritual oeuvre dramatises the quest for Christian perfection so characteristic of the fourth century. The age that Evagrius was able to call his own saw the triumph of the Cross throughout the empire, the rise and fall of Arianism, the first two general councils strive to define the elusive identity of the Christian faith by exposing the adverse forces of heresy. It was also an age of great theologians and one that saw established monasticism take shape. It may be true that, whilst he was much concerned about issues of orthodoxy and heresy, the mature Evagrius did not care much for ecclesiastical politics that preoccupied the minds in the capitals. His was a desert life of contemplation and providing spiritual guidance to others. Nevertheless, while he administered teaching primarily to the narrow audience of Nitrian monastics, Evagrius is not to be extricated from an age that formed him into the person he was and to whose history his presence contributed. Evagrius for his own sake and in his own right is still to be explored against the background of the fourth century. To unravel the fascination of a body of writings is, first, to elucidate its fundamental threads, and, second, to reveal the underlying principles of coherence holding it together. The leit-motif of my enquiry was Evagrius’s intuition that God is both transcendent and interventional. Metaphysics, then, actively shapes the physical reality, as God’s action of grace mixes with creation. In Evagrius’s view, God’s selfrevelation in stages is necessitated by the difficulty the created mind encounters in progressing to know the Uncreated God. The ‘knowledge of the Holy Trinity is

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a spiritual summit1 hard to approach’.2 By advancing in contemplation gradually rather than abruptly, the mind conforms to the realities it contemplates more gently, adjusting to the change at its own pace. Its healing is thus more complete. That the ascent is gradual is itself anagogic: there is always more of God’s perfections to be known which enchants the seeker to press on, in fulfilment of 1 Cor. 13.10: ‘But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away’.3 The following are the patterns of Evagrius’s thought that emerge out of the concept of graded reality and which this inquiry has found fundamental. Evagrius’s conception of the value of physical created things for the life of praxis and the beginning of true knowledge has long stood in need of re-evaluation. This study hopes to have been able to show in Chapter 2 that, contrary to the recent misconceptions and indeed, mistranslations, in this life at least, nature and grace work together harmoniously in Evagrius’s system. Evagrius, then, is no hater of the body. The relationship between the essence and operations of God in fourth-century patristic thought has long been a confused and neglected area. Chapter 3 of this book makes a detailed evidential contribution to it, by showing the contrast between Evagrius’s conceptions of ‘natural contemplation’ and ‘the knowledge of God’s essence’. Whilst the ‘Cappadocian Fathers’ also distinguished between the divine essence and operations, it has not been understood that Evagrius was using this conceptual distinction in a manner original to him. God reveals Himself in the universe as in a mirror. In contemplating the uncreated principles of the universe, the mind grows aware of God’s creative wisdom. To know God’s essence, however, is a more excellent way of knowing. Concerned with God alone, this kind of spiritual knowledge, Evagrius asserts, is not transmitted by created intermediaries. Like the contemplation of created things, however, this ‘direct’ intimation of God remains a partial, rather than absolute, form of knowledge. Evagrius’s theology of spiritual advancement is not merely a form of intellectual speculation. It arises from an experience and its purpose is to teach others how to live their life on earth in order to reach the experience. Chapter 4 is a re-assessment of Evagrius’s experientialism, expressed especially in his theology of the divine light. The chapter for the very first time establishes the link between Evagrius’s theology of the divine light and his concept of ‘the divine essence’. The subject required to be approached from an entirely new angle by demonstrating how his theology of divine light cannot be separated from his entire doctrine, so that there is no such a thing in him as bare mystical experiences, devoid of dogmatic content. Evagrius’s Christ is a great and wondrous Lucifer-like intelligence fashioned by God. By bringing out the unusual nature of Evagrius’s conception of Christ, Chapter 5 invited to cast a fresh look upon Evagrius’s presuppositions. Pace L. Dysinger’s account, my purpose was to demonstrate how Evagrius’s Christology is quite intentionally and consistently subordinates to his Triadology, so that Christ ‘is not one of the Trinity’ at all but is created and as such is not the object of spiritual knowledge. The same chapter completes the account of Evagrius’s views on the 1 ‘oàroj pneumatiko/n.’ 2 Letter 59, Frankenberg, 609, 1.1–2. 3 Hart as it is to find citations of this text in Evagrius, he was an avid reader of Paul.

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body, this thorny topic in Evagrian scholarship, by finally establishing beyond doubt that Evagrius traces the origin of bodies to the intellects’ primordial fall from grace. While constituting the heart of Evagrius’s thought, his teaching about the glory that is to come in the future age has been completely neglected by recent Anglophone scholars. Chapter 6 showed Evagrius’s eschatology to be unique, in that he argues for the inevitable salvation of the devil in the ultimate scheme of things and that matter, bodies, and the pre-eminence of Christ, as opposed to God the Logos, will be finally annihilated. Both this and the previous chapter gave very considerable attention to the interpretation of Evagrius’s most speculative work, the Kephalaia Gnostica, extant only in a Syriac translation. The drawing together of the Greek and Syriac Evagrian material combined with a detailed analysis of Evagrius’s concepts has been a fundamental intention of this monograph. Thereby the book contributes towards filling a distinctive gap in contemporary Evagrian studies, many of which focus exclusively upon his Greek works while overlooking the ones preserved in Syriac translations. Keeping the Greek and the Syriac Evagrius together will always be essential for our proper understanding of this thinker and his age, both because the works now extant only in Syriac contain Evagrius’s more mature thought, the fruit of many years of uninterrupted reflection and those that are make for the more authentic Evagrius, and because by comparing his ‘Syriac’ corpus with his Greek one, we are in a position to form judgements about how imperial ‘orthodoxy’ gradually changed from the fourth century to the fifth. (ii) Contribution to broader history of Christian thought and to patristics As a thinker whose name accompanied Origen in the crisis of 553, Evagrius is also a function of the sixth-century Church’s struggle for the preservation of orthodox identity. The agenda of the sixth century surprisingly has affected the perspectives of modern Evagrian scholarship, in that they are too often acquiescent in the condemnation of Evagrius and do not re-evaluate his significance. This position of Evagrian scholarship, in turn, affects modern debate about the 553 controversy. This monograph’s concern was to redress the balance by providing openings for a reassessment of Evagrius’s posthumous involvement in the sixth-century Origenist controversy. While it has not been the monograph’s purpose to do justice to the importance of Evagrius in broader Christian tradition, it is important to realise that since his legacy continued to live on after the sixth-century condemnations, Evagrius also contributes, in yet another fashion, to histories of Christianity in subsequent centuries and to the history of their own scholarship. The present book adds to the subject matter of patristics for two reasons: first, because elucidating Evagrius in his fourth-century context it provides answers for researches into the fourth- and sixth-century Christian thought; second, because the method used for the study of Evagrius also has methodological implications for patristics generally. Of all the possible contributions to patristics to which this monograph opens avenues, two areas in particular deserve mention: the question of Christian diversity and uniformity and that of method in patristic studies.

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(a) Contribution to patristics in matters of Christian diversity and uniformity The discipline of patristics will always be enriched through Evagrius because he fosters a more nuanced understanding of the complex issue of Christian diversity, ‘orthodoxy’ and ‘heterodoxy’, both in his own age and across centuries. Fourth-century Christian opinion was homogeneous regarding many of the agendas that were addressed and the sources fourth-century writers used. Thus, there was an agreement that the soul held sway over its body, that the task of the truly philosophical mind was in some sense ‘to flee from the body’, and that God desired all to be saved. Yet disparity of opinions obtained regarding the conclusions reached and the degree of literalness with which these beliefs were held. In Evagrius, the speculation about the beauty and pre-eminence of the mind hardened into the conviction about the mind’s pre-existing its body, a universal apocalyptic restoration of the minds and their final deliverance from their bodies. By contrast, other thinkers maintained that, although all were called to be saved, not everyone actually attained to salvation. Hell was eternal and salvation a thing to be earned rather than guaranteed. The body, they insisted, was fashioned simultaneously with the mind/soul and, in a refined form, will accompany the soul into the age to come. Variations are likewise observable across the late fourth-century ecumenê regarding the doctrine of Christ. In 383–85, Gregory of Nazianzus published his triptych of Christological Letters to Cledonius, 101, 202, and 102, directed at once against the Apollinarist Christology, which denied the presence of a human intellect in Christ, and its opposite, the Christology of Diodore of Tarsus, already known for his doctrine of ‘two Sons’. Around the same time, in 381, Gregory of Nyssa was accused of Apollinarianism in Jerusalem and only shortly after (386) of an opposite heresy by the bishop of Alexandria. Does not this suggest the presence in the 380s of brewing Christological tensions in Constantinople, Cappadocia, Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Nitria? One could almost chart their geographical distribution. Given Evagrius’s close ties with Jerusalem and the specific kind of di-polar Christology he embraced, the conjecture is that, whilst in Jerusalem and Lower Egypt the monks preferred a Christological di-polarity of two united but numerically distinct persons, in Constantinople, Alexandria, and Cappadocia, it was considered axiomatic that, whilst undoubtedly dual, Christ was numerically identical with the Logos, so that Christ was the Logos made flesh. Diachronically, too, the deposit of Christian faith was in some sense fluid. That Constantinople 553 castigated the term apokatastasis and the idea that the last things will be just as the first, suggests that, imperceptibly to the participants of 553, both Christian doctrine and terminology in that theological area had shifted since the fourth century. This evidence of fluidity, synchronic and diachronic, provokes still deeper reflection, on the very essence of early Christian orthodoxy. Ancient theologians, Evagrius included, considered orthodoxy as a rule of faith, deposited by the revelation objectively, so considered once and for all times. Christian revelation, then, was static. Few allowances were made even for the idea of a gradual assimilation of revelation by the mind. In turn, the modern historian of doctrine tends either to believe that the rule of faith in the early Church indeed possessed a fixed identity, or

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to deny that it had any identifiable identity altogether. A subtler position, however, which would benefit patristic study more, is to see early Christian orthodoxy as indeed stable in some areas and fluid in others. In the early Church all agreed about some fundamental Christian tenets: that Christ was the Saviour of the world; that God was in some sense One and Three; that salvation was in the Church. By contrast, other ideas, in particular, on the soul and the Age to come, were not so precisely fixed. Thus, a truer picture of what over the centuries was regarded as the authentic Christian faith is construed as a dialectic equilibrium between inalterability and fluidity. It was the purpose of this study to help elucidate this principle. (b) Contribution to patristics in matters of method Another contribution to patristics this book has intended to make lies in its calling attention to what works best in a study of a patristic figure.4 The method was holistic throughout, whereby Evagrius’s oeuvre was viewed as one whole, his ascetical and more doctrinal works evaluated in the light of each other. The author’s ideas were not all taken at their face value. Instead, consideration was given to the place of a particular text within the hierarchy of Evagrius’s oeuvre and to its underlying meaning. Throughout the study Evagrius was assessed on his own terms and in his context. As the history of Evagrian scholarship demonstrates, it is a mistake to approach a historical figure from the vantage point of another age. While, as has been noticed above, the same thinker can belong to many historical contexts, the starting point at least for the evaluation lies with the person’s own situation rather than with other contexts, ages, and agendas. What the research into ancient Christianity needs, then, is precise temporisation combined with greater self-awareness regarding one’s chosen method of study. (iii) Contribution to psychology of religion and epistemology In Evagrius we have the first psychologist of religion, pre-dating William James. Was not Evagrius’s an early attempt, more cogent than that of Plotinus, to show that experience was capable of being divided up and defined? In doing this, Evagrius described how the self is developed and constructed. Evagrius was a very early thinker to show with clarity that religious experience does not consist merely in emotion of some kind, but is grounded in a coherent and articulated metaphysics and view about knowledge. Through his writings a clear picture emerges of what, in his opinion, knowledge is. His intense preoccupation with epistemology is unusually modern. A modern term loaded with post-Kantian connotations, ‘epistemology’ is construed in terms of defining the limits of human knowledge and establishing criteria to eliminate from knowledge fantasy and erroneous speculation. All that has 4 Although strictly not a father of the Church himself, Evagrius both nourished and provoked the minds of the fathers. He thus belongs to the patristic context of Late Antiquity. In this sense, he can rightfully be described as ‘a patristic figure’.

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meaningfully been called ‘knowledge’ since the eighteenth century has to have a large element of sense-data as the basis for forming ideas. Conversely, what entirely lacks sense-data content cannot be subsumed under the heading ‘epistemology’. Epistemology in this sense is considered to be a modern way of describing the theory of knowledge that arguably is not applicable to the presuppositions of ancient philosophy. We have seen, however, that Evagrius’s writings do not isolate sense experience from religious experience in the way post-Kantian thinkers do. Consequently, the term ‘epistemology’ is applicable both to Evagrius’s theory of sensory cognition and his idea of the knowledge/gnosis of God. His writings put epistemology at the forefront of religion already in the fourth century. The phenomenon of Evagrius, then, belongs to many areas of the history of ideas and there is in Evagrius something for everyone. Ultimately, it calls to establish our religious past and the contribution of this past to our present.

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Epiphanius, Ancoratus, ed. K. Holl, GCS 25 (Leipzig, 1915). ———, Panarion, ed. Holl, GCS 37–8 (Berlin, 1980, 1985). Evagrius Ponticus, Ad monachos, ed. by H. Gressmann, Nonnensspiegel und Mönchsspiegel des Euagrios Pontikos, TU, 39.4 (Leipzig, 1913), 152–65. ———, Exhortations to Monks (Institutio ad monachos): Deux exhortations aux moines, partial edition in PG 79, 1236–40. Completed by J. Muyldermans, ‘Evagriana, Vaticanus Barberini Graecus, 515’, Muséon 51 (1938), 200–203 (CPG 2454). ———, Ad virginem, ed. by H. Gressmann, Nonnensspiegel und Mönchsspiegel des Euagrios Pontikos, TU 39.4 (Leipzig, 1913), 152–65; S. Elm, Evagrius Ponticus’ Sententiae ad uirginem, in Dumbarton Oaks Papers 45 (1991), pp. 97–120. ———, Antirrheticus, Syriac text with Greek retroversion ed. and translated by W. Frankenberg, Evagrius Ponticus, Abhandlungen der königlichen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, Phil.– hist. Klasse, Neue Folge, vol. 13, no. 2 (Berlin, 1912), 472–545. English: ‘Evagrius Ponticus, Antirrheticus (Selections)’, translated by M. O’Laughlin, in Wimbush, ed., Ascetic Behavior, pp. 243–62. German: Prologue; translated by G. Bunge, ‘Evagrios Pontikos: Der Prolog des Antirrhetikos’, Studia Monastica, 39 (Rome: Collegio Sant’Anselmo, 1997), 77–105. Books I and II, translated by D. Baethgen, appendix (Anhang I) to O. Zökler, ‘Evagrius Pontikus. Seine Stellung in der altchristliche Literatur- und Dogmengeschichte’, in Zökler, Biblische und kirchenhistorische Studien (Munich, 1893), 105–25. Book VI translated by Christoph Joest, ‘Anhang; Übersetzung von Antirrhetikos VI’, in ‘Die Bedeutung von Akedia und Apatheia bei Evagrios Pontikos’, Studia Monastica, 35.1 (1993), 48–53. ———, De seraphim et de cherubim, ed. by J. Muyldermans. ‘Sur les Séraphins et sur les Chérubins d’Évagre le Pontique dans les versions syriaque et arménienne’, Le Muséon, 59 (1946), pp. 371–5. ———, De diversis malignis cogitationibus, ed. and translated by Paul Géhin, Évagre le Pontique Sur Les Pensées, SC 438 (Paris: Cerf, 1998). ———, De magistris et discipulis, ed. by P. Van den Veld, ‘Un opuscule inédit attribué à S. Nil’, Mélanges Godefroid Kurth, vol. 2 (Liège: Bibliothèque de Philosophie et lettres de l’Université de Liège, 1908), 73–81. Textual corrections by Muyldermans: ‘Le De Magistris et Discipulis de S. Nil, Quelques Corrections Textuelles’, Le Muséon, 55 (1942), 93–6. English: translated by G. Gould, ‘An Ancient Monastic Writing Giving Advice to Spiritual Directors (Evagrius of Pontus, On the Teachers and Disciples)’, Hallel, 22 (1997), 96–103. ———, De octo spiritibus malitiae, PG 79. 1145–64. ———, De oratione (De oratione capitula), ed. by S. Tugwell, Evagrius Ponticus: De oratione (Oxford: Faculty of Theology, 1981), based on six manuscripts as well as: PG 79.1165–1200; Philokalia I (Athens, 1957), pp. 176–89. English translation by S. Tugwell, Evagrius Ponticus: Praktikos and On Prayer (Oxford: Faculty of Theology, 1987). On Prayer, One-Hundred and Fifty-Three Texts, The Philokalia vol. 1, ed. and translated by Palmer, Sherrard, and Ware (London, 1979). French translation by I. Hausherr, ‘Le Traité de l Oraison d’Évagre le Pontique (Pseudo-Nil)’, Revue d’ascétique et de mystique, 15 (1934), 42–93 and 113–69.

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———, Epistula fidei (Letter 63 = Basil, Letter 8), ed. and translated by Y. Courtonne, Saint Basile. Lettres vol. 1 (Paris : Les Belles Lettres, 1957), pp. 22–37. Also in Loeb 190, ed. translated by R. J. Deferrari, pp. 47–93. German translated by G. Bunge, Evagrios Pontikos: Briefe aus der Wüste (Trier, 1986), 284–302. ———, Gnosticus, ed. and translated by A. and C. Guillaumont, Le Gnostique ou celui qui est devenu digne de la science, SC 356 (Paris: Cerf, 1989). ———, Kephalaia Gnostica, critical edition of Syriac S1 and S2 texts ed. and translated by A. Guillaumont, Les Six Centuries des ‘Képhalaia Gnostica’ d’Évagre le Pontique, Patrologia Orientalis, 28.1, no. 134 (Paris, 1958). Syriac S1 text with commentary by Babai the Great and Greek retroversion, ed. and translated by W. Frankenberg, Evagrius Ponticus, Abhandlungen der königlichen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, Phil.- hist. Klasse, Neue Folge, vol. 13, no. 2 (Berlin, 1912), pp. 8–471. Principal Greek fragments edited by: I. Hausherr, ‘Nouveaux fragments grecs d’Evagre le Pontique’, OCP, 5 (1939), pp. 229–33; Muyldermans, ‘À travers la tradition manuscrite d’Évagre le Pontique’, Bibliothèque du Muséon, 3 (Leuven: Istas, 1933), pp. 74, 85, 89, 93; 3); Muyldermans, ‘Evagriana. Extrait de la revue Le Muséon, 42, augmenté de nouveaux fragments grecs inédits’ (Paris, 1931), pp. 38–44; Géhin, ‘Evagriana d’un manuscrit basilien (Vaticanus Gr.2028; olim Basilianus 67)’, Le Muséon, 109 (1996), 59–85. ———, Letter to Melania (Letter 64), Syriac text with Greek retroversion ed. and translated by W. Frankenberg, Evagrius Ponticus, Abhandlungen der königlichen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, Neue Folge, vol. 13, no.2 (Berlin, 1912), 613–19; and G. Vitestam, ‘Seconde partie du Traité, qui passe sous le nom de “La grande lettre d’Évagre le Pontique à Mélanie l’Ancienne”’, Scripta Minora Regiae Societatis Humaniorum Litterarum Lundensis 1963–1964, no. 3 (Lund, 1964), pp. 6–29. German translation by G. Bunge, Evagrios Pontikos: Briefe aus der Wüste (Lund, 1964), pp. 6–29. English translation by M. Parmentier, ‘Evagrius of Pontus and the “Letter to Melania”’, Bijdragen, tijdschrift voor filosofie en theologie, 46 (Amsterdam, 1985), 2–38. ———, Letters 1–62, Syriac text with Greek retroversion ed. and translated by W. Frankenberg, Evagrius Ponticus, Abhandlungen der königlichen Gesselschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, Phil.-hist. Klasse, Neue Folge, vol. 1, no.2 (Berlin, 1912), 564–611. German: G. Bunge, Evagrios Pontikos: Briefe aus der Wüste (Trier, 1986), pp. 211–83. ———, Practicus, ed. and translated by A. and C. Guillaumont, Évagre le Pontique Traité Pratique ou Le Moine, SC 170 (Introduction), 170 (text) (Paris: Cerf, 1971). English: Evagrius Ponticus: Praktikos and De oratione, translated by S. Tugwell (Oxford: Faculty of Theology, 1987). ———, Scholia on Ecclesiastes, ed. and translated by P. Géhin, Évagre le Pontique Scholies à l’Ecclésiaste, SC 397 (Paris: Cerf, 1993). ———, Scholia on Proverbs, ed. and translated by P. Géhin, Évagre le Pontique Scholies aux Proverbes, SC 340 (Paris: Cerf, 1987). ———, Scholia on Psalms. References are provided to published sources: Origen, Selecta in Psalmos, PG 12.1053–686; Athanasius, Expositiones in Psalmos, PG 27. 60–589; Origenes in Psalmos, ed. Pitra, Analecta sacra, vols. 2, pp. 444–83,

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& 3, pp. 1–364. The collation is provided on the basis of Vaticanus Graecus 754 by M.-J. Rondeau, ‘Le commentaire sur les Psaumes d’Évagre le Pontique’, OCP 26 (1960), 307–48. ———, Skemmata (Capita cognoscitiva), ed. by J. Muyldermans, ‘Evagriana’, Le Muséon, 44 (Luvain, 1931), pp. 37–68, 369–83. ———, Tractatus ad Eulogium, PG 79.1093–140; longer recension ed. by J. Muyldermans, ‘Evagriana de la Vaticane’, Le Muséon, 54 (1941), 4–7, 9. ———, Chapters of Evagrius’s Disciples (Kefa/laia tw=n maqhtw=n Eu)agri/ ou): J. Paramelle, ‘Chapitres des disciples d’Évagre’ dans un manuscript grec du Musée Bénaki d’Athènes, in Parole de l’Orient 6–7 (1975–76), pp. 101–13. Syriac version: ‘Fragments syriaques des Disciples d’ Évagre’, ibid., pp. 115–23. Eusebius of Caesarea, De evangelica praeparatio, SC 206, edited and translated by J. Sirinelli and É. Des Places (Paris, 1974). George the Monk, De haeresibus ad Epiphanium, CPG 7820, in Richard, Opera minora. III, no. 62. Eunomius of Cyzicus, Eunomii liber apologeticus and Eunomii exposition fidei, ed. and translated by R. Vaggione, in Aspects of Faith in the Eunomian Controversy (1987), 8–48 and 53–61. Galen, De historia philosophica, in Opera Omnia vol. XIX, ed. D. C. G. Kühn (Lipsiae, 1830), 222–345. Gregory of Nazianzus, Poemata dogmatica, PG 37.452. ———, Letters 101, 102, 202, SC 208 (Paris, 1974), ed., translated by P. Gallay. ———, Orations 27–31 (The Five Theological Orations), SC 250, ed. translated by P. Gallay. ———, Orations 38–41, SC 358, intr. C. Moreschini, translated by P. Gallay. ———, De vita sua, text, German translated by and commentary by C. Jungck (Heidelberg, 1974). Gregory of Nyssa, Gregorii Nysseni Opera (gen. ed. W. Jaeger; Leiden, 1960–), Jaeger, W., Two Rediscovered Works of Ancient Christian Literature: Gregory of Nyssa and Macarius (Leiden, 1954). Historia Monachorum in Aegypto, the Greek text ed. A. J. Festugière, Enquête sur les moines d’Égypte (Brussels, 1971); the Latin translation and amplification by Rufinus, PL 21.387–462, ed. E. Schultz-Flügel, Tyrannius Rufinus. Historia Monachorum sive De vita Sanctorum Patrum (Berlin/New York, 1990). Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Trallians, in The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations of Their Writings, 2nd edn, J. B. Lightfoot and J. R. Harmer, editors and translators, M. W. Holmes, editor and reviser (Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1992). John Chrysostom, On the Incomprehensibility of God: Sur l’incomprehensibilité de Dieu, A. M. Malingrey, R. Flacelibre (Paris, 1970). John Damascene, De haeresibus, B. Kotter, Patristische Texte und Studien 22 (Berlin, 1981). Justin Martyr, The Apologies, in the Ante-Nicene Christian Fathers. Lactantius, The Divine Institutions: Divinae institutiones, SC 204, introduction, text, notes by P. Monat (Paris, 1973).

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Pharr, C., The Theodosian Code and the Sirmondian Constitutions (Princeton: PUP, 1952). Plested, M., The Macarian Legacy: the Place of Macarius-Symeon in the Eastern Christian Tradition (Oxford, 2004). The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, A. H. M. Jones, J. R. Martindale, J. Morris (Cambridge, 1971–92). Rahner, K., ‘Die geistliche Lehre des Evagrius Ponticus’, Zeitschrift für Aszese und Mystik, 8 (1933), 31–47. ———, ‘Le début d’une doctrine des cinq senses spirituals chez Origène’, Reeve, C. D. C., Substantial Knowledge (Indianapolis/Cambridge, 2000). Refoulé, F., ‘La christologie d’Évagre et l’origénisme’, Orientalia Christiana Periodica, 27 (1961), 221–66. ———, ‘Évagre fut-il origéniste?’, Revue des Sciences Philosophiiques et Théologiques, 47 (1963), 398–402. ———, ‘La mystique D’Évagre et l’origénisme’, Supplément de la Vie Spirituelle, 66 (1963), 453–63. Rich, A. D., ‘Discernment in the Desert Fathers: Dia/krisij in the Life and Thought of Early Egyptian Monasticism’, Studies in Christian History and Thought (Milton Keynes, 2007). Rich, A. N. M., ‘The Platonic Ideas as Thoughts of God’, Mnemosyne, Series iv, 7 (1954), 123–33. Richard, Marcel, Opera minora III (Turnhout: Brepols, 1976–77). Rist, John M., Plotinus: The Road to Reality (Cambridge, 1967). Rondeau, M.-J., ‘Le commentaire sur les Psaumes d’Évagre le Pontique’, Orientalia Christiana Periodica, 26 (1960), 307–48. Rubenson, S, ‘Evagrios Pontikos und die Theologie der Wüste’ (1993), and M. O’Laughlin, ‘Closing the Gap between Anthony and Evagrius’, in eds H. C. Brennecke et al., Logos: FS Luise Abramowski (Berlin, 1999). Schwartz, E., continued by Straub, J, Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum. 4 vols. (Berlin, 1914–). Sinkewicz, R. E., Evagrius Ponticus: The Greek Ascetic Corpus (Oxford, 2003). Spanneut, M., Le Stoïcisme des Pères de l’Église (Paris, 1957). Staats, R., Gregor von Nyssa und die Messalianer: Die Frage der Priorität zweiter altkirchlicher Schriften, Patristische Texte und Studien 8 (Berlin, 1968). Stead, Christopher, Divine Substance (Oxford, 1977). ———, Substance and Illusion in the Christian Fathers (London, 1985). Stewart, C., ‘Working the Earth of the Heart’: The Language of Christian Experience in the Messalian Controversy, the Writings of Pseudo-Macarius, and the Liber graduum, D.Phil. Thesis (University of Oxford, 1988). ———, ‘Working the Earth of the Heart’: the Messalian Controversy in History, Texts and Language to AD 431 (Oxford, 1991). ———, Cassian the Monk, Oxford Studies in Historical Theology (New York/ Oxford, 1998). ———, ‘Imageless Prayer and the Theological Vision of Evagrius Ponticus’, Journal of Early Christian Studies, 9.2 (2001), 173–204.

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———, ‘Evagrius Ponticus on Monastic Pedagogy’, in Abba: The Tradition of Orthodoxy in the West: Festschrift for Bishop Kallistos (Ware) of Diokleia, eds John Behr et al. (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2003), pp. 241–71. Trouillard, J., La mystagogie de Proclos (Paris, 1982). Vacherot, E., Histoire critique de l’école d’Alexandrie (Paris, 1846). ———, Eunomius of Cyzicus and the Nicene Revolution (Oxford, 2000). Vaggione, R. P., Eunomius. The Extant Works (Oxford, 1987). Vitestam, G., La seconde partie du traité qui passe sous le nom de ‘La Grande Lettre d’Évagre le Pontique à Mélanie l’Ancienne’, Scripta Minora Regiae Societatis Humaniorum Litterarum Lundensis, 1963–64, no. 3 (Lund: Glerrup, 1964). Vivian, Tim, ‘Coptic Palladiana II: The Life of Evagrius (Lausiac History 38)’, Coptic Church Review, 21.1 (2000), 8–23. De Vogüé, A., and Bunge, G., ‘Palladiana III. La version copte de l’Histoire Lausiaque. II. La vie d’Évagre’, Studia Monastica, 33 (1991), 7–21. Völker, W., Das Vollkommenheitsideal des Origenes (Tübingen, 1931). Ware, Kallistos, and Dempf, Alois, ‘Nous and Noesis in Plato, Aristotle and Evagrius of Pontus: Evagrios Pontikos als Metaphysiker und Mystiker’, Diotima, 13 (1985), 158–63. Weaver, R. H., Divine Grace and Human Agency: A Study of the Semi-Pelagian Controversy (Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 1996). Williams, R., Arius: Heresy and Tradition (London, 1987). Witt, R. E., ‘The Hellenism of Clement of Alexandria’, Classical Quaterly, 25 (1931), 195–204. Wolfson, H. A., ‘The Knowability and Describability of God in Plato and Aristotle’, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, vol. LVI–LVII (1947), 233–49. ———, The Philosophy of the Church Fathers (Cambridge, Mass., 1956). Young, R. D., ‘The Armenian Adaptation of Evagrius’ Kephalaia Gnostica’, in R. J. Daly (ed.), Origeniana Quinta (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1992), 535–41. Zachhuber, Johannes, Human Nature in Gregory of Nyssa: Philosophical Background and Theological Significance (Leiden/Boston/Köln: Brill, 2000).

Index

*Marks titles of works by Evagrius abandonment 81, 112 abbot 113 Abraham 72, 154 activity creative 50–51 demonic 27, 33, 37 of God 58, 60, 67, 70 of intellects 20 of soul 31–2, 91 actuality 66, 68, 72–3 in Aristotle 68, 72 God’s 66, 73 *Ad virginem (=Sententiae ad virginem) 147, 158 Adler, A. 14 admiration, intellects 54 advancement, spiritual 131, 137, 180 Aetius 67 affections of body 93 of soul 35 age 56–7, 72, 117, 121–2, 127, 129, 142, 155, 159–60, 165 eschatological 155, 159–60, 165 first 165 second 165 ages contemplation of 117 multiplicity of 142 and worlds 56–7, 121–2, 127, 129 air 126–7, 129 akêdia 7 monastic 7 Albinus 91 Alcinoos 53, 68, 90–91, 185 Didaskalikos 90 Didaskalikos 90–91n Epitome 53n Alexandria 17, 17n, 149, 182, 185 Alexandrian catechetical school 17

Amélineau, E. 11n, 13n Ammonius the monk 18, 20, 95 Amphilochius of Iconium 69 anachoretic life (=withdrawal) 23 anagogic 23, 148, 180 analogy 54–5, 72, 93, 122 artisan-God 58, 73 between minds 55 bodies 93 body-grave 93 God and human mind 54 and man 54 head-acropolis 90 Sun’s light 72, 74 tantum/quantum 122, 124, 127 Anastasius, pope 94, 94n anathema 20–22, 109, 142–3, 145, 147–8, 153, 170–72 Anatolius the monk 29, 30–31 anchorite 6 angelic 55, 121, 125 angels 16, 20, 118–19, 121, 124–5, 130, 134, 141, 157 cherubim 71, 131 and contemplation 118 and demons 124, 157 as heavens 125 and men 119, 141 and names 134 and number 130 and stars 121 state of 20 anger 37, 43–4, 111 anima (=soul, psyche) 124, 175 animal (adj.) 89, 90 animal (noun) 73, 134 annihilation 21, 64, 159, 170 of bodies 21, 64 of evil-doers 159 of self 170 Annisa 12, 12n

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anointed 140, 142–3, 145 anointing 139–40, 142, 144, 148 of Christ 139, 142, 148 by grace 140 of soul 142, 145 as spiritual knowledge 143, 145 Anomoeanism 146–7 Anomoeans 68, 71 Anthony the Great (=Abba Anthony) 51, 77 Letters 77 Anthropomorphism 8 Anthropomorphites 9, 19 anti-Anthropomorphism 8, 9 anti-Anthropomorphites 8, 9 anti-Apollinarian 147 anti-Arian 8, 15, 147 anti-Eunomian 15 anti-Nicenes 15 *Antirrheticus 6, 25, 37, 95 apatheia 112 as health of soul 112 apokatastasis 170–73, 176 Apollinarius 149 condemnation of 149 apophatic 47, 64, 96 apophaticism 47–8, 64–5, 96 Apophthegmata partum 77 Aquinas the intellectual vision 83n Arianism 146, 147, 179 Aristotelian 72 Aristotle 35, 68, 91n and Basil 68 Categories 35, 37, 44, 65, 68n first essence 68 On Interpretation 35 Metaphysics 68n De partibus animalium 90n Posterior Analytics 41n, 121n Prior Analytics 41n Topica 41n Arius 5n, 151n Thalia 5n Armstrong, A. H. 98 Arnim, J. von 37 ascent 30–31, 81, 154, 159, 179–80 contemplative 48 of soul 110 spiritual 4, 29–31, 61, 110, 137–8, 166 ascetic (adj.) 3, 7, 23, 31, 94, 103, 153, 156 discipline 112

discourse 126 instruction 110 writers 22 ascetic (noun) 3, 9, 45, 87, 89, 93, 103, 110, 114, 153, 156 asceticism of beginners 118 and body 165 of Evagrius 17 and hell 161 in Lower Egypt 17 and material creation 161 assault, demonic 38–9 Asterius 67, 151n Athanasius of Alexandria 15, 144, 150n Ad Epictetem 144 Against the Arians (=Contra Arianos) 5 Christology 144 Life of Anthony 77 Athens 13, 25 Benaki museum 25 attachment, of soul 92–3 Atticus 53 Augustine of Hippo On Genesis Against the Manichees 141n authority of Adam 134 Christ’s 117–18, 129, 137, 162 auto-contemplation 100 autocentrism 100, 114 Ayres, L. 5, 150 Balthasar, H. U. von 4n, 6n, 7n, 24n, 47n, 55n Bamberger, J. E. 23n, 25n baptism of Christ 139, 143 as second death 117 Barsanuphius and John of Gaza Correspondence 77 Barsanuphius of Gaza 22, 77 Bartelink, G. J. M. 11–12n Basil of Caesarea Against Eunomius 68–9n, 71n, 134n apokatastasis 171 and Aristotle 68 creation 69, 70 epinioia 68 epistemology 69 eschatology 172 on God’s essence 69, 70

Index operations 70 and Gregory of Nazianzus 71–2 and Gregory of Nyssa 72 hell 172–3, 177 knowledge of creation 75 as partial 68–70 language 134 Letters: 8 (=Evagrius, *Letter 63) 22n 14 12n 34 70 235 69 and Macrina the Elder 19 and Origen 69 rational beings 173 Small Rules 172 and universal salvation 173 battle, invisible 39 battleground, spiritual 36 Beaucamp, J. 13n beauty 58, 99, 100, 119, 137, 182 of Christ 106, 119 of material creation 119 of mind 182 and natural contemplation 137 of self 99, 100 of soul 106 of universe 58, 119 beginning 110 of bodies 159 of creation 171–2, 175–6 of human nature 174 of intellects 22, 142 of spiritual ascent 110 of true knowledge 180 beings 31 composite 65 contemplation of 32, 49, 60–61, 64, 77, 82, 138, 140–41 diversity of 137 eschatology 159 essence of 70 and God 59 harmony of 61 immaterial (see also intelligible) 50–51, 115 knowledge of 64, 75, 111 logoi of 41–2, 45, 50–51, 55–6, 60 names of 131 origin and destiny of 31

201

and spiritual fatherhood 120 and wisdom 61 belief(s) 4, 5, 7, 89, 92–3, 123, 165 anthropology 89, 93 eschatology 157 pre-existence 5, 123 rule of faith 5 soteriology 7 beliefs, traditional 62 Benaki Museum 25 Bible 114, 116, 148 birth 57, 92, 121, 152, 166 of ages and worlds 121 of bodies 121, 166 of God, Christology 152 of knowledge 57 of souls 92 blessed 1, 116 blessedness 1, 29, 135–6, 172 of the body 126 final 29, 31, 136, 172 of intellect 28, 116 as knowledge of God 1, 73 and spiritual perfection 135 blood 111–12 of Christ 111n Eucharistic 111–12, 114 bodies abolition (see also destruction of) 166, 170 angelic 125, 154 and condemnations of 553 21 dark and demonic 20, 125, 154, 159, 166 destruction of 64, 105, 165–8, 170 fashioning of 109 the flight from the 87–9, 93, 166, 182 good and evil 126 and knowledge 28, 123, 125 and natural contemplation 48–50 and number 65 and original fall 125 and providence and judgement 122 resurrection of 21, 156, 159 as second creation 51, 121–5, 128, 142, 170 separation from the 87–9, 93, 166, 182 spherical 21 bodiless 28, 40 creation 56 disposition 85 God 40, 170

202

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body 84, 126 awakening from 99 of Christ 21, 106, 110, 144, 163, 166 eschatological 163, 176, 178 Eucharistic 111 and evil 126 as grave 93 as holy 126 and impassibility 36 and intellect 87, 89, 124 and prayer 8, 86 as punishment 126 and representations in the mind 34 and the self 99 and soul 32, 84–5, 87–8, 91, 106, 124, 154 bread 40, 111 Eucharistic 47 Bréhier, E. 54n Bundy, D. 23n Bunge, G. 1, 2n, 6–8, 12n, 14n, 16n, 18n, 24–5n, 78n Butler, D. C. 11–12n Byzantine encyclopaedia 14 Caesarea in Cappadocia 13, 15, 17n calm of the mind (see also impassibility) 45, 81 Cappadocia 15, 182 Cappadocian Fathers 4, 8, 13–14, 17–19, 48, 66–8, 75–6, 95, 103, 134, 170, 172–3, 180 anti-Eunomian writings 48, 67–8 and Evagrius 12, 14, 17–19, 48 and fourth century 76 on God’s essence 67, 75–6 on hell 172–3 on knowledge 75 on language 134 and Macarius 103 and Origen 19 Casiday, A. 65n cataphatic theology 47, 52, 76 Catholic 4, 91 as orthodox in Late Antiquity 91, 144, 178 as Roman Catholic 4 purgatory 160 chain 36 of passions 31, 36 of stages of perfection 158

Chalcedon 110 Chalcedonian definition 61n The Chapters of the Disciples of Evagrius 25, 146 *Chapters on Prayer (=*De oratione capitula) 7n, 18, 23n, 25, 27n, 28, 48, 61, 77n, 79n, 85n, 88, 92n, 114n, 116n, 136, 161 of St Nilus 141 choices, moral 127, 156, 173–4, 178 chrism 139, 142 Christ 4, 5, 7, 8, 21–2, 39, 40, 49–51, 57–60, 74, 106–7, 109–22, 128–9, 131–52, 154–7, 162–4, 174, 176–7, 180–83 archetypal 142–3, 145, 147 body of 111, 166 co-heritance with 162–3 as a composite being 110, 120, 147 and creation 120–21, 132, 138 as creator 121, 132 divinity of 60, 132, 135, 138, 142, 144, 162 eschatology 159 and the Father 144, 150–51 and God 109, 144, 150 as the good Samaritan 112 and holy Unity 139 and human soul 94, 111, 113–14, 118–19, 141, 144, 148 humanity of 72, 106, 143–4 ignorance 135 image of in man 119 the inheritance of 163 as king 137, 162 the kingdom of (see also the kingdom of heaven) 116 and knowledge 135 and the Logos 142, 144–8, 164 as mediator 111, 119–20 and natural contemplation 66, 110, 112, 115, 137 as pedagogue of soul 111, 113 pedagogy of 114–15 and prayer 114, 120 providence and judgement 122 royal dignity of 155 soul of 5, 110, 126, 147 spiritual fatherhood 120 Transfiguration of 106 and the Trinity 144–5 as Wisdom 49, 114

Index Christian 5, 17, 42, 54, 77–8, 89, 91–2, 94, 102, 109, 138, 149, 164 apologists 51, 64, 134 revelation, nature of 182 Christianity 5, 30, 114, 135, 181 early 119 imageless 27 as spiritual life 30 Christmas 15 Christocentric 107, 121, 148, 164 light 107, 148 universe 121 Christocentricity 102 of light-visions 105 in Macarius 106 Christological 74 knowledge, in Gregory of Nyssa 74 Christology 4–6, 70, 109–11, 113, 115, 117, 119, 121, 123, 125, 127, 141–3, 145, 149, 151–2, 182 Apollinarist 182 of Basil 70 di-polar 5, 149, 151, 182 of Diodore of Tarsus 182 divisive 142, 149 of Evagrius 5, 6, 107, 109–10, 138, 143, 147, 149 fourth-century 4, 149, 152 subordinationist 137 unified 72, 135 Chrysippus 52 Church Christological position 109 imperial 149 and salvation 183 Church Histories (see Socrates and Sozomen) 12 Cicero 90 De natura deorum 90n circumcision 143 spiritual 155 Clark, E. 4–6, 8, 9, 27–8, 123n Cleanthes 52 Cledonius 152, 182 Clement of Alexandria 13, 35–6, 51, 53, 69, 91, 93, 95, 171 apokatastasis 171 apophaticism 69 divine ideas 53 and Evagrius 13 exercise of death 93

203

God as a mind 53 knowledge 95 logoi 51, 57 Paedagogos 52n, 91n rationality 52 soul 91 Stromateis 36n, 52–3n, 69n, 91n, 93n virtue 91 cognition (see also knowledge) 28, 102 experiential 44 natural 28–9, 33, 126 Colossians, Epistle to 113n, 156n, 174n colour 80, 168–9 sapphire 79–81, 104 of the sky 80–81 colours, eschatology 168 commandments of Christ 137–8 last trumpet 159 commencement of Christ’s reign 155 of immortality 157 communion with divine grace 105 soul and God 101 and intelligible realities 92 compassion, seeds of 161 completion of first eschatological stage 164 of life 153 of spiritual journey 39, 166 complexity of Anomoean position 68 of fourth-century theological scene 126 components, lower, of the soul 32 composite 147 matter 129 composition of bodies 121 as defining created beings 62 human 84, 86, 88–9, 91, 93 of soul 158 compulsion, moral 173 compunction (see also repentance) 33 concept-formation 36, 41, 45 and contemplation 42 concepts and contemplation of logoi 50 and knowledge 44

204

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in the mind 27–8, 34–5, 37–8, 69 beneficial 39, 40 Gregory of Nyssa 71 and names of God 73 passionate 38 that nourish the mind 85 stamp the mind 44 conceptualisation 65 about God 19, 65 concupiscence 111–12 as men’s definition 126 as spiritual illness 112 concupiscible, part of soul 90, 157 connatural (see consubstantial) 144 consensus, doctrinal 94, 178 Constantinople 1–3, 6, 13–17, 22–3, 70, 87, 104, 109, 149–50, 153, 170, 178, 182 381 13, 104, 149–50, 150n 553 1–3, 6, 22, 109, 153, 170, 178, 182 consubstantial 21–2, 119, 144–6, 150–51 consummation 175 eschatological 153, 162, 169, 175 contemplation (see also natural contemplation, first and second) capital 48 levels of 48 contemplative knowledge 31, 49, 58, 64, 77, 148 Corinthians, 1st Epistle to 21, 72, 121n, 131n, 134n, 145n, 154, 155n, 157, 159n, 164–5n, 166, 169, 171, 173–4, 176, 180 Corinthians, 2nd Epistle to 72n, 91, 91n, 95n, 106, 106n corporeality 4, 47, 123, 126 and primordial sin 126–7 of rational beings 4, 123 of universe 47, 123 cosmos 33, 35, 57–9, 119, 164 diversity of 59 eschatology 164 and God 57 as God’s mirror 58 inner 33 materiality of 111 councils, ecclesiastical 6, 20, 109, 149–50, 179 Courtonne, Y. 22n created minds 54–5, 62–4, 76, 139, 142, 145 Christ as a created mind 145, 148

and God 63 and substantial knowledge 63 creation of the body 123, 128 and contemplation 57 eschatology 155, 169, 176 ex nihilo 61 first act of 51 and gnosis 56 as God’s book 56 mirror 57 and grace 179 of humans 161 immaterial (see intelligible) 55–6, 109 intelligible 50, 83, 169 and light 83 logoi of 41, 60 and ‘Movement’ 154 and natural contemplation 66 second act of 119, 121, 131, 138, 142, 167 and substantial knowledge 62 creative wisdom 58–9, 61, 74–5, 128, 180 Creator 50–51, 54, 56, 61, 71, 77, 88, 96–7, 111, 113, 115, 120–21, 128, 132, 134, 137 ex nihilo 128 instrumental 138 ultimate 122 Creator-demiurge 120 creed(s) 15, 149–51, 156 ecumenical 151 Nicene 150 Nicene-Constantinopolitan 15, 150, 156 synodal 149 cross 179 of Christ 144 Crouzel, H. 1n, 93–4n, 126n, 161n cunning, of demons 33, 37, 39 Daniélou, J. 175 darkness 39, 79, 175 divine 73n David the prophet 130 *De magistris et discipulis 113n De Vogüé, A. 11 death 36, 86–9, 92–4, 104, 109, 116–18, 124, 166, 176 and corruption 166 duality of 116–17

Index exercise of 86–9, 92–4 of Gregory of Nyssa 104 as pride 36 Dechow, J. 12n, 17–20n, 94n, 123n, 147n, 156n Deferrari, J. 15–17n, 22n, 100n, 109n, 113–14n, 116–17n, 130n, 150n deification 65, 92, 97, 126, 128, 140, 148, 162–3 Christ’s 139 deliverance, final 182 Demiurge 21, 132 demons 8, 20, 33, 37–9, 112, 124–6, 133, 140, 154, 157–8, 160 and evil thoughts 8 and hell 160 and reign of Christ 157 and virtue 158 demonstration 41 scientific 44 demonstrative syllogisms 41–2, 121 depersonalisation 7 desert 44, 87, 149 ascetics 178 city 17 life 26 despondency 7, 36 destiny 5, 31, 57, 124, 134, 139, 173 final 168 destruction 38, 51, 64, 156, 158–9, 166–8 of Christ’s enemies 156 post-lapsarian 32 Deuteronomy 25n devil 21, 95, 157, 166, 181 Didymus the Blind 1, 2, 17, 20, 171, 178 and Constantinople 553 20, 178 and eschatology 171 and Rufinus 17 Diekamp, F. 20n Diodore of Tarsus 182 ‘two Sons’ 182 Diogenes Laertius 37, 68 Dionysius the Areopagite 65 Dioscorus the monk 18 direction, spiritual 16 disappearance 156, 158–9, 166, 168 of bodies 159, 166 of evil 7, 156 of impiety 158 of matter 168 discerning 41

205

discern(ment) 17, 33, 40 disciples 130, 146 Christ’s 158 of the Lord 130 discursive reasoning 99 disobedience 52 dispassion(ate) (see also passionlessness) 38, 41 disposition 55, 85, 91 bodiless 85 fleeting 87 of the intellect 85 natural 173 spiritual 92 virtuous 91 dissolution of bodies 165 of creation 167 of time 167 of universe 164 diversity 178, 182 of beings 137 of bodies 55 eschatology 170 of inclinations of soul 127 of intellects 170, 178 of intentions 127 of names 164 numerical 168, 178 of theological opinions 76, 178 of universe 59, 116, 127 divine 33, 40, 65, 70–71, 73, 82, 88, 90, 92, 95, 97, 100–101, 121, 129, 135–6, 138–41 anointing 140, 143 life 95–6 manifestations 131 modus vivendi 169 number 130 part of soul 90 substance 68, 70 titles and names 133 the divine, union with 97, 100 divine action 50, 57, 73, 132, 172 and logoi 41 divine essence and energies 67, 180 intellectual vision of 83 knowledge of 73 and nature (see also divine substance) 61, 73–4, 76, 168–70, 180

206

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divine glory 100 in Macarius 106 in Plotinus 100 divine light, luminosity 81, 95, 97, 101, 106 divine nature in Gregory of Nyssa 74 and the Incarnation 73 and the last things 168 divine persons 61, 144, 169 divine Unity 120, 128, 139 docetism, docetists 146–7 docetists, fourth-century Alexandrian 147 doctrine 31, 92, 94, 144, 183 ecumenical 151 right 110 of soul 31, 94, 144 dogma, dogmatic 5, 6, 15, 17, 22, 30, 102, 107, 152, 180 Dogmensgeschichte tradition 19 Dorotheus of Gaza (=Abba Dorotheus) 22 dove, symbolism of 139, 143 Draguet, R. 11, 12n Driskoll, J. 31n dualism, dualistic 5, 123, 126 dunamis, -meis, power(s) 67–9, 72–3 Dysinger, L. 1, 6, 9, 22–3, 36, 55, 59, 112, 114, 143, 146, 180 Eastern Christian tradition 16, 102 Eastern Empire 12, 103 Ecclesiastes 57 Edwards, M. J. 1n, 89n, 91–2n, 126–7n, 175n Egypt, fourth-century 147 Egypt(ian) 9, 12, 14–15, 18, 87 eight cardinal thoughts 36 eighth day 142, 155–6 eikones (see also images) 35 embodiment (see also corporeality) 123 empire 179 sixth-century 178 enemies 89, 95, 154, 157 Christ’s 154, 156–7, 159 God’s 159 of the intellect 95 energies, divine 67–9, 72–6 Enoch, Book of 155 Enquiry About the Monks in Egypt (=Historia monachorum in Aegypto) 12, 12n, 17n, 95n epectasis 75

Ephesians, Epistle to 58, 59n, 115n Ephesus, council of 110 Epicureans 68 epinoia 68 Epiphanius of Cyprus 67n, 94n, 147n Panarion 67n, 94n, 123n, 147n, 185n Epiphany, feast of 16 epistemology 69, 72, 75–6, 183–4 definition 184 equality 14, 150, 162, 167 gnostic 163 with God 62 of men with Christ 162 ontological 163 of persons in Trinity 14 of Son and Father 150 errors, doctrinal 146 Esau 15 eschatological 64, 124, 165–6, 168, 170 assimilation to Christ 162 consummation 139 conversion 158–9, 161 destruction 159 era 163–4 immortality 157 paradise 175 perfection 153, 177 renewal 165 restoration 163, 171 time 155, 161–2 transformations 154, 159, 162, 177 unification 169 eschatology 3, 4, 8, 22, 24, 105, 123, 152–6, 163, 165, 171–2, 174–5, 177–8 apokatastatic 6 millenarist 155 Origenist 170–71 eschatology 105n eskhaton 9, 39, 100, 126, 153, 155, 158, 164–5, 169–71, 174, 176 essence 20–21, 53, 59, 61, 63, 66–75, 82–3, 93, 101, 149, 157, 163–4, 169, 180 of devils 157 God’s 59, 61, 66–7, 69, 70, 82–3, 180 secondary 68 of things 67 eternity 100, 157, 161, 169, 172, 175 of body 175, 178 of hell 173

Index Eucharist 8, 9, 40, 47, 111–12, 114, 148 Eucharistic blood 111 body 111, 114 bread 111 gifts 112 rites 8 eudemonia 11 Eunomians 15n, 22 Eunomius of Cyzicus 67–8, 134, 151 and Aristotle 68 Fragments 67 on God’s essence 67 Liber apologeticus 67n Euphrates 103 Eusebius of Caesarea 18, 20, 53 De evangelica praeparatio 53n Eusebius the monk 20 Eustathius 103 Euthymius the monk 18, 20 Evagrius Ponticus 553 condemnations 2, 3, 19, 20, 22, 109, 181 and Abba Anthony 51 anthropology 74, 89, 91–4, 122–6 and Apollinarianism 146 apophaticism 61, 64–5 and Basil of Caesarea 26, 69, 70 the body 27, 44, 126, 128, 164–6, 180 and the Cappadocians 67, 75–6, 134 Christology 129, 147–52 chronology of works 3, 22 and Clement 91 cosmology 7, 9, 142 on creation 75, 123–4, 128–31, 133 demonstrative syllogism 41 dispassion 81 on doctrinal orthodoxy 146 dualism 123 the duality of kingdoms 116 education 13, 103 eschatology 153, 155, 159, 163, 168–9 *Evagriana 4, 9, 66, 77, 83, 103, 117, 123, 131, 137, 149, 163, 171, 178–9 evil 156, 161 experience and theology 180 the fall xii, 124–6, 175 God as a mind 53 God’s creative wisdom 75 essence 82–3

evil

207 and Gregory of Nazianzus 12–14, 26, 70, 72, 93 and Gregory of Nyssa 13, 73–4, 127 hell 160–61, 175, 177 historical Jesus 152 holism 123 iconoclasm 32, 44 images 35, 40, 44 intellectualism 102 and Justin Martyr 134 language 134 light 77–9, 84–5, 95–7 logoi 52 and Macarius 78, 93, 102–7 as a mystic 6, 107 natural contemplation 47–9, 54, 58, 60–61 and Origen of Alexandria 19, 53, 127–8 as an Origenist 6, 7, 18–19 orthodoxy of 5, 146, 170, 179 as a patristic figure 183 and Platonism 94 and Plotinus 97, 99–102 on prayer 78–80 providence and judgement 55–6 salvation 163–4 scholarship 1, 2, 4–6, 8, 12, 27–8, 32, 44, 47–8, 55, 67, 83, 109, 148, 179, 181, 183 the soul 31, 91, 94, 123, 125 spiritual friendship 118 spiritual knowledge 30 spiritual life 23, 30 Stoic background 51n and Theodore of Mopsuestia 147 works, chronology 22, 24

disappearance of 156 as privatio boni 157 evil bodies, goodness 126 *Exhortations to Monks (=*Ad monachos) 96, 31, 146 Exodus 71, 104, 174n experience 39, 66, 73, 78–9, 98–9, 101–2, 107, 180 demonic 39 of God 66, 102, 107 of grace 73 of light 78 solipsistic 101 Ezekiel, Book of 79n, 80n, 96n, 104n

208

Evagrius Ponticus

Ezekiel the prophet 72 faith 111 and fear of God 31 Nicene 151 fantasiai (see also images) 35 Father (see also God) 21, 67, 71, 110, 114, 117, 119, 132, 134, 139–40, 144–5, 147, 150–52, 154–5, 163–4, 168 right hand of 139–40 fatherhood, spiritual 120 fathers (of the church) 172, 183 Festugière, J. 12n, 95n Fifth Ecumenical Council (see also Constantinople 553) 20 first natural contemplation 50–51, 54, 59, 66, 82, 115–17, 128 Fitzgerald, R. R. 36n flesh 21, 91, 111, 126, 143–4, 150, 152, 160, 182 forms, Platonic 1, 18, 28, 36, 62, 66, 81, 92 fornication 36 Frankenberg, W. 8n, 14n, 16n, 23–5n, 95n, 120n, 138n, 154–5n, 161n, 167–8n, 180n free choice 127, 174 free will 124, 157, 177–8 freedom and evil 157 of the love of God 177 from passions 31 from representations 80 friendship 118 spiritual 118 fusion of minds, eschatology 168 Gabriel, archangel 131 Galen De historia philosophica 53n Gallay, P. 15n, 152n gangrene, spiritual 112 Géhin, P. 1n, 24–5n, 35n, 42n, 82n, 85n, 136n Gendle, N. 12n, 67n Genesis, Book of 15n, 31, 31n, 69, 80n, 134, 141n, 144, 156n, 166n, 172n George the hieromonk De haeresibus ad Epiphanium 2n Gerson, L. R. 101n glory 106, 160–61, 181 of beings 160–61

of Christ 106, 160–61, 181 eschatological 177, 181 human 36 gluttony 36 gnosis 1, 3, 11, 13, 23, 29, 30, 36, 155 contemplative 85 gnostic 1, 3, 11, 22–3, 29, 36, 38, 96 ascent 2 kingdoms 117 levels 135, 174 life 30 perfection 4, 166 reality 3 stage of knowledge 23, 29, 30, 117, 174 states 23, 79, 122–3, 157 universe 3, 148 gnostic (noun) 3, 11, 22, 36, 38 *Gnosticus 23, 23n, 27–31n, 36n, 42, 42n, 44, 55–6, 65, 84n, 111–12n 135, 161 God absoluteness 62 action of 50, 60, 101, 138, 179 attributes of 49, 65 and beings 169 bodiless 28, 40, 170 and creation 62–3, 66, 72, 74, 101, 131, 135, 138 essence/nature 4, 47, 49, 51, 53, 55, 57, 59, 61–3, 65–71, 73, 75–7, 82–3, 95–6, 119–20, 180 goodness 57, 70, 138, 156, 176 grace 42–3, 73–4, 95, 105, 143–4, 176 ineffability and inexpressibility 62, 65, 70, 134 judgment 56, 122–3, 139, 154 knowledge of 49, 51–3, 55, 57, 59, 61, 63, 65, 67, 69, 71, 73, 75, 83, 86, 120 mercy 177 as a mind 53 operations 66–7, 73, 180 potentiality 66 providence 55–60, 114, 118 self-manifestation 56, 75, 80, 97 simplicity 74 transcendence 72, 101 vision of 84 Golitsin, A. 12, 12n, 48, 67, 67n goodness 70, 157 essential 63

Index Görgemanns, H. 20n Gospels 91, 140 of John (Fourth) 22n, 39, 40, 49, 70, 73n, 91, 114n, 118, 142n, 148n, 152, 154, 156n, 162n, 169, 173, 176, 176n of Luke 74n, 77, 112, 114, 114n, 116, 125, 125n, 130, 130n, 140n, 154, 156, 161, 172 of Mark 106n, 116, 135, 140n of Matthew 1, 40, 88n, 106n, 116, 122, 130n, 158, 172 grace 33, 42–4, 60, 86, 101, 105, 121–2, 124, 139–40, 172, 178 and eschatology 178 and human nature 33 as light 105 in Macarius 105 and rational creation 140 and vision of light 86 gradations contemplative 49 eschatological 155 of spiritual life 29 of wisdom 59 *Great Letter (=*Letter to Melania) 6, 18–19, 24–5, 31, 124, 109n, 131, 136, 140, 142, 153, 153n, 155, 155n, 168, 174 Gregory of Nazianzus 12–18, 22, 26, 54, 70, 72, 75, 93, 116, 149, 152, 171, 173, 177, 182 apokatastasis 174 body as grave 93 Christology 5, 72 creation 72 divine presence 71 eschatology 153 exercise of death 93 Five Theological Orations 70 flight from the body 93 God’s essence 71–2 and scriptural names 71 glory 71 Letters 12n 3 13n 31 93 to Cledonius (=Letters 101, 102, 202) 152n, 182n Orations: 152 5 5n 27 71

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27 15n, 71n, 171n 28 71–2 30 173 30 171n, 174n 38 15 40 116n via negativa 72 vision of the divine 71 Gregory of Nyssa 57, 65, 68, 72, 75, 103–4, 119, 134, 149, 171, 174–5, 182 Against Apollinarius 149 Against Eunomius 72–3n anthropology 57 apokatastasis 171, 175 and Aristotle 72 Beatitudes 73 Catechetical Discourse 175 Christology 149 Contra fatum 171 creation 73 creative wisdom 74 De instituto christiano 103n, 104 De opificio hominis 171n, 175n De oratione dominica 171n divine power/activity 73 epectasis 75 eschatology 174 Homilies on Ecclesiastes 171, 175n knowledge 72 Letter 3 149n potentiality and actuality 73 Gregory Palamas 102 Gregory the Wonder Worker (=Gregory Thaumaturgus) 19 Grillmeier, A. 2 Grumel, V. 16n Guillaumont, A. 1, 4n, 12–14n, 16n, 23, 25n, 27–8, 35n, 36, 51–2, 54, 63, 71, 78, 83, 87, 97, 99, 100, 109, 123, 141–2 Guillaumont, C. 1, 4, 6, 27 Harder, R. 100n Harmless, W. 36, 78–80, 117 harmony 32, 58, 61, 91, 119, 129, 131 of creation 61, 119 and knowledge 131 of soul 32, 91 of universe 58, 119, 129 hatred, perfect 112

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Hausherr, I. 1, 4, 4n, 6, 7, 24–5, 33, 37, 47, 50, 65, 87–8, 102, 123 head 88, 89, 90, 96 as spiritual centre of man 89, 90 health 112–3, 171 heart 90 and intellect 88–9 physical 88 spiritual 88 heaven 21, 96, 116–17, 125, 127, 150 colour of 96 kingdom of 116–17, 148 Hebrews, Epistle to 177 hell as eternal 182 fire of 160–61 as purification 161 henad 20–21, 142 henôsis (see also mystical union) 101, 155 Henry, R. 97n heresy, archetypal 147 heretics 177n heterodoxy 5, 94, 170, 182 and orthodoxy 11, 182 Hierapolis 155 hierarchy anthropology 89, 91 in creation 121 of gnostic states 123 post-lapsarian 125 of realities 105 in soul 90 in universe 131 High Priest 66 historians 5, 12, 172, 178 ancient 12 modern 5, 172, 178 holiness 16, 102 of Evagrius 16 and theologising 102 holistic 2, 9, 104, 183 anthropology 104 holy mountain 71 homoiômata (see also images) 35 Hornblower, S. 92n humans and image of God 9 rank of 125 and seraphim 65 Ibora 12

Ignatius of Antioch Letter to Trallians 111n ignorance 52, 55, 62, 64–5, 69, 76, 84, 135, 155, 158–61, 166 as evil 55, 155 infinite 62, 64–5 and knowledge 64 image of Christ 113, 163 of God 9, 32, 113, 129 of the Son 163 imageless, prayer 105 imagelessness 9, 28, 44 images 8, 9, 27–8, 32, 34–6, 38, 40, 44–5, 104, 113, 129, 163 demonic 35 and impassibility 45 in the mind 27–8, 34–6, 38, 81 and knowledge 44 immortality 93, 104, 124, 166 and resurrection 157 and virtue 124 impassibility (see also passionlessness) 1, 36, 45, 113 Incarnation 70–71, 73, 145, 152 incorruptibility 166 the inner man 74 intellect bodiless 166 created 53, 115, 120, 138, 141–2, 145, 148, 156, 167–8 as God’s altar 66, 86, 101 immaterial 20, 54, 155, 162 the light of 48 nature of 95 vision of 77, 79, 81, 83–5, 87, 89, 91, 93, 95, 97, 99, 101, 103, 105, 107 intellectual beings 122, 129, 132, 139, 141, 163–4, 166–7 and Christ 163–4 and the last things 167 and progress 166 as trees 141 intellectual nature 53, 84, 119, 128, 141, 163 intercourse, sexual 105, 126 intrusive thoughts 36, 113 irascibility 43 Irenaeus of Lyons Against Heresies (=Ad.Haer.) 155n Isaiah, book of 160 Isidore the monk 20

Index Israel 105, 129 Israelites 105, 143 Jacob 31, 72 Jaeger, W. 171n, 175 Jaspers, K. 98–9 Jerome 14, 19 De viris illustribus 14n Letters: 96 94n 133 19, 20n Jerusalem 16–18, 87, 149, 149n, 182 Jewish-Alexandrine philosophy 58 John of Jerusalem 18 John of Sinai Ladder of Divine Ascent 77 John, 1st Epistle of 79n, 83n John Cassian the monk 37, 65, 77 Conferences 37n, 77n Institutes (=De institutis coenobiorum) 37n John Chrysostom 65 Homilies 65n On the Incomprehensibility of God 65 John Damascene 37, 77 De haeresibus 103 On the Eight Spirits of Malice 37 John of Jerusalem Letters 18n John of Lycopolis 95 John of Sinai 22, 37 Ladder of Divine Ascent 77 John the Baptist 143 Jonas, H. 7n the Jordan 139, 143 Joshua 80 judgement last 155–6, 166, 171, 173 preliminary 154 Julian, emperor 103 justice 135 Christ’s 129 of God 70, 135 Justin Martyr 69, 95n, 134–5 2nd Apology 69n, 134n divine names 135 Justinian, emperor 1n, 20 Kadloubovsky, E. 25n Karpp, H. 20n Kellia 16–17, 26, 95

211

Kelly, J. N. D. 149–51 kephalaia 23–4, 49, 51 genre of 23, 133 *Kephalaia Gnostica 6, 27n, 31n, 49n, 51n, 54, 57–9, 60–64, 82–5, 86–9n, 97n, 101, 107, 115–16, 118, 119, 120–22, 124–6, 128–9, 131–3, 137, 139–45, 154–7 (this is only a selection of occurrences) Kierkegaard, S. 8 king 159 kingdom 116–17, 148, 157, 164 of God 116–17 of heaven 116–17, 148 kinship, with God/the divine 82, 92, 97 Kline F. 1, 107n knowledge in Basil 68–70 empirical 38–9 energetic 69, 70, 75 human 68, 184 imageless 40 immaterial 63, 116 and sense-perception 28 true 1, 57, 69, 73, 76, 121, 180 unified 164 Kopecek, T. A. 67–8n Laban 15 Lackner, W. 13n Lactantius 155 Divine Institutions 155n Lampe, G. W. H. 43n language 68, 98–9, 134 and experience 99 Larchet, J.-C. 52n, 86n, 170n Late Antiquity 1, 4, 5, 41, 53–4, 57, 66, 92–4, 110, 126, 183 Latin West 37 Leo XIII, pope Aeterni Patris 83n Letter, Synodical to Western bishops 15 *Letters 14n, 18n, 112 6 120n 22 16n 25 138 43 154n 46 14 56 1 58 166n 59 154n, 161n, 180n

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63 (=*De fide orthodoxa) 15–17, 22, 65, 100n, 109n, 112, 113n, 114, 116n, 117, 129n, 130, 135–6, 150n, 155n 132 136n of Advice 8n light, divine 9, 24, 81, 85, 106, 120, 148, 153, 180 light-visions 44, 78–9, 81–3, 85, 95–6, 104–6 and the body 85 descriptions of 79, 96–7 and essence of God 83 in Evagrius 106 and experience 82 as gnostic states 79 and the intellect 96, 104 and knowledge of God 95 in Macarius 105–6 and prayer 78 logoi 38, 41–3, 45, 47–52, 55–7, 60, 65–6, 69, 70, 72–3, 75, 83, 114–15, 120, 128–9, 131, 134 of beings 41–2, 45, 50, 55–7, 60 of foreknowledge 73 immanent 134 Logos (logos) and the Father 140 the incarnation 71 and phusis 51 in Stoicism 51–2 love 31 Macarius 4, 78, 93, 102–7, 156 Macariana 4, 78n, 94, 103 and the Alexandrian tradition 103 anthropology 104 and the Cappadocians 103 Christology 106 Collection I 103 Collection III 105 education 103 Great Letter 103–4 image of God 104 the light-visions 104 Macrina the Elder 19 Mary the Mother of God 51 Matthew 158, 160 the apostle 160 the publican 158 Maximus the Confessor 22, 37, 177 Opuscula 26 177n McGuckin, J. A. 13–14n, 70n

mediation 60, 92, 109, 128, 152 between mind and God 60 of Christ 109, 120, 152 of the Son 109 mediator 111, 120 perfect 120, 138 Melania the Elder 18, 75 memory 36 mercy 21, 44, 60, 138 Middle Platonism on language 68 Middle Platonists, Christian 52 mind 1, 4, 9, 31, 34–8, 51–3, 56, 63, 81, 95, 100, 110, 124, 149 ascetic 115 of Christ 110, 149 dispassion of 64, 82 free will 124 perfection of 63 in prayer 81, 96, 100 pure 56, 60, 74 separation of 87 mind/soul 5, 54, 182 monasticism 7, 178–9 Christian 7 Egyptian 17–19, 77, 177 monks 12, 16, 18–20, 25, 33, 39, 95, 161, 182 and demons 33, 39 and eternal fire 161 fourth-century Lower Egyptian 123, 126 Jerusalem and Lower Egypt, Christology 182 Palestinian 138 perfect 153 Moses 71, 73, 75, 96, 104, 174 theophany of 174 mother, spiritual 18 Mount of Olives 16 Movement, the 124, 132, 156, 174 Muyldermans, J. 1, 24n , 25n, 77n, 139n, 141n mystical union 28, 99 names, divine 73–4, 132, 185 natural contemplation 4, 24, 30, 47–9, 51–2, 56, 60–61, 70, 74, 79, 114–15, 134, 138 as definition of Christianity 30 first 148 and God’s essence 49, 51

Index and knowledge of God 60, 66 of Gods essence 180 of logoi 69 and the logoi 83, 134 mind 56, 81, 83 and practical virtues 138 second 137 and sensation 66 and spiritual knowledge 47, 79 and substantial wisdom/knowledge 61 and theologia 138 two levels of 49, 50, 82 nature 27, 31, 42, 52, 60–61, 71, 73–4, 109, 130, 167, 169 of bodies 165, 167 God’s 61, 71, 73–4, 128, 130, 169 and grace 27, 42, 60, 109 human 31, 33, 70, 161, 174 Nectarius of Constantinople 14 Neo-Arianism 67n Neo-Platonic 138 Neo-Platonists 53, 93, 157 Nicaea 5, 149–50 council of 150 Nilus of Ancyra 22 Nitria(n) 16, 17n, 19, 179, 182 noêmata (see also images) 35 number 7, 121, 129–30, 167 and bodies 65, 121 category of 129–30 dissolution of 167 Numbers, Book of 130 obedience 16, 77 O’Daly, G. 99n O’Laughlin, M. 6, 6n, 25n, 51n O’Meara, D. J. 99n *The Seraphim and Cherubim 65n *On the Thoughts (=*De malignis cogitationibus) 6, 28–9, 35–41, 77, 79–81, 84–5, 88, 96, 106, 112–13, 117, 154, 161, 174 oneness 81, 99, 101 operations 32, 66–7, 73, 162, 180 of God 70, 73–5 of intellect 162 of senses 39 of soul 32 Opitz, H.G. 150n

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ordained clergy 57 order 22, 48, 56, 116, 121, 131, 147 of contemplation 56 knowledge-acquisition 131 of logoi 48 of thoughts 116 orders of being 147 beings, hierarchy 121 ordination 13n Origen of Alexandria 1, 16, 18, 20, 36, 53, 55–6, 113, 119, 124, 126, 133–4, 149, 171–2, 175–8, 181 Against Celsus 53, 171 the body 176 and Cappadocians 19 Commentary on John 133, 171 Commentary on Matthew 36n condemnation of 553 1 divine numbering 130 Exhortation to Martyrdom 53n On First Principles (=P.Arch.) 53n, 55n, 94, 112n, 127, 127n, 171, 175–6, 176n Homilies on Ezechiel 36 on Luke 36 on Numbers 130 image of image of God 113 Philocalia 19 On Prayer 116 providence and judgement 56 Origenism 2, 8, 18–20, 27, 142 553 condemnations 19, 20, 142, 153, 171 fourth-century 18 Origenist controversy 8, 19 sixth-century 181 leaders 19 Origenists 2, 8, 18–19, 95 orthodoxy 2, 5, 11, 109, 149, 170, 178–9, 181–2 and Christian diversity 182 Constantinople 553 109 early Christian 182–3 fluidity of 181 fourth-century 178 sixth-century 2, 11 Orwell, G. 177 otherworldliness 5 pagan philosophy 90, 94

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Palestine 12, 18 Palladius of Helenopolis 11–12, 18, 156 Historia Lausiaca 11, 12–16n, 18n, 95n, 156n Palmer, G. E. H. 25n Pamphilus of Caesarea Apology for Origen 94 pantheism, pantheistic 76, 154, 169 paradise 139, 141, 175 Paramelle, J. 25 Parmentier, M. 24n, 124n, 131–3n, 140n, 155n, 169n partaking 1, 112, 114 of Christ 177 of divine life 1 of Eucharist 111–12, 114 Paschal lamb 105 passionate thoughts 45 passionlessness 29, 32, 80–81, 86, 88, 93, 97, 111–12 perfect 81, 96 passions 31, 35–6, 38, 40, 43, 52, 80, 82, 84–5, 91, 112–13, 144, 146, 173 Christ’s 144 freedom from 31 and virtue 146 patriarchs, Old Testament 72 patristic 128, 144 sources 144 studies 182 writers 49, 156, 169 patristics 179, 181–3 Paul the apostle 64, 91, 93–4, 160, 163, 165, 173, 180 Payne Smith, R. 61n, 162n peace 33, 38, 103 of Church 103 of intellect 33, 38 of soul 33 peak mystical state 81 perception 33, 36, 41, 44, 70, 81 bodily 66 spiritual 42, 66 perdition 38, 159 of intellect 38 of Matthew the publican 158n perfection 3, 11, 27–8, 48, 63–4, 106, 135–6, 158, 168, 170, 173 Christian 135, 179 contemplative 169 final 63, 135, 170, 173, 178

spiritual 29, 79, 128, 135, 146, 153–4, 174 Peripatetic 91 persecution 103 personal identity 5 personhood human 31, 149 seat of 146 persons, divine 149 Peter of Alexandria 94 On the Soul 94 Pharr, C. 155n Philo De opificio mundi 53, 53–54n Quod deus sit immutabilis 91n Philokalia, Russian 25 philosophy 13, 15–17, 58, 83, 90, 93–4, 98, 103, 184 Plato 1, 31, 48, 52–4, 61, 68–9, 90–94, 100–103, 126–7, 138, 157, 175, 185 Cratylus 68, 93, 134 Gorgias 93 Laws 91n Phaedo 92, 92n Phaedrus 90, 90n, 92, 92n, 100, 100n Republic 54n, 90–91n, 157n Timaeus 92 Platonic 91–2n, 94n, 103n philosophy 103 Plested, M. 102, 102–3n, 123 Plotinus 4, 53, 57, 78, 88, 90, 92, 97–102, 107 Enneads 53n, 57n, 78n, 88n, 90n, 97–8, 98n, 100–101n, 157n inadequacy of language 98 and Macarius 102 as a mystic 99 and Proclus 101 the self 100 solipsism 100 subject-object distinction 98 subjectivity 99 union with the One 101 pluralism, doctrinal 5 pneuma 93n polemic 68 Anomoean 67 Porphyry De vita Plotini 97n post-Enlightenment 8 post-Kantian 184

Index potentiality 66, 68, 72–3 and actuality 68, 72 and actuality 68n powers bodiless 85 divine 73 of God 50 holy 118, 125 reasoning 176 Promised Land 105 practical virtues 28, 30, 111, 114, 117, 137–8, 146, 148, 162 life of 29, 30 *Practicus 6, 14, 23, 25, 28, 30–33, 35–9, 44–5, 51–2, 77, 81, 85–8, 92, 97, 112, 114n, 116–17 praxis 23, 29, 30, 39, 45, 97, 113–14, 117, 137, 158, 160–62 life of 30–31, 36, 47, 180 monastic 29, 30, 39, 41 prayer 9, 14, 25, 27–8, 60–61, 77–9, 81, 83, 85–6, 88, 92, 95, 101, 105–6, 112, 114 contemplative 100 formless 89 imageless 8, 9, 51 luminous 82 in Macarius 106 mystical 28, 109 pure 60–61 spiritual 7, 28, 78 true 78 pre-cosmic catastrophe 124 predestination 173 premises 5, 41–2, 120–21, 139–40, 148 pride 33, 36–7, 111–12 primeval transgression 126 primordial transgression 94, 126 Proclus 101 Platonic Theology 101n protology 22, 124, 178 Proverbs 49, 58, 130n, 145–6, 158 providence 48, 55–8, 70, 120–23, 132 logoi of 55–7, 60, 118 Psalms 58, 58n, 125n, 130, 133, 138, 140, 145n, 156, 158–9, 167n psyche 124 punishment 161, 172, 178 eschatology 178 of fire 161 of hell 172

215

purification 85, 158, 161 universal 161 purified senses 66, 70 purity 1, 28, 74, 88, 96, 160 ranks 32, 121–2, 124, 131 lower 132 spiritual 125 rational beings 173 goodness 173, 176 health of 173 rational nature 62–3, 97, 118, 124, 139, 141, 143, 159 recollection 36 redemption 145, 152 Refoulé, F. 22n, 109n, 146n reign, of Christ 142, 154–5, 163, 174, 177 repentance 85, 178 representations 28, 34–40, 80–81, 146 *Rerum monachialium rationes 23 restoration 24, 122, 142, 161, 167, 171–2, 175 resurrection 86, 89, 116–17, 148, 155–7, 159, 165–6, 175 bodily 156, 171 final 158 general 89, 138, 142, 155–7, 166 revelation 70–72, 132, 135, 182–3 of Christ 119, 138 god’s 62, 72, 74 Rich, A. D. 17n Rich, A. N. M. 53–4n Richard, M. 2 righteousness 32, 44, 97, 116, 145, 158–61, 176 Roman Empire 12, 103 Romans, Epistle to 118, 163 Rome 149, 151–2 Rondeau, M.-J. 24–5n Rubenson, S. 51n Rufinus of Aquileia 12, 12n, 16, 16n, 17n, 18, 75, 94, 171 Apology to Pope Anastasius 94 sacramental realism 111 sacraments 112, 114 Saffrey, H. D. 101n saints 77, 106, 129–30 salvation 7, 74, 109, 120, 129, 144, 150, 152, 154, 160, 163–4, 173, 176, 182–3 economy 143

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final 162, 177 history 40 inevitable 181 sapphire 79–81, 96, 104 Sarghisian, H. B. 12n, 23n, 25n Saviour 106, 111, 118, 120, 135, 183 *Scholia on Ecclesiastes 24, 24n, 40n, 55, 57, 86, 111n, 120n, 121, 123n, 130, 156–7n *Scholia on Job 24 *Scholia on Proverbs 24–5, 55, 84, 86, 96, 113, 118–20, 130, 158, 160–62n, 164n *Scholia on the Psalms 9, 23–4, 42, 55–7, 60, 64, 116–20, 122, 125, 130–31, 137–8, 141, 145, 146n, 147, 154–5, 157–60, 168n *scholion on 1 Timothy 79n scripture 2, 13, 28, 39, 47, 50, 56–7, 74, 111, 114, 158 second natural contemplation 49–51, 56, 59, 66, 82, 115–20, 128, 137–8, 148 and authority of Christ 117, 137 and bodies 116 logoi of 56 and material diversity 128 and the minds 128 and practical virtue 148 and virtues 49 and the wisdom of Christ 115, 119 and wisdom of Christ 115 secular learning 27, 42–4 seer 60, 63, 84–5, 96 self 99–101, 170, 183 self-awareness 183 self-concentration, extreme 100 self-construction 3, 22, 26, 179 self-glorification 37 self-possession 100 the seminal principles (see also logoi) 54 sense-perception 28–9, 33, 41–3, 79 *Sententiae ad virginem 147 separation intellect’s 124, 165 soul’s 92, 94 Septuagint 24, 96, 96n seraphim 65 sheep 40, 118, 162 sickness, spiritual 38, 113 silence 71

sin 9, 29, 52, 64, 116–17, 126, 132, 138, 146–7, 160, 169–70, 176 Sinkewicz, R. 1 *Skemmata (=*Capita cognoscitiva) 25, 25n, 31, 31n, 37, 37n, 77n, 79–81, 85–6n, 96n, 120, 139, 143n Socrates 12–14, 16, 18, 67 Historia Ecclesiastica 18 sofia (see also wisdom) 49, 58, 61, 67, 74, 113 solipsism 100 Solomon 58, 89, 130, 145 Son 5, 22, 67, 109, 118, 132–3, 136, 140, 147–8, 150–52, 154, 163, 168, 173 son, adoptive 119 Son, and Jesus 151 Song of Songs 119 soul 5, 6, 20, 31–3, 35–40, 57–8, 74, 84–95, 98–101, 104–6, 110–24, 135–9, 142–4, 147–9, 154–8, 160–62, 182–3 and body 5, 90, 182 as a city 137 as God’s church 74 mirror 74 health of 32, 112–13 inner chamber 57 lower 86–8, 90 optimum state 86–7 of 86–7 rational 1, 21, 32, 36, 84, 86–7, 90, 92–3, 138, 158 soul/mind, human 54, 145 Sozomen 12–14 Historia Ecclesiastica 13–14 Spanneut, M. 52n Spawforth, A. 92n spheres 121, 138, 148, 175 Spirit of God (see also Holy Spirit) 21, 106, 140, 151 spiritual awakening 47 spiritual brotherhood 119 spiritual director 26 spiritual life 23, 29, 30, 89, 116, 136 spiritual paideia, children 112, 115, 120 the state of the mind 81 Stead, C. 68n, 92n Stewart, C. 12, 25n, 37n, 51n, 103n Stoic 33 immanent logoi 54 philosophy 103

Index Stoicism, natural seeds 33 Stoics 91, 93, 171 passions 52 subject-object distinction 98–9 substance (see also essence) 43, 69, 70, 115, 115n, 147, 150–51 of the Father 150 of God 70 unbegotten 67 undivided 151 substantial knowledge 61–5, 76, 119–20, 139, 142, 144–5, 163–4 and Christ 144–5, 164 in Christ 120 and created minds 63 and infinite ignorance 65 and the intellect 63 as substantial wisdom 64 summit, spiritual 180 Sun 20, 72–3, 97 analogy of 72, 74, 88 of righteousness 97 symbolism 49, 130 symbols 110, 156, 166 of the Father 110 of resurrection 156 Tall Brothers 18, 95n Thebaide 95 Theodosian Code 151, 151n Theophilus of Alexandria 18, 94, 149 Thessalonians, 1st Epistle to 91 2nd Epistle to 166 Thmius 18 Thomism 83n thoughts 8, 27–9, 31–2, 34–8, 41, 44, 53, 77, 79–81, 85, 96, 106, 112–13, 117, 154 demonic 37 God’s 53 impure 38 simple 35, 44, 80 Thunberg, L. 65 Trinity and Christ 141–2, 144 consubstantiality of 22 contemplation of 136, 166 immanent 101 knowledge of 48–9, 82, 119, 179 light of 79–81

217 as substantial knowledge 62

universe, as God’s sacred book 56, 66 unknowability 64 vision 1, 3, 4, 19, 20, 45, 54, 60, 71, 77–8, 81, 85, 95–6, 99, 102, 104, 107, 117 Vitestam, G. 18n, 24n warfare, spiritual 25, 38–9 water 14, 49, 72, 127, 129, 141, 168 spiritual 141 Westerink, L. G. 101n wickedness 20, 62, 125, 156, 158–9, 173, 176 of demons 125 diminution of 64, 166 and identity 173 and ignorance 158 William James 183 Williams, R. 5n Wimbush, V. L. 25n wine, Eucharistic 47, 49, 111 Winston Smith 177n wisdom of Christ 49, 59, 60, 115 created 120 of God 58 Wisdom literature 49 wisdom, multiform 129 Wisdom of Solomon 58 wisdom, substantial 61, 64 Witt, R. E. 91 wolves 40, 81 the world created in the mind 33 the flight from 17 worlds created 65, 69, 81, 137 diversified 56 hierarchical 118 inner 33 intelligible 92 manifold 164 outward 38 post-lapsarian 162 sensible 168 worship 28, 57, 66, 73, 101, 114 Zachhuber, J. 68n