In developing this theory, Origen introduced certain key distinctions that have colored the whole history of spiritual writing ever since. The first of these is the distinction between action (praxis) and contemplation (theōria). This is a distinction that can be found already in Aristotle’s division of the virtues into the categories of moral and intellectual (Nicomachean Ethics I, 13). It has nothing to do with the comparatively modern distinction (and opposition) between the apostolic life and the contemplative life, a distinction Origen would not have understood. The distinction refers rather to two aspects of a person’s spiritual life that are by definition overlapping and complementary. For Origen, the active life is the ascetic combat through which vices are conquered and virtues acquired; the contemplative life refers to the intellectual assimilation of truth.
It seems better to refer to action and contemplation in Origen’s thought as “aspects” rather than “stages” of the spiritual life, because for him they are not rigidly distinct and successive. Yet Origen certainly envisions progress in the spiritual life, as is evident from his use of the “journey” metaphor. One can, then, speak of stages in the spiritual life as one can of stages in a journey, but these are stages in both the acquisition of virtue and the assimilation of truth. In the earlier stages of the spiritual journey, the struggle against vice may predominate over contemplation, but as the soul becomes proficient in the practice of the moral virtues, its attention is turned more toward the assimilation of truth. However, the practice of the moral virtues is not abandoned as one progresses in the spiritual life. On the other hand, if one compares action and contemplation with one another, the assimilation of truth appears to be a higher activity than the struggle against vice. Origen seems to have been the first to interpret the Martha-Mary story of Luke’s Gospel as referring to the higher value of contemplation.99
The second important distinction that Origen contributed to the history of Christian spiritual thought is the threefold division of the spiritual life that he develops in his commentary on the Song of Songs. He says that there are three sciences that Solomon treated in three different books in accordance with the degree of knowledge with which each is concerned. Proverbs teaches morals and the rules for a good life. Ecclesiastes is really physics — the causes of things are set forth as well as their transient nature. Anyone who studies this science comes to realize the transitory nature of the physical world and is moved to turn to that invisible and eternal world of which Solomon spoke in the Song of Songs: “Thus, when the soul has been purified morally and has attained some proficiency in searching into the things of nature, she is fit to pass on to the things that form the object of contemplation and mysticism” (Orig. hom.cant. 78).100 These three stages would later become known as the purgative, illuminative and unitive ways, and this distinction formed the basis of most later Christian theory of the spiritual life until very recent times.
With these distinctions in mind, we can follow Origen’s interpretation of Israel’s early history as referring to the life of the soul. As the Israelites were pursued by the Egyptians, so the soul is pursued by temptations and evil spirits. The journey through the desert corresponds to the gradual stripping away of the natural life and the discovery of the spiritual life. The fact that the people were led by both Moses and Aaron signifies the need for both action and contemplation. Eventually the purified soul enters the more mystical region and reaches spiritual ecstasy. This, Origen says, “occurs when in knowing things great and wonderful the mind is suspended in astonishment” (Orig. hom. in num. 27,12).101 For Origen, there is no opposition between the contemplative life and apostolic activity such as may be found in later writers; rather, both aspects of the spiritual life, action and contemplation (i.e., the practice of moral virtue and the assimilation of truth), equip a person for the difficult tasks of preaching and teaching.
Among the many monks of the fourth century who studied, developed and applied Origen’s theories to the monastic life, the most influential was certainly Evagrius of Pontus (A.D. 345–399).102 Evagrius had been a disciple of St. Basil the Great, who ordained him a lector. After Basil’s death in 379, he had gone to Constantinople, where Basil’s friend Gregory Nazianzen had ordained him a deacon. Following an unhappy love affair (we are told by Palladius), Evagrius left Constantinople and went to Palestine, where he stayed on the Mount of Olives with Melania the Elder. She persuaded him to go to Egypt and take up the monastic life there. This he did, living at Nitria for two years and then at the Cells for fourteen years, until his death in A.D. 399 at the age of fifty-four (Pallad. hist.laus. 38).
Evagrius borrowed freely from Origen and built upon his ideas, especially in the area of cosmological speculation. Some of Origen’s ideas in this area seem to derive from the middle Platonists, and some from his attempts to wrestle with the perennial theological problem of the evils and inequalities that exist among men. If everything is created by a just God, how can such inequities be just? In order to maintain the justice of God, Origen adopted the theory that before the creation of the world, all spirits were equal and free; but they grew lazy and gave up pursuing the good. Then they were swept away toward the contrary of the good, evil. This happened to all of them, except the soul of Christ, in varying degrees, and the degree to which they fell away from the good determined their status as angels, souls and demons as well as the variations to be found in these three divisions. Matter was then created for the spirits in the intermediate category, and Jesus became man in order to lead souls back to their original state. Since Origen had explained matter as secondary to man’s basic nature, he inevitably came to the conclusion that bodiliness would one day come to an end, and so he interpreted the resurrection as one stage along the way. These two points — the pre-existence of souls and the interpretation of the resurrection — as well as others, were to cause great controversy in succeeding centuries and eventually led to the condemnation of his works at the Second Council of Constantinople in 543.103
It was with the help of these ideas, however, that Evagrius developed his theories of prayer and contemplation. In his version of Origen’s cosmology, he posited in the beginning God, who is essentially unity or a Monad, and a created Henead of rational pure intellects. Through negligence, these latter fell away from their contemplation of the essential knowledge. This resulted in the disruption of unity among themselves and the introduction of inequalities. Evagrius defined the soul as “an intellect which by negligence fell from unity” (Evagr. keph.gnos. 3,28). God then created bodies as a means through which souls could gradually regain the essential knowledge. This is the work of contemplation.
The different fallen intellects receive a kind of knowledge for their contemplation appropriate to the degree of their fall. Thus, there are different types of contemplation: that of demons and wicked men; that proper to souls for which the body is needed as an instrument; that of angels; and finally the knowledge of the essential Unity, which is reserved for the completely purified intellects. A soul may pass in stages through these types of contemplation and arrive at salvation by becoming progressively more and more spiritual. The function of Christ in this schema is that he voluntarily took a body like that of the fallen spirits in order to aid in their salvation by revealing the essential knowledge.
Evagrius also took over from Origen the distinction of action and contemplation, but for him they became two distinct and successive phases of the spiritual life. The goal of the active life is to purify the passionate part of the soul and achieve the state of apatheia, or passionlessness. This involves a struggle against the demons, which fight against the monk by causing evil thoughts. In analyzing the passions, Evagrius developed a theory of the eight principal thoughts, which passed into the Western ascetic tradition through Cassian and eventually became known as the seven capital sins. The elimination of these thoughts results in the state of passionlessness, a state that Evagrius thought he had attained, according to Palladius (Pallad. hist.laus. 38). With characterist
ic acerbity, Jerome accused Evagrius of using the word apatheia to imply that the soul must become either a stone or a god. Evagrius, however, seemed to imply that although temptations do not cease, the soul could achieve a God-given state in which it becomes impervious to evil.104
The state of passionlessness results, according to Evagrius, in charity. This is not, however, the goal of the spiritual life, as one might gather from St. Paul, but only a prelude to its higher stages, which are to be achieved through contemplation. The latter he divides into several stages, as mentioned above. The final or “theological” stage of contemplation is achieved in the vision by the intellect of itself. Evagrius does not seem to admit a direct vision of God by the intellect as possible for a soul still in the body. What the intellect can see is “the place of God,” of “light without form” or “the light of the intellect.” This is the condition of “pure prayer,” perhaps Evagrius’ most characteristic and controversial idea. For him, the purity of prayer was to be judged not merely from its moral quality but from its intellectual qualities as well. Since God is simple and one, the mind cannot approach him as long as it remains complex, that is, filled with wandering thoughts, spiritual images and intellectual concepts. Evagrius was thus able to define prayer as “the lifting up of the mind to God” and as “the expulsion of thoughts.” This meant all thoughts and images. Then the mind could be filled with the light of the Holy Trinity, losing self-consciousness and attaining a state of spiritual ecstasy which Evagrius called anaesthesia (Evagr. de orat. 120).105
Theological critics, both ancient and modern, have found serious difficulties with such a theory of contemplation.106 It is little wonder that many of the uneducated Coptic monks found it confusing and disturbing. They were accustomed to think of God in terms of mental images and to hold conversations with these images. Those who tried to propagate the teaching of Evagrius appeared to them as threatening and even heretical. The more intellectual Greek monks, in turn, regarded their less sophisticated counterparts somewhat contemptuously as “anthropomorphists,” because they pictured God in human form. There was, inevitably, the suggestion that this was heretical.
In the last years of the fourth century, this Origenist-anthropomorphist dispute came to involve most of the principal ecclesiastical figures of the time.107 It became further complicated by the rivalries among the principal episcopal sees and also, perhaps, by the developing nationalism of the Copts. In 386 a certain John became bishop of Jerusalem.108 He was quite favorable toward the study of Origen, as were the ascetics on the Mount of Olives, among whom were Rufinus and Melania the Elder. Epiphanius, bishop of Famagusta (Salamis) in Cyprus, to whom we are indebted for much of our knowledge of ancient heresies, was a confirmed heresy-hunter and suspected Origenist errors among the intellectuals of Jerusalem. In 393 he came to Palestine in an effort to get others to anathematize Origen. Rufinus refused to do this, but Jerome consented. Epiphanius did not succeed in persuading John of Jerusalem to condemn Origen. At one point Epiphanius preached a sermon against Origen in Jerusalem, and John replied with one against anthropomorphism. On another visit Epiphanius caused severe offense to John by illicitly ordaining Jerome’s brother, Paulinian, and by calling on the monks to break off communion with John, whom he called an Origenist. John appealed to the archbishop of Alexandria, Theophilus, to mediate the dispute. This was done successfully, if only temporarily, by an emissary from Theophilus named Isidore. At this time there seems to be no doubt that Theophilus was sympathetic to the Origenist cause.
It was the custom of the archbishop of Alexandria to publish a paschal letter each year. Shortly after the death of Evagrius in 399, Theophilus published a letter that strongly denounced anthropomorphism. This was naturally welcomed by the Greek-speaking intellectuals of Nitria, but apparently was not even permitted to be read in many other monastic communities. Then, according to the historian Socrates, an angry mob of monks came to Alexandria with the intention of burning down Theophilus’ house (Soz. hist.eccles. 6,7). Theophilus, hearing that they were on the way, went out to pacify them. He addressed them in such a way as to imply anthropomorphist sympathies: “So I have seen you as the face of God.” The monks then demanded that he anathematize the books of Origen, which, in an opportunistic about-face, he did. Rioting took place in Alexandria and Nitria against the Origenists, and in 400 Theophilus called a synod at Alexandria, which condemned Origen. Theophilus himself began to persecute his former Origenist friends. With such a hostile climate prevailing, as many as three hundred of the Greek-speaking monks, including Dioscurus, the bishop of the diocese in which Nitria lay, departed from Egypt. Most went to settle in various parts of Palestine, but many went on to Constantinople to appeal to the patriarch, John Chrysostom. Among these were John Cassian and his friend Germanus. With them the intellectual tradition of Egyptian monasticism was to pass eventually into the West. The further ramifications of the dispute and the deposition of John Chrysostom lie beyond the scope of this narrative. These events, however, mark the end of the first creative period of Egyptian monasticism. After this time Egypt ceased to be an international center of monasticism and became increasingly cut off from the rest of the movement.
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* On the origins of Christian monasticism in the East, the following works are particularly worthy of note: D. J. Chitty, The Desert a City (Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1966); G. Colombás, El monacato primitivo, BAC 351, 376 (Madrid: La Editorial Católica 1974–75); K. Heussi, Der Ursprung des Mönchtums (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1936); P. Labriolle “Les débuts du monachisme” in A. Fliche and V. Martin, Histoire de l’église, Vol. 3 (Paris: Bloud & Gay 1950); H. Leclercq “Cénobitisme” DACL, 2; “Monachisme” DACL, 11; “Nonnes” DACL, 12; B. Lohse, Askese und Mönchtum in der Antike und in der alten Kirche, Religion und Kultur der alten Mittelmeerwelt in Parallelforschungen 1 (Munich: R. Oldenbourg 1969); S. Schiwietz, Das morgenländische Mönchtum, 3 vols. (Mainz: Verlag von Kirchheim 1904–38); G. Turbessi, Ascetismo e monachesimo prebenedettino (Rome: Editrice Studium 1961).
1 The term askēsis has a pre-Christian usage in which it refers to practice or training, especially that of athletes. The term does not occur in the New Testament. It acquires a spiritual meaning in non-Christian writers such as Philo. In early Patristic usage it comes to mean: study, the practice of piety, spiritual exercise or training, an austere life, and eventually becomes a technical term for the eremitical and monastic life and its practices. See G.W.H. Lampe, A Greek Patristic Lexicon (Oxford: The Clarendon Press 1961) s.v. askēsis. For a discussion of ascetic tendencies in the New Testament, see H. von Campenhausen “Early Christian Asceticism” in Tradition and Life in the Church (Philadelphia: Fortress Press 1968) pp. 90–122; H. Chadwick “Enkrateia” RAC 5 (1962) 349; G. Kretschmar “Ein Beitrag zur Frage nach dem Ursprung frühchristlicher Askese” ZThK 61 (1963) 27. This has been reprinted in: Askese und Mönchtum in der alten Kirche, ed. K. Suso Frank (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 1975) pp. 129–182.
2 Cf. T. Camelot “Virgines Christi” La Vie Spirituelle 70 (1944) 30–43, and especially F. de B. Vizmanos, Las vírgenes cristianas de la Iglesia primitiva; estudio histórico-ideológico sequido de una antología de tratados patrísticos sobre la virginidad, BAC (Madrid: La Editorial Católica 1949). A useful collection of ancient and Patristic texts on the subject may be found in H. Koch, Quellen zur Geschichte der Askese und des Mönchtums in der alten Kirche (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1933).
3 This distinction is taken from Heussi, Ursprung, p. 53. Although it is not accepted by all, it provides virtually the only way of distinguishing the monastic movement from the earlier period. It is not actually a modern distinction. Athanasius himself considered that Antony’s innovation consisted in his withdrawal into the desert (Vita Anton. 11). The geography of Egypt contributed to make spatial separation a marked feature of northern Egyptian monasticism, but the notion of the necessity of withdrawal can also be found, mutatis mutandis, in Basil and Augustine. For furth
er discussion of the role of withdrawal from society in early monasticism, see the discussion of anachōrēsis below.
4 For a discussion of the origin and the use of the term “monk,” see Appendix 1, pp. 301–313.
5 Cf. H. Weingarten “Der Ursprung des Mönchtums im nachconstantinischen Zeitalter” ZKG 1 (1877) 1–35; Heussi, Ursprung, pp. 283–287; Lohse, Askese, pp. 38–39.
6 See E. F. Sutcliffe, The Monks of Qumran (Westminster, Md.: Newman Press 1960) passim; J. A. Mohler, The Heresy of Monasticism (Staten Island, N.Y.: Alba House 1971) pp. 15–27.
7 Philo, Quod omnis probus liber sit XII–XIII (75–91) quoted by Eusebius, praep. evang. 8,12; Hypothetica (Apologia pro Iudeis) quoted by Eusebius, praep.evang. 8,11; Jos. de bello Iud. 2, 119–161; Pliny, nat.hist. 5,15,73.
8 See J. van der Ploeg “Les Esséniens et les origines du monachisme chrétien” Orientalia Christiana Analecta 153 (1958) 327–328; Hans Hubner “Zölibat in Qumran?” New Testament Studies 17 (1970/71) 153–167.
9 See F. L. Cross, Jr., The Ancient Library of Qumran (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday-Anchor 1961) pp. 127–160.
10 Ibid., p. 100.
11 A. Vööbus, History of Asceticism in the Syrian Orient, CSCO 184,197 (Louvain: Secrétariat du CSCO 1958, 1960) 1.29, suggests that early Christianity in Syria may have received its ascetic character through Jewish groups that adopted Christianity, such as the Essenes. This is pure speculation for which there is no historical evidence.
12 Cf. Mohler, Heresy, pp. 27–30; Lohse, Askese, pp. 95–101.
13 Philo, De vita contemplativa; Eus. hist.eccles. 2,17; Hier. de viris illus. 8; Cassian. inst. 2,5.
14 Lohse, Askese, pp. 45–46; P. Jordan “Pythagoras and Monachism” Traditio 17 (1961) 432–441. Heussi, Ursprung, pp. 19–20, suggests that the author of Acts was influenced by a description of the Pythagorean community in his description of the early Christian community. This suggestion has not found much favor with exegetes.
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