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Welcome to Life Sentences, an exploration into the wisdom of the ancient Church Fathers presented by me, Thomas Small.
In this episode, Evagrius continues to teach us how to combat the demons who attack our tripartite soul, focusing on sloth, vainglory, and pride, but most of all: wrath.
Over the past several episodes, we’ve been exploring Evagrius’s time in Constantinople working as a deacon in the coterie of St. Gregory of Nazianzus. We’ve seen how the fraught politics of the day had landed St. Gregory in one complicated mess after another. The emperor Theodosius was dead set on establishing Nicene orthodoxy as the only form of Christianity in the East, which for decades had been dominated by Arians and Semi-Arians. Gregory’s advocacy for the Nicene cause had led to him being stoned, vilified, and nearly assassinated.
Most humiliatingly, Maximus the Cynic, an ascetic from Alexandria who’d managed to win Gregory’s confidence, was unmasked as an agent of Peter, the Alexandrian archbishop, who was trying to ensure that his ancient see was in control of the newish see of Constantinople.
The truth is, the business with Maximus is a sign of what was really going on just beneath the surface: a fight between the two rival sees of Antioch and Alexandria over which of them would have control over the imperial capital.
Gregory wasn’t unaware of Antioch’s political aims. In fact, his very presence in Constantinople was partly the result of a council held in Antioch two years earlier, where it was decided that someone affiliated with the Antiochian Diocese of the East should be established in Constantinople. As a Cappadocian, Gregory was of the Antiochian party — and he was a devotee of St. Meletius of Antioch, one of two Nicene archbishops in the deeply divided see of Antioch, both of whom claimed to be the orthodox hierarch of the Church there.
And in its ongoing rivalry with Alexandria, Antioch had reason to worry. The Edict of Thessalonica, which the Emperor had passed the previous year, called on all imperial citizens to “profess that religion which was delivered to the Romans by the divine Apostle Peter, as it has been preserved by faithful tradition, and which is now professed by the Pontiff Damasus, and by Peter, Bishop of Alexandria” — making no mention at all of Antioch. Theodosius himself was a Spaniard, a Westerner, and the Popes of Rome had long been close allies of the Popes of Alexandria. So to establish its privileges throughout the East, Antioch would need to act fast.
In early 381, the emperor summoned a large number of Antiochian bishops to Constantinople for a council. Theodosius’ aim was political. He wanted to settle the schism inside Antioch, to establish Gregory as the rightful bishop of Constantinople, and to replace all Arian or Semi-Arian bishops in the east with Nicene bishops. Gregory was pleased. In addition to supporting all these aims, he also hoped the council would declare his controversial teaching on the full divinity of the Holy Spirit to be correct dogma.
Now, the politics of that era is immensely fascinating, and thanks to a huge amount of documentary evidence, not least Gregory’s own poems and sermons, scholars have been able to reconstruct the history in great detail. But we mustn’t lose sight of our primary objective: understanding Evagrius.
He was certainly there when the eastern bishops arrived for the council. Among them was the younger brother of his former master, St. Basil the Great: St. Gregory of Nyssa, whom the Church remembers as the Father of Fathers. Not long after his arrival, Gregory of Nyssa gave a public reading of his recently composed work Against Eunomius, a stone-cold classic of patristic theology. Evagrius would probably have been present alongside many well-known luminaries: St. Jerome for sure, probably St. Cyril of Jerusalem, possibly St. Meletius of Antioch, and even his newly ordained deacon, a certain John Chrysostom. In such illustrious company, Evagrius must have felt right at home. They were all fellow-Christians dedicated to practicing the Nicene faith with intelligence and true devotion.
Well, as always, the story is more complex. The council was, to put it bluntly, an ecclesiastical train-wreck. Thirty-six of the bishops, aligned with Nicene Christology, refused to acknowledge the full divinity of the Holy Spirit, and stormed out. To be fair to them, so much ink, and indeed blood, had been spilled over the word homoousios, or consubstantial, as applied to the Son, that these bishops were probably horrified at the prospect of opening another can of worms by applying the word to the Spirit.
And Gregory’s teaching was novel and innovative. Even his best friend, St. Basil, had refused to call the Spirit “God”, or to use the word homoousios about him, which had led to a huge falling out between the two friends, who had still not reconciled by the time of Basil’s death, a cause of great sorrow and regret to Gregory. Even the bishops who remained in the council prevaricated on the question and so, in the end, the council refused to call the Holy Spirit “God” or to say that he is consubstantial with the Father and the Son — which St. Gregory considered a terrible failure.
And if the Council’s theology was tangled, its politics were even messier. Gregory’s disastrous mishandling of the Maximus affair had already alarmed many Antiochian bishops. They saw Gregory as lacking in political judgment. He’d allowed himself to be hoodwinked by their rival, Bishop Peter of Alexandria, letting Maximus, an Alexandrian, be secretly ordained Archbishop of Constantinople — and Maximus was at that very moment in the West, cosying up to Pope St. Damasus and St. Ambrose, the archbishop of Milan, who were pressing Theodosius to recognize Maximus as the rightful bishop of the eastern capital.
The Maximus affair had been a monumental blunder, as Gregory himself admitted. St. Meletius, bishop of Antioch, who was president of the council, still had Gregory’s back, but shortly after the council started, Meletius suddenly died. And so, to Gregory’s growing alarm, the knives were out. Even the emperor, who had hoped Gregory would be a reconciler, gradually withdrew his favour as he realized that Gregory’s theological intransigence was preventing political compromise.
And so, without warning, the emperor Theodosius decided to widen the council’s scope. He ordered bishops from Egypt and from the Latin-speaking province of Illyricum to join the proceedings. Upon arrival they immediately undid whatever progress the council had already made, and set about manoeuvring to bend the council to their own political priorities. Gregory would later characterize the clash between the Westerners and the Easterners, the Alexandrians and the Antiochians, the Romans and everyone else, as a pack of wild boar, tearing at each other with their tusks.
His biggest problem came when his own uncanonical elevation to the see of Constantinople was raised against him. And indeed, he had already been appointed bishop not only of his hometown of Nazianzus, but even earlier of the small town of Sasima, and technically a bishop could not be transferred from one see to another.
Gregory had lost the trust of his own Antiochian party. Obviously the Alexandrians rejected him. The Westerners, representing the Pope, were calling on Theodosius to recognize Maximus. Gregory knew there was only one thing to do.
One morning he stood up before the bishops in council and formally resigned.
“What more need be said?” he declared. “How can I bear this holy war? How shall I unite and join together the hostile occupants of sees, and hostile pastors, and the people broken up along with and opposed to them, as if by chasms caused by earthquakes? The very quarters of the globe are affected by the spirit of faction, so that East and West are arrayed on opposite sides. How long are parties to be mine and yours, the old and the new, the more rational and the more spiritual, the more noble and the more ignoble, the more and the less numerous? Farewell, mighty Christ-loving city! I will depart as a stranger and will leave gladly the men who have driven me out, departing with the words, ‘May you be well.’”
And with that, St. Gregory walked out, head held high.
What had Evagrius been thinking as he watched his master, St. Gregory, fail to control the situation? I wish I could say that, having witnessed all of this, Evagrius immediately decided never to fall into the trap that Gregory had fallen into of being embroiled in Church politics. After all, as we’ve seen on Life Sentences already, and we’ll see even more clearly in this episode, later on Evagrius taught that you cannot theologize properly when your thymikon is raging. You cannot know God when your soul is being tossed about by ambition and rivalry. You cannot bring peace outwardly, if inwardly your reason has been subverted by wrath.
So yes, I wish I could say that following St. Gregory’s resignation, Evagrius became determined to pursue what St. Gregory had always claimed to desire more than anything: a quiet life of asceticism, contemplation, and pure prayer.
But sadly, no. Evagrius did not immediately learn that important spiritual lesson. Instead, he remained in the capital and became even more embroiled in politics and moral corruption — as we’ll hear next time.
For now, let’s return to Evagrius’s hard-won spiritual wisdom, starting with his advice on how to confront the most cunning and destructive of demons: the demon of wrath.
Now, if you remember, last time, before continuing with the Praktikos, we read through the first chapter of a different Evagrian treatise, On the Logismoi. This time I want to start out with the third chapter of On the Logismoi. It acts as a great summary of everything Evagrius has covered so far, and so it will put us in the right frame of mind to continue hearing Evagrius’s teaching on how best to combat the demons.
So here it is, Evagrius of Pontus’s On the Logismoi, chapter 3:
A man cannot drive away impassioned recollections unless he attends to desire and anger, consuming desire through fasting, vigils, and sleeping on the ground, and taming anger through patience, forgiveness, and almsgiving. For from these two passions almost all demonic logismoi arise, which cast the nous into destruction and ruin. It is impossible for someone to prevail over these passions, without completely disregarding food, possessions, and glory, and further still, his own body. It is therefore entirely necessary to imitate those in danger at sea, who throw things overboard, because of the violent winds and threatening waves.
But here, pay close attention, lest in jettisoning the cargo, we do so in order to be seen by others. For in that case, we have already received our reward in full, and another shipwreck will overtake us, more grievous than the first, driven by the opposing winds of the demon of vainglory. Our Lord, instructing our helmsman, the nous, says in the Gospels, “Take heed, that you do not give alms in front of others, to be seen by them, for unless you take heed, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.” Again, he says, “When you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to pray standing in synagogues and at street corners to be seen by men. Truly I say to you, they get the reward they want. Moreover, when you fast, do not put on a gloomy face, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so that they may be seen by men to be fasting. Truly I say to you, they have their reward.”
We must pay attention here to the Physician of souls, how he heals anger through almsgiving, purifies the nous through prayer, and withers desire through fasting. From these is formed the new man, who is renewed in the image of the One who created him, in whom there is no male and female because of holy dispassion, nor, because of one faith and love, is there Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free, but Christ is all in all.
So once again, Evagrius roots his ascetical theology in the doctrine of the tripartite soul. Ideally, reason, the logistikon, sits on the throne, governing anger, thymos, and desire, epithymia. But we are fallen. Our reason has been dethroned. Desire and anger, both perverted through attachment to material sense-perceptible objects, rule the soul instead, and everything inside ourselves is in disarray.
Given this state of affairs, our first focus must be on putting our souls back into correct alignment. We do this first by targeting perverted desire, which helps us see our inner selves clearly enough to set our focus on perverted anger. And of the two, perverted anger is the more destructive and intractable by far: the most important to bring under control. As we’ll see in this episode, though you cannot fight perverted anger without fighting perverted desire first, nonetheless you’re only fighting perverted desire so that you can fight perverted anger — something which a lot of Christians forget.
And of course Evagrius also stresses how important it is to be on the lookout for vainglory. All our asceticism, all our good deeds, all our virtues are immediately cancelled out, undone, disregarded the minute we allow ourselves to feel pleased with ourselves about them, or whenever we do anything in order to be seen to be doing it by other men.
What’s more, as we’ll see, vainglory, wrath, and lust all pollute prayer, and it is prayer which purifies our nous, Evegrius says. And then he so beautifully describes what having a purified nous really means. It means being re-created, becoming entirely new, or better, renewed in the image of the One who created us, he says, thereby rising above and beyond all narrow and merely created categories, definitions which shackle our mind to the world here below, and prevent it from rising above to the heavens which are its true home; categories like race, ethnicity, religious affiliation, social class, and even the categories of male and female; so that Christ, who is above every division, can be all in all.
A reminder then of what we are aiming at! And having been reminded of it, let us turn our attention back to the Praktikos, and hear Evagrius discuss the thymikon, the soul’s incensive power, its capacity for anger, when it is subverted. Beginning with the passion of wrath.
Chapter 20:
Wrath and hatred increase thymos but acts of mercy and meekness reduce even that which already exists.
Okay, could he be more straightforward? Thymos, remember, is to the thymikon, as epithymia is to the epithymitikon. So, thymos, often translated as anger, is the energy that powers the incensive faculty of the soul: the second of the three parts of the tripartite soul. And, obviously, if you indulge or cultivate wrath and hatred (these are passions, these are emotions in you), your anger, your level of thymos, will go up.
Indulging in wrath and hatred increases your thymos, your anger, which is another way in which the logistikon, the rational power of the soul, is dethroned from its rightful place at the summit of the soul. This is very bad. This is the equivalent of indulging in food, which Evagrius said increases your epithymia.
Notice what this means. This means you could use thymos properly to protect yourself from inordinate epithymia, to keep epithymia or desire in check — not indulging in food, not indulging in drink, not indulging in a desire for material possessions, not indulging in any worldly pleasures — but at the same time indulge in wrath and hatred. And therefore, while your epithymia may not be out of balance, your thymos is out of balance and your reason is overthrown.
This is an extremely common ailment of people on the spiritual path. So common that it’s almost shocking. The vast majority of people who consider themselves to be good Christians are people who use their thymos to keep their epithymia in check, but are not on guard against indulging in wrath, usually of a cold type. Cold wrath, i.e. that judgmental, critical inner voice that judges other people, that considers oneself superior to other people and in fact does what it takes to maintain that superiority. This is what thymos does. It is the power that is competitive, that is fighting, struggling against something. And too much thymos, understood as an indulgence in wrath and hatred — including, as I say, cold wrath: critical, judgmental, superior — this state of passion, of wrath, can co-exist with only a moderate degree of desire, epithymia. And yet all the moderate desire in the world will do you no good if you have an immoderate degree of thymos, of anger. Your reason will then be just as subverted. In fact, more so. Our Lord in the Gospel sets his sights more on inordinate thymos than he does on inordinate epithymia.
So yes, we control our epithymia. We make sure that we do not indulge in desire. But that’s only so that, detached from fleshly sensual desire, we will cultivate inner awareness enough to really make sure that our thymos, that our anger, is moderate, directed properly towards defending the soul against sin and not entering into competition with other people to maintain superiority by diminishing them, degrading them, judging them, even if only inside the heart.
I’m stressing this because so many Christians literally fall at this hurdle. They think that they are on the right path because their desire is in check while all the while they are silently, secretly, coldly in wrath against their fellow man, judging them and holding themselves to be superior. It is spiritually deadly. We must be on the lookout for it.
And when we see it in ourselves; and you will, because it’s there; just as surely as fleshly desire is there and must be held in check, so is an excess of spirit, of thymos, of anger in the soul, and must be held in check; how do you hold it in check? Evagrius says acts of mercy (this can also be translated as almsgiving) and meekness. Meekness is not humility. Meekness is gentleness. Meekness is an absence of wrath.
It’s very important to understand this. Misunderstanding this fact can lead people to adopt a fraudulent humility, thinking that they’re thereby fulfilling that beatitude, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” But, actually, a fraudulent humility, more than anything else, hides wrath and a judgmental critical spirit. Whereas it isn’t expressions of humility that constitute meekness. It is an inner struggle against wrath, against judgment, that is meekness. Criticizing yourself and not others. Inwardly allowing the will of others to prevail and not your own. To sit silently with that rage that you feel when something isn’t going according to the way you think it should go. When your critical faculty is in overdrive: that’s wrath inside of you. It’s painful. It’s passion. Meekness is to sit with it. To remain conscious of it. To combat it or at least not to indulge it. To know that it’s happening and to suffer it. To deny yourself the pleasure of succumbing to it. This is meekness. This is how we combat wrath inside ourselves.
And my God! It is a kind of suffering, let me tell you. But we must embrace it willingly and with gratitude, because nothing separates us from the love of God and from the love of our fellow men more than wrath.
So much so that wrath will feature in a number of chapters in this section of the Praktikos, not just one chapter like the preceding passions. It’s a sign of how important it is to combat wrath.
So, in the next chapter, Evagrius talks about the connection between wrath and anxiety, which I think is extremely important to understand.
Chapter 21:
Let not the sun set upon our anger, so that the demons, attacking us suddenly by night, may not terrify the soul, making the mind more cowardly for the battle on the following day. For by nature, fearful visions arise from the turmoil of anger, and nothing turns the nous into a deserter so much as agitated anger.
How interesting, eh? Did you notice that at the end? Evagrius links cowardice with an excess of anger. How unexpected!
Because, obviously, courage as a virtue involves the thymikon, the incensive power of the soul. And so you’d think that cowardice would be caused by a lack of anger. But that’s not what Evagrius says here. He says that cowardice is caused by an excess of thymos, of anger. He links an excess of anger — wrath in the soul — to anxiety, to fearful visions, to foreseeing the worst.
And I know that all of you listeners who suffer from an excess of anger, who suffer from wrath and a hypercritical spirit, know this to be true. I know that you also suffer from anxiety. You also suffer sleepless nights, constantly foreseeing all of the bad things that are just around the corner. Anxiety and wrath are linked here.
And the trouble is, when it comes to the real fight, the fight against demonic temptation, that anxiety, which follows upon an excess of anger in the soul, will cause you to flee the battle. It will cause that agonizing experience that we all know, of shrinking back in the face of demonic temptation. Shrinking back in fear and anxiety whenever there’s an upsurge of passion of any kind in the soul.
This is so important. It shows again just how important it is to combat wrath through acts of mercy and meekness. If you don’t combat wrath, you will experience an upsurge in anxiety and cowardice and lay yourself open to defeat by all the other demons.
So, do not indulge wrath. Do not judge your neighbour. Do not indulge a critical spirit. If you do, you will lose all the virtues you think you already have. As our Lord said, “He who has nothing, even what he has will be taken away.” This is one of the interpretations of that very cryptic Gospel passage. If you have nothing — if, because of wrath, you have no love in the soul, love which is God — then even that which you have, i.e., your much-vaunted moderation in sensual desires, will also be taken away from you.
How many stories do we hear about upstanding members of the community who, it is revealed, have secretly been leading lives of great sensual indulgence, indeed criminal indulgence? How many examples are there of the self-righteous man exposed as a secret fornicator, a secret drug addict, a secret alcoholic, or even worse?
So, we must fight wrath. And just as when we’re suffering from depression, we must ask ourselves, “Which pleasure is being thwarted?”, so, when we’re suffering from anxiety, we must ask ourselves, “In what way am I indulging wrath? Who am I hating? Who am I criticizing? Why am I so angry?” You combat anxiety through combating wrath.
And in the next chapter, Evagrius is going to talk about wrath in the context of desire, and how the two interrelate, very interestingly.
Chapter 22:
Whenever, having seized upon some pretext, the irascible part of our soul is agitated, at that very moment the demons suggest to us that it would be good to retreat, instead of freeing ourselves from turmoil by resolving the causes of sorrow. But when the desiring part is inflamed, then they work to turn us into philanthropists, calling us harsh and savage, so that, desiring bodies, we may come into contact with bodies. It is necessary not to obey them, but rather to do the opposite.
I don’t know, I mean, without going into details, this chapter always slays me. I know that I have spent — I should say misspent — most of my life not doing the opposite of what the demons suggest in both of these scenarios, but instead following the demons’ recommendations.
So what is Evagrius saying? Remember, anger can be experienced as anxiety on the one hand, and sorrow on the other hand. So, anger has quite a broad range of affect in the soul. Anger is experienced emotionally in many different ways. So what is Evagrius saying? He’s saying: in whatever way this increase or imbalanced degree of anger is experienced by the soul, whenever there’s an increase of anger in the soul, at that very moment, he says, demons say you should retreat, you should withdraw.
So, let’s say someone does something and it seriously annoys you. You feel a sudden upsurge of wrath, of critical judgment. The demons will say, get out of there. Withdraw. They do this so that they will isolate you and, in that state, bombard you with memories of the offense, memories of the causes of sorrow, as Evagrius calls them. The demons want you to feel resentment, like a canker. They want you inwardly, in your fantasy, in your imagination, to play over and over again the offense. To relive it. To nurture hatred, judgment, resentment. That’s what they want. They can get that from you if they convince you to withdraw.
Whereas it’s precisely at moments like that that you must remain, that you must suffer meekly the pain of the wrath, combating it there in the presence of the cause of your sorrow. It is there that you have an opportunity to practice meekness. To practice charity, almsgiving, acts of mercy. You move towards the cause of your anger in a spirit of meekness and charity. Not away. Moving away is cowardice. Moving away is a manifestation of that anxiety that follows upon anger. It can feel like the right thing to do. You can think to yourself, “If I don’t move away, I don’t know what will happen! I’ll express this anger!” No. Stand firm. Don’t express your anger, but rather fight it. Suffer it meekly. Turn in love towards the cause of your anger. That’s what Evagrius says.
I mean, it’s hard as hell. But we must do it. We must not retreat. We must not give way to cowardice, but instead stand up to our own wrath courageously, fighting it with meekness and charity.
Now, that’s how to deal with an upsurge in wrath. What about an upsurge in epithymia? An upsurge in desire?
Evagrius says that when that happens, then suddenly the demons fill us with love for our fellow man. Fill us with the idea that we must remain close to the source of our desire. “Withdrawing from this person who has inflamed your lust would be harsh and severe,” they tell you. “Lust, after all, is a kind of love. Stay close to the object of your lust, so that you can love them. In purity, of course! But still, you’ll love them. Stay close to them.” Whereas Evagrius says, in this case retreat from objects of lust is advisable.
I mean sinful lust. Fornication. Obviously you must not retreat from your spouse, towards whom it is right and proper to feel sexual desire. No, but when you feel an upsurge in desire towards a forbidden body, you must withdraw. That is the courageous move there. That’s how you courageously stand up to the demon of fornication in that case. You withdraw. You retreat. You do not listen to that extremely insidious voice in your head that gives you whatever excuse you need to stay close to that forbidden object.
And the excuse is usually, as Evagrius puts it, philanthropy: a love of man, a love of human beings. “It would be rude, it would be unkind, it would be uncharitable to retreat from this person. To separate myself from this person. Not to see this person. It will hurt their feelings. It’s so mean-spirited. Why should I hurt their feelings? I should make them feel good by my presence, keeping myself close to them, close to the source of the forbidden lust.”
I know it sounds crazy or very puritanical, especially in this day and age. But Evagrius’s goal here is to help us purify our souls that we might in the end be united — body, soul, and spirit — to God. And in order to do that, we must combat wrath by standing our ground and fighting the passion with meekness; and combat fornication, sensual desire, by courageously retreating.
And after another quick break, when we return we’ll hear Evagrius turn to the close relationship between the passion of wrath and the passion of lust. We’ll be right back.
We’re back, racing through (ha ha!) the Praktikos. In the next chapter, Evagrius describes the way in which wrath is linked to fornication.
Chapter 23:
Do not give yourself over to the logismos of wrath, battling in thought against the one who has grieved you, nor again to the logismos of fornication, fantasizing about pleasure to the utmost, for the former darkens the soul and the latter summons it to kindle the passion, and both pollute your nous. At the time of prayer, fantasizing about such idols and thereby failing to offer pure prayer to God, you immediately fall into the hands of the demon of acedia, who especially leaps upon such states of mind and, like a dog, tears the soul to pieces as though it were a baby deer.
Okay, acedia. Here, Evagrius very clearly diagnoses the causes of acedia, or sloth, in the soul. And I want everyone really to pay attention to this. Because, I don’t know, maybe even more than avarice, or fornication, or sorrow, are we attacked these days by sloth: spiritual laziness. A kind of deep existential tiredness that keeps us from doing our duty by God and our neighbour: from regular disciplined prayer, from rising on time to get to church, from scrutinizing our consciences, repenting and confessing.
Spiritual laziness. It’s everywhere. It’s dangerous. It’s deadly. So we must pay attention to its causes.
And Evagrius is clear. Incredibly clear, remarkably clear. He says acedia is caused when, while praying, you indulge either fantasies of wrath or fantasies of lust. That’s it.
If you find yourself unable or unwilling to pray, to go to church, to go to confession, then at some point in the past you will have prayed impurely by allowing yourself, during prayer, to indulge thoughts of wrath, anger, hatred, or lust, fornication, desire. It’s as if God hands you over to the demon of sloth. Or God spits you out of his mouth. He rejects your impure prayer and cast you out into the darkness of sloth. God hates impure prayer. God cannot abide it when a soul in prayer is secretly indulging fantasies of wrath, fantasies of hatred or lust. He will spit you out. He will hand you over to sloth.
So, if you are experiencing sloth, if you are experiencing that deep existential unwillingness to pray or to do your duty by God, then know what you must repent of. You have prayed impurely. You have mixed in hatred and lust to your prayer. You must repent of it. You must ask God’s forgiveness for this sin. And with confidence in his mercy, and courage, you must return to prayer doubly on your guard.
I think this chapter is extremely interesting. Extremely helpful. It gives the man suffering from sloth the precise remedy. It tells him precisely what he has done wrong, precisely what he must repent of and what he must be on his guard against.
Okay, so having explored wrath in a number of chapters, Evagrius now is going to talk about natural and unnatural anger. He’s still on the subject of anger, on thymos, on the thymikon, that part of the soul. But now he’s going to talk about the natural way that thymos is meant to be activated.
Chapter 24:
The natural function of anger is to fight against the demons and to struggle for pleasure of whatever kind. Therefore, the angels, suggesting spiritual pleasure to us and the blessedness that comes from it, urge us to direct our anger against the demons. But the demons, on the other hand, drawing us toward worldly desires, compel anger to act contrary to its nature by fighting against people, so that the nous, now darkened and falling away from gnosis, becomes a traitor of the virtues.
Incredibly clear. There are two kinds of pleasure: spiritual and carnal; spiritual and material. Our souls possess the power of anger so that we would use it to pursue spiritual pleasure by fighting the demons who try to prevent us from experiencing spiritual pleasure by perverting our use of anger and directing it against human beings in our pursuit of carnal pleasure.
It’s extremely clear. It is basic. It is important. You must never ever indulge anger against human beings. You must always only employ anger against demons. Even when you are confronted with a human being behaving in a damaging, sinful, or otherwise unpleasant way, you must not hate the human being. You must rather love the human being by hating the demon who has that human being under his spell. This is all important.
And staying on the subject of anger, chapter 25:
Be attentive to yourself lest you drive away any of the brothers by provoking them to anger and in doing so spend your life failing to escape from the demon of sorrow, which will always become a thorn for you, especially at the time of prayer.
Fascinating. This is wrath, now, but from the other side.
This is now addressing that annoying person, that person whose unconscious, thoughtless behaviour provokes anger in other people. The demon is operating through that person just as much as he’s operating on the person who is feeling the anger.
And in both cases, for both people, anger in some form is the result. The person provoked to anger, who then withdraws, who then is driven away — You see? That soul has succumbed to the demon who’s told him to retreat when anger arises — so, anger is in that person. And anger ends up taking root in the annoying person, but in his case in the form of sorrow, being reminded of what he did to cause that other person to be angry and to go away. The demons of wrath and sorrow here have worked together to defeat two souls, and in this chapter Evagrius is telling that annoying person to be attentive to himself. (Interestingly, an echo of that talk by St. Basil the Great, Be attentive to yourself. Remember? Perhaps a sign that Evagrius, for those twelve or so years, was a spiritual son of St. Basil.)
So yes, are you a person who is thoughtless and annoying? A person who seems always to make everyone angry? Well, be attentive to yourself. Stop being so annoying. You are causing your brother, your sister, harm.
And still on the subject of wrath and anger, in this case cold wrath or resentment, chapter 26:
Gifts extinguish resentment. And let Jacob persuade you, who insinuated himself into Esau’s good graces with gifts, Esau who had gone out to meet him with four hundred hundred men. But as for us, being poor, let us fulfill the need with the table.
That reference to Jacob and Esau is from Genesis chapter 32, when Jacob, Esau’s younger brother, who had been long estranged from Esau on account of tricking Esau out of his inheritance, is on his way to meet Esau for the first time in a long time, feeling afraid of his older brother’s resentment. And indeed, according to Evagrius here, Esau was still very resentful and was on his way with four hundred men, I guess to attack his younger brother Jacob. But Jacob neutralizes Esau’s resentment by giving him gifts.
Evagrius here is advising us about what to do when we realize that someone is harbouring resentment against us. Someone is refusing to forgive us. Evagrius says gifts are the solution. And if you’re poor, then he specifically recommends inviting them to your house for a meal together.
It’s an interesting chapter. It shows us that despite what Cain said after killing Abel, we are our brother’s keeper. And if we have done something inadvertently or advertently to cause someone else anger, it is incumbent upon us to help our brother heal from that resentment by giving him gifts, by inviting him to a meal. We must not allow our brother or our sister to remain alone in their passion. We are to bear one another’s burdens.
And if you see that someone is harbouring resentment against you, do not retreat or withdraw from that person. Move towards them in charitable love. It will, Evagrius says, help heal their resentment.
And now a chapter on acedia. Chapter 27:
When we fall prey to the demon of acedia, let us at that time divide the soul with tears, making one part the one that offers comfort, and the other the one being comforted, sowing good hopes within ourselves, and chanting the words of the holy David, “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why do you trouble me? Hope in God, for I shall yet praise him, the salvation of my face and my God.”
That’s from Psalm 41.
If we link this chapter up with the chapter earlier on acedia, where he said that acedia is caused by impure prayer, when you indulge in fantasies of wrath or lust during prayer, then this chapter gives us further guidance on how to respond to that fact.
We must feel the pain of that. We must move towards God in prayer, truly penitently — indeed he says with tears — but not so much that we despair. He says we should divide our souls in half, one half comforting and the other half being comforted.
This is actually quite an interesting way of characterizing repentance in general. We do not repent, as it were, in anguish only. Penthos, yes, as the Fathers say, mournfulness. But not in anguish. We repent with hope. Repentance is a movement towards God in faith, and faith is the substance of things hoped for, as St. Paul says. Faith is the presence of the God whom we love. And therefore we must repent with hope, comforting ourselves, Evagrius says.
This chapter is a nuanced, subtle, and keenly observed corrective to an exaggerated, hysterical repentance — to a fixation on one’s fallenness, a fixation on one’s sinfulness — to the detriment of our calm, confident, faithful hope in God’s mercy.
And Evagrius writes all of this in the context of acedia, which can feel so horrible. When acedia, sloth, has really gripped you, it’s like you’re drowning in laziness. You feel so disconnected from everything divine, so disconnected from your own spiritual self, especially when you realize what the cause of it is. You realize and take responsibility for having polluted yourself in the past through fantasies of wrath and lust. You feel sad, you feel in near despair. And at that point, Evagrius says, you must carry out this neat trick. You must divide your soul with tears and comfort yourself with hope, ensuring that your repentance is hopeful, is calm, is indeed courageous.
And courage is the subject that Evagrius takes up in the next chapter. Chapter 28:
One must not abandon the cell during times of temptation, devising seemingly reasonable excuses. But rather, remain within, endure, and bravely receive all those that come, especially the demon of acedia, who, being the heaviest of all, causes the soul to be tested to the highest degree. For the act of fleeing such struggles and avoiding them teaches the mind to be unskilled, cowardly, and a deserter.
We are not hermits in the Egyptian desert. We can’t just stay in our cell, not physically at least. But we can stay, inwardly, in the cell of our hearts. And when demonic temptation arises, and as Evagrius says here, especially sloth, we must not run away, as it were, inside ourselves. We must not flee the discomfort of temptation, the pain of it. We must not do that.
And how do we do that? Through distracting ourselves, more than anything else. Distracting ourselves with pleasure: eating, hanging out with people, going to the pub, getting drunk. Distracting ourselves with ambition: pursuing wealth, pursuing career. Distracting ourselves mentally, intellectually: through surfing the internet, playing video games, watching TV. We mustn’t do this. This is running away. This is cowardice.
When we are attacked by the demons — when temptation comes and especially that temptation of spiritual laziness, sloth, acedia — we must not run away. We must stand courageously amidst the discomfort, amidst the pain. Like the Good Thief crucified beside Christ, we must feel the crucifixion of the temptation and, with faith, turn to our Lord, uniting ourselves spiritually with his saving passion, saying, “Remember me, Lord, in your kingdom.” This is the spiritual way. This is the true courage of withstanding temptation.
And it’s a lifelong battle, as the next chapter discusses, which takes up a very famous saying of Evagrius’s spiritual father in the desert, Macarius the Great.
Chapter 29:
Our holy teacher, experienced in praktikē, used to say this: “It is necessary for the monk always to stand ready as though he were to die tomorrow, and also to use his body as though he were to live for many years.” For the first, he would say, cuts off logismoi of acedia and makes the monk more diligent, while the second preserves the body in good health and keeps his self-control always in balance.
As I say, a classic statement of the spiritual life from Macarius the Great. We are to walk the Way of the Cross as it were juggling these two attitudes: on the one hand, we practice our spiritual lives as if we will die tomorrow and be called to judgment; and on the other hand, we treat our body as if we will live for many, many more years, maintaining it in good health and resisting any extremes in fasting etc.
So, we neither indulge the body nor do we mistreat the body. We maintain balance, prepared to die at any moment, and therefore we maintain our spiritual discipline conscientiously, but also prepared to survive for many decades, and therefore we are moderate in all things, cultivating self-control.
This is the Way.
And now, on to my favourite: vainglory. Chapter 30:
It is difficult to discern clearly the logismos of vainglory. For whatever you do to destroy it, that very thing becomes for you the source of yet more vainglory. And it isn’t only the demons who oppose our correct thoughts, for some of them are opposed by the vices to which we have become conformed.
Okay, vainglory is particularly pernicious because it feeds off our virtues and therefore whatever you do to combat vainglory becomes an excuse for feeling vainglory. You feel the demon of vainglory approaching, the passion of vainglory rises within you, and so you humble yourself in some way. You tell yourself that you’re a worthless sinner. You say with feeling, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, the sinner!” and the logismos of vainglory says, “Aren’t you great at the Jesus Prayer! Gosh, you’re so un-vainglorious! If only people knew, they would really praise you for being so un-vainglorious.”
You see, you can’t really win with vainglory. It’s very insidious. And because vainglory is so subtle and insidious, we are all, unconsciously and habitually, in its grip.
So much so, Evagrius says, that when correct angelic thoughts arise in our minds — thoughts to pursue virtue, thoughts to pursue spiritual pleasure — demons actually aren’t required to oppose them. Our own habitual vainglory regularly, instinctively, and immediately will oppose them unless we’re on our guard. So, an angelic thought arises, saying: “You should humble yourself and help your neighbour.” And immediately your own vainglory will subvert that thought by sneakily convincing you to praise yourself.
So, we must be on our guard against vainglory.
And in the next chapter, Evagrius addresses the demon of vainglory. Chapter 31:
I have observed the demon of vainglory being driven out by nearly all the other demons, and then, upon the defeat of its pursuers, standing shamelessly and displaying to the monk the greatness of his virtues.
This is actually a funny chapter because it shows that the demon of vainglory has no friends among the demons. The other demons don’t like him because, in order for him to triumph, he has to actually defeat them. The demon of vainglory only prevails in the soul when some other demon has been defeated by you.
If you defeat the demon of avarice, then the demon of vainglory can say, “Oh, aren’t you great! You’re so unmaterialistic! You’re really such a great Christian!” To the extent that the demon of vainglory, Evagrius is suggesting, can even help you defeat other demons. And so the other demons are here characterized as actually trying to chase the demon of vainglory away. And yet, Evagrius says, in the end, he’s seen the demon of vainglory stand triumphant on the corpses of the other demons, having defeated them all and, most importantly, having defeated you by convincing you of your spiritual greatness.
So again, the demon of vainglory, what a bastard! He’s hard to spot. He’s hard to fight. So we must be on our guard. And in the next chapter, Evagrius suggests how the demon of vainglory is ultimately defeated.
Chapter 32:
The one who has attained to gnosis, and is reaping the pleasure that comes from it, will no longer be persuaded by the demon of vainglory, even if it should present to him all the pleasures of the world. For what greater promise could it offer than spiritual contemplation? But as long as we remain without a taste of gnosis, let us eagerly pursue praktikē while making sure God knows what our goal is: namely that we do all things in order to acquire gnosis of him.
Vainglory is so insidious and powerful and subtle that ultimately the only thing that will destroy him or neutralize his power is when God grants the soul true knowledge, true spiritual knowledge, gnosis of God. Evagrius says that vainglory cannot coexist with a soul that is truly contemplating God.
Which means that if you think you do have a share in spiritual contemplation, and yet you also find yourself indulging a fantasy of vainglory, then you are in delusion and you are not experiencing true contemplation. Demons are giving you contemplations, possibly even contemplations of true realities, in order to make you feel vainglorious.
I can tell you, based on my own personal experience, exactly what this feels like. Often, if you’re a religious person, if you are, possibly, an intelligent religious person, if you read the Fathers, if you read books of theology, if you go to church, contemplate the divine mysteries, maintain a more or less disciplined prayer life, etc., you will have contemplations. Sometimes your mind will be almost flooded with what feel like truly profound insights about the spiritual life, about God, about creation, what have you. And if you’re paying attention, at the very same moment, in your imagination, you are seeing yourself teaching these insights to the people. You are seeing yourself, possibly clothed as a priest, delivering fascinating sermons to huge crowds and receiving adulation for it. These contemplations are almost always accompanied by precisely that kind of imagination.
Don’t get me wrong, you’re not just seeing yourself as a priest delivering sermons. Maybe you’re seeing yourself writing a book, a bestseller acclaimed to the skies. Maybe you’re seeing yourself on television being interviewed by the Archbishop of Canterbury and setting him straight on all the ways in which he’s theologically in error. There’s really no end to these vainglorious fantasies.
The point is that if your contemplations are accompanied by vainglorious fantasies like those, then you are not truly contemplating. You have fallen victim to the demons, who are whispering truths in one ear so that they can pollute your soul in the other ear. The presence of the vainglorious fantasy should alert you to this fact and you should turn immediately to God in prayer, silencing the so-called contemplation in your mind, having nothing to do with it. Ignore it. Return your discursive intellect, in an act of penitence, to a state of silence, of emptiness, and attend only to prayer.
This chapter, chapter 32, is extremely important wisdom. If you are capable of vainglorious fantasies while experiencing some mode of contemplation, then that contemplation has not come from God. It’s as clear as crystal.
And I might say, even if that contemplation has come, let’s say, from some angel, if a demon of vainglory has slipped in, then throw out the contemplation. No contemplation is worth indulging in vainglory. You will never be thanked for a true contemplation mixed in with vainglory. Throw it out. Purity of heart is what we’re aiming at, and vainglory pollutes purity of heart.
As does the greatest and most villainous of all the demons, which Evagrius now turns to, and with whom he finishes this section of the Praktikos: pride.
Chapter 33:
Continuously remind yourself of your former life and your past transgressions and how, though you were once full of passions, you have been brought to dispassion through the mercy of Christ. And again, how you have left the world that so often and in so many ways humiliated you. And consider these logismoi for me: who is it that protects you in the desert, and who drives away the demons that gnash their teeth against you? For logismoi like these not only instil humility but they also keep out the demon of pride.
Pride is when you forget that the source and cause of all good things, including whatever virtue there is in your soul, is God. And, Evagrius says, the best way to ensure that you do not forget that and succumb to the demon of pride is to constantly remind yourself that without the presence of the Holy Spirit in you — whose presence is gracious, having nothing to do with any merit that you imagine you might have earned, but fully gracious — without the presence of the Holy Spirit in in you, you would immediately succumb to every passionate impulse and be totally lost.
Evagrius advises reminding yourself of past sins, reminding yourself of how liable you were to being humiliated, he says, by the demons in your past life, before you embraced religion conscientiously and began to walk the Way of the Cross. He says to do this constantly, to do this regularly, to remind yourself who it is that protects you in the desert, he says, i.e., the Holy Spirit. To remind yourself of who it is who drives away the demons when they are driven away. It isn’t by your power that the demons are vanquished. It is by God’s power.
If you regularly remind yourself of these things, if you consider those logismoi, Evagrius says, then they will keep out the demon of pride and instil humility in your soul.
Which is necessary if our pursuit of praktikē, if our disciplined adherence to the spiritual life, is ever to purify our hearts, allowing for true theoria to dawn in us, the true spiritual knowledge which vanquishes vainglory, firmly establishes dispassion in the soul, and causes true agape, true love, to shine in us.
And with that carrot held out before all of us, the carrot of theoria and divine love, this episode of Life Sentences comes to an end.
We learned alongside Evagrius and St. Gregory of Nazianzus that real life is messy and compromising — though we must soldier on and do our best.
Evagrius focused great attention on wrath and on the various modes in which anger appears in our soul: rightly when it is used to defend the soul against sin and evil and ignorance; wrongly when it is used to fight other people, to criticise other people, when it is twisted into sorrow or fear, and in general when, instead of keeping us united to God in purity, it struggles sinfully to keep us united to the many created objects which bring us merely sensual or egotistical, psychological pleasure.
And we learned how to combat acedia, or sloth; vainglory, or self-esteem; and pride — thereby reaching the end of this part of the Praktikos, known as On the Eight Logismoi.
Thank you very much for listening. I hope you enjoyed the episode. I hope it taught you some things. I hope that it will establish you even more firmly in your spiritual life.
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Right, that’s it for this episode of Life Sentences. Until next time, stay well.
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