Christian Ascetic Literature and Lonergan’s Functional Specialty of Systematics

A Conversation between Evagrius Ponticus and Robert Doran

Jeremy W. Blackwood

THEO 329: Lonergan, Girard, Soteriology Fr. Robert M. Doran, S.J.

Spring 2008

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Theologian Robert M. Doran has been interested of late in a dialogue between the

thought of Bernard J.F. Lonergan (1904 – 1984) and that of René Girard (1923 – ). Though

Doran’s work on this matter is not yet complete, what has emerged is a clear trend situating

Lonergan as the one who establishes the heuristics of human authenticity, and Girard as the

one who can provide the filling-out of those heuristics at the level of the mimetic dynamics

of intersubjectivity.

In part, the value of this work for systematics lies in its ability to relate persons’ felt

states of subjectivity to the intellectual constructs of systematic theology. Our specific

interest in this paper is a subset of that application: Doran’s work can provide a systematic

framework for relating some of the affective emphases of Christian ascetical literature to the

results of systematic theology. Doran’s work, that is, provides systematic theology with a tool

by which to understand the focus of ascetical literature, a focus which in Lonergan’s terms

falls under the functional specialty of foundations but which is rarely expressed in terms of

the intellectual pattern of experience. Ascetical literature is instead often symbolic in form,

but it is in its main thrust a symbolic examination and normative explication of foundations.

Thus, in order for systematic theology to appropriate it as a resource for reflection, there

must be found a bridge between the symbolic and the intellectual patterns of experience, and

there must be found a link between the foundational emphases of ascetical literature and the

search for understanding of systematics. Doran’s work with Lonergan and Girard is one

form of such a bridge.

An early Christian ascetical writer, Evagrius Ponticus (c.345 – c.399), provides a good

test for this project. He continues to be held in high regard especially by the Eastern

Christian monastic tradition, but he was also influential for Western Christianity. Further,

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while he often wrote in symbolic terms and his goal was the edification of ascetics, still his

emphasis on interior states of soul and the psychic/affective dimension of subjectivity lend

themselves to a comparison with Doran’s own contemporary systematic work. Our question

is: Using Doran’s work with Lonergan and Girard, can we see how the ascetic literature of

Evagrius Ponticus relates to systematic theology?

Our course will proceed as follows. Part I will focus on Evagrius’ life and work,

offering a brief biographical sketch followed by an examination of his most important ideas

and emphases, and finalized by a series of quotations from two of his most important texts.

Part II will then show the character of Doran’s attempts at a Lonergan/Girard

dialogue. A brief overview of each of the main component thinkers will be followed by a

more detailed investigation of the manner in which Doran has integrated their emphases.

Special attention will be drawn to the main currents of this integration that parallel the

monastic literature with which we are concerned.

Part III will then conclude the paper with an effort to show the relation of the

Evagrian emphases to the work Doran has been doing. Here, the goal will be to show the

parallelism between two major thrusts of these two thinkers’ writings: the concern with

affectivity, and the concern with violence. From these parallels, a link can be made to the

contents of systematic theology.

Finally, a concluding Post-Script will offer suggestions about the future relevance of

ascetic literature to systematic theology.

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I. EVAGRIUS PONTICUS

One needn’t look far to the east to see the influence of Evagrius Ponticus. John

Cassian, who was foundational for Benedictine thought, was a devoted student of Evagrius’.1

Yet Evagrius is not well-known in the Western Christian world despite this important

influence on the beginnings of Western monasticism, and so we must first turn our attention

to his background and importance.

I.1. Biography

Evagrius was born in 345 in Ibora, Pontus (present-day Iverönü, Turkey), of which

Gregory of Nyssa was the bishop beginning in 380. Ibora was near the family estate of Basil

the Great, and because our Evagrius’ father (also named Evagrius2) was a peculiar kind of

bishop whose responsibility was to travel the countryside, the younger Evagrius often fell

under the influence of Basil.3 Then, shortly after Basil’s death in 379, the younger Evagrius

was ordained a deacon by Gregory Nazianzen.

Already at this point in his life, then, Evagrius had been influenced by all three of the

Cappadocians,4 and when Nazianzen was called to the capital to join the fight against

Arianism, Evagrius accompanied him.5 After Gregory’s death, however, a near-scandal with

1 Jean Leclercq, “Preface,” The Praktikos and Chapters on Prayer, trans. J.E. Bamberger, Cistercian Studies Series 4 (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1981), xiii says “in order to understand Cassian, it is necessary to know Evagrius.” 2 John E. Bamberger, “Introduction,” pages 3-11 of Praktikos and Chapters on Prayer, Cistercian Studies Series 4 (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1981), xxxv. Nyssa himself presided over the election of a new bishop after the death of an “Evagrius,” who is believed to have been our Evagrius’ father (according to the Lausiac History 38:13) and whose name we know from a letter of Gregory Nazianzen’s written during his time as our Evagrius’ tutor (Epistle 19, PG 37:24B). 3 This peculiar sort of bishop was known as a χωρεπίσχοπος [“chorepiscopos”/“chorbishop”]. See Bamberger, “Introduction,” xxxv-xxxvi. 4 See Bamberger, “Introduction,” lxxii: “St. Basil first, then Gregory of Nazianzen, the great Theologian of the Trinity, and then Gregory of Nyssa, each exercised a direct intellectual and personal influence upon Evagrius while he was still quite young.” 5 Bamberger, “Introduction,” xxxvii. A mentoring relationship soon developed between the two men that continued to inspire deep affection in Evagrius even to the end of his life, and it is likely that Evagrius’ relationship with Gregory Nyssa also grew at this time (Bamberger, “Introduction,” xxxviii).

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a married woman drove Evagrius to the Holy Land,6 where he met Melania and Rufinus, and

under their influence he continued on to Egypt where he eventually joined the monks at

Nitria (about 40 miles from Alexandria) around 383.7

There he remained for the rest of his life, and near its end, the other monks regarded

him highly. Evagrius died in 399, just after being taken to the church to receive the Eucharist

on the Feast of the Ephiphany.8

With these events in his background, Evagrius appropriated a broad, rather than

simply regional, Christian heritage, beginning with the Cappadocians, extending through the

Imperial capital and the Holy Land, and finally concluding with the Egyptian monks. He was

influenced by the thought of both Origen and Clement of Alexandria (especially with regard

to apatheia),9 and this Hellenistic strain was supplemented by ascetic influences including

Macarius the Great, Macarius of Alexandria, Paphnutius, Ammonius Parotes, and Anthony

the Great.10

I.2. Evagrius’ Reception

Evagrius was regarded as part of the Origenist party when the controversy over the

latter’s writings broke out.11 In 374, Epiphanius had complained about the Nitrian

‘Origenists’ in the Panarion, but it was the Coptic monks who proved to be the major source

of difficulty. Evagrius had emphasized the immateriality of God, while the Copts had

opposed this position out of their anthropomorphic spirituality; in fact, “[t]hey considered

that [God] was in his very form a pattern for the structure of the human body, except in

6 Bamberger, “Introduction,” xxxix – xl. 7 Bamberger, “Introduction,” xl – xli. On page xl, he notes that information on Melania and her importance can be found in Francis X. Murphy, “Melania the Elder: A Biographical Note,” Traditio V (1947): 59-77, and Gian D. Gordini, “Il monachesimo romano in Palestina nel IV secolo,” St. Martin et son Temps, Studia Anselmiana 46 (Rome: Herder, 1961), 85-107. 8 Bamberger, “Introduction,” xlvi – xlvii. 9 See below, page 9. 10 Bamberger, “Introduction,” lxxiii. 11 Bamberger, “Introduction,” xxv: admittedly, Evagrius was “an ardent Origenist.”

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larger proportions.”12 The ecclesiastical authorities decided against the Evagrian/Origenist

position in this matter, and troops were sent in when Evagrius’ followers resisted, prompting

many of the monks, including John Cassian and his companion Germanus, to flee the area.

The Evagrian Origenists found temporary protection with John Chrysostom, then the

Constantinopolitan Patriarch, but the entire sequence of events ended with the latter himself

dying in exile.13

The controversy continued intermittently for centuries, with Evagrius being grouped

along with Origen and Didymus the Blind on a list of heretics first condemned officially at

the Fifth Ecumenical Council (553) under Justinian the Great and again at the next three

Ecumenical Councils (the Sixth in 680, the Seventh in 781, and the Eighth in 869).14

Despite these condemnations, Evagrius was well-received by many. His works were

translated into Syriac very early on because these far-eastern regions of Christianity were left

essentially unscathed by the Origenist and Pelagian controversies and because Evagrius’

emphasis on mysticism set well with the Oriental mindset of these Eastern regions.15 But for

our purposes, it is important to note that the Latin world also received Evagrius well.

Rufinus had initially translated his works into Latin,16 and despite the negative evaluation and

12 Bamberger, “Introduction,” xlviii. This was the Copts’ interpretation of human beings’ being made in the image and likeness of God. Bamberger is drawing here on Antoine Guillaumont, Les “Kephalaia Gnostica” d’Evagre le Pontique, Patristica Sorbonensia 5 (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1962), 61, concerning which he notes, “This author [that is, Guillamont] has a very interesting discussion of the origins of this anthropomorphite theology. He sees it as a development taking place in reaction to the mystical theology of the Chapters on Prayer of Evagrius, notably the view that one goes ‘immaterial to the Immaterial.’ This struck the more earthy Copts as being too spiritualized a concept of God.” In terms of Lonergan’s thought, one is prompted to ask whether, in terms of dialectic, one is witnessing here the presence and absence of intellectual conversion; that is, is this disagreement not grounded in the recognition or failure to recognize that the real is the intelligible? On this same issue in a different, though related, context, see Bernard J.F. Lonergan, The Way to Nicea: the Dialectical Development of Trinitarian Theology, trans. from the first part of De Deo Trino by C. O’Donovan (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1976). 13 Bamberger, “Introduction,” xlix. 14 Bamberger, “Introduction,” xxv. He refers the reader to Guillaumont, 136f, for more information on these condemnations. 15 Bamberger, “Introduction,” li. 16 Bamberger, “Introduction,” xli, notes that Rufinus “translated a number of [Evagrius’] works into Latin and thus was responsible for propagating Origenist theories in the West.”

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restrictions of Jerome, the influence of the Evagrian corpus grew in the West. Further, there

was the influence of the Evagrian Origenists who, in their exile, had eventually settled in the

Latin West. This group included John Cassian, and the influence of Cassian’s writings on the

Benedictine movement has assured the place of Evagrius in Western monasticism.17

As a consequence, the list of Eastern Christian theologians influenced by Evagrius

includes Maximus Confessor, Symeon the New Theologian, Gregory of Sinai, the Hesychast

movement and Gregory Palamas, the compilers of the Philokalia (Nikodemus and Macarius),

and even the more recent so-called neo-Palamite theologians such as Vladimir Lossky and

Georges Florovsky. In the West, his influence has extended beyond its significant monastic

role into the work of such eminent theologians as Karl Rahner, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and

Jean Daniélou.18

I.3. The Content of Evagrius’ Work

Evagrius was influenced by both the Hellenistic and the Egyptian strains of thought,

and there are tensions in content and tone within his works that leave one with “the

impression that the two major streams of influence, the Hellenistic and the Coptic, flow side

by side, in mutual isolation, rather than merging into a single confluence.”19 The appearance

of Evagrius’ work as two-streamed in this way is so strong that although it is commonly

acknowledged that there is a system operative in his thought, as of yet scholarly studies

continue to struggle with elements of Evagrius’ work – particularly portions of the Praktikos

and Chapters on Prayer – that do not seem to fit well within this system.20

17 Bamberger, “Introduction,” li – lii. See also Bamberger, “Introduction,” xxviii: Through Cassian, Evagrius “has proved to be one of the significant influences upon the Latin monastic tradition.” Jean Leclercq’s The Love of Learning and the Desire for God (New York: Fordham University Press, 1985) traces these influences. 18 Leclercq, “Preface,” xix. 19 Bamberger, “Introduction,” xxxiv. 20 Bamberger, “Introduction,” lxxiv.

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The Evagrian system21 posited a single, whole, pure intelligence (God). Through

negligence, bodiless spirits fell from the original state of contemplating the pure intelligence

in a state of moral unity. When this moral unity was severed, the “second creation” occurred;

there was a movement (Κίνησις) away from God, to which the pure intelligence responded

with a judgment (Κρησις). This judgment is the origin of the material world, which is ruled by

God as Creator and Providence. Nature is thus good for Evagrius, finding its origin in the

free choice of God, and this latter point keeps Evagrius’ system from being an emanational

arrangement in a strictly Neoplatonist sense: there is no necessity to the fall, the

“descending” grades of being, or the response of God to the fall.

The fallen spirits themselves gained bodies that had varying degrees of materiality

and “thickness.” Angels, for instance, are not as fallen as are human beings, but they are a

part of the material world because they have subtle and invisible fiery bodies. Next are

human beings, which are “thickened, above all by passion, by sensuality and by anger.”22 The

demons, finally, are the most intertwined with matter; they are caught up in negative

passions so much that they are without any light or heat at all.

For Evagrius, souls result from the fall; what was once pure intelligence, gains a soul

in the second creation. Here, in the soul (or ‘psyche’), reside the passions. For angels,

intelligence still dominates, but in human beings and demons, the passions rein – passions of

sensuality (’επιθυµία) in the human being, and passions of irascibility (θύµος) in the demon.

Yet at the same time, for Evagrius, God’s act of tying fallen rational creatures to passions

through their bodies is a mercy, not a punishment. It is precisely through ascetical practices

and the purification of the passions that one ascends “upward” toward the angelic form of

21 The following overview relies on Bamberger, “Introduction,” lxxv-lxxix. 22 Bamberger, “Introduction,” lxxvi.

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contemplation, with the eventual goal of renewing the original union with God.23 Thus,

“[w]ere it not for the material world and the corporal substance joined to the rational nature

(λόγικος), this creature would be in a position where it could not achieve liberation from its

guilt, and so would remain in ignorance about God.”24

Such ascetical labor Evagius envisioned in its relations to different stages of spiritual

development. Thus,

The fear of God strengthens faith, my son, and continence in turn strengthens this fear. Patience and hope make this latter virtue solid beyond all shaking and they also give birth to apatheia. Now this apatheia has a child called agape who keeps the door to deep knowledge of the created universe. Finally, to this knowledge succeed theology and the supreme beatitude.25

I.3.1. Apatheia

Apatheia is an important concept for our considerations in this paper. Although it

had been thought of as deriving from a Hellenistic or Stoic background, research has led to

the conclusion that, though it perhaps is influenced by Hellenism or Stoicism as it is used by

some early Christian monastic writers, its origins actually lie within the Christian, biblical

context.26 In its use by Evagrius, it carries a meaning “rather akin to the fear of the Lord,”27

and it is in this sense that it brings forth agape. The term apatheia itself refers to the peace of

the passions that is reached through ascetical practices, while agape refers to the resulting

love, but for Evagrius apatheia and agape are never truly separate. Though distinguishable as

the state of peace itself and the love flowing from that state, still they remain together –

never really the peace without the outflowing love, and never really the love without the

23 Evagrius in fact defined the ascetical life as “the spiritual method whose aim it is to purify the part of the soul that is the seat of the passions” (quoted in Bamberger, “Introduction,” lxxxi; see his n.230). 24 Bamberger, “Introduction,” lxxvii. 25 Letter to Anatolius, quoted in Bamberger, “Introduction,” lxxxii. As Bamberger notes, here Evagrius is using ‘theology’ to indicate “experiential knowledge of God through the highest form of prayer.” (Also see Bamberger, “Introduction,” lxxii, n.231). 26 See Bamberger, “Introduction,” lxxxii, n.233. 27 Bamberger, “Introduction,” lxxxiii.

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peace out of which it arises.28 It is important to note as well that, though Evagrius

emphasizes the role of ascetical practices in the achievement of apatheia, it remains that grace

is a prerequisite, as are the ecclesiastical community and the sacraments. Thus, Evagrius’

notion of apatheia remains fully Christian.29

Evagrius relates apatheia and the passions to dreams and their content. If one

achieves apatheia – or purity of heart, as it later came to be called in Western tradition30 –

then one’s dreams will achieve a certain peace. Inversely, if one’s dreams are not at peace,

this is a sign that one has not reached apatheia. Along the same lines, when in the state of

apatheia, one’s waking life remains free of disordered passions even in situations that tend to

arouse them; one’s memory of such situations does not arouse them; one can pray without

distraction; and finally when one’s own soul’s light is visible, one knows that one has

achieved the state of apatheia.31

This state of ordered passions opens one to contemplation, and through

contemplation, one more and more is able to realize the union with God to which all

creatures are called. As Bamberger states,

In [Evagrius’] outlook man is not defined as a rational animal (Aristotle) but rather as a being created to be united with God in loving knowledge. This is, for our author, in the full sense of the word, a metaphysical statement, not only a mystical and religious statement.32

28 Space limits our ability to fully explore the deep, rich concept of apatheia. For further elaboration of the notion, see Bamberger, “Introduction,” lxxxii-lxxxvi. 29 Bamberger, “Introduction,” lxxxvi. Bamberger also notes that the orthodoxy of Evagrius’ position can be seen in his relation of apatheia to a Christological context, as well. 30 See Bamberger, “Introduction,” lxxxvii: “Later on, when John Cassian would address himself to the western monks on the true aims of the ascetic life, he could find nothing better to put at the very head of his Conferences than this same apatheia, though he was careful, of course, to employ a Latin equivalent that would not stir up the suspicions of the anti-Pelagians of his day. That equivalent was puritas cordis, purity of heart.” 31 Bamberger, “Introduction,” lxxxvi-lxxvii. 32 Bamberger, “Introduction,” xcii.

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Thus, Evagrius has a very holistic notion of the human person in its relation to its

transcendent end, and while Aristotle’s definition focused on the intellect, Evagrius sought

to bring out the orientation of the entire person toward the transcendent end that is God.

This manner of understanding the human person lends itself to a study, not just of

the intellectual capacities and movements of human beings, but of all the interior states,

including affective states, that constitute personal subjectivity. Thus Bamberger can say that

There is a profound psychology hidden beneath this doctrine; a psychology which realizes the dynamic connections between psychic images on the one hand and, on the other, the emotions and habitual attitudes both of mind and of affections. Only where mental and spiritual images are fully adapted to the pure light of God, so far as this can be, is it possible for man’s attitudes and activities to achieve their full flowering in a harmony that resolves all earlier discords.33

I.3.2. Caveat on Demonology

For contemporary readers of Evagrius, however, his casting of this psychological

discourse in terms of demonology can be – to say the least – problematic. What must be

remembered is that demons were simply an accepted fact of life for Evagrius’ milieu,34 and

thus, despite its demon-laden language, “The Praktikos represents a distinct phase in the

evolution of the demonology of the desert tradition.”35 In fact, because it is more practical

than theoretic, it became the standard way of understanding demons for the desert monks,

and this new standard was an advance over previous notions of demonology and interior

analysis.

One of the reasons for this advance is that for Evagrius, there is a distinction

between the passions and the demons; he does not make the mistake of conflating them.36

33 Bamberger, “Introduction,” xciii. 34 Bamberger, “Intro to Praktikos,” 5. 35 Bamberger, “Intro to Praktikos,” 7. 36 Bamberger, “Intro to Praktikos,” 8: “He knows that ‘the passions are accustomed to be stirred up by the senses.’ He recognizes that ‘those memories, colored by passion, that we find in ourselves come from former

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This frees his demonology to achieve a degree of technical precision not previously reached

in monastic literature. For Evagrius, one understands the demon through attentiveness to

and analysis of one’s interior movements:

If there is any monk who wishes to take the measure of some of the more fierce demons so as to gain experience in his monastic art, then let him keep careful watch over his thoughts. Let him observe their intensity, their periods of decline and follow them as they rise and fall. Let him note well the complexity of his thoughts, their periodicity, the demons which cause them, with the order of their succession and the nature of their associations. Then let him ask from Christ the explanations of these data he has observed.37

Yet this method works because, although demons are distinct from interior movements, for

Evagrius the world of demons is in continuity with the world of interior movements, and it

follows analogous laws.38

I.3.3. Evagrius’ Psychologia

Thus, although Evagrius focused on prayer, his work is similar to contemporary

depth psychology, though it does indeed go beyond it.39 Leclercq notes that “it is already

obvious that when a psychiatrist studies [these texts] he finds in them things which escape

the simple historian” and that Evagrius is important because “[w]hat we need today is not

experiences we underwent while subject to some passion.’ And still more explicitly: ‘…the conqueror of the demons…despises not only the demon he conquers, but also these kinds of thoughts he causes in us.’” 37 Evagrius Ponticus, Praktikos 50, in J.E. Bamberger, trans., Praktikos and Chapters on Prayer, Cistercian Studies Series 4 (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1981), 29-30. [For further references to Evagrius’ Praktikos and the Chapters on Prayer, I am giving the number of the Praktikos or Chapter followed by the page number in Bamberger’s text.] See also Bamberger, “Intro to Praktikos,” 8-9. 38 Bamberger, “Intro to Praktikos,” 9. One might perhaps make the case that, in its own peculiar way, this insight of Evagrius’ prefigures the medieval insight Lonergan termed the ‘theorem of the supernatural.’ See Bernard J.F. Lonergan, Grace and Freedom: Operative Grace in the Thought of St. Thomas Aquinas, Collected Works of Lonergan [hereafter CWL] 1, ed. F.E. Crowe and R.M. Doran (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000). 39 Leclerq makes this explicit (“Preface,” xi-xii): “It is above all in relation to prayer that he introduced ideas which have served as a ferment throughout the whole course of tradition and continue to be active in our own times. For the mystery and the practice of prayer – above all contemplative prayer – raises questions which to some seem new, but which are in fact the same which have confronted every period of Christian life when man has stood before God in that eminent attitude of soul where faith touches as it were its object, unable to grasp it yet ever reaching for it….. That which is called today ‘depth psychology’ does not in actual fact reach the deepest part of man where the image of God resides in him. It is this obscure presence of God in his depths that man must discover and bring to light….. [The resulting peace] is what the term hesychia said for Evagrius and his contemporaries, when it is properly understood in the context of all the other terms which are complementary to it and give greater precision to its meaning.”

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only critical editions and philological exegesis of the ancient sources but present-day and

constantly reviewed studies of the states of soul which are part of the spiritual exegesis of

every age.”40

This sort of study, however, is precisely what the ascetic literature, as typified by

Evagrius, aimed to do. Evagrius took full account of interior states and movements, in both

their positive and negative aspects.

Whatever a man loves he will desire with all his might. What he desires he strives to lay hold of. Now desire precedes every pleasure, and it is feeling which gives birth to desire. For that which is not subject to feeling is also free of passion.41

The specific quality of prayer is that it is a respectful gravity which is colored by compunction. It has something of a deepfelt sorrow about it, the kind one feels when, amid silent groans, he really admits his sins.42

Regarding these two passages, Bamberger notes that

Feeling, αϊσθεησις, is for Evagrius an ‘accidental faculty’ which has its seat in the psyche. It is here [in the first quote above] considered in its negative aspect as the fruit of sin. And indeed in the Evagrian conception all the powers of the affective part of man are, indirectly, the result of sin. But for Evagrius this faculty of αϊσθεησις has a more positive side too as is revealed, for instance, in [the second quote]. The reference is to the sense (αϊσθεησις) of prayer.43

Feeling’ is for Evagrius, then, more aptly identified with the contemporary notion of

‘experience,’ at least insofar as it identifies more than just ‘emotion,’ and it plays for Evagrius

both a positive and a negative role. It can either hinder or help one’s prayer, but for him it is

very much worthy of focused attention, especially insofar as it concerns anger.

The passions are accustomed to be stirred up by the senses, so that when charity and continence are lodged in the soul then the passions are not stirred

40 Leclercq “Preface,” xx-xxi. For further discussion on this question, see John Eudes Bamberger, “ΜΝΗΜÊ-∆ΙΑΘΕΣΙΣ: The Psychic Dynamism in the Ascetical Theology of St. Basil,” Orientalia Christiana Periodica 34 (1968): 233-51. 41 Praktikos 4, 16. 42 Evagrius Ponticus, Chapters 42, in J.E. Bamberger, trans., Praktikos and Chapters on Prayer, Cistercian Studies Series 4 (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1981), 61. 43 Bamberger, “Intro to Praktikos,” 16, n.23.

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up. And when they are absent the passions are stirred up. Anger stands more in need of remedies than concupiscence and for that reason the love that is charity is to be reckoned a great thing indeed in that it is able to bridle anger.44

This focus on anger will be very relevant when we move toward seeing Evagrius in

relation to Doran’s work with Girard, but the focus on anger must not be allowed to detract

from the overall horizon in which it occurs. Evagrius is concerned with feelings as such; he

is examining interior states of soul, how it feels to be prayerful, to be a monk, to be angry, to

be joyful. He is certainly effecting a psychologia. The focus on anger, the negative feeling or

experience with which he is most concerned, is simply a normative specification and

concretization of Evagrius’ more general efforts to achieve that psychologia. Yet at the same

time, that normative specification is immensely important for our comparison with Doran.

II. LONERGAN AND GIRARD IN DORAN

Here is where we stand: Evagrius had a broad base of Christian influences; he was

well received in the more mystically-oriented circles of Christianity despite official

condemnations; his followers spread his influence, most importantly (for us) in the Latin

West; and that influence consisted of an emphasis on states of soul, a psychologia, that was

highly concerned with anger. As we move on now to examine Doran’s work with Lonergan

and Girard, the relevance of Evagrius should become more and more clear.

The terms of Doran’s work with Lonergan and Girard draw on the affective

dimension of human interiority, which he has developed in relation to Lonergan’s own four-

level cognitional structure of experience, understanding, judgment, and decision.45 This

‘psychic’ dimension, which Doran proposes as a complement to Lonergan’s ‘spiritual’

44 Praktikos 38, 26. 45 For a good account of Doran’s work on this point, see especially his Theology and the Dialectics of History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990), chapters 2 and 6-10.

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dimensions, allows us to speak of one dynamic consciousness, laden with affect and oriented

toward beauty, intelligibility, truth, and goodness.

Doran finds the connection with Girard through the importance of the affective

dimension for human intersubjectivity. For Girard, the malformation of desire and its

intersubjective effects constitutes the overarching sinful environment that the Christian

tradition has termed ‘original sin,’46 and the main purpose of the revelation in Christ is to

oppose this sinfulness. Using the affectively-broadened notion of interiority that his own

work has opened up, Doran suggests seeing Girard and Lonergan as offering different

dimensions of the one gospel truth regarding sin, redemption, and violence.

II.1. Lonergan

Bernard Lonergan was a Jesuit philosopher and theologian in the Thomist tradition.

Most of his systematic-theological work is contained in early Latin writings, principally the

theses and supplements he wrote for students while teaching at the College de l’immacule

conception in Montreal and at the Gregorian University in Rome. Not surprisingly, this early

work was in Roman Catholic and scholastic manual form, although it does contain a few

points that, according to Lonergan himself, may be permanent contributions to theological

discourse.47

In 1958, Lonergan published his major philosophical work, Insight: A Study of Human

Understanding, in which he attempted to ground a metaphysics, an ethics, and the beginnings

of a theological method in terms of the structure of human knowing (cognitional-intentional

structure). The metaphysics and ethics that resulted bore a distinct resemblance to the

46 René Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, trans. J.G. Williams (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2001), 150. Girard’s two other major works are Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World, trans. S. Bann and M. Metteer (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1987) and The Scapegoat, trans. Y. Freccero (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986). 47 See Charles C. Hefling, “A Perhaps Permanently Valid Achievement: Lonergan on Christ’s Satisfaction,” Method: Journal of Lonergan Studies 10 (1992): 51, for a note on this point.

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metaphysics and ethics of the Aristotelian-Thomist tradition, but Insight is not a text on

Aristotelian-Thomist thought in general, nor is it a text confined to that horizon.48 Rather, it

is a text drawing on (at that time) contemporary scientific insights to foster an understanding

of human knowing, and then out of that understanding Lonergan moved to the construction

of a metaphysics and an ethics.

These two points in Lonergan’s history – the early scholastic work and Insight – help

to contextualize the documents with which we are primarily concerned: De Deo Trino, which

began to be published in 1961 but which had roots extending back to 1945,49 and De Verbo

incarnato, written in the period 1963-4.50 These both are structurally similar to the early Latin

pedagogical texts, but they contain within them points also closely related to Insight.

De Verbo incarnato, Part V, Thesis 17, is identified in Lonergan’s text as

“Understanding the Mystery” but has come to be known in Lonergan scholarship as “The

Law of the Cross.”51 In it, he suggests a heuristic structure identifying the immanent

intelligibility, the central form or meaning, of the redemption itself. There are three basic

points52: first, one must submit to evil without responding to it with further evil; second, evil

must be voluntarily transformed, not through powerful or violent means, but by returning

48 See Frederick E. Crowe, “The Growing Idea,” Appropriating the Lonergan Idea, ed. Michael Vertin (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1989), 6-7; but for balance, see also his comments in “The Origin and Scope of Bernard Lonergan’s Insight,” Appropriating the Lonergan Idea, ed. Michael Vertin (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1989), 21ff. 49 For this information, I had recourse to the online bibliography of Lonergan’s works compiled by the late Fr. Terry Tekippe at http://arc.tzo.com/padre/pri.htm. 50 De Deo Trino is available in Latin/English facing pages as Bernard J.F. Lonergan, The Triune God: Systematics, CWL 12, ed. R. Doran, D. Monsour, and M. Shields (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007) and The Triune God: Doctrines, CWL 13, ed. R. Doran, D. Monsour, and M. Shields (Toronto: University of Toronto Press [forthcoming]); De Verbo incarnato is unavailable in published English. I have made use of an unpublished translation by Charles C. Hefling of Bernard J.F. Lonergan, “Understanding the Mystery,” Part 5, Thesis 17 of De Verbo Incarnato (Rome: Gregorian University Press, 1964). [Hereafter DVI.] 51 Hefling’s translation includes this note at the outset: “Lonergan gave the title ‘Understanding the Mystery’ to this thesis in the index at the end of Part Five; the subtitle [‘The Law of the Cross’] has been added because he often referred to the thesis in that way, for example in ‘The Transition from a Classicist World-View to Historical-Mindedness,’ written in 1966” [now contained in A Second Collection: Papers by Bernard Lonergan, S.J., ed. W.F.J. Ryan and B.J. Tyrrell (London: Darton, Longman, and Todd, 1974), 7]. 52 On the three steps, see DVI 96-7.

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good for evil; and third, there is the divine vindication of the transforming work. Christ

submitted to evils; out of that submission, he transformed those evils into good on the cross;

in response, the Father raised him from the dead, blessing the work he had done and

vindicating Christ. As it was with Christ, so it is with all those who follow after him and

attempt, through peace, to transform evil into good.

For Lonergan, Christians follow after Christ and are drawn into his salvific work

insofar as “the whole Christ, Head and members” is the form of the economy of salvation.53

The Law of the Cross, the three-point structure outlined above, appears in Christ himself as

principle of redemption, and in his members as matter for that redemption.54 Yet

[the members are matter] not, of course, as in inorganic or merely biological or even sensitive matter, but as in rational matter which has to learn and believe, and which out of love freely consents to Christ, lives in Christ, operates through Christ, and is associated with Christ, so that it may be assimilated and conformed to Christ dying and rising.55

Such conformity is accomplished in part through the four56 created participations in

the divine reality that appear in the De Deo Trino text.57 In what may be the most specific

statement in contemporary theology of just what it means to say that Christians are made

“participants in the divine nature,” [2 Pet. 1:4] Lonergan suggests that just as there are four

53 DVI 104. 54 DVI 97. 55 DVI 97. 56 I do not wish to deviate too much from our appointed task. However, the recent debate in Theological Studies has brought under wider scrutiny what before had been a little-known notion in Doran’s thought: the use of the ‘four-point hypothesis’ as a theological “unified field structure.” The question of whether there are four participations (as Doran would have it), or three (as Hefling would emphasize), or two (as Coffey would suggest), is an important one that I believe Doran has correctly negotiated. Thus, although Lonergan himself does not always talk about four participations, my own position is that four is the correct number. For further elaboration, see Robert M. Doran, What is Systematic Theology? (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), chapter 7; idem., “The Starting Point of Systematic Theology,” Theological Studies 67/4 (2006): 750-776; idem., “Addressing the Four-Point Hypothesis,” Theological Studies 68/3 (2007): 674-682; Charles Hefling, “On the (Economic) Trinity: An Argument in Conversation with Robert Doran,” Theological Studies 68/3 (2007): 642-660; Neil Ormerod, “Two Points or Four? Rahner and Lonergan on Trinity, Incarnation, Grace, and Beatific Vision,” Theological Studies 68/3 (2007): 661-673; and David M. Coffey, “Response to Neil Ormerod, and Beyond,” Theological Studies 68/4 (2007): 900-916. 57 The four-point hypothesis itself appears in Lonergan, The Triune God, 471-473.

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real divine relations – paternity, filiation, active spiration, and passive spiration – so there are

four absolutely supernatural created participations in those four relations – the secondary act

of existence of the incarnation [esse secundarium incarnationis] participating in paternity; the light

of glory participating in filiation; sanctifying grace participating in active spiration; and

habitual charity participating in passive spiration.

In his fulfillment of the Law of the Cross, Christ is the new Adam and the Head of

the Church. Precisely in being that Head, he informs the members by drawing them to a

participation in divine life consisting of, in part, the four created participations in the four

divine relations, insofar as these four participations are themselves the ground of human

beings’ conformity to (that is, imitation of) Christ. This, in very brief form, is the key

material from Lonergan on which Doran draws in the dialogue with Girard.

II.2. Girard

René Girard is a French-born literary and social critic who now teaches at Stanford

University. He was baptized Roman Catholic but left the faith in his early adulthood,

believing it not to be credible. Literary research led him to the theory of imitation or

‘mimesis’ for which he is most well known today, and out of that theory he developed an

understanding of the beginnings of human culture, including especially religion, in terms of

mimetic or imitative violence.

Girard suggests that there is a structure to mimetic violence. First, human desires do

not occur in a vacuum, nor are they autonomous; rather, human beings desire because they

wish to imitate one another. While such imitation or mimesis is in principle good,58 in fact it

most often takes the form of an acquisitive mimesis that desires to possess. This desire to

58 Girard, I See Satan, 15.

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possess is modeled after someone who already possesses the object; thus, there is a

triangular structure to acquisitive mimesis: the desirous one, the model, and the object.59

Second, the desire to possess or acquire can become so powerful that it twists the

desiring individual. When this happens, the object of desire becomes less and less, and the

model more and more, the focus of attention; eventually, the object can fade out altogether,

as the model and the mimic become so concerned with the rivalry between them that they

focus on one another instead of on the object. The mimic and the model begin to resemble

one another as they strive (or think they strive) for the object. The more alike they become,

the less they notice it in their efforts to get at the object; yet the more they strive for the

supposed object, the more they resemble one another to outsiders.60

Third, this process of mimetic rivalry does not remain confined to two people.

Rather, as a human community develops, so too do numerous overlapping and complex

rivalries develop. The roles of mimic and model become complexified, with one individual

mimicking another while simultaneously serving as a model for a third, who herself is a

model for another, and so on.61

Fourth, the intensification of the rivalries eventually coalesces around a single

individual, who becomes the object of violence growing out of the rivalrous contagion. This

individual is identified as the source of the rivalry, is violently killed, and thereby serves as a

scapegoat.62 Yet the killing is followed by a peace as the contagious violence finds an outlet,

thus moving the community to identify the scapegoat as the one responsible for the peace as

59 Girard, I See Satan, 15. 60 Girard, I See Satan, 16-7 and 22-3. 61 Girard, I See Satan, 18 and 22. 62 Girard, I See Satan, 24-5.

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well as the violence. Re-enactments of this event then eventually produce religious ritual,

explaining the notion of sacrifice and ritual found in many religious traditions.63

When he turned his attention to the Christian religion, Girard expected to find at its

roots the same mimetic violence that he found at the root of other cultural and religious

establishments. Instead, he found at the root of Christianity an argument against

participation in the violent mechanism that drove the creation of other cultural and religious

elements; this, then, suggested to Girard a real instance of God at work revealing divine

truth to us. He thus returned to the religion into which he had been baptized, and he has

become a powerful intellectual advocate for nonviolence.64

II.3. Doran

Doran’s efforts at drawing Lonergan and Girard into dialogue are succinctly

presented in two of his recent papers, “Imitating the Divine Relations: A Theological

Contribution to Mimetic Theory,”65 and “Lonergan and Girard on Sacralization and

Desacralization.”66 The first proposes that the key to the dialogue is the notion of ‘imitation.’

In the four-point hypothesis, each of the four absolutely supernatural created realities

(secondary act of the incarnation, sanctifying grace, habit of charity, and light of glory) is a

participation in and imitation of one of the four real divine relations (paternity, active

spiration, passive spiration, and filiation, respectively). To understand these imitations, then,

we turn first to the intra-Trinitarian relations.

Aquinas found the analogue for the divine relations in what he called the emanatio

intelligibilis, traditionally translated as ‘intelligible emanation.’ Doran, however, wants to 63 James G. Williams, “Foreword,” I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, trans. J.G. Williams (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2001), xvi-xvii. 64 Williams, “Foreword,” provides a good, concise background on Girard’s biography. One example of Girard’s influence is the growing Colloquium on Violence and Religion (COV&R), whose activities are profiled at http://www.uibk.ac.at/theol/cover/. 65 Robert M. Doran, “Imitating the Divine Relations,” forthcoming paper. 66 Robert M. Doran, “Lonergan and Girard on Sacralization and Desacralization,” forthcoming paper.

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translate emanatio intelligibilis as ‘autonomous spiritual procession,’ and it is here that the

dialogue with Girard first finds contact. Girard suggests that none of our desires are

autonomous, that we in fact derive them from our imitation of a model; Doran, however,

focuses on “the authentic autonomous unfolding of a set of human desires that, while they

may be activated by mimesis [in Girard’s sense], far from being infected by mimetic

contagion, are the condition for transcending it.”67

The key to Doran’s option for a set of uninfected desires is Lonergan’s notion of

two different ways of being conscious. In De Deo Trino, Lonergan distinguishes between the

way in which we are conscious “through our sensitivity” and the way in which we are

conscious “through our intellectuality.”68 Lonergan’s talk in Insight about self-appropriation

and our orientations to the real, the true, and the good primarily applies to the second form

of consciousness (the ‘spiritual’), while Doran has developed our understanding of the

spiritual in its relation to the first form of consciousness (the ‘psychic’). The desires that arise

out of the psychic level provide the concrete affective orientation of the dynamic movement

that ascends through the levels of experiencing, understanding, and judging. When these

desires are properly constituted, they foster authenticity; when they are improperly

constituted, they tend toward unauthenticity. For Doran, this latter occurs principally in the

“acquisitively mimetic desire” identified by Girard, but Doran’s work with desire has allowed

him to distinguish this sort of desire from the sort of desire driving the dynamism of the acts

of understanding, judging, and deciding themselves. The former might be called “psychic

desire”; the latter, “spiritual desire.”

The transcendental orientations for the real, true, and good are desires – the human

subject, as intelligent, reasonable, and responsible, desires the real, the true, the good. But

67 Doran, “Imitating,” 8 68 Doran, “Imitating,” 4-5.

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Doran notes that “[t]hese transcendental desires, even when they are awakened through

mimetic process, are, when authentic, both natural and, in their inner constitution, non-

imitative.”69 The imitative element comes to the fore in the psychic, rather than the spiritual,

way of being conscious, but in such a way that it deeply affects the spiritual, for “the first

‘way of being conscious’ permeates the second… [and it] precedes, accompanies, and

overarches the intentional operations that constitute the second ‘way of being conscious.’”70

Thus Girard is able, according to Doran, to provide theology with a way of specifying just

what is the interference of the psyche with the spirit, and to help theology clarify the notion

of imitation in theological talk of ‘imitating’ the divine.

In the second of his articles, “Lonergan and Girard on Sacralization and

Desacralization,” we can see more explicitly the content of the dialogue Doran wishes to

foster between Lonergan and Girard:

The threefold (or fourfold) communication of God is explicitly referred to in the trinitarian systematics as an imitation of the divine relations, which under Girardian emphases we could see as a mimesis that runs counter to the infected mimesis that constitutes or at least affects the evils of the human race from which we are freed by the Law of the Cross.71

This new mimesis effects a move toward a proper constitution of the first, psychic, way of

being conscious by effecting a removal of the dramatic bias72 that can interfere with the

spiritual levels of consciousness.

Specifically, however, Doran adopts Girard’s understanding of violent contagion to

articulate the primary (though not the only) instance of such dramatic bias. In and through

69 Doran, “Imitating,” 24. 70 Doran, “Imitating,” 25. See also Bernard J.F. Lonergan, “Natural Right and Historical Mindedness,” A Third Collection: Papers, ed. F.E. Crowe (New York: Paulist Press, 1985), 174-5 and “Mission and the Spirit,” A Third Collection: Papers, ed. F.E. Crowe (New York: Paulist Press, 1985), 29-30. 71 Doran, “Lonergan and Girard,” 9. 72 On dramatic bias, see Bernard J.F. Lonergan, Insight: a Study of Human Understanding, ed. F.E. Crowe and R.M. Doran, CWL 3 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992), 214-231, and Doran, What Is Systematic Theology?, 112.

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the gradual removal of one’s subjectivity from the mechanism of mimetic violence, one’s

psyche is moved toward a constitution that will lend support to authentic spiritual

dynamism. But because the mimetic mechanism identified by Girard is intrinsically social

(our desires imitate other persons’), the removal must also be social.

For his part, Lonergan in fact suggests that the end result of the participation in the

divine nature that occurs in the four absolutely supernatural created realities is a full

achievement of the proper arrangement of social interaction that he terms the “good of

order.” Because this end result is intrinsically social and because Girard’s notion of mimesis

is also intrinsically social, Doran uses Girard to suggest that the notion of the good of order

identified by Lonergan is constituted in part by intersubjective relations devoid of violent

mimetic contagion. It is a new, nonviolent, interpersonal, and eschatological reality, founded

on the ground of all interpersonal realities – the relations amongst the three divine persons.

III. CONCLUSION: THE EVAGRIUS-DORAN PARALLEL

From this same second article, we can construct something of an ad hoc framework

for the Doran-Evagrius conversation. Our keys will be three statements from “Lonergan and

Girard on Sacralization and Secularization” – the first from Lonergan and the second two

from Doran – that show the opening of this systematic work to the emphases of ascetical

literature:

[W]hile all men need symbols, only a small minority ever seriously get beyond the limitations of symbolic thinking. Hence, in a developed culture, religion has to be pluralist: it needs some measure of symbolization for all; it needs only a limited measure for the few that get beyond symbolic thinking; and it needs a bounteous dose for the many that do not.73

73 Bernard J.F. Lonergan, “Sacralization and Secularization,” Philosophical and Theological Papers 1965-1980, CWL 17, ed. R.C. Croken and R.M.Doran (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), 264, quoted in Doran, “Lonergan and Girard,” 32-3.

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[T]he appropriate symbolization will be found for Lonergan primarily in the incarnate meaning of persons and of communities that, gathering in the name of Jesus, radiate peace and joy.74 What sets the standard for sacralizations to be fostered is adherence to and symbolic celebration of what Lonergan calls the Law of the Cross.75

I am drawing three principles out of these statements.76 First, religion cannot get on

without symbolization. Second, incarnate meaning is primary at least to the extent that it

conditions the second way of being conscious through its influence on the first way of being

conscious. Third, the appropriate incarnate symbolizations must be symbolizations of the

Law of the Cross. Christian ascetical literature fits these keys: the language of such literature

is largely symbolic; it is intended as a guide for either coenobitic groups of monks attempting

to incarnate the meaning of the cross as a community, individual eremitic monks attempting

to incarnate the meaning of the cross for a community, or some combination of both; and it

displays an understanding of the cross that is in fundamental agreement with Doran’s

position on Lonergan and Girard. The first two of these positions are likely to be accepted

somewhat more quickly by the reader than the third; such fundamental agreement on the

third point, however, is precisely what I intend to show as we conclude this paper.

I suggest that for us the two most important aspects of Doran’s work are 1) the

emphasis on the psychic or first way of being conscious, and 2) the use of Girard to specify

the normative constitution of the first way of being conscious. Turning to Evagrius, one

cannot escape the fact that the ascetic writer was concerned with the constitution of the

74 Doran, “Lonergan and Girard,” 33-4, adds, “But that symbolization is no substitute for the hard work of understanding, judgment, and decision, indeed of collective responsibility.” That is, proper psychic constitution is not sufficient, but must be supplemented by the spiritual levels of consciousness. 75 Doran, “Lonergan and Girard,” 43. 76 These three statements could be supplemented by others. In neither Doran’s nor Lonergan’s case are these the only statements along these lines.

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psychic component of human subjectivity. Succinctly, for Evagrius, “The ascetic life is the

spiritual method for cleansing the affective part of the soul.”77 Likewise,

Just as the soul perceives its sick members as it operates by means of the body, so also the spirit recognizes its own powers as it puts its own faculties into operation and it is able to discover the healing commandment through experiencing the impediments to its free movement.78

I do not think it would be stretching either Evagrius’ or Doran’s meaning to suggest that by

“impediments to its free movement,” Evagrius intends something similar to what Doran

means by the following:

The habitual orientation of our intelligence and affectivity exercises a censorship over the emergence into consciousness of the images that are the psychic representation and conscious integration of an underlying neural manifold….And since the images are easier to repress than [are] the feelings, the affective component becomes dissociated from its imaginal apprehensive correspondent, and attaches itself to other and incongruous images, that is, to those that are allowed to emerge into consciousness. The result is a cumulative departure from coherence, a progressive fragmentation of sensitive consciousness.79

With regard to the first of Doran’s emphases, then, Evagrius runs parallel to the

contemporary concern.

Likewise, Evagrius sees rivalry and anger as the major obstacle to a proper psychic

constitution. Evagrius ranks anger as one of the greatest opponents of the ascetic life:

The most fierce passion is anger. In fact it is defined as a boiling and stirring up of wrath against one who has given injury – or is thought to have done so. It constantly irritates the soul and above all at the time of prayer it seizes the mind and flashes the picture of the offensive person before one’s eyes. Then there comes a time when it persists longer, is transformed into indignation, stirs up alarming experiences by night. This is succeeded by a general debility of the body, malnutrition with its attendant pallor, and the illusion of being attacked by poisonous wild beasts.80

77 Praktikos 78, 36. 78 Praktikos 82, 36-7. 79 Doran, Dialectics, 59-60, but for the full force of the statement, see at least 59-63. 80 Praktikos 11, 18.

25

More specifically, he is concerned with anger’s manifestation in terms of harm among

brothers, as this series of passages makes clear:

When you are praying such matters will come to mind as would seem clearly to justify your getting angry. But anger is completely unjustified against your neighbor. If you really try you will find some way to arrange the matter without showing anger. So then, employ every device to avoid a display of anger.81

Be very attentive lest ever you cause some brother to become a fugitive through your anger. For if this should happen your whole life long you will yourself not be able to flee from the demon of sadness. At the time of prayer this will be a constant stumbling-block to you.82

Whatever you might do by way of avenging yourself on a brother who has done you some injustice will turn into a stumbling block for you at the time of prayer.83

‘Leave your gift before the altar and go be reconciled with your brother,’ [Mt. 5:24] our Lord said – and then you shall pray undisturbed. For resentment blinds the reason of the man who prays and casts a cloud over his prayer.84

The man who stores up injuries and resentments and yet fancies that he prays might as well draw water from a well and pour it into a cask that is full of holes.85

The solution, however, is to be found in a humility grounded on one’s finitude,

whether that grounding is found by remembering judgment:

When you find yourself tempted or contradicted; or when you get irritated or when you grow angry through encountering some opposition or feel the urge to utter some kind of invective – then is the time to put yourself in mind of prayer and of the judgment to be passed on such doings. You will find that the disordered movement will immediately be stilled.86

or by charity:

81 Chapters 24, 59. 82 Praktikos 25, 23. 83 Chapters 13, 37. 84 Chapters 21, 58. 85 Chapters 22, 58. 86 Chapters 12, 57.

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Both anger and hatred increase anger. But almsgiving and meekness diminish it even when it is present.87

Such statements seem very much like expressions of an early-Christian monastic

understanding of the problem of mimetic rivalry. Given that passages such as these occur

within Evagrius’ whole perspective – that of admonishing ascetics to surrender themselves

as Christ surrendered Himself in order to return to union with God – it is reasonable to

suggest that his understanding of proper psychic constitution corresponds with Doran’s

insofar as it demands what Doran identifies as adherence to the Law of the Cross. Further,

Evagrius’ literature was constructed in order to foster a lifestyle incarnating that principle in

individuals and communities.

It therefore seems a reasonable judgment that Evagrius’ early Christian literature

runs parallel in concerns to the contemporary systematic work primarily represented by the

writings of Robert Doran. Because Doran’s work connects these affective and non-violent

emphases to the scholastic constructs of Lonergan’s Latin texts, the emphases of Evagrius’

ascetic literature can likewise be linked to such systematic work. This is the bridge of which

we spoke in the opening of our paper, and therefore to this extent, we have achieved our

stated goal of showing Evagrius’ congruity with Doran’s recent work with Lonergan and

Girard.

IV. CONCLUDING POST SCRIPT ON A DEEPER QUESTION

However, there is a further question, and in the remaining few pages, we intend to

touch upon it, even if its complexity prevents us from arriving at a full solution. Specifically,

a project like the one we have undertaken here forces the systematician to ask: Who cares?

That is, what does it matter if Evagrius’ emphases run parallel to or are ancient expressions

87 Praktikos 20, 21.

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of Doran’s contemporary interests? Are we left with a mere example of intertextuality, even

if we can situate the texts in relation to wider systematic work? Must we stop at this point

and merely proclaim, “Isn’t that interesting?” Can we go on to make a point relevant for

systematic theology?

IV.1. Specifying the Question

First, one might suggest that our efforts here provide a new tool for interpreting

ascetic literature. However, such is not Systematics, but the functional specialty of

Interpretation. Second, one may instead offer this work as a means of determining just what

was going forward in Evagrius’ milieu. Again, however, this is the functional specialty of

History, not Systematics. Third, it is possible to offer up mimetic theory and its relevance to

the psychic component of human subjectivity as a means of situating the Evagrian synthesis

dialectically among other early Christian options. Yet still, one would be left with only a first-

phase use – Dialectic – for our project.88

We begin to zero in on our target once we turn to second-phase options. Evagrius

expresses in symbolic form something very similar to the interior shift that Doran has called

psychic conversion; Evagrius, in part, helps to specify in symbolic-literary terms the psychic

foundations of Christian life. Still, this is only the fifth functional specialty of Foundations,

and so we proceed with Doctrines. Evagrius affirms the basic Christian doctrines of God

and Christ, and he does so in relation to and often in terms of his expression of foundations.

Yet it is in the effort to understand those affirmations, the functional specialty of

Systematics, that we are engaged. What benefit does our project offer that effort?

88 On the two phases of theological method, see Bernard J.F. Lonergan, Method in Theology (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), 133.

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IV.2. A (Perhaps) Controversial Suggestion

One of Doran’s major concerns is the distinction and yet connection between the

first and second ways of being conscious. We here have attempted to establish that Evagrius

Ponticus agrees with that concern, but we have done so with an ulterior systematic purpose

in mind. Systematics has traditionally sought to express understanding in terms of the

intellectual pattern of experience. It has and in large part continues to focus on theory, on

intellectual expression, and it unfortunately often remains in the second stage of meaning,

whatever theoretic advances it may foster. All too often, the purely theoretic expression of

systematic theology is limited not only in the level of human subjectivity to which – and the

pattern of experience in which – it speaks but also in the level of human subjectivity of

which it takes notice. Yet as we have seen, there are two interconnected ways of being

conscious, and a full transition to the third stage of meaning – the stage of interiority –

demands a recognition of the complete reality that is the human subject. That complete

reality is a dynamic movement, at one point passing through understanding, but neither

remaining there nor beginning there. Now, in part, the style of contemporary systematics is a

result of the limitations of human understanding and intellectual expression: there are

elements of human meaning that cannot adequately be expressed in non-symbolic language,

and these pertain (primarily, at least) to the first way of being conscious. Yet if systematics’

goal is the fullest understanding possible, then it must not fail to take account of even those

elements of human meaning that cannot be expressed adequately in theoretical language.89

There are, then, two projects required in the future. First, there must be a

transposition into a theoretical context of those elements of symbolic expression that can be

so transposed. It is this project for which Doran’s work is invaluable: the parallels between

89 Doran, What Is Systematic Theology?, 122ff, makes this point.

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his interests and those of, in this case, Evagrius show that emphases from patterns of

experience other than the intellectual can be brought into a theoretical context. Within the

theoretical context of Doran’s work with Lonergan and Girard, there is then achieved a

connection between the systematic and scholastic theoretical constructions of Lonergan’s

Latin texts and the psychic and symbolic interests of Evagrius’ ascetical literature. Again,

establishing just this much was our goal for all but the concluding remarks of our paper.

Second, there is a more daunting task for the theologian, for the transposition of

which I just spoke was limited. Just as we must transpose into a theoretical context those

elements of symbolic expression that can be so transposed, so we must likewise recognize

that there are elements of symbolic expression that cannot be so transposed.90 Without those

elements, the understanding achieved by the functional specialty of systematics will fall short

of its calling, being denied access to so important a carrier of the meaning of divine

revelation.91 In order to bring these elements as much as possible into the systematic

enterprise, then, new symbols must be constructed and made use of within systematic discourse.

Finally, there is undoubtedly a personal implication for the theologian here. Just as a

full understanding of the symbols of ascetical literature requires a degree of personal

familiarity with the religious experience(s) of which such symbols speak, so the restatement

of those materials in new symbols likewise – and perhaps even more so – requires personal

90 A good example of this from Evagrius would be his statements about knowing apatheia is achieved “when the spirit begins to see its own light.” (Praktikos 64, 33) To a certain extent, apatheia can be discussed theoretically (and we have done so in this paper), but one reaches the symbolic surplus in statements like this one from Evagrius. It is clear that there is meaning here that is relevant to the understanding of the revealed mysteries but that goes beyond the capabilities of theoretical expression. For Doran’s part, see his comments in Dialectics, 61: “No matter how sophisticated and differentiated consciousness becomes, the affect-laden images of the psyche will remain the primary field of expression of our orientation into the known unknown, the primary field of mystery.” 91 Doran, What Is Systematic Theology?, 122-4. Doran’s comments here are the original impetus for my final statements in this paper, though I am making tentative steps beyond his position.

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familiarity with those experiences. This, then, implies that the systematic theologian must be

– to a certain degree, at least – a mystic.

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