the chris to logy of evagrius of pontus v2

8/2/2019 The Chris to Logy of Evagrius of Pontus v2

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Sacred Heart Major Seminary

The Christology of Evagrius of Pontus

in theEpistula Fideiand theEpistula ad Melaniam

ST 910: Early, Medieval, and Renaissance Christology

Stephen C. Petrica

December 2011

(Submitted March 2012)


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William Harmless, S.J., and Raymond R. Fitzgerald, S.J. The Sapph ire Light of the Mind: The Skemmata

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of Evagrius Ponticus, Theological Studies 62 (2001): 498.

San Francisco: Ignatius Press.2

Evagrius Ponticus, The Praktikos & Chapters on Prayer, translated, with an introduction and notes, by3

John Eudes B amberger, OCSO (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1981). Abbreviated hereafter as PCP.

Francis Kline, The Christology of Evagrius and the Parent System of Origen, in Cistercian Studies 204

(1985), p. 155.

A Personal Prolegomenon

Evagrius may not be a household name today, but in the 4th century, he was on Christianitys

cutting-edge and rubbed shou lders with some of the most prom inent figures in the early Church.1

Until just a few years ago, mine was among the households where Evagrius was un-

known. But as one whose spiritual discipline has long been shaped by the Benedictine Rule, my

interest was drawn to the publication in 2002 ofEarthen Vessels: The Practice of Personal

Prayer According to the Patristic Tradition, by Gabriel Bunge, O.S.B. In his monastic Rule2

[73:2,5], St. Benedict commends the Conferences of the Fathers [and] theirInstitutes to those

hastening on to the perfection of monastic life, and I had indeed acquired some familiarity with

St. John Cassian. But it was Bunges discussion that introduced me to Cassians dependence

upon the obscure Evagrius. A few years after that I bought Bambergers edition ofThe Praktikos3

& Chapters on Prayerby the same Evagrius. I discovered in him a profound and provocative, if

sometimes cryptic, spiritual guide.

I was not alone in that discovery. Kline wrote in 1985 that

[e]ver since the discovery that CassiansInstitutes and Conferences describe a spiritual system thatcould be traced back directly to Evagrius and then to Origen, monks and nuns have rightly busied

themselves with 1) a study of his wo rks and 2 ) a search for traces of his influences in later monastic

writers.4

In a 2004 status question, Casiday noted [t]wenty years of fruitful research that were forcing


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Augustine Casiday, Gabriel Bunge and the Study o f Evagrius Ponticus, St. Vladimirs Theological5

Quarterly 48 (200 4), pp 249 251. Casiday cites the publication in English ofEarthen Vessels as something of a

turning point in this revisionism.

Tim Vivian,Four Desert Fathers: Pambo, Evagrius, Macarius of Egypt and M acarius of Alexandria6

(Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimirs Seminary Press, 2004), p 5 2.

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revisions to the traditional accounts of Evagrianism. Evagrius has been undergoing a revival.5

But how had such a fecund writer fallen into obscurity in the first place? His name, I learned, had

been tainted by centuries-old anathemas and charges of heresy. I was primed, then, to do some

exploring on my own.

Evagrius: APrcis of His Life

Our principal sources of information about the life of Evagrius are a fragmentary Coptic

Life of Evagrius and chapter 38 of the GreekLausiac History, both by Palladius, the late fourth-,

early fifth-century Galatian monk in Egypt. The Coptic Life is substantially longer than the

corresponding chapter of theLausiac History, leading Vivian to infer almost certain censorship

regarding Evagrius and other Origenists arising from what has been called the First Origenist6

Controversy. Anti-Origenism and its effects on the transmission of texts by and about Evagrius is

an issue we will meet again later in this paper.

Evagrius was the son of a chorepiskopos, or suffragan bishop serving a rural diocese,

born circa 345 in Pontus, a town on the Black Sea. He was ordained a lector by Basil, bishop of

Csarea, who was later revered as St. Basil the Great, one of the Cappadocian fathers. In his

twenties he relocated to Constantinople, where he became something of a disciple to another of

the Cappadocian fathers, St. Gregory of Nazianzus. Gregory ordained him to the diaconate, and

recognizing his intellectual abilities advanced him to the position of archdeacon. With Gregory,

Evagrius attended the Council of Constantinople in 381. There he acquired a reputation as an


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Ibid., p. 75.7

Ibid., pp. 757 6. Note that distracting thoughts deployed by demons to distract monks from their ascetic8

struggle is a typical Evagrian analysis, developed in his essay On Thoug hts (in Casiday [2006], pp. 89116 ). A

cynic, reading that the womans husband was an influential nobleman and that the heretics would revel in

implicating Evagrius in a scandal, might suspect that the operations of his con science were augmented by thoughts

planted by a demon of calculation.

Ibid.9

Ibid., p. 78.10

Like St. Jerome, his con temporary in Jerusalem, Rufinus was a translator of theological works into Latin;11

he it was who translated Origens De principiis from the Greek. Rufinus had also spe nt several years in Egypt

himself, for six years as a disciple in Alexandria o f Didymus the B lind.

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effective defender of orthodox Trinitarian theology. Palladius notes that:

[T]ruly Evagrius was very pro tective of the Scriptures and was well equipped to refute every heresy

with his wisdom. He was therefore well known throughout Constantinople for having combated the

heretics with forceful and eloquent language. The whole city praised him greatly.7

Despite his learning and rhetorical skills, however, Evagrius remained subject to the temptations

of young men. Palladius continues:

[H]e fell into the hands of the demon who brings about lustful thoughts for women, as h e told us later

after he had been freed from this passion. Indeed, the woman loved him very much in return. But

Evagrius was fearful before God and d id not sin with her because, in fact, the woman was married and

Evagrius also followed his conscience because her husband was member of the nob ility and greatly

honored and, furthermore, Evagrius thought deeply about the magnitude of shame and sin and

judgment and realized that all the heretics whom he had humiliated would rejoice. 8

Palladius notes that Evagrius sought Gods help to free him from this passion, yet the woman

persisted in her madness for him to the point that she made a public spectacle of herself.9

Warned in a dream, Evagrius fled Constantinople for Jerusalem, where he was joyfully wel-

comed by Melania the Elder, a patrician Roman who took the veil after her husband and two10

sons all died in the same year. She and Rufinus of Aquileia ruled over a double monastery of11

men and women on the Mount of Olives.

Still susceptible, however, to vanity and bodily pleasure, Evagrius developed a mysteri-


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Chapter 60 on Prayer, PCP 65.12

Harmless and Fitzgerald, pp. 4984 99.13

4

ous wasting illness that resisted all the efforts of physicians. Melania perceived that the illness

was Gods visitation, and bade Evagrius to disclose to her all this thoughts. Exacting his promise

to become a monk, she entreated God for him and he was restored to health. True to his word,

Evagrius took the habit and went to Nitria, a center of Egyptian monasticism in the Nile delta.

After two years there (receiving monastic formation?) he moved deeper into the desert, 12 miles

south to Kellia. There he spent the remaining years of his life, dying in 399.

Evagrius as a Theologian

His monastic context and the structures of prayer and ascetical discipline that characterize

it are utterly essential to understanding Evagrius as a theologian. Indeed, the very term theolo-

gian has a particular meaning in the Evagrian thought-world, as is suggested by what may be his

best known words: If you are a theologian, you truly pray. If you truly pray, you are a theolo-

gian. Harmless and Fitzgerald explain:12

According to E vagrius, theology is a knowledge of God gained from first-hand experience It comes

not from boo ks, but from prayer. Evagrius did not doubt the value of reading, of study, of reason; nor

did he doubt the p rofound value of dogma, of liturgy, or of ecclesiastical authority. Far from it. But

for him, theology in the strict sense is the encounter of the praying mind with God.13

The human person, in Evagrius understanding, was a pure mind created by God to enjoy

the knowledge of him, but by the exercise of their free wills, these pure minds fell from their

contemplation of God:

Falling at some point from its former rank through its free will, it was called a soul. And it descended

again and was named a b ody. Since their differences of will and movem ent will at some point pass

away, it will rise to its former creation: its nature and person and name will be one, which God


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A.M. Casiday,Evagrius Ponticus, The Early Church Fathers, (London: Routledge, 2006), p. 69 . The text14

cited is from The Great Letter, often referred to as the Letter to Melania, 26 (by Casidays paragraph num ber-

ing).

Evagrius Ponticus,Ad Monachos , Ancient Christian W riters, Translation and Comm entary by Jeremy15

Dricoll, O.S.B. (New York: Newman, 20 03), p. 7. Emphasis in the original.

Andrew Louth, An d If You Pray T ruly, You Are A T heologian: Some Reflections on Early Christian16

Spirituality, in Wisdom of the Byzantine Church: Evagrios of Pontus an d Maximos the Confessor, edited by Jill

Raitt, (Columbia, Mo.: Department of Religious Studies [University of Missouri], 1997), p. 2. N ote that Evagrios

is Louths preferred spelling.

Ibid.17

Praktikos 38, PCP 26.18


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knows.14

As Driscoll summarizes, [God] provides the rationalsoulas the direct extension of the fallen

mind, and he arranges lower parts of the soul whereby he joins it (and the mind of which it is an

extension) to a body. The mind of which the soul is an extension is the highest part of man.15

The soul is further subdivided into two parts: the concupiscible part and the irascible part (or as

Louth calls them, the desiring and incensive parts of the soul, respectively). These two are16

thepassionate part of the soul, while the mind is the faculty ofreason by which one knows God.

Prayer is the activity of the mind by which we know God, but that intellectual activity can be

hindered by desire (the concupiscible part of the soul) distracting the intellect (or mind) and the

incensive orirascible part darkening it. This leads Evagrius directly to the whole point of17

monastic life: Since [t]he passions are accustomed to be stirred up by the senses, for the soul18

to return to God its passions must be purified and brought into order, and [t]he ascetic life is the

spiritual method for cleansing the affective part of the soul.19

The goal o f the ascetic life is charity; the goal of contemplative knowledge is theology. The beginnings

of each are faith and contemplation of nature respectively. Such of the demons as fall upon the


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Harmless and Fitzgerald, p. 521. T he sapphire allusion is to the theophany narrated in Exodus 2 4:9-10:21

Then Mo ses and Aaron, Nad ab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel went up, and they saw the God of

Israel; and there was under his feet as it were a p avement of sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness (ibid.,

p. 518).

Ibid., p. 513. T hey note as well on p. 5 14: Evagrius says that prayer is not just an activity of mind; it is a22

state of mind, a katastasis. That means that prayer is not so much something one does as something one is. For

Evagrius, prayer is not ekstasis, not leaving oneself; it is a katastasis, a coming to ones true state.

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affective part of the sou l are said to be the opponents of the ascetic life. Those again who disturb the

rational part are the enemies of all truth and the adversaries of co ntemplation.20

The ascetical disciplines of monastic life have as their object the mastery of passion, leading to

the condition Evagrius calls apatheia or passionlessness. Freed from the darkness and distrac-

tions of the soul, the mind is able to enter into the contemplative knowledge of the Trinity. He

expresses this paradigmatically in Skemmata 2:

If one wishes to see the state of the mind, let him dep rive himself of all representations and then he

will see the mind appe ar similar to sapphire or to the color of the sky. But to do that without being

passionless (a-patheia) is impossible, for one must have the assistance of God who breathes into him

the kindred light.21

This brief passage is freighted with terms (state, mind, representations, and passionlessness) that

in Evagrian use have specific content; but for the purposes of this paper, mindandpassionless-

ness are the more directly relevant.

[I]n the Greek tradition, the mind (nous) is our intuitive side. It enables us to know and recognize the

truth of things instantly, whether a friends face or a mathematical proof. Evagrius believed that the

way the mind kno ws God is not a matter of logic, of thinking; it is a direct intuition. For Evagrius,

as for the whole E astern theological tradition, the mind is the highest dimension of the human person.

It is the image of God within us, that which is most like its creator. Since the mind is the mo st God-

like part of us, it is the faculty most capable of knowing God. Thus Evagrius claims that there is

nothing more natural to us as human beings than praying22

In a comment on Psalm 141:2 (Let my prayer be set forth in thy sight as the incense),

Evagrius says that if prayer is like incense, then the mind as the vessel of prayer is a sort of


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Cited in Harmless and Fitzgerald, p. 514.23

Driscoll, p. 338.24

Louth (1997), p. 8.25

Louth (1997 ), p. 7. He is quoting at the end number 52 o f the Chapters on Prayer; cf. PCP 63.26

Harmless and Fitzgerald, p. 516. T hey note: The term apatheia had been o riginally used by the Stoics,27

but Christian theologians soon adopted it. Athanasius, for instance, speaks of Christ as passionless; and in the Life

of Anthony, Athanasius describes his hero arriving at a state of dispassionate tranquility.

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censer.23

True prayer is knowledge of God, that is, contemplation of the Trinity. Strictly speaking,

theology is not ratiocination about the qualities or nature of God, but it is knowledge of God in

prayer. (Knowledge gained through discursive reasoning Evagrius would callphilosophy. ) As24

Louth puts it, [i]nstead of referring to what we know of God, however highly qualified, [theo-

logy] refers to our actual knowing of God. Only the one who prays truly can be a theologos or25

theologian, and to pray truly requires an intellect that is attentive to God; but the passions of the

soul distract from that attentiveness.

But if the intellect can rise above distractions to the state that Evagrios called apatheia, then it attains

to its natural state which is the state of prayer. [I]n this state the philosophical and spiritual mind

is snatched up on high in the most intense love.26

The English word apathy is a false cognate forapatheia as Evagrius uses the word. Harmless and

Fitzgerald state that:

Evagriuss term here, apatheia, has nothing to do with apathy. Nor does it mean a lack of passion

in the sense of a lack of emotion. In fact, Evagrius defines his understanding quite precisely in the

Skemmata: Passionlessness is a quiet state of the rational soul. It results from gentleness and self-

control {Skemmata 3) .27

Evagrius's concern is prayer, and in his understanding the passions interfere with true prayer: A

man in chains cannot run. Nor can the mind that is enslaved to passion see the place of spiritual


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Number 71 of the Chapters on Prayer, PCP 66.28

Harmless and Fitzgerald, p. 5 16f. Imperturbability, however, is pr ecisely how St. Jerome describes29

apatheia as Evagrius uses the word. In Epistle 133 he lampoons the teaching: Evagriushas published a book of

maxims on apathy, or, as we should say, impassivity or imperturbability; a state in which the mind ceases to be

agitated andto speak simplybecomes either a stone or a God . In the same passage he also maligns Melania as

her whose nam e bears witness to the b lackness of her perfidy. At http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/30011 33.htm.

Accessed December 13, 2011.

Louth (1997 ), p. 9. Of the Platonic influence on Evagrius and his contempo raries, Louth notes (p. 5f.)30

that this influence should not be construed as the impact o f one collection of ideas on another collection of ideas (of

Platonism on the Bible), but rather as the way Christians who spoke and thought in Greek, who were Greek, drew

upon ideas familiar to them to answer prob lems [sic] that were problems for them.

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prayer. It is dragged along and tossed by these passion-filled thoughts and cannot stand firm and

tranquil. Apatheia is not some Stoic ideal of imperturbability. It is a relative calm on the far28

side of the stormand a realistic calm that still must face the daily upsets of life. Evagrius29

understands the apatheia sought in monastic life as the return of a fallen soul to its healthy state.

Through assiduous practice of the ascetical disciplines, the monk learns to control the

distractions of the sensible world on the operation of the intellect, and thus he is able to rise to

the former state of his soul: the intellectual contemplation of God in prayer. Louth points out that

this is consistent with Plato, for whom theology

was more than the ascertaining of facts about the divine; it entailed a who le moral reformationthelong and painful passage from the shadows of the Cave to the daylight reality of the world ou tside.

Moral v irtue was the indispensable basis for intellectual virtue, and neither could be achieved without

struggle and perseverance. Philosophy described this whole process. It was a preparation for passing

beyond this world to the world of intelligible reality 30

In this sense, then, monks are philosophers whose lives are ordered to control the passions.

With the intellect clear, the monk is able to pray truly and become a theologian.

Evagrian Christology

From the foregoing, it will be apparent that Evagrius is neither a speculative nor a

systematic theologian in the sense that those terms are used today. Rather, he is a monk writing


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Casiday [2006], p. 45f.31

Epistula Fidei [hereafter abbreviated EF] nos. 45 (according to Bunges numbering as used in Casiday32

[2006]).

EF 8.33

9

primarily for other monks out of his experience of ascetic discipline and prayer. Understanding

his theological method, one also sees that one cannot separate Evagrius doctrinal and ascetical

writings. That is a distinction he would neither make nor understand.

Nevertheless, Evagrius does discuss theological doctrine in his writings. He touches on

questions of the nature and work of Christ primarily in four documents. The Scholia on the

Psalms touch incidentally on types of Christ in the Psalms, while theKephalaia Gnostica

engages Christological questions more substantively. However, neither is readily available in

complete English translation. We shall focus principally, therefore, on two significant documents

in the Evagrian corpus, theEpistula Fidei and theEpistula ad Melaniam.

The epistle on the faith is the earliest datable writing of Evagrius, being written from

Constantinople circa 379380, i.e., in the period immediately before the First Council of31

Constantinople. Given that time and place, it is unsurprising that matters of Christology are

discussed in the context of Trinitarian theology. Evagrius begins with a clear affirmation of the

divinity of the Son: One must confess God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit

To those who insult us on grounds of believing in three gods, it must be said that we confess that

God is one, not in number, but in nature. He notes that everything holy that has a circum-32

scribed nature has holiness added to it; and since it has holiness added to it, it admits of evil. But

the font of holiness, from which every reasoning creature is made holy in proportion to its virtue,

is the Son and the Holy Spirit. He continues,33


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EF 9.34

EF 14.35

EF 14 15. Scripture quotations throughout are from the Revised Standard Version.36

EF 1618.37

10

And yet we, in keeping with right reason, do no t say the Son is either like or unlike the Father; each

term is equally inapplicable. For the terms like and unlike are used only with respect to qualities,

whereas the divine is free from quality. But as we confess the identity of their nature, we also accept

the identity of their essence and disavow the idea of a comp osite naturefor the Father, who is God

by his essence, has begotten the Son, who is God by his essence. Thus, the identity of their essence

is shown: for one who is God by essence has the same essence as another who is God by essence.34

All three Persons of the Trinity share the same essence, that of the one God.

Then he considers each of six passages of Scripture that our adversaries seize and distort

to their own purpose before presenting them to us to debase the glory of the Only-Begotten,35

namely, by suggesting the inferiority of the Son to the Father.

1. I live because of the Father (John 6:57)36

Evagrius first proposes that this expression does not describe [Christs] life in eternity,

as I thinkbut rather that life in the flesh that came to be in time which he lived through the

Father. Then he suggests that [h]e can also mean by life that life which Christ lives in that he

has God the Word within himself. Noting that the same verse continues, so he who eats me

will live because of me, he says we eat his flesh and drink of his blood, becoming communi-

cants of the Word and Wisdom through his Incarnation and physical life. It is this flesh and

blood existence that Christ lives through the power of God that is the means by which the soul

is nourished and prepared for the contemplation of ultimate realities.

2,. The Father is greater than I (John 14:28)37

Even from this phrase, Evagrius claims, it can be shown that the Son is of one essence


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EF 1925.38

11

withe the Father because just as with apples and oranges, comparisons are only meaningful

between things that are of the same nature.

[W]e say that this angel is greater than that, or this man more righteous than that, or this bird faster

than that. If, then, comparisons are made of things in the same species; and the Father is called

greater in comparison with the Son; then the Son is of the same essence as the Father.

A second consideration about how he who is the Logos and became flesh could confess

that the Father is greater than himself, is precisely that he became a dead man for your sake, so

as to deliver you from death and give you a share of heavenly life. That is to say, the subordina-

tion of Christ to the Father is an element of the divine condescension for the sake of fallen

humanity.

3. Of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father

only (Matthew 24:36)38

Evagrius adduces two separate arguments to explain the apparent subordination of the

Son to the Father in this passage. In the first he asserts that nothing is unknown to the true

Wisdom, through whom all things were made [i.e., to Christ; cf. John 1:3]; and no one at all is

ever ignorant of what he has made. Nevertheless, Christ numbered himself among the ignorant

for the sakeof the weakness of the multitudes; that is:

[H]e makes this dispensation for your weakness, so that those who are sinning would not fall into

despair owing to the appointed time, as if insufficient time remained for repentance; and again so that

those who have been long fighting against the opposing power wou ld not abandon their posts owing

to the length of time.

In other words, in the Incarnation Christ assumes human ignorance so as to assure the lax that

there is still time to repent and to encourage the strong to persevere.

Alternatively, Evagrius explains that the disciples of Christ having come to contemplation


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EF 21.39

EF 22.40

Ibid.41

EF 27.42

Casiday [2006], p. 211 n. 9.43

12

and being purified by the Word yearn to know ultimate blessedness. By day Jesus meant the

complete and precise comprehension of Gods purposes, and in saying hour, the contemplation

of the One and Only. But understanding these things is possible to the Father only, since the39

Father himself is the end and ultimate blessedness.40

If, then, God is said to know about himself what is, and not to know what is not; and our Lord is not

the final object of desire, in keeping with the purpose of the Incarnation and rudimentary doctrine; then

our Saviour does no t know the goal and ultimate blessedness.41

Knowledge of that goal and ultimate blessedness, which Evagrius identifies as the meaning of

the day and hour, is specifically knowledge of the Father rather than of Christ. Therefore Christ

quite properly does not know it, since it is not knowledge of himself; that, however, is not to

deny that he is God the Son, one in essence with the Father.

4. The LORD created me (Proverbs 8:22)42

Evagrius distinguishes between creation in essence and creation in function:

He who leads us to the kingdom o f heaven is also called the beginning of the evangelical waysnot

as one who became a creature in nature, but as one who became the way according to the

dispensation. And in the same way he became the way, so, too, he became the door, the

shepherd, the angel, the sheep, and again the high priest and apostle, with the particular names

being applied to particular considerations.

The word considerations in this passage is Casidays translation for Evagrius term epinoia.43

The epinoias of Christ are different aspects of his identity, vocation, and providential action.

Thus he is the way, the door, the shepherd, and so on. The epinoias of Christ are what is created,


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EF 28.44

EF 29.45

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says Evagrius, not his essence.

5. For our sake he made him to be sin (II Corinthians 5:21)44

Rather than meaning that Christ in his essence somehow became sin, and therefore by

definition distinct from, inferior to, and unworthy of the holy God, Evagrius asserts that he

became sin when he made mankinds subjectionand persecution, nakedness, and weak-

nesshis own: [T]he Lord made his own those difficulties that surround us by taking to himself

our passions through communion with us.

6. The Son can do nothing of his own accord (John 5:19)45

Evagrius avers that even this passage attests chiefly that the Son is of the same nature as

the Father, and he adduces three arguments to prove it. First is a sort of syllogism:

[I]f every rational creature with free will can do of itself what it wills and has equal inclination toward

the good and the bad, whereas the Son can d o nothing of himself, then the Son is no creature; and if

no creature, then he is of one essence with the Father.

Second is another syllogism predicated on a Christological reading of an Old Testament text:

[N]one of the creatures can do all that it wishes. But the Son has done whatever he desired in

heaven and on earth [Psalm 134.6]. So, then, the Son is no creature. Third, and most obscurely,

he argues that all creatures consist of opposites or admit of opposites. But the Son is righteous-

ness itself and is immaterial. So, then, the Son is no creature; and, if not, he is of one essence

with the Father. The third argument, in other words, reasons from the eternal Son, the second

Person of the immaterial Trinity in whom there are no opposites, in apparent distinction from

the Incarnatei.e., materialJesus. It would be anachronistic to call this argument Nestorian,


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Epistula ad Melaniam [hereafter abbreviated EM ] no. 5 (according to Bun ges numbering as used in46

Casiday [2006]).

EM 6.47

EM 7. This use also prefigures the ninth century hymn, Veni Creator Sp iritus, which includes the line,48

The sevenfold gifts of grace are thine, O Finger of the Hand Divine

EM 8.49

14

but it does seem to reflect what could be described as at least an incipient Nestorianism.

The second principal source for Evagrius Christology is theEpistula ad Melaniam,

which is his longest and perhaps latest letter. Whatever its precise date, it may be said to reflect

Evagrius mature thought. He begins with a discussion of the nature of epistolary communica-

tion, and analogizes creation to a letter from God. He says that creation exists like a letter:

through his power and his wisdom (that is, by his Son and Spirit), he made known abroad his

love for [those who are far from him] so that they might be aware of it and draw near. As in46

reading a letter one becomes aware of the skill of him who wrote it and the intention of the

writer, so one who contemplates creation with understanding becomes aware of the Creators

hand and finger, as well as his intentionthat is, his love. Hand and finger are figures for47

the Son and Spirit of God:

You may ask m e, How can the hand and finger stand for the wisdom and power or rather, the Son

and the Spirit? Listen to the Spirit of God, who says, The Lords right hand h as shown strength, and

the Lords right hand exalted me [Ps 118 .15]; and, Your right hand, Lord, is glorified in strength,

etc. [Ex 15.6]. The right hand and the power are the Son. As for the Spirit, the Son says in his

gospel, If it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out dem ons [ Mt 12.28 ]; but according to another

Evangelist, he says, by the finger of God [Lk 1 1.20]; so the finger and wisdom are the Spirit of

God. It is thus evident that the hand and finger of Go dare the Son and Spirit of God.48

Thus the ministry of God through creation for those who are far from him, but others who are

receptive because of their purity and good deeds are so near to God that they do not need letters

(that is, creation) to become aware of their Creators intention, wisdom and power. Gods49


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EM 12. It would be a mistaken inference to conclude from the parallelism of the last sentence that50

Evagrius considers the Son and Spirit to be created. He makes the point explicit in EM 18 : [T]he Word and Spirit

are signs of the Father: they know everything and make everything known, since they are not creatures but rather are

the exact image and true radiance of the Fathers essence.

EM 27.51

EM 26.52

EM 27.53

EM 5758.54

15

ministry to them is still by the Word and the Spirit, but is no longer mediated by created things.

There is a hierarchy discernible here:

The So n and the Spirit are signs of the Father by which he is known, and rational creation is a sign by

which the Son and the Spirit are known (in keeping with the verse, in our image [Gen 1.26]). T he

sign of intelligible and immaterial creation is visible and material creation, just as visible things are

the types of invisible things.50

Contemplation of thesensible world leads those whose perceptions have been purified by the

ascetical life to the intelligible world, the world of mind where the soul may contemplate God,

and therein lies their salvation:

When like torrents to the sea the minds return to [G od the F ather], he completely changes them to his

own nature, colour and taste: in his endless and inseparable unity, they will be one and no longer

many, since they will be united and joined to him.51

Thus the minds that through the exercise of their free will fell from their former rank and became

souls, and then descended again and became bodies, may rise again to their former creation. 52

This unification of rational beings with God the Father, ortheosis, is possible only because of53

the incarnation of God the Son:

It is unnatural that God should be bo rn from a wom an [Gal 4.4]. Yet, because of his love for us and

since his nature is not bound by or sub jected to any law, God was born from a woman in keeping withhis will (so that his being was not destroyed), to free us from the conception and birth of the curse and

transgression and to bear us anew in a b irth of blessing and righteousness. [H]e not only did no t

dwell among [this conception and birth that is enclosed by the curse], but even raised us up because

(as we have said) in his love he descended into them without transgression.54


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EM 61.55

Luke Dysinger,Psalmody and P rayer in the Writings of Evagrius Ponticus, (Oxford: Oxford University56

Press, 2005), in ada pted form at http://www.ldysinger.com/evagrius/00_introd/02_biog.htm. Accessed Decemb er 13,

2011.

These three occur at the end of a list of 21 putative heretics, among them Sabellius, Arius, Eunomius,57

Apollinaris, Paul of Samosata, and Nestorius.

16

Toward the end of theEpistula ad Melaniam Evagrius anticipates the question of

incipient Nestorianism that we adumbrated above:

In this world, they were not two (God and man), but one (G od for himself and simultaneously man for

us); likewise, in his world, they were not two (God and man), bu t one God (God for himself who is

God and man, since God became hum an)for just as the former is man because of the latter, likewise

the latter is God because of the former.55

Conclusion: Anathema and Revision

During the hundred and fifty years which followed his death in 399, Dysinger notes that

Evagrius writings inspired both criticism and admiration. In 553, however, the Second Council56

of Constantinople (i.e., the fifth ecumenical council) anathematized Origen and his followers

(among whom was accounted Evagrius), who were found to hold a heretical metaphysic. Nearly

100 years later the Lateran Council of 649 enacted its Canon 18, which reads:

If anyone according to the holy Fathers, harmoniously with us and likewise with the Faith, does not

with mind and lips reject and anathematize all the most abominable heretics together with their

impious writings even to one least portion, whom the holy Catholic and apostolic Church of God , that

is, the holy and universal five Synods and likewise all the approved Fathers of the Church in harmony,

rejects and anathematizes, we mean Origen, Didymus, Evagrius, and briefly all the remaining

heretics, who have been condemned and cast out by the Catholic Church 57

Consequently, the works of Evagrius were systematically expunged by the orthodox churches of

the east and west. The original texts were lost, although translations survived in the Syrian and

Armenian churches. Some, most notably theEpistula Fidei, survived by virtue of misattribution

to writers of undoubted orthodoxy.

The irony is that the contemporaries of Evagrius do not seem to have understood him to


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Ibid.58

Ibid.59

Casiday [2004], p. 251. He calls the revisionists the Benedictine School because its two principal60

protagonists are Benedictines, as are the principal institutions and publications involved.

17

be an Origenist. To be sure, he knew and was influenced by the writings of Origen, but as

Dysinger pertinently observes:

[I]n the first decades following his death neither his critics nor his admirers bestowed o n him the title

(or epithet) Origenist. Jerome disliked Evagrius use of the term apatheia and was suspicious of

Evagrius friendship with Rufinus; but he seems to have regarded Evagrius as a crypto-Pelagian, rather

than a disciple of O rigen. Neither Palladius, Socrates, nor Sozomen associate Evagrius with the first

Origenist crisis, which they otherwise recount in detail. Palladius failure to associate Evagrius with

Origen is particularly surprising, since Pallad ius considered expertise in Origen a high attainment,

almost a sign of sanctity; and he extols other desert fathers and mothers pr ecisely because they pored

over the famous Alexand rians works. That Palladius does not praise his own teacher, Evagrius, in

these terms suggests that Evagrius Origenism was either less apparent or less a so urce of concern

to his contemporaries than it was to those who later came to kno w his writings.58

The question isnt whether what the Councils condemned was heretical, but whether the heretical

teachings could legitimately be ascribed to Evagrius. Of this Dysinger says,

These anathemas were occasioned in large measure by the exaggerated (and by then clearly heretical)

christology and eschatology of certain sixth-century Palestinian mo nks who were fascinated with the

writings of Origen and apparently also with Ev agrius more obscure treatises, especially theKephalaia

Gnostica.59

For centuries, orthodox theologians east and west have taken the findings of the ecumenical

council at face value, with the consequence that Evagrius was largely ignored where he wasnt

completely forgotten. But the last several decades have seen a renewal of interest in the work of

Evagrius and a reassessment of his place in theological history.

Augustine Casiday describes two divergent approaches in the contemporary study of

Evagrius: the traditional Heresiologist school and a revisionist view that he calls the Benedic-

tine School. An Origenist who surpassed Origen himself is the Heresiologist view, but60

Casiday argues cogently that:


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Casiday [2004], p. 269.61

Casiday [2004], p. 270.62

Ibid.63

John McGuckin, ed., The Westminster Handbook to Origen (Louisville: Westminster, 2004), p . 7464

18

Later controversies have exercised an undue influence on how peop le have read Evagrius: lapidary

slogans, excerpts stripped from their original context, and hostile accusationsthe most important of

which were made o ver a century and a h alf after his deathhave p rovided the framework that most

theologians and historians have used to assess Evagrius writings.61

These slogans and excerpts arise from the Second Origenist Controversy (c. 532-553), the most

thorough account of which was written by one Cyril of Scythopolis. Scholars for centuries have

tended to accept Cyrils presentation as essentially accurate, but Casiday cites the work of the

Dutch Cistercian scholar Danil Hombergen which he says offers a compelling case for

systematic skepticism about Cyrils claims. And by calling into question the historical62

reliability of Cyrils depiction of Origenism, Casiday says, Hombergen has kicked a major prop

from beneath the habit of reading Evagrius as a speculative theologian who was, in the eyes of

orthodox bogeys, dangerously liberal.

To be clear on this all-important point, the expectation that in Evagrius we find a free-thinking

philosophical theologian derives primarily from the conde mnations of Origenism advanced chiefly by

Cyril of Scythopolis. And since Hombergen has shown that Cyril tendsto make unverifiable

assertions about what Origenism meant in the sixth century, there is really no reason for theologians

and scholars at the dawn of the twenty-first century to perpetuate Cyrils claims.63

It seems to me to be the case rather that what McGuckin says about Origens Christology could

just as readily be said about that of Evagrius, changing only the date:

One must on ly keep in mind that, when he first conceived his Christology, in the first half of the third

century, Origen ventured into a co nceptual no-mans-land. The time was hardly ripe for a systematic

treatise on Christ. However, in his whole written legacy the Alexandrian pioneer exhibits a consistent

Gospel-based Christology, whose richness still amazes many historians of Christian thought.64

Indeed, when Evagrius was active the Church had yet to pronounce on questions of Christologi-


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Derwas J. Chitty, The Desert a City (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimirs Seminary Press, 1995), p.50.65

Dysinger, loc. cit.66

Butlers Lives of the Saints, New Full Edition , Vol.2: February, Revised by P aul Burns (Collegeville:67

Liturgical Press, 1998).

Pp. 112 and 113, respectively. The entry inButlers is based largely (p. 114) on Louis BouyersHistory68

of Ch ristian Spirituality, a work very m uch of what Casiday calls the heresiological school in its approach to

Evagrius.

19

cal orthodoxy; the councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon took place in the fifth century. Evagrius

came to maturity, rather, during the Trinitarian controversies of the fourth century, and as

Palladius records (in the passage cited on p. 3, above), his contemporaries regarded him as a

champion of orthodoxy.

The observation Derwas Chitty made about Evagrius in 1966 remains true today: His

very great importance is only now beginning to be appreciated, and thus theologians (in the65

modern sense of the word) have begun to revisit the received wisdom about him. Dysinger

reports (a bit optimistically, as it turns out) that:

Evagrius memory has also been recently vindicated in the Roman Catholic Church. He is includedin the most recent edition of Butlers Lives of the S aints (Collegeville, 1997 [sic]), with directions that

his feast day of February 11 may be celebrated as an o ptional memorial.66

That new edition ofButlers features a distinctly ambivalent eulogy of Evagrius (e.g., there is67

still debate about whether his influence was altogether beneficial and [he opened a current of

abstract thought that was to] influence the Middle Ages in ways that can be seen as being at least

as dangerous to Christian spirituality as beneficial to it ). Still, it acknowledges that [h]e is68

now recognized as a major spiritual writer, above all on the monastic life, and that he marked a

real turning-point in the development of spirituality. However, the celebration of Evagrius

rehabilitation seems to be premature, as he is not, in fact, in the newest edition of theMartyrolo-


21/23

Catholic Church, Martyrologium Romanum, Editio Altera, (Vatican City: Typis Vaticanis, 2004).69

Butlers, p. 208. Emphasis added.70

Casiday [2006], p. 38.71

20

gium Romanum. A later entry in Butlers may offer a clue, though, in its mention of a new69

draftRoman Martyrology, which might suggest that Evagrius inclusion was considered (and70

considered up until a very late stage) but ultimately rejected. The vindication of Evagrius is not

yet complete, but it is past due. Casiday comments that

the dramatic afterlife of Evagrian theology serves as a valuable lesson in how the peop le who lived

during the generations that come between us and what we study are sometimes able to divert our

attention away from earlier history onto their own concerns.71

For Evagrius sakeand our ownwe need to reclaim him from those intervening generations.


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21

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