A Course in Desert Spirituality, Page 3

  Rather than saying that St. Basil reacted against Eustathian ascesis, it would be better to say that St. Basil took what he considered best and most evangelical in the doctrine and practice of his master, and affirmed it, as against the extremism of the left wing, which involved total separation from the ordinary faithful, condemning them as un-Christian. After the Council of Gangres, St. Basil emphasized what was genuine and truly traditional in the doctrine and practice of Eustathius, and worked out a way of life for all Christians to be perfect, according to the teaching of the Gospel. This way of life was not strictly speaking monastic life—though tradition regarded it as such. If by monastic life is meant withdrawal from the ordinary Christian community as well as from the world, then Basil was not “legislating for the monastic life.” If by monastic life is meant ascetic communities within and in contact with the Christian community as a whole, then this is what Basil envisaged! He is talking of what we mean today by the religious life—especially that of active congregations, rather than of “contemplative monks.” The love of money and rank were to be renounced, along with the love of pleasure, comfort, etc. Emphasis was placed on a life of prayer and work, as opposed to the one-sided emphasis on prayer preached by the extremists.

  Montanism

  Montanism was the great heresy of the second century. It claimed Tertullian as one of its adherents. In it false asceticism and false mysticism were combined. It contains elements common in movements of similar type down the ages:

  1) Crude idea of eschatology: the end of the world is about to happen any day now.

  2) The reign of the Holy Spirit had begun. Hence there is an obligation for all to practice extreme asceticism.

  3) Perfection consists in extraordinary mystical gifts and experience. Montanus was a priest with his two prophetesses, Priscilla and Maximilla. Frequency of visions and ecstatic madness, spectacular manifestations of “possession by the Holy Spirit,” convulsions, etc. marked the movement, which was condemned by the Church.

  Neoplatonism

  The above were heretical movements. Neoplatonism is not a Christian deviation; it is a Hellenistic philosophical and mystical school of thought. It falls short of Christianity and was opposed to it, but it cannot be dismissed lightly. It flourished at Alexandria; Plotinus, Proclus, etc. were its main lights. It represented a development of Plato’s philosophy with religious elements from the Near East included; thus it was syncretistic. Much of the Christian tradition on “contemplation” is in fact full of the influence of Neoplatonism.

  The word “contemplation” does not occur in the Gospel. The idea of abstracting oneself from all things, purifying one’s mind of all images, and ascending by self-denial to an ecstatic intellectual contact with God the Supreme Truth—ending up by being “alone with the alone”—all this is characteristic of the Neoplatonic approach. It has been taken over by a whole tradition of Christian writers and has become Christianized. But still we must remember in dealing with such writers that we are handling a characteristically Greek type of thought and must take care not to lose sight of Christ Himself and His teachings in order to follow a more or less pagan line of thought from which Christ is all but excluded.

  One specifically Neoplatonic element is the idea that contemplation (gnosis) is for a select elite and others cannot attain it. It is true St. Paul speaks of perfect Christians and carnal-minded Christians—but that is not quite the same thing.1

  Another element is dualism, in which body and soul are considered as separated: soul belongs to the realm of spirit, body to the realm of matter, and the material is inferior if not even evil. Origen was led astray by this idea. Hence arises the conclusion that to live a “purely spiritual” life is better; hence also the emphasis on apatheia (complete freedom from passion) as the climax of ascetic life. Nowhere in the New Testament do we find such an ideal of complete deliverance of the soul from the body. On the contrary, the New Testament envisages the spiritualization of the whole man, body and soul together, pointing to the Resurrection of the Flesh. But ideas like apatheia became part and parcel of Christian ascetic theory and practice, especially in the Orient. They must always be qualified with Christian correctives.

  Gnosticism

  Gnosticism [is] a deviation from Christianity (an attempt to “improve” on it), cruder, more oriental, more elaborate than Neoplatonism. It was also more esoteric (that is, salvation and sanctification are more exclusively for an elite of initiates). There is a very curious mythological and magical content in Gnosticism, which posited a “Pleroma” of mythical personages, some friendly to God and some inimical to him. Note the creation of personages like “Sabaoth” due to misunderstanding of the Septuagint. (They thought the Lord Sabaoth [Lord of Armies] was a special personage called “Sabaoth”—a kind of demiurge.) However Gnosticism is centered on Jesus. A fantastic ascent through the thirteen aeons brings the perfect soul at last to Jesus himself, the supreme Mystery of Light, above all the celestial archons.

  Gnosticism was an attempt to unite Christianity with astrology and magic, rejecting the Old Testament and substituting for it the pseudo-sciences of the day. Dualism was present even in divine things: God of the Old Testament was evil (enemy of Jesus), God of the New Testament good; body was evil, “tomb” of the soul, etc. The universe came from an evil principle called Ialdaboth. These ideas were taken up by Manichaeans later.

  We can recognize similar trends all down through the history of the Church. Such trends arise when there are times of unrest, when the masses are spiritually hungry and going through a period of transition. Such trends are associated with ignorance (excluding Neoplatonism of course) and misinterpretation of Christian revelation—and with relatively crude natural appetites for spiritual experience. They flare up and lead to many excesses, but when they die down the spirit of whole classes or groups is left “burnt out” and helpless.

  __________

  1 See, for instance, 1 Cor. 2:6, 3:1, 14:20; Eph. 4:13; Col. 1:28, 4:12.

  LECTURE 3

  The Christian Teachers of Alexandria

  It is very important to know something of this great school. The work of this school was the establishment of Christianity as a spiritual and intellectual movement acceptable to the upper classes and to the intellectuals.

  Clement of Alexandria

  Clement and Origen adopted as much of Greek thought as could be harmonized with Christianity. Note—the large and influential Jewish colony at Alexandria included many intellectuals who for generations had been working to reconcile Platonism and Jewish thought. Clement interpreted Exodus 11:1-3, about borrowing precious vessels from the Egyptians, in the sense that the Church should appropriate all that was good in pagan philosophy. In this he followed an interpretation already favored by the Alexandrian Jews. At the same time Clement believed that Plato, Socrates, etc. had been saved by their knowledge of God arrived at through philosophy. Knowledge was their “covenant” as the Law was the covenant of the Jews. Tertullian on the contrary thought Greek philosophy came from the devil.

  Clement considers the Christian life as a progress from faith to gnosis. In this he is perhaps too intellectual and remains too close to pagan philosophical terms. He wrote three books, guides to the Christian life, presenting Christ in three aspects:

  1) The Protreptikos (Converter)—How the Lord converts souls and awakens them to the new life of faith: an apologia of Christianity for the Greeks.

  2) The Paidagogos (Teacher of Small Children)—Christ teaches and guides us in the beginnings and ordinary paths of Christianity. Written for “Christians in the world,” it throws many lights on the social life of Alexandria in the second century. See quotes from the Paidagogos about food, for example: [When invited to dinner, the Christian should eat what is set before him, as Paul recommends] “We are not, then, to abstain wholly from various kinds of food, but only are not to be taken up about them. We are to partake of what is set before us, as becomes a Christian, out of respect to him who has invite
d us, by a harmless and moderate participation in the social meeting.” [And], “it is the mark of a silly mind to be amazed and stupefied at what is presented at vulgar banquets, after the rich fare which is in the Word.”1

  3) The Stromata—Clement’s greatest work. Stromata means “Carpets” [and] consists in various unsystematic thoughts—especially on the relation of Christian wisdom to pagan learning. Pagan philosophy paves the way for Christ. In it Clement also argues against gnostics and opposes to them the true Christian gnosis. In his ascetic teaching Clement insisted too much on the division between the ordinary Christian and the “gnostic” (contemplative), and also demanded that the perfect Christian be completely above all passion (apatheia).

  Origen

  There is a kind of fashion among superficial minds to dismiss Origen as a heretic and have nothing to do with him. This is very unfortunate because Origen is certainly one of the greatest and even holiest of the Church Fathers and was certainly the most influential of the early Fathers. His contribution to Catholic theology and spirituality was inestimable, and if he unfortunately did fall into theological errors (which was not to be wondered at in these early times when theological teaching had not been at all systematized), it is not difficult to separate his errors from the great mass of his orthodox teaching.

  Of all the Eastern Fathers Origen is perhaps the one who remained the most influential in Western monasticism, not excluding St. Basil. St. Bernard’s commentary on the Canticle of Canticles, which is typical of the whole theology and spirituality of the Cistercians and of medieval monasticism as a whole, goes back directly to Origen, and is often merely an elaboration of the basic ideas found in Origen (many of which in turn go back to Philo Judaeus).

  Origen was born in 185 of Christian parents; his father Leonidas died as a martyr under Severus (202). Origen was prevented by a trick from offering himself up to the persecutors; his mother hid all his clothes. He lost all his patrimony in the persecution, and at eighteen he began teaching in the school of Alexandria, abandoned by Clement.

  The Catechetical School of Alexandria grew up on the confines of the great pagan university—it had been started by a converted Stoic, Pantaenus (a kind of Newman Club)—converts were instructed, curious pagans came for lectures, Christians were prepared for Orders. The master received pupils in his own house. For some, simple study of the Creed was enough. Others received a full intellectual training in science, philosophy, letters—with an apologetic slant. The course culminated in ethics, where dialectical training began—questions, for example good and evil, leading up to theology. According to Eusebius he lived a life of strict asceticism and evangelical poverty, fasted, slept on the floor. However, in misguided ascetic zeal he castrated himself: a grave error.

  At first he taught secular subjects—dialectics, physics, mathematics, astronomy, Greek philosophy—and attracted pagans by these courses. Later he devoted himself entirely to Christian theology.

  In 216, he moved to Palestine. Not yet ordained, he was invited to preach (as distinguished from teach). This created a scandal in Alexandria: his bishop opposed it. The bishops in Palestine ordained Origen. Demetrius of Alexandria protested that the ordination was illicit since Origen had castrated himself, and excommunicated Origen. The bishop of Caesarea adopted him and ignored the excommunication; Origen continued to teach at Caesarea. Origen was imprisoned and tortured under Decius, and died at Tyre in 253 as a result of his sufferings. In effect, he gave his life for the faith. But he had many enemies during life and many after death.

  There was a storm about Origenism about 400 and finally the Council of Constantinople in 543 anathematized certain propositions of Origen. His errors are due to his excessive Platonism. His main errors condemned by the Church concern:

  1) The pre-existence of the human soul

  2) The Resurrection—the manner of the resurrection of the body

  3) The apocatastasis—that Christ will somehow renew His Passion for the demons and the damned and that the punishments of hell will be brought to an end

  As a result of the controversies, much of his original writing disappeared, and what remains was largely preserved in Latin. There were supposed to have been between two and six thousand treatises by him in existence.

  Origen’s Writings

  His works on Scripture include The Hexapla: [a] six-column translation (original Hebrew, Hebrew in Greek characters, and four Greek translations annotated by Origen). And, Commentaries—Origen, the first great Christian exegete, commented on practically every book of the Old and New Testaments. The commentaries are often in the form of homilies addressed to the people, but are generally deep and mystical. Origen is a master of the spiritual, mystical or typological sense of Scripture, and also is rich in tropological (moral) interpretations of the sacred books. His writings on Scripture are, with his treatise On Prayer, the most important for monks. His scriptural commentaries are rich and full of inexhaustible ideas, as long as we do not expect from him scientific interpretations. But his mystical interpretations are not mere fancy and subjectivism. He treats the Scriptures as a whole new world of types and symbols, and the end result is a contemplative wisdom, a broad, rich, penetrating view of the universe as “sacrament” and “mystery” in Christ, for which there is plenty of warrant in the New Testament.

  Other important works are:

  1) De Principiis—the fundamentals of knowledge, especially as a basis for theology.

  2) On Prayer—the oldest Christian treatise on prayer, in two parts. It deals with prayer in general, the validity of petition; and the Our Father (a commentary). Conditions for true prayer [include that] one must be earnestly striving to detach himself from sin; one must be struggling to become free from domination by the passions, especially those which cause conflict with our neighbor; [and] one must strive to avoid distractions. But after all one must remember that prayer is a gift of the Holy Ghost. Origen recommended that we pray standing, facing east: (Christ = rising sun).

  3) Contra Celsum—defence of the Christian faith against paganism.

  4) Exhortation to Martyrdom.

  Origen sees degrees of spiritual life in the Sapiential Books [with] Proverbs, for beginners; Ecclesiastes, for proficients; [and] Canticle of Canticles, for [the] perfect. [His] doctrine of the active and the contemplative comes from Philo, who got it from Plato and Aristotle.

  [On the] ascetic or active life—praxis [he emphasizes]:

  1) Self-knowledge—a theme taken up later by St. Bernard, and based on Canticle of Canticles—this is the first step to perfection.

  2) Struggle to renounce the world. As we begin to know our passions (object of self-knowledge) and realize our implication in the perishing world, by reason of passion, we begin the struggle to extricate ourselves. This means renunciation, sacrifice, self-denial. Origen places great emphasis on continency and chastity and is a strong defender of virginity. Life-long asceticism is necessary.

  3) Imitation of Christ—the ascetic seeks to be re-formed in the likeness of Christ. This gives the soul stability, security in good, and restores lost union with God by charity. This involves crucifixion with Christ, and sharing in His virtues. Origen bases his asceticism on the fact that man, created in the image and likeness of God, has lost his likeness to Him, but remains the image of God. This likeness has to be recovered by grace and love. St. Bernard took over this doctrine and made it the basis of his teaching.

  [On the] contemplative life—theoria:

  1) When one has become purified by self-denial, crucifixion with Christ, and interior trials, one begins to receive a higher light of knowledge of Christ, principally by a penetration of the spiritual meaning of Scripture. But preparation by interior suffering in union with Christ is essential. This is the characteristic feature of Origen’s mysticism; here we find a blending of Neoplatonism and Christianity, intellectualism and sacramentalism.

  2) The perfect man is the spiritual man, pneumatikos, moved by the Spirit: “He who carri
es the image of things celestial according to the inner man is led by celestial desires and celestial love.” The pneumatikos is guided by the Spirit of love. “The soul is moved by this love when having seen the beauty of the Word of God she loves His splendor and receives from Him the arrow and the wound of love” (In Cantica, Prologue).

  3) The soul aspires to mystical union with the Word of God. She cannot be satisfied with a mediate knowledge of God through human ideas or even through Scriptural symbols: “When the mind is filled with divine knowledge and understanding through no agency of man or angel, then may the mind believe that it receives the very kisses of the Word of God. Therefore the soul prays: Let Him kiss me with the kiss of His mouth” (In Cantica). Origen also introduces the idea of “the wound of love” which is developed in Christian mystical tradition. In the Oriental Church, a mystic is referred to as “a man kissed by God.” This idea of union with the Logos through union in love and suffering with Christ, the Word Incarnate, is the most fundamental idea in all Christian mystical theology.

  4) But normally, the life of the soul seeking Christ is a constant search with alternations of light and darkness, presence and absence. “Frequently I have seen the Spouse pay me a visit and remain often with me. Then He withdrew suddenly and I could not find Him for whom I was looking. That is why I again long for His visit” (In Cantica).

  5) It is necessary to have discernment to recognize the comings and goings of the Spouse, and to distinguish temptations and false lights among the true lights that come from God. As we grow in experience, we develop the use of the spiritual senses which give us a kind of experience of ineffable and divine realities, “sight for contemplating supra-corporal objects, hearing, capable of distinguishing voices which do not sound in the air; . . . smell which perceives that which led Paul to speak of the good odor of Christ; touch which St. John possessed when he laid his hands upon the Word of Life” (Contra Celsum, I:48). The spiritual senses do not develop unless we mortify the carnal senses.