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.
15
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.
16
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.
22
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.
23
[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.
24
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.
31
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