November 2003 Christian Spirituality      Continued from previous issue By George A Lane SJ

Continue from ...... THE IDEAL OF CONTEMPLATION For the early Christians in this part of the world it was a great problem to maintain the purity of the Gospel in the face of these philosophical currents. It was not surprising that a great school and a series of great teachers developed in Alexandria who attempted to develop through scholarship, teaching, and writing a synthesis of these pagan intellectual currents and Christianity. What was good in this philosophical tradition could be drawn into a Christian spirituality and be put at the service of the Christian faith. What was incompatible could be discarded. The culmination of this synthesis came in the great Origen who lived from 185 to 252 AD. We have already distinguished this man Origen from the Origenist school which unfortunately took its name from him. Origen was a magnetic personality who drew many people around him. His life was marked both by great austerities and an immensely energetic devotion to the apostolate. He effected the most successful synthesis of pagan philosophy and Christianity. Origen proposed a doctrine of Christocentric asceticism and mysticism. Right away we notice the shift in Origen's thinking away from the pagan views of the time. Human perfection for him was not to be found in knowledge but in love and the works of charity. Renunciation, asceticism, and contemplation were not for Origen the end of the spiritual life, but means for conquering evil inclinations and achieving a perfect love of Christ who is the actual end and aim of spirituality. Origen certainly had an influence on those who fled into the desert about a half century after his death. But when his great Christian synthesis was taken up by the desert monks, it proved too delicate and it succumed to the influence of the pagan philosophical milieu, especially in the hands of Evagrius of Pontus. Evagrius is a sort of mystery figure who is referred to again and again by the various chroniclers of Christian history. After his doctrines were condemned by the Council of Alexandria in 399, his writings continued to be circulated for centuries under the names of Nilus of Ancyra and St Basil and other orthodox teachers of the time. Evagrius was a great enthusiast. He came from Asia Minor near the Black Sea. In his early life he was tried by temptations against chastity, and in the face of these he decided to flee to the desert near Jerusalem where there was a thriving series of monastic communities. He did not remain long near Jerusalem, however, for he was soon attracted to Egypt by the stories and legends of the desert monks there. He spent the last twenty years of his life teaching and writing in the desert outside of Alexandria. Evagrius lived until 399, and it was only a few months after his death in that year that his Origenist doctrines were condemned. The doctine of Evagrius is that of Origen with most of the essentials of Christianity removed. The importance of the man's work is that he systematized many elements of asceticism as they were preached and practiced in his circles. There are basically two aspects to his doctrine, that of the active life and of the contemplative life. These terms have special meanings and are not to be confused with our contemporary understanding of them. The active life can be summed up as virtue achieved through the analysis and methodical avoidance of vice. In fact, Evagrius was the first to come up with the doctrine of the deadly sins. He proposed eight of them. The methodical ridding of the soul of vice was carried on in order to achieve the negative goal of apatheia. Without this insensitivity to the world it would be impossible for a person to move on to the contemplative life.

- To Be Continued -