The Prologue (i)
1. Since you recently wrote to me in Scetis from the holy Mountain, dear brother Anatolius, and demanding that I explain to you the symbolic habit of the Egyptian monks - for you believe it to be neither accidental nor superfluous that [the habit] is so different from what other people wear - I will therefore tell you what we have learned concerning this from the holy fathers.
It is questionable whether either Anatolius or Evagrius were indeed particularly interested in the outer garb of the Egyptian monks. Rather, as we shall see shortly, the outer garb of the monks gives utterance to an inner truth. The garb is in fact a “spiritual armor” building on a foundation laid by St. Paul (Eph. 6, 10-20). The monk - about to learn praktike - is putting on a specific kind of “godly armor” to fight the passions and the demons, and to aquire virtue. The outer reality corresponds to the inner reality. It is also interesting to note here that several times in his teaching Evagrius will speak of praktike bodies which “clothe the nous” in this world as it struggles for salvation and purification (theosis). As one’s inner state changes so does one’s outer state which means that one can move from a praktike body to a more spiritual body:
Judgment is for the just the passage from a body for asceticism [praktike body] to angelic things: but for the ungodly it is the change from a body for asceticism to a darkened and gloomy bodies. For the ungodly will not be raised in the first judgment, but rather in the second (Scholia in Psalms, 1, 5, 8).
The path of the praktikos (the ascetic) does not merely transform one’s inner state but also has a transformative inlfuence on one’s outer state. As body and spirit achieve a more balanced and healthy state both evidence their growth. It seems to me that as far as Evagrius is concerned our flesh and blood ( σὰρξ καὶ αἷμα) which, as St. Paul reminds us (1 Cor. 15, 50) will not inherit the Kingdom, is the clothing received from God in the narrative of Genesis 3: “And the Lord God made for Adam and his wife, garments of skins, and clothed them (vs. 21).” Rather the spiritual body (1 Cor. 15, 44) is what will clothe the heavenly man (1 Cor. 15, 48)-49). Our ascetic effort and God’s grace (judgment or krisis which for Evagrius is more of medical than a legal term) are healing us as we progress on the path of salvation. It seems to me that the outer garb is therefore a point of meditation and manifestation of the doctrine of the fall and salvation.
The outer garb is also an occasion for Evagrius to introduce the basic of his ascetic theory concerning the eight logismoi - since almost all of them are symbolically countered by a particular part of the dress. The dress is a way of enacting St. Paul’s command:
1 I BESEECH you therefore, brethren, by the mercy of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing unto God, your reasonable service. 2 And be not conformed to this world; but be reformed in the newness of your mind, that you may prove what is the good, and the acceptable, and the perfect will of God (Rom. 12, 1-2 Douay Rheims).
Dn. Gregory
Tags: Asceticism, Christianity, Evagrius Ponticus, Origenism, Orthodoxy, Patristics, Religion, Spirituality
You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.