Introduction
The Praktikos is not written for monks alone, nor is it written for “beginning Christians.” Evagrius presumes quite a bit of Christian life and faith before one picks up this treatise. The faith-context within which Evagrius is writing is the Nicene Faith as taught to him by the great Cappadocians – especially his beloved teacher St. Gregory Nazianzus (the Theologian). This faith is trinitarian, scriptural and sacramental. One receives the “faith” in baptism – baptism is the sacrament of re-creation/rebirth - and is vivified by Jesus Christ in receiving His Body and Blood in the Eucharist. This treatise, The Praktikos, is directed at a baptized and Nicene orthodox Christian and seeks to guide him/her to a faith practice in accordance with this Nicene Faith. Despite some claims to the contrary, Evagrius’ ascetical works cannot be separated from his (so-called) theoretical work. The Nicene theory requires a Nicene ascesis and vice versa. Separating theory and ascesis in Evagrius’ works probably distorts one’s understanding of Evagrius in the same measure one divides these two aspects of his work.
Very often the key used to unlock Evagrius’ spiritual teaching are the 15 anathemas of Emperor Justinian the Great (erroneously attributed to the Fifth Ecumenical Council) so that the works of Evagrius can be divided into heretical anthropology/christology and Orthodox ascetical teaching. Some of his so-called “orthodox” treatises can be found in the Philocalia – most notably perhaps his De Oratione (On Prayer). Ironically precisely this work presumes the whole of Evagrius’ ascetical and theoretical work in order to be understood and applied properly. The key to Evagrius’ work which I will be using does not stem from the sixth century (second) Origenist Controversy (of which Evagrius had no part since he had been dead for at least a 150 yrs!), rather the key will be Evagrius himself as he engages the divine scriptures (Bible).
For example the (in)famous trilogy Praktikos, Gnostikos, Kephalaia Gnostica takes up a significant amount of Evagrius’ corpus but it does not take up the largest part of his corpus. This trilogy could be regarded as Evagrius’ speculative ascetical psychology and theology and it is immediately evident how much more space his works on Scripture take up (inluding the Antirrhetikos). Clearly, Evagrius wants to be understood in the context of the Christian Scriptures – even where he is at his most speculative (the union of the nous with God) he is most steeped in scriptural language. In seeking to understand Evagrius this approach seems (to me) the best way to unlock Evagrius’ texts and it has been applied with remarkable success by Fr. Gabriel Bunge OSB (mention must also be made here of Fr. Jeremy Driscoll osb and Augustine Michael Casiday). Sadly Fr. Gabriel’s work is (mostly) unavailable in English and only available in German and French, with one notable exception: Earthen Vessels which is the best how to available in English for developing a spiritual practice of prayer. It is also the best introduction to Evagrius available in English because the work as a whole is an expose and application of the Evagrian way of spiritual life.
Fr. Gregory Wassen
The Open Country (article)
