A Study Of “On The Character of Men And the Virtuous Life”: Part XI

Introduction and Part II

Evil is a passion found in matter, and so it is not possible for a body to come into being free from evil. The intelligent soul, grasping this, strives to free itself from the evil burden of matter; and when it is free from this burden, it comes to know the God of all, and keeps watch on the body as being an enemy and does not yield to it. Then the soul is crowned by God for having conquered the passions of evil and of matter.[1]

There are three ways to discuss evil.[2] The first is ontological, which looks at evil as a privation of the good. The second is moral, which looks at evil as an imperfect act of the will. The third is subjective, which looks at evil as that which we suffer. Because of the relationship between the three, they are often confused, one with another, in ordinary conversations. We must, however, contend against this confusion, and remind people of the distinctions between the three kinds of evil. We must, for example, not believe some physical defect, such as being born blind, necessarily indicates some moral evil had been done to directly cause such blindness. Sometimes the relationship can be direct, as when one person pokes someone else’s eye out, but often, the relationship is indirect, and one would have to map out the interdependent relationships of actions taken in the world in order to understand how a physical evil came about. Obviously, we come into a world which has been ontologically impaired as a result of sin, and this is a necessary precondition for physical suffering, but, outside of the contamination of sin which affects the whole of creation, we cannot say all forms of suffering are directly related to the moral defects of the person who suffer them.

Though our souls also suffer, most of us hardly notice such suffering. Our attention is primarily physical. While the suffering of our soul affects us, and our moods, we are rarely conscious of this fact. Most of us have to train ourselves to become aware of what is affecting our soul; for most of us, the soul is too subtle for us to notice. Thus, for most of us, the material realm is often where we consciously come to know and experience evil, and so it is where “evil is found.” This points to the fact that saying evil is found in matter is not an exclusive claim for matter. More powerful evil is found in the spiritual realm, and such evil affects not only immaterial substances, but matter as well. Since spiritual substances have a direct influence on matter, to overcome material suffering, one must also overcome the spiritual causes for such suffering. To remove one’s focus on the material world, to focus on the spirit, is one way to free oneself from the evils which come from matter, not because one ignores matter, but one seeks to overcome the dominant influences on matter, to positively influence the material world so suffering in it would be lessened. The body is seen as an enemy inasmuch as its passions and desires are not kept in check (for example, one who suffers from great lust must see the desire, coming from their body, makes their body their enemy); however, we must understand, as it is in this respect an enemy, it is to be loved, not hated—it is to be helped and perfected so that its passions, once put in check, allow the body to be the proper companion and lover to the soul. The soul which conquers the inordinate passions of the body will make the body ready to be transformed, so that the body can be transfigured by grace.

We have here a very interesting, and difficult, text. In my commentary, I tried to highlight the truths contained in it, but, it should be clear, I have been rather flexible with the text. We have here a rather Origenistic text, teaching ideas rejected by the Church. It is clear, if this is Anthony’s text, he pondered them before such ideas were officially rejected and condemned. Many saints have been known to hold views which were later rejected by the Church without having their sainthood denied (Saint Lucian of Antioch, for example, appears to have held proto-Arian views). But, many are uncomfortable with saints holding erroneous views. Thus, we might come to know why this text, though remembered (in some fashion) as being his has often been ignored and rejected: his holiness being as it is, many would have considered it impossible for Anthony to have erred in this way, similar to how Photius did not believe many works attributed to St Clement of Alexandria could have been Clement’s because they were seen as more Origenistic than Origen.[3] We, however, cannot so simply dismiss this text in this fashion; indeed, the evidence we have is that Anthony was, to some degree or another, connected with and influenced by Origenist thought, as Samuel Rubenson has shown in his research with Anthony’s Letters.[4] And, if it can be shown to be from Anthony, we would be able to see and understand better the ties between his ascetic ideals and other forms of asceticism of his time (Gnostic, Stoic, Buddhist, et. al.). In this way, if this is Anthony’s text, it could be a key text in understanding early Christian monasticism, and many of the trials and tribulations early monks would face.

It is commonly said that Origenism teaches that, before the fall, we were all bodiless spirits, and we were all meant to exist without a material body. Due to sin, that is, due to disobedience, many spirits fell and took on bodies for themselves. Because of our attachment to them we will be raised up with them in the resurrection, but, as we become purified, our body will take on less and less matter until they are transformed into pure spiritual bodies, untouched by matter. Matter is unfit for spiritual beings and therefore, spirits need to detach themselves from it. There is some nuance to this: matter, though said to be tainted for us, must not be seen as entirely evil, since it was created by God. It is improper for spirits, made to be higher than matter, to look to matter as higher than, or equal to, themselves; our disobedience to God has brought about such a disordered attachment to matter, requiring purification (such as through ascetic discipline) in order for us to overcome this disordered pairing with matter.

Origenism, as the name suggests, comes, in some fashion, out of the development of thought found in many of Origen’s writings. Origen himself addresses many issues speculatively, and wanted to have the Church give a final say on what he discussed, and in this fashion, we must not see him as willfully disobedient to ecclesial authority, which is necessary for formal heresy. But, because his speculations were known, and his reputation as an important theologian was known, his speculations took on a life of their own – attributed to him, in some fashion, they were developed and became something more in Origen’s disciples than they were in Origen’s writings. We must remember how Origen was understood in later centuries was in part due to how his followers interpreted him; when we read condemnations of Origen, we must think of them as condemnations as to how Origen was read and used in later debates than as direct condemnations of teachings Origen thought must be definitively held. Origen was often vague and speculative, sometimes contradictory, about the issues which would permeate around Origenism. But Origenism did connect to Origen and his thought. Thus, as Elizabeth Clark describes St Jerome’s condemnation of Origen, there is, to be sure, some truth behind Jerome’s contention that the problems lie within Origen’s writings, especially his Peri Archon (On First Principles), but Jerome’s immediate context was the way this thought was heightened and became normative in Origen’s disciples:

Jerome catalogues them as follows: that within the Godhead, the Son was subordinated to the Father and the Holy Spirit to both; that rational creatures fell from a heavenly, incorporeal preexistence to acquire bodies, identified with the ‘coats of skins’ of Genesis 3:21; that the devil could resume his angelic status and be saved; that demons could be transformed into humans, and vice versa; that since bodily substance was destined to pass away, there would be no physical resurrection; that a succession of worlds may have already existed and may exist in the future; that hellfire is not eternal to us, but the pangs of guilty conscience; that Christ may come again to suffer for the demons; and that allegorical exegesis is preferable to literal for those of advanced spirituality.[5]

Scholars have come to deny many, if not all, of the charges as being authentic interpretations of what Origen wanted to say in his writings; they see them as being imperfect representations or understanding of Origen from both the Origenists and anti-Origenists. For example, Origen clearly taught the resurrection of the body, though he does so in a way which allows many interpretations:

Our flesh is indeed considered by the uneducated and by unbelievers to perish so completely after death that nothing whatever of its substance is left. We, however, who believe in its resurrection, know that death only causes a change in it and that its substance certainly persists and is restored to life again at a definite time by the will of its Creator and once more undergoes a transformation; so that what was at first flesh ‘of the earthly type’, and was then dissolved through death and again made ‘dust and ashes’, — for ‘dust that art’, it is written, ‘and unto dust shalt thou return’ – is raised again from the earth and afterwards, as the merits of the ‘indwelling soul’ should demand, advance to the glory of a ‘spiritual body.’[6]

What would come after Origen was not really a systematic presentation of definitive teachings, but a general set of inclinations. Some might hold to all that was said to be Origenism, while others might only hold a few of those teachings. Origen’s thoughts, in various forms, were spread throughout many Christian communities, especially monastic ones with some sort of association with Anthony. And, with Origenism’s understanding of the body, it is understandable why many monks would follow its teachings, for they saw Origenism as providing a context for their ascetic struggles. Once one understood the body as being a kind of prison for the spirit, as somehow keeping the spirit back from its proper function, one can understand why bodily temptations would have to be overcome – one wanted to be freed from bodily bondage. And this is the kind of thing we find hinted at in other writings by or about Anthony, though, usually in a far more reserved fashion than our text under examination here.

Those hints, for example, find themselves in a speech presented of his presented by Athanasius. We see, like Origen before, a vague position on the resurrection, one which shows itself uncomfortable with the body and its earthly nature, though of course, he sees it is somehow taken up and transformed in its glorification:

Whenever, therefore, we live full fourscore years, or even a hundred in the discipline, not for a hundred years only shall we reign, but instead of a hundred we shall reign for ever and ever. And though we fought on earth, we shall not receive our inheritance on earth, but we have the promises in heaven; and having put off the body which is corrupt, we shall receive it incorrupt.[7]

Indeed, this is affirmed by Athanasius’ description of Anthony’s ascetic teaching before his attempt to become a confessor:

And he used to say that it behoved a man to give all his time to his soul rather than his body, yet to grant a short space to the body through its necessities; but all the more earnestly to give up the whole remainder to the soul and seek its profit, that it might not be dragged down by the pleasures of the body, but, on the contrary, the body might be in subjection to the soul.[8]

Similarly, Anthony tells us to “despise the flesh” in The Sayings of the Desert Fathers.[9] This resonates with our passage in question, if we consider the “despise the flesh” to be related to the consideration of our body as our “enemy.” While we come into a theologically dangerous notion here, because it could lead to a Gnostic rejection of the world, it is clear that this is not what is wanted, either in this text, or in the rest of what we know of Anthony. Indeed, in his letters, he says God provides for people, “works whereby they may constrain their soul and their body, that both may be purified and enter together into their inheritance.”[10] This tells us that Anthony not only believed the body was to have some share in eternal life,  but that he also understands the soul itself needs purification: as he would say elsewhere, the mind must be used in subjecting both of them so as to prevent them from falling for impure passions.[11] It is clear that he believed that the body is more involved with our suffering than the soul, for it is seen to live in the realm of death and find itself dissolved.[12] And he also said that our immortal nature, our intellectual substance, has fallen into disgrace; though not exactly saying it is disgraced because it is in a body, he mentions this in relation to it being bound with impermanent, gendered bodies.[13] One can come out of this, as with much other ascetic literature, a rather impoverished notion of the body; this would be recognized by many later ascetics, where they would come to develop further the proper integral theology needed to preserve the good of the body (such as found in hesychasm).

There is enough thought, in what we find in the writings generally accepted as being by or early witnesses of Anthony, to suggest most of the spirit of this passage connects with what we know of Anthony elsewhere. Indeed, we should not find this surprising; Anthony, as we have said, helped give support to Didymus the Bind, a rather important Origenist thinker of his age. And, more significantly, we cannot deny many monks, in the lineage of Anthony, would take on Origenism and would be involved in the first Origenist crisis. If this work was his, it would explain why, so soon after Anthony, this happened. It would, indeed, make sense: Origenism was, for the most part, an important apologetical system, one which was looked to and used to help early Christians keep an orthodoxy which opposed Gnostic and pagan traditions while still following through with the truths contained in each – truths which early ascetics would understand as important because they often provided tools necessary for one to be an ascetic.[14] Nonetheless, this is a problematic passage, first, because it suggests Antony held some unorthodox teachings, and second, those teachings would have been rather sophisticated ones, and we would have to wonder his own source for them. Of course, that source could have been, as stated at the outset of our study, one of the many teachers he had, and this could be a reflection of his “notes” on the subject, and he did not go further with it than what we find here, in this text. Or, because of his interest in understanding theology, he could have developed these notions in those talks he had with educated visitors when they came to be with him.[15] In this way, though Antony was uneducated in the formal sense, it is quite clear he was not unintelligent, indeed, unlearned. And so we should not be surprised if he was to come across and believe subtle theological positions coming out of the Origenist tradition: indeed, being in Egypt, this would be expected.