The truly intelligent man pursues one sole objective: to obey and conform to the God of all. With this single aim in view, he disciplines his soul, and whatever he may encounter in the course of his life, he gives thanks to God for the compass and depth of His providential ordering of all things. For it is absurd to be grateful to doctors who give us bitter and unpleasant medicines to cure our bodies, and yet be ungrateful to God for what appears to us to be harsh, not grasping that all we encounter is for our benefit and in accordance with His providence. For knowledge of God and faith in Him is the salvation and perfection of the soul.[1]
While it is true that there are many things God expects from everyone, outside of those expectations, what God desires and expects from each of us will be different. We are all given different tasks to achieve in our lives. It is up to us to discern what those tasks are.
As Christians, we should try to understand what God desires of us in each and every situation we find ourselves in. This means we need to form and listen to our conscience and to conform ourselves to its dictates. Of course, because we have been given free will, God also has given us the ability to accomplish his goals in different ways, to creatively engage his will with ours: there are many ways, some better than others, in which we can attain God’s desire for us. However, we can also even achieve goals following paths God would not have us take; the goal is still good, but the good achieved is far less than it should have been if we follow with illegitimate means to attain a good end. Those who are “truly intelligent” would seek the way to attain the good God desires of them, and to do so in the most moral fashion possible. This allows them to obey God, that is, to follow what is good, while conforming to what God desires, that is, attaining the end God seeks for us in our lives.
Nevertheless, rarely is it easy to know what God would have us to do. We must live in faith. We must follow what we do know, and see where it takes us. We do not have to have a special revelation to live day to day. However, we must use our intellect. We must figure out the right thing to do when we find given all kinds of difficult choices. We must remember the best thing to do is often not the easy thing to do, nor is it what gives us the most immediate pleasure. It might seem good to follow the passions, to achieve some immediate, lesser good, but in the end, what we get is less than what will satisfy us, less than what we need. We will suffer as a result. Wisdom teaches us this is so, though this wisdom is often acquired in life by seeing the pain such actions have caused, both for others and for ourselves. Thus, someone who is smart will realize this and will take this into account as they make decisions in life; they will look for the long term effect their actions will bring. They might not know where every decision will lead, but they will strive to act in ways they see will bring about what is good, because they by doing so, they will find greater happiness for themselves. And yet, in all of this, they know God remains by their side, helping them, creating opportunities for them, so that even if they make a mistake, God’s providence can provide a way out, to lift them up and return them to the way of life God intended for them.
Thankfulness to God, accepting what providence puts before us, and conforming ourselves to what God wills for us, is central to any spiritual discipline. Once again, it is knowledge of God, knowing God is good and what he wills is good for us, which allows us to have hope in God, and therefore, to be saved. While this passage can be seen as discussing a “God of the philosophers” and not the God of Christian revelation, this should not stop us from seeing how this passage relates to the overall understanding we have of Anthony; it is in accord with the teachings we know are his, and this sentiment is used, in a way, by Athanasius to demonstrate the superiority of Christianity:
Tell us therefore where your oracles are now? Where are the charms of the Egyptians? Where the delusions of the magicians? When did all these things cease and grow weak except when the Cross of Christ arose? Is It then a fit subject for mockery, and not rather the things brought to nought by it, and convicted of weakness? For this is a marvellous thing, that your religion was never persecuted, but even was honoured by men in every city, while the followers of Christ are persecuted, and still our side flourishes and multiplies over yours. What is yours, though praised and honoured, perishes, while the faith and teaching of Christ, though mocked by you and often persecuted by kings, has filled the world. For when has the knowledge of God so shone forth? or when has self-control and the excellence of virginity appeared as now? or when has death been so despised except when the Cross of Christ has appeared? And this no one doubts when he sees the martyr despising death for the sake of Christ, when he sees for Christ’s sake the virgins of the Church keeping themselves pure and undefiled.[2]
Christianity, according to Anthony in Athanasius, leads us to the knowledge of God, which has then led holy men and women to discipline themselves, to follow through with what divine providence ordains. Even if providence leads someone to great suffering, such as the suffering found in the martyrs and confessors of the Church, Christians have been willing – and thankful – to God for where he leads them. Their willingness to suffer for the sake of God demonstrates they knew God, they had become perfected, and their salvation in Christ was assured. The martyrs had to have a profound faith in God to follow through with their heroic feats. The martyrs, indeed, went to their doom, not with sorrow or fear, but with praise of God and a boldness which demonstrated their spiritual conditioning. The conformity with providence which even the pagans knew as an ideal was lived out by Christians because they had followed more than an ideal, but God.
A faithful hope in God leading one to accept his providential decisions certainly has a place on Anthony’s letters. Even in times of grief, Anthony reminded his readers that the Father is working on their behalf, and their current trials and tribulations were nothing in comparison to the reward being prepared for them:
Truly, my children, we are set in the house of the robber, and bound with the bonds of death. I tell you truly, my beloved, that our carelessness and our humiliation and our turning aside from the way, are not a loss to us only, but they are weariness for the angels and for all the saints in Christ Jesus. Truly, my children, our humiliation gives grief to them all: and again our salvation and glory gives joy and refreshment to all. And know that the kindness of the Father ceases not, always from its first motion until today, to do good to us, that we may not bring about our own death by misusing the free will which we were created.[3]
In this way, while the language of “On the Character of Men and on the Virtuous Life” in this section, as with so many others, is vague so that some think it does not appear to be a Christian text, the sentiment is underscored and used in other writings by or about Anthony. It presents a way to discipline the mind, in the way a monastic would desire, helping restrain one from wanting what is not theirs to have. And, as is often the case with early apologetics, especially in the Alexandrian context, Anthony could be taking on a sentiment which people of many faiths and philosophical schools of thought could have accepted, and then use it to justify his Christian faith by pointing out how Christianity best satisfies the demands made out of their commonly accepted belief. Since we know people often made collections of texts to use as crib notes for writings and speeches, this is the kind of note one would expect Anthony or one of his followers would make. It rings true to the Anthonite spirit.
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