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

Introduction and Part II

We find ourselves once again in a series of paragraphs with related theme, that of the nature and experience of good and evil. We are in familiar territory, but we find the text once again delving into the territory with some new insight. If we took the time to explore everything contained in the next few paragraphs, and discern what is being said in them, we would find out we are dealing with a spiritual genius. But, for our purpose here, we must only highlight what is said, so we can move on to a new theme which needs be examined. Nonetheless, if the author is truly Anthony or one of his disciples, we have even more reason to recognize the genius within, because the text gives answers to the question of evil which will be used and developed by some of the greatest thinkers of the Christian tradition.

The soul is said to be naturally pure and good, and, as long as it keeps its innate goodness, it keeps its attention on God, allowing it to be enlightened by God.[1] Union with God fills the soul with good desires. As long as  a soul’s will is united with God’s will, it desires heavenly things, not earthly rewards such as fame – indeed, because it lives contrary to the way of the world, it is disliked or hated, perhaps even ridiculed, without such mockery affecting it because it only cares for what is good.[2] Evil seduces, making people love it and its ways due to false promises; what it promises, it does not give. It blinds people, turning them away from God, turning them away from the one who can truly enlighten them and make them wise, making them ignorant. “Those who are full of evil and drunk with ignorance do not know God, and their soul is not watchful.”[3] Darkened by ignorance, they are easily manipulated, with their thoughts distorted by the interference of demons.[4] The relationship between good and evil, happiness and misery, is best expressed in these lines:

When the soul has come to recognize evil it hates it like the stench of a foul beast; but he who does not recognize evil loves it, and it holds him captive, making a slave of its lover. Then the unfortunate and wretched man can neither see nor understand his true interest, but imagines this evil is an adornment, and so he is happy.[5]

One of the greatest puzzles for theology is the question of evil. By its nature, that is, by the fact that it is irrational, any explanation fails to explain evil, for that explanation seeks to use reason to explain what is fundamentally irrational. We can, however, perceive, in some fashion, how we react to evil and why we follow its ways, but we cannot explain how such a distortion fully entered the world. This does not mean we have nothing to say on the matter; what it means is that, what we say, we must understand is fundamentally flawed because it over-reaches, because it seeks to explain the unexplainable; but, even if our project is doomed to failure, it is useful because, by looking into the possible causes of evil, we can then humbly examine ourselves and those impulses which lie inside us which lead us to act and “create” more evil. Knowing them, we can work against them, that is, we can purify ourselves from them, so that they do not lead us astray. The point is not that these impulses are evil, but rather, they become the means by which evil perverts our understanding and distract us, by making our focus be on them,  on a part of our being, rather than being true to the fullness of ourselves and our being. Evil distorts by breaking things apart, by destroying their holistic harmony, and then having such parts it finds rearranged so that undue emphasis is put on one aspect of our being, leading to an imbalanced activity which, as long as it is followed, will never lead us to perpetual happiness. Those who see the work of evil in their soul will see how evil is distorting their lives; they will see how they have acted and reacted according to the ignorance of distorted perceptions, and so they will seek to remove any distortions which interfere with their experience in the world, so they can then experience the world as it truly is. Only then can true happiness be had, and only then can one be open for union with God.

Since we have turned away from God, our experience of God and the world is covered up, and we see the world through the lens of sin. We ignorantly follow what we think will give us happiness. With a distorted perception of the world, our mind thinks and responds to the data given it, and it comes to wrong conclusions. We reason according to an incomplete picture, with an imperfect, fallen intellect, and so we act based a fallen mode of reasoning, an act which is accomplished through a fallen mode of willing (the gnomic will).  We still seek happiness, we even will for what we think is good, but, because we have fallen and turned our back on the Good, the good we seek is a lesser good, and cannot satisfy us as the Good can.

When the people of a community come together and express their shared understanding of the world, this leads to what is known as “common sense.” We cannot stand by and accept what common sense teaches, because it is an aggregate of the ideas created through false perceptions. Though it can and often does contain elements of truth, nonetheless common sense is the expression of a fallen and ignorant understanding of the world and therefore cannot be the source of our understanding of what is good. Common sense often decries what is good, and insults those who do good, or, as St Augustine points out, it often leads to a condemnation of those who do good:

But haven’t people often been condemned for good deeds? Not to refer you to any other books, recall the story that is superior to all others by virtue of its divine authority. There you will find that we must think very poorly of the apostles and martyrs if we intend to make condemnation a sure sign of wrongdoing. All of them were judged worthy of condemnation because of their confession of faith It follows that if everything that is condemned is evil, it was evil in those days to believe in Christ and to confess that faith. [6]

Evil is difficult to recognize, because it appears as good. It seeks, not only to misdirect persons, but to create structures of sin, to create an environment in which the world is perceived through distorted mental constructs, and to reify them, to make people think they are absolute truth and what is good, so that people, following them, will create (if that is the right word) more evil. Of course, people are not seeking evil, rather, they follow some good which is taken as the whole of the good. The one who sees beyond such a construct must see such a good for what it is, for a good that it is but a good misapplied and abused, taken out of its proper holistic context. This is often difficult, and why so many who oppose evil end up creating a new evil, using another distorted good to respond to a different evil. This is also why so many have difficulty seeing beyond the evil they stand for, because for them, they do not see it as evil; they see the good before them, and think that proves what they support cannot be said to be evil, ignoring, of course, how evil uses such a good as a vehicle for its justification.

When we will, we will for our happiness, for what we think is right and good. Evil traps us, because it distorts our ability to understand what is good. It turns our attention to some lesser good, to some distortion of being, leading us to act inappropriately. It might not be immediately, but the fruit of our act will come out, and negatively affect us. When we look at our life as a whole which we have made, it points to a disposition we have created for ourselves. Have we come to understand why we are not to be like gods, that we cannot create good and evil, and so open ourselves up to the fullness of the real, or will we try to become the god of our own existence, to demand the mental construct we establish is the fullness of reality, creating our existential prison in which no eternal happiness can be found? Those who see the limitations of our mental constructs will see how they create the evil which we must avoid, and they will avoid such evil – they will open themselves up by overcoming the one ultimate construct which must be destroyed, the false egotistical self, so that they can become the open person who is free to experience the world as it truly is. They will act, not according to a deliberative will that seeks to reify their own mental constructs, but according to the open nature of the world, to the true nature of everything, so that the good in all things can be shared by all without distortion.

St Augustine, after establishing that the Good is God, and that God is the one alone who can bring us happiness, points out that it is because we turn away from God, from the common source of all that is good, that we sin. We sin because we seek, not the common Good of all, but the limited good for the self:

Therefore, when the will cleaves to the common and unchangeable good, it attains the great and foremost goods for human beings, even though the will itself is only an intermediate good. But when the will turns away from the unchangeable and common good towards its own private good, or toward external or inferior things, it sins. It turns toward its own private good when it wants to be under its own control; it turns toward external things when it is keen on things that belong to others or have nothing to do with itself; it turns toward inferior beings when it takes delight in physical pleasure. In this way one becomes proud, meddlesome, and lustful; one is caught up into a life that, by comparison with the higher life, is death.[7]

This is the point. When we turn in and thing with the false concept of the self, trying to make it a god which then creates a construction of the world, seeking to turn reality into a play thing under its control, it closes in on itself, seeking happiness in itself, and, inasmuch as there is any goodness within, that is as much happiness as it will find. But the only way for eternal happiness is to transcend that shell of the self and to know God, to be united with God, because he provides, not a limited good, but unlimited good. Anything else ends up as hell.

While much of this text is in accord with what has already been seen as Anthonite, we might wonder whether or not the exposition on evil here is something which Anthony himself would have provided. That is, would Anthony, before Augustine, have a semi-Augustinian understanding of the will for evil? The answer must be yes, because asceticism is based, in part, on the pursuit of the real good instead of the apparent good. Ascetics, Anthony being one of them, understand why they need to purify their wills, for they understand the attraction of evil and why people turn to it. The wisdom they offer comes, in part, from the way they have mapped out temptation, that is, they have seen what desires lie within and how they attract us to act in error.[8] It is for this reason one must watch over oneself; watchfulness is an important concept which, without surprise, is one Anthony understood.[9]

Christian ascetics also understand that the real happiness comes from God, who they seek after in their asceticism. We find Anthony explaining in Athanasius’ Life how God works good for those who choose the good, which of course, is why we must seek after God:

Wherefore, children, let us hold fast our discipline, and let us not be careless. For in it the Lord is our fellow-worker, as it is written, “to all that choose the good, God worketh with them for good.”[10]

While this is not the exact same thing as saying God is the source of all that is good, and so by finding God, we find the happiness we seek, it points out, in the practical sense, how God will provide that which people seek if one seeks after the good. This can only make sense if God is that good, but that is not something Anthony would see as needing to be explained in every place he is exhorting others to seek after the good. Theological answers are important, but monks need to find the theological answers within, so as to really know the truth and not rely upon the experience of others to know it. This means, it should not be surprising that Anthony at times would exhort his audience to know the truth in themselves, to find the implications of his arguments for themselves, so as to prove for themselves their real understanding of the truth and not some bookish knowledge of it. Even if we do not find him speaking anywhere else as directly as we see written here, it is the authentic conclusion to what we do see him speak about, and so it is not surprising if he would, in some place or another, have spoken or written what we see here.  Thus, what we see here is not a stretch to attribute to Anthony, but, by itself, it is not something we can show as being a way he would express himself.