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

Introduction and Part II

“Evil is a passion adherent to matter, but God is not the cause of evil. He has given men knowledge and understanding, the power of discriminating between good and evil, and free will.”[1] We are culpable for the evil we do; we follow our passions out of “negligence and indolence.”[2] We must understand that this is true for all which do evil. Whether it is some fallen human or devil, all evil is “a result of the free choice of their own will.”[3]

The devout person will strive to make sure they do no evil, that they don’t let evil arise in their soul. When we avoid some evil, we avoid the consequences of such evil in the future.[4] For one who has moved beyond evil, “Such a man is dominated neither by demon nor by fate, for God delivers him from all evil and, protected like a god, he lives unharmed.”[5]  Those having transcended the dictates of fallen humanity do not have any concern over the opinions of others: they will laugh at any praise they receive and will not defend themselves, nor even feel bad, when ridiculed by others.[6]

“Evil clings closely to one’s nature, just as verdigris to copper and dirt to the body.”[7] God is not to be seen as the author of evil, just as a coppersmith is not the one who creates verdigris, and our parents do not make the dirt which comes upon our bodies.[8] God has given us the means to avoid evil. Indeed, we know there will be consequences for our actions, and this should serve as a means by which we avoid evil.[9] “Thus when you see someone enjoying power and wealth, mind you are never deluded by some demon into thinking him happy. Quickly bring death before your eyes, and you will never have a desire for any evil or worldly object.”[10]

Unlike what fatalists (religious and secular) suggest, we have been given free will. Free will, of course, must be understood properly: it does not mean that if we will to do something, we can automatically do it. It means that we have the ability to interact with our surroundings, to make choices, and to act out on our choices without some external force dominating us and making sure we can and will act in only one way. This must not be seen to suggest, however, that we are not being influenced in our decision making processes; we are often influenced by many sources, both external and internal. Those who have not given to spiritual exploration and development will be more influenced and find themselves quite limited in what they can do, while those who have developed their spiritual life and opened themselves to the Holy Spirit will find themselves freed from such influences according to the level of spiritual development they have achieved. True liberty is the liberty of the saints, freed from the bondage of sin and concupiscence, and unconcerned with the opinions of those remaining within the domain of the fall.

Since the fall, humanity has found its home in the physical, material aspect of its being, so that we act to achieve material goals, we seek after material goods, and we have a difficult time seeing or experiencing the invisible, spiritual real in which material being resides. Likewise, our intellect is now focused on the material realm as the foundation for its understanding. This means, as St Edith Stein explains, that the fallen mode of intellectual activity cannot lead us to God:

 In the natural world, the intellect grasps objects through the forms and images that the senses perceive. These cannot serve to lead forward on the way to God. As well, whatever of the supernatural world is accessible to the intellect here cannot help attain any certain knowledge of God. The intellect, therefore, in its own insights cannot construct an adequate concept of God. The memory out of all its fantasy cannot create a form or picture that could portray God; the will cannot taste any joy or delight that is at all similar to God himself.[11]

When the root text says that evil is “a passion adherent to matter,” it is not saying that evil is only found in matter, but rather, it is describing how, as beings turned toward the world of matter, it is in and through the passions adherent to matter that we are generally led to act and sin. We are sensual beings, having turned towards our senses as the primary means by which our intellect learns, and it is through the senses that our intellect deliberates and guides our will. This, of course, explains why we will in ways which hurts ourselves. We deliberate “gnomically,” with imperfect knowledge and understanding; we are easily distracted by lesser, but more immediate, goods, and so we follow them even though if we took time to consider the ramifications of our actions, we would realize those lesser goods lead to ends which we do not desire.  In this way, inordinate passions often guide us to act so that we seek fleeting pleasures, because they are easily attained, and our senses support such passions because they show us how easy their ends can be attained. For example, people who lust will find themselves seeking and attaining all kinds of sexual fulfillment, those who are greedy will seek the accumulation of material goods, and those who are gluttonous will find themselves seeking food to satisfy their unending craving.

Since the material world is low in the chain of being (matter is next to nothing on the chain of being), it is more conditioned toward necessity. One who gets caught up in a purely material modality will find themselves more and more conditioned to necessity until, at last, they can be said to be “enslaved” by it. Indeed, the more we act in a fallen, materialistic fashion, the more we create a habit of sin in our life, leading to a greater enslavement and lessening of our power of will. Deliberation which precedes will is influenced by the conditions under which we find ourselves in; the more we sin, the more likely we will continue in sin because of the conditions sin established in our lives. It is only through the work of grace that the bonds of necessity established by sin can be overcome – but, that grace must be cooperated with by acts of will as well. And this is where asceticism comes into play. Ascetic practices seek to purify our intellects by looking beyond simple, easily attained pleasures, by showing us that we don’t have to follow after them. Indeed, we must find ourselves overcoming the world and all it presents to us if we want to find God. “Whoever expects to overcome a pampered and contrary body by being lenient is in need of common sense. Whoever wants to possess the world and yet serve God perfectly is attempting the impossible and is perverting God’s own teaching.”[12]

Ascetical practices might be difficult at first, but the more one practices them, the easier they become and the freer one finds oneself. Through them, one can look for and seek after the greater good (God) over and above the lesser good which entraps us.  It is, therefore, a way to free our intellect and to open itself up to God. Thus, St Maximus explains asceticism: “Asceticism, and the toils that go with it, was devised simply in order to ward off deception, which established itself through sensory perception.”[13]

We must understand that, until we find ourselves fully freed from the bonds of sin, we are called to work out our own salvation with much fear and trembling (cf. Philip. 2:12). We are called to examine the stains of sin in our lives, to see how sin influences us and our way of thinking, and to find ways to overcome such influences. Sin darkens the mind, for it limits our view of creation and all the possibilities which lie before us. Our fallen mode of activity leads us to deliberate based upon the darkness imposed upon us by sin, and so we often look to where the sin points to us, to the limited good and pleasure which the sin wants us to accept, and follow it time and time again. When we give in to sin, when we do not struggle against it, we find ourselves negligent, and our indolence is likely to lead us away from the ultimate, absolute good we desire. We must remember, again and again, the limits of lesser goods, and not attach ourselves to them as if they are more than they really are. We must remember that our darkened mind gives us a limited understanding in the world, and we must strive to understand the world and all that is in it by overcoming those acts of sin we desire to follow so as to see beyond the sin and into the world freed from sin’s dictates. The pleasures we experience are real, but they are limited; if we meditate upon them, if we explore such pleasures to their limit, we will find out where they lead us and how far their destination is from the real happiness which we seek. We should seek the real good which transcends the lesser goods we have accepted by our prior actions. Those, however, who are negligent of their salvation will not struggle against the limits imposed upon them by their choices; if they decide to stay where they are, and give up all spiritual development, all ascetic discipline, they will find the limited good they have accepted to be the limits of their existence, the place of their spiritual entrapment. The pleasure they have will soon become a thing of suffering, until at last, if they do not turn away from the place their choices take them, they find themselves in a state of perpetual suffering and eternal hell. This, then, explains why we should not see those who possess earthly glory as being truly happy. Those who have sought after and received such a limited good have found their reward (cf. Matt 6:2). They have got what they wanted, but they will find that their achievements do not lead to eternal happiness and beatitude; the limited happiness they have attained comes to an end at the end of their temporal life. Their attachments to goods which they can never have in eternity will be the means by which their earthly pleasures have turned into the eternal pains of hell. It is for this reason we must contemplate all earthly glories and see their limits, so we are not seduced by them and led to our own private hell. Moreover, for those who are stuck with such desires, we must pity them, pray for them, and hope they will abandon their attachments before eternity, so that they too can find a share of true, eternal happiness.

There are a few questions which can come out of these passages. On the one hand, it seems as if the author is establishing matter as the source of what is evil, and therefore, it appears that the author is dualistic his understanding of the world. Of course, if we remember what was said before this passage, the text also acknowledges spiritual evil, and so we must not reduce evil to matter. We must not take passages out of the whole, but rather, remember this is one complete text, even if and when it is borrowing from many sources (and, it is true, these sources might contradict each other in their original context, but as it is often the case, someone looking for truth will find elements of it in many sources and take what it is they believe to be true out of them while trying to find a way to relate contradictory texts, and so we must consider our text to be the accumulation of truths from many sources and work to understand them as they are brought together). It is quite clear that we find in the letters of Anthony, as with other monastic sources, a similar “dualistic” difficulty; the body is consistently treated as the major source of evil, especially for beginners. “Antony shared the basic Platonic view on corporeality, and thus often refers to the body as something ‘heavy’ which ties man down, something corruptible to be freed from.”[14] Our text is not claiming that matter is itself evil, though of course, one can easily be led to such a belief if one is not careful; rather, it is showing us how it has become the primary motivation for and condition of our actions, so it is for most of us that bodily passions are the foundation for our evil acts.

One can wonder whether or not a human person would be considered “like a god” as we find here, when one has overcome sin.[15] However, it is also the kind of sentiment one sees developing out of the concept of theosis, a doctrine not only taught by St Athanasius (the friend of Anthony who was his primary biographer),[16] but found in earlier writings such as in the works of St Irenaeus.[17] Thus, it is something Anthony could have been familiar with and used. [18]  While it can be used properly, nonetheless, one can question whether or not Anthony himself would do so in such a shocking fashion. Of course, if our thesis is correct, that the root text is a collection of thoughts, both from Anthony (or one of his disciples) and from sources Anthony has studied or listened to, then this can also be used to explain such an application of theosis.  It is clear Jesus himself calls us “gods”[19] and this has been used by many to defend the doctrine of theosis, and it is a similar application of “god” here as one can find in the words of Jesus. So, while we might wonder if Anthony the monk would use the term in this way, it would not be against what we know of early Christianity and those sources which would have influenced Anthony to see Anthony take them up in this fashion.

The general ascetic sentiment of these passages remains the kind one would expect from Anthony, who famously fought against the temptation of greed and saw the grace of the Spirit as what leads to Christian liberty. To this extent, though there are a couple questionable aspects to these passages (which we will have to discuss later), for the most part, we once again find texts which discuss matters which would be of interest to Anthony and express sentiments he would share with others.