Been Down to the Crossroads: Evagrius’ Bad Thoughts

There is a story about two men who needed to make a journey though the desert, as they had the misfortunate to live in the fourth century there were no planes, trains, or automobiles, and so he set off on foot, alone. As the journey took more time than they had planned, their supplies of food ran out. Now he stood among the dunes with no food, and rapidly diminishing strength. The men cried out to God to hear his cry and help him. Soon they arrived at a crossroads where 2 loaves of bread set. The hungry men each picked up a loaf, ate, and continued their journey. Later one of the men would sit down with a friend and mentor, the great monk Evagrius, and relate the story about finding bread near the crossroads leading to the monk’s commune. Evagrius surprised the man by relating a story of a similar finding, and the day he had spent looking for the owner of a dropped bag of coins. Being a man of considerable concern to do good and prove himself a worthwhile man, our boy asked, “Who do you think dropped the bread and gold,” the man asked, “Was it an angel or a demon?” The wise Evagrius answered:

“As for you and me, whether what happened in our cases occurred on account of an angel or on account of a demon, let us give glory to God, for occurrences like these do not profit the soul, but purify it. Nevertheless, I give glory to you for receiving food from an angel. Yes it is possible for demons to steal some loaves of bread and bring them to someone, but such loaves will not nourish the body because things that belong to demons stink, and if something comes from demons the soul is confused when it sees it. If however, it comes from the angels, the soul is not confused but remains steadfast and at peace at that time. The person who is worthy to receive food from the angels first of all possesses discipline in thinking about the saying of the Apostle who says, “Solid food is for the perfect for those who faculties have been trained by practice to distinguish evil from good.’”[1]

Though it may seem odd to our modern ears to hear all this talk about good and evil, angel and demons, or if someone questioning who would leave food on desert trails, the question come out of a culture and time that cared greatly about, and discussed at length what they called virtue and vice. The monk Evagrius would spend his weeks alone mediating on such topics, then would gather with a group of like men and women and discuss his findings throughout the weekend. And in many ways he and his time was not so much unlike our own. The area in which he lived had entered into a pronounced depression. Years of poor harvests, as well as the ever weakening state of his nation left many poor and out of work. The Christian religion of his father offered little support, as concerns about poor morals, poorer teaching, and mass apathy threatened to swamp the faith.

And so men and women like Evagrius of Pontus, Basil of Ceasarea, and Gregory of Nanzianus came together to seek the true faith, and a truer way to live their lives. It is this metaphor of the journey that these monks would repeatedly turn. For them life was a journey and the most important thing was to choose wisely the path one wanted to traverse. As you read the writings of these men, and the following thinkers influenced by them, you notice what I have taken to the call the railroad tracks. A thought strikes the mind, works its way into the heart, and proceeds out of body by way of the feet, hands, or mouth. A course of action is taken, and soon followed by another, and another. Soon a habit has been formed. Then a way of life, and before one knows it this way of life has become normal and unthinkable otherwise. All of this is well and good if that first thought was well, good. Yet if that first thought was not so good, then everything that has come since is tainted and quite possibly worthless.

In modern times we talk about gateway drugs, those drugs that users start with before moving on to heavier substances (this is the major reason for keeping something like marijuana illegal). And these early church fathers were onto something very similar here. For this reason Evagrius created and distributed his list of eight bad thoughts. “Watch for these, and head them off at the path,” he seemed to be saying in his discussion of them. Evagrius says, “to speak to this point, no one can fall to a demon unless he has been wounded by these demons of the front line.”[2]

To follow along these lines and on this path, though broad and occasionally enjoyable, was to travel along the way to ruin and destruction. Yet following the words of our Savior on the mountain, they called each other to that other path, the narrower one. Here one started by Keeping the commandments, the practice of the virtues, and the shunning of these bad thoughts, moved on to a fuller understanding of the world and the way it worked, and last arrived at that great moment in life, the beatific vision, that is a vision of God as He truly is. This journey which lasts longer than a lifetime leads through death to life. Writing to friends, Evagrius would say:

“Abiding in us, [Christ] is perfected according to our power and wishes to be seen in us through the hidden works of our virtues…. There is no one who works iniquity, yet seeks righteousness; no one who hates her companion, yet seeks love; no one who lies, yet seeks the truth. So now this is seeking the Lord: to keep the commandments with true faith and genuine knowledge. The model of these things is the writing we have sent to teach you; it has expounded to you ‘the strait and narrow path that nevertheless leads to the kingdom of heaven.” [3]

Over time, two of Evagrius’ bad thoughts (sloth and acedia) would be merged, and inside the rapidly professionalized confines of the confessional would become known as the Seven Deadly Sins, the sins that lead inexorably to other sins.  And the overworked Bishops of the Catholic Church would seek to destroy these sins by encouraging the works of another way, the seven virtues.

Much of this thought would be lost during the Reformation; yet as the 20^th century has turned into the 21^st, there have been some who have looked back at the writings of this strange monk, and wondered if Evagrius might not have appreciated the words of the great bluesman Robert Johnson: “I went down to the crossroad / fell down on my knees  / Asked the lord above “Have mercy now / save poor Bob if you please.”[4] It’s a prayer that has been prayed before, and most likely will be prayed again.

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[1] Story as told by Palladius in his Lausiac History as translated by Tim Vivian in Four Desert Fathers: Pambo, Evagrius, Macarius of Egypt, and Macarius of Alexandria. (St Vladimir’s Press: Crestwood, NY, 2004).

[2] Evagrius. “On Thoughts.”  Evagrius Pontus. Trans. A.M. Cassidy. (Routledge: New York, 2006), 93.

[3] Evagrius. “On the Faith.” Evagrius Pontus. Trans. A.M. Cassidy. (Routledge: New York, 2006), 61.

[4] Robert Johnson. “Crossroad Blues.” RCA, 1931-34.

Seminary Guy: What Can you say about sin in three minutes….

This is a tough challenge I have been given today. What can one effectively say about sin in three minutes? Where would one even begin, and what could one say to contemporary America about this naughty word? Ours is a culture saturated with the dualism of Star Wars and Harry Potter, the Gnosticism of the Matrix, the animalistic / evolutionary determinism of Vampire Lit, the hedonistic individualism of Oprah, all competing with the all-too-literal and legalistic book-banning attempts of evangelists like Bob Jones, and even some misguided politicians like Sarah Palin. In this chaotic mess, I can only start in the cupboard of Dr. Timothy Larsen, Wheaton College’s Carolyn and Fred McManis Chair of Christian Thought. Buried amongst other cups and glasses is a rather sharp-looking beer stein, and what kind of beer stein is owned by a distinguished professor of Christian Thought?

One with a pithy quote from Martin Luther, of course. Right there on the side, it reads “Sin Boldly!” So is this distinguished professor advocating that his sinners break the Wheaton Community Covenant and indulge in all manner of bacchanalia? To quote the great Lee Corso, “Not so fast, my friend!” These words of Luther reveal the great man’s thoughts on human nature as revealed more clearly in the Larger Catechism and his classic The Bondage of Will. In these works and others he argued that we, all of us who call Christ our Lord, are simul Justus et Peccator, that is simultaneously Just and Sinful. If one does not believe that you are both just and sinful, you may ask your spouse or children to set you straight. However as a single man, I guess I can make due with Luther’s discussion of the 10 Commandments found within the Larger Catechism. As he rolls through each commandment he seemingly takes great joy in exposing how each of us break each of these in amazingly imaginative ways each day. He even shows how even when we are trying our best to be holy, just, and dignified, we are still infinitely short of the great glory and purity of our role model, Jesus Christ.

Along these lines, one can see and hear as this wild German monk harks back to the words of the founder of his order, Augustine, who taught that in this beautiful world that God created and called good, there are two types of things. There are the heti and the eti: those things that ought to be loved and those things that ought to be used. Yet bound as we are by our foolish thoughts, wrong desires, and fractured relationships, we often seek to love what is only to be used, and try to use that which was meant to be loved. In this way we have become a gluttonous nation of sex addicts, rage-aholics, and bulimics who binge and purge on relationships, churches, and ideals. Things have gotten so bad for us that even the “liberal, god-hating” editors and writers of Time magazine can produce a cover story asking Americans to rethink the words of Jerry Mcguire, and stop seeing marriage as a way to personal wholeness, completeness, and self-fulfillment.

Growing up the words most often heard in our house were “I can do it myself.” Usually these were said by my sister or I at the top of our lungs. We needed no help from each other, no advice, no fellowship, we could, as it were, do it ourselves. It is these words that are so harmful to Christian’s pursuit of the good or virtuous life. Adam and Eve did not need to listen to the voice of God as he strolled though the cool of the day, they gain the knowledge of good and evil themselves, by eating the apple. Abram did not need to wait for God’s promised heir, he could create life himself, with his servant Hagar. In the modern age we, too, are a people who desire to do-it-ourselves and have created warehouses full of  torture porn, gourmet food, and books full of promises on how we can lose weight, gain vitality, and increase our bank accounts all by ourselves and at the push of a button, or the popping of a pill. Wide is the path to our destruction, and easy is the road to desolation.

It is here in this motley crew, that we come to the Bible and meet a stranger in our world, a man who did it for us, a man who embodied and exhibited the selfless love of his father. And we find another way. And we might be mindful of the poet Robert Frost who famously declared:

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;         5

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,                   10

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

It is here that the Christian learns to sin boldly, but live much more boldly. There are two ways to live: one which ends in death and the other which invites death to come but ends in life. For in our willingness to look like the world’s boldest fools, and at times the world’s boldest sinners that we find the narrow gate and narrower paths. And it is here that they may hear the words of Kyle Reese-esque words: “Follow me if you want to live.”

Of monks, writers, and moderns: Norris’ story of dealing with the noonday demon

Editor’s Note: I am unfortunately one of the many to find himself unemployed in the wake of the economic turmoil. After spending hours networking, emailing, googling, and calling anyone who might have a line on a job, I find myself exhausted and in need of some refreshment. After initially spending too much time killing brain cells with junk, I decided to take advantage of the situation and get in some good reading. You may have noticed the reading log I have been keeping as a way of keeping myself accountable to spending this unplanned and unwanted down-time in a more or less productive manner.

As I have struggled with the raging emotions caused by lack of work, multiple rejections, and a worse lack of identity (work is who we are is this place we call America), I have come to beb challenged by the wonderful work of Kathleen Norris titled Acedia and Me.  Her discussion of acedia, the so-called sin of sloth otherwise known as the noonday demon, has been challenging and rewarding, the way any great work of religious merit should be. So please allow me to reproduce part of her fantastic work here. As the old saying goes, if someone has said it better, why try to redo it. Here is Norris describing and defining this pernicious demon, who may just be the demon of our time:[1]

“Religious vocabulary is demanding and words such as sin and repentance carry so much baggage that even many Christians are reluctant to employ them. In a culture marked by theological illiteracy it is tempting to censor terms that are so often misconstrued and maligned. Many people who would not dream of relaying on the understanding of literature or the sciences that they acquired as children are content to leave their juvenile theological convictions largely unexamined. If they resented religion when they are young, as adults they are perplexed and dismayed by its stubborn persistence in the human race. But religions endure because they concern themselves with out deepest questions about good and evil, about the suffering that life brings to ach of us, and about what it means to be fully human in the face of death.

Peek-a-boo: The Life of Radical Faith

Editors Note: The following sermon was preached on 3/22 at the Vineyard Church of DuPage.

Question: How would you define the term: Radical? If I was to describe someone by saying they are “a radical” what would that mean to you?

Follow-up:

Dictionary.com defines radical as:

– a person who holds or follows strong convictions or extreme principles; extremist.

– a person who advocates fundamental political, economic, and social reforms by direct and often uncompromising methods.

One poster to wikipedia has stated that “the term radical originally meant to go to the root of a (social) problem.”

Since the term can be used as an adjective, one might also ask what it would mean to have “a radical faith.”

Question: How define last week?

“faith is believing and acting on God’s Word”

equation – Faith = Belief + Action Supernatural Result

Dave stated… “Signs follow those who believe”

Don’t know if intentional but reminded of one of my favorite quotes from the 8^th century English story “Beowulf.” — “Fortune Favors the Brave.”

I have always felt that this quote much maligned by some stated a central premise of the Christian life.. I think about the charismatic stories I have grown up reading and hearing about: John Wimber, Derek Morphew, John G. Lake, Smith Wigglesworth, Kathleen Kulhman, Benny Hinn, Todd Bentley, the list goes on. Each of these men and women have had the courage to be fools both in the eyes of the world, and unfortunately many times in the eyes of the church.

One of my favorite stories about radical faith: Columba.

Transition: I don’t know about you, but the little boy in me would like to think I would that kind of faith, the faith to face down evil. Yet while many of us may never come face-to-face with armed intimidation, I am convinced that all of us face monsters in our own lives, and we wonder what does it mean and how can we go about facing down these giants. Like many of you I simply long to believe that there is a purpose to my life and that I have my own giants to slay. Yet I wake up each morning in my small apartment and go about what often seems to me to all these small, minor, insignificant tasks. And I wonder of maybe I missing the point?

It has been in these times of questions and doubts that I have hit upon my own definition of faith and established the following slogan to live by: “A radical faith seeks and finds God.”

Peace on Earth, We Need It Now

Editor's Note: The following is a sermon presented at the Vineyard Church of DuPage this past December.

Peace on Earth. Words that we flash across the world at Christmas time, like some Miss America pageant winner… “And in my reign as Mr Perfect of the DuPage County Courthouse I plan to bring peace to all the earth and see white people and black people hug at least twice a day.”

Have you ever wondered just what we mean when we say Peace on Earth. Here is one take from my parent’s generation (You know I had to go there):

The Words of John Lennon:

Imagine there’s no Heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace

You may say that I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world

You may say that I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will live as one

Peace on Earth. John wanted it now. And not to be some Generation X buzzkill who looks back and for the life of him cannot see what the big deal was, but these lyrics which are about peace make me less peaceful. Anytime I hear someone mooning over these lyrics, I want to plug my ears and run screaming from the room. I find it amazing that these words have been so loved by a bunch of rich white people who have never known a hardship other than having to wait in line for their new iphone. So I just want to say, “yeah John I hear you but I just don’t feel it. To me it seems all kindy whiny and pretentious.”

Love, True Love Is What Brings Us Together Today

Editors Note: The following is a sermon presented at the Vineyard Church of DuPage this past January.

One of my favorite movie scenes of all time happens to be the wedding scene in the Princess Bride. No matter how many times I see it, I crack up anytime I hear the preacher droning on… “Love. True Love is what brings us together today.”

In a sense we could probably say this to each other every time we met here at the VCD. Don’t believe me, it’s right there in our mission statement: “Experiencing the Kingdom of God by loving God, loving each other, and loving our community.” When John told me that he wanted to use that as a mission statement I was thrilled, because I am convinced that love is the key that unlocks the Kingdom. Time after time in scriptures we are told that Jesus stopped what he was doing and brought the Kingdom through healing, and the prophetic pronouncement. Time after time. Why would he stop what he was doing and do something else. Was Jesus ADHD like me? Did he find it easy to be distracted and do stuff for no reason. As much as I would love for God to sanctify my distractability, this is not the case, because time after time scripture tells us that Jesus was moved by compassion, he was moved with love for the people around him, and so he moved in the Kingdom power to do Kingdom things. He was moved with compassion for the hurting so He healed them. He was moved with compassion for the fate of his people, so he spoke prophetic words of truth to the powers at large. He was moved by the disciples struggles and trials and so He taught them how to be like Him.

Christiana Rosetti and the Decalogue

Editor's Note: The following is a review of Timothy Larsen's paper presented at the Reading the Decalogue Through the Decades Conference held at Wheaton College this past October.

It was a first for the conference and a first for the series of conferences of which it was a part. It was a long awaited first, but an important first step nonetheless. In his lecture coming towards the end of the Reading the Decalogue Through the Decades Conference, Timothy Larsen presented the views of Christiana Rosetti, the Anglican poet and expositor of scripture. Within this presentation, the first female expositor was quoted and examined. As Larsen posited these was of value in and of itself. In the longstanding focus on the male expositor of Scripture, the Church and Academy has lost the ability to examine what roughly half of the population at any given time might have thought on a topic. In restricting its search for understanding to just one group of respondents, both groups have lost many a great insight and possible train of thought.

The Decalogue and the New Testament

Editor's Note: The following is a review of Craig Evans' paper presented at the Reading the Decalogue Through the Centuries Conference held at Wheaton College this past October.

The Decalogue played an important if not always highlighted role in the New Testament. Much of the New Testament teaching can be seen as refracted through the Deuteronomic text. All of the law was important and if one takes seriously the Matthew Five passage, in which Christ taught that “I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.”

The debate over the place of the Decalogue within the New Testament as such figured as the primary discussion of Craig Evan’s lecture at Wheaton College’s Reading the Decalogue Through the Decades Conference. In opening up the lecture Evans preceded to place each of the commandments within the writing of the New. He argued that only the First Commandment was not explicitly or implicitly quoted. The Fifth, Sixth, Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth Commandments are quoted explicitly which leaves the Third, Fourth, and Seventh figuring into the discussion in implicit terms.

Roman Catholics, Americans, and the Conscience of Politics

In an ongoing editorial feature Rolling Stone runs a With Us – Against Us column. Should anyone be confused about the political leaning of RS, the With column was colored blue while the Against column was, wait for it, red. In the current issue towards the edge of the red lies a blurb about a Roman Catholic Church parish’s refusal to serve the Eucharist to Obama voters. My initial query concerning the mechanics of such a plan (how does the priest know who I voted for, does God tell on me, is that something I would have to confess and receive absolution for, can I be absolved for voting Bush in ‘o0 and ‘o4) was lost to consternation at the stupidity of the sound bite pulled for the piece. The episode revealed a not-so-minor problem which the Roman Catholic Church in America has faced since the beginnings of the nation, that of the relation of Church-State-Individual. In this home of the brave and land of the free has does the ex cathedra of the Pope work with the freedom to pursue life, liberty and happiness of Jefferson, for the American there is no statement more viewed as ex cathedra than the Constitution. For this reason among others, some critics of the RCC would argue that Americans are not real Catholics, but if you really but that line, I dare you to try that logic on some 70-year-old Irishman or woman from Boston sometime. I cannot know for sure what was going on in Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger’s mind as he and others worked on the Roman Catholic Catechism, but I am inclined to believe that this may have been an issue (or something like it) for which their work was done.

Karl Barth and the Axiomatic Nature of the First Commandment

In his presentation on the Decalogue in the New Testament at the Reading the Bible Through the Centuries Conference, Dr. Craig Evans argued that the one commandment never explicitly or implicitly cited by Jesus Christ was that of the First Commandment. He stated in passing that perhaps this most basic of commandments of just not that controversial. Pharisee, Sadducee, Jew, and disciple could argue that God was, is, will be, and should therefore be honored and revered above all others. Throughout the ages of the church, be it patristic, medieval, or reformation, the discussion of the First Commandment has been important, but never in doubt or presenting any ignitable substance. Yet when on picks up the writing of the 20^th Century luminaries such as Karl Barth the never neglected but thoroughly uncontroversial First Word takes on a new trajectory. Suddenly the staid and thoroughly boring step-sister has become the belle of the ball.