[Asceticism and Mystical Theology.doc]

Christian monks and nuns throughout history have experimented with widely-varying forms of community and solitude, testing the respective advantages and disadvantages, the different ascetical opportunities and impediments afforded by each. Even before the birth of Christ, in the writings of Philo (d.c. 50), the hermit had come to exemplify the contemplative life, while those who practice asceticism in community were models of the quest for moral virtue.  In the late fourth and early fifth centuries, John Cassian (d.c. 430) provided a Christian rationale for this conviction in his Institutes and Conferences, fortifying his rationale with examples and teachings he attributed to the early founders of monasticism.

        Life in community offers abundant opportunities for the practice of obedience, mutual service and fraternal correction, forms of asceticism enjoined throughout the New Testament.  The community can serve as a mirror, reflecting back those elements of behavior and personality in needs of change.  The importance of “others” willing to speak honestly and openly of defects they perceive had already been acknowledged and emphasized by the pagan philosopher-physician Galen, (d.c.200) (The Diagnosis and Cure of the Soul’s Passions. ch 3-4 / 5.13-5.24; Harkins 1963: 33-44).  The monastic legislator Basil of Caesarea (d. 379)  echoed Galen and highlighted the value of community in chapter 3 of his Long Rules stressing both the value of community in discerning one’s faults and the opportunities for service afforded by community: “Whose feet, therefore, will you wash? To whom will you minister? In comparison with whom will you be the lowest, if you live alone?” (Long Rules 3.6; Wagner 2010: 252).

        Solitude, exemplified by the prophet Elijah and John the Baptist, came to be regarded as a higher, more spiritual and potentially more dangerous calling, offering both the benefit of leisure for contemplation and the terrifying prospect of direct temptation by demonic powers.  On a more positive note the spiritually advanced who undertook this perilous path would become more vividly aware of the soul’s weaknesses and perceive with greater clarity the contours of the battlefield of the innermost self. In monastic literature the primordial literary portrait of the hermit-monk was Athanasius’ biography of the monk Antony.  As has been described, Athanasius (d. 373) portrays Antony’s early ascetical training as formed by the liturgical life of his village and by the wise example and teaching of semi-hermit elders living nearby (Life of Antony 3; Gregg 1980: 32).  In Athanasius’ depiction the transformation of Antony has a further goal: the transfigured Antony becomes an abba, a wise elder competent to listen with understanding to the stories and struggles of others.  Throughout the rest of Athanasius’ portrayal Antony is a “physician to Egypt” ( Life of Antony 87; Gregg 1980: 94), able to help others interpret and make sense of their thoughts.  Such a spiritual advisor was considered an essential prerequisite to the art of discernment. 

        Discernment (diakrisis) was understood as a skill that requires both dialogue and submission to spiritual authority.  It begins with the necessary humiliation of opening one’s heart to another in whose judgment one trusts.  This revelation of the inner landscape of the soul, including especially the thoughts and temptations with which one is afflicted, permits the spiritual guide, the abba or amma, to diagnose spiritual afflictions and recommend ascetical remedies.  As will be described in the next section, this skill can be understood as an application of the art of biblical exegesis to the soul, that is to the salvation history of the disciple, rather than to the sacred text.

        The interrelationship between communal and solitary asceticism is perennial in Christianity.  It is exemplified in the East by the monastic colony of Mount Athos, founded in the tenth century on a peninsula in northern Greece.  Athos, “The Holy Mountain” endures to this day and encompasses a wide spectrum of ascetical observance, ranging from hermit’s cells to large, long-established cenobia, and including as well small “lavras” that combine elements of both the eremitic and cenobitic life.   In the West monastic reform movements from at least the tenth century to the present have tried to create an approved context for solitaries.  Medieval anchoresses were often ritually established in cells adjoining parish churches, while new orders of men such as the Camaldolese (1072) Carthusians (1084), and Grandmontines (c.1100) strove to incorporate elements of the solitary life into a canonically-approved cenobitic structure.

This Webpage was created for a workshop held at Saint Andrew's Abbey, Valyermo, California in 2003....x....  ’ “”.