The Archbishop of Canterbury on Passions

Dr Williams presented his paper entitled: "Tempted as we are: Christology and the Analysis of the Passions" based his theme on Evagrius, the late-fourthcentury interpreter of Origen and John Cassian, who brought the teachings of Evagrius and the Egyptian monks to Gaul* in the early fifth century.
*Gaul the area now known as France and Belgium.

The Archbishop told his audience: "The entire development of a diagnostic and a therapy of passion in Christian ascetic literature from the fourth century onwards, especially in the East, is part of that complex process by which Christianity assisted, remotely and not-so-remotely, in the invention of the "modern" self -that is, of a conception of human identity in which narrative, uncertainty, choice and self-questioning are focal elements."

It is from the writings of Evagrius, Cassian and John Climacus that the Church arrived at the list of what are now known as the Seven Capital Sins or Seven Deadly Sins. The original list included an eighth: vainglory.

The writings of the early Church Fathers and Mothers have never ceased to affect and influence scholars. The International Conference began in 1951 and is held every four years. There has been a much greater geographical and cultural mix of people participating in recent years. The majority of participants are still from Western Europe and North America with some from Australia, but there are now Japanese and other Asian participants as well as a good number from Eastern Europe, including scholars from Russia, Romania, Hungary and the Czech Republic. Most of those present are Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican or members of the Protestant Churches.

In his dense and lengthy paper, which can only be summarised here, Dr Williams showed how Ireneaus, Origen, Evagrius (writing as Nilus of Sinai) and Cassian evolved an ascetic schema based on the three temptations of Christ.

The Archbishop said: "Right at the beginning of his treatise on "Thoughts, logismoi (long preserved- at least in substantial part- under the name of Nilus of Sinai), Evagrius proposes that we should think of three primary areas in which mental distortion is possible- greed, acquisitiveness and vainglory and these are the three passions that are put before Christ by the devil in the wilderness."

He said Evagrius touches only fairly briefly on the temptations of Christ whilst Cassian, in the fifth of the Conferences (Abba Serapion on the eight principal faults) makes a serious attempt to do justice both to the "tempted as we are" text of Hebrews and to the carefully differentiated anthropology and psychology of the Evagrian heritage.

In Cassian`s work the temptations of Christ appear under three headings:

Gluttony, kenodoxia and pride-gluttony through the seduction of the forbidden fruit, vainglory through the promise that Your eyes shall be opened, pride in relation to Ye shall be as gods.

The Archbishop said: "The three gospel temptations, in their Matthaean order, correspond to these primordial encounters with passion. Jesus' response is an example to us, but more importantly the victory over these trials is part of the liberation of humanity; it does not simply set an example, it makes possible a different kind of response."

The Archbishop then moved to Cassian's work on the temptations as they appear in St Luke's Gospel where the offer of the kingdoms of the world is placed second and the invitation to jump from the pinnacle of the temple last.

He continued: "Clearly the Temple temptation represents pride, which appropriately comes last, since, when other passions are overcome, this can remain, and-as Satan above all should know-can be experienced by disembodied angelic spirits. But this means that the vision of the kingdoms of the world has to be related to covetousnous…Acquisitiveness does not arise from gluttony…it has a different kind of origin.

"The story of Christ in the desert thus provides not only an example, not only a manifestation of the new Adam restoring human nature, but the confirmation of a particular diagnosis of the relations between the passions. As Serapion is careful to warn his hearers at the end of the fifth conference (chapter 27), we should not think in terms of a tidy progression, combating and defeating the passions one by one; in actuality they appear in different ways and with different degrees of force, depending on the character and circumstance of each person, so that we need self-knowledge to fight back adequately… The list of the eight passions or thoughts is less of a catalogue than a genealogy, beginning from the most elementary impulse to misuse the material world we inhabit, and traced through to the most sophisticated of self- delusions."

The Archbishop stated that in our confident reliance on the grace of the new Adam working with our good will we can control the conditions that allow these "testing" elements to persist.

"What Adam's choices made possible for him (the rest of the eight diseased passions) are only abstract possibilities for Jesus, since he has not consented to the primary error of Adam. He lives in that-for us-unimaginable place where instability is always real yet always contained, on the threshold between freedom and self-enslavement; and, living there, he promises the Christian ascetic more and not less, not a disembodied security or a state where no decision and self-examination are needed, but the same liminal condition in which every choice and every change of circumstance take on significance."

(For the full text of this lecture contact the Archbishop`s office)

Veronica Whitty
www.veronicawhitty.co.uk
veronicawhitty@hotmail.com
1 october 007 enneagram monthly