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Lesson 3.6: Revelations in the Sand
12 Plays1 month ago
In the centuries after Jesus, it was unclear what it mean to be a “good Christian.” Some fled into the desert to battle demons, others tore down temples and murdered philosophers, and many sought out persecution—not to avoid death, but to guarantee salvation.
Topics discussed:- Martyrdom as Moral Calling: Early Christians often saw suffering and death not as tragedy but as spiritual victory—martyrdom was the fast track to eternal life, especially for society’s marginalized.
- Religious Violence and Iconoclasm: As Christianity gained imperial power, some Christians believed it was their ethical duty to destroy pagan temples, art, and even people—acts justified as spiritual warfare against idolatry and demons.
- The Desert Fathers and the Flight from the World: In stark contrast, ascetics like Antony and Pachomius retreated to the wilderness to fight internal battles through solitude, fasting, and constant self-examination.
- Demonic Distraction and Spiritual Warfare: The desert was imagined as the devil’s territory; monks fought temptations and impure thoughts as if they were literal demons—an early form of psychological warfare rooted in spiritual metaphysics.
- Philosophy Reborn as Monasticism: The practices of the Desert Fathers were deeply influenced by Stoicism, Platonism, and even Cynicism, reshaping ancient philosophical self-care into a radical Christian form of soulcraft.
- Ethical Lessons for Today: Monastic practices of attention, restraint, self-scrutiny, and ethical discretion remain surprisingly relevant, offering tools for resisting distraction, consumerism, and emotional reactivity in the modern world.
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Transcript
Introduction to Early Christian Ethics
00:00:02
Speaker
Let me say right off the bat that I don't mean to be unnecessarily provocative here. This is not my intent to tick anyone off.
00:00:13
Speaker
The aim here in this lesson is to discuss Christian ethics in the first few centuries of the Common Era CE.
Christian Activities and Extremism
00:00:22
Speaker
And what I was originally going to do is just cover the Desert Fathers and that would have been fine.
00:00:29
Speaker
However, as I kept reflecting on what ethics means in this time period, realized I couldn't just do that lesson. Sure, the Desert her Fathers did prescribe sort of a way of life. They were role models for many people as to what it is that a Christian should be.
00:00:49
Speaker
But in this time period, Christians were engaging in all sorts of activities that they saw as the requisite lifestyle.
00:01:00
Speaker
And it wasn't just praying and living like an ascetic. In fact, during this time period, some Christians saw themselves as morally required to do things that smack of religious extremism.
00:01:15
Speaker
i sometimes call this the terrorist stage of Christianity. because it reminds me of you know some of the things that jihadist groups like ISIS and the Taliban have been doing in my day.
00:01:27
Speaker
So we're going to cover some of that too. And I just want you to know why I'm doing it. This is...
Belief and Doxastic Differences
00:01:34
Speaker
for the time, sort of uniquely Christian, which means, you know, if I'm covering lifestyle philosophies that are somewhat novel and interesting and unique, I have to cover this too.
00:01:47
Speaker
So let me give you some preliminary thoughts about this. According to the biblical scholar Bart Ehrman, It was actually proto-Christians' certainty about their religion that fueled their actions. And many of them, of course, were very violent and antisocial and in some cases murderous. i will We will soon see that.
00:02:10
Speaker
And this is the part that is a novelty in the religious milieu of the time, because certainty was not really a feature of pagan religions.
00:02:23
Speaker
Pagan religions, they weren't really focused on having the right beliefs at all. Those religions were ritualistic more than anything. So no stress on a particular belief system. The the fancy jargon for this is they didn't really have a doxastic element.
00:02:43
Speaker
Christianity did have this doxastic element, like that stress on having orthodox beliefs. And for that reason, it sort of generated a psychological need to have some certainty about the set of beliefs that you're accepting.
Lifestyle Choices: Martyrdom and Monasticism
00:02:58
Speaker
So that happened. So that's one very interesting novel thing going on in this time period. and And because of this emphasis on having the right beliefs, this other idea came about that even minor deviations from the true faith could result in you being, you know, roasted for all eternity.
00:03:20
Speaker
So some Christians were denouncing other Christians for having, at least from a secular viewpoint, moderately different beliefs about God and the afterlife.
00:03:35
Speaker
But that was enough, they thought, to you know guarantee their damnation to hell. Given this context, well, pagan beliefs were major deviations from the true faith.
00:03:48
Speaker
So that's a virtual guarantee of eternal damnation. And so given that Christians believe that literally the fate of the world and their souls was at stake, they felt compelled to take action, right? They had to take action against the non-believers, against the heretics.
00:04:08
Speaker
And naturally, this requires a sort of moral certainty, right? You have to be really confident and your beliefs in order to act on them in this way if they are requiring of you such extreme actions.
00:04:24
Speaker
So this is what is novel in this time period. And so now what I'm going to do is give you three lifestyle choices that you can take as an early Christian in this time period.
00:04:38
Speaker
So here is the first lifestyle choice that is available to you. If you are a Christian in the first centuries CE, you can try to get martyred.
00:04:52
Speaker
Now, let me begin with a historical clarification. Contrary to popular belief, most early persecution of Christians, of proto-Christians, I should say, was sporadic.
00:05:06
Speaker
It was localized. Basically, it was not part of a coordinated imperial policy. It happened in different pockets of the empire. It was not top-down, by and large at least, and it was not sustained.
00:05:21
Speaker
The only sustained campaign of persecution against proto-Christians came under the rule of Emperor Nero. Now, Nero was a very erratic person, probably um lots of mental maladies going on. i won't get into that.
00:05:38
Speaker
But besides that particular emperor, there was no other top-down, sustained, dedicated seeking out of Christians in order to execute them or persecute them.
00:05:51
Speaker
So now that we have that out of the way, let's think about the sort of situation that Christians or proto-Christians found themselves in early on in the history of their religion.
00:06:07
Speaker
Proto-Christians were living in relative isolation, right? They had distanced themselves from Judaism and they had, you know, they were basically awaiting the apocalypse there was a second coming jesus was coming back and they were just waiting for that and as a historian charles freeman argues this longing for salvation this waiting for apocalypse really shaped their identity and their behavior they were in this these are freeman's words in an apocalyptic waiting room
00:06:45
Speaker
And you can see this in the earliest proto-Christian writings. So if you look at the writings of Paul, you can feel this urgency and then less of an urgency.
00:06:59
Speaker
So you first of all, you have to organize Paul's letters into the order in which they were written, which is not the order in which they are presented in the Bible. um but once you do that, you can see that at first he really stresses belief in over behavior. There's really not even any time for you to you know change behavior. The end is near.
00:07:21
Speaker
It's coming. Later on, though, after some time, he begins to emphasize morality a little bit more, community life a little bit more. Basically, the delay of Christ's return, just you know the apocalypse just kept not happening.
00:07:38
Speaker
And so these Jesus groups had to figure out how to live together with each other in anticipation for when the day, you know, finally comes. Here's the punchline of this, you know, little survey of the context.
00:07:52
Speaker
For proto-Christians, the end is near. Salvation is top priority. Well, if that's all that matters, and there's really almost no time to change your behavior and shape your soul,
00:08:08
Speaker
Here is a guarantee of salvation. Martyrdom. For this reason, Christians ah appeared to revel in persecution.
00:08:21
Speaker
We have fairly good evidence of this from correspondence between Romans discussing the Christians essentially. So we have the letters, for example,
00:08:33
Speaker
of Emperor Trajan and Pliny the Younger. Pliny the Younger, by the way, has a beer named after him, so you can check that out, but that's not relevant here. um In any case, you can read their correspondence, and it's kind of weird, but the Romans are not as bloodthirsty as usual, and the explanation appears to be that they were just confused with regard to the Christians.
00:08:59
Speaker
Sometimes a Christian would be accused of essentially not participating in the civic religion, right? The religions of the Roman Empire.
00:09:11
Speaker
And so Roman authorities would give Christians or proto-Christians the opportunity to sacrifice to the Roman gods, you know, to atone, but they wouldn't.
00:09:22
Speaker
And the Romans would say, hey, just touch some of this incense and just say some of these words. And that's all we really want. and proto-Christians would not do it, essentially forcing the Roman hand. That's at least the way that one scholar puts Catherine Nixie.
00:09:41
Speaker
But here's why Nixie is maybe making some really good points here. Trajan explicitly says in his letters, don't seek the Christians out, just let them be.
00:09:52
Speaker
But it looks like fanatical Christians were the ones that were seeking martyrdom. Now this might be very confusing to you. Why would anyone want to be killed? Well, again, remember this guaranteed salvation.
00:10:08
Speaker
Not only that, it actually guaranteed you a higher place in heaven. So maybe this is what helps us understand the psychology behind these martyrs. You wanna go to heaven and you want a special place there.
00:10:23
Speaker
There's actually also sociological considerations that might help us understand what's going on here. Martyrdom would allow many who were otherwise a very lowly status or from a disenfranchised group, women, slaves, that kind of thing, they could become instant celebrities, essentially.
00:10:42
Speaker
So not only do you get a sweet spot in heaven, but you are famous. So that might have been also so very appealing to some people. And so that's why, you know, they were seeking it out so much.
00:10:55
Speaker
Add to that the fact that martyrdom literature proliferated. In other words, Christians were writing about this and celebrating the martyrs, right? So this is how you would become famous as a martyr. and And for this reason, if you wanted to be famous as a martyr,
00:11:13
Speaker
Well, you had to have a really good story. So sometimes Christians would actively seek out the most painful punishments. So yes, this is something that happened.
00:11:24
Speaker
It's very hard to square with ah our modern sensibilities, but this is what was happening. I even have here a long quote, which I won't read to you, but one Christian writer even lamented when the emperor Julian didn't actively persecute Christians.
00:11:46
Speaker
He says basically that Julian, the emperor, was robbing Christians of the opportunity for martyrdom. Very interesting. I won't read you that long line, but it's from the first invective against Julian, oration 4, line 58. So you can go check that out on your own.
Iconoclasm and Cultural Hegemony
00:12:07
Speaker
So martyrdom is one route you could take if you are a proto-Christian. Here's another.
00:12:17
Speaker
If martyrdom isn't your cup of tea, maybe instead you can destroy art.
00:12:48
Speaker
If martyrdom isn't your cup of tea, maybe instead you can destroy art, tear down pagan temples, and maybe even murder some pagans.
00:13:01
Speaker
So let me give you the historical context here. Emperor Constantine was the first Christian emperor. Now he wasn't baptized until his deathbed.
00:13:14
Speaker
But before that, and he was already, you know, giving political favor to Christianity. And in 313, he decreed the Edict of Milan.
00:13:26
Speaker
According to this edict, Christianity is not only tolerated, but it would get some imperial support. And that imperial support, by the way, only grew over time and until eventually Some time later, it did become the official religion of the Roman Empire.
00:13:46
Speaker
In any case, now we are transitioning from Christianity being pretty marginalized sect to slowly but surely cultural hegemon, right?
00:13:59
Speaker
And this transition unleashes a wave of religious violence. So this, again, really clashes with our modern sensibilities.
00:14:12
Speaker
Sometimes when we think of the relationship between Christianity and art and you know culture, I think of mostly positive things. So, for example, during the Renaissance and later in the Enlightenment era,
00:14:27
Speaker
Christians saw creating beautiful art and discovering the nature of the cosmos, they saw it as a form of worship. They were almost basically, they felt like they were fulfilling their Christian duties by doing those things.
00:14:43
Speaker
But that's beginning in the 14th century-ish, right? A thousand years earlier, in the 4th century, the exact opposite was true.
00:14:56
Speaker
Pagan temples were razed to the ground by Christians.
00:15:02
Speaker
Statues depicting pagan gods were smashed into sometimes hundreds of pieces. And religious art in general was destroyed in acts of iconoclasm.
00:15:17
Speaker
We have lots of evidence of this compiled by the archaeologist Eberard Sauer in his book, The Archaeology of Religious Violence.
00:15:29
Speaker
And in this book, Sauer teaches us how to tell the difference between when a piece of pagan art was destroyed by Christians and when it's destroyed by foreign invaders like Germanic tribespeople.
00:15:46
Speaker
So let me talk about that a little bit so you can kind of see what Christians were doing. so let me first right off the bat say this. Christians believed that paintings and statues of pagan gods were inhabited by demons.
00:16:06
Speaker
And in fact, this art being basically possessed by a demon was designed to ensnare people, right? To get them to bring food to the statue so that you can worship a demon.
00:16:22
Speaker
Well, Germanic tribes had no known superstition about the evil power of, you know, graven images to put it in the language of the Bible.
00:16:34
Speaker
And so there's no reason why a Germanic tribes would specifically target statues in this way. Moreover, You can tell when a Christian would target, let's just say a statue, because they really took the time to demolish it.
00:16:53
Speaker
So sometimes they would you know sit there and hammer at something until it's, in one case, we have one statue that was broken into 360 pieces.
00:17:05
Speaker
That is very time consuming. And if you don't believe me, just try to count to 360 and you'll get bored before you actually get there. In the case of Germanic tribespeople, they might tip over a statue and you know break it that way.
00:17:23
Speaker
but they would not stay there and keep hammering at it for hours, right? So that's how you can tell the difference between a Christian act of destruction and one from a Germanic tribesperson before they were converted. Eventually the Germanic tribes were converted to Christianity, but before that.
00:17:43
Speaker
On the topic of time-consuming destruction, There is actually some acts of destruction that are extremely, not only time consuming, but risky.
00:17:57
Speaker
So there was a temple in Dendara that is in Eastern Egypt. And in this temple, Christian extremists had to climb up ladders to reach some graven images of the god Hathor. I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly.
00:18:15
Speaker
And these images were 17 meters high. So if you don't know meters, that's about 55 feet. Basically, they were five stories high.
00:18:28
Speaker
So given the damage, if you look at it now, it looks like the person or persons had one hand on a very tall ladder and the other hand was wielding some kind of a pickaxe.
00:18:42
Speaker
So very slowly and at great risk to themselves, these fanatics were, you know, just hammering away at the faces of the god Hathor along the walls of this temple.
00:18:58
Speaker
Again, that is not something that we have any reason to suspect that Germanic tribespeople would actually do. Another way to tell that an act of destruction is coming from a Christian and not from ah Germanic tribesperson is that some mystery religions like those of Mithras and Serapis were targeted.
00:19:26
Speaker
So these mystery cults like Christianity also promised a blissful afterlife in eternity. And so you can think of them as being in direct competition with Christianity.
00:19:42
Speaker
And so that's why they were targeted. And by the way, Germanic tribes, if they're you know coming in to loot and you know just do a raid real quick, they're not going to know the difference between Mithras and Serapis and any other pagan god.
00:20:00
Speaker
So there's no reason why a Germanic warrior would target, for example, Mithras. It must have been someone who lives in the empire and knows the difference.
00:20:13
Speaker
And of course, those would be, you know, the great, the best candidate for that is a Christian. Let me give you a few more notes about this. How would this happen?
00:20:24
Speaker
Well, it wasn't just individuals, right? It really was, like I was saying earlier, a lifestyle thing because it would be bishops that would essentially weaponize mobs of monks for this demolition of pagan things.
00:20:42
Speaker
So one example of this is Theophilus of Alexandria. And he would, you know, gather his monks around and say, let's go do this. And and then they would. And so that's how it went down. It wasn't necessarily um just single individuals deciding for themselves to do this.
00:21:01
Speaker
And this is why this reminds me a little bit of terrorism today. There is an architect to terrorist cells, right? They are organized in a certain way.
00:21:12
Speaker
And so this is the same thing here. It wasn't isolated incidents of Christian destruction of pagan things. It was coordinated destruction. Besides pagans, I should add, Jews were also sometimes targeted.
00:21:26
Speaker
John Chrysostom um has some choice words about Christians. So by that by the time of John Chrysostom, who was alive in the 300s.
00:21:38
Speaker
Christianity and Judaism ah were pretty well separated. They had dissociated from each other. And this is the time period where some scholars say that we get the beginning of racism.
00:21:51
Speaker
So John Chrysostom is one of those people who is saying things about the Jews that they're basically irredeemable and they can't be fixed. So here's a quote from John Chrysostom.
00:22:05
Speaker
on the synagogue, the Jewish place of worship, quote, the synagogue is not only a brothel, it also is a den of robbers and a lodging for wild beasts, a dwelling of demons, a place of idolatry.
00:22:24
Speaker
So this antisemitism is pretty ugly, but it does get uglier still. In March 415, mob of Christians murdered a famous female mathematician.
00:22:42
Speaker
Her name was Hypatia, and she was notable for many, many reasons. But let me just say one of them. She had many, many followers, and this is very noteworthy.
00:22:59
Speaker
in a very patriarchal society. So Hypatia must have been exceptional indeed if men were willing to become her students. But what happened to Hypatia? Well, using shards of broken pottery, Christians flayed her alive. That is, they took off her skin until she died.
00:23:23
Speaker
That is only the most famous instance of Christians killing a pagan There are some other reports here I have from Sauer. Again, in his book, The Archaeology of Religious Hatred, one person was buried, maybe buried alive, with something like iron handcuffs.
00:23:46
Speaker
And according to Sauer, this is the dead giveaway the fact that it was Christians who did this. Most people of the age would not waste iron in this way.
00:24:00
Speaker
Iron was very expensive. The sole exception to that rule would be Christians. Christians, especially in this time period, has shunned all kinds of materialism, materialism in all its guises.
00:24:14
Speaker
Material things just didn't matter to them. And so, according to Sauer's research, this was probably a pagan priest who was maybe buried alive.
00:24:29
Speaker
So let me give you here a quote from Eberhard Sauer. And in this quote, by the way, he quotes a Roman named Libanius. Quote, The well-known orator Libanius attests in a passionate appeal to the Christian emperor Theodosius I that in Syria, already by the 8380s, pagan priests who resisted temple destruction were at mortal risk.
00:24:59
Speaker
Referring to gangs of black-robed monks, he writes, now quoting Libanius, they assault the temple carrying wooden beams, stones, and iron tools, or even without these items, with their hands and feet.
00:25:16
Speaker
Even though they destroy the roofs, raise the walls to the ground, pull down the statues, and tear down the altars, the pagan priests have to keep silent.
00:25:27
Speaker
or they have to die. in other words, what's going on here is that a mob of monks is tearing down a temple, and the pagan priest has to sit there on the side quietly, and if he makes sound, they kill him.
00:25:45
Speaker
Wouldn't you call that terrorism?
00:25:50
Speaker
One more datum about this phenomenon Quite a few Christian theologians actually justified and even celebrated this destruction.
00:26:02
Speaker
In a book typically called City of God, Augustine, or should I say Saint Augustine, praises the purging of pagan idolatry as evidence of Christianity's triumph.
00:26:19
Speaker
By the way, the full name of the work The City of God Against the Pagans. So the whole book almost has that vibe of triumphalism. I also have here a quote from Augustine, from one of his sermons, actually, quote, that every superstition of the pagans and the Gentiles should be ah abolished is what God wants.
00:26:45
Speaker
God has ordered. God has foretold.
Integration of Pagan Philosophy
00:26:49
Speaker
God has begun to bring about and in many parts of the world has already in a great measure achieved.
00:27:01
Speaker
So there is your second option of Christian ethics. Don't worry, there won't be an assignment that allows you to do that. But even as Christians, and now and makes sense to say Christians, by the way, by the three hundred ss there is something that is discernible as Christianity from our modern viewpoint.
00:27:25
Speaker
But even as Christians were destroying the pagan world, they were absorbing elements from their philosophy and their culture.
00:27:36
Speaker
Of course, they would alter their character ah little bit, and actually in some cases quite a lot. But now that you know the history of ancient Greek philosophy, you will recognize these
Desert Monasticism and Key Figures
00:27:52
Speaker
elements in the next Christian lifestyle that we will cover.
00:27:59
Speaker
Let's move on now to the rise of the Desert Fathers.
00:28:34
Speaker
Here is your third example of Christian ethics in the first few centuries CE. Leave the city. So what do I mean by that?
00:28:44
Speaker
Well, as Christianity began to have more and more privileges and eventually some kind of political power, there was no more persecution of Christians.
00:28:56
Speaker
So you couldn't really do the first option that I discussed earlier. There was no more option for martyrdom. So how do you now demonstrate your worth to God?
00:29:10
Speaker
How do you prove that you are worthy of salvation? Well, beginning in the 300s, some people simply just fled the cities. They would leave this worldliness and go into the desert to purify their souls and literally do battle with demons.
00:29:36
Speaker
So there's probably a lot of questions in your mind right now. Let's just begin with this. Who were these people? Who were the first people to do this? These are typically called the Desert Fathers. I should also say that there were also Desert Mothers.
00:29:52
Speaker
And let me just give you a few key names in this area so you can have, you know, just a little bit to hang your head on. Maybe the father of Christian monasticism and of the desert movement in general is Anthony the Great, also known as Anthony of Egypt, sometimes Saint Anthony the Abbot.
00:30:16
Speaker
In any case, after hearing a gospel reading that encouraged giving up all your worldly possessions, he did exactly that. He sold his inheritance and he withdrew into the Egyptian desert.
00:30:31
Speaker
The plan was to live a life of solitude, prayer, and asceticism. Asceticism, by the way, when you hear that word, you can just think to yourself self-denial.
00:30:43
Speaker
If you want a more formal definition, when a Christian practices asceticism, it's not quite what the philosophers practiced when they practice asceticism.
00:30:57
Speaker
So for a Christian, asceticism is extreme restriction or even abstinence from, in some cases, food, drink, sleep, and sex.
00:31:09
Speaker
So in other words, they would eat very little, they would drink very little, they would sometimes deprive themselves of sleep, and of course, no sex. A lot of Christians just said no to sex in general.
00:31:22
Speaker
So that is what Anthony was doing in the desert. And even though he was seeking solitude, his sort of really radical approach inspired many, many followers.
00:31:35
Speaker
And so next thing you know, many of his disciples formed communities around him. And so this is the beginning of monasticism. That's a way of life for the Christians centered around the aforementioned asceticism,
00:31:51
Speaker
but in a community largely separate from the outside world. So just when you hear monasticism, just think of yourself monks, right? Monks living a life of self-denial, separate from the world, right? Away from the city.
00:32:07
Speaker
Another important figure in the history of the Desert Fathers was Pachomius. Pachomius is primarily remembered for founding the first communal monastery,
00:32:19
Speaker
And that happened in Egypt around 320 CE in a town called Tabanisi. I'm positive I mispronounced that. And so the difference here is that while Anthony practiced a solitary you know form of asceticism, Pachomius organized his followers into a structured community with rules for prayer, work, daily conduct.
00:32:43
Speaker
So Anthony, the people that went to go live around Anthony, kind of set themselves in in something called cells. They were little huts and they were just around Anthony. But Pachomius had an actual community going on, right? It was less haphazard.
00:33:00
Speaker
And this communal approach allowed for, you know, some people say greater spiritual discipline because there was a supportive brotherhood behind it, right?
00:33:11
Speaker
And there was a ah set of monastic rules. And these rules, by the way, became the template for later Christian monastic movements. So that's why Pachomius is kind of a big deal.
00:33:23
Speaker
And if you want to know the basic tenor of Pachomian monasticism, three things. obedience, manual labor, and shared resources.
00:33:37
Speaker
Now, if that rings Pythagorean bells to you, well, that's probably accurate. In any case, one more thing I wanted to say about the Pachomian experiment here.
00:33:50
Speaker
Kind of had a military air about it, and that probably comes from the fact that Pachomius spent some time in the military. And I guess one more thing about Pachomius, it was very successful. About a century after he died, there were as many as 15,000 monks in Egypt, right? So,
00:34:11
Speaker
I would call that a successful movement. By the way, maybe some 400 of them were women. So, you know, reaching more demographics than was usually the case, right, for for these patriarchal societies.
00:34:26
Speaker
One more person I should mention here. I have a whole list of people here, but I'll just mention one more person, Evagrius Ponticus. He was... a student of a group of people called the Cappadocian Fathers.
00:34:41
Speaker
I won't get into that. ah But what I will say is that he came a little bit later, 345 to 399 CE. Those are his dates. And because he was, you know, a little bit later, he was able to systematize the spiritual teachings of the Desert Fathers that had come before him.
00:35:00
Speaker
And so he actually produced some works on something called the Eight Logismoi, which are basically some treatises on tempting thoughts, temptations in general.
00:35:12
Speaker
And these would later influence the Western concept of the seven deadly sins. So Evagrius here, an important stepping stone in the history of Christian theology.
00:35:26
Speaker
Two more things about him real quick. If you see his writings, they really do bridge Greek philosophy and Christian theology in general, but also Christian mysticism.
00:35:39
Speaker
So I'll talk about that a little bit later. um The last thing I'll say about Evagrius is that he did have originist leanings. That is, he liked some of the writings of Origen.
00:35:52
Speaker
And if you recall, Origen was deemed a heretic, So the same thing happened to Evagrius. After his death, he was condemned for his originist leanings.
00:36:06
Speaker
And so his work actually mostly survives in Eastern Christian traditions, right? Especially in places where they spoke Syriac. So in the West, Evagrius kind of dies off for a while.
00:36:18
Speaker
Okay, so those are some important figures in the history of desert monasticism and mysticism. But I don't want you to just think of like three guys in the sand, right?
00:36:30
Speaker
They were followed by thousands of people, including, once more, Many, many women, more women than usual, right? So very interesting. And they either joined monasteries, you kind of have to picture a monastery in the desert, or they lived their solitary lives in their little huts.
00:36:52
Speaker
Their huts, by the way, are called cells, like a prison cell. So they were either part of organized communities or sort of haphazard collections of huts or cells.
00:37:05
Speaker
So have that in mind. What were they out there doing? Well, I have quite a few books here in front of me about what it is that the ultimate aim was.
00:37:19
Speaker
And I'm going to describe it as demonic warfare. So you can check out books by Jamie Kreiner Jeffrey Burton Russell, Catherine Nixie.
00:37:30
Speaker
ah basically, these monks believed that the desert was the demon's domain. That's where they lived. Why would demons live in the desert? Well, the desert is associated with temptation, right? Remember in the Bible, Jesus was tempted by the devil in the desert.
00:37:49
Speaker
So that's one thing. But obviously, it's also just away from the cities, you know? During this time period, people wanted to prove themselves. We still have to understand that Christians found themselves in an apocalyptic waiting room.
00:38:05
Speaker
They wanted to guarantee their salvation. And so they saw this as one way to do it. Go do battle with demons in the desert. The city was no longer dangerous for them. Remember, martyrdom was no longer an option because Christianity was becoming a favored religion in the Roman Empire.
00:38:25
Speaker
Just to kind of, you know, add a little factoid here that could help you see this. Apparently, St.
Demonic Temptation and Spiritual Warfare
00:38:32
Speaker
Anthony, as in Anthony of Egypt, heard that there were persecutions of Christians going on in the city.
00:38:40
Speaker
So he rushed out of the desert and went into the city hoping to get martyred. That didn't end up happening, but you can see that the motivation is to guarantee their salvation.
00:38:54
Speaker
So they go to the desert. That's where demons live. And they're going to go do battle with these demons. What does that even mean? Well, demons could assault you in many, many different forms.
00:39:09
Speaker
And your job is to overcome these assaults, these temptations. So let me give you a couple of examples here. Maybe it's an intellectual temptation.
00:39:21
Speaker
So let's just say you're in the desert, you're a monk, and you're trying to guarantee your salvation and you feel this urge, right? This this feeling, maybe maybe i can go back home. Maybe I can just sell my stuff and donate it to the poor.
00:39:37
Speaker
That could help people. So that is an intellectual temptation being whispered in your ear by a demon. That is not your job.
00:39:49
Speaker
The lifestyle that you've chosen is one of doing battle with demons in the desert. That is the highest form of demonic combat and proving your worth to God.
00:40:02
Speaker
So going back to the city, you're just really trying to go back to the comforts of the city. But no, no, no, no. no Even though it sounds like a good idea, um your true job is to stay here and continue to do battle with temptations just like this one.
00:40:18
Speaker
Here is another form of demonic assault. Distraction. So if you are in the desert, what your job is, is to pray, meditate and do manual labor.
00:40:32
Speaker
So lots of monks would engage in manual labor like rope making so they can sell it and have enough money for their one daily meal. So if all you have to do all day long is pray, meditate and work, distraction is the enemy.
00:40:48
Speaker
And so any kind of distracting thought was blamed on demons. Even flatulence was blamed on demons because it impedes prayers.
00:41:00
Speaker
Did you catch that flatulence? Farting. Even farting was blamed on demons. The demonic attack might also be very much a carnal kind of thing.
00:41:13
Speaker
Maybe a demon would take the form of a pretty girl and tempt a monk into sexual temptation. That is another form of demonic assault. And your job as a monk is to, of course,
00:41:28
Speaker
overcome that temptation, say no to that demon.
00:41:33
Speaker
It's even the case that demonic attacks might come as physical affliction. So people believe that demons could shrink and you know afflict the body directly. They could go into you through your nose or whatever.
00:41:49
Speaker
This is actually one of the potential, no one really knows where this comes from, but it's a potential origin of the tendency to say bless you when someone sneezes. Maybe a demon shrunk and snuck itself you know into your nose.
00:42:05
Speaker
That's the kind of thing that demons might do to you. to tempt you and your job as a monk is to not let that happen, to stick to your tasks, pray, work, meditate, right?
00:42:20
Speaker
I have here another list of ah experiences that might be interpreted as you know demonic attacks. This one comes from Evagrius. I did want to read some of these real quick to you because any of these might be distractions. So so link this to the the thing I said earlier about distractions.
00:42:39
Speaker
But Evagrius, you know, all these things that I read here, um they sound just like natural thoughts, right? But these monks were interpreting this as literally what demons whisper into your ear.
00:42:52
Speaker
And so if you have a memory, for example, of like a past indulgence, maybe a feast, or in in my case, maybe some really good wine I had once, that is a distraction. That is a temptation from a demon, right? So even that gets interpreted as demonic attacks.
00:43:11
Speaker
Weakness in the body, like when you're extremely hungry, that weakness, that comes from a demon too. If you've ever had um memories of extremely attractive people,
00:43:23
Speaker
You think about that person that you saw over at that one place or whatever. That is another demonic attack. Nocturnal emissions are another form of warfare from demons. So wet dreams, in other words, come from demons.
00:43:43
Speaker
Even rumination comes from demons. So if you ever... you know are are plagued with thoughts about you know past poor judgment, saying something stupid or doing something stupid, and you keep thinking about it, that's also a demon distracting you from your duties of prayer and meditation.
00:44:04
Speaker
So yeah, all these different things were interpreted as um as demonic warfare. Schadenfreude, that's when you delight in someone else's suffering. Procrastination, all of these things, very, very interesting.
00:44:20
Speaker
Okay, so what I want to talk about now is how all these practices from the Desert Fathers, and I'll actually to get more into the practices later on, but these practices from these ascetics, the Christians didn't invent them from scratch.
00:44:36
Speaker
In fact, some scholars argue that these practices were simply lifted from pagan philosophy and adapted to Christian beliefs.
00:44:47
Speaker
In other words, it looks like Christians were describing their religion as a philosophy, especially people like Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Origen.
00:45:00
Speaker
They spoke of our philosophy, right? Juxtaposed against the barbarian philosophy, that of the pagans. And because they saw themselves as a philosophy, they would just borrow practices that people from the schools of philosophy would engage in for their own, for the Christian religion, essentially.
00:45:21
Speaker
So I want to make a few explicit connections so that you can see this. These ideas didn't come from nowhere. They came from pagan philosophy. So let me give you some of these ah explicit connections. By the way, I'm going to read you a few connections.
00:45:38
Speaker
Otherwise, this would be just two hours of me saying, hey, here's where this comes from. So, okay, let's go roughly in order here. Platonism. So from Plato, Christians got the belief in the superiority of the spiritual over the material.
00:45:56
Speaker
Remember for Plato, The world of being, the world of the forms, that's perfection. And everything in this earthly realm is just a cheap copy of the real thing.
00:46:08
Speaker
Also from Plato, Christians got the idea of the soul ascending to God through reason and discipline. So for Plato, the soul ascends to the form of the good.
00:46:20
Speaker
and of course, for Christians, they just switch the good to God. And that is this idea of mysticism, communion with God. Through a lot of hard work, you can come to know God.
00:46:36
Speaker
in the case of the Christians, or the form of the good, in the case of Plato. Christians, of course, also got some ideas from Aristotle. From Aristotle, we get his notion of practical wisdom.
00:46:50
Speaker
In the language of the Desert Fathers, practical wisdom is called discretion. But if you read passages about discretion from the Desert Fathers, and you were to just say practical wisdom instead, it sounds identical to Aristotle. I was kind of laughing when I was reading some of these things. So I don't know why I said that.
00:47:10
Speaker
Also from Aristotle, the concept of the golden mean is found in the work of the Desert Fathers and some other things, but that's good enough, right? From Stoicism, we get the ideal of apathia, freedom from passion, as well as prosoche,
00:47:31
Speaker
attention to oneself, mindfulness, in other words, right? Because you need ah freedom from passion in order to do demonic combat effectively.
00:47:42
Speaker
And you need to be always mindful of yourself in order to make sure that you don't unconsciously succumb to a temptation from a demon. So that's where these ideas came from.
00:47:54
Speaker
i should also mention that apatheia, probably both in Stoicism and in proto-Christianity, stems from contact with Pyronian skepticism. As far as we know, Pyronian skepticism was the first, you know, philosophical movement that had the ideal of apathia.
00:48:14
Speaker
Also coming from the Stoics is this practice of journaling. So Saint Anthony used to recommend to his disciples that they take written notes of the actions and movements of their souls.
00:48:27
Speaker
And this is, of course, you know, very obviously like what Marcus Aurelius does in his meditations. So that practice was also borrowed from the Stoics.
00:48:38
Speaker
And I have here two other things borrowed from the Stoics. Obviously, the Stoics are very influential in Rome in this time period. So it makes sense that this, you know, it's what's readily available to Christians.
00:48:52
Speaker
So One Christian, Dorotheus of Gaza, like Epictetus, recommends to his students that they train themselves in little things first to make it a habit before moving on to tougher changes in your lifestyle.
00:49:09
Speaker
So basically, Dorotheus advises us to diminish the number of our sins bit by bit, right? Just like the Stoics. Take on the bad habits that are easy to get rid of first and then move on to the tougher ones, right? So that's very typical Stoic advice adapted into Christianity. and One more example here, Evagrius suggests that we combat one passion by means of another.
00:49:38
Speaker
For instance, fornication, right? Sex. um Not good. You're not supposed to do it. But it's hard. You get these writings of these desert fathers that they're just really struggling with not having sex.
00:49:54
Speaker
And so Evagrius' advice is for you to find some other passion that you have to try to combat your desire for sex.
00:50:06
Speaker
For example, you, like me, probably care about your reputation. You probably want a good reputation. So just remember, if you're in the grip of you know, sexual lust and you want to have sex, remember that you will likely get caught and you will get a bad reputation. so by reminding yourself that you want to have a good reputation, it'll be easier to fight the urge to have sex.
00:50:34
Speaker
So there you go. Sidebar to my last point, Cicero, the academic skeptic, also recommends something similar in his Tuscallan disputations.
00:50:46
Speaker
So that's advice from both the Stoics and Cicero. Two more pieces of data here showing that many Christian practices came from Greek philosophy.
00:50:58
Speaker
From the cynics, Christians got these ideals of poverty and shamelessness and self-sufficiency. And, you know, basically it's quite obvious that the Desert Fathers kind of look like Diogenes the dog, right? So that's a pretty obvious one.
00:51:17
Speaker
Here's my last one. And this one comes from all the schools of philosophy. The schools of philosophy summarize their dogmas and their ideas in pithy little statements that could, you know, you can memorize them and you can apply them to your daily life. You can recite them to yourself.
00:51:37
Speaker
That is exactly how the sayings of the Desert Fathers were conveyed. And so we can see that all these different practices, had been going on in the schools of philosophy for centuries, at least 500 years before the rise of Christianity.
00:51:56
Speaker
And so these clearly were co-opted from pagan philosophy into Christianity. My point here is that, you know, one can make the case that there's nothing new under the sun here.
00:52:11
Speaker
The Roman Empire was... a boiling cauldron were Greek ideas synthesized with Jewish ideas, thus creating Christianity.
00:52:24
Speaker
But as I mentioned earlier, Christianity had some different dogmas than the schools of philosophy, some central tenets that just kind of didn't jive with some pagan philosophy.
00:52:40
Speaker
And so as the Christians adapted some pagan practices, they changed the tenor of philosophical life.
00:52:52
Speaker
Here is a quote by Clement of Alexandria that I found in a book by Pierre Hadot. And I'm not going to tell you what the big difference is with pagan philosophy, but as you're hearing it, tell me if you can't tell, it's obvious, oh, this doesn't really jive with philosophy.
00:53:13
Speaker
Quote from Clement of Alexandria. It is necessary that divine law inspire fear so that the philosopher may acquire and conserve peace of mind by dint of prudence and attention to himself and that he may remain exempt from sin and falls in all things.
00:53:36
Speaker
Did you catch what is so very different from pagan philosophy? The divine law is supposed to inspire fear. Yeah, that's not very philosophical.
00:53:48
Speaker
Plato, Aristotle, the Epicureans, the Stoics, they specifically instructed people to get rid of excess fear. Actually, in the case of the Stoics and the Epicureans, get rid of fear altogether, right? So that is quite unphilosophical, I guess.
00:54:08
Speaker
Another big change between pagan philosophy and Christianity and has to do with asceticism. So prior to Christianity, and asceticism referred to basically the spiritual practices of the philosophers, mostly interactivities of the mind, right?
00:54:28
Speaker
The will. Sometimes it was physical too, in the case of the cynics, but mostly it was about habits of mind. But when it comes to Christianity, asceticism means, you know, once more extreme restriction, right? Very little food, very little drink, very little sleep, no sex.
00:54:49
Speaker
So, asceticism changes in Christianity. And maybe let me mention one more thing here, but this is from from me. you know I feel that by putting off flourishing until the next life, Christians lost much of the therapeutic focus of Hellenic philosophy.
00:55:12
Speaker
i hope I'm explaining myself correctly here, but The schools of philosophy wanted to figure out how you could flourish here, now, in this life. But that's not the point of Christianity.
00:55:27
Speaker
And so something gets lost there, I think.
Psychological Techniques of Desert Fathers
00:56:00
Speaker
I want to move on to the practices of the Desert Fathers in a little bit, but let me quickly make some brief comments on mysticism.
00:56:11
Speaker
Mysticism in the you know monastic movement of the Desert Fathers is another pagan inheritance, but I want to give it its own space because mysticism is very important in the history of Christianity.
00:56:28
Speaker
In fact, many very prominent mystics would write some of the most influential theology in the history of the church. So mysticism here is key.
00:56:43
Speaker
And the Christian mystic tradition begins, again, not with Christians. It begins with pagans.
00:56:54
Speaker
and does a quick detour into Judaism. But you can read books on this. There's actually a book called The Origins of the Christian Mystic Tradition, which says exactly this. There's another book called From Plato to Christ.
00:57:09
Speaker
And so that's where we begin with Plato. For Plato, the soul is divine, right? It pre-exists the body. But it seeks reunion with the forms. It used to live with the forms before it was embodied.
00:57:25
Speaker
And so for Plato, mysticism is the soul's ascent back to the realm of the forms. How do you do that? Well, you know, we talked about it at length, but basically philosophical training.
00:57:41
Speaker
Eventually you recollect the forms and you come into union with the good, the highest form. So that's Plato. We could have started earlier, by the way, we could have probably gone back to Pythagoras. I think Plato is good enough because Plato was a very big influence on the next person, Philo of Alexandria.
00:58:03
Speaker
Philo once more was ah Jew. But he blended Greek philosophy, especially Platonism, with Judaism. And when doing that, he changed a couple of things.
00:58:18
Speaker
Instead of seeking communion with the good, as in the case of Plato, now you are coming into communion with a personal transcendent God, right? So now God is a person that exists outside of time and space.
00:58:37
Speaker
So according to Philo, the route to, you know, achieving communion with God is through his true religion, right? The real Judaism, not temple Judaism.
00:58:50
Speaker
Lots of self-knowledge, lots of meditation, and eventually you achieve what he calls divine madness. So that is God's gift to you, right? Knowledge of God.
00:59:02
Speaker
So that's Plato, Philo. Now let's move on to Plotinus. Plotinus, of course, gives us a new take on Plato. And for Plotinus, mysticism is the return to the one through self-knowledge and purification.
00:59:20
Speaker
And so what we get that is novel from Plotinus is this need for purification, right? That is a key to being able to achieve this ecstatic union with the one.
00:59:35
Speaker
So by the time that you get to someone like Evagrius and Augustine, whom we haven't talked about yet, but we will, all these elements are in place so that there's this idea that the physical world is, you know, essentially worthless.
00:59:55
Speaker
The real value is in the divine realm. And you want to get there and achieve union with God, who is a person That came from Philo.
01:00:07
Speaker
But to get there, you have to purify yourself. That came from Plotinus. And so we can really see here that the Christian mystic tradition borrows all kinds of elements from non-Christian sources.
01:00:22
Speaker
Now, I made a whole table of the evolution of these ideas. I won't get into it here, but I will post all that on my website. too It's interesting stuff, but let's close off this lesson with some ethical practices from the desert, let's say.
01:00:42
Speaker
So I began this lesson in ah what I would consider at least a somewhat controversial way. But I do want to finish this on a positive note.
01:00:53
Speaker
And it's because I really think that there are some practices from the Desert Fathers that really serve as a toolkit for, you know, psychological techniques that are applicable in today's day and age.
01:01:08
Speaker
In other words, These are practices that speak to modern struggles with distraction, with meaning, with moral integrity. Things we we you know still wrestle with.
01:01:22
Speaker
So even though they are in a sense derivative from pagan philosophy, the Desert Fathers worked on these things and and there's some value in them. so Let's begin with the category of attention and mindfulness training.
01:01:38
Speaker
So just like the ancient philosophers, monks sought attentional autonomy. So that's basically the ability to control where your mind goes.
01:01:49
Speaker
So some of the practices that they engage in in order to achieve this are routinizing their days, minimizing speech like small talk,
01:02:01
Speaker
And they also used memorized phrases like these little pithy little statements I'm always talking about. Now, it's in their case, it's mostly scripture. But nonetheless, this was a way to sort of talk back to their intrusive thoughts, to their temptations, and to get back on track.
01:02:20
Speaker
So we already spent a bunch of time on, you know, the benefit of routine. You can go back to the lesson on the Pythagoreans if you want a refresher, but basically,
01:02:35
Speaker
There are clear, measurable psychological benefits to adhering to a routine. So it's just a good idea. You gotta get on board. Let's talk about minimizing socializing.
01:02:50
Speaker
So monks saw socializing as inviting opportunity for temptation. This is because small talk tends to rile up the emotions.
01:03:02
Speaker
This is actually backed by contemporary neuroscience. So this has to do with something called the default mode network. And this is a set of interconnected brain regions.
01:03:15
Speaker
I'll just spit out a couple of these. The posterior cingulate cortex, the angular gyrus, the medial prefrontal cortex. There's some others, whatever. This default mode network seems to be nearly identical to the brain regions used during social interactions, like when making small talk.
01:03:38
Speaker
So studies show that practices like mindfulness meditation, but you can engage in others, these decrease the activity in the default mode network and thereby increase They reduce anxiety, stress, and negative internal chatter.
01:03:57
Speaker
So not a bad idea. Maybe the take-home message here is that there's probably ah need for narrowing our social and informational bandwidth a bit.
01:04:10
Speaker
Some of us socialize and derive entertainment from social media platforms all day long. Maybe that's not a good idea.
01:04:22
Speaker
I'm not even speculating here. There's researchers who make this point forcefully that at least in the case of young people, It's a really bad idea to spend all day on your devices. So I'll throw some related reading on the website so you can check that out.
01:04:39
Speaker
Here's the punchline. As an ethical practice, maybe you have a duty to yourself to regain your attentional autonomy. You can do this in many ways. You can practice mindfulness, sure, but that's not the only way.
01:04:54
Speaker
You can set routines for yourself. You can minimize you know small talk. You can also use these little pithy phrases to block out distracting thoughts and keep you on track away from distractions and all that.
01:05:07
Speaker
So i actually asked ChatGPT to come up with some pithy little statements that are like part Desert Father, part, you know, the modern struggle with our devices.
01:05:18
Speaker
So i'm going to give you a couple of these. Some of these are actually pretty good. Mental gluttony is no less dangerous than bodily gluttony. Here's another. The mind, like the stomach, cannot digest endlessly.
01:05:35
Speaker
Not every ping deserves your presence. The scroll is endless. Your time is not.
01:05:46
Speaker
To preserve your peace, leave some voices unheard. A hundred opinions will not make you wise. If the crowd is always with you, when will you be with yourself?
01:06:03
Speaker
Some echoes of the world grow louder in solitude. Choose your silence carefully. Finally, here's my favorite. You become what you refresh.
01:06:18
Speaker
So these are some practices that the monks use to gain attentional autonomy. They also engaged in a kind of mindfulness meditation. They practice an early form of, the technical jargon is called metacognition.
01:06:35
Speaker
In another lesson, i call this cognitive labeling, but basically, What you're supposed to do is scrutinize each thought, right? So as a thought arises in your mind, you can label it.
01:06:48
Speaker
Is rational? Is it irrational? Is it a desire? Is it a thought? Is it an opinion, hypothesis? Just label it. And once you label it, decide whether or not you should engage with it.
01:07:01
Speaker
If it's an irrational thought, you say, okay, well, that's a thought that I had. Let's let it float away now. For more on that, by the way you can go back to the lesson on Stoic ethics for a more complete discussion there. But wonderful practices here from the Desert Fathers.
01:07:21
Speaker
Let's move on to renunciation. So this might at first seem not relevant to our daily life, but bear with me here. So let's talk about the monk's cell.
01:07:36
Speaker
This is once more... that little hut that some of them would live in And for them, it became like a laboratory for testing which parts of life were necessary and which were just distractions.
01:07:50
Speaker
And what they decided on is basically limiting their speech, extreme fasting. These practices were what made sense to them, right? We might call this like a radical minimalism,
01:08:04
Speaker
um sort of deliberate rejection of worldly goods and things that distract you. What can we take away from this? Well, I like to call this the desert filter, but there's so many things in our lives that are not really essential, right?
01:08:24
Speaker
So maybe one thing that we can do that's in line with the Desert Fathers is identify and strip away non-essentials in our lives. so The habits, the routines, the possessions, maybe social commitments, things that don't really serve or align with your deeper values.
01:08:47
Speaker
This is a nice thing to to do to ourselves sometimes because sometimes we fall into social commitments and habits and we end up getting things, maybe they're gifts, but they're not really important.
01:09:00
Speaker
bettering us. So sometimes we got to do a little filtering, right? And just get rid of some excess things.
01:09:08
Speaker
The next category that I want to talk about, going to just call these mental habits, but this is memory, reading, reflection. These are good habits to have.
01:09:21
Speaker
and so let's take each of these in turn. Let's begin with memory Monks created early memory palaces. So basically they had visual representations of what they considered to be important ideas. So one easy one is if you have a temptation, several of the desert fathers would use scripture to battle that temptation. So if a particular temptation came up, say wanting to fornicate, there is a particular scripture
01:09:52
Speaker
that you're supposed to recite that will combat that demonic attack. Well, you don't have to use scripture and you don't have to consider it to be ah you know, demonic warfare, but it is useful to really memorize and internalize so that you can operationalize many of the practices that we've detailed here.
01:10:16
Speaker
There's so many ways to, for example, Get rid of mental chatter, right? Internal ruminating dialogue that's like a a negative vortex of negative feelings and thoughts.
01:10:29
Speaker
There's ways to block this. And maybe you read about it, but then you forget the practices. That's where memory comes in. Commit to memory those practices that help you life.
01:10:42
Speaker
You know, we all have to life and it's hard sometimes And there's ways around it. There's workarounds. And what we have to do is actually remember them. Take effort in making sure that you're cleaning your mental house, right? So that's one thing that the Desert Fathers really sort of um are emblematic of. I really like that about them.
01:11:06
Speaker
The next habit is reading. There are neuroscientists who are basically pleading with us to not stop what they call deep reading.
01:11:18
Speaker
So too many of us just skim too often, but it is actually deep reading, which is a little bit laborious, right? It's ah it's a difficult kind of you know invested reading that's very time consuming, but that's the kind of reading that helps you develop rich, deep connections in thoughts and really develop your critical thinking.
01:11:42
Speaker
right? So you could say, yeah, you know, AI could do this for me. But many researchers are saying, don't let AI do your reading for you. This is something that you need to develop your brain.
01:11:54
Speaker
And so this is something that Desert Fathers did. They would recite scripture out loud. And it was a very serious task, right? They made sure that they, you know, thought about each individual phrase and sentence and even words. So This is an important practice that the Desert Fathers are beckoning us to engage in.
01:12:17
Speaker
Here's one more mental habit from the Desert Fathers. Reflection. So just like Marcus Aurelius, the Desert Fathers would keep journals of their thoughts and actions.
01:12:30
Speaker
Maybe you should too. Journaling has been shown to improve mental health on many fronts, but more than anything, If you are trying to improve yourself, if you're trying to overcome bad habits or um grow in a particular area of your life, keeping record of what you're doing and how it works out and what your shortcomings are and the workarounds that you develop, that's important.
01:12:57
Speaker
And so journaling might help you achieve many of the goals that you want to achieve. So many of us get stuck between the wish to get better and actually getting better.
01:13:09
Speaker
Unstick yourself, right? Time to get unstuck.
01:13:13
Speaker
Here is the last category of ethical practices that I wanna cover from the Desert Fathers. I'm gonna just call it ethical minimalism slash hospitality.
01:13:25
Speaker
So let's start with the minimalism portion of this. So if you recall Aristotle's ethics, you'll remember that he has some virtues that are very difficult to achieve for many, many people. You have to be very lucky to be born into a position where you can achieve the kind of wealth that is required to achieve things like, you know, the more grand virtues that Aristotle prescribes.
01:13:55
Speaker
The virtues praised by the Desert Fathers stand in stark contrast to those of Aristotle. So they are things like discretion, non-judgment, poverty, and silence.
01:14:11
Speaker
So I think being non-judgmental, poverty, silence, those are self-explanatory. And, you know, to a certain degree, we've already talked about them a little bit. Let's talk about discretion.
01:14:24
Speaker
because this is one that they share with Aristotle. And I think it's extremely valuable. So as I've already mentioned, discretion borrows elements of Aristotle's practical wisdom. I mentioned that way early on in the lesson, as well as the concept of the golden mean.
01:14:41
Speaker
Now, the part that the Desert Fathers add is that they see discretion as key for salvation. Here is a quote from Anthony the Great. There are some who wore their bodies away with spiritual discipline, but became far from God because they did not have discretion.
01:15:01
Speaker
What does that mean? in effect, you should not engage in practices that will break you. We want to, you know, better ourselves. In the case of the Desert Fathers, they want to achieve salvation.
01:15:18
Speaker
But don't go so hard. Don't burn the candle at both ends so that you don't make it to the finish line, right? So don't take on more than you can handle, basically.
01:15:32
Speaker
In addition to those comments by Anthony the Great, we also have some from Evagrius, who says that there is a right time and duration for everything, right? So again, don't spread yourself too thin.
01:15:48
Speaker
Make sure that you take the steps toward betterment in a proper incremental fashion. i have one more comment here on discretion from John Cassian, who is basically giving us what Democritian ideas.
01:16:05
Speaker
Now you have to go way back to unit one to the lesson on Democritus and atomistic philosophy. um But John counsels monks to not take on more than they can deliver.
01:16:18
Speaker
Right. You know, that's the same idea. Know your abilities and don't try to, you know, don't shoot beyond those abilities. So there you go.
01:16:30
Speaker
Some ideas that run counter to Aristotle, but but that I think are worthwhile virtues to pursue. i mean, you want to be nonjudgmental um and to a certain degree, at least you want to maintain a certain degree of silence. You don't have to be talking all the time. You don't have to be socializing all the time.
01:16:48
Speaker
The poverty thing, maybe that's not your cup of tea. But some psychologists see conspicuous consumerism as really harming us at a psychic level, right? So maybe that's something to to think about a little bit, you know, decrease your degree of consumption, maybe down to just the essentials. That's an idea.
01:17:10
Speaker
And of course, discretion, that does tie in with Aristotle, but it has kind of a different tenor when it comes to the Desert Fathers. The last thing I'll mention here in this category is the practice of hospitality.
01:17:25
Speaker
So what does that mean? Well, the monks lived a very secluded life, right? It is true that they basically almost never talked to other people. But once in a while,
01:17:38
Speaker
they would get visitors, right? Maybe other monks or maybe some interested followers or something like that. And the monks maintained an ethic of radical hospitality.
01:17:50
Speaker
did It didn't matter what you were doing for the most part, right? But if you are in a fast at that time, doesn't matter. If someone comes to your door, you open your door and you have some food and you pour some wine,
01:18:06
Speaker
You are basically ethically flexible in the sense that those practices that are key to your salvation, if you're a monk, you know, they're important, but it's also important to be good to each other.
01:18:21
Speaker
And so that's something that maybe we can really learn from, right? Of course, we want to better ourselves and, you know, you're on hardcore diet or you're really studying really hard for some tests or, you know, whatever.
01:18:33
Speaker
It's important, of course, to have your head on straight and and work on bettering yourself. But be good to other people. Don't let that be an excuse to be rude or to be antisocial or something like that.
01:18:47
Speaker
And when you can, make room for friends. People need you too. And so maybe by getting rid of some of the non-essentials in your life, when you know you have an opportunity to be sociable and to spend time with friends,
01:19:01
Speaker
You can enjoy it without feeling guilty that you're not getting some other things done. Right? So keep your virtuous habits and your friends as your top priorities and get rid of everything else.
Theological Challenges in a Christian Empire
01:19:15
Speaker
Those are the non-essentials, right? So be hospitable to people.
01:19:21
Speaker
And so that's the way the monks were living in the desert, a state of detachment from the world. That, of course, is not all Christians.
01:19:32
Speaker
Many, many Christians stayed in the cities because things were changing in Rome. In the year 380, we get the Edict of Thessalonica, and this decree officially makes the Roman Empire a Christian empire.
01:19:50
Speaker
But what does that mean? What exactly is a Roman citizen supposed to be like now? And What's up with this idea of a Christian empire? That sounds like a contradiction in terms.
01:20:04
Speaker
So now we have new theological problems that Christians have to try to figure out and they would begin to work on these issues in the West, attempting to reconcile the idea of being Roman with being Christian. Remember, being Roman for the longest time meant being Christian totally unchristian at least from a modern point of view and so how is one now a roman christian well many thinkers are going to try to tackle these issues and define what a christian empire ought to be little did they know that the western half of the roman empire was about to collapse