No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Apocalyptic praxis in Evagrius of Pontus and Francis of Assisi
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 May 2024
Abstract
The Christian mystical tradition approaches the apocalyptic as praxis – a way of living that renounces the world as it is, lives proleptically into a counter-world of God's reign and practices indifferent freedom in the meantime to love God and neighbour. Although concerns about the ethical viability of such a disposition have merit, this essay demonstrates its constructive possibility through recourse to two archives: the writings of Evagrius of Pontus and the witness of Francis of Assisi. By recovering a scriptural distinction between world and creation, and by emphasising the posture of holy indifference, apocalyptic praxis offers a resource and guide.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press
References
1 Schweitzer, Albert, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, ed. Bowden, John Stephen (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2001)Google Scholar; Bultmann, Rudolf, ‘New Testament and Mythology: The Problem of Demythologizing the New Testament Proclamation’, in Ogden, Schubert Miles (ed.), New Testament and Mythology and Other Basic Writings (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1984), pp. 1–44Google Scholar; Gaventa, Beverly Roberts (ed.), Apocalyptic Paul: Cosmos and Anthropos in Romans 5–8 (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2019)Google Scholar.
2 See Koch, Klaus, The Rediscovery of Apocalyptic: A Polemical Work on a Neglected Area of Biblical Studies and Its Damaging Effects on Theology and Philosophy (London: SCM Press, 1972)Google Scholar.
3 Taubes, Jacob, The Political Theology of Paul (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004)Google Scholar; Agamben, Giorgio, The Time That Remains: A Commentary on the Letter to the Romans (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Caputo, John D. and Alcoff, Linda (eds.), St. Paul Among the Philosophers (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009)Google Scholar.
4 Keller, Catherine, Apocalypse Now and Then: A Feminist Guide to the End of the World (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1996)Google Scholar; Keller, Catherine, God and Power: Counter-Apocalyptic Journeys (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2005)Google Scholar; Keller, Catherine, Political Theology of the Earth: Our Planetary Emergency and the Struggle for a New Public (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Keller, Catherine, Facing Apocalypse: Climate, Democracy, and Other Last Chances (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2021)Google Scholar.
5 See Lambelet, Kyle B. T., ‘The Lure of the Apocalypse: Ecology, Ethics, and the End of the World’, Studies in Christian Ethics 34/4 (7 July 2021), pp. 482–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
6 Käsemann, Ernst, New Testament Questions of Today (London: SCM Press, 1969), p. 102Google Scholar.
7 McGinn, Bernard, The Foundations of Mysticism: Origins to the Fifth Century, vol. 1 of The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism (New York: Crossroad, 1991), ch. 1Google Scholar.
8 By ‘pseudo-apocalypses’ I simply mean forms of thinking, acting or narrating that draw selectively and in pernicious ways from the apocalyptic archive of scripture. One glaring example is to approach the apocalyptic as solely announcing destruction (e.g. calling the aftermath of a climate-amplified storm apocalyptic), rather than as also inaugurating a new heaven and a new earth. See John J. Collins, ‘The End of the World in Biblical Tradition’, Political Theology Network, 6 January 2023, https://politicaltheology.com/the-end-of-the-world-in-biblical-tradition/.
9 A few exceptions to this include the work of Ted Smith and Elizabeth Phillips in moral theology and Cláudio Carvalhaes in liturgical theology. See also the forthcoming works of Daniel Rhodes, Jerusha Neal and Matthew Elia.
10 I use ‘indifference’ in the technical theological sense as indiferentes or apatheia; see below for further discussion.
11 On the apocalyptic genre, see John J. Collins, ‘What Is Apocalyptic Literature’, in John J. Collins (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Apocalyptic Literature (New York: OUP, 2014), pp. 1–18. On apocalypse as an ideology, see Frances Flannery, Understanding Apocalyptic Terrorism: Countering the Radical Mindset (London: Routledge, 2016). On apocalyptic eschatology, see Cyril O'Regan, Theology and the Spaces of Apocalyptic (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 2009); Brian D. Robinette, Grammars of Resurrection: A Christian Theology of Presence and Absence (New York: Crossroad, 2009).
12 One exception to this practical neglect is Catherine Keller, who throughout her work has wrestled with the political and ethical ambiguities of the apocalyptic lure. Yet while Keller moves from scripture through deconstruction and critical theory to the present, I aim to pluralise the historical resources available for developing an apocalyptic praxis.
13 Lambelet, ‘The Lure of the Apocalypse’.
14 See James 4:4. See also David Elliot's helpful development of this conception of worldliness from the Johannine corpus to Thomas Aquinas in Hope and Christian Ethics (New York: CUP, 2017), pp. 160–68.
15 Catherine Keller artfully makes this distinction by drawing on the poetry of Ed Roberson. She argues, ‘“the world” signifies a collective schema: human self-organization inextricably entangled in the nonhuman. So “the earth” evokes the planet, the earth that presents – is there “to see” – in its critical difference’. Keller, Political Theology of the Earth, p. 69.
16 Thomas Lynch, Apocalyptic Political Theology: Hegel, Taubes and Malabou (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019).
17 Anathea Portier-Young, Apocalypse against Empire: Theologies of Resistance in Early Judaism (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2011).
18 See also 1 Corinthians 7.
19 I am taking methodological cues from Kathryn Tanner's approach to the constructive task of thinking (and acting) within a tradition. See Kathryn Tanner, Theories of Culture: A New Agenda for Theology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1997).
20 Lauren F. Winner, The Dangers of Christian Practice: On Wayward Gifts, Characteristic Damage, and Sin (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2018).
21 Eusebius, The History of the Church: A New Translation, trans. Jeremy M. Schott (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2019), X.IX, p. 490. Eusebius, while reading God's providential action in Constantine's establishment of Christianity as the religion of the Roman Empire, was not merely a triumphalist. See Aaron P. Johnson, Eusebius (London: I.B. Tauris, 2014).
22 Athanasius, Vie d'Antoine, trans. Gerard J. M. Bartelink, Sources chrétiennes 400 (Paris: Cerf, 2004); Athanasius, The Life of Antony and the Letter to Marcellinus, ed. Robert C. Gregg (New York: Paulist Press, 1980). A recent and more complicated account of the back and forth between desert and city has challenged this rather paradigmatic picture of the early monastic movement. See David Brakke, ‘Holy Men and Women of the Desert’, in Bernice M. Kaczynski (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Christian Monasticism (Oxford: OUP, 2020), pp. 35–50.
23 My historical recounting follows William Harmless, Desert Christians: An Introduction to the Literature of Early Monasticism (Oxford: OUP, 2004). The primary ancient chronicler of Evagrius’ life was Palladius. See The Lausiac History of Palladius, trans. Cuthbert Butler (Cambridge: CUP, 1895).
24 In the citations that follow I use Robert Sinkewicz's critical translation of Evagrius’ corpus. See Evagrius of Pontus: The Greek Ascetic Corpus, ed. Robert E. Sinkewicz (Oxford: OUP, 2006).
25 Evagrius, Foundations, 3; in Evagrius of Pontus, p. 5.
26 Evagrius, Praktikos, 48; in Evagrius of Pontus, p. 106.
27 Ibid.
28 Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), p. 217.
29 Ibid., p. 237.
30 Evagrius, Chapters on Prayer, 1; in Evagrius of Pontus, p. 193.
31 ‘Go, “sell your possessions and give to the poor” [Matt 19:21] and “taking up your cross, deny yourself” [Matt 16:24], so that you may be able to pray free from distraction’. Evagrius, Chapters on Prayer, 17; in Evagrius of Pontus, p. 194.
32 Evagrius, Chapters on Prayer, 66; in Evagrius of Pontus, p. 199.
33 Columba Stewart, ‘Imageless Prayer and the Theological Vision of Evagrius Ponticus’, Journal of Early Christian Studies 9/2 (2001), pp. 173–204.
34 Evagrius, Praktikos, 81; in Evagrius of Pontus, p. 110.
35 Luke Dysinger, Psalmody and Prayer in the Writings of Evagrius Ponticus (Oxford: OUP, 2005), pp. 14–15.
36 See Harmless’ account of the Origenist controversy in Desert Christians, pp. 359–63.
37 Derwas J. Chitty, The Desert a City: An Introduction to the Study of Egyptian and Palestian Monasticism under the Christian Empire (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1995), p. 50.
38 Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault, trans. Arnold I. Davidson (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1995).
39 Ann Conway-Jones, ‘Interiorised Apocalyptic in Gregory of Nyssa, Evagrius of Pontus and Pseudo-Macarius’, Studia Patristica LXXIV (2016), p. 196.
40 Bernard McGinn, The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Women in the New Mysticism (1200–1350), vol. 3 of The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism (New York: Crossroad, 1998).
41 Bonaventure, Life, Prologue.1; ‘Major Life of St. Francis’, trans. Benen Fahy O.F.M., in Marion Alphonse Habig (ed.), St. Francis of Assisi: Writings and Early Biographies: English Omnibus of the Sources for the Life of St. Francis, 4th rev. edn. (Quincy, IL: Franciscan Herald Press, 1991), p. 631. For the original Latin text see Enrico Menestò and Stefano Brufani (eds.), Fontes franciscani, Medioevo francescano 2 (Assisi: Edizioni Porziuncola, 1995). For English translations, I have used Bonaventure, ‘Major Life of St. Francis’. For another, more popular, translation see Bonaventure: The Soul's Journey into God, The Tree of Life, The Life of St. Francis, trans. Ewert H. Cousins (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1978).
42 Bonaventure, The Life of Saint Francis, IV.5.
43 Bonaventure, Life, Prologue.1; ‘Major Life of St. Francis’, p. 631.
44 See Brian Hamilton's dissertation for one compelling development of this argument: ‘Pauperes Christi: Voluntary Poverty as Political Practice’ (Ph.D. diss., South Bend, IN, University of Notre Dame, 2015), https://curate.nd.edu/show/mg74qj74z81.
45 Unlike Evagrius, the documentary record for Francis is limited, and so contemporary readers must engage him largely through the writings of his near contemporaries. For the purposes of this essay, I will engage especially Bonaventure's account of Francis in his Legenda maior or The Life of St. Francis.
46 Bonaventure, Life, II.4, VII.9; ‘Major Life of St. Francis’, pp. 643, 686. On the latter, I find Cousins' translation a truer rendering of ‘mundi desertum’ as ‘the desert of the world’. See Bonaventure, Bonaventure: The Soul's Journey into God, The Tree of Life, The Life of St. Francis, p. 246.
47 Bonaventure, Life, II.1; ‘Major Life of St. Francis’, p. 640.
48 Bonaventure, Life, II.4; ‘Major Life of St. Francis’, p. 642.
49 Bonaventure, Life, VIII.9, V.12, V.9; ‘Major Life of St. Francis’, pp. 695–6, 670–71, 668–9.
50 Bonaventure, Life, V.11; ‘Major Life of St. Francis’, p. 669.
51 St. Francis of Assisi: Writings and Early Biographies, pp. 130–31.
52 Bonaventure, Life, III.7; ‘Major Life of St. Francis’, p. 649.
53 Bonaventure, Life, IV.7; ‘Major Life of St. Francis’, pp. 657–8.
54 Bonaventure, Life, V.7; ‘Major Life of St. Francis’, p. 667.
55 Bonaventure, Life, X.1; ‘Major Life of St. Francis’, p. 705.
56 Bonaventure, Life, XIV.2; ‘Major Life of St. Francis’, p. 738.
57 Hamilton, ‘Pauperes Christi’.
58 Bonaventure, Life, XIII.10; ‘Major Life of St. Francis’, p. 736.
59 For more on the dangers of authoritarian charisma, see Lloyd, Vincent W., In Defense of Charisma (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Lambelet, Kyle B. T., ¡Presente! Nonviolent Politics and the Resurrection of the Dead (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2019), ch. 5Google Scholar.
60 Bernard McGinn, citing Bonaventure's Prologue, in McGinn, The Flowering of Mysticism, p. 73.
61 I would like to thank Michael Rubbelke who offered initial inspiration and insight for this essay, as well as Keith Menhinick, Jennifer Carlier, Lahronda Little, Sarah Bogue and my colleagues at the Fellowship for Protestant Ethics for their feedback. Finally, I'm grateful to the editor Ian McFarland and the anonymous reviewers of this journal for their constructive critiques that greatly enriched the essay.