Five Models of Spiritual Direction in the Early Church

George E. Demacopoulos

• Editore: University of Notre Dame Press
• Anno: 2007
• ISBN:
  9780268063085
• Argomento: Theology & Religion
• Categoria: History of Christianity

In late antiquity the rising number of ascetics who joined the priesthood faced a pastoral dilemma. Should they follow a traditional, demonstrably administrative, approach to pastoral care, emphasizing doctrinal instruction, the care of the poor, and the celebration of the sacraments? Or should they bring to the parish the ascetic models of spiritual direction, characterized by a more personal spiritual father/spiritual disciple relationship? Five Models of Spiritual Direction in the Early Church explores the struggles of five clerics (Athanasius, Gregory Nazianzen, Augustine of Hippo, John Cassian, and Pope Gregory I) to reconcile their ascetic idealism with the reality of pastoral responsibility. Through a close reading of Greek and Latin texts, George E. Demacopoulos explores each pastor's criteria for ordination, his supervision of subordinate clergy, and his methods of spiritual direction. He argues that the evolution in spiritual direction that occurred during this period reflected and informed broader developments in religious practices. Demacopoulos describes the way in which these authors shaped the medieval pastoral traditions of the East and the West. Each of the five struggled to balance the tension between his ascetic idealism and the realities of the lay church. Each offered distinct (and at times very different) solutions to that tension. The diversity among their models of spiritual direction demonstrates both the complexity of the problem and the variable nature of early Christianity. Scholars and students of late antiquity, the history of Christianity, and historical theology will find a great deal of interest in Five Models of Spiritual Direction in the Early Church. The book will also appeal to those who are actively engaged in Christian ministry.

Notes

Introduction

1. Cassian, Conl. 18.5.

2. By “lay” Christian, I mean both married and unmarried men and women who understood themselves to be members of the Christian community but who did not wish to adopt the more rigorous life of organized asceticism.

3. A more precise but perhaps overly technical term would be pyschagogy, meaning “guidance of the soul.” The spiritual director had a prominent place in the philosophical schools of the ancients. Christians borrowed the idea and developed it to suit their needs (sometimes quite differently). Throughout the text, I will use the terms spiritual direction and pastoral care almost interchangeably. The term pastoral care conveys a certain set of modern preconceptions about clerical ministry, but it was also a term employed by late ancient Christians, especially Pope Gregory I, to describe the responsibilities of spiritual leadership. Concerning spiritual direction in classical philosophy, see the collective works of Pierre Hadot, especially his Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault, trans. Michael Chase (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995).

4. It is, of course, unlikely that priests or monks in the fourth, fifth, or sixth centuries would have understood their formation of disciples to be composed of a series of “pastoral techniques.” Nevertheless, it is possible (even necessary) to employ this terminology in order to differentiate between pastoral traditions.

5. Christians did not invent the practice of asceticism — the Greco-Romans had a long tradition of philosophical askesis or “training” that was suppose to clear the mind of all distractions, enabling philosophical contemplation. In Christian hands, askesis took on physical characteristics that were designed to train both the body and soul to shun those things that distracted a person from God.

6. For the scholarly debate over an acceptable definition of asceticism, see Vincent Wimbush’s introduction to Ascetic Behavior in Greco-Roman Antiquity (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990), 1–11.

7. Here too, parish is an awkward and anachronistic term. Nevertheless, it well conveys to a modern reader the environment of a lay Christian community under the leadership of an ordained and orthodox clergy.

8. For a concise presentation of the technical difference but practical similarity between a professed ascetic and a monk, see Susanna Elm, Virgins of God: The Making of Asceticism in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 13–14.

9. See Conrad Leyser, Authority and Asceticism from Augustine to Gregory the Great (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000).

10. See James Goehring, “The Encroaching Desert: Literary Production and Ascetic Space in Early Christian Egypt,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 1 (1993): 281–96.

11. For example, see Ignatius, Epistle to the Ephesians 3–5, in Letters [Epistulae] (J. B. Lightfoot, crit. ed., pt. 2, vols. 1–3 of The Apostolic Fathers [1885; repr., Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1989]).

12. See John Behr, The Way to Nicaea (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001), 81–83.

13. Irenaeus, Against Heresies [Adversus haereses] 3.3.4 (A. Rousseau and L. Doutreleau, crit. ed., SC 100, 152–53, 210–11, 263–64, 293–94); Tertullian, The Prescription against Heretics [De praescriptione haereticorum] 32 (R. F. Refoulé, crit. ed., SC 46).

14. Chrysostom, On the Priesthood [De sacerdotio] 3.4 (A. M. Malingrey, crit. ed., SC 272). Here and elsewhere in this book, all translations from primary sources are my own unless otherwise indicated.

15. Ibid., 3.5.

16. Ibid. John typically uses the vague term ἱερωσύνης (priesthood), which implies both the priest and the bishop. See Anne-Marie Malingrey, ed., Jean Chrysostome: Sur le sacerdoce (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1980), 72–73.

17. Didascalia Apostolorum 2.33. I am relying on R. H. Connolly’s translation of the Syriac text; see R. H. Connolly, ed. and trans., Didascalia Apostolorum: The Syriac Version Translated and Accompanied by the Verona Latin Fragments (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1929).

18. 1 Tim. 3:2–4.

19. Ignatius, Epistle to Polycarp 3, in Letters.

20. Didascalia Apostolorum 2.25. See Georg Schöllgen, Die Anfänge der Professionalisierung des Klerus und das kirchliche Amt in der syrischen Didaskalia (Münster: Ashendorffe Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1988), 34–100.

21. Claudia Rapp, Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity: The Nature of Christian Leadership in an Age of Transition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 31.

22. Didascalia Apostolorum 2.25.

23. Ibid., 2.20.

24. Ibid., 2.1.

25. See Claudia Rapp, “The Elite Status of Bishops in Late Antiquity in Ecclesiastical, Spiritual and Social Contexts,” Arethusa 33 (2000): 379–99.

26. Aug., De doc. 4.2.3ff.

27. See Rapp, “Elite Status of Bishops,” esp. 386–87. See also her Holy Bishops, 183–88. See also A. H. M. Jones, The Later Roman Empire, 284–602, 2 vols. (1964; repr., Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), 1:93.

28. On the episcopal court system, see Jill Harries, Law and Empire in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 199–211, and John Lamoreaux, “Episcopal Courts in Late Antiquity,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 3 (1995): 143–67.

29. Didascalia Apostolorum 2.5.

30. Ibid., 2.18.

31. Origen, Commentary on the Gospel According to Matthew [Commentaria in Evanglium secundum Matthaeum] 12.11 (J.-P. Migne, ed., PG 13).

32. Ibid., 12.14.

33. Rapp, Holy Bishops, 35–36. Origen cautions, “[I]f [the bishop] is tightly bound with the cords of his sins, he will be unable to bind and loose.” Origen, Gospel According to Matthew 12.14.

34. Origen, Gospel According to Matthew 12.14.

35. Ammonas, Ep. 4, 12. I have relied on Chitty’s and Brock’s translation from the Syriac.

36. Ammonas, Ep. 12.

37. Ammonas, Ep. 6.

38. Ammonas, Ep. 6.

39. Ammonas, Ep. 11. “And if I, who am your spiritual father, had not formerly obeyed my spiritual parents, God would not have revealed His will to me.”

40. See, for example, Antony, Ep. 6. I have relied on Rubenson’s translation of Antony’s Letters; see Samuel Rubenson, ed. and trans., The Letters of St. Antony: Monasticism and the Making of a Saint (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995).

41. Antony, Ep. 6.

42. Ammonas, Ep. 4.

43. Ammonas, Ep. 4. As the consequence of trial, see Ep. 10.

44. Ammonas, Ep. 4.

45. See Joseph Lienhard, “On ‘Discernment of Spirits’ in the Early Church,” Theological Studies 41 (1980): 505–29.

46. The premier study of the role of the spiritual father in ascetic culture is still Irénée Hausherr’s Spiritual Direction in the Early Christian East, trans. A. Gythiel (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1990). Note also John Chryssavgis, Soul Mending: The Art of Spiritual Direction (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2000), esp. 49–58; Philip Rousseau, Ascetics, Authority and the Church in the Age of Jerome and Cassian (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), 19–32 and 49–55.

47. See Hausherr, Spiritual Direction, 99–122, and Rousseau, Ascetics, Authority, 56–67.

48. Cf. Basil, Longer Rules [Regulae fusius tractatae] 54, in Ascetic Works [Ascetica] (J.-P. Migne, ed., PG 31); see also Philip Rousseau, Pachomius: The Making of a Community in Fourth-Century Egypt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 104–18.

49. Rousseau, Pachomius; see also Claudia Rapp, “‘For Next to God, You Are My Salvation’: Reflections on the Rise of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity,” in The Cult of the Saints in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages: Essays on the Contribution of Peter Brown, ed. J. Howard-Johnston and P. Hayward (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 63–81.

50. The philosopher, according to Hadot, would harness all of his rhetorical resources, not so much to supply an exhaustive explanation of reality as to enable his disciples to orient themselves to their world in a way that would bring assurance and peace to the soul. See, for example, the chapter “Forms of Life and Forms of Discourse in Ancient Philosophy,” in his Philosophy, 49–77, esp. 63–64. See also the book’s introduction by Arnold I. Davidson, 20–22.

51. In its present form the Apophthegmata was probably compiled during the sixth century, but it is the product of several editorial redactions and additions. The earliest material stems from the fourth century.

52. Benedicta Ward, trans., The Sayings of the Desert Fathers (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1975), xxii.

53. Ammonas, Ep. 8.

54. Ammonas, Ep. 8.

55. Ammonas, Ep. 8.

56. Basil, Longer Rules 41.

57. Ammonas, Ep. 11.

58. Ammonas, Ep. 11.

59. John Climacus, Ladder of Divine Ascent [Scala paradisi] 4 (J.-P. Migne, ed., PG 88). See Chryssavgis, Soul Mending, 59–72.

60. See Antony, Ep. 3, 4, 5, and 6.

61. See Ammonas, Ep. 4, 5, 8, and 12.

62. Basil, Longer Rules 25.

63. Naz., Or. 2.16. A ph...