The Wisdom of the Desert with Nicholas Buxton: Christian Scholars, #1

By Wise Studies and Revd Dr Nicholas Buxton

Over four lectures, Nicholas introduces us to the lives and sayings of the desert fathers, with a particular focus on the fascinating writings of Evagrius of Pontus (c. 345-399). In doing so, he makes the wisdom of the desert relevant to contemporary spiritual practice.

The course begins by looking at the origins of Christian monasticism during the third century CE, when thousands of men and women renounced the world and withdrew to the deserts of Egypt, Syria and Palestine to seek God in a life of solitude and prayer. What inspired them to do this? What were they trying to achieve? In seeking answers to these questions, we will examine the lives and sayings of the so-called 'desert fathers', with a particular emphasis on the theological writings of Evagrius of Pontus (c. 345-399).

Evagrius was described as being one 'skilled in the discernment of spirits'. In his ascetical treatises, he elaborates a detailed programme for aspirants to the holy life comprising a foundation of stillness (hesychia), the cultivation of equanimity (apatheia) and, ultimately, unitive knowledge of the divine reality (gnosis). Particular attention will be given to his psycho-spiritual taxonomy of the 'eight thoughts', and the practice of contemplative prayer, as expounded in texts such as the Foundations, Praktikos, Eight Thoughts, and On Prayer.

• Session One – Monks of the Desert – Historical origins of Christian monasticism • the story of the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness • St Antony, the 'first monk' • fleeing the world to face the self • life in the desert • Pachomius and the beginnings of institutional monasticism.
• Session Two – The Ascetic Rationale – The theology of Origen of Alexandria • principles of monastic asceticism • the importance of humility and purity of heart • Evagrius of Pontus, theologian of the desert • stages on the path of spiritual progress • the cultivation of apatheia (equanimity).
• Session Three – The Eight Thoughts – On the subject of demons • the eight categories of obsessive thoughts: gluttony, lust, avarice, sadness, anger, acedia, vanity and pride • the practice of the discernment of thoughts.
• Session Four – On Prayer – Types of prayer in the Christian tradition • prayer in the Bible and the teachings of Jesus • the nature of the mind • the notion of 'pure prayer' in Evagrius • the legacy of the Desert Fathers.

The Reverend Dr Nicholas Buxton is the Director of St Antony's Priory, in Durham, and founder of 'Just Meditation' and the Newcastle Meditation Centre. He has a PhD in Buddhist philosophy from the University of Cambridge and is an experienced meditation teacher and retreat leader. Publications include The Wilderness Within: Meditation and Modern Life (Canterbury Press, 2014), and Tantalus and the Pelican: Exploring Monastic Spirituality Today (Continuum, 2009).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wise Studies
• Release date: Jan 4, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393125501

Book preview

Part One – Monks of the Desert

Historical Origins

In what follows, we are going to explore the spirituality of the so-called ‘Desert Fathers’, seeing also – I hope – how the ancient wisdom of the desert might be relevant to contemporary spiritual practice. We will start by looking at the emergence of Christian monasticism during the early fourth century, when thousands of men and women renounced the world and withdrew to the wilderness regions of Egypt, Syria and Palestine to seek God in a life of solitude and prayer. What inspired them to do this? What were they trying to achieve? In seeking answers to these questions, we will examine the lives and sayings of the ‘Desert Fathers’, with a particular focus on the fascinating writings of Evagrius of Pontus (c. 345-399), and who was described in contemporary accounts as being one ‘skilled in the discernment of spirits’. In his various theological writings, Evagrius gives a detailed account of the spiritual life and the path leading to the practice of what he calls ‘pure prayer’. But first, we need to begin at the beginning, with the historical origins of the Christian monastic movement.

Tradition has it that Christian monasticism emerged in the deserts of Egypt during the fourth century of the Common Era. According to this story, St Antony was the first monk and his younger contemporary, Pachomius, was the founder of the first monastic communities. However, the truth is – as ever – much more complex, and the notion that the origins of Christian monasticism can be traced to the activities of one or two key individuals in a particular time and place is overly simplistic and probably quite mistaken.

The truth is nobody really knows quite how or why – or even where and when – monasticism first emerged, as there is evidence of similar movements arising independently in Palestine, Syria and the Sinai Peninsula, during the same period. Within the monastic tradition itself it has always been maintained that what in due course evolved into the institution of ‘monasticism’, as we know it, actually began at the same time as Christianity itself, and indeed is arguably its purest expression. But, of course, monasticism is not the exclusive preserve of the Christian tradition. It is clear that there were precedents within Judaism, such as the sect known as the Essenes, who withdrew from normal society to live in strict obedience to the Jewish law, engaging in rigorous asceticism under a common way of life. Their community at Qumran being famously associated with the collection of ancient texts we know as the ‘Dead Sea Scrolls’.

And we can also see from the Bible that the desert itself had a strong appeal to the religious imagination long before the emergence of Christian monasticism. The people of Israel were born from the womb of the Sinai desert following their Exodus from slavery in Egypt, and their prophets would frequently return to the wilderness to commune with their God. It was a place where God was to be encountered, and where the devil was to be resisted: Moses, Elijah and John the Baptist all engaged with God in the wilderness.

So, when we talk about the origins of Christian monasticism we have to take into account the fact that monasticism is not a uniquely Christian phenomenon. There were religious communities of one sort or another in the region of the eastern Mediterranean prior to the advent of Christianity – to say nothing of the establishment of Buddhist monasticism in India five centuries before the birth of Christ. One could perhaps argue that human beings simply have a perennial and universal urge to renounce the world and seek a higher truth: it’s just something that some people feel the need to do, and what we call ‘monasticism’ is just one of the various ways in which this natural human spiritual instinct has been, and continues to be, expressed. However, this also means that it is virtually impossible to account for the specific historical causes and conditions that gave rise to the particular phenomenon of Christian monasticism in the deserts of Egypt, Syria and Palestine towards the end of the third century. What eventually evolved into the institutional structures we now recognise as ‘monasticism’ emerged from a diffuse web of wider religious and cultural trends, each with long and complex histories.

Thus, neither the mere fact of the existence of communities living apart from society, nor the spiritual significance of the desert itself in the Judeo-Christian religious imagination are sufficient to explain exactly why the Christian monastic movement suddenly took off when it did. Some scholars have speculated that the early monastics may simply have been men and women forced into poverty by the crushing burden of Roman taxation, others have suggested that they were fleeing the threat of persecution, whilst a third theory claims that on the contrary it was in fact the ending of the great persecution under the Emperor Diocletian in the year 311, and thus the lack of further opportunities for martyrdom, that led zealous Christians to seek other ways of giving up their life for Christ.

Monks themselves have always understood monasticism as ‘life according to the Gospel’, and it doesn’t seem unreasonable to suppose that the people to whom we now give that label did not at the time see themselves as creating a new formal structure. They were just trying to imitate the example of the first disciples, at a time when the church was becoming an increasingly institutionalised part of the establishment. After all, for the first three hundred years of its existence Christianity was basically a deviant sect, clinging precariously to the margins of society, its followers branded as ‘atheists’ on account of their refusal to worship the gods of the state. Following the Emperor Constantine’s conversion to Christianity and his Edict of Milan in the year 313, however, Christians were for the first time free to practise their religion openly, and by the end of the century Christianity had become the official and indeed only permissible religion of the empire. In such circumstances it seems plausible to suggest that some Christians may have sought a return to the radically countercultural spirit of the early church, as recounted in the pages of the New Testament, and in particular, the Acts of the Apostles. Here we read how the first Christians lived a communal life, wherein, to quote: ‘the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common.’[1] Far from being some new-fangled fourth century invention, monasticism was understood – at least by its practitioners – as Christianity’s most authentic expression: monks were living the life of Christian witness to the full.

Temptation in the Wilderness

Whether or not we feel that the historical record provides sufficient evidence for the view that monasticism is simply ‘life according to the gospel’, the monastic tradition undoubtedly derives theological justification from the scriptures, and in particular the life and example of Christ as recorded in the pages of the New Testament. After all, the first thing Jesus does following his baptism by John in the River Jordan, which marked the beginning of his public ministry, is to retreat into the wilderness for forty days and forty nights of fasting and spiritual asceticism. Given the longstanding and deeply felt association between spirituality and the wilderness, which is found throughout the Bible, it should come as no surprise to us that we also read of how he would often go off to deserted places by himself to pray. The example of Jesus, his retreat into the desert and his practice of solitary prayer was, and still is, the inspiration for Christian renunciation and withdrawal on which the monastic tradition is founded. We should not be surprised, therefore, that some people would seek to follow that example by going into the desert themselves, in order to develop a deeper, fuller relationship with God. Whether historically true or not, it is hopefully safe to say, therefore, that the spiritual origins of Christian monasticism most obviously lie in the origins of Christianity itself. It is not some deviation from the norm, but, in many ways, its most literal expression, modelled as it is on the life and example of Jesus himself.

The well-known story of the ‘temptation in the wilderness’ thus became the prototype for the Christian ascetic tradition. We will examine some of its themes, particularly the temptations themselves and how Jesus responds to those temptations, in more detail in subsequent chapters, but it might be worth just spending a moment now to remind ourselves of the story, given its great significance to the monastic tradition.

Basically, Jesus has been living in the wilderness and fasting for six weeks. We can imagine he must be absolutely famished. Knowing this, the devil – and we’ll talk more about how we might understand the language of demons later – makes his first move, trying to tempt Jesus with his hunger, by saying, ‘If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.’ Jesus responds with a quotation from the Law of Moses in the Book of Deuteronomy, saying: ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’[2] The point he is making, of course, is that the fullness of our humanity does not subsist in the physical body alone. The human being is an integration of body and soul: in order to be most fully human we need not only physical sustenance, but also spiritual nourishment.

Having failed with his first attempt, the devil next tries to tempt Jesus by promising him all the power and wealth in the world, boastfully claiming that it has been given to him to give to whomever he pleases. If Jesus will only bow down and worship him, it will all be his for the taking.[3] Jesus responds by asserting that God alone is worthy of our praise, implying that if we take the things of the world, made as they are by human hands, as the objects of our desires then this is tantamount to idolatry. Finally, the devil tempts Jesus to reveal to the world that he really is the Son of God, with power over life and death, by throwing himself off the pinnacle of the temple in Jerusalem and invoking the angels to save him. Jesus, of course, refuses, declaring that we should not be so presumptuous as to think we can put God to the test.[4]

Now, leaving aside questions we may have about how literally to take this story, and focussing instead on the psychological and spiritual experiences it describes, the first thing we notice is that the three ‘temptations’ present themselves as distracting thoughts, such as will be more than familiar to anyone who engages in spiritual practices such as prayer and meditation. Note too that Jesus is tempted by a series of three appeals to the ego; temptations to satisfy, indulge or inflate the self. First, he is tempted to satisfy his own personal physical needs and desires. Second, he is tempted to indulge the almost universal human greed for power, possessions and wealth. And finally, he is tempted to show off, to give in to the craving we have for the esteem of others and allow vanity to inflate the ego like a balloon. Each time, however, the voice of his conscience rejects the temptation as being an inappropriate response to his calling, an inappropriate expression