The Conferences 3.20–4.18

“Yet we must believe with unshaken faith that nothing at all is done in this world without God. For it must be confessed that everything is done either by his will or by his permission: that is, that good things are believed to be accomplished by God's will and help, and contrary things by his permission, when the divine protection, forsaking us because of our wickedness and hardness of heart, allows the devil or shameful passions of the body to rule over us. This we are most plainly taught by the words of the apostle: ‘For this reason God gave them up to shameful passions’; and again: ‘Because they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a reprobate mind, to do what is not fitting.’ And the Lord himself says through the prophet: ‘And my people did not hear my voice, and Israel did not heed me. So I let them go,’ he says, ‘according to the devices of their hearts; they shall walk in their own devices.’”

Germanus: “This testimony most plainly shows free will: ‘If my people had heard me’; and elsewhere, ‘And my people did not hear my voice.’ For when he says ‘if they had heard,’ he shows that the decision to consent or not to consent was in their power. How then is our salvation not to be placed in ourselves, when he himself has granted us the power either to hear or not to hear?”

Paphnutius: “You have indeed considered shrewdly the words ‘if he had heard me,’ but you have paid no attention to who it is who speaks to the one who hears or does not hear, nor to what follows: ‘I would soon have humbled his enemies, and laid my hand on those who trouble him.’ Let no one, then, twisting by a perverse interpretation what we have brought forward to prove that nothing is done without the Lord, try to take it up in defence of free will in such a way as to attempt to take away from man the grace and daily providence of God, on the ground of the words, ‘And my people did not hear my voice,’ and again, ‘If my people had heard me, if Israel had walked in my ways,’ and the rest. Let him consider rather that, just as the power of free will is shown by the disobedience of the people, so God's daily providence toward them is shown, as he in a way cries out and warns. For when he says, ‘If my people had heard me,’ he plainly shows that he spoke to them first. The Lord does this not only through the law written in letters but also by daily admonitions, according to what is said through Isaiah: ‘All day long I have stretched out my hands to a people that does not believe me and contradicts me.’ Both things, then, can be proved by this testimony: ‘If my people had heard me, if Israel had walked in my ways, I would soon have humbled his enemies, and laid my hand on those who trouble him.’ For just as free will is shown by the disobedience of the people, so the dispensation of God and his help are declared at the beginning and the end of the verse itself, when he recalls that he spoke first and that he would afterwards have humbled their enemies, if he had been heard by them. For by what we have brought forward we do not wish to remove man's free will, but to prove that God's help and grace are necessary to it every day and every moment.” With these words Abba Paphnutius sent us out of his cell before midnight, instructed, and not so much cheered as pierced in heart. He gave us this as the chief gift of his conference: that, whereas we believed we should reach the summit of perfection by fulfilling the first renunciation, which we were striving to carry out with all our strength, we began to recognize that we had not yet begun even to dream of the heights of monks. For we had learned little in the coenobia about the second renunciation, and we knew that we had never before even heard of the third, in which all perfection is contained and which surpasses those two lower ones in many ways.

Among the other men of Christian philosophy we also saw Abba Daniel, equal indeed in every kind of virtue to those who lived in the desert of Scetis, but adorned more particularly with the grace of humility. Because of his purity and gentleness he was chosen for the office of deacon by the blessed Paphnutius, presbyter of that same wilderness, although he was younger than many. For the same blessed Paphnutius so rejoiced in his virtues that he hastened to make equal to himself in the order of priesthood too one whom he knew to be his equal in the merits and grace of life. Unable to bear his remaining any longer in the lower ministry, and wishing to provide a most worthy successor for himself, he raised him, while he himself was still living, to the honor of the presbyterate. Yet he did not give up the habit of his former humility, and never, in the other's presence, claimed anything for himself from the addition of the higher order; but whenever Abba Paphnutius offered the spiritual sacrifices, he remained in the duty of his former ministry, as a deacon. Yet in this, though the blessed Paphnutius was such and so great a man that in many things he possessed even the grace of foreknowledge, his hope and choice of a successor were disappointed; for not long afterwards he sent ahead of him to God the one he had prepared as his successor.

This blessed Daniel, then, when we asked him why it was that sometimes, as we sat in our cell, we were filled with such gladness of heart, with an unspeakable joy and an overflowing of the holiest feelings, that not only could speech not follow it, but even feeling could not keep pace with it; prayer too was sent up pure and ready, and the mind, full of spiritual fruits, felt its prayers reaching God effective and gentle even while it prayed in sleep; and why, again, for no reason at all, we were suddenly filled with such anguish and weighed down by an unreasonable sadness that we not only felt ourselves drying up as to such feelings, but even the cell was loathsome, reading was distasteful, and prayer itself was sent up unsteady, wavering, and as it were drunken; so that, though we groaned and tried, our mind could not be called back to its former direction, and the more intently it was led back to the contemplation of God, the more violently it was snatched away in a slippery excursion into unstable wanderings, and so became barren of all spiritual fruit that it could not be roused from this deadly sleep either by the desire of the kingdom of heaven set before it or by the fear of Gehenna, answered as follows.

“A threefold explanation of this barrenness of mind you speak of has been handed down to us by the elders. It comes either from our negligence, or from the assault of the devil, or from the Lord's dispensation and testing. From negligence, when, through our own fault and a preceding lukewarmness, we behave carelessly and slackly, and, feeding on harmful thoughts through idle sloth, make the soil of our heart produce thorns and thistles; as these spring up in it, we are consequently made barren and empty of all spiritual fruit and contemplation. From the assault of the devil, when, even while we are sometimes devoted to good pursuits, the adversary penetrates our mind with cunning subtlety and we are drawn away from the best intentions either without knowing it or against our will.”

“The dispensation and testing have a twofold cause. The first is that, being forsaken for a little while by the Lord and humbly seeing the weakness of our mind, we may not be puffed up at all over the earlier purity of heart given us by his visitation; and that, finding by experience that when forsaken by him we cannot recover that state of joy and purity by our groans and effort, we may understand that our former gladness of heart was bestowed on us not by our own zeal but by his condescension, and that our present one must be asked again from his grace and illumination. The second cause of the testing is that our perseverance, constancy of mind, and desire may be proved, and that it may be shown in us with what intention of heart and urgency of prayer we seek the visitation of the Holy Spirit when it leaves us; and that, recognizing at the same time with what labor this spiritual joy and the gladness of purity are regained once lost, we may take more care to guard it once found and hold it more attentively. For whatever is believed to be easily recoverable is usually guarded rather carelessly.”

“By this it is clearly proved that the grace and mercy of God always work in us what is good; that when it leaves us, the zeal of one who labors avails nothing; and that however much one strives, his effort cannot recover the former state without its help again; and that this is continually fulfilled in us: ‘It is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy.’ On the other hand, this grace sometimes does not refuse to visit even the negligent and slack with that holy inspiration you speak of and an abundance of spiritual thoughts; it inspires the unworthy, rouses the sleepy, and enlightens those held in the blindness of ignorance, and mercifully reproves and chastens us by pouring itself into our hearts, so that, stirred by its compunction, we may be moved to rise even so from the sleep of sloth. Indeed, in these very visitations we are often suddenly filled with fragrances beyond all the sweetness of human compounding, so that the mind, dissolved in this delight, is caught up into a kind of ecstasy of the spirit and forgets that it is dwelling in the flesh.”

“So well did the blessed David know that this withdrawal, and so to speak desertion by God, of which we have spoken is useful, that he did not choose to pray not to be forsaken by God in anything at all (for he knew that this was not fitting either for himself or for human nature as it reaches toward any perfection); but rather he prayed that it might be moderated, saying: ‘Do not forsake me utterly’; as if he said in other words: ‘I know that you are accustomed to forsake your saints usefully, so as to test them; for otherwise they cannot be tempted by the adversary unless they have been forsaken by you for a little while. And therefore I do not ask that you never forsake me, because it is not good for me not to feel my weakness and say, “It is good for me that you have humbled me,” or not to have practice in fighting. This I certainly cannot have if the divine protection always clings to me without a break. For the devil will not dare to tempt me while I am propped up by your defence, casting up against me or you, and reproaching, what he is accustomed to say with slanderous voice against your athletes: “Does Job worship God for nothing? Have you not fenced him in, and his house, and all his substance round about?” But rather I ask that you do not forsake me utterly,’ which in Greek is heōs sphodra, that is, ‘to excess.’ ‘For as useful as it is to me that you forsake me a little, so that the constancy of my desire may be proved, so harmful it is if you allow me to be forsaken too much, according to my merits and sins. For no human strength, if it is long forsaken by your help in temptation, will be able to persevere by its own constancy and not at once give way to the power or scheming of the adversary; unless you yourself, who know human strength and govern the contests, do not allow us to be tempted beyond what we are able, but make with the temptation also a way out, that we may be able to bear it.’ We read something like this mystically signified in the book of Judges concerning the extermination of the spiritual nations that oppose Israel: ‘These are the nations which the Lord left, to train Israel by them, and that they might have practice in fighting with enemies’; and again a little later: ‘And the Lord left them, to test Israel by them, whether they would hear the commandments of the Lord which he had commanded their fathers by the hand of Moses, or not.’ God certainly kept back this battle not because he begrudged Israel peace or meant them ill, but because he knew it was useful: so that, while always pressed by the attack of these nations, they might never feel that they did not need the Lord's help, and so, remaining always in meditation on him and calling upon him, might neither be relaxed by idle ease nor lose the practice of fighting and the exercise of virtue. For security and prosperity have often cast down those whom adversity could not overcome.”

“We read in the apostle that this battle too has been usefully placed in our members: ‘For the flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh; for these are opposed to one another, so that you do not do whatever you will.’ Here too you have a battle rooted, as it were, in our body, arranged by the Lord's dispensation. For whatever is present in all generally and without any exception, what else can it be judged to be than something attributed as though by nature to human substance itself after the fall of the first man? And what is found to be born and grown together with all, how can it not be believed to have been placed there by the will of the Lord, who does not harm but takes counsel for our good? He declares the reason for this war, that is, of the flesh and the spirit, to be this: ‘so that,’ he says, ‘you do not do whatever you will.’ So what God has arranged so that it cannot be fulfilled by us, namely that we do not do whatever we will, what else can be believed than that it would be harmful if it were fulfilled? And this battle, placed in us by the Creator's dispensation, is in a way useful to us, calling and driving us to a better state; if it were taken away, a ruinous peace would without doubt follow in its place.”

Germanus: “Although some line of understanding seems already to be shining ahead of us, yet since we cannot yet see the apostle's statement clearly, we want this explained to us more plainly. For three things seem to be indicated here: first, the fight of the flesh against the spirit; second, the desire of the spirit against the flesh; third, our will, which is placed as it were in the middle, of which it is said, ‘so that you do not do whatever you will.’ Although, as I said, we gather some notions of understanding from what has been set out, yet, since the occasion of this conference has presented itself, we would like something to be discussed for us more clearly.”

Daniel: “To distinguish the divisions and lines of questions is a part of understanding, and the greatest part of intelligence is to know what you do not know. That is why it is said: ‘To a fool who asks, wisdom will be reckoned’; because, though the one who asks does not know the force of the question put forward, yet because he inquires prudently and understands what he does not understand, this very thing is reckoned to him as wisdom, since he has prudently recognized what he did not know. According to your division, then, three things seem to be named by the apostle in this place: the desire of the flesh against the spirit, and of the spirit against the flesh, whose fight against each other seems to have this cause and reason: that we cannot, he says, do what we will. There remains a fourth, which you did not see at all: that we do what we do not will. Now, then, we must first recognize the force of the two desires, that is, of the flesh and of the spirit, and so at last be able to discuss what our will is, which is placed between them both; then we must likewise distinguish what cannot be our will.”

“We read the word ‘flesh’ used in many ways in the holy Scriptures. Sometimes it means the whole human being, that is, one who consists of body and soul, as there: ‘And the Word was made flesh,’ and: ‘All flesh shall see the salvation of our God.’ Sometimes it means sinful and fleshly men, as there: ‘My spirit shall not remain in these men, because they are flesh.’ Sometimes it is put for sins themselves, as there: ‘But you are not in the flesh but in the spirit’; and again: ‘Flesh and blood shall not possess the kingdom of God’; and then it follows: ‘nor shall corruption possess incorruption.’ Sometimes it is used for kinship and relationship, as there: ‘Behold, we are your bone and your flesh,’ and the apostle: ‘If by any means I may provoke to emulation my flesh and save some of them.’ We must ask, then, in which of these four meanings we ought to take ‘flesh’ here. For it is plain that it cannot at all stand in the sense of ‘And the Word was made flesh,’ or ‘And all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’ Nor in the sense of ‘My spirit shall not remain in these men, because they are flesh’; because ‘flesh’ is not put here, as it is there, absolutely of a sinful man, when he says: ‘The flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh.’ For he is speaking not of substances but of activities, which struggle in one and the same person, either together or one at a time, with a certain alternation and change over time.”

“Therefore in this place we should take ‘flesh’ to mean not the human being, that is, human substance, but the will of the flesh and its worst desires; just as ‘spirit’ does not designate any substance either, but the good and spiritual desires of the soul. The same blessed apostle plainly expressed this meaning just before, beginning thus: ‘But I say, walk by the spirit, and you will not fulfil the desires of the flesh. For the flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh; for these are opposed to one another, so that you do not do whatever you will.’ Since both of these, that is, the desires of the flesh and of the spirit, are in one and the same person, an internal war is waged within us every day. The desire of the flesh, which rushes headlong toward the vices, delights in the pleasures that belong to present ease; the desire of the spirit, opposing these, wishes so to cling wholly to spiritual pursuits that it would even exclude the necessary uses of the flesh, longing to be occupied with them so continually that it would wish to give no care at all to the flesh's frailty. The flesh delights in luxury and lust; the spirit does not assent even to natural desires. The one longs to be satisfied with sleep and filled with food; the other is so fattened on vigils and fasts that it would not admit sleep and food even for the necessary uses of life. The one desires to abound in every plenty; the other is not content to have even the daily supply of a little bread. The one seeks to shine from the baths and to be thronged every day by crowds of flatterers; the other rejoices in the squalor of dirt and the vastness of an inaccessible desert, and shudders at the presence of all mortals. The one is warmed by the honors and praises of men; the other glories in the injuries and persecutions inflicted on it.”

“Between these two desires, then, the will of the soul stands in a more blameworthy middle ground. It neither delights in the crimes of the vices nor consents to the pains of the virtues. It seeks to refrain from fleshly passions in such a way as never to be willing to bear the necessary pains without which the desires of the spirit cannot be possessed: wishing to obtain chastity of body without chastising the flesh; to acquire purity of heart without the labor of vigils; to abound in spiritual virtues with the flesh at rest; to possess the grace of patience without being provoked by any insult; to practise the humility of Christ without loss of worldly honor; to pursue the simplicity of religion together with worldly ambition; to serve Christ with the praise and favor of men; to speak the strictness of truth without giving even slight offence to anyone; in short, it wishes to obtain the future goods in such a way as not to lose the present ones. This will would never bring us to true perfection, but would settle us in a most wretched lukewarmness and make us like those who are rebuked by the Lord in the Apocalypse: ‘I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were cold or hot. But now you are lukewarm, and I will begin to spew you out of my mouth’ — unless these wars rising up on either side broke up this most lukewarm state. For when, serving this will of ours, we wish to relax ourselves a little into this slackness, at once the goads of the flesh rise up and, wounding us with their vices and passions, by no means allow us to remain in that quality of purity in which we delight, and drag us to that cold way of pleasures, full of thorns, which we dread. Again, if, burning with fervor of spirit and wishing to extinguish the works of the flesh, we try with pride of heart to give ourselves wholly to immoderate pursuits of virtue without any regard for human frailty, the weakness of the flesh intervenes and calls us back and holds us back from that blameworthy excess of the spirit. And so it happens that, as each desire fights the other alternately in such a struggle, the will of the soul, which neither wishes to give itself wholly to fleshly desires nor to toil at the labors of the virtues, is in a way tempered with just moderation. This contention between the two, excluding that more ruinous will of the soul, places, as it were, a just balance on the scales of our body, which marks off the boundaries of spirit and flesh with fair judgment, allowing neither the mind inflamed with the ardor of the spirit to outweigh on the right, nor the flesh with the goads of the vices on the left. And while this battle is usefully waged in us every day, we are driven, to our good, to that fourth thing which we do not will: to acquire purity of heart not by ease or security, but by constant sweat and contrition of spirit; to keep chastity of the flesh by strict fasts, hunger, thirst, and watchfulness; to gain direction of the heart by reading, vigils, continual prayer, and the squalor of solitude; to keep patience by the exercise of tribulations; to serve our Maker amid blasphemies and a surfeit of insults; to pursue the truth, if need be, amid the ill will and enmities of this world. And so, as such a struggle wages war in our body, and we are drawn away from that idle security and called to the labor and pursuits of virtue which we do not will, the best middle balance is kept. The fervor of the spirit on one side, and the coldest rigor of the flesh on the other, temper the lukewarm choice of our will with a most moderate warmth: the desire of the spirit does not allow the mind to be dragged into unbridled vices, nor does the frailty of the flesh allow the spirit to be carried up into unreasonable longings for virtue. So neither do the tinders of every kind of vice spring up from the one side, nor from the other does pride, the chief disease, emerge and pierce us with the heavier weapon of arrogance; but a just balance succeeding from their fight opens a sound and moderate way of virtues between them, teaching the soldier of Christ always to walk by the royal road. And so it will come about that when, through the lukewarmness of this most slothful will we have spoken of, the mind has been rolled down too readily toward the desires of the flesh, it is reined in by the desire of the spirit, which by no means consents to earthly vices; and again, if our spirit, through excess of heart, has been carried away with immoderate fervor to impossible and ill-considered things, it is drawn back to a just measure by the weakness of the flesh, and, rising above the most lukewarm state of our will, walks the way of perfection with the most suitable temperance, by a level path, and with the diligence of sweat. We read of something similar arranged by the Lord in the building of that tower in the book of Genesis, where the confusion of tongues that suddenly arose checked the sacrilegious and wicked daring of men. For there too a harmful agreement against God, indeed against themselves who had begun to assail his divine majesty, would have remained, had not the difference of language, opposing them among themselves by God's dispensation, compelled them by the discord of speech to advance to a better state; and good and useful discord recalled to salvation those whom ruinous agreement had spurred on to their own destruction, as they began, through the division that came between them, to feel the human frailty which, puffed up by their harmful conspiracy, they had not known before.”

“So useful to us is the delay that arises from the opposition of this battle, and so wholesome the postponement produced by this contest, that, as the solidity of the body resists and we are held back from carrying out what we have wickedly conceived in the mind, we are sometimes corrected into a better state, either by repentance that follows or by some amendment which usually comes from putting off the deed and thinking again. Indeed, we see that those whom we know are not held back by any obstacle of flesh from carrying out the desires of their wills, namely the demons and spiritual wickednesses, although they have fallen from a higher order of angels, are more detestable than men, because, the power to act lying close to their desires, they do not delay to carry out with incorrigible malice what they have once wickedly conceived. For as their mind is swift to devise, so their substance is quick and unhindered to accomplish; and since a ready facility of doing whatever they wish is at hand, no wholesome deliberation comes between to correct the evil conceived.”

“For a spiritual substance, not bound by any solidity of flesh, just as it admits no excuse for an evil will arising in it, so it excludes pardon for its malice, because it was not, as we are, provoked to sin from outside by the assault of the flesh, but was inflamed only by the fault of an evil will. And for this reason its sin is without pardon and its sickness without remedy. For just as it fell with no earthly matter enticing it, so it cannot obtain indulgence or a place for repentance. From these things it is clearly gathered that this contention of flesh and spirit stirred up against each other in us is not only not harmful but even brings us much benefit.”

“First, because it rebukes our sloth and negligence at once, and like a most diligent tutor never allows us to stray from the line of strictness and discipline: if our security exceeds even a little the measure of fitting seriousness, it immediately goads and rebukes us with the scourges of its incitements and calls us back to proper frugality. Second, as regards the integrity of chastity and purity: when, by the gift of God's grace, we have seen ourselves free for a long time from genital pollution, so that we believe we shall no longer be troubled even by a simple movement of the flesh, and for that reason, as though we no longer bore the corruption of the flesh, we have become puffed up in the secret of our conscience, it visits us again with its flow, though quiet and simple, humbles and checks us, and reminds us by its goads that we are human. For whereas we tend to fall rather indifferently into other kinds of vices, even graver and more harmful ones, and are not so easily pierced with compunction when we commit them, in this our conscience is humbled in a special way. Through this illusion it is stung by the memory of neglected passions too, clearly understanding that it has been made unclean by natural incitements, while it did not know that it was more unclean through spiritual vices; and running back at once to amend its former sloth, it is warned at the same time neither to trust in the successes of past purity, which it sees it has lost by turning a little away from the Lord, nor to think that this gift of purification can be possessed except through the grace of God alone. The very experience of the thing teaches us, as it were, that if we delight to attain integrity of heart permanently, we must strive to keep the virtue of humility constantly.”

“That pride in this purity would be more ruinous than all crimes and sins, and that because of it we should gain no profit from any integrity of chastity, those powers we mentioned above are witnesses. Though they are not believed to have had any such ticklings of the flesh, they were cast down with everlasting ruin from that lofty and heavenly station for pride of heart alone. We should therefore be lukewarm, wholly without remedy, having no indicator of our negligence seated either in our body or in our own conscience; we should never strive to reach the fervor of perfection, nor even keep the strictness of frugality or self-control, unless this growing tickling of the flesh humbled and checked us, and made us careful and intent on the cleansing of spiritual vices as well.”

“Indeed, we find that this lukewarmness of mind is generally present in those who are eunuchs in body for this reason: as though set free from this fleshly necessity, they think they need neither the labor of bodily self-control nor contrition of heart; and, made slack by this security, they never truly seek or hasten to possess perfection of heart, nor even the cleansing of spiritual vices. This state, departing from the fleshly condition, becomes ‘soulish’ (animal), which is without doubt a worse degree. For it is the one which, passing from cold to lukewarm, is marked by the Lord's voice as more detestable.”

Germanus: “The usefulness of the struggle stirred up between flesh and spirit has, it seems to us, been clearly expressed, so that we believe it has been made palpable to our very hands. And therefore we wish that this point too may likewise be opened to us: what the difference is between the fleshly and the soulish man, or how the soulish man can be worse than the fleshly.”