Евагрий Понтийский: Сабырлы монах және күнәлар туралы ойлар

Christian monk

Evagrius Ponticus , also called Evagrius the Solitary (345–399 AD), was a Christian monk and ascetic from Heraclea, a city on the coast of Bithynia in Asia Minor. One of the most influential theologians in the late fourth century church, he was well known as a thinker, polished speaker, and gifted writer. He left a promising ecclesiastical career in Constantinople and traveled to Jerusalem, where in 383 AD he became a monk at the monastery of Rufinus and Melania the Elder. He then went to Egypt and spent the remaining years of his life in Nitria and Kellia, marked by years of asceticism and writing. He was a disciple of several influential contemporary church leaders, including Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Macarius of Egypt. He was a teacher of others, including John Cassian and Palladius of Galatia.

The most prominent feature of his research was a system of categorizing various forms of temptation. He developed a comprehensive list in AD 375 of eight evil thoughts (λογισμοὶ), or eight terrible temptations, from which all sinful behavior springs. This list was intended to serve a diagnostic purpose: to help readers identify the process of temptation, their own strengths and weaknesses, and the remedies available for overcoming temptation. Evagrius stated that "The first thought of all is that of love of self; after this, the eight." The eight patterns of evil thought are gluttony, lust, greed, sadness, acedia [despondency], anger, vainglory, pride. Some two centuries later in 590 AD, Pope Gregory I, "Pope Gregory The Great" would revise this list to form the more commonly known Seven Deadly Sins, where Pope Gregory the Great combined acedia (despondency) with tristitia (sorrow), calling the combination the sin of sloth; vainglory with pride; and added envy to the list of "Seven Deadly Sins".

In Evagrius' time, the Greek word apatheia was used to refer to a state of being without passion. Evagrius wrote: "A man in chains cannot run. Nor can the mind that is enslaved to passion see the place of spiritual prayer. It is dragged along and tossed by these passion filled thoughts and cannot stand firm and tranquil."

Even in his own day, Evagrius' views had been criticised. A controversy over how to conceptualise God that broke out in the Nitrian desert in 400 saw dispute in which one side was influenced by Origenist views. Although Evagrius was not mentioned in this dispute, in 415 Jerome's Letter 133 accuses Evagrius of being a prominent Origenist, and critiques his teaching on apatheia. Many of Evagrius' more ascetic works survive in Greek, often in manuscripts of the tenth century and after from Mount Athos and other monastic centres, although often attributed to Nilus of Ancyra, or occasionally to Basil or Gregory of Nazianzus. His exegetical scholia were incorporated into anthologies, sometimes with correct attribution, sometimes not (those on the Psalms were typically attributed to Origen). Only in the twentieth century was this set of ascetic works properly attributed to Evagrius. In the Latin world, Evagrius’ friend Rufinus is known to have translated several of the works into Latin in the early fifth century, and others were translated decades later by Gennadius of Marseilles. Although these were the very first translations of Evagrius’ works, they have been entirely lost; only later Latin versions of two collections of proverbs (the Sentences for Monks and Sentences for a Virgin) and the treatise On the Eight Spirits survive. The Sentences were popular in Benedictine circles, ironically often attributed to “Evagrius the bishop.” The latter text was always attributed to Nilus. Evagrius' influence was arguably greater in its indirect forms. Within the Greek literature of Byzantine monasticism, Evagrius’ presence is obvious in both the content and the format of works by Diadochus of Photike, Maximus the Confessor, John of Damascus, Symeon the New Theologian, and Gregory Palamas. The fullest flowering of Evagrius’ influence in the Syriac world was in the spiritual writings of Isaac of Nineveh, who relies heavily on Evagrius’ teaching on both the passions and prayer. In the Latin world, Evagrius' influence came in the way that John Cassian, one of his most faithful disciples, preserved and propagated the basic elements of Evagrius' teaching on the stages of the monastic life, tripartite anthropology, and the eight thoughts (although Cassian never mentions Evagrius by name, since his reputation was already tainted). Through Cassian, Evagrius' thought passed to Gregory the Great, and the Evagrian schema of eight generic thoughts afflicting the monks of Egypt was transformed into a list now famous as the Seven Deadly Sins.