Anthropology, Deification, and Asceticism (3 of 3)

Theological Letters

Greetings subscribers. Two weeks back, I announced a trio of theological letters on anthropology, deification, and asceticism, respectively. You can read the first of these, covering the anthropology of the Eastern fathers, here, and the second covering deification here. Today marks the third and final installment, looking at the specifics of the spiritual life that leads to deification.

By way of context, a dear friend, Raleigh, who works in the field of counseling-psychology asked me to consult on a forthcoming book project. The work looks at Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) in the light of Christian theology. Because Raleigh has grown increasingly sympathetic to Eastern Orthodoxy over the years, he asked me to help him better understand the Eastern patristic perspective on anthropology, deification, and asceticism. The request prompted the present series of letters.

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Dear Raleigh,

In my previous letter, we considered the anthropology of the Eastern Church fathers, how it colors the Fall, and the way the Incarnation heals our species. Toward the close of that letter, I spoke about our own participation in the remaking of man through the life of repentance and faith within the hospital of the Church. What I would like to look at more closely is what this participation in our remaking looks like under the guidance of the Eastern fathers. 

Because our correspondence began as a discussion about Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and whether its principles might align with the wisdom of the fathers, allow me to begin there. I will not pretend to be an expert on ACT. Truth be told, I know little more than what I’ve learned through our conversations and your book. Nonetheless, allow me to recount the basics, as I understand them. Please, take this summary for what it is: The recollections of a novice. 

The basic principles of ACT, as I recall, run roughly as follows. The approach recognizes that most long for a life of purpose, reflective of certain values, and yet, many struggle to live those values. The disconnect is often because the challenges of life set in motion unwanted thoughts or inclinations that run contrary to our ideals. In response, we may over identify with such inclinations, leading us to believe our values are unattainable, or slip into patterns of avoidance, giving in to unwanted inclinations as a means of coping. Both responses carry the same outcome: Behaviors that violate our values, carrying us away from the life we wish to live.

ACT addresses this pattern with several principles.¹ The first is acceptance — not of unwanted behaviors but of past and present realities. Rather than evading or denying such things, the patient is to take stock of his present state of affairs, accepting the good and the bad alike. Yet, acceptance should not be confused with over-identification with unwanted behaviors, as if these are essential traits of his person or mandates he must follow. They are neither. So, the patient must adjust his lenses, differentiating the self, who observes these thoughts and feelings, from the thoughts and feelings themselves. Such differentiation empowers the patient to move from a passive to an active posture, looking at unwanted patterns as changeable. When dealing with wellworn paths, of course, the shift requires vigilance. The patient is thus called to mindfulness, remaining grounded in the here and now, attending to the stirrings within, so that he is not easily carried away by old habits. In addition, if the patient is to take an active role in reorienting his thoughts and behaviors, he must answer the question: Toward what end? The patient requires a “true North,” as it were — core values by which to reorient his thoughts and inclinations. Once oriented, he can, then, commit to actionable steps that move steadily toward a life reflective of his values.

Presuming my grasp of ACT is accurate — or accurate enough — I admit I find its principles surprisingly harmonious with the wisdom of the Eastern fathers. Before saying more, allow me a brief aside. You’re aware of my criticisms of counseling-psychology, specifically its tendency to wade into waters of philosophy and religion without either awareness it has done so or the necessary tools to navigate such waters. The principles of ACT are not immune to this criticism. The notion that the self is distinct from its thoughts, for example, would greatly displease David Hume — along with some branches of Buddhism.² The claim is not self-evident. And the same could be said about the presumption that we possess free will to reshape ourselves.³ But setting aside how ACT might justify and defend its principles, I can say of its principles that they display notable affinity with the Eastern fathers of the Church up to a certain point. 

Since I’ve already touched on the question of the self, I’ll begin there. Much of ancient pagan philosophy was so preoccupied with questions about what is common across objects — what a genera or species share — that little attention was paid to the individual. Yet, the Eastern fathers, more so than any other ancient thinkers, gave great attention to this matter, precisely because of the doctrines of Trinity and Christology.⁴ These truths of the Christian faith forced the fathers to think deeply about the individual, or person,⁵ because of the confession that the Trinity consists of three persons of a common divinity and one of these took on our nature, bearing divinity and humanity in his one person.⁶ 

For this reason, Eastern patristic literature insists that the individual, or person, or self is not merely a cluster of sensations or generic traits. The person is what exists beneath such things.⁷ In the case of a human, the person is the one who has this nature, giving to it concrete existence and exercising its powers. — The power of reason, for example, is something you and I share, but I use these powers one way and you another because we are distinct persons.⁸ — Moreover, each person bears a host of “accidental” traits — traits that are idiosyncratic and transient, such as size or color.⁹ Yet, the person remains despite such change: Though one’s color may oscillate, who he is does not. 

Bringing this to bear on unwanted thoughts and behaviors, ACT is right to differentiate the person from the thoughts and inclinations he experiences, and equally right to see these as accidental and, therefore, moldable by repetition of choice. We can see this in a couple of places. The first is in Eastern patristic talk of logismoi (λογισμοί), which is a word for thoughts or suggestions. The fathers recognize that we often have odd thoughts “pop in our heads,” as it were. Many fathers discuss the belief that these may be prompted by demons, wishing to distract or tempt us. For thi reason, the fathers recommend “watchfulness” (nēpsis = νῆψις) over our thoughts, lest these suggestions take root and bear poisonous fruit. Suffice it to say that such watchfulness makes little sense unless one differentiates the person from his thoughts. 

Concerning inclinations, a central feature of Eastern patrristic anthropology, touched on in my first letter, is the passions. I noted that man is a merger of the animal and the spiritual. As such, we are subject to the throes of animal impulses, or passions, which Paul and James identify as the root of sin.¹⁰ This is not to say the passions are evil. They are animal. A dog’s impulse for food or sex is neither virtuous nor vicious, and like any beast, our animal nature inclines toward that which it perceives to be desirable. When the smell of food wafts across our nose, our response is desire. When spotting an animal that appears dangerous, we naturally recoil. Such responses are “pre-volitional” — reflexes that precede any conscious choice. As such, they are neither morally upright nor repugnant. Morality only enters the frame when our will engages these inclinations. 

Like the call to watchfulness over thoughts, the Eastern fathers commend a habit of resistance to the passions, cultivating dispassion, or apatheia (ἀπάθεια). To be sure, the term does not mean numbness or a laissez-faire attitude. Instead, it means one has cultivated the ability to experience a passion without giving in, creating room for him to assess whether or not the passion is in keeping with virtue. Like watchfulness, the call to dispassion makes little sense unless distinguishing the person from his inclinations. 

Presumed in both watchfulness and dispassion is the ability to change, reshaping thoughts and inclinations by choice. The Eastern fathers are exceedingly clear that change is a hallmark of creatureliness, our existence beginning with transition from seedling to maturity. And as noted in my prior letter, in the case of man, this changeability is paired with free will:¹¹ The capacity to discern the natural order and choose whether to adhere to it or not. Now, in the story of Eden — and no doubt in our own lives — we see how this power might be abused, doing violence to ourselves. Yet, as Gregory of Nyssa points out, we ought not despair. For the very changeability that makes possible our lapse into sin also makes possible our return.¹² In a word, even our unwanted thoughts and behaviors can be reshaped by a proper exercise of will. 

As for the orientation of the will by core values, the clearest touchstone is the notion of spiritual simplicity. Basil of Caesarea once received a request: Teach us to love God. His reply? He cannot. For they already love God. As Basil explains, God is The Good, and whenever we desire a thing, we do so because of some good within it.¹³ That small flicker of goodness is a refraction of divine Goodness.¹⁴ But as the Eastern fathers also observe, not all goods can be grasped at once. — One cannot experience the good of ease and the good of exercise simultaneously. — The tyranny of the passions is that they pull us in every direction, clambering for every good as if it were our chief end. But no worldly good is. Spiritual simplicity recognizes that all lesser goods come from God. The one who is spiritually simple understands this and allows love of God to orient all his lesser pursuits. Now, whether ACT understands this truth or allows each to choose his own “true North,” I can’t say. But I can say that the instinct that healing requires a point of orientation is quite right. For as John Cassian points out, a man traveling in the wrong direction has all of the toil and none of the good of his journey.¹⁵

Now, plenty could be said about acceptance in the Eastern fathers. But I’ll simply offer two observations. The first is that the Eastern fathers are well aware of our tendency to embrace distraction and pleasures to numb and cope. The very reason so many went into the desert was in recognition of this fact. They knew full well that the desert strips from its dwellers the tools by which to cloud the wounded soul, leaving one alone with himself, God, and the demons, forcing him to look within. 

I would add that the Eastern fathers harbor what Vladimir Lossky calls a “deep ontology.”¹⁶ Many know that these fathers teach that our knowledge of God comes from his operations in the world, but his essence is beyond our grasp — much like God’s insistence that Moses can behold his back but never his face. Less known is that these fathers believe something similar is true about persons generally. Our knowledge of one another comes from appearances and actions. We never get to peer into another’s chest, as it were, to see things hidden. And these fathers believe the same is true of ourselves.¹⁷ The heart is deep,¹⁸ and our efforts to distract hide from our own eyes the things within. Stripping away distractions draws to the surface things we wish to ignore. This is why the fathers see trials as for our salvation, offering bitter medicine for spiritual healing. 

The second, more obvious touchpoint is confession. All practical guidance from the Christian East about confession bids the penitent to not justify himself or his sin. This cuts against our natural impulse to hide our shame and whitewash our offenses. Much like in Eden, where Adam blames his wife and God who gave her to him,¹⁹ the temptation is to follow each confessed sin with an excuse. Yet, a good confession is marked by humility that fully owns the things done in an unvarnished fashion. 

To illustrate, John Climacus recounts the story of a robber who wished to become a monk. Upon hearing the man’s confession, the Abbot asked if he would confess before the monks. The man replied, He would confess before all of Alexandria! At the divine liturgy, the Abbot had the robber dragged to the assembly in a theatrical fashion, much to the perplexity of the monks. But he stopped the man at the threshold, declaring his unworthiness. In response, the thief fell to the ground, wetting the floor with tears and “confessed one after another all his sins, which revolted every ear, not only sins of the flesh, natural and unnatural, with rational beings and with animals, but even poisoning, murder and many other kinds which it is indecent to hear or commit to writing.”²⁰ The Abbot absolved the man and gave him a habit, numbering him amongst the brethren. John explains that the display was not to humiliate but to offer to the monks an example of what a good confession looks like, since many had yet to make one. 

While acceptance of this kind is a critical step on the road to life, it raises a point heretofore unsaid. To reduce confession to mere ownership of past and present realities is to drain it of its deeper power, namely, absolution. And this raises a crucial point. The danger in drawing parallels between the wisdom of the fathers and ACT without qualification is that it risks commending a form of religion void of its power.²¹ In other words, the risk is the invention of a non-realist spirituality,²² where confession brings acceptance, not absolution; prayer offers mindfulness, not communion, and so on. For this reason, when speaking about actionable steps, I think it best if we invert our investigation, beginning with the Eastern patristic understanding of what these actions accomplish and then apply them to ACT. Toward that end, let’s return to anthropology.