On spiritual writing and writers

With the guidance of St. Maximos and St. Gregory of Sinai

Near the end of his “Second Century on Love,” St. Maximos the Confessor (c. 580 – 662) makes this jarring claim; at least, it should be jarring for those of us who both try to follow Christ and have the audacity to write about theological or spiritual subjects: “The written word,” he tells us, “is taken down either for one’s own memory, or to help others, or for both reasons; or else he writes in order to injure certain people, or to show off, or out of necessity.” [1] This is one of those warnings which, like James 3:1 (“Let not many of you become teachers, my brethren, for you know that we who teach shall be judged with greater strictness”) and certain passages in the writings of the Fathers, that cautions us who write to reflect on the faithfulness of our own lives, to be restrained and judicious (remembering the One we presume to represent), and to evaluate and reevaluate whatever we’ve written in the past. For example, I admire the guts it took for someone of St. Augustine’s stature, recognized in his own lifetime as a towering figure and a luminary, to write a book retracting views he had expressed in earlier works but subsequently came to reject. Looking over the eleven books I have in print (a twelfth will be appearing this fall), I find passages in most of them that I would now alter significantly and a couple of titles I’d happily see disappear altogether. Only four would I leave wholly untouched, and the one book I’ve written that I feel I can promote with nary a qualm is my collection of ghost stories. But Maximos’ statement is one I should probably frame and place beside my laptop as a reminder each time I take it upon myself to do something so imprudent as to write on matters that will have consequences for how I handle or mishandle them. The pressing questions I should put to myself each time are these: When the Day comes that I must answer for what I’ve said and done, will I be able to say honestly that what I’ve written, I’ve written for the sake of retaining in my memory something of infinite or spiritually practical worth, or to help others do the same (or both); or did my writing cause inner injury to others, or was it done to impress others, or was it written out of necessity (Maximos may have meant by “necessity” an act of religious obedience, which is precisely how St. Gregory of Sinai understood it, as we’ll see below)? Maximos leaves us with such tough questions for our self-evaluation, and – assuming we don’t pass them by with merely a respectful nod – the more we weigh their implications, the harder and weightier they become. At the end of the day, Paul’s words hold true for those of us who write anything under Christ’s scrutiny as they did for those he referred to as commissioned “builders” in the churches: “[E]ach man’s work will become manifest; for the Day [of Judgment] will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done” (1 Cor. 3:13). And this brings me to what St. Gregory of Sinai (1255 – 1346), whose writings are among those I cherish most in The Philokalia, and whom I have written about before and will do so again, has to say about those disquieting words of Maximos above.