The last temptation

On spiritual struggle and the intellectual life

An earnest desire for acquiring true spiritual life (or, as it’s designated in the Christian East, “the acquisition of the Holy Spirit”) is beset by all sorts of temptations to distraction, some less obvious than others. Most of us can recognize in ourselves easily enough arousal to sexual lust, the igniting of inapt anger, a tendency to laziness or addictive pursuits, irrational prejudices, hatred, and so on. A growing awareness of ourselves through pious discipline and interior prayer will shine a revealing light into the darker recesses of our psyches, where we will find whole regions requiring a patient and long operation of cleaning up. It promises to be a struggle; nevertheless, it will be a necessary one if we are to progress. But there are even more profound hindrances than the ones we can name with little effort. These might be called distractions of the imagination or the intellect – more subtle, less noticeable, often appearing as “an angel of light” and promising to massage our self-regard. Evagrius of Pontus (345 – 399), renowned for his intellect and climbing the ecclesiastical ladder of success until his moral “wake-up call” and consequent flight from Constantinople to the desert on account of his desire for a married woman, knew something about the subtler temptations and, in particular, those that impinge on the soul of the intellectual. We have two rather telling stories from the Apophthegmata Patrum that illustrate how he was sensitively enjoined by his ascetic peers to adopt a humbler station, apparently when he was still relatively new to the monastic life (it should be noted, incidentally, that the monastic life was seen as a more intense practice of what was – or had been – expected of the baptized life for every Christian):