Program / Course 20: Spiritual Theology / Lesson 2.3
What you will learn
- Describe who John Cassian was and how his Institutes and Conferences carried desert teaching to the West.
- List the eight principal faults and explain why the tradition called them thoughts.
- Explain acedia and how it differs from ordinary boredom or depression.
- Describe the controversy over Cassian’s teaching on grace and the objections raised.
The big idea
John Cassian was a monk who studied in the Egyptian desert and then wrote two works in Latin, the Institutes and the Conferences, to bring what he had learned to monks in Gaul. In them he sets out the eight principal faults or thoughts, taken from the desert teacher Evagrius: gluttony, lust, avarice, sadness, anger, acedia, vainglory and pride. The tradition treated these as patterns that begin in the mind and grow into habits. Cassian’s list shaped the later Western list of seven deadly sins. His teaching on grace and free will was criticized, and the debate still matters.
Key terms
- Logismoi (thoughts)
- Greek for the suggestions, images and impulses that arise in the mind. In desert writing they are not sins in themselves but the beginnings of temptation.
- Acedia
- A state of spiritual weariness, restlessness and disgust with one’s calling. It is sometimes translated as sloth or listlessness. Later Western tradition folded it into sloth.
- Vainglory
- The desire to be admired by others for one’s virtues or achievements.
- Purity of heart
- In Cassian, the immediate goal of the monk’s life, freedom from disordered desire so that the mind can love God. The phrase draws on Matthew 5:8.
- Discretion
- In Cassian, the virtue of right judgment that keeps zeal from becoming extreme. Without it, he says, even virtue goes wrong.
- Cenobium
- A monastery in which monks live together in community.
- Semi-Pelagianism
- A later label for views that grant the human will a first step toward God before grace. Whether Cassian taught it is debated.
Background
John Cassian was probably born around 360, perhaps in the region of modern Romania and Bulgaria. He entered a monastery at Bethlehem with a friend, Germanus, and the two then spent years visiting monks in Egypt. Cassian later reported their conversations in the Conferences. He appears to have spent time in Constantinople and Rome and settled near Marseille in southern Gaul around 415, where he founded monasteries. He wrote the Institutes (on the rules of monastic life and the eight principal faults) and the Conferences (twenty-four reported dialogues with desert elders) in the 420s. He died around 435.
Cassian’s importance is that he translated the desert tradition into Latin and into the settled conditions of the West. Benedict, a century later, names the Institutes and Conferences as recommended reading in his Rule. Through that route Cassian’s eight thoughts, his teaching on prayer and his emphasis on discretion passed into Western monastic and spiritual life.
The eight thoughts came from Evagrius of Pontus, whom Cassian does not name, probably because Evagrius’s teaching on other topics was later condemned. Cassian’s text is a pastoral and practical adaptation of Evagrius’s observations on how temptation works. Course 25 covers the daily practice of a rule. This lesson looks at the thinking behind the list.
Step-by-step explanation
Step 1: Why thoughts, and why eight
The desert writers observed that temptation usually arrives as a thought: an image, a memory, a suggestion. A thought is not yet a sin. The trouble begins when a person welcomes it, dwells on it and lets it grow into desire and action. The tradition taught monks to notice thoughts early and to refuse them while they were small.
The list has eight members. In order, Cassian gives gluttony, lust (also called fornication), avarice, anger, sadness, acedia, vainglory and pride. He arranges them so that the earlier ones, tied to the body, are fought first, and the later ones, subtler and more spiritual, are fought later.
Step 2: The bodily and relational faults
Gluttony concerns the appetite for food and drink, and the habit of eating for pleasure. Lust concerns sexual desire misdirected. Avarice is the love of possessions. Anger is a boiling over against others. Sadness, in Cassian, is not simply grief but a resentful, bitter gloom that darkens the mind, often following frustrated desire.
Cassian gives practical remedies: moderate fasting, work, generosity, patience and the practice of forgiving quickly. The desert tradition did not treat the body as an enemy. Its discipline was meant to set the body in order.
Step 3: Acedia
Acedia gets the longest description. It tends to come at midday, when the sun seems to stand still, and makes the monk feel the day is endless, his cell dull, his brothers annoying and his work pointless. He is tempted to leave. Evagrius and Cassian linked it to the noonday demon of Psalm 91:6 as the old Greek and Latin versions read it.
Cassian’s remedies are work with the hands, staying put and steady patience. Modern readers should be careful. Acedia has features that overlap with depression, but the tradition did not equate them. A person who is seriously low in mood should seek medical care as well as spiritual help.
Step 4: Vainglory and pride
Vainglory is the desire for human praise, and Cassian says it can enter even good works. A monk who fasts to be admired has lost the benefit. Pride is the root, the setting of the self in place of God. Cassian argues that pride, more than any other, comes from success in the earlier struggles, and that it brought down angels and human beings.
Here the Institutes echo Scripture: pride goes before destruction (Proverbs 16:18), and God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble (James 4:6).
Step 5: The goal and the grace debate
In the first Conference, Abba Moses teaches that the monk’s immediate goal is purity of heart and the ultimate goal is the kingdom of God. The eight thoughts matter because they stand in the way of purity of heart. In the thirteenth Conference, Cassian’s Abba Chaeremon discusses grace and free will. He appears to say that the first movement toward God can come from the human will, with grace then helping.
Augustine’s followers, including Prosper of Aquitaine, objected that this left room for a human beginning not given by grace. The Second Council of Orange in 529 affirmed that even the beginning of faith is God’s gift. Catholic and Orthodox readers have often valued Cassian’s practical wisdom while treating this point with care. Protestant readers have often been more critical. The question of whether Cassian was Pelagian is disputed among scholars.
- Which of the eight do I most readily recognize, and in what form does it come?
- What is the difference between having a tempting thought and consenting to it?
- When do I feel restlessness about my work or vocation, and what do I usually do with it?
- How does vainglory enter my good works?
- What does it mean to treat sadness as a fault and not just a mood, and what are the limits of that idea?
- Where do I need discretion, a sense of proportion, in my own practice?
Examples
Acedia at midday
A monk copying manuscripts finds at noon that his work feels pointless and his companions irritating. He imagines himself elsewhere. Cassian would advise him to stay at his task and finish it, and to be patient with the feeling. (A constructed example drawn from Cassian’s description.)
Vainglory in good works
A woman gives generously and quietly notes how many people know of it. The desert writers would say the thought of being known is a small seed of vainglory, which can be refused by giving anonymously the next time. (A constructed example.)
The lasting list
Gregory the Great, in the late sixth century, reshaped the list into seven: pride, envy, anger, sloth, avarice, gluttony and lust. Dante and later writers made it familiar. The seven deadly sins of common speech are a descendant of Evagrius and Cassian.
Different perspectives
Catholic
The Catholic tradition treats Cassian as a major source on monastic life, and he is honored as a saint in some places, though his cult has been local and not part of the general Roman calendar. The Catechism lists the capital sins, and Catholics see the eight thoughts as part of that heritage. Cassian’s teaching on grace is read with the Church’s later decisions in mind.
Orthodox
Orthodox Christians honor Cassian as a saint. His Conferences are valued within the monastic tradition. The Orthodox also read Evagrius with care, since some of his speculative teaching was condemned, while his practical teaching on thoughts remained influential.
Protestant
The Reformers generally criticized Cassian’s teaching on free will and the monastic setting of his writing. Many Protestants today still reject the idea that the human will begins the movement toward God. Some Protestant readers nevertheless find his observations on the mind’s temptations and on the persistence of sin useful.
Scholarly view
Historians dispute whether Cassian should be called semi-Pelagian, a label invented later. Some see him as defending monastic experience against what seemed a fatalistic reading of Augustine. Others see a real difference in doctrine. Many agree that the quarrel was shaped by pastoral concerns on both sides.
Why it matters
Cassian’s list gives names to the ordinary struggles of a praying life, and the habit of noticing a thought before it grows is useful in any tradition. Reading him also introduces one of the great arguments of Western Christianity, over grace and free will, in a setting where the practical stakes are visible.
Common misunderstandings
Misunderstanding: The eight thoughts are the same as the seven deadly sins.
Correction: The seven descend from the eight, but the lists differ. Gregory the Great added envy, merged vainglory into pride and joined acedia and sadness into sloth.
Misunderstanding: Having a tempting thought is a sin.
Correction: The tradition distinguishes a thought arising from consenting to it. The struggle lies in not welcoming and feeding it.
Misunderstanding: Acedia is the same as depression.
Correction: They overlap, but the terms are not equivalent. Acedia is a spiritual condition described in monastic life. Depression is a medical condition that deserves professional care.
Misunderstanding: Cassian was condemned as a heretic.
Correction: Some of his teaching on grace was criticized, and the Council of Orange in 529 affirmed a position that does not match one reading of him. He was not condemned by name, and he remained widely read.
Knowledge check
Name the eight principal faults in Cassian’s list.
Gluttony, lust, avarice, anger, sadness, acedia, vainglory and pride. Cassian ordered them from the more bodily to the more spiritual, and held that pride is the root of the others. The list comes from Evagrius of Pontus.
Why are they called thoughts?
Because the desert writers saw temptation as beginning with a suggestion in the mind, which grows if welcomed. A thought is not yet a sin. The discipline is to notice it early and decline to feed it, before it becomes desire and action.
What is acedia, and why shouldn’t it simply be called depression?
Acedia is spiritual weariness and restlessness, with disgust for one’s calling and a wish to leave. It overlaps with depression, but it is a monastic description, not a diagnosis. Someone with serious low mood needs medical help as well as spiritual care.
What was the dispute about Cassian and grace?
In Conference 13 he seemed to allow that the first step toward God can come from the human will. Followers of Augustine objected that even the beginning of faith is a gift. The Second Council of Orange in 529 affirmed that view. Scholars debate how far Cassian really differed.
Think it through
- Why might a tradition choose to speak of thoughts rather than acts?
- Which of the eight thoughts is easiest to hide from yourself?
- How should a person weigh a teacher’s practical wisdom against disagreement over a doctrine?
Independent assignment
A thought diary
In your notebook, write 350 to 500 words. Read Book 10 of the Institutes on acedia, or a summary of it, and one of the other books on a fault you recognize. Describe one recurring temptation of your own in Cassian’s terms, how it begins as a thought and what usually follows. Then name one remedy suggested by Cassian that you could try for a week. Do not share this with anyone.
Further study
- John Cassian, The Institutes Read the books on the eight principal faults, especially those on acedia, vainglory and pride.
- John Cassian, The Conferences Read Conference 1 on the goal, Conference 2 on discretion and Conference 13 on grace.
- Benedict of Nursia, The Rule of St. Benedict Notice that the closing chapter recommends Cassian.
- Augustine of Hippo, Confessions Read Book 10 for Augustine’s own account of the temptations of the heart.
- Matthew 5:8 The pure in heart shall see God.
- James 4:6 God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble.
- Proverbs 16:18 Pride goes before destruction.
- Psalm 91:6 The noonday verse linked with acedia.