Skip to content

Course 2 · Lesson 5.1

Spiritual pride

11 minute read

Lessons in this course

Course 2 outline

Module 1: What Solitude Is and Is Not

  1. Solitude, isolation, and withdrawal from responsibility
  2. A deliberate approach to Christian life
  3. Solitude without superiority

Module 2: The Long Tradition

  1. Anthony and the first hermits
  2. The Desert Mothers and the sayings of the elders
  3. From the desert to the monastery: Pachomius, Basil and Benedict
  4. Hermits and anchorites in the later church

Module 3: The Church and the Solitary Christian

  1. The church as the body of Christ
  2. What Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant Christians say requires a church
  3. Fellowship without a congregation

Module 4: Independence and Its Limits

  1. Reading Scripture for yourself
  2. The limits of private interpretation
  3. Testing teachers and online voices

Module 5: Accountability and Humility

  1. Spiritual pride
  2. Self-deception and confirmation bias
  3. Finding real accountability

Module 6: Building Your Framework

  1. Private devotion and communal life
  2. Drafting your framework
  3. Review and revision

All courses

Program / Course 2: The Solitary Christian in Depth / Lesson 5.1

What you will learn

  • Define spiritual pride and explain why Christian writers regard it as the most dangerous form of pride.
  • Recognize its common signs, including contempt, secrecy, comparison and resistance to correction.
  • Describe what Cassian and the desert tradition taught about vainglory and pride.
  • Practice a few simple disciplines that work against it.

The big idea

Spiritual pride is taking pride in one’s faith, knowledge or discipline, and using these as a reason to look down on others. Christian writers across the centuries call it the most dangerous form of pride, because it hides inside goods. A person can fast, pray and study, and be pleased with himself for it, and the pleasure goes unnoticed. For those who live and study alone, the danger is greater, since fewer people are around to notice and say so. Recognizing it is the first step, and the hardest.

Key terms

Pride
Putting oneself in the place that belongs to God, or placing oneself above others. In Christian teaching it is counted among the deepest of sins.
Spiritual pride
Pride whose subject is religious: one’s holiness, knowledge, devotion or sacrifices.
Vainglory
A desire for praise or fame, including praise for being religious. Cassian lists it close to pride among the eight evil thoughts.
Humility
Seeing oneself truthfully before God. It is not low self-esteem, but freedom from the need to be admired.
Presumption
Expecting God’s favor or salvation without the right dependence on him, or taking spiritual gifts as one’s own achievement.
Eight thoughts
A list from Evagrius and Cassian of the main inner temptations: gluttony, lust, avarice, anger, sadness, acedia (listless discouragement), vainglory and pride. Later Western tradition shaped it into the seven deadly sins.

Background

Almost every serious Christian teacher on prayer has warned about pride. The earlier lessons of this course raised it in connection with solitude and superiority. This lesson takes a closer look because the problem does not go away with good intentions. The more one succeeds in the spiritual life, the more one is tempted to admire oneself for it.

The Bible places pride at the center of human wrong. “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall” (Proverbs 16:18). “Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth” (1 Corinthians 8:1). “Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall” (1 Corinthians 10:12). These passages are not addressed to scoffers. They are addressed to the serious.

Step-by-step explanation

Step 1: Learn its disguises

Spiritual pride seldom announces itself. It tends to appear as other things: as zeal for truth, as frustration with the lukewarm, as sadness over the state of the church, as a wish to be left alone by people who do not understand. Each of these may be partly sound. The test is what accompanies them. If a person feels a quiet pleasure in being the one who sees, the one who sacrifices, or the one who has not been fooled, the pleasure is a warning.

Another disguise is false humility, such as speaking self-deprecatingly in order to be contradicted, or boasting of how much one fails. Teachers in the tradition noticed this and called it a subtle form of the same fault.

Step 2: What the desert and Cassian taught

John Cassian, in the Institutes (Books 11 and 12), treats vainglory and pride as the last of the eight evil thoughts. He says that the other faults can be overcome, and that vainglory then springs up from the victory, so that a monk who has conquered gluttony may be proud of his fasting. Pride, he says, is the worst, because it turns even a person’s gifts into an occasion of falling away from God. He stresses that the remedy is humility, practiced in concrete ways such as obedience, confession of thoughts to an elder and willingness to do menial work.

The sayings of the desert elders make the same point again and again, in short stories about monks who were praised, who judged others or who were sure of their own progress. Abba Moses and the leaking basket, met in Lesson 1.3, is one example. These sayings are not formulas. They show a trained attention to the small movements of the heart.

Step 3: The Pharisee and the tax collector again

Jesus’ parable in Luke 18:9-14 remains the central text. The Pharisee thanks God that he is not like other men, and lists his fasting and tithing. His prayer is addressed to God, but it is about himself. The tax collector says only, “God be merciful to me a sinner” (Luke 18:13). Jesus says the tax collector went down to his house justified. The parable shows that pride can use even the language of thanks.

Note that the Pharisee thanked God. Gratitude can be sincere or can be a cover for self-regard. The way to tell is whether the gratitude leads to compassion or to contempt.

Step 4: The special risk of the solitary

In a congregation or a community, pride is often exposed by friction. Someone contradicts you, takes credit, or hurts you, and you see your own reaction. Alone, there is less friction. Others’ faults can be studied from a distance without the experience of being known. A solitary who spends hours reading and praying, and who is rarely corrected, can easily come to believe in his own progress. The monastic tradition anticipated this danger and responded with obedience, spiritual direction and the common life. The solitary who wants the benefit of solitude without its harm must find equivalents.

Thomas à Kempis, in Book 1 of the Imitation of Christ, warns against being proud of learning and urges readers to know themselves, to prefer to be unknown and to value the humble farmer over the proud philosopher.

Step 5: Practices against pride

A few disciplines help. Keep some good deeds secret (Matthew 6:3-4). Say a short prayer for people you disagree with, by name. Take on one lowly task regularly. When you are praised, thank the person simply and do not argue. When you are criticized, wait a day before replying and ask whether any part is true. Confess your faults to a trusted person (James 5:16). And read the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ own humility, as in his washing of the disciples’ feet (John 13).

  1. When did I last feel quietly pleased that I was not like some other Christians?
  2. How do I react when someone corrects me about something I take seriously?
  3. Do I keep any of my spiritual practices secret?
  4. Do I speak with contempt about people I disagree with?
  5. When I give thanks, does it lead me toward compassion or away from it?
  6. Who would tell me if I were becoming proud?

Examples

Proud of fasting

A man keeps a strict fast and is sure he has grown. At dinner with a friend he notes, silently, how much the friend eats. He catches the thought, writes it down and tells his friend about it the next week. The first step against pride is seeing it. (A constructed example.)

The wounded critic

A woman who left her church after hurt is certain that its members are hypocrites. She is right about some. Over time her certainty grows hard and she can no longer see good in anyone there. Her anger had something real in it, but it has turned into superiority. (A constructed example.)

Humility that is not low

A scholar is praised for his book. He thanks the speaker, points to the work of those who taught him and returns to his table. He neither denies his work nor puffs it up. That is closer to the humility the tradition describes. (A constructed example.)

Different perspectives

Catholic

Catholic teaching counts pride among the seven capital sins and Thomas Aquinas calls it the beginning of every sin. Catholic spiritual writers, such as Ignatius of Loyola and Teresa of Avila, give humility a central place in prayer, and Teresa wrote that humility is walking in truth.

Orthodox

Orthodox ascetical writing, in the tradition of Cassian and the Philokalia, gives great attention to pride and vainglory. Elders require disciples to disclose their thoughts, because pride hides best in secrecy. Orthodox writers also stress that the Jesus Prayer is a prayer of the sinner, which supports humility.

Protestant

The Reformers saw the root of pride in trust in one’s own works. Luther said the Christian is at once righteous and a sinner, and Calvin opened his Institutes by tying the knowledge of God to the knowledge of oneself, and he taught that a sense of one’s own need is where true religion begins. Puritan and Wesleyan writers examined their own hearts closely for hidden pride.

Scholarly and secular observers

Psychologists describe self-serving bias, the tendency to take credit for success and blame circumstances for failure. Moral philosophers have long discussed humility as a virtue. These are descriptions of human behavior that agree with what the religious writers say.

Why it matters

A solitary Christian can read a great deal and pray a great deal and still grow worse. The only way to know is to look for the signs of pride that the tradition has described, and to ask others to look as well. This lesson gives a language for doing so. It is a task that is never finished, and it is one on which almost every serious teacher agrees.

Common misunderstandings

Misunderstanding: Spiritual pride is the same as confidence in the faith.

Correction: Confidence in God’s promises is not pride. Pride is taking credit for one’s own holiness and looking down on others.

Misunderstanding: Humility means thinking you are worthless.

Correction: The tradition treats humility as truthfulness. A humble person can recognize real gifts and give thanks for them without boasting.

Misunderstanding: Only beginners struggle with pride.

Correction: The writers say the opposite. Advanced practitioners are tempted most, since their success gives pride more to feed on.

Misunderstanding: If I confess pride I am safe from it.

Correction: Confession helps, but pride can enter even the act of confessing. The tradition recommends continued watchfulness and an outside counselor.

Knowledge check

Why do Christian writers consider spiritual pride especially dangerous?

Because it feeds on good things, such as prayer and knowledge, and so is hard to detect. It can turn success in the spiritual life into a reason to look down on others, and it resists correction.

What did Cassian say about vainglory and pride in relation to the other faults?

He said that after a monk overcomes the lower faults, vainglory and pride can arise from the victory itself. They are therefore the last and most subtle of the eight evil thoughts.

What does the Pharisee’s prayer teach?

It shows that thanksgiving can be used for self-regard. He thanks God but his prayer is about his superiority over others, while the tax collector asks for mercy and goes home justified.

Why is the solitary person especially exposed to pride?

Because there is less friction and correction. Others rarely contradict or expose faults, so a person can grow sure of progress. The tradition answered this with counsel, obedience and common life.

Think it through

  1. Where in your own practices might pride be hiding as zeal?
  2. What is the difference, for you, between honest self-assessment and boasting?
  3. Whom do you admire for humility, and what do they do that shows it?
  4. What would you be willing to do in secret, and keep secret?

Independent assignment

A week of watching

For seven days, in your own notebook, note each time you feel superior, pleased about your devotion or contemptuous of another person’s faith. Record the occasion in a sentence and what you did. At the end, write 250 to 400 words on what patterns you saw. Choose one practice from Step 5 and keep it for a month. Do not show this notebook to anyone unless you choose to.

Further study