“Orthodoxy” and “Gnosticism” in Post-Nicene Egypt: Thinking on the “Gospel of Jesus’ Wife” and Others

If you sit down with a history of the Early Church or patristic doctrine such as Henry Chadwick’s The Early Church or J N D Kelly’s Early Christian Doctrines, a picture emerges of an Egypt where before Nicaea the proto-orthodox look to have won out over the ‘Gnostics’ — ‘Arianism’ being a debate between factions within proto-orthodoxy, indeed amongst Origenists (see my post here).

Athanasius of Alexandria was the champion and forger of the Nicene cause. Antony was revered by him and many of the Fathers for his holiness. The monks of Egypt, with whom Athanasius hid in exile, were notoriously orthodox, doing the bidding of the unflinchingly orthodox Theophilus in desecrating pagan temples. Cyril is one of the ‘orthodox’ party’s strongest voices, as is his contemporary monastic fellow Shenoute of Atripe.

Egypt seems to be very much orthodox, especially by 381. And, once you’ve wrapped your mind around the Chalcedonian debate, perhaps they never even stopped (see my post on ‘Monophysites’).

Archaeology has been telling us a new story, perhaps a parallel one. From the sands of Egypt, most notably Nag Hammadi, have come a wealth of ‘Gnostic’ documents — frequently called ‘Gospels’, largely in Coptic. These documents are often from the fourth century, as is the momentarily-famous ‘Gospel of Jesus’ Wife’. Some are possibly later, such as the Books of Yu, themselves possibly representing an entirely different mystery religion of its own.

Having read Hurtado’s take on the business-card sized papyrus on Jesus’ wife and that of Gathercole, as well as Dr King’s own cautious statements in the flamboyant news reports, this is a document wherein Jesus mentions ‘My wife’ (or ‘my woman’). This may bring us into the realm of Gnostic allegory. It may bring us into a text trying to legimitate Christian marriage by saying Jesus was married (a point on which our earliest sources are silent).

What it brings us into is ‘Gnosticism’, a term applied to an amorphous group of religious beliefs and practices that are often related in some way to Christianity, sometimes claiming to represent the true tradition thereof, but not always, and not always necessarily related to the Church itself at all (as with one possible reading of the Books of Yu).

From what I’ve seen, by Nicaea, the mainstream or proto-orthodox Church — the institutional Christianity from which all of today’s churches descend — is not necessarily grappling with Gnosticism and Gnostics. They seem to have at times had their books, as described by Eusebius, when bishops hand over heretical scriptures to the Roman authorities. And their are, I understand, certain Valentinian influences on the letters of St Antony the Great and possibly elsewhere amongst the Desert Fathers.

But these appear to be just traces. Gnosticism seems not to be leaving a great impact upon the wider Church in the fourth century, unlike in the second when Irenaeus wrote his Against the Heresies in opposition to certain of these groups.

But they were still around. They left us papyri in the desert. Where did they go? How did they interact with their ‘orthodox’ neighbours? Did they eventually disappear through assimilation into mainstream Christianity after the official sponsoring thereof by the Emperors?

I don’t know. Do any of you?

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Saint of the Week: Shenoute

Not only is today the day Canadians remember Queen Victoria signing the BNA Act and making Confederation and the Dominion of Canada reality, it is also the Feast Day of St. Shenoute (348-466).

Now, if you’ve not been around my blog before, or only dip in once in a while, you’re probably saying, “St. Whosit?”

Indeed.

Shenoute’s section in William Harmless’ book Desert Christians has the title “Monasticism Overlooked: Shenoute of Atripe.” This is because Shenoute has, frankly, been largely overlooked. Even Derwas J Chitty’s masterful introduction to Desert monasticism, The Desert a City, passes him by, because Shenoute is beyond the purview of a book concerned only with the Chalcedonian tradition.

That’s possibly a better reason than most have for not knowing about Shenoute: He was a Copt who wrote in Coptic and left no remains in Greek or Latin. Shenoute’s obscurity, in my opinion, is entirely because he is part of the Coptic tradition. Perhaps if the Coptic and Graeco-Latin traditions of Christianity had not become estranged, more of us would know about Shenoute. However, given that we also have a hard time making Syriac saints beyond Ephrem and Aphrahat popular, I doubt it.

It is high time Shenoute, for all his faults and oddities (see my earlier post about him), had his day in the sun.

Shenoute became a monk at a young age, moving into the large coenobitic complex of his uncle, Pjol, near Atripe in Upper Egypt. If you read The Life of Shenoute by his disciple Besa, you will learn about the miracles and feats of asceticism Shenoute was capable of even as a young man.

Eventually, Abba Pjol died. Foolishly, the administration of the coenobium was left to someone else. Anyone who knows the Life of Pachomius should know that the new abbot should be popular, precocious young man, not that other guy. But I guess Abba Pjol didn’t know about the Life of Pachomius. Or Besa did. Either way, things went badly, until Shenoute took over as archimandrite of the monastery, just as Theodore eventually succeeded to being abbot of the Pachomian foundations at Tabennesi.

The monastic complex over which Shenoute was archimandrite is called the White Monastery by modern archaeologists, given the white colour of the stones from which it was built. It is to be distinguished from the Red Monastery which is nearby and was led during Shenoute’s life by the revered Abba Pshoi. Antony and Savvas are said to have made the desert a city of monks — Shenoute certainly did, for the White Monastery was more of a monastic city than a simple coenobium or monastery.

There were several monastic houses attached to one another within the walls of the White Monastery — Egyptian coenobia tend to come with walls to keep out wild beasts, thieves, and the Devil. At a certain distance were the houses of women associated with the monastery. Also connected to the White Monastery were some anchorites. Eventually, Shenoute went out to the desert to be an anchorite himself, dealing with the monks of his establishments through letters.

These monastic settlements succeeded in drawing between 10 and 15,000 monastics within their life and walls. Impressive.

What drew these people to Shenoute and the White Monastery? Salvation. The hope of glory. The fear of Hell.

Some would say, “Financial and economic security,” imagining poor Copts to be easily-ruled people who are concerned largely with their bellies. I do not know if this is true; it sounds too much like Hellenic propaganda about barbarians to me. Research should look into it and tell us.

Shenoute offered people more than food in their bellies and a structured work day. He offered them salvation, and he regulated that salvation down to the minutest detail — what you wore, when you prayed, what you ate, what you prayed, how you worked, how you prayed, where you worked, how you were beaten, by whom you were beaten — that sort of thing. A highly detailed roadmap to heaven was made available to Shenoute.

Who wouldn’t want that?

Shenoute also cast his monks as brethren. They were a family. And they were all equal, which is why they were brethren, not brethren and sistren.  Salvation was found in a tightly-knit group of people with whom you could rejoice when one rejoiced and mourn when one mourned. All were bound together in this vision of salvation.

This is not to say that it was all basket-weaving and linen harvesting. No, indeed. The monks and nuns of the White Monastery occasionally got fed up with Shenoute’s heavy hand. A couple of times they rebelled. Sometimes the women, who never actually saw Shenoute, would take the running of their community into their own hands; they would also frequently receive spiritual instruction from Pshoi, abbot of the aforementioned Red Monastery.

These occasional disturbances are why Shenoute moved into the desert and communicated not only with the women but also with the men via epistolary.

He was a man who was committed to the orthodoxy of the Patriarch of Alexandria, and accompanied St. Cyril to the First Council of Ephesus in 431. Our records of his Christology are largely to the extent that he an anti-Nestorian Nicene, and although he lived until 466, his own thought does not seem to show a great facility with the issues surrounding Christ’s nature that were setting Alexandria to the North aflame.

Some say that his Christology is of a Christ-less Christianity. Jesus was God, certainly, and he died for our sins. But there is little of grace in Shenoute, sadly. His Jesus, while a close chum of Shenoute’s (Besa records several instances people running into Shenoute having a chat with Jesus), is a stern Jesus, a Jesus of the baking sun and blowing wind of the Desert. This Jesus puts heavy burdens on humanity so that humanity can grasp salvation.

Nonetheless, Shenoute was one of the first great Coptic writers, and his dialect, Sahidic, was the literary form of Coptic for centuries until Bohairic eclipsed it in the Middle Ages. He left behind a collection of letters — sadly scattered and tattered by now — and sermons in Sahidic Coptic. He helped Coptic move beyond its status as a language whose literary remains were largely translation into a language with a spiritual literature all its own, standing alongside Latin, Greek, and Syriac as one of the great languages of ancient, patristic Christianity.

For more on Shenoute:

Primary Sources

Besa. The Life of Shenoute. Trans. David N. Bell. Kalamazoo: Cistercian, 1983. Our main source for Shenoute’s life.

If you read Coptic, check out Shenoute’s Literary Corpus that has gathered together all the scattered bits.

Secondary Sources

Harmless, William. Desert Christians. Oxford, 2004. pp. 445-447 deal with Shenoute.

Krawiec, Rebecca. Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery. Oxford, 2002. This book, while it seems to be a women’s studies approach to Shenoute given the subject matter and title, is a very good introduction to life in the White Monastery and what drew people to Shenoute’s rule.

Saint of the Week: Amma Syncletica

In light of the fact that I have yet to officially make a woman “Saint of the Week” and the Egyptian saints’ feasts this week (as noted in yesterday’s post), I feel that it is only appropriate to look at Amma Syncletica (feast: 5 January).

The first question you may be asking is, “What kind of a name is that?” It is, I reply, the sort of name one gives an Egyptian monachos, or, I suppose in this case, monacha?

The group of early monks/hermits/anchorites we call the “Desert Fathers and Mothers” had a number of notables amongst it. These people were treated with respect by the other monastics and were often consulted for nuggets of wisdom by these younger or less experienced desert dwellers. They were mostly male, and in Greek are referred to as geron, old man. They also received, however, the Egyptian/Coptic title Abba or Amma, Father or Mother. So we hear of Abba Antony, Abba Poemen, Abba Macarius, and Amma Syncletica.

The details of Syncletica’s life are obscure. Syncletica was born to Greek/Macedonian parents in Alexandria. All of her life she was drawn to God. Like St. Antony before her (my post here), she inherited a large estate and the care for her sister. Like St. Antony before her, she sold off her inheritance and gave to the poor. She retired with her sister to a crypt.

She now began the principle exercise of the desert life: prayer. Prayer is the scopos (goal) of all the Desert Fathers and Mothers, with the telos (end) of prayer being holiness and the vision of divine glory. [1] As Syncletica says, “Bodily poison is cured by still stronger antidotes; so fasting and prayer drive sordid temptation from us.” (DF 27) [2]

Syncletica emphasises fasting in other sayings attributed to her, for prayer in the desert is always coupled with ascetic discipline and sobriety of spirit.  The goal of this sobriety which is reflected by a lack of immoderate laughter and much silence, is a true, lasting joy, as Syncletica says, “In the beginning there are a great many battles and a good deal of suffering for those who are advancing towards God and afterwards, ineffable joy.  It is like those who wish to light a fire; at first they are choked by the smoke and cry, and by this means obtain what they seek (as it is said: ‘Our God is a consuming fire’ [Heb. 12:24]): so we also must kindle the divine fire in ourselves through tears and hard work.” (SDF 231)

As Syncletica lived the ascetic life of prayer, fasting, silence, and mortification in solitude from the world, her fame (inevitably) spread.  Like St. Antony before her, she went from being an anchorite (like Lady Julian) to being an abbess.  Unlike Antony, she seems not to have minded (St. Antony kept running away from his monks).  She is thus, like Poemen, one of the earliest examples of coenobitic monasticism — seeking the disciplined life of prayer and fasting in community.

Her ascetic labour also attracted the attention of the devil and his minions.  This is the inevitable result of holiness, for the devil has a grip on this world, and the holiness of the saints does war against it.  However, she was able to withstand their assaults and temptations, teaching the virtue of moderation (DF 106) as well as the importance of fortitude in the face of temptation (DF 63-64).

Some more of her teachings are as follows:

Blessed Syncletica was asked if poverty is a perfect good.  She said, “For those who are capable of it, it is a perfect good.  Those who can sustain it receive suffering in the body but rest in the soul, for just as one washes coarse clothes by trampling them underfoot and turning them about in all directions, even so the strong soul becomes much more stable thanks to voluntary poverty.” (SDF 231)

She also said, “Imitate the publican, and you will not be condemned with the Pharisee.  Choose the meekness of Moses and you will find your heart which is a rock changed into a spring of water.” (SDF 233)

She also said, “Those who are great athletes must contend against stronger enemies.” (SDF 233)

She also said, “Just as one cannot build a ship unless one has some nails, so it is impossible to be saved without humility.” (SDF 235)

[1] See John Cassian, Conference 1.

[2] Quotations marked DF are from Benedicta Ward’s translation of the Latin Systematic Collection of sayings, The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the Early Christian Monks for Penguin Classics. Quotations marked SDF are from her translation of the Greek Alphabetical Collection of sayings, The Sayings of the Desert Fathers for Cistercian Publications.

The Impact of the Desert Fathers

The Desert Fathers and Mothers have a powerful impact, stretching far beyond the deserts of Egypt.  While I was engaged in my research into John Cassian’s demonology, I wanted to organise my comparative demonologies into “Desert” and “Not-Desert”.  I was advised that, while this was a useful exercise for organisation, the boundaries of the Desert are not so easily defined.

For example, one of my “Not-Desert” sources was St. Augustine of Hippo.  As a source for demonology in relation to John Cassian, he shows us that, if Cassian did not draw ideas directly from the Bishop of Hippo Regius, their western locale informed both men’s writings.  However, to say, “St. Augustine of Hippo is not a Desert influence,” is to ignore the fact that St. Augustine had desert influences upon him, both in his Rule and from St. Athanasius’ Life of St. Antony.  St. Augustine, in fact, cites the Life of St. Antony as being instrumental in his road to conversion.  The Desert has impacted St. Augustine.

Another man impacted by the Desert whose ideas on spirits resonated with John Cassian’s is St. Gregory of Nyssa.  St. Gregory did not himself spend time in Egypt.  However, his elder brother Basil, who confirmed his ordination to the episcopate in 372, did.  Furthermore, when we think of the interconnectedness of the Eastern Church, we realise as well that both St. Gregory and Evagrius Ponticus were present at the Council of Constantinople in 381, and that Evagrius maintained contact with people outside of Egypt after he retired to the monastery at Nitria (Kellia? I forget).  Who knows what words of Evagrius may have made their way to Nyssa?

By the late 300s, anybody who was anybody had some contact with the Desert Fathers, including St. Jerome who had his own monastery in Bethlehem, where some of the Desert ascetics lived as well, and Rufinus who spent time living amongst the Fathers, and Egeria of the bestselling travelogue.

In the West, Athanasius’ biography of St. Antony was translated by the mid-fourth century and circulated widely (thus St. Augustine’s acquaintance with it).  As well, a collection the Apophthegmata Patrum, the Sayings of the Desert Fathers, were made available in Latin by the 500s.  They had a wide circulation, not only with the Life of St. Antony but also with the Lausiac History and Rufinus’ translation of the Historia Monachorum in Aegypto — all gathered together, these are called the Vitae Patrum.  Monks all over Western Europe would continue to read these works down to the Renaissance, seeking wisdom for how to live.

In wide circulation as well were John Cassian’s Institutes and Conferences.  These two works had a lasting impact on western spirituality in mediating the Desert tradition as well as much of Evagrius Ponticus’ spiritual wisdom.  For more on the legacy and impact of John Cassian, read my post on the topic.

St. Benedict felt the impact of the Desert as he organised his monastery and Rule.  He recommended that his monks read John Cassian.  Thus did John Cassian’s mediation of the Desert pass into the round of monastic reading alongside the Vitae Patrum.

Throughout the Middle Ages, the Desert Fathers would make their impact visible in the Franciscans, in the Augustinians, even amongst the Brethren of the Common Life, being cited by Thomas a Kempis as worthy reading.

In the East, the monasticism of Egypt has continued in unbroken ascetic labour to this day.  Its sister monastic movements, inspired and sprung from the soil of Egyptian toil, exist to this day, living by the same desire for detachment and prayer in Mt. Athos and in the monasteries of Cyprus, Russia, Greece, the Middle East, Ukraine, the Americas.

They were enshrined to be required spiritual reading for all eternity in the Philokalia.

In the contemporary world, the Desert Fathers have impacted Thomas Merton, Henri Nouwen, Benedicta Ward, Richard J. Foster, Christopher A. Hall, and me.

Will they impact you?

Saint of the Week: Saint Antony the Great

St. Antony and St. Paul

St. Antony the Great (251-356) is traditionally considered the “founder” of Christian monasticism, although this is a difficult thing to be sure of.  One of the stories about him, in fact, tells of his pride about how he was the first-ever monk, and then an angel told him about this guy Abba Paul who’d been a hermit way longer than he had, so he went off to visit St. Paul the Hermit on St. Paul’s deathbed.

Whether or not he was the first or not, he was part of a movement to the desert that was beginning at the time.  There had already been the occasional Egyptian person or village that would disappear into the desert whenever socio-economic times got hard.  At the time went St. Antony started out for the tombs and the mountains of the Egyptian wilderness, people were first getting the idea of this retreat (anachoresis) as an act of Christian piety and part of the path self-renunciation as a replacement of martyrdom.

St. Antony’s anachoresis was inspired by the command of Jesus to the Rich Young Ruler to sell all he had and give to the poor, then to follow Jesus.  St. Antony figured this was a good principle for all serious Christians, so he sold off his inheritance, leaving behind enough for his sister to live on.  Then he went visiting Christian ascetics in the town where he lived and learning from them about how to live.

Soon, he heard the verse about not worrying about tomorrow, so then he got rid of the stuff that was supporting his sister and put her in a house of virgins (inchoate nunneries).  Then he went off into the desert to live alone.  Of course, living alone is hard to achieve for spiritual masters, because somehow word always get round that you’re out living in a cave or a tomb or an abandoned temple somewhere, so you start to get a bit of a following.  Over the years, Antony lived in tombs, on a mountain, and on a second mountain, each time moving farther and farther from society and receiving fewer and fewer guests — or at least hoping to receive fewer and fewer guests.

In these days of incipient monasticism, the concept of the hermit as a man who was complete and utterly cut off from the rest of the world was an ideal but never achieved (I’m not sure any hermit ever achieved it).  We see that St. Antony had disciples, such as his successor Ammonas, as well as those to whom he gives his discourse in The Life of St. Antony by St. Athanasius.

In the Sayings of the Desert Fathers (Apopthegmata Patrum), Antony is frequently quoted as providing a pithy saying or two, demonstrating that he was part of the new monastic movement wherein a newer monk would approach a more experienced monk and say, “Abba, give me a word.”  The more experienced monk, the Abba, would then give a brief saying or discourse to the less experienced.  Antony is also quoted in John Cassian’s Conferences concerning discretion, saying that discretion is the most important tool of the monk.

St. Antony did more than give advice to his disciples, however.  As we saw in my last post, he was engaged in the battle with demons.  In this battle, according to St. Athanasius, he received literal blows from demons and found himself almost physically defeated, but he continued on nonetheless.  The idea is that the desert is the property of the demons, their last retreat and lair.  By going there, St. Antony and the other monks are encroaching on their turf; turf wars ensued, with the monks victorious through many battles.  Eventually, St. Antony was left alone by the Devil and his minions.

Although called “unlettered” in St. Athanasius’ biography, this does not mean St. Antony was illiterate.  It likely means he was not literate in Greek or Latin, that he was not schooled in the classics of the Hellenistic world.  Modern philology has determined that seven Coptic letters attributed to St. Antony are most likely by this monk himself.  Whether he wrote them with his own hand or dictated them is impossible to say.  In these letters, we get a picture of a man who was concerned for the care of souls, deeply orthodox in theology, but not uninfluenced by Valentinian Gnosticism in aspects of his spirituality.

This does not, however, mean that Egyptian monasticism was Gnostic by any means.  There are similarities between Celtic Christianity and Buddhism, for example; yet there are also similarities between the Celts and St. Maximus the Confessor.  The Coptic monks tended to be orthodox in their theology, as evidenced by their harbouring of St. Athanasius when he was on the run.  They ran into theological difficulties with Anthropomorphism (imagining God to have a body like a man) and Origenism (the antithesis, all-too-often accompanied by Origen’s heterodox teachings on Christology and souls). However, St. Antony shows no influence of the heterodox aspects of Origenism or Gnosticism in these letters.

Here is some wisdom of St. Antony:

Advice given to those troubled by demons: Have faith in Jesus; keep your mind pure from wicked thoughts and your body free from all sordidness.  In accordance with the divine sayings, do not be seduced by the fullness of the stomach.  Detest pride, pray frequently, recite the psalms in the evening and in the morning and at noon, and meditate on the commands of the Scriptures.  Remember the deeds done by each of the saints so that the memory of their example will inspire your virtue and restrain it from vices. (Life of Antony 55, trans. White)

Wherever you go, always have God before your eyes; whatever you do, have [before you] the testimony of the holy Scriptures. (The Sayings, Latin systematic collection [I think], trans. Ward)

I beseech you, beloved, by the name of Jesus Christ, do not neglect your own salvation, but let each one of you rend his heart and not his garment (Joel 2:13), for fear lest we should be wearing this monastic habit in vain, and preparing for ourselves judgment. (Letter 2, trans. Chitty)

Whoever has not experienced temptation cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. . . .  Without temptations no-one can be saved.  (The Sayings, Greek alphabetical collection [#5], trans. Ward)

I no longer fear God but love him, for love casts out fear. (The Sayings, Greek alphabetical collection [#32], trans. Ward)

If you are interested in learning more about St. Antony, I recommend the translation of St. Athanasius’ Life of St. Antony in Carolinne White, Early Christian Lives, published by Penguin Classics.

I read Derwas J. Chitty’s translation of the Letters of St. Antony, published by SLG Press.

Sister Benedicta Ward, SLG, has a Penguin Classics translation of the Latin systematic Sayings called The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the Early Christian Monks as well as of the Greek alphabetical (by author) sayings called The Sayings of the Desert Fathers published by Cistercian.