Dennis Okholm - Dangerous Passions, Deadly Sins: Learning from the Psychology of Ancient Monks

. Source: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114369/quotes.

. See Gabriel Bunge, Despondency: The Spiritual Teaching of Evagrius Ponticus , trans. Anthony P. Gythiel (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimirs Seminary Press, 2012), 4045 for material in this paragraph. Also see On Thoughts, especially chapter 1 on the three fundamental thoughts in Evagrius of Pontus: The Greek Ascetic Corpus , trans. Robert E. Sinkewicz (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 15382.

. See John Cassian, The Twelve Books of the Institutes of the Coenobium , 5.1 for the list of eight principal faults. Cassian Folsom clarifies that these are not vices per self-esteem , but fundamental attitudes or basic instincts in human nature which turn the heart away from God (Anger, Dejection, and Acedia in the Writings of John Cassian, in The American Benedictine Review [1989] 35:220). In The Conferences 5.16, Cassian calls them sins. Cassians writings can be found translated by Edgar C. S. Gibson in The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers , 2nd series, eds. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, repr. 1986), vol. 11. In most cases I have preferred this translation to a more recent translation because, strangely, the older one seems to be more readily comprehensible than the newer one. But when I have used the newer one I have indicated so with the initials ACW that stand for two volumes in the Ancient Christian Writers series: John Cassian: The Conferences , trans. and annotated by Boniface Ramsey, O.P. (New York: The Newman Press, 1997) and John Cassian : The Institutes , trans. and annotated by Boniface Ramsey, O.P. (New York: The Newman Press, 2000).

. See Gregory, Morals on the Book of Job , 3 vols., trans. J. Bliss (Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1850), vol. 3, comments on 39:25. Also, see Solomon Schimmel, The Seven Deadly Sins: Jewish, Christian , and Classical Reflections on Human Nature (New York: The Free Press, 1992), 25.

see Aquinas, Summa Theologica , 5 vols., trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (Westminster, MD: Christian Classics, 1948), IIaIIae, Q 148, resp. 2. (Hereafter the Summa will be referred to as ST .)

. See Gregory, Morals on Job 39:25. Aquinas lists these same offspring in ST IIaIIae, Q 148, resp. 6; obviously, he has imported this idea from Gregory.

. But they are, each of them, so closely connected with each other, that they spring only the one from the other (Gregory, Morals on Job 39:25).

. Cassian, Conferences 5.10.

. Introduction by John Eudes Bamberger, lxxxii, in Evagrius Ponticus, The Praktikos and Chapters on Prayer , trans. J. E. Bamberger, OCSO (Spencer, MA: Cistercian Publications, 1970).

. Schimmel, Seven Deadly Sins , 25.

. See Bambergers introduction to Evagriuss Praktikos ; he suggests that in Evagrius the concept is more biblical than Stoic, something like the fear of the Lordsee lxxxiii and n233. Also, cf. Cassian, Institutes 4.43.

. There is some language that sounds like this; e.g., see Evagrius, Praktikos 87. But the fact that the goal is the passion of love, as we will see, means that we must be careful how we understand this language.

. See Bamberger, introduction to Praktikos , lxxiilxxiii.

. Cassians favorite term for apatheia is purity of heart; e.g., see his Conferences 1.4. It is a state of undistracted prayer.