Evagrius Ponticus and Cognitive Science: A Look at Moral Evil and the Thoughts (review)

In this little book, Tsakiridis tries to build bridges between Christian spirituality and empirical science. At the same time, he attempts to show the usefulness and depth of patristic thought in dialogue with science and theology by giving an account of what evil is for the fourth-century ascetic master, Evagrius of Pontus, and what this may mean for contemporary scholars in the cognitive sciences.

He does so in clear and systematic fashion (see 12). After a brief introduction (Chapter One), the author presents in chapter two Evagrius's conception of the eight negative thoughts or logismoi (gluttony, fornication, avarice, sadness, acedia, anger, vainglory, and pride), forerunners of the later seven deadly sins, in the context of Evagrius's overall view of evil. He emphasizes the importance of Evagrius's prescriptions or remedies for these thoughts (above all in the Antirrhetikos), and the interactions involved in prayer, the pious mind, demonic suggestion, and the brain, and points out Evagrius's awareness of the possible manipulation even of prayerful consciousness by demonic stimulation of the brain (e.g., in Praktikos 72 and 73). In Chapter Three, Tsakiridis uses the works of Pierre Hadot and Paul Ricoeur on the question of evil and its formulation in patterns of binary opposition (and of others such as Karl Barth, Paul Tillich, etc.), to recover contemporary meaningful possibilities from Evagrius's contextual meanings and to show their relevance to a Christian theological/philosophical standpoint. In Chapter Four, he further contextualizes Evagrius's thought by presenting modern cognitive scientific views on moral evil in the brain/mind complex and in myth-formation of evil, ranging from William James to Eugene d'Aquili, Andrew Newberg, and others, and focusing particularly on spiritually integrated psychotherapy (Kenneth Pargament) and the experience of "absolute unitary being" (d'Aquili and Newberg) or "mystical" experience.

Finally, in Chapter Five, Tsakiridis brings these different perspectives into dialogue. Among his major conclusions are the following four or five trajectories for consideration. First, he emphasizes how patristics is an under-utilized treasure for thinking in new ways about current issues in the ongoing dialogue between science and religion. While we have to keep in mind that spiritual disorders and psychological maladies need to be distinguished, a significant link between the brain and spiritual health needs to be reexamined, and Evagrius's complex view of the eight thoughts and their remedies offers significant potential for thinking creatively about a relation with modern science. Second, while Evagrius's language, and specifically his metaphors, should be applied to psychotherapy only with caution, the personification of evil and binary opposition (between good and evil) are relevant to the human pursuit of theological truth and therefore to a broader scientific view of what it means to be human. Third, instead of a pseudo-scientific rejection of everything pre-modern, or on uncritical adherence to some unmediated access, he argues that by means of a proper "hermeneutic recovery" (or in Ricoeur's terms, a "second naivete" [112]) "one may see truth that connects with current science and theology." Fourth, Tsakiridis finds Ricoeur's idea of a "semantic dualism" a useful means of understanding Evagrius, that is, in terms of a "practical dualism" necessary for talking about "the material and immaterial parts of a person." This would be a form of semantic dualism that somehow negotiates the murky water between "dualism of discourses" and a "dualism of substances" without falling into the latter or simply subjectivizing the former-at least, this is my interpretation of what Tsakiridis has to say (114). Finally, Tsakiridis highlights the limitations of science: "the visibility of Evagrius's work goes far beyond the assumptions of science, but part of the hope in this research is to validate the practical aspects of Evagrius's spiritual quest and worldview through empirical methods" (116).

There is much to commend in this little book, especially the attempt to recover the undoubted relevance of Evagrius's work for our own age and...