SO GOOD QUOTES

While the “knowledge that comes from men is strengthened by careful meditation and diligent exercise,” the knowledge “that by God’s grace has come to be within us” requires the virtues of justice, angerlessness, and compassion. “The first [knowledge] can be received by those still subject to passion; the second [knowledge] is received only by those [who have obtained] passionlessness—those who are also able at the time of prayer to contemplate the illuminating gentle radiance proper to their intellect.” Thus Evagrius heard from the mouth of his teacher Basil, “the pillar of truth.”

The “external wisdom,” that of the “wise of this world,” is only a question of intellectual accomplishment. Its preferred means, next to study and practice, is “dialectic.” An error in this domain is, so to speak, only a “technical failure,” which as such does not bring discredit to the “scientist” and likewise can hardly be imputed to him as a moral failure.

Standing in complete contrast to this is the knowledge that flows toward us “from God,” “from God’s grace”—to become a partaker of which intellectual accomplishments do not suffice.

The knowledge of Christ requires not a soul [skilled in] dialectic, but one that sees: for while impure souls may become dialecticians, seeing is reserved for the pure. 

“Purity” means “passionlessness”: above all, freedom from “wrath, resentment and what follows these,” such as envy, suspicions, resentment, and the like.

Dragon’s Wine and Angel’s Bread: The Teaching of Evagrius Ponticus on Anger and Meekness by Gabriel Bunge