To say that evil does not exist is not to say that there is no evil in the world, but to say that it has no ‘existence’ other than what comes into being through our actions. This is an important piece of Christian theology that is often neglected, but sits right at the beginning of S. Diadochos’s Gnostic Chapters. Chapters 2 and 3 explore the human capacity for good and evil and Diadochos is clear that these are not equal and opposite realities. He insists that human beings are not naturally evil but can create evil through the desire of the heart. But his first principle is that human beings can become good through ‘careful attention to their way of life’, and can be united to God, who is good by nature. Because goodness exists naturally, it is more powerful than inclinations towards evil, which is not natural because it is not created by God. In other words, evil is an absence of good, or a distraction from what is good.

Now, all of this might seem like semantics, because we all know – very painfully – that evil does exist in our world. However, I think it completely changes our outlook on other people if we get away from the idea that they are fundamentally evil. Evil is a distortion of our truest nature, not part of it. And in practical terms, at least on an interpersonal level, it makes sense to me that we overcome disorder in our relationships and communities not by focussing primarily on wrongful actions, but by nurturing goodness. I don’t pretend to have insights on how this might scale up to the level of, say, criminal justice, except to say that this kind of thinking would give greater weight to rehabilitation than might be popular among politicians [see Gwen Adshead’s Reith Lectures], but I find this approach helpful on a more immediate level. And that immediate level for Diadochos, as for Desert Mothers and Fathers, was, very clearly, one’s own actions, one’s own behaviour:

We transform ourselves into what we are not when our soul, by devoting its attention to true delight, unites itself to God, so far as its energized power desires this.

Our transformation begins in delighting in God!

For my Lent reading this year, I thought I might undertake a slow reading of a 5th century text by a Greek bishop whose influence is far more signifcant that his relative obscurity might suggest. S. Diadochos was bishop of Photiki, which is on the edge of modern-day Paramythia in north-west Greece, not too far from the Island of Corfu. His time in history was a troubled one, with the Council of Chalcedon taking place in the middle of that century and in relation to which Diadochos wrote against the so-called monophysite position [with my love of the Oriental churches, I have my own views on this, which I’ll keep for another occasion!]. It’s possible that Diadochos was taken away by pirates to North Africa towards the end of his life, but this is not certain.

What is certain is that he left a small number of mystical works, one of which – his century of texts on spiritual knowledge and discrimination, or the Gnostic Chapters – found its way into the Philokalia where it is easily to be found in English translation in the first volume of that compilation. The complete works are also available in a later English translation by Fr Cliff Ermatinger (Cistercian Studies 239). It is this text that I want to explore over the coming weeks and I’ll try to post as regularly as I can, as it is clear to me that this short work is very rich indeed.

Diadochos writes elegantly, with some memorable images to illustrate his points, though the langauge can be technical, sometimes using the terminology of Evagrius of Pontus. His approach is a wonderful via media between head and heart, offering a positive but realistic anthropology and teaching a very practical way of prayer. Indeed, it is that last area in which Diadochos may have had the most lasting influence, as he is the first known proponent of what became known as the Jesus Prayer.

As a wee taster, the first ‘chapter’ reads as follows:

All spirital contemplation should be goverened by faith, hope and love, but most of all by love. The first two teach us to be detached from physical delights, but love unites the soul with the excellence of God, searching out the invisible by means of intellectual perception.

The word translated ‘searching out’ is, in fact, the verb ‘to track’, as a hunter would his prey! The human search for God should have the same focus and stedfast motivation as that hunter. And the governing principle of love reminds us that, in Greek thought, love is also a kind of knowing, an ‘intellectual perception’ as much as an emotional instinct. At times, Diadochos also uses the language of erotic desire to indicate our passionate search for God. So, right at the beginning of the text, we invited to join in the hunt, to commit ourselves to the pursuit of God who is love and life, and who calls us into union with him.