Discernment for a Weakened Age

The single most characteristic idea in St. Ignatius’s thought is his diagnosis that his own age was spiritually impoverished — that the great Spirit-bearing elders had become rare, that monastics and laity alike were weaker than their forebears, and that the old, daring forms of asceticism and obedience could no longer be safely practiced. From this diagnosis flows his whole prescription: guidance chiefly by the Scriptures and the Fathers, “life according to counsel” in place of the lost obedience, and a sober, restraining caution in everything.

Tradition: Russian Orthodox (canonized 1988)

The Diagnosis

Running through the whole of Brianchaninov’s writing — and giving it its distinctive temper — is a settled conviction that he was living in a spiritually weakened age. The Christians of his century, monastic and lay, were, in his judgment, feebler in faith, in ascetic capacity, and in spiritual discernment than the Christians of the great ages of the desert and the Fathers; and, crucially, the living elders capable of guiding souls with the old authority and infallibility had become extremely rare (Brianchaninov, The Arena and The Ascetical Experiences; cf. johnsanidopoulos.com, on his lament over “the scarcity of true Spirit-bearing elders in his day”). This was not a passing complaint but the structural premise of his entire pastoral theology. He had learned it first in his own wandering search for an elder (see The Search for an Elder), and he generalized it into a reading of his whole epoch.

The diagnosis has two parts that must be held together. First, the capacity of souls had declined: people could no longer bear the rigors, or rise to the heights, that earlier generations had. Second, the means of guidance had failed: the charismatic elder who could direct a disciple infallibly, the linchpin of the classical monastic system, was now scarce to the point of near-absence. A weak people and the loss of strong guides — that double impoverishment is the condition for which Brianchaninov writes.

Why It Matters

This diagnosis is not pessimism for its own sake; it is the engine of his whole prescriptive teaching, and it explains features of his thought that would otherwise seem merely cautious or negative:

It explains his insistence on the Scriptures and the Fathers as the primary guide. If living elders are scarce, the soul must be guided by the written deposit — the Gospel and the patristic writings — read humbly and applied to one’s state (see Reading the Fathers).
It explains his caution about the higher reaches of prayer and his warnings against prelest. A weak age, reaching beyond its strength without strong guides, is peculiarly liable to delusion; hence the constant restraining counsel (see Against Delusion).
It explains his modesty about asceticism. He does not counsel the heroic austerities of the desert for his contemporaries; he counsels measured, sustainable discipline matched to their actual (lesser) strength, lest excessive ascesis breed pride or break the body and spirit.
It explains the very existence of The Arena as “an offering to contemporary monasticism” (see The Arena) — a book written precisely because the present age cannot simply take up the old manuals as they stand.

Life According to Counsel

The most constructive part of the prescription is Brianchaninov’s teaching on “life according to counsel” (zhitie po sovetu). In the classical system, the disciple lived by obedience (poslushanie) — the unreserved submission of his will and judgment to a Spirit-bearing elder, who bore responsibility for his soul. Brianchaninov teaches that this full obedience, in the strict sense, presupposes the genuine Spirit-bearing elder, and that where such elders are absent it cannot be safely or honestly practiced — to render absolute obedience to a guide who is not himself enlightened is to risk being led astray by a blind guide (Brianchaninov, The Arena, on obedience and counsel).

In place of the lost obedience he sets life according to counsel: the humble seeking of advice from the Scriptures, from the Fathers’ writings, and from prudent and experienced fellow-Christians — counsel weighed against the patristic norm rather than submitted to absolutely, retaining one’s own responsibility and discernment, and never investing any merely human adviser with the infallibility that belonged to the true elder. This is a more modest, more cautious, and (in his judgment) more honest mode of guidance, fitted to an age that can no longer supply the greater thing. It is one of his most influential teachings, and it stands behind much modern Orthodox caution about “elder-seeking” and about the dangers of false or premature spiritual submission (cf. Spiritual Direction).

Is the Diagnosis Right? A Note on the Question

A serious reader will ask whether Brianchaninov’s diagnosis was correct — whether his age really was spiritually weaker than earlier ages, or whether this was the perennial complaint of every generation that it has fallen from the giants of the past. The question is fair, and the collection’s discipline is not to pronounce on it but to frame it honestly. Several things may be said. First, the perception of decline relative to a golden age is indeed a recurring topos in monastic literature; the desert Fathers themselves lamented that they were lesser than their predecessors. Brianchaninov’s diagnosis is therefore not unprecedented, and may be read in part as his participation in a long tradition of monastic humility about the present. Second, however, his specific claim — that living Spirit-bearing elders had become rare — was, in his concrete circumstances, a defensible empirical observation: the Paisian revival had restored eldership at a few centers (Optina above all), but such elders were genuinely few, and his own failed search was real evidence (see The Search for an Elder). Third, and most importantly, the pastoral value of the diagnosis does not depend on settling the historical question: whether or not the age was objectively weaker, the prescription it generates — humility, reliance on the Scriptures and Fathers, sober caution, distrust of one’s own experiences, life by counsel — is sound counsel for any soul that lacks a reliable elder, which is to say for most souls in most times. The diagnosis may be partly a topos and partly an observation; the prescription is good regardless.

It should also be said, in fairness to Brianchaninov, that his is not a counsel of despair or a romantic pessimism that wallows in decline. He does not say the spiritual life is impossible in his age, only that it must be conducted differently — more cautiously, more by the book, more humbly — than in ages of strong guides. And he includes himself in the weakness he describes, which strips the diagnosis of any tone of superiority. It is, finally, a working assumption adopted in order to give the safest possible counsel, not a thesis defended for its own sake.

The Sobriety That Follows

From the whole diagnosis follows the pervasive sobriety that is Brianchaninov’s signature: distrust of one’s own spiritual experiences; refusal to reach for high states; insistence on repentance and humility as the only safe foundation; suspicion of felt consolations and imaginative prayer; and the steady preference for the small, sustainable, patient labor of the inner life over any dramatic spiritual ambition. This sobriety is not timidity. It is, in his understanding, realism — the only honest response of a weak generation that has lost its strong guides, and the only path that does not lead such a generation straight into delusion and ruin. The same realism shapes his account of the soul after death (see The State of the Soul) and his polemic against the dreamy religiosity of his educated contemporaries (see The Sober Path).

There is, finally, a note of humility in the diagnosis itself. Brianchaninov includes himself among the weak; he does not exempt himself from the impoverishment he describes, and he writes not as a strong man instructing the weak but as one weak man, who has read the Fathers carefully and suffered his own infirmity, offering to his fellow-weak the safest path he has been able to find. That self-implicating humility is part of why the diagnosis has been received not as a counsel of despair but as a gift of realism to the modern Orthodox conscience.

The Influence on Later Caution About “Elders”

Brianchaninov’s teaching on the scarcity of true elders and the dangers of false or premature obedience has had a long afterlife, and it stands behind a strand of caution that runs through much subsequent Orthodox writing on spiritual direction. The phenomenon of “elder-seeking” (starchestvo sought as a kind of spiritual consumerism), the dangers of investing an inexperienced or self-appointed “elder” with the authority that belongs only to the genuine article, and the harm done by misplaced absolute obedience — these are concerns that the modern Church has had repeatedly to address, and Brianchaninov is one of their principal classical sources (cf. Spiritual Direction, which sets out the verified treatment of obedience, the starets, and the cautions against false eldership). His insistence that obedience presupposes a Spirit-bearing elder, and that where such elders are absent the safer path is counsel weighed against the patristic norm rather than blind submission, gave the tradition a principled basis for distinguishing healthy spiritual direction from its counterfeits. In an age — his and ours — in which the hunger for a charismatic guide can outrun the supply of genuine ones, and in which that hunger can be exploited, his sober teaching is a needed corrective.

It should be stressed, against any misreading, that Brianchaninov is not against eldership or obedience as such; he reveres the genuine article, which he tasted under Leonid (see The Search for an Elder). His point is narrower and more careful: that the genuine article is rare, that its counterfeits are dangerous, and that the soul which cannot find the true elder must not therefore submit blindly to a false one, but should walk the humbler and safer path of counsel and the Fathers. This is not anti-elder; it is anti-delusion, applied to the domain of spiritual direction — and it is of a piece with his warnings against delusion in prayer (see Against Delusion).

References

Brianchaninov, Ignatius. The Arena: An Offering to Contemporary Monasticism. Trans. Lazarus Moore. Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Publications. (The weakened age; obedience versus “life according to counsel”; the scarcity of true elders; measured asceticism.)
Brianchaninov, Ignatius. The Ascetical Experiences (Asketicheskie opyty), in Polnoe sobranie tvorenii, vols. 1–2. (The diagnosis of spiritual impoverishment and the sober prescription.)
Saint Ignatius (Brianchaninov), Bishop of the Caucasus and Black Sea (+ 1867). John Sanidopoulos, johnsanidopoulos.com (2018). (His lament over the scarcity of true Spirit-bearing elders.)
Osipov, Alexei Ilyich. The Basics of Spiritual Life, Based on the Writings of St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov). OrthoChristian.com (orthochristian.com/53476.html). (Brianchaninov as the reliable guide for the spiritually inexperienced modern Christian.)