03 — The Logismoi

The logismos (λογισμός, Slavonic помысл) is the working unit of the ascetic literature: a thought that carries a temptation. This section defines it, traces the stages by which such a thought becomes a settled passion if it is not met, and sets out the genealogy of the eight generic thoughts — from Evagrius through St. John Cassian to St. Gregory the Great — which is one of the most frequently garbled sequences in popular writing on the subject.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

The ascetic writers do not analyse sin primarily as an act. They analyse it as a process that begins long before an act, in the arrival of a thought, and they built a technical vocabulary for the stages of that process because the practical question — at what point can this still be stopped, and how? — has different answers at each stage.

What a Thought Is and the Stages of Assent defines logismos, distinguishes it from an idea and from a sin, sets out the tradition’s account of where thoughts come from, and gives the sequence prosbole → syndyasmos → synkatathesis → aichmalosia → pathos as St. John Climacus gives it — while noting that the terminology and the number of stages vary between authors and that no one scheme is canonical. It also states the pastorally decisive point: the first arrival of a thought carries no guilt.

The Eight Thoughts and the Seven Sins gets the genealogy right. The eight generic thoughts are Evagrius, Praktikos 6. They reach the Latin West through John Cassian, who transmitted them in the Institutes V–XII and Conferences 5. St. Gregory the Great reorganized the scheme in Moralia in Job XXXI.45, producing the seven that became the Western capital vices — and the file corrects the usual account of what Gregory actually did.

File Contents
What a Thought Is and the Stages of Assent Logismos defined; the three sources of thoughts; Evagrius’ Antirrhetikos method; the stages from prosbole to pathos in Climacus and the variant schemes; the innocence of the first suggestion; the warning against disputing with thoughts
The Eight Thoughts and the Seven Sins Evagrius’ eight and the logic of their order; Cassian’s transmission and his alteration of the order; Gregory the Great’s reorganization and what he did and did not do; why the East kept eight and has no doctrine of “deadly sins”

See Also