What a Thought Is and the Stages of Assent

Logismos (λογισμός), Slavonic помысл, is the basic unit of the ascetic literature: not an idea but a thought bearing a temptation. This file defines the term, sets out the tradition’s account of where such thoughts come from, gives the sequence by which one becomes a passion — provocation, coupling, assent, captivity, struggle, passion — and states the point on which pastoral practice most often turns: that the first arrival of a thought is not a sin.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

The Term

Ordinary Greek λογισμός means a reckoning, a calculation, a consideration. In the ascetic writers it is narrowed to a technical sense: a thought that arrives carrying a suggestion — an impulse toward something, an image, a grievance, a scheme, a fantasy — and that therefore presents the person with a choice. Evagrius devoted a treatise to them (On Thoughts, Περὶ λογισμῶν) and made them the object of the whole practical life.

The Slavonic and Russian помысл (pomysl), plural помыслы, carries the same technical sense and is used with the same precision by St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, St. Theophan, and the Optina elders. English translations render it variously as “thought”, “tempting thought”, “evil thought”, or “suggestion”; where a text says simply “thoughts” and means something specific, this is the word behind it.

What it does not mean: a logismos is not an idea, an opinion, or a belief. Reasoning about a doctrine, planning a day’s work, and remembering a fact are not logismoi in this sense. Nor is a logismos the same as a sin. It is the material on which the will works, and the ascetic writers are exact about the difference.

Where Thoughts Come From

The tradition gives three origins, and the classification is practical rather than speculative: it exists because the response differs.

St. John Cassian sets it out most clearly. Thoughts arise from God, from the devil, and from ourselves — the last including memory, temperament, habit, and the ordinary movement of a mind that has lived a life (Cassian, Conferences 1.19; trans. Boniface Ramsey, Ancient Christian Writers 57, New York: Paulist Press, 1997). Cassian then makes the ascetic’s task explicit with the image that governs the whole literature: the monk is to be like an expert money-changer, testing every coin that is offered him — is the gold genuine, is the image the right one, is the weight correct — a reading of the logion “be approved money-changers”, which Cassian and other early writers cite as a saying of the Lord (Cassian, Conferences 1.20–22; trans. Ramsey, ACW 57). [Apocryphal: the saying “be approved money-changers” (γίνεσθε δόκιμοι τραπεζῖται) is not found in the canonical Gospels; it is one of the most widely attested agrapha, quoted as dominical by Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and many later writers. The tradition’s use of it is thus pinned to its patristic attestation, not to a Gospel text.]

Two consequences follow. Because thoughts have several sources, the first requirement is diakrisis, discernment (see Discernment and the Measure). And because some thoughts come from outside the person, the arrival of a repugnant thought is not evidence of a corrupt will — a point the elders make constantly to the scrupulous.

The Antirrhetic Method

Evagrius’ practical answer to thoughts was the Antirrhetikos — “the counter-arguer” — a collection of Scripture verses arranged against each of the eight generic thoughts, to be spoken in reply when a given thought arrives. The model is Christ’s own answer to the tempter, who is met three times not with argument but with a verse (Matthew 4:1–11). Evagrius’ work survives complete only in Syriac (Evagrius, Talking Back: A Monastic Handbook for Combating Demons, trans. David Brakke, Cistercian Studies 229, Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2009).

The method’s principle outlasted the book. The Jesus Prayer itself functions in the neptic literature as the universal antirrhesis: instead of engaging the thought, the mind is occupied with the Name (Hesychios the Priest, On Watchfulness and Holiness, in The Philokalia, vol. 1, London: Faber and Faber, 1979, where the invocation of Jesus is repeatedly given as the direct answer to the prosbole; see The Jesus Prayer: Monologistos Prayer in the Desert).

The Stages

The classic sequence is given by St. John Climacus in Step 15 of the Ladder, and it is the passage to which later writers refer.

προσβολή — prosbole — provocation (Slavonic прилог). The first arrival: “a simple word or image encountered for the first time, which has entered into the heart”, a thought still free of passion, glimpsed by the nous. It comes unbidden.

συνδυασμός — syndyasmos — coupling (Slavonic сочетание). “Conversation with what has been encountered” — the mind entertains the thought, turns it over, whether with pleasure or not. Here the will begins to be engaged.

συγκατάθεσις — synkatathesis — assent (Slavonic сложение, соизволение). “The delighted yielding of the soul to what it has encountered.” This is the decisive point: the sin is committed here, inwardly, whether or not it is ever enacted.

αἰχμαλωσία — aichmalosia — captivity (Slavonic пленение). “A forcible and unwilling abduction of the heart”, in which the mind is carried off and cannot readily return.

πάλη — pale — struggle. The contest between the thought and the person’s resistance, which may be won or lost.

πάθος — pathos — passion (Slavonic страсть). What the repeated cycle finally produces: a settled disposition, “a vice lurking for a long time in the soul”, which now moves the person habitually and no longer needs an occasion (Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Step 15; trans. Colm Luibheid and Norman Russell, New York: Paulist Press, 1982; see St. John Climacus: The Monastic Psychology).

No single scheme is canonical. Climacus himself does not present his list as fixed, and other writers give different numbers and different terms. The glossary of the English Philokalia sets out a six-stage sequence drawn from Mark the Ascetic as well as Climacus, in which a momentary disturbance of the intellect (παραρριπισμός) follows the provocation, and prepossession (πρόληψις) — a predisposition laid down by past assents, making the next one easier — takes the place of struggle (The Philokalia, vol. 1, trans. Palmer, Sherrard, and Ware, London: Faber and Faber, 1979, glossary, s.vv. “Provocation”, “Prepossession”). Philotheos of Sinai and Hesychios describe the same movement with less taxonomy and more urgency (Hesychios the Priest, On Watchfulness and Holiness, in The Philokalia, vol. 1; Philotheos of Sinai, Forty Texts on Watchfulness, in The Philokalia, vol. 3). The point common to all of them is not the number of stages but the shape: a thought that is met early is met easily, and a thought repeatedly consented to becomes a disposition.

The First Suggestion Carries No Guilt

This is the pastorally decisive claim in the whole scheme, and it is universally held. The prosbole is not a sin. It arrives without being invited and often against everything the person wants; it is the occasion of a choice, not the choice. Climacus says so explicitly, and the Philokalia glossary restates it: the provocation “is not a sin”, since it is involuntary (The Philokalia, vol. 1, glossary, s.v. “Provocation”; Climacus, Ladder 15).

The consequence for a scrupulous person is large. Blasphemous thoughts in church, obscene images during prayer, sudden hatred toward someone loved — these are the standard examples in the literature, and the standard counsel is that their very violence and unwelcomeness is evidence that they are not the person’s own. The blasphemous thought in particular is treated as a demonic assault whose whole force lies in the despair it produces; Climacus devotes a step to it and instructs the sufferer to refuse to take responsibility for it and to refuse to discuss it (Climacus, Ladder 23; trans. Luibheid and Russell, 1982). St. Nikodemos of the Holy Mountain gives the same counsel in the Handbook of Spiritual Counsel and in Unseen Warfare (see St. Nikodemos the Hagiorite: Unseen Warfare and Spiritual Exercises).

Guilt begins at consent, and it is proportioned to consent. This is why the tradition’s characteristic question in confession is not “what happened to you?” but “what did you agree to?”

Cut It at the Beginning — and Do Not Argue With It

Two practical rules follow from the sequence, and they are found together everywhere in the literature.

Meet the thought at its entrance. The universal counsel is that a thought is resisted at the prosbole with almost no effort and at the stage of captivity with almost none available. The Fathers’ image for this is Psalm 136:9 (LXX; 137:9 in the Hebrew numbering) — the dashing of the infants of Babylon against the rock — read allegorically as the destruction of the newborn thought against Christ, and used in this sense from the desert onward (Hesychios the Priest, On Watchfulness and Holiness, in The Philokalia, vol. 1; Philotheos of Sinai, Forty Texts on Watchfulness, in The Philokalia, vol. 3).

Do not dispute with it. The counsel that surprises modern readers is that one should not reason with a logismos, refute it, or examine it at length. Argument is already syndyasmos; the mind that is disputing is the mind that is engaged. The instruction is to turn away — to prayer, to the Name, to work — rather than to win. St. Ignatius Brianchaninov is emphatic on this and treats the impulse to analyse one’s thoughts as itself a form of captivity (Brianchaninov, The Arena, trans. Archimandrite Lazarus, Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Monastery, 1991; see St. Ignatius Brianchaninov: The Arena). The same rule appears in modern Athonite counsel (see St. Paisios: Logismoi).

The third rule belongs to the next section but must be named here: thoughts are disclosed. The Gaza school made the manifestation of thoughts to an elder — ἐξαγόρευσις, Russian откровение помыслов — the centre of formation, on the principle that a thought spoken loses its power and that the person under attack is the last person able to judge it (Barsanuphius and John, Letters, trans. John Chryssavgis, 2 vols., Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2006–07; see The Discernment of Spirits).

References

Barsanuphius and John. Letters. Trans. John Chryssavgis. 2 vols. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2006–07.
Brakke, David, trans. Evagrius of Pontus: Talking Back — A Monastic Handbook for Combating Demons. Cistercian Studies 229. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2009.
Brianchaninov, Ignatius. The Arena: An Offering to Contemporary Monasticism. Trans. Archimandrite Lazarus. Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Monastery, 1991.
Cassian, John. The Conferences, 1.19–22. Trans. Boniface Ramsey. Ancient Christian Writers 57. New York: Paulist Press, 1997.
John Climacus. The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Steps 15 and 23. Trans. Colm Luibheid and Norman Russell. New York: Paulist Press, 1982.
The Philokalia: The Complete Text. Trans. Palmer, Sherrard, and Ware. Vol. 1 (1979): Hesychios the Priest, On Watchfulness and Holiness; glossary, s.vv. “Provocation”, “Prepossession”, “Passion”. Vol. 3 (1984): Philotheos of Sinai, Forty Texts on Watchfulness. London: Faber and Faber.
Scripture: Psalm 136:9 (LXX) / 137:9; Matthew 4:1–11.