Discernment and the Measure

Diakrisis (διάκρισις), Slavonic рассуждение, is the judgment that distinguishes — between thoughts, between courses of action, and above all between what a particular person at a particular stage can bear and what will break him. The desert called it the greatest of the virtues. This file sets out that judgment, the “royal road” it keeps, the concept of a person’s measure, and the reason the tradition gives obedience to those who do not yet have discernment.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

The Word and Its English

Greek διάκρισις means separating, distinguishing, judging between. The standard English Philokalia renders it “discrimination” and defines it as the spiritual gift permitting a person to distinguish between the types of thought that enter his mind, to assess them accurately, and to treat them accordingly (The Philokalia, vol. 1, trans. Palmer, Sherrard, and Ware, London: Faber and Faber, 1979, glossary, s.v. “Discrimination”). The rendering was unobjectionable when it was chosen and is now a difficulty: in current English “discrimination” carries a primary social and pejorative sense that has nothing to do with the term. Readers of the Philokalia should mentally substitute “discernment” throughout. Slavonic and Russian рассуждение — literally “reasoning through”, “judging” — has no such problem and is the word used across the Russian ascetic literature.

The Greatest of the Virtues

The tradition’s estimate of discernment is stated in a scene St. John Cassian preserves. A group of elders spent a night debating which virtue is the greatest; various answers were given — fasting, vigils, withdrawal, the works of mercy — and each was shown to be capable of going wrong. St. Antony gave the verdict: discretion, because it is the virtue that keeps all the others from destroying the one who practises them, and without it the rest are undertaken blindly (Cassian, Conferences 2.2; trans. Boniface Ramsey, Ancient Christian Writers 57, New York: Paulist Press, 1997). Conference 2 as a whole, given to Abba Moses, is the classic patristic treatise on the subject and stands in the Philokalia in an abridged Greek form as “On the Holy Fathers of Sketis and on Discrimination” (The Philokalia, vol. 1, 1979).

Cassian does not leave the claim abstract. In the same Conference he tells the story of Heron, a monk of extraordinary and long-sustained austerity who refused the counsel of the elders, was persuaded by an apparition that he was beyond harm, and threw himself into a well to prove it; he was pulled out and died three days later (Cassian, Conferences 2.5; trans. Ramsey, ACW 57). The story is told as a warning about ascetic achievement without discernment, and the tradition has kept telling it because the pattern it describes recurs: severity, isolation from counsel, a confirming experience, catastrophe.

The Royal Road

The characteristic operation of discernment is finding the mean, which the Fathers call the royal road — the way that turns aside neither to the right nor to the left (Numbers 20:17; Deuteronomy 5:32). Excess and deficiency are both refused, and the tradition is at least as suspicious of excess, because excess looks like zeal.

St. Antony’s image is the one most quoted. A hunter, scandalized to find Antony relaxing with the brethren, was told to shoot an arrow, then another, then another; when he objected that the bow would break if it were always bent, Antony replied that it is so with the work of God, and that if the brethren are stretched beyond measure they will quickly break (The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection, Antony 13; trans. Benedicta Ward, rev. ed., Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1984).

Two applications of the royal road recur throughout the literature. In ascetic practice: fasting and vigil are calibrated to a person’s health, work, and stage, and a rule taken up beyond one’s strength is treated not as admirable but as a mistake likely to end in collapse or in pride. In dealing with others: the same act calls for severity in one case and gentleness in another, and the elders’ refusal to give uniform counsel is not indecision but the exercise of this virtue.

Measure

The Greek μέτρον and its Slavonic equivalent carry a technical weight in this literature. A person’s measure is what he can actually bear at his present stage — of ascetic labour, of solitude, of responsibility, of knowledge about himself. The tradition holds that measure is real, that it differs between persons, that it changes over time, and that a person is a poor judge of his own.

Three consequences follow, and they run against the grain of most modern spiritual self-help.

More is not better. A rule kept moderately and permanently is worth more than a rule kept severely and abandoned. The elders consistently prefer the small measure sustained.

The same counsel is not given to everyone. This is why the ascetic literature resists systematization and why a reader who applies a saying addressed to a hermit of fifty years to his own life has misused it (see The Sources and Their Limits).

A person cannot reliably assess his own measure. Hence the structural role of the elder, of confession, and of the parish priest who tells an enthusiastic convert to eat and sleep normally.

Discernment as Gift and as Acquisition

The tradition speaks of discernment in two registers, and both are needed.

It is a charism — one of the gifts St. Paul lists (1 Corinthians 12:10) — given by God and not producible by technique. And it is acquired, growing with experience, with the honest observation of one’s own falls, and above all with humility. St. John Climacus devotes Step 26 of the Ladder, the longest in the book, to discernment of thoughts, passions, and virtues, and treats it as the fruit of the whole preceding ascent rather than as an entry-level skill (Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Step 26; trans. Colm Luibheid and Norman Russell, New York: Paulist Press, 1982; see St. John Climacus: Simplicity, Humility, Discernment).

The link with humility is not decorative. Discernment requires seeing what is there rather than what one wishes to see, and the passions distort perception in the direction of self-interest — which is why the tradition holds that a person’s discernment is bounded by his humility, and why the claim to possess discernment is treated as evidence against it.

What a Beginner Is Given Instead

The practical corollary is the tradition’s whole doctrine of obedience. A person who does not yet have discernment is not left to act on a judgment he does not possess; he is given someone else’s. The disclosure of thoughts to an elder, and the practice of acting on counsel rather than on one’s own assessment, are the substitute for a faculty still being formed (Barsanuphius and John, Letters, trans. John Chryssavgis, 2 vols., Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2006–07; see The Discernment of Spirits; Orthodox Monasticism: The Elder and the Disciple).

This is also why obedience is treated as a shortcut rather than an imposition: it gives a beginner the use of a discernment he has not yet acquired. The theology of the elder–disciple relation, its limits, and the abuses to which it is liable belong to Spiritual Direction and The Optina Elders: Startchestvo and Spiritual Direction, and this collection defers to them.

Discernment When Elders Are Rare

The obvious modern objection — that the structure presupposes experienced elders who are hard to find — was raised and answered within the tradition itself in the nineteenth century, and the answer is now the standard one.

St. Ignatius Brianchaninov held that Spirit-bearing directors had become extremely rare in his own time, and drew the practical conclusions without abolishing the principle. He counselled living by counsel rather than in the fantasy of an obedience one does not have: testing one’s path against Scripture and the writings of the Fathers, taking the advice of sober contemporaries, keeping to plain and safe forms of prayer, and treating humility, repentance, and the commandments as the guide that does not deceive (Brianchaninov, The Arena, trans. Archimandrite Lazarus, Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Monastery, 1991; see St. Ignatius Brianchaninov: Discernment for a Weakened Age). The collection on the Jesus Prayer states the same answer, and this one agrees with it (see The Jesus Prayer: Prelest and the Need for Guidance).

Two things in Brianchaninov’s answer are easy to miss and are the substance of it. Living by counsel is not living by one’s own judgment — it still requires submitting one’s thoughts to someone. And the criteria are objective and available: Scripture, the Fathers, the mind of the Church, and the plain commandments do not require a charismatic elder to consult.

References

Barsanuphius and John. Letters. Trans. John Chryssavgis. 2 vols. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2006–07.
Brianchaninov, Ignatius. The Arena: An Offering to Contemporary Monasticism. Trans. Archimandrite Lazarus. Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Monastery, 1991.
Cassian, John. The Conferences, Conference 2 (Abba Moses, “On Discretion”), esp. 2.2 and 2.5. Trans. Boniface Ramsey. Ancient Christian Writers 57. New York: Paulist Press, 1997.
John Climacus. The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Step 26. Trans. Colm Luibheid and Norman Russell. New York: Paulist Press, 1982.
The Philokalia: The Complete Text, vol. 1. Trans. Palmer, Sherrard, and Ware. London: Faber and Faber, 1979. (John Cassian, “On the Holy Fathers of Sketis and on Discrimination”; glossary, s.v. “Discrimination”.)
The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection, Antony 13. Trans. Benedicta Ward. Rev. ed. Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1984.
Scripture: Numbers 20:17; Deuteronomy 5:32; 1 Corinthians 12:10.