09 — The Vocabulary in Use

The closing section puts the terms back together and then fences them. One file sets out the virtues opposed to the passions and the schemes of progress — praktike and theoria, purification, illumination, and union — while stating how far such maps bind and how far they do not. The other is the guardrails file: what this vocabulary is not for, written to be usable by a priest handing this literature to an enthusiastic convert.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

A glossary that stops at definitions leaves two questions unanswered: how the terms fit together, and what happens when they are misapplied. This section answers both.

The Virtues and the Order of Progress treats the constructive side of the vocabulary — the virtues, each named against the passion it heals; humility, repentance, mourning, and compunction; and the two great schemes of progress, Evagrius’ praktike–physike–theologia and the Dionysian purification–illumination–union. It states plainly what those schemes are: pedagogical maps of very great usefulness which no council has defined, whose stages overlap in practice, and from whose first stage no one graduates.

Cautions for the Modern Reader is the guardrails file, modelled on the corresponding file in the collection on deification. This literature is monastic in origin and is routinely misapplied — as psychological diagnosis, as a self-directed programme, as moralism, as a technique, and as a vocabulary for assessing other people. The file states each misapplication and the reason it is one. It says plainly that the passions are not a taxonomy of mental illness and that this literature is not a substitute for medical care.

File Contents
The Virtues and the Order of Progress The virtues opposed to the eight; humility, repentance, penthos, and the gift of tears; praktike, physike, theologia; purification, illumination, union; how far the schemes bind; synergy
Cautions for the Modern Reader Nine guardrails: the monastic register; not a psychiatric taxonomy; not self-directed; not moralism; passions are not emotions; not a technique; not for judging others; not a substitute for the Church; and how to read the sources

See Also