Psalmody and Prayer in the Writings of Evagrius Ponticus (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Psalmody and Prayer in the Writings of Evagrius Ponticus Robert Sinkewicz Luke Dysinger, OSB Psalmody and Prayer in the Writings of Evagrius Ponticus Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005 Pp. viii + 245. In this publication Fr. Luke Dysinger presents the revision of his doctoral thesis at Oxford University. This is a close study of the Scholia on the Psalms by Evagrius of Pontus and is intended for an academic audience. The Scholia on the Psalms is one of the longer (ca. 1360 scholia) and more important of Evagrius's works, but it has been largely neglected by scholarship because of the lack of a critical edition, a need that will hopefully soon be met by the edition being prepared by Marie-Josèphe Rondeau. Luke Dysinger's work is thus a welcome addition to Evagrian scholarship. The volume begins with an introductory chapter treating the life, writings, and ascetical-mystical theology of Evagrius. The presentation is clear, thorough, and balanced in its judgments. Dysinger's study appeared before it could profit from the posthumous work of Antoine Guillaumont, Un philosophe au désert: Évagre le Pontique (Paris: Vrin, 2004). The author continues with a chapter on the monastic discipline of psalmody, reviewing the evidence of Athanasius, Palladius, the Desert Fathers, and John Cassian. It is not clear how much of this is relevant to Evagrius's own practice. For him the important office was the synaxis celebrated at some specific time during the night (Eulogios 9 [PG 79:1104C]). It seems likely that it was celebrated in the middle of the night rather than just before dawn, as Dysinger suggests. Citing the evidence of John Cassian, Dysinger also believes that the intervals for quiet contemplation following each psalm were brief, but this argument is not convincing. Cassian was engaged in a "re-reading" of Egyptian monastic practice for the benefit of a very different audience, and his evidence for the monastic office cannot so readily be projected back into the practices of Evagrius at Kellia. Chapter 3 is devoted to Evagrius's practice of biblical exegesis and his comments on psalmody in particular. Here and for the remainder of the book Dysinger explicates the thought of Evagrius by giving a detailed commentary on the relevant texts, citing both the original and his translation. Much of this chapter is devoted to a section in Evagrius's On Prayer (cc. 82–87). Dysinger, however, misses one of the more important comments of Evagrius on psalmody, that found in Eulogios 9 (PG 79:1104C–1105A; note the long recension of this passage in R. E. Sinkewicz, Evagrius of Pontus: The Greek Ascetic Corpus [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003], 315). Chapter 4 covers the topic of psalmody as spiritual remedy, and chapter 5 the related topic of the Psalter as spiritual weapon. The latter chapter is particularly interesting for its exposition of the Evagrian practice of "counter-saying the thoughts," that is, the application of a scriptural verse as a remedy for a particular psycho-spiritual affliction, presumably by means of the meditative repetition of the biblical verse. This practice is most prominent in Evagrius's Antirrhetikos, but it is also found in the Scholia on the Psalms. The final chapter, entitled "The Psalter as Contemplative Vision," treats first [End Page 385] Evagrius's christological exegesis of the Psalms and more particularly some controversial issues of his Christology. Dysinger reexamines those passages from the scholia that have been used by Guillaumont and others to show that Evagrius held that Jesus Christ is not the incarnation of the divine Logos but rather the enfleshed Christ-nous. For the four scholia at issue, the text of Vat. gr. 754 in addition to another scholion from this manuscript not available to Guillaumont shows clearly that Evagrius's Christology is in fact quite orthodox, affirming the uniqueness of Christ and his role as a mediator. The second half of this chapter is devoted to a discussion of another important aspect of Evagrian theology, namely, the logoi of judgment and providence—in other words, the domain of theological anthropology. There is one serious omission in this study. There is no discussion of the state of the text of...