Reviewed by: Cassian the Monk Marianne Djuth Columba Stewart. Cassian the Monk. Oxford Studies in Historical Theology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Pp. ix + 286. $60.00. The first major study of Cassian (ca. 360–435) to appear in print in twenty years, Cassian the Monk provides a thorough analysis of the life, writings, and theology of a man who deserves to be read, and heard, on his own terms. This is the task that the book’s author sets for himself. On the basis of his shared commitment with Cassian to the monastic life, Stewart approaches Cassian’s texts as a monk writing about a monk from a theological perspective. In the end, he succeeds admirably well in giving his reader a balanced, insightful account of who Cassian is and what he wrote. Stewart devotes the initial chapters of the book to a threefold consideration of who Cassian is as monk, writer, and theologian. Chapter 1, “Cassian the Monk” (3–26), introduces the reader to a man whose elusiveness with respect to origin, personality, and biographical details plays a central role in the telling of his story. Stewart masterfully weaves together what little we know of Cassian’s life from relevant primary and secondary sources. The portrait that emerges from this meticulous survey of virtually every known piece of evidence currently available to scholars provides the basis for situating Cassian as writer and theologian. The key factor here is that the credibility of Cassian’s writings on monastic life rests upon his experience of monasticism. Chapters 2–3, “Cassian the Writer” (27–39) and “Cassian the Theologian” (40–61), focus the reader’s attention on how to read Cassian. Since many different Cassians surface throughout his works, Stewart, adopting Cassian’s own distinction, proposes to read him through the lenses of the different types of contemplative knowledge found in Scripture: historical, allegorical, tropological, and anagogical. In Chapter 2, for example, Stewart’s approach to such topics as the relationship between the Institutes and Conferences, literary style and sources, and the pedagogical technique of repetition requires an emphasis on tropological knowledge. The focus on these topics in Chapter 2 anticipates the inseparability of tropological knowledge from anagogical knowledge discussed in Chapter 3. Stewart’s preoccupation with eschatology in this chapter aims in part to deflect any suggestion that Cassian’s monastic theology is dualistic in nature. Instead, he presents Cassian as “a visionary and a pragmatist” (40) in search of contemplative knowledge of Christ through the practice of ascesis, which engenders the purity of heart needed to attain the ultimate goal of heaven. By downplaying the Neoplatonic assumptions of Cassian’s thought, Stewart emphasizes the Christo-centric character of Cassian’s experience of contemplation, and thereby accentuates the importance of eschatology in Cassian’s account of the relation between purity of heart and contemplation. The remainder of Stewart’s comments, Chapters 4–7, concentrates on the content of Cassian’s monastic theology. Here Stewart is at his creative best in selecting and exploring original themes for discussion. In keeping with Cassian’s [End Page 468] emphasis on the importance of the practice of virtue in the monastic life, Stewart dedicates Chapter 4, “Flesh and Spirit, Continence and Chastity” (62–84), to a study of Cassian’s anthropology. His argument has two original twists to it. First, he claims that the virtue of chastity constitutes the core of Cassian’s ascetical theology. Second, in order to account for the presence of this virtue in the soul, he revisits the disputed issue of grace and freedom in Cassian, contextualizing the issue in relation to the discussion of chastity. The frankness of Stewart’s approach to topics such as nocturnal emissions and orgasmic dreams in charting the largely unexplored territory of Cassian’s conception of monastic sexuality serves to remind the reader of the way in which Cassian balances the relationship between sexuality and spirituality without recourse to dualism. Stewart reserves the bulk of his comments on Cassian’s monastic theology for his theology of prayer. Chapters 5–7, “The Bible and Prayer” (85–99), “Unceasing Prayer” (100–113), and “Experience of Prayer” (114–30), provide an appropriate setting for collating the...
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Jan 1, 2022
Rev Eliazar Daila Baba Phd 
