The Monastic Contribution
The Monastic Contribution
Monasticism — a life devoted above all to prayer — makes a special contribution to mystical theology in the patristic period. However, it is also in the monastic tradition itself that a pronounced anti-mystical strand is found: an insistence that man is utterly remote from God, and in this world must live a life of repentance and ceaseless struggle against the powers of evil. The life of contemplation, the search for a sense of kinship with God, continues to call men, and so the two strands — mystical and anti-mystical — are woven together in the history of Christian monasticism and are the source of endless tensions. At the outset of this history, both were embodied in a state of perfect development in one man, Evagrius of Pontus.
Keywords: monasticism, anti-mystical, prayer, mystical theology, patristic period, Evagrius of Pontus
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