Disordered and Demonic Thoughts

Though I think, after Augustine Casiday's recent work, that any suspicion of Evagrius should be set aside, I would argue that even those who are still a bit uneasy about him can and should benefit from his original and path-breaking insights into the role of the mind and the destructive power of thoughts--1500 years before Freud and modern psychology. I thought of Evagrius and his insights into the logismoi or disordered thoughts when listening last weekend to a fascinating and moving interview on NPR with Martin Pistorius and his harrowing descent into massive disability whereby he was unable to move or communicate, but still had an active mind--a mind that began malevolently to work against him, assaulting him with dark and despairing thoughts of his hopelessness and worthlessness. How cruel those thoughts can be! It is little short of miraculous that he has made the dramatic recovery he has, as recounted in his recent memoir, Ghost Boy: The Miraculous Escape of a Misdiagnosed Boy Trapped Inside His Own Body.

There are many recent studies on Evagrius, but three in particular address the thoughts and the temptation of despair: George Tsakiridis, Evagrius Ponticus and Cognitive Science: A Look at Moral Evil and the Thoughts. (I interviewed George here.) In addition, there is David Brakke's Evagrius Of Pontus: Talking Back: A Monastic Handbook for Combating Demons and then Gabriel Bunge's Despondency: The Spiritual Teaching of Evagrius of Pontus.

Rublev's Trinity

Rublev's Trinity is of course the most well known icon in the world. And it has been nicely studied in a book published a few years ago, and just recently released electronically for those who have an Amazon Kindle: Gabriel Bunge, The Rublev Trinity, trans. Andrew Louth (St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2012).

About this book the publisher tells us:

Many art historians and scholars have described the sublime icon of the Holy Trinity by St Andrei Rublev, but nothing equals this detailed and comprehensive theological explanation by Benedectine monk Gabriel Bunge. In this inspired and utterly sober work, Fr Gabriel aims to make the icon's timeless message accessible to the contemporary praying believer.
The author understands precisely that Russian iconographic art, much more than the Romanesque and Gothic sacred art of the West, represents a theological confession of faith. Icon painters were conscious of this responsibility, and the monk-painters who learned their Orthodox faith through the prayer of the Hours and the Divine Liturgy, through the familiar texts of the hymns and the Gospel readings, reflected the revelation of God in their art. Fr Gabriel, completely attuned to this method of inspiration, upholds the palladium - the sign and meaning of Holy Russia - in this work, and reverently expounds upon the awesome utterance by Pavel Florensky: "There exists the icon of the Trinity by St Andrei Rublev; therefore, God exists."