‘Our Struggle Is for the Contemplation of the Holy Trinity’: Spiritual Formation as Divine Contemplation in Evagrius Ponticus

Abstract

For Evagrius, spiritual formation is a process of incessant development through the careful exegesis of Scripture, especially its wisdom books. In order to achieve spiritual formation, we must acquire a certain moral philosophy and a solid natural philosophy which allow us to reach the contemplation of God as Trinity. In more concrete terms, we must become aware of the ethical dimension of life through asceticism, and then we must understand the world as God’s creation through the teachings of Scripture so that, in the end, we should reach union with God. Evagrius teaches that there is a right path to God and that is to be achieved through prayer, which allows us to understand Scripture and creation. Spiritual formation is a path of continuous investigation in Evagrius, which is a lifelong pursuit of personal sanctification through dedication and contemplation. The purpose of these spiritual efforts is achieving the vision of God, whose culmination is union with God as Holy Trinity.