“Jason Byassee’s Introduction to the Desert Fathers is presented in a spirit of humility that befits the subject. He offers simple yet rich engagements with the Sayings that use humor, insight, and life experience to prompt readers to reflect with the same tools. Readers who are looking for a place to begin their interaction with the often paradoxical teachings of the desert fathers would do well to begin here.”
—Amy Frykholm, Special Correspondent, Christian Century
“Jason Byassee has established himself as the master of explaining complex subjects and helping us understand why they matter. He has done it again with the Desert Fathers.”
—James C. Howell, pastor of Myers Park United Methodist Church, Charlotte, North Carolina
o An Introduction to the
Desert Fathers
Cascade Companions
•
The Christian theological tradition provides an embarrassment of riches: from scripture to modern scholarship, we are blessed with a vast and complex theological inheritance. And yet this feast of traditional riches is too frequently inaccessible to the general reader.
The Cascade Companions series addresses the challenge by publishing books that combine academic rigor with broad appeal and readability. They aim to introduce nonspecialist readers to that vital storehouse of authors, documents, themes, histories, arguments, and movements that comprise this heritage with brief yet compelling volumes.
Titles in this series:
Reading Augustine by Jason Byassee
Conflict, Community, and Honor by John H. Elliott
Forthcoming titles:
Theology and Culture: A Guide to the Discussion
by D. Stephen Long
Reading Paul by Michael J. Gorman
iPod, YouTube, Wii Play: Theological Engagements with Entertainment by Brent Laytham
Creation and Evolution by Tatha Wiley
Theological Interpretation of Scripture by Stephen Fowl
An Introduction to the Desert Fathers
Jason Byassee
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE DESERT FATHERS
Copyright © 2007 Jason Byassee. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf & Stock, 199 W. 8th Ave., Eugene, OR 97401.
ISBN13: 978-1-59752-530-5
Cataloging-in-Publication data:
Byassee, Jason
An introduction to the desert fathers / Jason Byassee.
xii + 118 p.; 20 cm.
ISBN13: 978-1-59752-530-5
1. Desert fathers. 2. Spirituality. 3. Spiritual life—Christianity. I. Title
BV4832.3 .B90 2007
Manufactured in the U.S.A.
Preface
o I wrote this little book because I found the Sayings of the Desert Fathers delightfully applicable to our present-day efforts to live a more intentional spiritual life in the way of Jesus. Their best “advice” might be their form: if you want to follow Jesus more rigorously, ask for a word from one more advanced in holiness.
I’ve often been the beneficiary of an edifying word from another in the course of writing. First, I’m grateful to Kurt Berends for originally proposing the idea of writing this and my previous book Reading Augustine with Cascade. Thanks are due to Jon Stock, Charlie Collier, and all the other good souls at Wipf and Stock for publishing these study guides. The evidence is in: a relationship to an extraordinary church like the Church of the Servant King makes you a better publisher. Thanks also to Jeremy Funk, my copy editor at Cascade, who dealt with me about as gently as some of these abbas! The work is certainly the better for it.
The best dispenser of wisdom in my life is my wife, Jaylynn, United Methodist pastor, mother, and amma in the way of Christ’s wisdom. Our life together with Jack, Sam, and Will is a rigorous but joyful way to learn discipleship. I’m grateful to my employer, the Christian Century, especially to my boss David Heim, for originally giving me a platform from which to write for an ecclesial audience somewhere between the parish and the academy. And I’m grateful to Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, North Park Theological Seminary, Wheaton College, and Northern Seminary for the chance to learn from students I claim to be “teaching” (actually being the abba is a terrifying thought!). Writing this book was an excuse constantly to think of and be grateful to God for my own collection of mentors: Tim Conder, James Howell, and Will Willimon above all. Keep giving me words, abbas!
Mostly, I wish to thank my brother, Eric Byassee, my closest friend. Eric is the real artist in my family. He’s a guitar player, singer, and general musician extraordinaire who is right now either booking or playing a gig somewhere between Chapel Hill, Nashville, or Austin. I have no better conversation partner on matters having to do with popular culture, sports, music, or life in general. I can’t remember a spiritual doldrum I’ve inhabited from which he hasn’t helped lift me. He may be surprised to know he’s played the role of “spiritual father” to me, but he indeed has. I treasure our relationship, and I dedicate this book to him.
For Eric
Introduction
o We all have mental images of the desert, images honed by popular culture. The desert as a wild, uncultivated place where only the strong survive: cacti, various reptiles, the odd cowboy.
That image has a degree of truth in some places. Just as often, we have successfully cultivated the desert. Arizona could never have become the retirement mecca that it is without air conditioning and technological advances in procuring water—the latter with some political controversy. The southern United States generally could not have grown so precipitously in population without similar advances. We like the harsh beauty of the desert, viewed comfortably from an air-conditioned room some sixty degrees cooler than it is outside, with critters kept at bay. Though we may still dress up like cowboys, the reality is not so romantic as the carefully crafted Hollywood image.
In the ancient Christian world, the desert also became a city—but not like Mesa or Tucson. It became a city of those fleeing a church grown soft in collusion with the powerful Roman Empire, trying to live out the risky vision of discipleship glimpsed in the gospels. The description grew up in which these were “white martyrs”: those whose martyrdom was not colored with the red of their blood but was a “death” nonetheless—of ascetic denial of comforts, sex, and worldly security. The “desert fathers,” as they came to be called, did combat not only with their bodies’ wants, but also with demons—demons often represented in terrifying bodily form, as in the famous exploits of St. Anthony. The desert fathers have long occupied a certain pride of place in Christian understanding, such that believers far from the desert and well removed from radical ascetic living champion these peculiar ascetics and, in some sense, made them their own.
All that is a bit romantic and far-fetched. The desert fathers often complained about far more mundane things like mere tedium or listlessness. Further, the romantic image of the previous paragraph suggests that the monks were primarily against certain things—the Roman world, their own bodies, the demons, and so on.1 Their self-understanding would have included not only an antagonistic posture but also, or even primarily, an affirming one: the pursuit