John Cassian’s Royal Road: Discretion,Balance,and the Tradition of the Fathers

Introduction

When the tribes of Israel were marching from Sinai to Canaan, they came to the borders of the Moabites and Amorites. They sent a letter to King Sihon, saying, ‘Let [us] pass through your lands. We will not turn aside into field or vineyard; we will not drink the water of any well; we will go by the King’s Highway until we have passed through your territory’. ¹ The ancient road was wide enough to accommodate the passage of a mass of people their size, and they promised not to veer from their course for either food or water. In the next millennium, the Roman roads were kept safe and in good condition in order to support the movement of imperial officials and information. John Cassian, monastic theologian of the early fifth century, used the imagery of these royal roads throughout his writings. The royal road symbolized for Cassian the path of theological balance as expressed by the luminaries of catholic Christianity and the way of ascetic discretion passed down in the tradition of the fathers. He explicitly utilized it in reference to ascetic discipline and the acceptance of all life experience, whether good or ill, and it implicitly structured his approach to anthropology, soteriology, and Christology. In this essay, I will provide an overview of the ways in which Cassian employs the metaphor of the royal road and, in the process, show how the theme of discretion, as both ascetic and theological balance, undergirds the whole of his theological project.

Royal road of Asceticism

In Institute Eleven, Cassian analyzed the spirit of vainglory. He noted that it attempted to take advantage of a monk’s failure or victory under temptation and trial. Referencing Proverbs 4:27, he counseled his readers that

we are warned by the most wise Solomon: ‘Do not turn to the right or to the left’. This means that you must not let yourself be flattered by your virtues or puffed up by the spiritual successes on your right, nor wander off to the path of vice on your left . . . ²

Those who wished to travel along the royal road needed to beware the danger of worldly, carnal pride as well as the pride that could result from false humility and spiritual victories.

Cassian referred to this awareness of the condition of one’s heart as the virtue and gift of discretion. Discretion also designated the examination of one’s ascetic discipline, whether it demonstrated the proper balance between ascetic severity and laxity. Cassian here found a way to combine Aristotelian ethics and the wisdom of the desert fathers in his fundamental virtue of discretion. ³ In Conference Two, he instructed his readers that discretion

avoids excess of any kind and teaches the monk always to proceed along the royal road and does not let him be inflated by virtues on the right hand – that is, in an excess of fervor to exceed the measure of a justifiable moderation by a foolish presumption – nor let him wander off to the vices on the left hand because of a weakness for pleasure – that is, under the pretext of controlling the body, to grow soft because of a contrary lukewarmness of spirit. ⁴

The fatigue of ascetic severity, such as extreme fasts and prolonged vigils, would be equally detrimental to a monk as would the spiritual vulnerability of ascetic complacency. ⁵ Thus, Cassian repeatedly counseled monks to pursue ascetic disciplines marked by moderation and sustainability. ⁶

Another gauge of spiritual equilibrium that Cassian directed his readers to cultivate was the capacity to accept without preference both the highs and lows of life. He took his inspiration from the apostle Paul who told the Corinthians that the attainment of virtue and the endurance of trials were God’s ‘weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left’. ⁷ The mature monk would thus be

always proceeding along on an even course and on the royal road, never moved away from that state of calm at the appearance of joy, as it were toward the right, nor as it were pushed to the left by an onrush of adversity or when sadness predominates. ⁸

Cassian considered those who had attained the spiritual tranquility of being undisturbed by either ‘spiritual achievements’ or the ‘turmoil of trials’ to be ‘ambidextrous’. ⁹ The soldier of Christ, as Cassian often called his monks, who developed the strength of both hands utilized fortunate and unfortunate events to further the pursuit of the perfect life.

Cassian understood this equanimity to be the parameter for Christ’s yoke being easy and his burden light. ¹⁰ Such a person could not be disturbed by either the trials of the enemy or the command of one’s spiritual elder. But many made an initial renunciation that was incomplete, thus sabotaging their entire endeavor. The royal path of Christ – trod by prophets, apostles, and Christ himself – could be abandoned for side-trails choked by the thorn bushes of numerous vices:

It is clearly we, I say, who make rough the straight and smooth paths of the Lord with the wicked and hard rocks of our desires, who very foolishly abandon the royal road paved with apostolic and prophetic stones and made level by the footsteps of all the holy ones and of the Lord himself, and who pursue byways and brambly roads. ¹¹

Cassian asserted that the way of Christ was smooth and easy to those who had committed themselves to obey the commandments of Christ, but it was hard and burdensome for those who attempted to follow their own desires while yet proclaiming their allegiance to Christ. ¹² While it was the monks who journeyed along this royal road, the journey would be impossible without the grace of God accompanying their effort and fulfilling their intention.

Royal road of Anthropology

Cassian can be seen to have applied his allegory of the ‘royal road’ to his understanding of the ordering of grace and free will. ‘For many who hold to one of these alternatives and assert it more freely than is right have fallen into different self-contradictory errors’. ¹³ On the one hand, ‘no one should think that we have suggested these things in an attempt to say that the whole of salvation is entirely dependent on our faith, according to the godless opinion of some’. ¹⁴ Here, he condemned the extreme position of the Pelagians. ¹⁵ On the other hand, ‘it must not be believed that God made the human being in such a way that he could never will or be capable of the good’. ¹⁶ He equally condemned the predestinarians who maintained that the human will could only follow evil inclinations and that Christ only died for the elect. ¹⁷

In Cassian’s monastic works, dependence on the assistance of grace was juxtaposed with a monk’s own responsibility to struggle against the vices without much concern about resolving the inherent dissonance between divine dependence and monastic effort. Institute Twelve and Conference Three supplied a common vision of the synergy of grace and willful action. Situated within a discussion of the vice of pride, Cassian intended his first delineation of grace and free will to promote the cultivation of true humility. Consequently, ‘in the case of each virtue where we have felt that we have made progress, we speak the words of the Apostle: “Not I, but the grace of God with me”’. ¹⁸ In light of the fact that one’s initial call and salvation were by the gift and grace of God, perfection was likewise to be considered an act of divine gratuity since the willing and the running are empowered by grace. ¹⁹ Cassian nonetheless asserted that such grace would only be given to those who willed and ran, no matter how weak the will or how brief the running. Indeed, because God desired our perfection and salvation even more than we did, He ‘gives what we ask, opens when we knock, and causes to be found what we are seeking’. ²⁰ Cassian thus insisted on the necessity of grace for the pursuit and attainment of purity of heart.

Discussing the perfection of monastic renunciation, Cassian considered another discussion of grace and free will to be advantageous. Halfway through the conference, Cassian’s companion, Germanus, asked Abba Paphnutius, ‘In what does free will consist, then, and how may our efforts be considered praiseworthy if God begins and ends in us everything that pertains to our perfection?’ ²¹ Paphnutius concisely responded that free will and monastic effort constituted the middle of ‘every work and practice of discipline’. ²² However, ‘it is by no means thanks to our own diligence and application that we are able to attain perfection’, because the ‘weakness of free will’ and its ‘slippery nature’ continually turn the monk away from its pursuit of virtue. And yet, monks could depend on the protection of God to keep them from falling too far off the road of ascetic progress. ²³ Citing Philippians 2:13, Cassian stated that, in addition to a good will and good works, the beginning of faith itself was a gift of God. ²⁴ He concluded the conference by assuring his readers that his defense of grace in no way discredited human free will. Rather, ‘it belongs to divine grace to offer us opportunities of salvation and favorable moments and victory, but that it is up to us to pursue either intently or lazily the benefits that God bestows’. ²⁵

Cassian continued to hold these two harmonious, though dissonant, truths in Conference Thirteen. Germanus was still concerned that the insistence upon the monk’s dependence on grace ‘tends toward the destruction of free will’. ²⁶ Abba Chaeremon, the interlocutor in this conference, reasserted the weakness of the will to bring about the good that it desired. Throughout the conference, Cassian provided pair after pair of scriptural passages that affirmed the power of the will and then the weakness of the will. That ‘good nature, which has been bestowed by the kindness of the Creator’, yet possessed the capacity to seek after God, ²⁷ but the door could only be opened by God. At the same time, though, God often called those who had not been seeking and drew unto himself many who had been willfully resistant. ²⁸ Furthermore, ‘the seeds of virtue exist in every soul, having been placed there by the kindness of the Creator’. ²⁹ Here again, Cassian affirmed a latent ability to seek the good as a gift of God in itself while still maintaining that the attainment of virtue required God’s assistance. He had given a similar affirmation of ‘initial grace’ at the conclusion of Institute Twelve, giving thanks

that [God] created us rational, gave us the power of free will . . . and, lastly, that, when he visits and moves us, he turns even our free will itself, which is readily inclined to vice, to better things and to the path of virtue. ³⁰

Throughout the Institutes and Conferences, Cassian maintained a balance between the initiative and assistance of divine grace and human responsibility. He found confirmation of the reality of this balance throughout the monastic life and conveyed it in the manner of a spiritual guide. ³¹ Concluding Conference Thirteen, Cassian recalled the words of the apostle Paul, ‘How inscrutable are the judgments of God and how unsearchable his ways’. ³² Interestingly, Augustine of Hippo used this same passage to argue that the divine justification for predestination was beyond human understanding (On Grace and Free Will, 22.44; On Admonition and Grace, 8.17–18; Predestination of the Saints, 8.16, 12.30). Cassian, however, employed it to suggest that the question of how grace and free will were balanced in the divine scales was itself the matter that was inscrutable and unsearchable.

Cassian also discussed a necessary balance within the human person. In Conference Four, he engaged in a prolonged explanation of Paul’s description of the opposition between the desires of the flesh and of the spirit. ³³ After the fall of the first humans, the flesh and the spirit pursued contrary desires. Cassian asserted that this embattled duality was brought into balance by humanity’s free will. The desires of the flesh pursued vice and repose, flattery, and luxury. The desires of the spirit sought the perfection of the virtues through fasts, vigils, harsh conditions, and spiritual reading. ³⁴ The human will naturally desired the virtues of the spirit, but it also preferred the repose of the flesh. Consequently, humankind tended toward a lukewarm spiritual condition. If the will acquiesced to the desires of the flesh, one would be wounded by the passions and dragged down to the trail of briers. If the will did not moderate the desire of the spirit, one would soon be incapacitated by the frailty of the body. ‘But the proper equilibrium which results from the struggle of these two opens up the healthy and temperate path of virtue between the both of them and teaches the soldier of Christ always to proceed along the royal road’. ³⁵ In this temperate pursuit of immovable virtue, divine grace assisted the monks in maintaining their movement toward the good, the virtuous, and the divine. The balance of a necessary theological duality likewise characterized Cassian’s understanding of the nature of Christ.

Royal road of Christology

Cassian’s treatise On the Incarnation, written at the request of Archdeacon Leo according to the preface, was intended to refute the teachings of Nestorius, bishop of Constantinople, by the clear teachings of the catholic tradition in accordance with scriptural revelation and the example of a restored Gallic heretic, Leporius. After piling on the scriptural evidence for orthodox Christology, Cassian turned to the baptismal creed of Antioch where Nestorius himself had been baptized and ordained. Finally, he concluded the edifice of his defense by yielding the floor to the unimpeachable orthodoxy of Ambrose, Augustine, Athanasius, Gregory of Nazianzus, and John Chrysostom. Cassian implored Nestorius throughout the treatise to see the folly of his intellectual arrogance and to seek the spiritual cure of the Nicene tradition’s Christological equilibrium. It should be noted that while Cassian addressed Nestorius throughout the treatise, this was done for rhetorical effect in an apologetic work that was likely intended to be read by Christians in Rome.

Cassian began by enumerating previous heresies that had over-emphasized one portion or another of the hypostatic union. On the left, as it were, the Church denied the validity of the Christ taught by the Ebionites, who insisted that Christ was in no way divine. On the right, then, the Church also refused to accept the inaccuracies of the Sabellians who dissolved the distinctions between the three Persons of the Trinity, the Arians and Eunomians who insisted that the Son was not of the same substance as the Father, Macedonians who refused to accept the divine equality of the Holy Spirit, Photinians who believed the Son and Christ came into existence at the Incarnation, and Apollinarians who asserted that Christ did not have a human soul, only the divine Spirit of Christ. ³⁶ In Cassian’s own time, Pelagianism had taken root throughout the empire, and he provided the tale of the return of one such Pelagian to the catholic fold as motivation for Nestorius to do the same.

Leporius, a monk and priest in Gaul, had taught that Jesus was born a mere man and that he had been adopted as the Christ at his baptism because of his morally exemplary life. Following the theological system of the Pelagians, he likewise taught that all people could follow Christ’s perfect example and that the grace of baptism was an additional assistance in the human effort for salvation since those born of God no longer sin. ³⁷ He was exiled from Gaul and ended up in Africa where he was convinced of the errors of his ways, possibly by Augustine himself. ³⁸ Leporius wrote several letters to the bishops of Gaul with a confession of his catholic faith. He acknowledged that ‘[c]lumsiness, pride, and foolish ignorance together with wrong notions, zeal combined with indiscretion’ had led him to limit divine attributes to divine substance and human attributes to human substance. ³⁹ He further confessed that

the God-man, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is truly born for us of the Holy Ghost and the ever-virgin Mary. And so in the two natures the Word and Flesh become one, so that while each substance continues naturally perfect in itself, what is Divine [imparts] without suffering any loss to the humanity and what is human participates in the Divine; nor is there one person God and another person man, but the same person is God who is also man . . . Nor may we imagine that gradually as time went on He became God and that He was in one condition before the resurrection and another after it, but that He was always of the same fullness and power. (Author’s revision) ⁴⁰

Cassian highlighted that this confession of faith was approved by the bishops of Africa, where it was written, and the bishops of Gaul, where it was received. ⁴¹ In this way, he emphasized that the affirmation of the fullness of both natures and of the hypostatic union was clearly both catholic and apostolic.

The tradition of the fathers concerning the nature of Christ exuded the equilibrium that Cassian idealized in all of his writings. He implored Nestorius to accept the harmony of the scriptural witness to the fullness of humanity and divinity in Jesus Christ. In Luke, the overshadowing of the Most High showed that Mary’s child was the God-man from conception, that Mary was indeed the God-bearer. ⁴² Paul testified that God, Savior, Christ, and Jesus refer to the same person born of Mary. ⁴³ Paul’s experience on the road to Damascus revealed that divinity and humanity were united in action because the same one who said ‘I am Jesus of Nazareth’ also shone with the light of divine splendor. ⁴⁴ In his exegesis of Romans 9:5, Cassian understood Paul to be showing that ‘“God” cannot possibly be separated from “Christ”’. Likewise, Christ cannot be separated from the man who was born of Israel. He told Nestorius, ‘You must either deny both of these statements, or you must accept both’. ⁴⁵

Cassian’s royal road of Christology consisted of a divinity that was of one substance with the Father and a humanity that was of one substance with Mary. The Logos was the Person of Christ united to human form at conception, a human form that included passions and a will. The communicatio idiomatum ensured a dynamic union of natures in the Person of Christ. For Cassian, Nestorius’ sharp distinction between divine and human attributes, between Christ and Jesus, in effect created two Christs and added a fourth Person in the Trinity. ⁴⁶ Cassian pleaded with Nestorius not to be like the Pelagians who denied that the Creator of the world was circumscribed in Mary’s womb, arguing that John, Paul, and Christ himself affirmed his divine and eternal origin. Cassian further entreated him to mimic neither the Manicheans nor the Ebionites, but to hold Christ’s divinity and humanity as close together as possible without confusion. ⁴⁷ The tradition of the catholic faith concerning the Person of Christ encouraged theologians to speak humanly of the divine and divinely of the human in Jesus Christ.

Cassian next confronted Nestorius with the Creed of Antioch, the confession of faith with which he had been baptized and ordained. As a summary of the scriptural testimony concerning Christ, this baptismal formula granted regeneration

in one Lord Jesus Christ, His only-begotten Son, and the first-born of every creature, begotten of Him before all worlds and not made: Very God of Very God, being of one substance with the Father: By whom both the worlds were framed and all things were made. Who came and was born of the Virgin Mary [for us], and was crucified under Pontius Pilate and was buried: and the third day he rose again according to scripture. (Author’s revision) ⁴⁸

Contrary to the confession of faith he had previously affirmed, Nestorius now severed the child of Mary from the Son of God and insisted that Christ was adopted as the Son of God at his baptism. ⁴⁹ Cassian was astonished that Nestorius had come to view the cross of Christ as both foolishness and a stumbling block. ⁵⁰ He had become blind to the testimony of Paul that, as a result of the Incarnation, Christ was the instrument of creation and that the Lord of Glory had been crucified. ⁵¹ Citing the ‘grammatical trope synecdoche’, Cassian asserted that whatever is said of the Son of God applies to the Son of Man and whatever is said of the Son of Man applies to the Son of God. ⁵²

Cassian progressed to a refutation of specific statements that Nestorius had made in his homilies, a collection of which had been sent to Pope Celestine by Cyril of Alexandria. ⁵³ Concerning the birth of Christ, Nestorius had insisted that ‘no one can give birth to one older than herself’, ⁵⁴ that ‘the one who is born must be of one substance with the one who bears’, ⁵⁵ and that all births follow common conditions, that there could not be one unique occurrence. ⁵⁶ In the first instance, the person of Jesus Christ had not existed prior to his conception by the Holy Spirit in the womb of Mary. In the second, Christ was of one substance with his Father and one substance with his mother, just as are all children. In the third, Nestorius had placed his own limitation on the freedom, power, and wisdom of God. Nestorius also maintained that Christ was merely the equal of Adam ⁵⁷ and that Christ was to be worshipped with God as a God-receiver. ⁵⁸ Both assertions again denied the divine nature of Christ from conception through birth, baptism, crucifixion, and resurrection. Cassian was confident that Nestorius no longer had any support from either scripture or the tradition of the fathers if he still refused to recant his heterodox teachings. However, to remind him of the authoritative tradition from which he was disconnecting, Cassian offered a few quotes from the most prominent defenders of the catholic faith. From the Latin Fathers, he offered Nestorius the wisdom of Hilary of Poitiers, Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome, and Rufinus. ⁵⁹ From the Greek Fathers, he lifted up Gregory of Nazianzus, Athanasius, and the golden-tongued bishop of Constantinople, John Chrysostom. ⁶⁰ The catholic tradition of the fathers affirmed the fullness of Christ’s divinity and humanity as well as the communication of their distinct properties within the one person of Christ, a balanced explication of the revelation of Christ throughout scripture.

Conclusion

The royal road was a smooth and level path upon which every Christian could walk with confidence. This metaphor depicted for Cassian the divine inspiration behind the foundations of his monastic and theological education that became the fundamental principles for his own monastic instruction. The balance between grace and free will in every human being and that between the divine and human in Christ were established by the apostles and apologists, reaching to the Christians of the fifth century through the apostolic succession of the bishops. The insistence upon sustainable ascetic discipline that Cassian attributed to the desert masters was extended by Cassian through his own moderation of Egyptian practice for the Gallic setting. An individual’s ascetic excess or negligence, as well as intellectual arrogance, exemplified the perils of off-roading. On the royal road, pilgrims could trust that the path ahead had been forged by the earliest defenders of the catholic faith and that the stewards of the path were keeping it clear of brambles and briars.