On Teachers and Disciples · §3 · Evagrius Ponticus

Training, praise, and correction without anger

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Evagrius is addressing the monastic leader directly, continuing his instructions on how to equip and guide disciples in spiritual combat.

Train your soldiers in their thoughts, so that they are skilled for battle, and make defeat a fearful thing by the warning of eternal punishment. Proclaim the victor with shining praises, for praise also knows how to make people more zealous. And heal the one who has been wounded with compassion, for forgiveness shames the sensible person no less than a warning does. Do not be moved to anger against a disciple who has sinned, for it is not holy to wound your own soul before healing another. Instead, correct him patiently toward the good. For a physician heals the disease and does not grow angry with the one who has fallen ill involuntarily. When a physician cuts, he does it without anger; and when a teacher corrects, let him not mix anger into the correction.

Greek

Γύμνασον ἐν λογισμοῖς τοὺς ὁπλίτας, οἳ ἐμπείρως ἔχουσι πρὸς τὴν μάχην· καὶ δεῖξον φοβερὸν

τὴν ἧτταν τῇ ἀπειλῇ τῆς αἰωνίου κολάσεως. Τὸν νικητὴν ἀνακήρυττε λαμπροῖς ἐπαίνοις, οἶδε γὰρ καὶ ἡ εὐφημία σπουδαιοτέρους ποιεῖν· καὶ τὸν ἐπηρεασθέντα θεράπευσον συμπαθῶς, οὐχ ἧττον γὰρ ἀπειλῆς ἐντρέπει συγγνώμη τὸν συνετόν. Μὴ κινήσῃ θυμῷ ἐφ' ἁμαρτήσαντι μαθητῇ, οὐ γὰρ ὅσιον ἑαυτὸν τιτρώσκειν πρὸ τῆς θεραπείας ἑτέρου· ἀλλὰ ἀνεξικάκως διόρθωσαι πρὸς τὸ ἀγαθόν· καὶ γὰρ ἰατρὸς θεραπεύει μὲν τὸ πάθος, οὐκ ἀγανακτεῖ δὲ πρὸς τὸν ἀκουσίως νοσήσαντα. Τέμνων ἰατρός, χωρὶς ὀργῆς τοῦτο ποιεῖ· καὶ ἐλέγχων διδάσκαλος μὴ μιγνύτω τῷ ἐλέγχῳ θυμόν.

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About this text

Evagrius on how a spiritual father should guide his disciples: an unskilled guide destroys and a skilled one heals, correction comes without anger, and the road leads, like Israel's to Elim, to freedom from the passions.

Evagrius Ponticus (c. 345–399) wrote this treatise for a monastic leader responsible for guiding disciples. He was a monk and ascetic teacher who spent his later years in the Egyptian desert communities of Nitria and Kellia, after earlier being a disciple of Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Macarius of Egypt. The work offers practical guidance on how to lead a community toward virtue and guard its members from harm.

The treatise addresses a leader directly, using comparisons from seafaring, shepherding, warfare, medicine, and Israel's desert journey. Evagrius argues that an unskilled guide destroys those in his care, just as an unskilled pilot wrecks a ship or an inexperienced shepherd loses sheep. The skilled leader is like a general and physician who prevents wounds or heals them quickly.

A reader should know that the leader must arm disciples with specific spiritual equipment, train them for spiritual combat, correct them without anger, and lead them through discipline toward the promised land. There they will live the blessed life of freedom from passions, receiving true joy as the reward for their labors.

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Translated from PG (Greek)

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