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The Angelic Life in
Desert and Ladder:
John Climacus’s Re-Formulation
of Ascetic Spirituality
JONATHAN L. ZECHER
John Climacus’s seventh-century ascetical and spiritual masterwork, the

Ladder of Divine Ascent, drew on and reformulated the themes and trajecto-
ries of Chalcedonian ascetic spirituality in ways that would prove decisive for
later Byzantine theologians. This paper seeks to elaborate the conceptualiza-
tion of Climacus’s spirituality through a sustained exploration of his treatment
of angels and his understanding of the ascetic life as ‘angelic.’ In the monastic
literature that Climacus inherited and that formed him, three tensions emerge
with respect to the predication of “angelic” to ascetics: optimism and doubt
about the possibility of a ‘care-free’ state, alternative conceptions of “liminal”
progress, and opposition of individualism and community. Climacus not only
holds together these tensions, but by coupling them with his own original
ideas carefully develops the possibility of ascetic imitation of angels.
John Climacus—about whom almost nothing is known with certainty, save

that he was abbot of the Vatos monastery (later St. Catherine’s) at Sinai
probably in the mid-seventh century—wrote at the request of fellow-abbot
John of Raithou a lengthy piece of spiritual direction called the Ladder of
Divine Ascent (also Spiritual Tablets). This book, which would become
one of the most popular, influential, and enduring works of the Christian
East, possesses a vast manuscript tradition and a global translational his-
tory.1 Moreover, it was very early made standard Lenten reading for all
1. Robert Sinkewicz, Manuscript Listings for the Authors of the Patristic and Byz-
antine Period, Greek Index Project Series 4 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval
Studies, 1992), L21–C22; Henrik Rydell Johnsén, Reading John Climacus: Rhetori-
cal Argumentation, Literary Convention and the Tradition of Monastic Formation
Journal of Early Christian Studies 21:1, 111–136 © 2013 The Johns Hopkins University Press
112 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES
Byzantine monastics, proving particularly influential for the later Byzan-

tine Hesychast Movement and the spirituality that, growing out of that
movement and its later revivals, continues to be normative among Eastern
Orthodox Christians.2 Curiously, the Ladder has never garnered a schol-
arly bibliography commensurate with its popularity, perhaps because its
manuscript tradition precludes a standard critical edition.3 Nevertheless,
Climacus is well worth scholarly attention for two interconnected rea-
sons: first, he witnesses to the Greek ascetic literary tradition and its for-
mative character among Chalcedonian monastics; second, he transforms
that tradition, building out of it his own profound and holistic vision of
ascetic spirituality. This vision would decisively influence later Byzantine
monastics, legitimating and founding many aspects of their theology and
spirituality, even as it stands alongside the sources and works that com-
prise the tradition out of which it is built. To understand, therefore, Cli-
macus’s own vision of ascetic spirituality requires we must first appreciate
(Lund: Lund University, 2007),10–11; Dimitrije Bogdanovic, “Jean Climaque dans la

literature Byzantine et la literature Serbe ancienne,” in his Jovan Lestvic=nik u vizan-
tijskog i staroj srpskoj književnosti (Belgrade: Vizantolozhki Institut, 1968), 205–8,
217–25; Muriel Heppel, “Some Slavonic Manuscripts of the ‘Scala Paradisi’ (‘Lest-
vica’),” Byzantinoslavica 18.2 (1957); Jean Gribomont, “La Scala paradise, Jean de
Rhaïthou et Ange Clareno,” Studia Monastica 2.2 (1960): 345–58; N. Corneanu,
“Contributions des traducteurs roumains à la diffusion de «l’Echelle» de saint Jean
Climaque,” SP 8 [TU 93] (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1963), 340–55. Portions of the
Ladder survive in Ethiopic as well—sections of §6 (on the Memory of Death) in the
Patericon Aethiopice, ed. Victor Arras, 2 vols., CSCO 277–78 [Scriptores Aethiopici
53, 55] (Louvain: Peeters, 1976) as well as a recently published version of §5 (on
Repentance) in an article by Robert Beylot (“Un Témoin éthiopien inédit du G radus
5 de Jean Climaque, Collegeville EMML 1939, Folio 102 R˚–113 V˚,” in Pensée
grecque et sagesse d’Orient. Hommage à Michel Tardieu, ed. M. A. Amir-Moezzi,
J. D. Dubois, et al., Bibliothèque de l’école des hautes études sciences religieuse 142
(Turnhout: Brepols, 2009), 89–107; and J. R. Martin, The Illustration of the Heav-
enly Ladder of John Climacus, Studies in Manuscript Illumination 5 (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1954).
2. On Lenten reading of the Ladder, see Ephrem Lash, “The Greek Writings Attrib-
uted to Saint Ephrem the Syrian,” in Abba: The Tradition of Orthodoxy in the West,
Festschrift for Bishop Kallistos Ware, ed. John Behr, Dimitrie Conomos, and Andrew
Louth (Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 2003), 82–83.
3. The editio princeps is: John Climacus [or Sinaiticus or Scholasticus], Scala Para-
disi, ed. Mattheus Rader, S.P.N. Ioannis Scholastici abbatis Montis Sina, qui vulgo
Climacus appellatur opera omnia (1633), reprinted in PG 88:624A–1164D. There
is also Sophronios (ed), Κλίμαξ (Constantinople, 1883; repr. Volos: Schoinas, 1959).
There are two English translations, one by Archimandrite Lazarus Moore, The Lad-
der of Divine Ascent (1959; repr. Brookline, MA: Holy Transfiguration Monastery,
1978); and the other by Colm Luibheid and Norman Russell, John Climacus: The
Ladder of Divine Ascent, CWS (New York: Paulist Press, 1982).
ZECHER / ANGELIC LIFE 113
the Greek ascetic literary tradition. The Ladder will in turn illuminate not
only how that tradition was seen by its own inheritors, but also, in new
and important ways, the whole of later Byzantine theology.
In this article I examine one facet of Climacus’s thought in which his
creative interaction with earlier ascetic literature and his unique ascetic
spirituality are particularly visible: his deployment of the classic rhetori-
cal trope of the ascetic life as “angelic.” Although this theme was popu-
lar long before Climacus wrote, it met as often as not with ambivalence
and outright antipathy. Ellen Muehlberger has shown that in early Coptic
material, angelic visitations (and, with them, the assumption that ascet-
ics lived “angelic” lives) could be used to reinforce social structures or to
break them down, and that because of this destructive and individualist
potential, the trope was often resisted by monastic leaders.4 This study will
move in a different direction, showing that such ambiguities betray coun-
tervailing, often conflicting, anthropological assumptions and theological
claims among desert ascetics, which in their turn reveal competing, often
incompatible conceptualizations of ascetic spirituality. These competing
conceptual trajectories developed and co-existed uneasily throughout the
literary tradition that emerged among Chalcedonian Greek ascetics of
Egypt, Palestine, and Gaza. John Climacus inherited this vast and com-
plex tradition and transformed its ambivalences into a remarkably unitary
vision of “angelic” asceticism, which at once accounts for valid objections
and doubts while maintaining its more optimistic attitude toward ascetic
possibilities.
I will begin by briefly showing how Climacus interacts with a specific
literary tradition. I will then describe how, within this literary tradi-
tion, optimistic and pessimistic perspectives on the “angelic” life devel-
oped, demonstrating that opposing attitudes toward “angelic” monikers
expressed countervailing conceptualizations of asceticism, centering on
three oppositions, or tensions: first with regard to angelic life as a “state,”
the second with regard to angelic life as “liminality,” and the third with
regard to the individualism and community that angelic virtues implicate.
Underpinning these claims and repudiations of stability, liminality, and
community are a variable set of assumptions about what it means to be
human and, particularly, a Christian ascetic: whether such beings can—or,
4. Ellen Muehlberger, “Ambivalence about the Angelic Life: The Promise and Perils
of an Early Christian Discourse of Asceticism,” JECS 16:4 (2008): 448–78. This
article contains an excellent review of the relevant literature, to which one must add
Demetrios Moschos, Eschatologie im ägyptischen Monchtums, Studien und Texte zu
Antike und Christentum (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), 153–68.
in fact, should—take on the traits associated with angels. Finally, a sus-

tained reading of the Ladder will show how Climacus, drawing on both
optimistic and pessimistic assessments in combination with his own ange-
lology, anthropology, and aretology, harmonizes them within a vision of
ascetic life as failure and progress that eternally pushes past the apparent
boundaries of human nature.
Tradition and the Individual Monk
T. S. Eliot once wrote that, “No poet, no artist of any art, has his com-
plete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation
of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone;
you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead.”5 His
remark applies especially to a self-consciously traditional writer like John
Climacus and an eclectic work like the Ladder. Climacus alerts us to this
at the Ladder’s outset:
. . . faithfully constrained by the commands of those true slaves of God,
stretching for a hand unworthy of them in undiscerning obedience, and
by their knowledge taking up the pen to write, dipping it in downcast yet
radiant humility, resting it upon their hearts smooth and white, just as
on sheets of paper or, rather, spiritual tablets, we will write here divine
words—or rather, seeds—painting them in many colours.6
It is not simply that quotes, references, allusions, and echoes of earlier lit-
erature abound in the Ladder—though they do.7 Rather, as Henrik Rydell
Johnsén has pointed out, Climacus engaged ascetic teaching through its
literary expressions, and was himself shaped by the texts and treatises to
which he had access.8 In order to understand and appreciate the Ladder,
we must first set Climacus in his literary and theological context. Specifi-
cally, Climacus drew heavily on the literary trajectory beginning with the
Apophthegmata Patrum and related vitae and travelogues—including Pal-
ladius’s Historia Lausiaca and the anonymous Historia Monachorum in
Aegypto—through the Palestinian monasticism of the fifth and sixth cen-
5. T. S. Eliot, “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” in his The Sacred Wood:
Essays on Poetry and Criticism (London: Faber & Faber, 1997), 48.
6. §1 (PG 88:632C); all translations of primary texts are my own unless other-
wise noted.
7. Kallistos Ware, “Introduction” to Luibheid and Russell, John Climacus: The Lad-
der of Divine Ascent, 59–60; John Chryssavgis, “The Sources of St. John Climacus,”
Ostkirchliche Studien 37:1 (1988): 3–13.
8. Johnsén, Reading John Climacus, 196–99.
turies. His most proximal inspiration was the “Gaza school” that began
with Abba Isaiah (d. 491) and fully emerged with the two “Great Old
Men,” Barsanuphius (d. ca. 540) and John (d. ca. 542), and their disciple
Dorotheus (6th c.). Climacus also read and utilized Mark the Monk (5th c.)
and Diadochus of Photice (5th c.). Climacus was especially inspired by
Evagrius Ponticus (346–99), although, given his milieu, he would never
admit it and at points explicitly condemns Evagrius.9
While one can, with effort, discern many specific quotations and undeni-
able allusions, for the most part Climacus avoids names and citations, and
one must be content with resonances and echoes, allusions and hints. We
can, however, deduce that the writers on whom he draws were primarily
(but not exclusively) Greek authors whom he considered to be within the
doctrinal and ecclesial fold of the Chalcedonian Churches (thus exclud-
ing much Coptic and Syriac material for linguistic as well as doctrinal
reasons). That is, Climacus was a Greek-speaker and, while not a dog-
matic writer, nevertheless positioned himself as a Chalcedonian10 and loyal
Byzantine.11 Interested more in forming monks than defining doctrine,
however, Climacus, like many later Byzantine writers, found inspiration
in the non-Chalcedonian Isaiah of Gaza and the great “heretic” Evagrius
9. Importantly, he condemns Evagrius not on matters of doctrinal or eschatologi-

cal speculation—which comprise the charges against “Origenists” at the Council of
Constantinople in 553, under which charges Evagrius was clearly implicated. Rather,
Climacus derides Evagrius’s advice on fasting: “Evagrius—that madman—considered
himself wiser than the wise in eloquence and thought. But the wretch was deceived,
being revealed as more foolish than fools. Indeed in many things, but also in this
one—for he said, ‘Whenever our soul desires various foods, straiten it with bread
and water [Practicus, 16].’ But what he has enjoined is like someone telling a child
to ascend the whole ladder in one step! But turning back from his definition, we say:
‘Whenever our soul desires various foods’ it seeks only what is proper to nature.
Therefore . . . we recommend cutting out fatty foods for a while, then spicy foods,
then sweets. If possible, give your stomach foods which are filling and easily digested”
(§14 [865A–B]). See Tractatus practicus vel monachos in Évagre le pontique, Traité
Pratique ou Le moine, ed. and trans. Antoine and Claire Guillaumont, SC 171 (Paris:
Éditions du Cerf, 1971), 2:540.
10. See §28 (PG 88:1137A): “Some say that prayer is better than the memory of
death. But I hymn the two natures of one person [μιᾶς ὑποστάσεως δύο οὐσίας].” See
also §3 (PG 88:672B), §25 (PG 88:992A), §27 (PG 88:1117A).
11. See §25 (PG 88:993A): “. . . I worship a Trinity in unity and a unity in Trinity
[προσκυνῶ Τριάδα ἐν μονάδι, καὶ μονάδα ἐν Τριάδι].” Climacus here quotes the Emperor
Justin II’s programmatic statement of imperial orthodoxy issued not long after his
ascension (ca. 565), as found in Evagrius Scholasticus’s Historia Ecclesiastica, 5.4,
in Historia Ecclesiastica, ed. J. Bidez and L. Parmentier, The Ecclesiastical History of
Evagrius with the Scholia (London: Methuen, 1898), 198.
Ponticus. Climacus collected practical wisdom wherever he could find it,

but especially within what he considered to be the Chalcedonian ascetic
literary tradition. I will, therefore, not here confine myself to Climacus’s
sources known with certainty, but will situate him within the broader
monastic literary tradition within which he wrote and against which his
own achievements will appear the clearer.
THE ANGELIC LIFE IN MONASTIC TRADITION

BEFORE CLIMACUS
Ascetics imagined themselves according to a variety of exemplars known

among Christians, among which angels held a special place.12 As Georgia
Frank has argued, like apostles, prophets, martyrs, and Christ himself,
angelic exemplars helped ascetics biblicize their identity and thereby legiti-
mate their purposes and practice. The comparison also helped outsiders—
which could include other ascetics—appreciate the often outré appear-
ance of these practices.13 Ultimately, the rhetorical trope helped legitimate
asceticism within a framework of acceptable virtues that would have been
reasonably common currency among Christians used to regularly hearing,
if not reading, Scripture. As it describes a stable state of being, the trope
derived from creative readings of passages like Matthew 22.30, in which
angels evoke a hope of eschatological existence unmarked by material
demands and societal conventions like marriage.14 In this passage and in
other apocalyptic texts, angels connote a state of undistracted proximity
to and ceaseless worship of God.
12. Historia Monachorum in Aegypto (H. mon.), Prol.5, in A.-J. Festugière, ed.,
Historia monachorum in Aegypto (Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1971), 7. See
also Apophthegmata Patrum (Collectio Alphabetica), John the Persian 4, in J.-B.
Cotelier, ed., Ecclesiae Graecae monumenta (Paris: Muguet, 1677), vol. 1, reprinted
in PG 65:71–440 and supplemented by J.-C. Guy, Recherches sur la tradition grecque
des Apophthegmata Patrum, SH 36 (Brussels: Société des bollandistes, 1984), 19–36.
(Hereafter all references to the Collectio Alphabetica will be by “Name #.”) See on
this Douglas Burton-Christie, The Word in the Desert: Scripture and the Quest for
Holiness in Early Christian Monasticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993),
168–70 and Moschos, Eschatologie im ägyptischen Monchtums, 153–68.
13. Georgia Frank, Memory of the Eyes: Pilgrims to Living Saints in Christian
Late Antiquity, Transformations of the Classical Heritage (Berkeley, CA: University
of California Press, 2000), 135–62.
14. Muehlberger, “Ambivalence about the Angelic Life,” 451–52. For the impor-
tance of the eschatological aspect of the angelic life, see, e.g., Theodora 10 (Guy,
Recherches, 19–36), Pambo 12 (PG 65:372A–B), and Apophthegmata Patrum (Col-
lectio Anonyma), N 235. The Anonyma have never been published in one place, and
must be consulted in a series of articles published by F. Nau: “Histoires des solitaires
Dispassion and Doubt

In order to achieve a similar state, ascetics renounced a “normal” bodily
existence. They traded sleep for prayer vigils.15 They fasted and slept in
simple or even open conditions.16 They renounced the familial and social
relationships that had previously marked out their identity in the world.17
Their supreme and most obviously defining renunciation was celibacy.
Celibacy, regarded as both angelic and eschatological, allowed ascetics to
cast off what is both an animal and a social bond.18 These renunciations
were, however, not ends in themselves, but, rather, means to an existence
at once “care-free” (ἀμερίμνος) and “dispassionate” (ἀπάθος).19 The monk,
therefore, traded worldly sustenance for divine,20 secular conversation for
spiritual, and, ultimately, passions for dispassion.21 He gave up everything
chrétien,” in Revue d’orient chrétien: 12 (1907): 48–68, 171–81, 393–404; 13 (1908):

47–57, 266–83; 14 (1909): 357–79; 17 (1912): 204–11, 294–301; 18 (1913): 137–46.
(Hereafter I will cite them using Nau’s numbering and the standard format of “N #.”
N 235 is found in vol. 14 [1909], 362.) Among later ascetics one can examine also
Barsanuphius, Quaestiones et Responses (Resp.), 607 in François Neyt and Paula de
Angelis-Noah, eds., Barsanuphe et Jean de Gaza. Correspondances, trans. Lucien
Regnault, 5 vols., SC 426–27, 450–51, and 468 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1997–2002),
2.2 [451]: 832–42. See also John Moschus, Pratum Spirituale, 26 (PG 87.3:2872B) and
171 (PG 87.3:3037B–3040C). See also Burton-Christie, Word in the Desert, 181–85,
231–32; on the very interesting interpretation history of this passage, see Ton H. C.
Van Eijk, “Marriage and Virginity, Death and Immortality,” in EPEKTASIS. Mélanges
patristiques offerts au Cardinal Jean Danielou, ed. J. Fontaine, and C. Kannengeisser
(Paris: Beauchesne, 1972), 209–35.
15. Palladius, Historia Lausiaca (H. Laus.), 2.3 in Dom Cuthbert Butler, ed., The
Lausiac History of Palladius (Cambridge, UK: CUP, 1904), 1:17–18; cf. Bessarion
11 (PG 65:141D).
16. Theodoret, Historia Religiosa (H. rel.), 21.3, 26.23 in P. Canivet and A. Leroy-
Molinghen, eds., Théodoret de Cyr. L’histoire des moines de Syrie, SC 234 and 257
(Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1977–79), 2:73–75, 2:207–9.
17. H. rel., 3.14–15 (Canivet and Leroy-Molinghen, 1:275–77). Arsenius 36 (PG
65:101D–104A) presents undoubtedly the clearest example of social renunciation.
18. For example, N 186 (Nau, 13 [1908]: 272) where monasticism is described
as ἀγγελική τάξις/πολιτεία and marriage as ἀκαθαρσία τοῦ κόσμου. See also, e.g., John
Kolobos 34 (PG 65:213A–C).
19. See Burton-Christie, Word in the Desert, 222–31; Antoine Guillaumont,
“Esquisse d’une phenomenology du monachisme,” in his Aux Origines du Mona-
chisme Chrétien, Spiritualité orientale 30 (Abbaye de Bellefontaine, 1979), 230–33,
235–36. For a scriptural account, see 1 Cor 7.33f, wherein Paul suggests celibacy to
those who would share his ἀμεριμνία.
20. James Goehring argues that “angelic” refers primarily to absolute dependence
on God: Ascetics, Society and the Desert: Studies in Early Egyptian Monasticism,
SAC (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press, International, 1999), 61.
21. H. rel., Prol.2, 4.9, 21.3 (Canivet and Leroy-Molinghen, 1:127–29, 1:313,
2:73–75); H. mon., 4.1 (Festugière, 40).
that could distract him from the ceaseless worship of God—every care,
every relationship, and every superfluity. He did not repudiate his body, but
he did seek to live as carelessly as a bodiless being might. The “angelic”
life as state therefore meant especially a dispassionate and care-free life.
Such claims met very often with doubt. First, there is the matter of
ἀμεριμνία, closely connected with ἀπαθεία. John Kolobos discovered that,
however he might wish it, he could not be “without care [ἀμέρμινος] like
the angels who do not work but ceaselessly worship God.” He found in
practice that the angelic ideal led only to starvation, and was told by his
elder brother “You are a human, and you must work in order to eat.”22
He not only could not divest himself of a body, which would have been
silly; he could not be “careless” (ἄμέριμνος) while in the body, which is a
far more disquieting lesson. This story illustrates a profound claim made
explicit in another saying of the same: that ascetic existence is, in fact,
one full of care. The monk, he says, “is toil, for the monk toils in every
work.”23 Angels have no care, because theirs is a stable and, therefore,
privileged, state. Likewise, though Barsanuphius held it in high esteem,24
he too carefully conditioned his praise of ἀμεριμνία: “But see, beloved, we
who are ruled by such freedom from care, that we do not desire to hold
ourselves as completely care-free, since we are ‘earth and dust.’”25 Barsa-
nuphius’ allusion to Genesis 18.27 touches on what is for him an impor-
tant theme: the continual remembrance by monks that they are mortal,
contingent, and ever blame-worthy in the presence of God.26 One won-
ders, then, to what extent ἀμεριμνία was considered a realizable or even
unequivocally beneficial goal, if its greatest exponents limit and condition
22. John Kolobos 2 (PG 65:204C–D).

23. John Kolobos 37 (PG 65:216C–D); see also, e.g., Zacharias 1 (PG 65:177D–
180A), Poemen 48 (PG 65:333A), and especially Theodore of Pherme 2 (PG 65:188A–
B). On the spiritual benefit of work, see Silouan 5 (PG 65:409B–D) and especially
Lucius 1 (PG 65:253B–C), wherein Lucius refutes Messalian claims, since his labor is
actually more spiritually beneficial than their attempts at ceaseless prayer. Cf. Theo-
dore of Pherme 10 (PG 65:189B) for an important corrective: the soul’s work must
come before manual labor.
24. G. Couilleau, “Saint Jean Climaque,” DSAM 8 (1974): 389.
25. Resp., 61 (Neyt and de Angelis-Noah, 1.1 [426], 304); cf. Gen 18.27.
26. See Barsanuphius’s deployment of “γῆ καὶ σποδός” in Resp., 48, 62, and 71
(Neyt and de Angelis-Noah, 1.1 [426], 258, 310, and 344); 73, 100, 101, and 125
(1.2 [427], 348, 414, and 472); 348 and 360 (2.1 [450], 368 and 384); 553 and 604
(2.2 [451], 712 and 820); cf. Dorotheus of Gaza’s discussion of the same theme in
his Doctrinae diversae, 2.34–37, 6.73–74, in Lucien Regnault and J. de Préville, eds.
and trans., Dorothée de Gaza. Oeuvres spirituelles, SC 92 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf,
1963), 197–202 and 274–78.
it so. The monk, called to repentance and battling instability, has and must
have cares if he is to make progress.27
Doubts extended to whether a monk ever should be in a totally “heav-
enly” state. The Historia Monachorum in Aegypto tells of Macarius the
Egyptian who found a copy of paradise in the far desert. After intense
prayer he forces his way past the demons into this (admittedly false) par-
adise. He later returns to “the settled region” and attempts to persuade
other monks to return with him, but they convince him otherwise, asking,
“could it not be that this paradise has come into being for the destruction
of our souls? For if we were to enjoy it in this life, we should have received
our portion of good things while still on earth.”28 The story argues not
simply that a heavenly existence is impossible for human beings, but that
attempting it on earth is inadvisable. Indeed, the association of this “para-
dise” with Egyptian magicians already suggests the duplicitous character
of “earthly paradise”—it would be, at best, a copy; at worst, an idol. As
Abba Poemen said of a monk who could not advise those in temptation,
“[his] works are above with the angels, and it escapes him that you and I
are in fornication.”29 A monk in heaven, or even in a copy of paradise, is
useless to himself and others.
More troubling is a story of Abba Arsenius. When asked why he flees
the company of others, he responds: “The thousands and myriads of angels
[cf. Dan 7.10] above have one will, but humans have many wills. I cannot
neglect God and go among people.”30 To those who claim that renuncia-
tion is angelic, Arsenius responds that his renunciation does not generate
similarity with angels, but is, rather, a way of coping with a congenital
dissimilarity. In these instances, the hope of an angelic life not only seems
to outstrip the reality of ascetic existence, insofar as it is restricted by the
27. John Kolobos 13 (PG 65:208B–C).

28. H. mon. 21.5–12 (Festugière, 125–26), trans. Norman Russell, The Lives of
the Desert Fathers, CS 34 (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1981), 108–9;
cf. 10.21, wherein Patermuthius is transported to paradise and retains a fig as proof.
Russell’s notes are also helpful: Lives of the Desert Fathers, 137. One finds similar
opposition of the present time (in which one works) and the age to come (in which
one rests) in Athanasius’s Vita Antonii, 19.4; Bessarion 12 (PG 65:141D), Arsenius
41 (PG 65:105C–D), Moses 12 (PG 65:285D), Poemen 76 (PG 65:340D–341B); H.
Laus., 6.1–4 (Butler, 22–23).
29. Poemen 62 (PG 65:336D–337A); cf. the even stronger account in Poemen 8
(PG 65:321C–324B).
30. Arsenius 13 (PG 65:92A). One might note that in the sayings attributed to him,
Arsenius consistently appears terrified or vexed at the idea of joining other people (1,
2, 7, 8, 21, etc. [PG 65:88B, 88C, 89A–B, 89B, 93A, etc.]). See also Matoes 13 (PG
65:293C) and Theodore of Pherme 14 (PG 65:189D–192A).
necessities of bodily care, but to oppose it in purpose, insofar as asceti-

cism is defined as repentance and toil. Even renunciation—seemingly so
angelic—is an act primarily proper to sin-bound beings.
The numerous letters and brief sermons of the Gaza School carry this
doubt to its limit, so that the trope dies out almost entirely. It is amazing,
since these letters and sermons provide some of the earliest witnesses to
the apophthegmatic collections in which angels feature so prominently, to
find only a few usages (mostly rather negative) in all 848 letters of Barsa-
nuphius and John, and in Dorotheus’s surviving works none at all.31 John
puts it succinctly: “Which of the saints [ἅγιοι] will you see like Michael
contending with the Devil? Indeed, Michael had the authority. There is
nothing for us weak ones to do except to flee to the name of Jesus.”32 John
includes even the ἅγιοι as “weaker” than angels. Indeed, Barsanuphius,
concerned as most were with “making progress,” implicitly contrasts the
monk with angels when he speaks of the latter as eternally unchanging.33
This keen awareness of fleshiness and the need for progress not in perfec-
tion but in repentance arises also from a distinction between renunciation
and its goal. The renunciations associated with angelic existence—fasting,
vigils, solitude, and celibacy—do not, of themselves, imply ἀμεριμνία or
ἀπαθεία or an actually angelic life.
Barsanuphius and John, like their Egyptian forebears, demonstrate an
ongoing tension between optimism and doubt about whether the angelic
life is attainable or even beneficial. Given that the angelic life reflects a
stable and, therefore, unchanging state of existence, it describes the per-
son who has already attained to interior and exterior unity, tranquility,
and heavenly focus. The problem is that often ascetics see themselves in
desperate search for those qualities, and to assume already what they
hope to attain in future is to invite failure. If human beings must “make
progress,” then an angelic “state” is an inappropriate ideal for those still
on the way. And yet that “state” indexes precisely the kind of lifestyle for
which ascetics choose a life of renunciation. The end is revealed to be in
tension with the means.
31. Resp., 607 (Neyt and de Angelis-Noah, 2.2 [451], 840), Barsanuphius says
that God has ordained equality with the angels only for the future. In 241 (2.1 [450],
188), Barsanuphius compares the deacon serving in the liturgy to both Cherubim and
Seraphim. Generally positive are 77 (1.2 [427], 360) and 794 (3 [468], 256).
32. Resp., 304 (Neyt and de Angelis-Noah, 2.1 [450], 296), alluding to Jude 9–10.
33. Resp., 600 (Neyt and de Angelis-Noah, 2.2 [451], 810), in the context of a
refutation of Origenism.
Liminality and Eschatology

A second tension arises with regard to a fundamentally different concep-
tion of angels as liminal beings. These were commonly portrayed as mes-
sengers and ministers, delivering God’s laws, tidings and judgments to
human beings34 and ferrying prayers to God.35 They were understood as
moving between God and human beings—inhabiting the middle spaces,
just as demons were thought to inhabit the middle atmosphere.36 Indeed,
as liminal beings, angels and demons have much in common, and each
presents a possible realization of the ascetic life. The ascetic then took on
his own “liminality,” which may best be described as a kind of vacillation
or tension between two possible identities, symbolized beautifully by his
chosen dwelling-place—the desert wilderness. There one escaped society’s
strictures but found also the realm of demons, beasts, toil, and death.37
The desert was, therefore, paradoxically close to life and close to death, a
frontier between earth, paradise, and Hades, and between present and pos-
sible future ages. Ascetics, then, inhabited a realm of polarized possibilities.
Considered as more liminal creatures, angels represent the sort of upward
mobility for which ascetics longed. However, liminality also opened up
two opposed concepts of progress. Liminality may imply progress whose
end is naturally produced by that progress; or it may mean progress
within possibilities that do not close and whose end is thus a gift to be
received. Evagrius’s thought exemplifies the first concept. Evagrius describes
angelic imitation primarily in terms of prayer.38 But “pure prayer” is the
contemplation (θεωρία) of God beyond human or even angelic modes of
thought.39 To put it simply, for Evagrius angelic imitation in prayer is the
fruit of practical virtue (πρακτική) and its successor, knowledge (γνῶσις),
and, ultimately, the monk seeks to transcend angelic modes of thought in
favor of pure contemplation. Here asceticism means progress (in virtues
34. Heb. 2.2 recalls the tradition that Moses received the Law through the media-
tion of angels. See also Gen 18.1–19.13, and Luke 1.19–34 and 22.43.
35. Dan 10.12–14, etc.
36. David Brakke, Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism, OECS (Oxford: OUP,
1995), 153.
37. Antoine Guillaumont, “La Conception du desert chez les moines d’Egypte,”
Revue d’Histoire des Religions 188 (1975): 3–21.
38. Evagrius [sub nomine Nili], De Oratione, 72 (PG 79:1181D), 111 (PG 79:1192C).
39. Angelic thought would still rely on νοήματα, since it is λογισμός (and all λογισμοί
are composed of νοήματα). Yet prayer is a rejection of νοήματα and, therefore, a refusal
of thought. See his De Oratione 70 (PG 79:1181C), in contrast to De diversis malig-
nis cogitationibus (Recensio Fusius) 8 and 17, in Évagre le Pontique, Sur les pensées,
ed. and trans. Paul Géhin and Claire Guillaumont, SC 438 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf,
1998), 176–78, 208–14.
and contemplation) whose end (pure prayer as contemplation of God) is

the natural product of that progress. The monastic has her end (τέλος)
here and now, and the “angelic” life is attainable, although only insofar
as it indexes virtues (especially ἀπαθεία) and activities requisite to θεωρία.
Evagrius’s attitudes contrast with the Gaza Fathers, who exemplify the
second spirituality of liminality. In a letter lambasting Origenist (and prob-
ably Evagrian) ideas, Barsanuphius writes tersely: “Here the toil, there the
reward.”40 Whatever taste monks may have of heavenly rest, it remains
only a fleeting taste this side of death.41 Daniel Hömbargen juxtaposes
Evagrius and Barsanuphius thus:
In earthly life a monk should not strive for spiritual knowledge, which is
only a reward in heaven, instead, he should dedicate himself exclusively to
the ascetic practice . . . this reveals a conception of the ascetic life which
strongly opposes that of Evagrius. When Evagrius divides the spiritual life
into praktiké and knowledge, the first stage is a preparation for the second,
which is a goal to be reached during this lifetime . . . a result of the ascetic
practice and belongs to the spiritual progress a monk should make on earth.
For Barsanuphius, however, it is only a reward bestowed after death.42
When the Gaza Fathers speak of “progress,” they mean progress in vir-
tues whose end is the post-resurrectional ability to receive God’s gift.
Since the ‘reward’ is indefinitely postponed—as long as the ascetic lives
he cannot receive it—liminality remains a kind of uncertain dwelling on
an endless frontier. The monk learns to live with and even in the uncer-
tain hope of a gift that he cannot possibly earn. This tension, then, points
out the problem with the place of human beings in the spiritual world.
Whatever resemblance one discerns with angelic exemplars is subject to
how one conceives that place, and liminality does not resolve the tensions
that invocation of an angelic state raises.
Individual and Community

The third tension is a social one that asks whether the proper state of
ascetics is individual or communal. In many ways, the Gazan conception
of spirituality is prefigured in the Apophthegmata and travelogues, par-
ticularly those that relate to coenobia. Macarius of Alexandria does not
40. Resp., 600 (Neyt and de Angelis-Noah, 2.2 [451], 810).

41. See, e.g., Resp., 2 (quoting 2 Cor 6.4–5, 12.10; Heb 4.1, Acts 14.22), 6, 9, 27
(Neyt and de Angelis-Noah, 1.1 [426], 166, 171–73, 178, 218–20).
42. Daniel Hömbargen, “Barsanuphius and John of Gaza and the Origenist Con-
troversy,” in B. Bitton-Ashkelony and A. Kofsky, eds., Christian Gaza in Late Antiq-
uity (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 179–80.
impress the coenobium and even earned a reprimand for his “fleshless”
feats.43 Macarius exists between earth and heaven in such a way that he
seems to find rest in neither. The coenobium is not the place for the kind of
individualized ascetic feats that may be associated with bodiless or angelic
life. There is, I think, nothing inherently individualistic about angels, but
it is also noteworthy that “angelic” did not index the virtues of monks in
institutions, where obedience and humility were primary.44
To explain, we may return to Hömbargen’s distinction between Evagrius
and Barsanuphius, which rests on a distinction between the resurgent
“Origenist” spirituality and the institutionalized asceticism presented by
Cyril of Scythopolis.45 In his “biographies” Cyril increasingly empha-
sized the life of the institution rather than the individual as the locus of
sanctity.46 This institutional focus, Hömbargen argues, led to mistrust of
“people who are charismatically inspired by new spiritual experiences.”47
He contrasts this with pictures of fourth-century Egyptian monasticism,
which now appears highly intellectual—and highly individualistic—with
its central focus on “the development of the interior life.”48 The kind of
achievements that made Macarius “fleshless” or that John Kolobos longed
for or that Arsenius despaired of finding—these pick out individuals and
highlight them as particularly holy and spiritually gifted. At stake in the
achievement of “angelic” virtues is, as in Cyril’s biographies, the stability
of the institution and the role of individuals as members of institutions—
and, therefore, subordinate to visible and regularized monastic authority.
Within the institutional framework that emerged with coenobia and lavrae,
reliant on hierarchical stability for existence, leaders necessarily looked
askance at exhibitions of spiritual power that could (and, in C
yril’s account,
nearly did) topple the new communal locus of sanctity. This stability was
represented and maintained by obedience to an established succession of
abbots, rather than a collocation of abbas. “Angelic” life does not further
43. H. Laus., 18.15–16 (Butler, 52–53).

44. Cf. Moschos, Eschatologie in ägypetischen Monchtums, 156–57.
45. Daniel Hömbargen, The Second Origenist Controversy: A New Perspective on
Cyril of Scythopolis’ Monastic Biographies as Historical Sources for Sixth-Century
Origenism, Studia Anselmiana 132 (Rome: Pontificio Ateneo S. Anselmo, 2001),
332–49.
46. Bernard Flusin, Miracle et histoire dans l’oeuvre de Cyrille de Scythopolis (Paris:
Études Augustiniennes, 1983), 182f.
47. Hömbargen, The Second Origenist Controversy, 346.
48. Mark Sheridan, “The Development of the Interior Life in Certain Early Monastic
Writings in Egypt,” in The Spirituality of Ancient Monasticism, ed. M. Starovieyski,
Acts of the International Colloquium Hel in Cracow-Tyniec 16–19 November 1994
(Tyniec, 1995), 104.
progress within established institutions. Rather, it indexes virtues that may

topple the stability of that institution.
These three tensions illustrate a series of countervailing conceptualiza-
tions or understandings of the ascetic life, that is, frequently co-existent
yet apparently exclusive ideas of what it means to be a monastic. Simi-
larities emerge, however, between the three pairs of choices: optimism of
ἀπαθεία and doubt about ἀμεριμνία, upward mobility and outward defer-
ral, individual growth and communal obedience. Optimism, mobility, and
growth, mark out the spirituality of the hero and superhuman: Athanasius’s
Antony, carrying Christ’s standard to the demon-haunted ends of the earth.
This interpretation of asceticism allows for and can even laud the monk
as an earthly angel. Antony’s move to the tombs is a frontal assault on the
demons, and has little in common with the anonymous young man who,
John of Scythopolis tells us, “while living, incarcerated himself among the
tombs and renouncing his own life, did nothing but lie underground and
groan from the depths of his heart.”49 This young man typifies a second
interpretation of asceticism, characterized more by humbling recognition
of one’s mortality, sin, and need for submission. Asceticism belongs also,
as Basil of Caesarea wrote, to the weak and the sick, for whom the monas-
tery is an infirmary as well as stadium.50 These conceptions of spirituality
not only render highly questionable language of “angelic” life; they con-
tour the bounds and ideals of ascetic spirituality, together with assump-
tions about anthropology, angelology, eschatology, and aretology, among
those monks whom this literature formed. Foremost among the heirs of
this tradition was John Climacus, and it is to his original re-formulation
of the trope of “angelic” life that we now turn. Developing his own ideas
about human and angelic natures and about which virtues are particu-
larly angelic, Climacus takes on our three tensions and transforms them
into a unified and holistic conception of ascetic life as progress through
and beyond failure.
The Angelic Life in the Ladder
It is highly unlikely that Climacus consciously intended to improve upon

or to resolve the variety of ascetic hermeneutics at work in the literary
tradition that he inherited. Rather, however paradoxical it may sound,
it is his strict adherence to received teachings that made him so original.
49. H. mon. 1.37 (Festugière, 22–23); also Poemen 50 (PG 65:333B).

50. Basil of Caesarea, Asceticon Magnum, regulae fusius tractatae, 6 (PG 31:925A)
and 7 (PG 31:928C).
Climacus, fond of lists and paradoxes, frequently holds together various

opinions that had before moved in opposing directions.51 He rarely rejects
opinions that had gained authority, although he often submits his own
opinion alongside them.52 As he quietly emphasizes certain elements of the
tradition and de-emphasizes others, Climacus develops an understanding
of ascetic spirituality that is new and yet familiar and highly attuned to
prior Greek ascetic tradition.
Angels appear regularly in the Ladder. Angels are the friends of God
who stand near him in heaven53 and whose privileged state allows them
also active liminality. Angels reveal God’s mysteries,54 distribute his benefi-
cence,55 and guard the baptized by aiding at prayer and carrying petitions
to God.56 Climacus says that they can help those going to judgment at
death,57 or, conversely, destroy the hope of those who do not repent.58
Angels are the constant companions of ascetics, drawing them heavenward
even as demons try to pull them off the ladder.59 In addition, Climacus
at many points calls ascetics ‘angels’ and their peculiar mode of being an
“angelic” one, very often doing so in passing and leaving open to inter-
pretation exactly what he might mean.60 All of these points are classic
characteristics of angels, considered especially as liminal beings, adding
little to what was already present in the literary tradition.
Climacus adds to these traditional opinions his own ideas, which lead
to a profound transformation of traditional material. Climacus uniquely
emphasizes angelic “perception” (αἴσθησις) and “progress” (προκοπή), cre-
ating a natural framework for analogy with humanity, which he sees as
malleable and self-transcending without being self-destructive. Within this
framework, Climacus refers angelic activity not to ἀπαθεία or ἀμεριμνία,
51. As, e.g., with definitions of humility—Climacus lists off several famous ones
and then offers his own: §25, 988C–989A.
52. As with the order of vices at §17, 929B.
53. §1 (PG 88:632B).
54. §26 (PG 88:1020D), §28 (PG 88:1132A); though within the extent to which
they themselves have been illumined (§30 [PG 88:1156A]); and the strictures of what
can be made known to humans (§27 [PG 88:1109B–C]).
55. §28 (PG 88:1137C–D).
56. §5 (PG 88:769C, 777D); §26.3 [summary] (PG 88:1092A), §28 (PG 88:1132B).
57. §3 (PG 88:665D); cf. Theophilus 1 (PG 65:197C), etc.
58. §28 (PG 88:1129C).
59. As much can be inferred from the standard illustrations of the Ladder; on
which see Martin, The Illustration of the Heavenly Ladder.
60. He speaks of monastic life generally as “angelic” at: §4 (PG 88:684D, 688D),
§8 (PG 88:832C). He calls the superior Isaac an ‘angel’ at §5 (PG 88:772B), Paul at
§25 (PG 88:1000C), Abba Arsenius at §27 (PG 88:1112C), etc.
but to “humility” (ταπεινoφροσυνή), “obedience” (ὑπακοή) and “prayer”

(προσευχή). For Climacus, these virtues define ascetic existence both in the
coenobium and in the solitary cell, but are developed precisely through
a progress that begins with failure. These moves create a coherent re-
deployment of the ‘angelic life,’ which both accepts and transcends the
objections raised in earlier literature, and which elaborates much of Cli-
macus’s own understanding of ascetic spirituality.
Angels and Other Bodiless Powers

Generally, John Climacus follows the traditional understanding of angels
as rational, bodiless,61 and immortal.62 On the other hand, he qualifies
these characteristics in order to differentiate clearly angels from demons,
while also opening up imitation of angels to mortal, embodied beings.
First, “bodilessness” is not a property of angels, but of “bodiless beings,” a
category that Climacus understands as including both angels and demons,
neither of which possess bodies.63 Thus, as important as ἀπαθεία is, it is
not enough simply to turn oneself away from the body. Even the demons
do that and, in fact, the Devil fell not through passion but through pride.64
Rather, all true “purity” (ἀγνεία) and ἀπαθεία, even angelic, is character-
ized by humility and obedience to God.65 Thus, while Climacus will speak
of “purity” as characteristic of bodiless beings66 he will further refer to
“angelic humility,”67 call “meekness” (πραΰτης) the angels’ “characteristic”
(ἰδίωμα),68 and praise their love and obedience to God.69 Without disre-
garding or rejecting claims about angelic dispassion, Climacus, showing
himself sensitive to potential ambiguities, quietly shifts focus away from
the particular traits that had raised so many problems in preceding lit-
61. See note 53 above.

62. Scholion proimion to §15 (PG 88:880C): “But ‘a made a little lower than the
angels’ also [means] this, that evil might not remain immortal, as the one called the
Theologian states.” The implied contrast is between angelic immortality and human
mortality. The “Theologian” is Gregory Nazianzen: or. 45.8 (PG 36:633A).
63. See, e.g., §15 (PG 88:881D).
64. See, e.g., §15 (PG 88:881D): “Do not trust your clay during your life. And do
not be very confident until you stand before Christ. Do not be confident that, from
self-control, you will not fall, for one fell from Heaven who never ate.” And espe-
cially §25, 1001A: “Rule of the angels became for one the pretext of arrogance. . .”
Cf. also §25 (PG 88:1001B–C).
65. See, e.g., §15 (PG 88:888C, 901B–C, and especially 904B).
66. §15 (PG 88:880D, 888B).
67. §25 (PG 88:993C).
68. §24 (PG 88:981A).
69. E.g., §4 (PG 88:685A), §30 (PG 88:1157B).
erature and toward a set of characteristics not necessarily at odds with

embodied existence.
Climacus makes two more crucial claims about angelic nature. First,
he argues that angels, being rational and bodiless, are also perceptive and
therefore self-aware. He writes, “It seems to me that it belongs to an angel
not to be tricked into sins.”70 Second, in a lengthy passage wherein he sets
up an extensive analogy between angels and the more advanced ascetics
(whom he calls “hesychasts”71), Climacus claims that angels make progress:
. . . I will teach you the perceived activity and way of life of the noetic
powers. These are not satiated unto the ages of age with praising the
Maker, and neither is the one entering in the heaven of stillness satiated
with hymning the Creator. The immaterial beings do not trouble themselves
about matter, and material beings do not concern themselves with food.
The former do not perceive food, and the latter require no promise of it.
The former do not care about goods and possessions or the latter about the
evildoing of spirits. For those above there is no desire of visible creation;
neither for those below (who desire things above) is there longing for some
visible image [in prayer]. The former do not pause in love, nor the latter in
progress. Hesychasts never cease from daily imitating angels. For the wealth
of progress is not unknown to angels nor the desire of ascent to hesychasts.
Angels stretch out until they stand as Seraphim. Hesychasts do not flag until
they become angels. Blessed is the one who hopes. Thrice blessed is the one
about to receive the status of angel.72
It is clear from this and other passages that angelic progress requires an
insatiable desire for God, which leads to a closer proximity to him and
therefore a higher degree of illumination.73 Granted, this progress moves,
as it were, from strength to strength and from glory to glory, but in this
lengthy meditation, Climacus opens up the possibility of an analogy
between angelic progress and ascetic progress. In doing so he avoids any
glaring inconsistency between static and dynamic beings to which writ-
ers like Barsanuphius had alluded. At the end of ascetic progress lies the
promise of becoming an angel. This claim is a bold one and, while we shall
70. §25 (PG 88:1000C): “Ἐμοὶ δοκεῖ ἀγγέλου, τὸ μὴ κλέπτεσθαι ἐφ’ ἁμαρτήμασιν εἶναι.”
71. I here transliterate Climacus’s word, ἡσυχάστος, rather than attempt to trans-
late it more fully. In his usage “hesychast” refers both to a “hermit” who with his
superior’s blessing lives alone with one or two others (§1 [PG 88:641D–644A]), and
to one who cultivates stillness and tranquillity (as described in §27). The two defini-
tions are complementary for Climacus.
72. §27 (PG 88:1101A–B). My emphasis.
73. See, e.g., §30 (PG 88:1156A); this would be consistent with a Ps-Dionysian
view of the angelic orders, with which Climacus would likely have been familiar.
have cause to consider this passage again below, it must first be qualified
by Climacus’s conception of human nature.
Malleable Humanity
Human beings, unlike angels, are bodily, sinful, and mortal. Though ratio-
nal, their perception of their own state and of the spiritual activity around
them is often unclear—an exigency of embodiment. Angels make progress
within the framework of their privileged and stable existence. Ascetics,
however, fail; indeed, they fail repeatedly and often. Climacus attributes
to one Macedonius, an Alexandrian monk, the following indirect state-
ment: “They say that angels do not fall, and some even say that they are
unable. But men fall, and are able to rise again, as often as this happens.
Demons alone do not rise after falling.”74 One reason why human beings,
unlike bodiless beings, can both fall and rise, is their ability to learn from
and correct the muddied perception that results from the union of soul
and body, on account of which they do not clearly perceive themselves,
the angels who aid them, or the demons who attack them.75
Ultimately, however, these constrictions are not hard and fast, for human
nature is highly malleable. Climacus makes this clear when he speaks of
human beings becoming demons or beasts.76 Each being has something in
common with the others, while natural barriers are susceptible of breach.
Indeed, Climacus understands asceticism as continued violence against
the constraints of human nature, especially as it resembles the animal or
demonic. He writes in the first step, “Flight from the world is a volun-
tary hatred of prized matter, and a denial of nature for the sake of things
beyond nature.”77 This denial is possible, Climacus says, with the help of
God (which, when recognized, induces humility).78 Climacus writes of the
person who attains purity through obedience and humility:
Whoever has conquered the body has conquered nature; and whoever
conquers nature becomes in every way beyond nature. But such a person
becomes one “made a little lower than angels” (Heb 2.7)—or I might say,
not at all. It is no marvel for immaterial to battle immaterial. But it is a
marvel, truly a marvel, for a material being, contending with hateful and
crafty material, to put immaterial enemies to flight!79
74. §4 (PG 88:696D).

75. §26.2 (PG 88:1072C).
76. §8 (PG 88:832A–B); cf. §27 (PG88:1097D).
77. §1 (PG 88:633C); see also §7 (PG 88:805B); etc.
78. §15 (PG 88:881A).
79. §15 (PG 88:896B–C).
Thus, victory over nature in no way abrogates bodily nature. That is,
ascetic renunciation does not seek a bodiless state. Because the body
expresses passions and constantly interposes its desires, monastic life is
one of struggle, “violence and ceaseless pains.”80 As the passage above
indicates, however, body and soul mutually affect one another, and “it is
a marvel to see the bodiless mind polluted and darkened by a body and
again to see the immaterial purified and rarefied by clay.”81 Because God
has bound the body to the soul, and because the body has a crucial role
to play, as enemy and as friend, in ascetic progress, Climacus claims that
monks aim to “ascend to heaven with the body.”82 Ascetics, seeking a state
of simplicity that anticipates the general resurrection, struggle to bring
body and soul into harmony.83 Thus, human beings, although they are
radically different from angels, become like them in every way save one:
human beings remain fundamentally bodily creatures.
Such a harmonious interior state differs strikingly from how ascetics
start out. Human beings, if they are to be like angels, must make prog-
ress—not within perfection, as angels do, but through failures. Climacus
harmonizes human failure with angelic perfection through his deploy-
ment and ordering of ascetic virtues, integral to which is his implied claim
that becoming an ‘angel’ does not have to do primarily with becoming
“bodiless.” Climacus therefore proclaims his understanding of asceticism
in terms of angelic imitation in the following paradoxical statement: “A
monk is attainment of the order and status of bodiless beings in a mate-
rial and defiled body.”84
Clarity and Obedience, Confession and Penitence

Climacus builds up his ideas of “angelic” asceticism within this angelologi-
cal and anthropological framework, developing it around three virtues that
we have already seen he associates with angels: clear perception, humility
and obedience. Through the interplay of these virtues, Climacus writes
imitation of “angelic” existence into the structure of the community’s daily
80. §1 (PG 88:636B); see also §14 (PG 88:869A): “Fasting is violence against nature.”
81. §14 (PG 88:868C).
82. §1 (PG 88:636B).
83. On anticipating resurrection, see, e.g., §15 (PG 88:881B, 892D–893A, 904B),
and §29 (PG 88:1148B). On the soul staying with the body, see §27 (PG 88:1097B):
“A hesychast is one who contends to keep the bodiless [τὸ ἀσώματον] within the
bounds of a bodily home [ἐν σωματικῷ οἴκῳ περιορίζειν]; a paradox!”
84. §1 (PG 88:633B): “Μοναχός ἐστιν τάξις καὶ κατάστασις ἀσωμάτων ἐν σώματι
ὑλικῷ καὶ ῥυπαρῷ ἐπιτελουμένη.”
life and portrays it as an ascent to unceasing contemplation of God, thus

effectively resolving the three conceptual oppositions described above.
Human beings, as we have seen, lack the crucial angelic characteristic
of clear perception—angels cannot be tricked into sinning—but monks
can develop it through practices of confession and self-accusation. Cli-
macus writes,
It seems to me to belong to an angel not to be tricked into sins, when I hear
of an earthly angel who said, “I know of nothing against myself, but am
not justified by this; but the one who judges me is the Lord” (1 Cor 4.4).
Wherefore we ought to constantly condemn and blame ourselves, so that
through voluntary cheapness we might be saved from involuntary sins.85
Clear perception makes a person an ‘earthly angel,’ and ascetics clear their
view by means of “self-accusation,” which Climacus more often treats
in its more formalized counterpart of confession of both thoughts and
actions to a spiritual director.86 Those who apply themselves assiduously
to self-accusation and confession receive angelic aid.87 For Climacus this
is no surprise because angels stand constantly beside all the baptized, not
only encouraging their prayers, but also recording their sins.88 Ascetics
preparing for confession imitate this angelic activity when they write down
their thoughts and actions.89 In confession, interestingly, one can observe a
dual motion: as the monk sees himself and his failings with greater clarity,
the angel erases his sins, removing them from the future accounting.90 In
a kind of inversion of judgment, the monk learns to judge himself rather
than others, and so he escapes God’s judgment by offering it to his direc-
tor,91 rather than usurping it for himself.92 Thus, the development of clarity
through the institutional mechanism of confession also purifies the monk,
making him in both ways more angelic.
Because clarity begins with an awareness of one’s own failings and sin-
ful propensities, Climacus would argue that it inculcates also the humil-
85. §25 (PG 88:1000C).

86. See, e.g., §4 (PG 88:724D); so also §26 (PG 88:1020A). On which see also
Kallistos Ware, “The Spiritual Father in Saint John Climacus and Saint Symeon the
New Theologian,” SP 18.2 (Leuven: Peeters, 1989), 299–316.
87. §26.3 (PG 88:1092A); on confession as self-revelation and self-perception see
especially Columba Stewart, “Radical Honesty About the Self: The Practice of the
Desert Fathers,” Sobornost 12:1 (1990): 25–39.
88. §4 (PG 88:684C).
89. §4 (PG 88:701C).
90. §25 (PG 88:1001A).
91. §4 (PG 88:680A).
92. So especially §10 (PG 88:845B–849A).
ity that he attributes to angels. Climacus refers to “angelic humility,”93

claiming that it is a virtue beyond human nature, but which human beings
can learn from angels.94 Indeed, the humble monk becomes a close com-
panion of angels95 and is gladdened by their presence.96 Again, however,
an important discontinuity emerges between human beings and angels.
While angels may be said to be naturally humble—perceiving themselves
quite clearly in relation to God97—human beings do not naturally pos-
sess humility. Rather, they learn it through confession, a process in which
failure is no obstacle: in fact, consciousness of one’s failings, inasmuch
as it contributes to repentance, leads to a revaluation of oneself against
divine perfection. Thus Climacus compares humility to a loaf made of
repentance and tears, fired with desire for God,98 and he closely connects
contrition, self-knowledge, and humility.99 Or, as he puts it elsewhere,
“Repentance raises up; mourning knocks on the heavens; but holy humility
opens them.”100 The path to humility—as also to dispassion101—is paved
with failures for which the monk repents in confession. The more a monk
learns to see himself clearly and to be aware of his failings and progress,
the more he finds a true humility that is not simply an artificial self deval-
uation, but a recognition of his character, constitution, and developing
relationship to God.
Humility and confession perfect the virtue that Climacus most consis-
tently associates with angels: obedience. As we shall see, for Climacus
humility and obedience operate dialectically. First, Climacus carefully
replaces ἀπαθεία, as well as Arsenius’s longed-for single “will,” with the
seemingly mundane “obedience.” Essential to coenobites, obedience
remains integral (mutatis mutandis) to the solitary’s life as well, even as it
opens up into the peculiarly angelic activity of prayer (as I will show below).
Climacus’s aretology thus avoids the pitfalls of ‘individualism’ as well as
doubts about a singular will, further opening up the monastic community
as a source of stability requisite for ascetic progress through repentance.
93. §25 (PG 88:993C).

94. §26 (PG 88:1028B).
95. §4 (PG 88:704C).
96. §21 (PG 88:948A): “The angel standing by gladdens the soul of humble monks.”
97. Climacus shows this per contra in his discussion of the Devil’s pride at §25
(PG 88:1001A).
98. §25 (PG 88:989C–D).
99. §25 (PG 88:997A–B): “συντριμμός,” “ἐπίγνωσις,” and “ταπείνωσις.”
100. §25 (PG 88:992D–993A): “Ἡ μὲν μετάνοια ἀνιστᾷ· τὸ δὲ πένθος εἰς οὐρανοὺς
κρούει· ἡ δὲ ὁσία ταπείνωσις ἀνοίγει.”
101. See §5 (PG 88:780C); cf. Climacus’s remarks at §7 (PG 88:813A).
The majority of comparisons between monks and angels appear in Cli-

macus’s Fourth (and longest) Rung, “Concerning blessed and ever-mem-
orable obedience [Περὶ τῆς μακαρίας καὶ ἀειμνήστου ὑπακοῆς].”102 There he
speaks lovingly of the coenobites’ “heaven-imitating life”103 and promises
to relate something “truly amazing”: how “earthbound mortals imitate
heavenly beings.”104 Climacus goes on to explain that this life refers to a
community knit together with love and humility, contrasting those bonds
with demonic dissension and anger.105 The humility needed to form this
community is born of obedience;106 and yet, as humility grows, it also per-
fects obedience.107 Thus, in his lengthy account of the great coenobium in
Alexandria, Climacus relates
. . . a marvel yet more fearful and angelic, men grey-haired, venerable
and holy running about under obedience like little children and having
obtained their own humility as a great boast . . . I saw others of those ever-
memorable monks with the grey hair of angels driven to deepest innocence,
to simplicity made wise, to action both voluntary and God-directed . . .
within their soul breathing God and the superior, like pure children.108
The more perfect, those who most completely resemble angels even in
physical appearance,109 remain obedient to God through the “superior”
(προεστῶς) who acts as their spiritual director. No longer does angelic
imitation refer primarily to acts of exterior renunciation, or to the distant
goal of dispassion, or to the individualizing hope of contemplation, but
to the utterly mundane demands of daily obedience within a community
with a stable, hierarchical structure.
Climacus (in the voice of its superior) calls this community “an earthly
heaven” that requires not only obedience but, for many (perhaps all), repen-
tance.110 Again we see that while perfection may be laudable, the realities
of ascetic life include many failures. The community, though, allows for
rehabilitation through acts of penitence, which complete the process begun
in confession to the superior. Indeed, the monastery described by Climacus
102. So titled in Rader’s edition (PG 88:677A).

103. §4 (PG 88:688D).
104. §4 (PG 88:684D).
105. §4 (PG 88:684A).
106. §4 (PG 88:717B).
107. §25 (PG 88:1000B).
108. §4 (PG 88:688B–C).
109. Cf., e.g., Arsenius 42 (PG 65:105D), Pambo 12 (PG 65:372A–B); H. mon.,
Prol.6 (Festugière, 7), 2.1 (Festugière, 35), 6.1 (Festugière, 43–44), 6.2 (Festugière, 44).
110. §4 (PG 88:713B–C); cf. §4 (PG 88:728A–B).
incorporates a separate institution, the infamous Prison (Φυλακή),111 where

those who sin against the community in ways great or small are sent for
a time of repentance.112 This place, too, is under a leader (Isaac, a man
whom Climacus calls an angel113), and there too monks live in obedience
and humility, progressing by means of more extreme measures than their
brethren in the main coenobium.
With these virtues, John Climacus resolves the conceptual oppositions
present in prior literature. First, rather than opposing the individual and
his community, Climacus’s spirituality reveals progress to be possible for
those who fail because of the stability provided by the monastic institu-
tion with its regularized forms of confession and repentance, by which
ascetics develop also the clear perception proper to angels. Second, rather
than opposing two states of existence, Climacus’s ideas of progress develop
within an unchanging genre of virtue dialectically fashioned out of obe-
dience and humility: all virtues imply and require these two. Without
obedience and humility, not even dispassion is truly dispassion.114 With
them even the most mundane activity is heavenly. Thus, Climacus does
not envision one kind of activity for those “on the way” and another for
those being perfected. Rather, both are concerned with the same virtues,
and both utilize the same practices to attain them.
Perpetual Progress
There remains the question of what sort of liminality is operative in Cli-
macus’s spirituality: what is the end toward which ascetics move, and
how do they approach it? Climacus is clear that God’s judgment cannot
be known this side of death and that ascetics therefore do not reach their
“end” in the present life.115 He is equally clear, however, that the mode of
being defined by obedience and humility—both of which are cultivated
now—continues eternally. Thus, the “end” of asceticism is, in fact, eter-
nal progress, which the monk accepts, as Barsanuphius would have it,
as a gift of God’s mercy.116 For Climacus, therefore, monks are always
“liminal” beings. More importantly, they progress toward an end that is
111. §4 (PG 88:704A).

112. §4 (PG 88:685A), §5 (PG 88:764C).
113. §5 (PG 88:772B).
114. See especially §15 (PG 88:888C, 901B–C, and 904B).
115. See, e.g., §5 (PG 88:769B–C, 773A–B), §7 (PG 88:812D), §23 (PG 88:968C), etc.
116. So §5 (PG 88:780B); see also §23 (PG 88:968B–C): “As many successes as
you had before your birth—in these alone rejoice! For God has given all things after
birth, as also birth itself.”
always future (as it was for Barsanuphius) and yet, paradoxically, ever
present (as for Evagrius). His conception of continual progress emerges
clearly in the analogy that he envisions between coenobitic and hesychas-
tic lives as “angelic.”
Climacus inscribes angelic imitation as continual progress into the rhe-
torical structure of the Ladder. The book has a “mirroring” and “bal-
ancing” structure, whereby early chapters on “fundamental virtues”
(§§4–7) are balanced and filled out by later chapters on “higher virtues”
(§§23–26). Likewise, the Ladder has a three-part “narrative” structure:
“breaking from the world” (§§1–3), the “practical life” (§§4–26) and the
“contemplative life” (§§27–30). Thus, the Fourth Rung on “obedience,”
which concerns monks in coenobia, is mirrored by the Twenty-Sixth on
“discernment,” which caps the “practical life” whose elaboration began
with “obedience.” “Discernment” also marks a change in tone and, in its
later portions, prefaces the Twenty-Seventh Rung, on “The life of Still-
ness and contemplation” (Ἡσυχία), concerning those who have “gradu-
ated” from the coenobium and entered the “contemplative life.” In this
construction, Climacus points out the fundamental continuity of these
various “stages” in the ascetic life. Obedience Climacus calls “a rejection
of discernment by means of a wealth of discernment.”117 In this way the
monk learns the humility and clarity that allow him to exercise properly his
own discernment—which Climacus tellingly calls “a clean conscience and
pure perception”118—and that prepare him for the dangerous yet impor-
tant step of living in solitude, where he can cultivate not only the virtues
of an “active” life, but those of the “contemplative” as well. Obedience
and stillness hold, therefore, analogous places in the Ladder’s structure, as
the twinned principles (ἄρχαι) of the “active” and “contemplative” lives
(although, of course, the latter is impossible without the former), and
Climacus’s mirrored composition emphasizes that the monk in solitude is
still a monk in obedience, perhaps no longer to a superior, but always to
God.119 Angelic imitation is most visible in these two chapters and shows
up both in the unity of coenobite and hesychast, and in the continuity of
growth in virtue that takes place for each.
While the coenobites lived a “heaven-imitating life,” Climacus calls
the hesychast “an earthly type of an angel,”120 of whom Abba Arsenius
117. §4 (PG 88:680A): “Ὑπακοή ἐστιν ἀπόθεσις διακρίσεως ἐν πλούτῳ διακρίσεως. . . .”

118. §26 (PG 88:1013B): “Διάκρισίς ἐστι συνείδησις ἀμόλυντος, καὶ καθαρὰ αἴσθησις.”
119. §26 (PG 88:1013A).
120. §27 (PG 88:1100A): “Ἡσυχαστής ἐστι τύπος ἀγγέλου ἐπίγειος. . . .”
is (ironically enough) a prime example.121 Why? Climacus explains that

this one, “with the tablet of desire and the words of haste, frees his prayer
from laziness and neglect.”122 One cannot help but think of the tablets
on which angels write sins and monks write thoughts, which Climacus
in Rung Four presents as symbolic of obedience.123 The hesychast carries
a similar sort of book with him, composed of divine desire and focused
haste,124 by means of which he develops a life of unceasing prayer. Prayer,
indeed, Climacus will call “work of angels, food of all bodiless beings.”125
In prayer the hesychast comes directly before God, learning the divine will
and accomplishing it;126 in discernment he receives his illumination directly
from God;127 and so, like angels, he draws as near as possible to God until
he reaches “the depth of mysteries.”128 The hesychast, however, only attains
this position through much struggle, having learned through failure to rec-
ognize and ignore the sounds of demons.129 Had he not learned to offer up
his will in obedience, always to hate it in humility, and to recognize God’s
will in discernment, the hesychast could not now offer his will directly to
God in prayer. Thus he perfects as an “earthly angel” the way of life that
he began in the “earthly heaven” of the coenobium and whose continu-
ance was possible only through recognition, even acceptance, of human
frailty and repentant overcoming of failures. His progress is continuous,
then, with that of the beginner, and, in fact, does not end.
We must note that in this scheme of progress ultimately “all-holy love”
tops the Ladder, setting ascetics at last among the angels130 in the heaven
of obedient and humble dispassion, making their lives most perfectly “the
rest of angels, the progress of the ages.”131
CLIMACUS’S ACHIEVEMENT
John Climacus invigorates and harmonizes the various spiritual and con-
ceptual claims on asceticism implicated in the ‘angelic life.’ By taking up
121. §27 (PG 88:1112C).

122. §27 (PG 88:1100A).
123. See Notes 88 and 89 above; see also §4 (PG 88:716A–B).
124. So Climacus implies at §1 (PG 88:644A), repeated almost verbatim at §27
(PG 88:1100A and 1105B).
125. §28 (PG 88:1129A): “’Aγγέλων ἔργον, ἀσωμάτων πάντων τροφή.”
126. §28 (PG 88:1133C).
127. §26 (PG 88:1013A).
128. §27 (PG 88:1100C).
129. §27 (PG 88:1101C, 1112C–1113D).
130. §29 (PG 88:1152B).
131. §30 (PG 88:1160A): “’Aγάπη ἀγγέλων στάσις· ἀγάπη προκοπὴ τῶν αἰώνων.”
traditional ideas, holding them together, and coupling them with his own
understanding, he crafts a unique contribution to ascetic spirituality. He
speaks to all the virtues discussed in earlier literature—including “heav-
enly” dispassion and “supernatural” purity—as well as to a variety of
renunciatory behaviors. Climacus lauds divine contemplation, progress,
and the hope of a heavenly existence. He elaborates all of these, however,
through the interplay of humility, obedience, and perception, which he
places within a unique angelology and anthropology. In doing so, Climacus
transforms the understanding of asceticism that he inherited: he opens up
progress through failure as a path of angelic imitation, made possible by
the stability of the institution and the virtue of humble obedience that it
requires and cultivates. Climacus first describes angelic nature in terms
of clear perception and humility, arguing as well that, though distinct in
nature, human beings and angels both make progress. For angels, progress
is always within perfection, referring to a closer proximity to God and
higher degree of illumination. For human beings, progress means getting
up after falls, repenting and thereby learning the perception that angels
possess naturally, as well as cultivating the humility that angels consistently
exhibit. At the same time, the stability requisite to progress is provided
by the monastic community and its superior, under whom monks learn
obedience, which Climacus characterizes as an especially angelic virtue.
Likewise, obedience (just like humility and self-perception) aids and is
aided by practices of confession and repentance. Thus, for Climacus the
quotidian drudgery of asceticism is what makes it an angelic lifestyle.
Moreover, Climacus overcomes fears of individualism by characterizing
his “hesychast” as an individual seeking prayer-filled union with God
within the strictures of obedience learned under a superior. Coenobite
and hesychast are both “angels” and for the same reasons. Ultimately,
Climacus develops an understanding of ascetic spirituality into which he
effectively inscribes imitation of angels precisely as continual progress
within the bounds of human nature and the monastic community. John
Climacus’s ascetic spirituality, familiar and yet original, characterizes the
monk’s life is one of never-ending growth from frailty to strength, ever
reliant on God’s mercy, a growth whose “end” is eternal continuance in
the expansive and divine practice of “all-holy love.”
Jonathan L. Zecher is visiting assistant professor in the Honors

College and the Department of Modern and Classical Languages at
the University of Houston

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7KH$QJHOLF/LIHLQ'HVHUWDQG/DGGHU-RKQ&OLPDFXV V5H)RUPXODWLRQ

John Climacus’s seventh-century ascetical and spiritual masterwork, the

John Climacus—about whom almost nothing is known with certainty, save

Byzantine monastics, proving particularly influential for the later Byzan-

(Lund: Lund University, 2007),10–11; Dimitrije Bogdanovic, “Jean Climaque dans la

in fact, should—take on the traits associated with angels. Finally, a sus-

Tradition and the Individual Monk

9. Importantly, he condemns Evagrius not on matters of doctrinal or eschatologi-

Ponticus. Climacus collected practical wisdom wherever he could find it,

THE ANGELIC LIFE IN MONASTIC TRADITION

Ascetics imagined themselves according to a variety of exemplars known

Dispassion and Doubt

chrétien,” in Revue d’orient chrétien: 12 (1907): 48–68, 171–81, 393–404; 13 (1908):

22. John Kolobos 2 (PG 65:204C–D).

27. John Kolobos 13 (PG 65:208B–C).

necessities of bodily care, but to oppose it in purpose, insofar as asceti-

Liminality and Eschatology

and contemplation) whose end (pure prayer as contemplation of God) is

Individual and Community

40. Resp., 600 (Neyt and de Angelis-Noah, 2.2 [451], 810).

43. H. Laus., 18.15–16 (Butler, 52–53).

progress within established institutions. Rather, it indexes virtues that may

The Angelic Life in the Ladder

It is highly unlikely that Climacus consciously intended to improve upon

49. H. mon. 1.37 (Festugière, 22–23); also Poemen 50 (PG 65:333B).

Climacus, fond of lists and paradoxes, frequently holds together various

but to “humility” (ταπεινoφροσυνή), “obedience” (ὑπακοή) and “prayer”

Angels and Other Bodiless Powers

61. See note 53 above.

erature and toward a set of characteristics not necessarily at odds with

74. §4 (PG 88:696D).

Clarity and Obedience, Confession and Penitence

life and portrays it as an ascent to unceasing contemplation of God, thus

85. §25 (PG 88:1000C).

ity that he attributes to angels. Climacus refers to “angelic humility,”93

93. §25 (PG 88:993C).

The majority of comparisons between monks and angels appear in Cli-

102. So titled in Rader’s edition (PG 88:677A).

incorporates a separate institution, the infamous Prison (Φυλακή),111 where

111. §4 (PG 88:704A).

117. §4 (PG 88:680A): “Ὑπακοή ἐστιν ἀπόθεσις διακρίσεως ἐν πλούτῳ διακρίσεως. . . .”

is (ironically enough) a prime example.121 Why? Climacus explains that

121. §27 (PG 88:1112C).

Jonathan L. Zecher is visiting assistant professor in the Honors

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