Open sample · Ascetic literature
The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Step 1
On the renunciation of life. John Climacus, abbot of Sinai, c. 600.
Editorial introduction
The thirty steps of John Climacus' Ladder have been read continuously since the time of their composition as a guide to the monastic life. The work was written, by the author's own indication, in response to a request from John, abbot of Raithou, who asked Climacus to compose a brief manual on monastic struggle. The result was anything but brief, and the work — almost certainly written piecemeal over a number of years — has the unmistakable texture of teaching that has been worked out in practice. Climacus speaks not as a theorist but as one who has watched a great many monks succeed and a great many fail.
Step 1, the renunciation of life, is the foundational discourse: the renunciation of the world, the entry into the monastic life, the question of motive. Climacus' treatment is famously austere. He is not interested in producing a vocational rhetoric that will encourage indecisive aspirants; he is interested in establishing what the renunciation actually requires. The discourse moves between two registers: a more or less systematic exposition of the renunciation, interrupted by aphoristic sayings and short anecdotes about particular monks Climacus has known. The aphoristic register, which gives the Ladder its proverbial character in later Christian literature, is already present here in the first step.
Our translation works from the Greek of Migne with the textual notes of Sophronios. The principal departures from the older English version (Lazarus Moore, 1959; revised Luibheid and Russell, 1982) are in the handling of monastic technical terminology. We have preferred to retain certain Greek terms — apatheia, penthos, hesychia — in transliteration, with a brief gloss at first occurrence, rather than to translate them as "dispassion", "mourning", and "stillness". The translated terms have, in our judgement, accreted theological associations that do not belong to Climacus.
Step 1 (selections)
Our God and King is Good — wholly good, beyond all good — and Bountiful. Blessed is the soul that has loved Him, for she shall not see her own death. Of created beings, by the very fact of their being created, some are good — and these are friends and acquaintances of the Good — and some are neither good nor evil but indifferent. Some are evil, though it is not in their nature to be so. Some are even worse than evil and have made themselves so, in flight from what is good. And of these last, some are silent in their evil and some are loud, some are weak and some are strong.
I write these things to you who are noble warriors, the holy fathers and brethren of the desert and the mountains and the caves, that you may know what manner of teacher you have set over yourselves in the present words. And let no one imagine, when he reads them, that they are easy to put into practice. Now then, my brothers, listen.
A Christian is the imitation of Christ in all things — in word and in deed and in thought — as far as is possible to a human being, who believes in the Holy Trinity in a manner that is right and without blame. A friend of God is the one who, having all that is permitted to him, partakes of communion with God in nature and through grace. The renunciation of the world is the voluntary hatred of what is praised in the world, and the denial of the natural for the sake of obtaining what is above nature.
All who have voluntarily left the things of the world have done so either for the sake of the kingdom which is to come, or because of the multitude of their sins, or because of their love for God. If none of these is the motive, then the departure is unreasonable. And yet, the Athlete who lays out the prize awaits to see how it shall end. Some are confined in the body and yet escape it; others are not in the body and yet have all their being there. They have been clothed in the body, but they have begun to be a spirit. Whatever they do, they do it to please God. This is the goal toward which the renunciation moves.
If one of those who has come into the monastic life supposes that he has placed himself in the easy and untroubled life, let him be undeceived. He has rather, on his own initiative, surrendered himself to a perpetual labour. He has volunteered to be a martyr — bloodless, as the Fathers have said, and uncrowned in this present age, but a martyr nonetheless. Let him not begin, then, looking for ease, comfort, or the affection of his brethren. None of these is the prize set before him. The prize set before him is to be like Christ, and Christ was made perfect through suffering.
Just as a sick man, after his bath, may experience renewed weariness, so the soul, after great gladness, may fall into a corresponding sadness. As thorns spring up of themselves, even in the absence of all cultivation, so do thoughts of vainglory rise up in the soul that has set itself to flee them. So long as we have not received baptism, we have the devil flattering us; once we have received it, he begins to wage open war upon us. We were ignorant of him while we were yet his slaves; we begin to know him as soon as we have ceased to be such.
A note on monastic terminology
The decision to retain key Greek terms in transliteration has been controversial within our editorial circle. Dr Voskuijl initially preferred a fully translated version, on the principle that English readers should not be required to learn Greek vocabulary in order to read a translation. Hieromonk Photios argued the opposite, that the technical vocabulary of monastic literature has no English equivalents and that "dispassion" — to take one example — has acquired connotations of emotional flatness which are misleading. We have adopted the latter position, with brief glosses at first occurrence. The full edition of subsequent steps will retain this practice.