Dialogue Is Never Enough | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J. | October 25, 2005

Dialogue Is Never Enough | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J. | October 25, 2005

Comments

[Cilia Washinski]

I liked your article very much. It´s amazing that it leads to the idea that Evagrio Póntico states in his "Antirrhetikos". I´m not sure if this is the correct spelling. I heard in EWTN radio in the Spanish program "Criterios" ( I am colombian and I live in the U.S. though) that this writing was recently discovered because it had been missing since about the 4th century. Right now it is translated into Italian. The journalist said few weeks ago, that this was one of the most important Catholic news ever.

I think you are right. I only have a bachelor degree in Business Administration in a jesuit university in Cali (Colombia) and I like to read ( I wish I had done so more).

What I heard is, that Evagrio Póntico says in the "Antirrhetikos" that we should not dialogue with Satan or the demon because then, we would fall into temptation like Eve did in the paradise. He said, notice that Eve had a dialogue with the serpent. What we should do is to follow Jesus example when he was tempted in the dessert. I think that when the demon told him to jump so the angels would catch him (or the demon used a Bible verse, I am not sure), Jesus didn´t start a dialogue. Jesus answered with a Bible verse too: Written is in the Bible "You won´t tempt your Lord God". Period.

The fact is that Evagrio Póntico in his "Antirrhetikos" gives the answers we should give to Satan to his 8 capital sins, following Jesus´s example, using the Bible and not starting a dialogue.

The fact is that Evagrio Póntico was the first person who came up with the capital sins. He came up with eight and they were reduced to 7.