Book review: Passions of the Soul by Rowan Williams

 by Brother Christopher

 

Over many years of working in spiritual direction and speaking to guests and retreatants about their prayer life, a consistent issue that comes up repeatedly is how to deal with distracting thoughts and, more broadly, how to deal with what the tradition has described as “the passions of the soul.” These are what get in the way of resting in God’s presence during formal prayer, while at other times lead us into self-defeating patterns of behavior that seem to have a life of their own. We often feel captive to them, and become discouraged over our seeming inability to keep them from controlling us. Monastic tradition has had long experience learning to understand such passions, and Evagrius and Cassian in particular have written authoritatively about them, identifying pride, lust, anger, gluttony, avarice, sadness, envy, and acedia as what we are dealing with. They have offered sound guidance to keep them from enslaving us. That said, their wisdom has traditionally been aimed at a specialized audience of monks and nuns and has not been easily available to the laity.

    In Passions of the Soul Archbishop Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury and an eminent theologian and author, offers a discerning look at this important topic based on his understanding of the sources and his unique ability to explain their wisdom in an accessible, down-to-earth way. These essays are based on a collection of talks he gave to a Benedictine community of nuns several years ago; nevertheless, they are hardly solely for contemplatives. As the passions affect each of us, often leading us to feel as if our freedom is hopelessly compromised, understanding them is relevant to us all, and Williams is at his best in reflecting on their hold on us. He uses wisdom culled from the Philokalia, a collection of eastern patristic writings from the fourth to the fifteenth century that speak directly to this. Presenting an introductory essay that among other things explains the notion of apatheia as described by the fathers, he makes it clear that apatheia has nothing to do with apathy and instead has to do with dispassionate love, staying focused on loving regardless of whatever we might be feeling. As such, it foreshadows the resurrection, helping us to see reality as it is and to act in accord with it. That is the whole nature of contemplative life: seeing reality as it is and loving it. Were we able to realize this we would know a liberation that would be nothing short of transformative.

    The main section of the book is composed of five chapters that lay out a basic map of the passions, showing how they evolve from experiences of temptation (or testing) that easily lead into a deepening engagement with our thoughts. The more we engage, before we know it we are enmeshed in them, caught in what Williams describes as a corrupt chain of thoughts, what the fathers described as logismoi. These are quite literally obsessive thoughts that make us “prisoners of destructive patterns within us” (p. 7) and rob us of any sense of inner peace. At this point we can only imagine what it would be like to be free of them. This is precisely what the early monks and nuns dealt with and what fired their hearts. This description naturally segues into an introduction to the eight basic passions, which Williams helpfully shows as arising from two primary instincts: aggression and desire. While in their natural state these impulses are not evil in themselves and have their place, they so easily go out of balance and lead to the distortion of the passions. What follows is a discussion of each of the eight passions, and each is cleverly offset by one of the eight beatitudes. For Williams sees the eight Gospel beatitudes as “sort of a reversed image of the things that go wrong in our souls” (p. 22), thereby giving a positive expression of what our base instinct might look like. This exposition is both helpful and illuminating, avoiding tiresome moralistic pontificating while showing how true seeing and freedom become the antidote to disordered passions. In this review I will not go into his treatment of each passion, but simply say that his exposition is both creative and beautifully presented, giving a clear pathway forward to becoming authentic disciples of Jesus who know a new level of personal freedom.

    The final two essays of the book, “To Stand Where Christ Stands” and “Early Christian Writing,” form part two and are taken from earlier work by the author. The first essay is a brief overview of the meaning of spirituality; it emphasizes that against what many in our day conceive simply as a particular segment of our lives, spirituality is “essentially about what it is for a whole human life to be lived in the ‘place’ defined by Jesus” (p. 83). Spirituality involves the whole of our life, and Jesus is a model of what that might look like. The second essay helps us to understand the context in which the earliest Christian writers lived and the risk believers took in believing Jesus to be the Messiah. This radical dedication prompted the age of martyrdom as well as the rise of monasticism once Christianity became legal, and that is reflected in their writings. While today’s circumstances are different for Christians (at least in this country and in Europe), Williams shows the value of early Christian writings and why we should continue to read them. When we take them seriously and with a bit of understanding, they just might inspire in us a renewed dedication to faith in Jesus.

    For a relatively short book, Passions of the Soul is ideal for meditation and spiritual reading. The writing is clear, not overly academic, and has real pastoral application for the whole church. Even more, it helps guide us to a more mature sense of freedom in Christ. I cannot recommend it more warmly. Also, for those interested, the original retreat conferences on which the book is based are available athttps://mucknellabbey.org.uk/apatheia-and-the-passions-talks-by-rowan-williams/