According to the fathers of the Conferences, the result of developing discretion and discernment is the manifestation of the fourth virtue on our list, namely, balance. This balance is described by Abba Moses as the “royal road,” upon which a monk is not made proud by virtue nor drawn down so as to give in to vice.33 Christian life, Abba Moses assumes, invites one both to laxity and to possible over-corrections in the pursuit of purity of heart. Seeing one’s particular failings in a certain direction, the person is tempted to go too far in the other, and vice-versa. It is interesting to observe that, throughout the Conferences, many of the desert fathers are much more concerned about teaching the importance of balance in the face of monks who engage in too much religious rigor-such as the monk who threw himself in a well-than in working to correct those who are lazy. For those of us living in the world, this may seem a little bit backwards in that most of us tend to be tempted toward falling into vice rather than toward an excess of fervor. However, for those ancient men and women who chose a life in the desert over a life in the city, it was evidently the case that deluded attempts at extreme piety were a more frequent problem than temptations to malaise. Regardless, to manifest the virtue of balance means not to fall into either trap.
For Abba Daniel, the speaker in the fourth conference, it is precisely in order that the Christian can learn to live a life of balance that God has created what may appear, to the untrained eye, to be a conflict between the flesh and the spirit within human beings. Abba Daniel begins by observing that the impulses of flesh and spirit are often contrary to one another.
The flesh delights in wantonness and lust, but the spirit does not even tolerate natural desire. The one wants to have plenty of sleep, and to be satiated with food; the other is nourished with vigils and fasting, so as to be unwilling even to take sleep and food as is necessary for life. 34
According to Abba Daniel, the human being is naturally inclined to try and find ways to attain the lofty desires of the spirit without ever setting aside any of the desires of the flesh; we want to have our cake and eat it. Abba Daniel describes the resultant state of monks who continually seek spiritual goods while trying to gratify bodily ones as “lukewarmness” and notes that it is impossible by pursuing such a lukewarm path to attain real perfection.35 It is precisely because the will tends to desire this lukewarm state that the spirit and the flesh are led into conflict with one another by God.
For when we give in to this free will of ours and want to let ourselves go in the direction of slackness, at once the desires of the flesh start up, and injure us with their sinful passions, and do not let us continue in that state of purity in which we delight…. But, if inflamed with fervor of spirit, we want to root out the works of the flesh, and without any regard to human weakness try to raise ourselves co excessive efforts toward virtue, the frailty of the flesh comes in, and recalls us and restrains us from that excess of spirit.36
Thus, for Abba Daniel, a kind of moderation results from the apparent conflict between flesh and spirit, the balance of the “royal road.”37 This life of balance is marked for him by sufficient, but never excessive, attention paid to the needs of the flesh, and by continuous pursuit of the desires of the spirit. Balance is like the virtuous mirror-image of the vice of lukewarmness. Where the lukewarm monk fails properly to address the needs of his flesh (by overindulgence), and never really attends sufficiently to the needs of his spirit, the monk leading a life of balance gives both their due, and allows each to draw the other into its right place.
The understanding of what it means to be human that is implicit in teachings like those of Abba Daniel is important. For Abba Daniel, human beings are not spiritual creatures somehow trapped in a physical body (a teaching that was common to much of the non-Christian and gnostic philosophy of the day, and often perpetuated today), but instead are created by God to be physical and spiritual beings at the same time. To realize the virtue of balance, then, is to begin to realize the kind of existence for which every human being was created-a life of perfection both physical and spiritual. Imbalance, for the fathers of the desert, leads one to pay too much attention to one or the other aspect of the human person, and thus leads one not to be what God created all people to be.
~Daniel G. Opperwall, A Layman in the Desert
33 Conf. 2.II.4.
34 Conf. 4.XI.2-3. Translation adapted from Gibson.
35 Conf. 4.XII.I -2.
36 Conf. 4.XII.2-3. Translation adapted from Gibson.
37 Conf. 4.XII.5.
