Negligence as the Cause of the Fall of Souls in Origen and its Reinterpretation by Evagrius Ponticus

RUBÉN PERETÓ RIVAS

Buenos Aires

Congreso; 13º Congreso Anual de la Sociedad Internacional de Estudios Neoplatónicos; 2015

ISNS

Could Acedia have been the reason for the fall of souls? That seems to be the opinion of Henri Crouzel and Marguerite Harl, who suggests it in the detailed analysis about the expression κόρον λαβειν in De principiis from Origen. The proposal of this paper is to revalidate some of the observations made by Harl in the aforementioned study, and confront them with the work of Evagrius Ponticus who, in Kephalaia gnostica, replicates the assertions from Origen. But in this case his statement takes on a new dimension because of the deep and comprehensive theorizing that Evagrius has about acedia. It is anti-Origenist condemnations from the year 553 that provide the expression κόρον λαβεῖν τῆς θεωρίας, which does not appear in the work of Origen. The text of the first anathema states: ?If anyone says that the group of all rational beings were disembodied and intangible intellects (...) and that, tired of divine contemplation, turned to the worst ...? The cause here adduced for the fall is the repletion or satiety - κόρον - of contemplation. However, Evagrius Ponticus and the De principiis point out that the cause is negligence. Is it possible to find complementarity between the concepts of repletion and negligence on the one hand, and the latter with that of acedia?