Spiritual Combat

SPIRITUAL COMBAT. - Ascetical repression of temptations and vicious inclinations, attainment of the moral ideal. The struggle for life and for improving and elevating its form exists not only as a sublimating and selecting force, in the organic and the social world, but in a particular way in the spiritual and supernatural one. That the spiritual life of the Christian is a struggle is one of the concepts that the Scripture of the New Testament most insistently inculcates: "He also will not be crowned unless he has legitimately fought" (II Tim. 2:5).

The teaching that the spiritual life is a struggle is particularly developed in the Pauline Epistles. The Apostle's life, after his conversion, is a "bonum certamen." The Christian life is represented by him as a harsh struggle, with alternating fortunes, ending only with death, a struggle of the greatest importance, since eternal life is at stake (I Cor. 9:26 ff.; Hebr. 12:4).

For there are in us, as it were, two beings, "two men": the "new man" regenerated, the product of Grace, living in the "spirit," who strives to bring about and develop the supernatural organism begun with Baptism; but alongside him subsists the "old man," the "animal," "natural" man, living in the "flesh," that is, indulging in the disordered tendencies deriving from original sin.

In this "old man," not annihilated by Baptism in his depraved tendencies, that is, in "concupiscence," lies the enemy to be fought. Concupiscence is threefold: "concupiscentia carnis, oculorum et superbia vitae" (Io. 2:16). The struggle of the "new man" against the unregulated attraction of sensual pleasures and earthly goods, and against pride, is made harsher by the intervention, in support of the internal enemy, of two other terrible external enemies: the world (that is, the aggregate of those who oppose Christ, with their doctrine and form of life, to which the Christian must be "crucified" and vice versa: Gal. 6:14; cf. I Cor. 7:31); the devil, through whose envy sin, death and unbridled concupiscence entered the world, and against whom one must perpetually struggle (Eph. 6:12).

These three enemies of our soul are in reality only one. The "old man," carnal, comes fatally into conflict with the "new man"; they cannot coexist together, but one must of necessity die, since, while the "carnal" man is enticed by pleasures without moral concern, the "spiritual" man abhors forbidden pleasures, sacrificing them to duty, that is, to the divine law.

Hence the perpetual spiritual combat, which transforms the Christian into an "athlete" and a "soldier," fighting until death for an immortal crown (Eph. 6:10-16: the armor of the soldier of Christ). The struggle has no truce during the earthly life, since all efforts to free oneself from the "old man" succeed only in weakening him, fortifying the "new man" against him.

The writings of the Apostolic Fathers, with their eminently ascetical background, all develop the concept of the Christian life as spiritual combat. This stands out in a particular way in the first part of the Didaché, the moral catechesis (chaps. 1-6), also called the "book of the two ways"; Pseudo-Barnabas summarizes in chaps. 18-21 the doctrine of the "two ways" set forth in the Didaché. Notable references to spiritual combat are also found in the Shepherd of Hermas, which teaches encratism understood in the orthodox sense of asceticism. The Christian life is likened to a spiritual combat especially in the II Pseudo-Clementine Epistle, a homily in which the speaker proposes, after a brief exordium on Jesus Christ (chaps. 1-4), his theme (chaps. 5-7), that is, the spiritual combat that the Christian must conduct against the world; the concept of this struggle is developed in chaps. 8-17 (this heavenly combat consists especially in the development of the Christian virtues: penance, purity, charity, confidence, etc.), and concluded in chaps. 18-20 with a warm invitation to serve God and to fight for him, whatever it may cost. The patristic literature of the 2nd-3rd centuries is a literature of combat, since the Church found itself in a century of struggle.

The Epistle to Diognetus develops the concept of the struggle between flesh and spirit (chaps. 5-7). Clement of Alexandria conceives the "pedagogue," that is, Christ, not only as a father, but also as a pilot and a general who guides Christians to the battle against the vices of the world (ch. 1). Origen develops the concept of the Christian's struggle against the devil, the world, and the flesh (De principiis, III: PG 2, 425-562, 641-1632). St. Ephrem, whose spiritual doctrine exercised a great influence in the Eastern monasteries, considers the spiritual life in the light of a c., of which he indicates the weapons ready to sustain the Christian in victory, namely fasting, temperance, prayer, holy readings, the exercise of the virtues, and in particular charity, virginity, patience, humility and penance (cf. G. S. Assemani, Opera omnia graece, latine, syriace, Greek series, I, Rome 1732, p. 66; II, pp. 321-22, 461; particularly in the Treatise on the Spiritual Life, Greek series, I, pp. 258-82; and in that on the formation of monks, III, pp. 337-56), a concept taken up by St. John Chrysostom, by St. Nilus the Abbot, and by all Eastern monasticism. Of these F. Cayré writes (I, p. 497 ff.) that they seem to have particularly meditated that this life is a c.; they understood and savored the words with which St. Paul exhorted the Ephesians to put on the armor of God. The enemies against whom the monk must fight are the devil and the vices. The monk had especially to watch against Satan, temptations, obsessions and diabolical illusions, learning to recognize their aggression in the restlessness of the soul, and having recourse to three weapons: prayer, work, fasting. This teaching is very well expressed in St. Jerome, and in the Institutiones and Collationes of Cassian to the monks.

In the Psychomachia (PL 60, 3, 11-90), the Christian poet Prudentius celebrates in 915 hexameters the spiritual c. of the Christian virtues against vice, in which «prima petit campum, dubia sub sorte duelli pugnatura Fides». The thought is taken up in the Scala (κλῖμαξ) Paradisi, of St. John Climacus, and made his own by St. Bernard and by St. Thomas Aquinas, who in the spiritual c. gives particular importance to the capital vices, sources of every sin.

The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola are entirely centered on the concept of the spiritual c.: they are the «spirituality of effort... spirituality of the c.». Indeed the spirituality of St. Ignatius has a military stamp. Christ is a captain, who invites us to fight at his side (P. Pourrat, op. cit. in bibl., p. 67). To respond to such an invitation is to enter his army, which must not only defend itself, but move to the offensive, taking up, to assure itself of victory, the most powerful weapon of the particular examen (v. ESAME DI COSCIENZA), because the soldier of Christ must conquer virtue as fortified places are conquered.

The influence of Ignatian teaching is particularly deep and recognizable in the C. s., one of the best ascetical writings of the 16th century. Lorenzo Scupoli (v.), a Theatine, is commonly held to be the author of this treatise, of which in 1590 he gave a copy to St. Francis de Sales. In the first edition (Venice 1589) it counted only 24 chapters, which then grew to 33, 40 and finally to the present 66; in these successive reworkings the logical order among the chapters has been disrupted, the style has lost its ingenuous grace. Dedicated to the «Supreme Captain and most glorious triumpher Jesus Christ», the C. s. opens with the inquiry «in what Christian perfection consists»; then it demonstrates that to acquire it one must fight, and that four things are necessary for such a battle: distrust of ourselves, confidence in God, the exercise of virtue and prayer, since Christian perfection is entirely interior, and results from the ensemble of the virtues that make us die to ourselves, in order to subject ourselves totally to love. The C. s. then treats of the defense of the intellect, which must be on guard against two enemies that attack it continually: ignorance and curiosity; above all of the defense of the will in relation to the supreme end, to which all interior and exterior actions must be directed, because in man there are «many wills» that wage a profound war upon one another. The C. s. then indicates the way to combat the evils of the senses, and the acts that the will must perform to acquire virtue, giving precious advice concerning the way to combat our vicious passions, and concerning the art and deceits with which the devil strives to combat and deceive those who wish to give themselves to virtue and those who already find themselves in the servitude of sin. Harsh is the law of the spiritual c., which every day must be accepted, since «the first thing that your inner eyes have to observe, once you are awake, is to see yourself within an enclosure closed by this law, that whoever does not fight in it remains there dead forever». A precious weapon for fighting is prayer and Holy Communion. The C. s. was much esteemed by St. Francis de Sales; although it does not have the enchantment of the De imitatione Christi, it remains one of the classic works of ascetical literature.

Umile Bonzi da Genova