Bigger Than God: The Heart of Pride

John Cassian on the First and Last Vice

This issue concludes our long look at the eight principal faults, concluding with pride—the vice which roots the rest, and which we arrive at last of all.

Some Brief Housekeeping

First up—I’m going to be going on vacation for two weeks starting tomorrow, which is fitting since we’re ending Cassian’s Institutes today. I’m planning on doing an audio AMA from the road, so if you have questions you want answered, message me.

Second—our next book club for supporting subscribers, will be over Benedict’s Rule, at 8:30 p.m. on June 19th.

The End is In the Beginning

One of the things which I’ve noticed about the vices as Cassian describes them is that it’s not always obvious what is in play. Diagnosis requires attention, and careful questions. If someone is prone to sleeping too much, it’s not obvious, for example, what’s at stake. A propensity toward too much sleep could be a manifestation of gluttony (a love of the senses), or it could be acaedia (being unable to move toward good things) or it could be even vainglory (enjoying the fruits of one’s labor by not doing what is needed for others).

Pride, in this way, gets too easy of a diagnosis, if we think that pride emerges in a straightforward positioning of one’s self over against God. From Cassian:

And of this pride there are two kinds: the one, that by which we said that the best of men and spiritually minded ones were troubled; the other, that which assaults even beginners and carnal persons….that first kind more particularly has to do with God; the second refers especially to men¹.

Pride for Cassian is the arch-vice, because it appears before humans are on the scene, as that which animates the fall of the angels from heaven. And so, when humans become prideful, presuming that we can in fact become gods, self-made creatures, we’re just parroting a logic of a dark magic as old as the cosmos, as it were². And as something so primal, it has more staying power, more ubiquity than the rest.

Being so primal, pride is slippery, and attaches itself to every virtue, and to every person. As opposed to something like gluttony—which has to do with the senses only—pride attaches itself to all the other faults and to all the other virtues. It gives our other vices more traction, and our virtues more cloudiness. It makes gluttony less open to rebuke from others, and patience less potent, because why should I tolerate fools?

As we’ve made our way through the various vices, each of them attach themselves as different points, and they’re not interchangeable. But pride lies beneath all the rest, it seems, waiting for the big finish.

But by the same token, once pride is identified, then all of the other vices do seem to have less to work with: it’s hard to be vainglorious if we think all we have has been given, and it’s hard to be gluttonous when we trust that God is giver of manna day in and day out. But identifying it is part of the trick. Just because it appears before all other vices doesn’t mean that it’s straightforward: pride—assuming oneself as better than God—may be the first of all vices, but it only manifests itself last of all. From Cassian:

It does not tempt only ordinary folk, but chiefly those who already stand on the heights of valor³.

Pride differs from vainglory, in that vainglory takes pride in the accomplishment, while pride is more generalized and more corrosive. Vainglory doesn’t happen unless you’ve accomplished something, whereas pride is revealed as part of the secret engine behind why you accomplished it in the first place.

Pride will have its day, and will not let anyone get in its way. But it’ll be content to let other vices have the outward facing accolades until the end: no rush. It takes a while to become self-sufficient, to become bigger than God.

Behold: I will show you a pride.

Proverbs 9 and the Two Ways of Climbing A Hill

Allow me an illustration. The way that Proverbs 9 depicts the contrast between wisdom and folly is super-interesting, in part because the two have so much in common. Both are depicted in feminine forms, calling out to people in the street to come in and eat, to take shelter from the road, and both are apparently at the high point of the city.

But interesting contrasts emerge: wisdom’s house is hewn from rock, whereas folly’s house is just there, a found location. Wisdom slaughters dinner and prepares it, while folly steals food. But one of the salient differences for this conversation comes in the acknowledgment of how someone gets in the door.

For if both of these houses are at highpoints of the city, with the road down below filled with fools (to be corrected by wisdom) and those on the straight path (corrupted by folly), then we are to assume that it takes some work to get into these relative houses. The path to folly seems to be straightforward:

13 Folly is an unruly woman;
    she is simple and knows nothing.
¹⁴ She sits at the door of her house,
    on a seat at the highest point of the city,
¹⁵ calling out to those who pass by,
    who go straight on their way

Wisdom, by contrast, makes it possible for people to come, knowing that what she has to offer is on the face less attractive than folly:

3 She has sent out her servants, and she calls
    from the highest point of the city.

Folly attracts people who are already disposed to wanting the other vices (stolen food, a slothful home, a life of ease), and so, the way they get there fits it: they rise up the hill on their own, without assistance, only to find that death waits inside the house. The ones who have to be helped up the hill by the servants are those who know they want the good stuff inside wisdom, but can’t muster up the desire to get there alone⁴.

In this way, Proverbs 9 depicts quite nicely what Cassian has in mind: pride is the capstone and the engine of the fool, and will eventually show itself to be the case. But humility works all the way down as well: the ones who seek wisdom—and find all of the other virtues along the way—are those who know they need help to get there.

There’s any number of things that could be said about that pride hides under the semblance of virtue in a digital age: tradwives, multi-level marketers, political wonks—these are the ones who, having succeeded want you to very much know how they succeeded. For their footnotes are few, and their forewords full of self-congratulatory accolades. They made it up the hill because they wanted it, thank you very much.

I have no doubt that my own self-congratulations is in the making, and it’ll leave the top of the mountain feeling very dusty. Every time I finish a major project, the letdown is palpable, and there’s reason to suspect it’s very much this: pride is like eating stolen food, drinking cheap wine—it’s only done alone, because if you eat it with anyone else, they’ll know where it came from.

The way that Cassian ends with pride in this way feels so abrupt, but there is no wrapping up of the Institutes. There is no final story that ties up the work: it just ends, in part because one gets the sense that the work he’s describing—of becoming a saint—doesn’t end. It just keeps going, and it keeps going long after (hopefully) your Featured Substack status is forgotten⁵. Perhaps it falls to God’s providence to not let goodness be recognized except behind our backs, and perhaps without us ever knowing it. For the antidote to pride, after all is humility, with pride being starved out by lack of recognition.

So, while I’m gone, feel free to share with others what Cassian is up to, and maybe let me know that Cassian has helped you the way he has me, and leave it at that.

1. Cassian, Institutes, Book 12, ch. 2.

2. Ibid., ch. 4. The notion that human sins follow from angelic ones is well-attested in Orthodox and Catholic texts, which makes the variety of sin which humans do pretty interesting: they’re not ones which we share with angelic beings. Angels apparently can only sin in straightforward ways: when you’re an immaterial being in the presence of God, gluttony isn’t going to be much of an issue, but I suppose wanting a share of the throne might be.

3. Ibid., ch. 5.

4. Cassian spends a great deal of time talking about the cooperative nature of wisdom here: God gives it to those who are asking for it. As Proverbs 9 puts it, there’s little use in trying to dissuade a fool from being a fool. Or as Jesus puts it, don’t throw pearls before swine—they won’t know what to do with them.

5. It’s back to normal here. The adrenaline spike of last week has settled back into a normal hum.