Evagrius Ponticus and Early Jewish Mysticism: Some Unexplored Correspondences

The 4^th century hesychast Evagrius Ponticus makes a subtle and somehow misleading distinction between “the kingdom of heaven” and “the kingdom of God”, two expressions apparently interchangeable in the Synoptic Gospels. Whereas the former is defined as “impassibility (apátheia) of the soul accompanied by true knowledge of beings” (Praktikos 2), the latter is identified with the “knowledge of the Holy Trinity co-extensive with the substance of the mind and surpassing its incorruptibility” (Praktikos 3). According to this scheme, the kingdom of heaven —corresponding to the so-called “natural contemplation”— has to be primarily seen as a sudden realization of God’s immanent presence in creation (a kenshō, in terms of Japanese zen tradition), whereas the kingdom of God —or “theological contemplation”— points to a more permanent union with the ultimate divine essence, expressed in Trinitarian terms. Interestingly, between both degrees of enlightenment Evagrius envisages an intermediate step: the contemplation of God’s Providence and Justice, mysteriously encoded within both the material and immaterial creation.

This paper explores for the first time the possible links of Evagrius’ theory of the two kingdoms with early Jewish mysticism. Meaningfully enough, kabbalistic and pre-kabbalistic texts tend to represent God’s immanent presence in creation (his shekhinah) by means of a sephirah called “kingdom” (malkhuth), which has many things in common with Evagrius’ theological speculations on the kingdom of heaven. Other possible correspondences include the intermediate sephiroth Chesed (“Loving-kindness”) and Din (“Judgement”), which might be not too distant from Evagrius’ seminal notions of Providence and Justice.