A caution against confusion. There are moralists who treat the strong, noble, self-denying attitude of such beings as the heroes of Plutarch, or the pure, enlightened, warmth-giving state of soul peculiar to truly good men and women, as difficult scientific problems. They investigate the origin of such phenomena, indicating the complex element in the apparent simplicity, and directing their gaze to the tangled skein of motives, the delicate web of conceptual illusions, and the sentiments of individuals or of groups, that are a legacy of ancient days gradually increased. Such moralists are very different from those with whom they are most commonly confounded, from those petty minds that do not believe at all in these modes of thought and states of soul, and imagine their own poverty to be hidden somewhere behind the glamour of greatness and purity. The moralists say, ‘Here are problems’, and these pitiable creatures say, ‘Here are impostors and deceptions.’ Thus the latter deny the existence of the very things which the former are at pains to explain. — Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human
Two Ways of Looking
Nietzsche, who did not confess the faith of the Church, saw here something the Fathers had long known: there are two ways of looking at goodness. One sees it and says, „Here is a mystery; let me understand it.” The other sees it and says, „Here is a lie; let me expose it.”
The first does not destroy what it finds. The second has decided in advance that nothing pure can exist. And the latter, says Nietzsche, imagines that its own poverty is hidden behind the greatness of others. What it does not possess, no one can possess.
Let us take this word as an occasion for reflection, not as a foundation. The foundation is not Nietzsche. The foundation is the truth revealed in Christ and kept by the Church.
The Image That Was Not Extinguished
Man was created in the image of God (Genesis 1:26). The Fall darkened and wounded human nature, but did not destroy the image at its root. St. John of Damascus and St. Maximus the Confessor teach that the passions are not „made” by God in man, but arise from the distortion of natural faculties: love twisted into lust, zeal into anger. Nature remains good; its use is corrupted.
For this reason virtue is not an illusion. The Apostle says that even the Gentiles, who „do not have the law, do by nature the things contained in the law,” showing „the work of the law written in their hearts” (Romans 2:14-15). All the more in the baptized and struggling believer, grace works together with the will: synergy, the common work of God and man. When we see true gentleness, we are not watching theater. We are seeing either a trace of the image or the fruit of grace received and laboured upon.
To say „all goodness is pretense” is therefore not merely a mistake of psychology. It is a denial of the teaching about man. It says that the image is wholly extinguished and that grace accomplishes nothing. The Church does not teach this.
The Web of Thoughts: the Fathers’ Inquiry
But does the one who examines „the tangled skein of motives” not stand on the road to cynicism? Not if he examines as the Fathers do.
The philocalic tradition is the deepest science of hidden depths that exists. Evagrius and St. John Cassian describe the logismoi, the thoughts that arrive, link together, cling, and ignite into passion. St. John Climacus knows that vainglory slips into fasting, vigil, and prayer, even into the hiding of a good deed, and that this thief enters by the very door you have just locked. Abba Dorotheos knows that a single passion can wear ten masks. St. Mark the Ascetic sees how evil hides within „the good,” and how an uncleansed conscience deceives itself.
Yet none of them concluded: „therefore humility does not exist.” They said something else: because true humility exists, it must be guarded; because pride can clothe itself in humility, discernment is needed. St. Cassian calls discernment the mother of the virtues, and the Ladder calls it the eye of the soul. Discernment does not decide in advance that nothing is pure. It asks with fear and patience: what is this, truly, and from whom does it come?
This is the difference: inquiry serves the truth; suspicion serves a verdict already reached.
Examine Yourself, Not Your Neighbor
Here we must be very clear, because here the road divides.
The Fathers demand unceasing examination, but they direct it first toward one’s own heart. „Take heed to yourself” (Deuteronomy 15:9), says St. Basil the Great in an entire homily. The Savior does not say „do not examine,” but: „Why do you see the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the plank in your own?” (Matthew 7:3). And: „Judge not, that you be not judged” (Matthew 7:1).
Abba Dorotheos, in his discourse on not judging one’s neighbor, shows that judgment takes from a person the one thing he can do well: his own repentance. Whoever reads another’s deeds with suspicion no longer has time to see his own sins. And the judgment of hearts belongs to God, who „will bring to light the hidden things of darkness and will reveal the counsels of the hearts” (1 Corinthians 4:5).
So the inquiry Nietzsche praises in the true moralist is good when it remains a work of repentance and watchfulness, not a sentence passed on another. We understand the tangle in ourselves in order to be healed. We understand it in our neighbor in order to forgive him and pray for him, not to dismantle him.
The Spirit of the Accuser
There is one more thing, and it is not easy to say. This systematic suspicion, which believes in no purity, has an ancient kinship.
In the Book of Job, the devil does not deny that Job is righteous. He asks: „Does Job fear God for nothing?” (Job 1:9). That is: does he not have some hidden calculation? And in Paradise the serpent sows the same poison in Eve: does God not have a hidden interest? The Apocalypse calls him „the accuser of our brethren” (12:10), who accuses them day and night.
We do not say that every suspicious person is a devil, but that suspicion without limit resembles the spirit of the accuser and does not build up. And the Pharisee in the parable (Luke 18:11) shows the other face of the same sickness: he reads his own „purity” and judges the others, with the same cold gaze.
What Psychology Says, Without Forgetting What the Church Says
Modern psychology has described, in other words, what the Fathers knew: what we cannot bear in ourselves we tend to place on others (projection). Whoever has never tasted a sacrifice made without self-interest finds it easier to explain it as „just self-interest.” And behind cynicism there often stands an unhealed pain: a disappointment, a betrayal, an unforgiven wound. Nietzsche himself would have called it ressentiment.
The Fathers say it more deeply: the wounded man who has not been healed through repentance tries to lower everyone to his own level, because that makes his pain „normal.” That is why the cynic feels cleverer than those who believe. But this is false cleverness: intellect is not discernment. The more the mind turns in on itself, the more a person hesitates, loses himself in thoughts, and often chooses worse. Discernment comes from humility and obedience, not from sharpness.
Wonder and Prayer
Let us not be frightened, then, by the complexity of man. Let us untie the threads, but with the fear of God. Let us examine, but first our own heart. Let us not wait for a good deed to be „pure” before we recognize it, for ours is not pure either. The Fathers know this, and that is why they remain always in repentance.
And when we see light in a person, let us not rush to tear it down with „explanations.” Let us say rather what the Psalmist says: „God is wondrous in His saints” (Psalm 67:35). One who examines without losing wonder, and without thinking himself above examination, may sometimes see the light even through the tangle that carries it. And one who denies without examining remains alone with his poverty, which he mistakes for lucidity.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
