The Ancient Secret the Desert Fathers Used to Conquer Sin

The patristic doctrine of the eight logismoi and why you keep fighting the same sins (and losing).

Too often, we approach our sins as we would any normal bad habit: we try to get rid of them by joining accountability groups, deleting apps, taking cold showers, or whatever advice the “self-improvement” sphere online offers.

And yet, these things don’t usually work. They might work in other ways, and they might even help you brute force your way towards a better life, but what tends to happen is that we fall into sin again within days, even after confessing and genuinely trying our hardest not to.

The reason this happens isn’t because you lack willpower, but simply that by approaching your purification in that manner you’re fighting symptoms instead of the disease.

A few weeks ago, we talked about the Divided Will, and we looked at St. Augustine’s Secret to Overcome Temptation. That article complements this one nicely, as both seek to address the root causes of sin, instead of just putting a band-aid over the symptoms.

Almost a century before St. Augustine’s conversion, there was a group of Christian hermits known as the Desert Fathers, who devoted themselves to vows of austerity, prayer and work. Their works not only inspired St. Augustine and other great theologians, but also served as the foundation of monastic life for believers.

And what’s interesting is that the Desert Fathers understood something about sin that modern Christianity has largely forgotten, and which can show us how to actually root out vice from our lives.

Playing whack-a-mole with individual sins instead of addressing the root causes doesn’t work because it treats sins as isolated incidents rather than symptoms of deeper thought-patterns that need to be addressed first. This is what the Desert Fathers understood, and so they came up with a completely different framework for understanding—and dealing with— sin effectively.

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The Desert Fathers’ Discovery

In the third and fourth century, Christian monks —those who later became known as the Desert Fathers— fled to the Egyptian desert to live a life of asceticism and prayer. Similarly to Christ being tempted in the desert, this lifestyle led to them waging war against demons in the most literal sense possible.

One of these men was Evagrius Ponticus. He spent decades in caves and cells, alone with his thoughts, fighting invisible spiritual battles that would have driven most of us insane.

Evagrius —and many other Desert Fathers— closely documented his struggles, learnings, and discoveries, the most significant of which was possibly his conclusion that all sins, no matter how different they appear on the surface, trace back to eight basic thoughts (logismoi) that demons plant in human minds. This theory would later be developed by future Christian thinkers into the Seven Deadly Sins.

The insights of Evagrius and the other Desert Fathers (who were in the frontlines, fighting temptation, evil, and demonic attacks daily) into how temptation actually works remains the most practical and effective framework for spiritual warfare that the Church has ever produced, and we can use it even in our postmodern era to aid us in our spiritual battles.

Understanding these eight thoughts —the eight logismoi— changes everything about how you should be fighting sin.

The Eight Logismoi Explained

The eight logismoi that Evagrius identified are:

1. Gluttony: Disordered desire for food, drink, or physical comfort. Gluttony isn’t jut overeating but an excessive attachment to bodily pleasure and ease.

2. Lust: Sexual fantasies, impurity, and the obsessive pursuit of sexual gratification. This thought reduces others to objects to be used for your own pleasure.

3. Avarice: Greed, materialism, and unhealthy attachment to possessions. The thought that security comes from what you own rather than from God’s providence.

4. Sadness: Depression, discouragement, and despair. The heavy darkness that convinces you that nothing will ever change and that God has abandoned you. Those with a melancholic temperament tend to struggle with this the most.

5. Anger: Rage, resentment, or bitterness. The burning desire for revenge and the refusal to forgive those who’ve wronged you. The thought that you should be the one serving justice, not God.

6. Acedia: A deadly sort of spiritual boredom, restlessness, and sloth. This one is very often misunderstood, and it’s a deep apathy about spiritual things that drives you to seek escape and distraction.

7. Vainglory: The insatiable craving for human praise, recognition, and approval. Everything you do becomes a performance for an audience.

8. Pride: Self-elevation and the fundamental refusal to submit to God or anyone else. The root of all other logismoi and the hardest to detect in yourself.

The important thing to note here is that these logismoi aren’t merely sins themselves, but most importantly thought-patterns that generate other sins. In that sense, most of your sins probably come from just one or two of these root thoughts, which are ingrained deep within your psyche and which need to be purged before you can start making serious progress in your path to sanctity.

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How the Logismoi Work

The Desert Fathers identified that the logismoi don’t begin as sins, but as simple, seemingly innocent thoughts planted in your mind by a demon. Initially, the thought is not yet sinful, but just a suggestion. However, entertaining those thoughts initiates a progression in which it becomes more and more difficult to stop until you end up falling into sinful action.

The progression works like this: if you engage with the thought mentally, pondering on and considering it, it becomes a dialogue. If you then consent to it emotionally, allowing yourself to desire what the thought offers, it becomes a passion that grips your heart. If you act on that passion, it becomes an actual sin. If you repeat that sin, it becomes a habit that feels automatic. And if the habit persists unchecked, it hardens into a vice that enslaves you completely.

Consider pornography as an example: it starts with a fleeting thought of attraction (not sinful), becomes mental engagement (”maybe just a quick look”, images playing in your head), turns into emotional consent (actively wanting it), leads to the action (opening the website), becomes a habit (every time you’re alone and bored), and finally becomes a vice (you can’t stop even when you desperately want to).

This is why fighting individual sins usually fails: you’re attacking the final stage, the already enslaving vice, instead of the first stage, the initial thought.

The Desert Fathers understood that defeating temptation requires a recognition and rejection of the logismos at the very beginning, before it gains any momentum in your mind.

Of course, this is easier said than done, but we can look at the Desert Fathers for guidance as to how we —supported and strengthened by God’s grace— can accomplish this.