Passions of the Soul

by Rowan Williams

The Eastern Christian tradition is filled with theological and spiritual riches.

In Passions of the Souls , Rowan Williams opens up the great classics of Eastern Christian writing to show how it can help us to understand and cope with the ups and downs of modern life.

With compelling and illuminating insight, he shows the cost of living in a culture that is theologically and philosophically undernourished, working with a diminished and trivialised picture of the human self. The Eastern tradition teaches us how to develop our self-knowledge and awareness, so that we can relate to the world without selfish illusions. Only then can we be ready for our eyes to be opened to God, and avoid destructive patterns of behaviour.

Only in this way can we understand the kind of people we need to become.

Genres: Theology, Christianity, Religion, Spirituality, Christian Living, Christian, Faith

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2024

About the author

Rowan Douglas Williams, Baron Williams of Oystermouth, is an Anglican bishop, poet, and theologian. He was Archbishop of Canterbury from December 2002-2012, and is now Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge and Chancellor of the University of South Wales.

Reviews

[David Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Profoundly honest and pastoral as well as intellectually rich. In „Passions of the Soul“, Rowan Williams shares and comments on some of the early and Eastern Christian reflections on ‚vices‘ and pairs them fruitfully with the Sermon on the Mount.
How to live well as a human? How is a Christian to respond to his or her unwanted feelings of anger, pride, greed? Many have gone before us and seriously contemplated these and related questions, and Williams opens up this treasure for us.

Immensely beautiful book.

This is my favorite passage:
“Poverty of spirit, the acknowledgement of our dependence, is our richest resource, our final security; to know that we are creatures is the path to sharing the joy of the creator.
This is the joy which the risen Jesus opens for us. He has taken on and fully shared a humanity that is passionate and fragile; he knew instinct and emotion as we do, the strength, the tide flowing, of anger and desire, like the rest of us. But because, at the centre of Jesus' identity, there is the unbounded and unimaginable openness to God the Source, the Father, which is the life of the eternal Son, Jesus knows who he is as a human being in a way that others do not. Thus he is free to 'rework' the fabric of passionate humanity as a vehicle for the fullness of God. This is what he shares with us in his body, the Church - in the sacraments, in the tangible fellowship we share as believers, in the grace given to those who are blessed with the freedom to see and act in a way that is liberated not from passion itself but from the reactive and self-serving distortions of our instincts that generate the horrors of injustice and violence in our world. He has given us something of his 'mind', the mind of Christ, his point of view, through the gift we share of his Holy Spirit.”

[Alain Verheij]

Eind deze maand / begin volgende maand in Trouw een interview van mijn hand met de auteur naar aanleiding van dit boek.

[Michael Kenan Baldwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rowan Williams introduces the moral virtue theology of the desert fathers (which eventually morphed into the ‘seven deadly sins’). He ties each vice of theirs into a beatitude from the Sermon on the Mount and it really works; the content is brilliant. Chapters 3-5 particularly stand out.
I just had to knock a star off for the dedication.

[Scott Bielinski · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very good work of moral theology.

[Andrew McNeely]

“For [the early Christians], theology was not a luxury or an academic affair; it was their way of seeing more clearly what their way of life implied.”

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

What Christian “self-help” should be.

[Kirby Key · Rating 5 out of 5]

(I'm giving this five stars despite the second-to-last chapter)...

incredible book. Williams transformed my reading of the Beatitudes.

"We are made, unlikely though it sounds, for seeing and sharing glory."

"God's life is infinite, boundless, and so 'heaven' is a sinking deeper and deeper into an ocean that has no ocean floor."

"To love 'humanly' is to accept that the person or thing loved is neither God nor a passive item for my ego to collect and use but a life that is genuinely other , existing in relation to the infinite love of God just as I do."

"Peace is ultimately a condition of cosmic praise."

he convinced me to read the desert monks. he did not convince me to join them

[Naomi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Challenging - not because it's hard to read, but because it's hard to get over yourself. Good book with plenty to ponder.

[PD · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author explores the historical list of the seven deadly sins, or what can be described the disorganized passions of the soul, and curiously overlays Jesus’s Beatitudes as the compass bearing to walk in deeper freedom and greater delight as a redeemed and renewed humanity in Christ.

[Colm Alton · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a nice small book about early Christian thinking on “instincts” and “desires”. Interestingly, I found some overlap with the way the early Christian’s thought of desire and some elements of modern psychology. One great line from this book is “We are who we are because God is”. All our desires come from God and are not sinful within themselves (including anger etc). I felt the author went a little off track in the second half of the book but overall an enjoyable short read.

[Alex Marque · Rating 5 out of 5]

I always appreciate how Rowan Williams can take ancient Christian spiritual insights and bring them into the contemporary life of Christian faith and reflection. Even if you don’t like to use the categories of the passions when talking about Christian formation, you will learn more about how Christians have talked about them and perhaps see how to engage in biblical reflection when considering them. Williams use of the beatitudes of the sermon on the mount provides a tether to keep the discussion of the passions centered into our life in Christ which I found commendable.

[Roy Howard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rowan Williams is one of the wisest theologian of our time. In this brief book, he brings the ancient theologians of the desert into conversation with the seven deadly sins and the beatitudes. It’s a marvelous conversation moving from one to the other in the exploration of what it means to live a Christian life in our time.

[Phil · Rating 4 out of 5]

I ran into this book on Google Play and, since it is a subject about which I'm interested (the link to early Christian and, here, monastic ideas around prayer and the self) and it is, after all, by Rowan Williams, I couldn't resist buying it. It is a superb book and definitely worth reading for those who are interested in prayer in general.

The book focuses on the Desert Fathers tradition and, especially, the eight bad thoughts (logismoi) which would eventually form the basis of the seven deadly sins in Western moral theology. Williams makes interesting links between these thoughts and the Beatitudes as ways to heal them. The discussions are helpful and, as one expects, erudite. I'm moderately familiar with the literature, so it made sense to me, although I worry that someone less familiar might feel overwhelmed by the strangeness of it all. But that's a risk when approaching the Christian mystical tradition in general, which Williams rightly points out in his last chapter.

This is a really worthwhile book and will reward the effort to read it. It has that Rowan William's effect on me, though, that, as I finish it, I usually feel like I'm going to have to go back at some point and re-read it to see if I actually did understand it. It is complex and interesting, so re-reading just seems to make sense.

[Gerdien · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mooi boek over hoe zorg te dragen voor de ziel. Ontroerend, eerlijk, tot nadenken stemmend. Ik heb veel onderstreept wat ik zeker ga herlezen. Niet makkelijk te lezen, met name de laatste twee hoofdstukken zijn voor mij te hoog over.

[Dave Courtney · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The thinking of the Christians of those first few centuries – their letters, their sermons, their forms of worship, even sometimes their fierce arguments about doctrine – shows us how talking of God and living in obedience to God are closely interwoven. For them, theology was not a luxury or an academic affair; it was their way of seeing more clearly what their way of life implied." P 107

This sentiment, or observation, is the perfect summary of what Williams, pastor and theologian rooted in the Eastern Orthodox Tradition, is doing in his newest book Passions of the Soul. He is looking at the world of the early Christians and early writers from the perspective of the Eastern Orthodox Tradition, and even more specifically the monastic Tradition, and asking how it is that we approach the Christian life. As he writes,

"What these earlier writers of the Eastern spiritual tradition are talking about is regularly grounded in the idea that our habitual mental and spiritual condition is one in which we quite simply don’t see clearly;

Our minds are skewed. We don’t know things as we ought to know them; we don’t see things as we ought to see them. In these reflections we shall be trying to follow the way in which analysis of the passions in some of these texts can be read as something that opens the door to a clarifying of our vision, our perception, and to grasp more fully how this clarity of vision is what we need for our love to be truthful." P 13, 14

Or, as he more aptly puts it, "if we’re not growing, we’re shrinking in the spiritual life. We can’t just stand still." P 14

And why should we embark on this journey?
"There is God and there is creation (including ourselves). But why is there creation? God is self-sufficient, perfect, needing nothing in order just to be God. We can only imagine that there is what-is-not-God because God’s abundant bliss is itself a sort of longing, a sort of internal pressure, we might almost say, for that joy to be shared. If this is right, then the only reason for creation is this internal pushing of the boundaries of God’s love by God’s love." P 16

To understand why. "What is both wonderful and difficult is that God’s unchangeable life is reflected in this changeable world, a world of diversity, interdependence, movement. God has so shaped the world that we grow into our deepest freedom in a world of constraints and challenges." P 17

And to grow. To grow is to engage the passions. "Change and chance confront us, and we respond." P 17 it is because of this that we engage the passions. "You’re going to have to come to terms with ‘passion’; you’re going to have to learn to become spiritually intelligent about your instincts, to ‘educate’ your passions so as not to live at the level of reaction all the time." P 19

The passions are Pride, Listlessness, Anger, Gluttony, Avarice, Lust, Envy and Despair. Each chapter walks through 2, focusing on the themes of dependence, necessary poverty, mercy and hope. These things then lead us to Jesus

"Thus is our ‘place’ defined: we stand where Jesus stands as Christian believers, and pray as Jesus prays; and in standing in that place before God as ‘Abba’, we share equally in Jesus’ directedness towards the good and the healing of the world.

Placed together in the place of Jesus, we are bound in koinonia towards each other, seeing one another not as rivals but as embodying a divine gift. Life in the spirit is life beyond the boundaries erected between ourselves and each other and ourselves and God (even, it is tempting to add, between ourselves and ourselves, since the divine Spirit, we are told, draws out of us what we did not know we desired (Rom. 8.26)).

Life in the spirit is life that is decisively free from the obsessions of self-justification, since the place of Jesus is the place of the one to whom the Father has eternally said Yes; there is no need to negotiate for space or argue for favour and privilege, as it is always already given to and through Jesus. It is in this very basic Christian theological perspective that we must look for the heart of Christian spirituality, since the life of the spirit cannot, in such a context, ever be an area of concern, merely a dimension of a wider life; it is the life of the believer, material and imaginative and desirous. Which is why the study of ‘spirituality’ constantly spills over into thinking about doctrine, ethics, art and all sorts of things besides." P 86

This is the kind of book one highlights and cites and quotes and returns to. It's small, it's brief, but it's powerful, even if you have no connection to the Eastern Orthodox Tradition. It is universal, and it will connect you not just to the Gospel, but to the fundamental heart and nature of the Gospel as a way of knowing, a way of telling the story about our lives and this world in such a way that reveals its truthfulness more deeply and more intuitively.

[Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Summary: An exploration of Eastern Christian writing on the passions that may be distorted into sin, paired with the Beatitudes.

One of the consequences of interest in the Enneagram is a renewed interest in Evagrius, a fourth century Eastern Christian monastic who wrote about the deadly sins, the passions of the soul that may be twisted in temptation to lead us into sin. In this slim booklet, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Willliams, acquaints us with Evagrius and other Eastern Christians as well.

What identifying the passions does is give us a vocabulary to name the propensities within us that turn our hearts away from the love of God and neighbor. Williams counsel as we discern these things is simple. Face it. Give it to God. And get on with our work. Rather than obsessing about self-denial, the real question is “What has God asked me to just get on with?”

With that, Williams briefly maps out eight passions. Then in the next four chapters, he takes them in pairs setting them over and against a contrasting virtue found in the Beatitudes. He begins with pride and contrasts it with the dependence that knows one’s need of God. Likewise, the boredom of listlessness is offset by the invitation to mourn, to truly feel, and find comfort in God. Anger is offset by the blessing of meekness, the knowledge of who we really are that needs no defense. Gluttony, the craving for more than we need, is countered by hungering and thirsting for justice in the world.

Avarice, a longing for control, comes in the absence of a sense of God’s mercy and is offset in the yielding of control to showing mercy to others, in which we know the mercy of God. The inordinate desire of lust is met in the longing for purity of heart. Envy is the zero sum world in which another’s gain means loss. To embrace peacemaking is to embrace the mutual flourishing of shalom. Finally, despair or dejection centers on one’s self assessment that one has failed and there is no hope, remedied by the promise that faithfulness, even in the worst of persecution and seeming failure eventuates in seeing God.

Williams appends two chapters to these meditations. The first, “To Stand Where Christ Stands” explores what we mean when we talk about the “spiritual.” This chapter, I found was not easy to follow. Williams says it is “about what it is for a whole human life to be lived in the ‘place’ defined by Jesus.” He traces how this has been developed by saints as diverse as Gregory of Nyssa and the Spanish Carmelites, John and Teresa. The last chapter, on “Early Christian Writings” reminds readers of the real dangers early Christians faced, even in gathering for the Eucharist. Prayer, doctrine, and ethics all posed a challenge to the state, and formed the early Christians into both a disciplined and inherently political community.

This slim book challenges our modern ways of being Christian, both in reviving the language of sin, calling us to grow in holiness, and defining our life in the world as the place where spirituality is lived. Rowan Williams introduces us to Eastern Christians with a compelling message for our times.

[Joel Zartman · Rating 4 out of 5]

The best thing about this book is how Williams explains what the passions are. He uses fresh language that is based on contemporary assumptions and expressions to get the reader back to some very ancient concerns. The next best thing is that he understands the sources he is mining very well. He is therefore able to provide illuminating comparisons and explanations. He has read and pondered Ignatius of Antioch, Clement and Origen, and his main resources, John Cassian, Gregory of Nyssa, and Evagrius of Pontus.

Because he wants people to understand him, I think he takes on too many modern assumptions or turns of speech sometimes, with the result that he can seem mildly woke. I think the lowest point in the book is when he tries to make a case for not entirely dismissing the idea of reparations. With John Cassian especially, he is mining a tradition that would in later times be susceptible to the charge of semi-pelagianism. Williams is not promoting it, however.

Here is a book for someone who wants to understand moral theology better. It is a book you can re-read and ponder.

[John Warner · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, brings deep, meditative reflection of the interplay between desire, emotion, and the spiritual life in this work appropriate for a Lenten study. Drawing upon early Eastern monastic writers, he examines eight passions of the soul: greed or gluttony, lust, avarice, anger, dejection, listlessness, envy or self-esteem, and pride; and, how when taken to the extreme can distort our perception of the world diverting our attention from a God-focused life.

Although a thoughtful and enriching read for anyone interested in the intersection of emotions, spirituality, and theology, it should not be undertaken unless full attention can be given to it without distractions. I found that I had to read some pages twice to fully understand what the author was trying to convey.

[Faith Key · Rating 4 out of 5]

"the mistake is to want to stop wanting - to desire to be satisfied so that i shall not have to desire any more...this leads gregory to talk of heaven itself as an endless desiring - in the sense that there will always be more of God to discover and enjoy."

"God is already your life, and there's nothing you can do about it. ..you are because God is; forget that, and you condemn yourself to a sort of shadow existence."

"happy are those who know their need of God."

this was not what i thought it would be -i found this work utterly lovely and devotional. refreshing & simultaneously piercing look at the beattitudes and vice. particularly of note: the discussion of slavery to passion as "unreality," the joy of being invited into the divine life, the gift of poverty of spirit. convicting, refreshing, and puts the beauty of Christ in humility and glory on display.

[Viggo van Uden · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hartstochten van de ziel (2025) van Rowan Williams is een mooi boek waarin de lezer inzicht krijgt in hoe we onze verlangens ten goede kunnen keren. In dit werkje put de voormalige aartsbisschop van Canterbury uit de monastieke spiritualiteit, waarbij hij zich baseert op invloedrijke figuren als Evagrius van Pontus en Johannes Cassianus. Hoewel Williams ook verbindingen legt met latere spirituele tradities, zoals die van Teresa van Ávila en Johannes van het Kruis, ligt de nadruk voornamelijk op de spiritualiteit van de woestijnvaders.

Na een voorwoord, waarin wordt toegelicht dat het boek zijn oorsprong vindt in een retraite, opent Williams met een inleiding onder de treffende titel: Een traditie om vrijheid te leren. Hierin biedt hij een beknopte oriëntatie op de oosterse christelijke spiritualiteit. Thema’s als 'waakzaamheid', apatheia en 'hartstocht' worden kort toegelicht, evenals het Griekse mensbeeld. Centraal staat de oosters-christelijke opvatting dat men de 'passies' of 'hartstochten' onder ogen moet zien, geestelijke intelligentie moet ontwikkelen en deze hartstochten moet ‘opvoeden’ om niet op reactieniveau te blijven steken (p. 28). Dit leerproces vormt de kern van de spirituele traditie waarop Williams zich in dit boek baseert. Reeds in de inleiding, maar doorheen het gehele boek, maakt hij de verbinding met Christus als degene die een vernieuwde wijze van mens-zijn mogelijk maakt.

In het eerste deel van het boek legt Williams een verband tussen de hartstochten van de ziel en de zaligsprekingen uit de Bergrede (Mat. 5:1-12). Dit deel opent met een hoofdstuk waarin de hartstochten worden ingeleid en waarin Williams het belang benadrukt van het 'registreren' van innerlijke bewegingen, wat de psychologische insteek van de woestijntraditie illustreert. De vertaling van deze Griekse spirituele traditie naar hedendaagse begrippen is complex, maar Williams toont zich hierin bijzonder vaardig en creatief. Zo vertaalt hij het begrip logismoi als 'verdorven gedachtenketens', wat goed de essentie van deze spirituele worsteling weergeeft. De wijze waarop de woestijnvaders omgaan met deze 'demonen' vormt een belangrijk thema in het boek. De oude bronnen van spirituele rijkdom wil Williams beschikbaar stellen voor de hedendaagse lezer. 

De auteur maakt een vertaalslag door de acht hartstochten te verbinden met de acht zaligsprekingen, waarbij hij de zaligsprekingen beschouwt als "een soort fotonegatief van wat er verkeerd gaat in onze ziel" (p. 56). Elke hartstocht wordt gedefinieerd (bijvoorbeeld: "Hoogmoed is de weigering om adem te halen en God te laten zijn wat God is", p. 58), in de spirituele traditie geplaatst en vervolgens gecontrasteerd met een bijpassende zaligspreking (zoals: "Zalig zijn de armen van geest"). De zaligsprekingen wijzen op een alternatieve levenswijze, waarin "Gods koninkrijk de toon aangeeft" (p. 19).

Williams maakt hier enkele prikkelende observaties, zoals over de spanning tussen de neiging om af te weren (hartstocht van boosheid) en de neiging om te absorberen (hartstocht van gulzigheid). Met betrekking tot deze laatste hartstocht merkt hij op dat de spirituele traditie stelt dat gulzigheid het contact met onze geschapenheid ondermijnt. Dit thema vormt een rode draad doorheen het boek: "Door bewuster als schepsel te leven en op een dieper niveau met onze geschapenheid in contact te komen, delen we steeds diepgaander in het leven van de Schepper, het leven van Christus Zelf" (p. 76). De wijze waarop Williams de hartstochten koppelt aan de zaligsprekingen is inspirerend en verrijkend.

Het tweede deel van het boek bevat twee korte essays: Staan waar Christus staat en Vroegchristelijke geschriften. In het eerste essay schetst Williams eerst wat christelijke spiritualiteit niét is, om vervolgens een positieve afbakening te geven. Hij stelt dat de kern van de christelijke spiritualiteit gelegen is in het staan waar Jezus staat en het bidden zoals Jezus bidt. Dit verbindt hij met figuren als Origenes, Gregorius van Nyssa, de martelaren Ignatius en Polycarpus, en de mystici Teresa van Ávila en Johannes van het Kruis. Het tweede essay, Vroegchristelijke geschriften, heeft een historisch-theologische inslag en reflecteert op Jezus' heerschappij en vrijheid, en hoe deze thema’s theologisch en literair gestalte kregen in de vroege christelijke traditie.

In Hartstochten van de ziel weet Rowan Williams op overtuigende wijze de woestijntraditie van de vroege kerk te verbinden met een hedendaags lezerspubliek. De koppeling tussen de acht hartstochten en de acht zaligsprekingen is origineel en verhelderend, al blijft de uitwerking ervan beknopt. Williams plaatst zijn inzichten binnen een breder theologisch kader, maar de behandeling van de individuele hartstochten had meer diepgang mogen hebben. De schep wordt in het zand gestoken, maar er wordt niet werkelijk diep gegraven. Hoewel hij de hartstochten kort bespreekt en koppelt aan de zaligsprekingen, ontbreekt een diepgaande analyse van hun historische én actuele betekenis en de manier waarop de zaligsprekingen kunnen bijdragen aan het omgaan met de logismoi.

Dit boek van Rowan Williams is bij uitstek geschikt als spirituele lectuur voor wie zich wil verdiepen in de relatie tussen hartstochten en zaligsprekingen en hier persoonlijk verder over wil reflecteren, bijvoorbeeld in de Veertigdagentijd. Voor wie een alternatieve benadering zoekt, is Dangerous Passions, Deadly Sins (2014) van Dennis Okholm een waardevolle aanvulling. Daarnaast kan het raadzaam zijn om de primaire bronnen van Evagrius en/of Cassianus zelf te raadplegen, om een nog rijkere en diepgaandere leeservaring te verkrijgen.

[Harry Allagree · Rating 5 out of 5]

The transcriber of this book, Mark Barber, a longtime student & friend of +Rowan Williams, calls the book "a profound distillation of spiritual wisdom, honed by years of personal reflection and pastoral experience..." The first part of the book began as as a series of retreat addresses.

Williams leans on the writings of very early Christian writers. I found myself reading many of the chapters, then re-reading them. The writing of the book, despite it size, is dense, loaded with words, phrases & paragraphs filled with historical insight, beauty, original origins, magnificent theological teaching. Williams's correlation between the passions & Christ's beatitudes is brilliant.

[Trey Hall · Rating 5 out of 5]

A teacher, theologian, and disciple who is flowing with God. His writing, like his “subject”, is real, trustworthy, true. I bet his work and ongoing prayer will help and guide people in centuries ahead.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was absolutely fantastic. Williams is brilliant in this short book, taking an approach to the Beatitudes that is expansive and livable. His writing was soul-stirring. The second part was unique and I appreciate that he emphasized that there are numerous perspectives to understand spiritually.

[Glenn Myers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rowan Williams traces the ideas of the Greek desert fathers about 'passions of the soul' (not necessarily bad, but easily feasted on and distorted) and maps them against the counter-example of the Beatitudes. Elegant, subtle and thoughtful.

[Timothy Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ll admit it wasn’t what I expected and so I was pleasantly surprised. Accessible and helpful. Williams has a way of phrasing things that makes him quotable, so I have no doubt I’ll be consulting this in the future.

[Denys Bakirov · Rating 5 out of 5]

A commendable synoptic treatise on the theme of Christian mysticism. I will write a longer review soon.

[Christopher Trend · Rating 5 out of 5]

A short book where every word is a gem. Using the writings of the Early Church, Rowan Williams explores aspects of Christianity and who we are. A good book for Lent.

[Hugo Collingridge · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting introduction to a subject I hadn't known much about.

[Jason Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Definitely a book to revisit . The early church fathers are fascinating and this look at their work on our emotional lives and relations with power and ego has much food for thought .

[Michael]

For a new thinking about passions, and the best definition of spirituality I've found, read this book.