asceticism

asceticism. The term, derived from the Greek word for ‘exercise’ or ‘training’, denotes (1) practices employed to combat vices and develop virtues and (2) the renunciation of various facets of customary social life and comfort or the adoption of painful conditions for religious reasons. In the NT there are repeated exhortations to self-denial. In the early Church many ascetic practices seem to have been common, including renunciation of marriage, home, and property; some ascetics practised extreme forms of fasting and self-deprivation. The theoretical foundations of Christian asceticism were developed by Clement of Alexandria and Origen. Taking over from the Stoics the idea of ascetic action as a purification of the soul from its passions, they saw it as a necessary means for loving God more perfectly and for attaining to contemplation. Origen also stresses its value as a preparation for martyrdom. The Desert Fathers from the late 3rd cent. and the subsequent monastic tradition tended to favour a more temporate external asceticism and to lay more stress on interior abnegation and cultivation of virtues. In the Middle Ages, with the growing devotion to the humanity of Christ, asceticism became increasingly inspired by a desire for conformation to His sufferings. This led to more violent forms of asceticism, such as flagellation and the wearing of hair-shirts and chains. At the end of the Middle Ages there was a twofold reaction: various movements stressed the interior life and questioned the value of external ascetic observances, and the Protestant Reformers, with their insistence on justification by faith, denied the propriety of many conventional works of penance. The ascetical idea, however, was upheld in the RC Church. Among the Puritans asceticism, in the negative sense of abstinence from particular pleasures and recreations, was widely upheld. In a more positive sense it also found a place in Methodism and among the Tractarians and their successors. According to its classical Christian exponents, asceticism is not an end in itself but essentially a preparation for the life of union with God.