Studies of Evagrius of Pontus have flourished over the last half-century. Scholarly interest owes much to two publications in particular. First, Karl Heussi's Das Nilusproblem (1921) demonstrated that many works passing under the name of Nilus (of Ancyra) were, in fact, by Evagrius. This opened up a great deal of material by which to understand the maligned but shadowy thinker. Second, while many Evagrian works have become accessible in their Syriac translations, the signal moment came in 1958, when Antoine Guillaumont published the Kephalaia Gnostica — formerly available only in meagre Greek fragments — in two full Syriac versions. Of these, the first, S₁, is relatively innocuous; but the other, S₂, contains much that aligns closely with the charges made against Origenism in the sixth century. In effect, from Heussi and Guillaumont, Evagrian scholars found not only an enormous amount of material to work with, but good reason to think that Hans Urs von Balthasar may have been right: Evagrian writings were perhaps more Origenist that Origen's own works. Yet, it had become clear that Evagrian spirituality, gone incognito, had maintained a long and rich legacy in the Greek Christian world.

While many scholars have developed their reading of Evagrius between these two poles — the prominence of Evagrian spirituality and the problematic nature of Evagrian theology — Gabriel Bunge has been a dissenting voice, focusing far more on Evagrian spiritual practices. Following Bunge, Augustine Casiday, with his usual vigour and elegance, strives in this book to read Evagrius without filtering his reading through charges of Origenist heresy. Indeed, the book's driving thesis is that Evagrius should not be read on the presumption that he is a heretic. C. argues that such a presumption predisposes readers not only to find suspicious texts that are not, but also leads them to apply what he sees as anachronistic categories to Evagrius’ thought.

That Evagrius should not be presumed a heretic on the accusations of others appears at first glance as a salutary, even laudable, plea for objectivity. The problem is that C. bases his thesis on a broad-stroked rejection of incriminating material, such as the S₂ version of the Kephalaia Gnostica, and an undiscerning inclusion of material whose Evagrian authorship is, at best, dubious (the Scholia on Luke, for example). C. concludes, perhaps unsurprisingly given the textual picture he builds, that Evagrius does not succumb to the charges levelled against him, and so cannot be read as nearly as scholars (and generations of theologians and monastics) read him. C. portrays Evagrius instead as a well-educated, devout monk, trained by the finest theologians of his day (including Gregory of Nazianzus), and a committed churchman who not only worked within but defended Niceno-Constantinopolitan orthodoxy.

While C. might protest that he is not attempting to ‘rescue’ or ‘rehabilitate’ Evagrius, that certainly seems to be the effect of his reading. In his choice of texts, C. does not offer a pristine version of Evagrius, free of later misinterpretation. Rather, he presents an equally constructed — not to say caricaturized — portrait of Evagrian thought, premised on a fundamental re-imagining of the Evagrian corpus itself. Perhaps he is right to do so. But the textual evidence is stacked against him. While it is possible that the S₂ version of the Kephalaia Gnostica is not Evagrian, it is hard to envisage who would have made a deliberately suspect version, but quite reasonable to imagine a scrubbed version circulating to preserve the good name of its author. Likewise, C. is right that Evagrius’ name is not implicated in the First Origenist Controversy. While scholars have generally explained this by positing his death in 399 (just prior to the controversy's outbreak), C. claims that it is because Evagrius was not touched with Origenism. Perhaps, but there are other reasons for silence around his name, and as Samuel Rubenson, followed by Mark Sheridan, and many other scholars, have shown, ‘Origenism’ textured the spiritual practices and theologies of many Egyptian monks, as well as Evagrius’ avowed teachers, the Cappadocians, and so C.'s argument tends rather to dislocate Evagrius from his thought-world.

This is a book very much for (and against) scholars. It is absolutely not an introduction to Evagrius. Certainly, C. devotes a very fine chapter to Evagrius’ theology of prayer (ch. 6, without doubt the highlight of the book), and offers some compelling readings of Evagrius as scriptural interpreter and doctrinal defender of orthodoxy (ch. 5). But these are framed within discussions of Evagrius’ life and reputation, as well as his Christology (ch. 7) and eschatology (ch. 8), which can only be understood within existing trends in Evagrian scholarship.

Herein lies my real difficulty with C.'s project. He has valid and salutary points to make in favour of Evagrius’ rehabilitation, but they come at a steep cost. That cost is the community and collegiality of scholarship. Evagrian scholarship of recent decades, by sophisticated critics such as David Brakke, Luke Dysinger, Robin Darling Young, Columba Stewart, Lorenzo Perrone, Julia Konstantinovsky, Kevin Corrigan and others, has been marked by co-operation and a spirit of mutual enquiry. C. does not share that attitude. Instead, he hardly interacts with recent anglophone scholarship (Konstantinovsky's and Corrigan's very fine books merit only one mention each in the footnotes; and Columba Stewart's recent work none at all). Indeed, C. ignores every anglophone development in Evagrian scholarship — naturally enough, since he begins by assuming that it is all beholden to the false lead of Antoine Guillaumont. So, rather than take seriously any work done in recent years, C. writes as though it never happened, preferring instead to shadow-box with the dead.

As it stands, I do not think I can adjudicate C.'s thesis. It rests on the overthrow of texts which scholars have, since Guillaumont published them, believed to represent the core of Evagrian thought: the Kephalaia Gnostica in the S₂ version, in light of which are read the Great Letter and other esoteric texts. Such sweeping claims by C. call for two responses: first, caution, both in critiquing his argument or in accepting it; and second, a fresh look at our texts. I believe C. has earned that much from his fellow scholars. I hope, though, that future examination will be undertaken with a generosity and collegiality which Evagrius — who dedicated himself to cultivating communities bound by love and hospitality — would be the first to applaud.