Gregory on Anger

For wrath kills the fool (Job 5:2)

St. Gregory the Great has a very nice discussion of anger at the end of Part 1 of his commentary on Job (Moralia 5.78-83). It gets a bit intense, so buckle up.

Taking his lead from the words of Eliphaz, St. Gregory begins with a bracing account of just how deadly anger can be. Even if we only consider anger as a passion or emotion–don’t worry about bad habits or consequent evil actions or how this fits with Original Sin yet–anger is bad because it destroys our God-likeness. It is by being creatures of reason that we are like God. We live out that likeness when our minds rest at peace in the contemplation of truth and when we love in accordance with the truth. Anger, as is well known to everyone who has ever lost their temper, interferes with this by causing tumult and confusion within ourselves. So when we strive to master and direct our anger with reason, we are striving to return to that divine likeness in which God created us; when anger throws off the directing of reason we spoil that likeness. St. Gregory’s first order of business is to list out all (?) the ways that likeness is destroyed.

There are seven ways anger destroys our likeness to God. The most basic loss is wisdom, that knowledge of highest things which orders and governs the whole host of lower things we call “life.” We completely lose sight (omnino nesciatur) of what we must do and the order in which we must do it. The second loss is life, which Gregory equates with putting into practice this knowledge of truth. Even if we do hold on to wisdom, we find that in our confusion we cannot convert this knowledge into right action and accomplish the thing we know to do. The third loss is justice, just as the Epistle of St. James warns. Our judgments are not really made by us but in a way by our anger, and yet we deem these judgments to be right all the same. It is as if we are unaware that we are no longer the ones making the judgment, and injustice cannot help but follow. The fourth loss is our society with the rest of humanity. By refusing to live by reason we elect to live like a beast and break off all social interaction with others. The Scriptural citations here tend in the direction of others choosing not to live with the angry, but there is also the sense in which we self-isolate through our anger regardless of what the people around us choose to do. The fifth loss, concord, works similarly but, as it were, in the opposite direction. Angry people stir up anger in others and provoke the bad to worse. We become the cause of strife and discord, both as directed back at ourselves and as a kind of social contagion that kills God-likeness in others. The sixth loss is the light of truth, which sounds like a return to the first loss but is in fact far more dreadful. Truth is the name St. Gregory most frequently gives to God Himself; the sun “not going down on our anger” here refers to The Sun that creates and illuminates all things. Because of anger the Divine Sun no longer shines on us, which is say that because of anger we are no longer able to see God. The seventh loss is the Holy Spirit itself, horribly reminiscent of the unforgivable sin Jesus repeatedly mentions. In anger we shut the door of the soul against God’s presence and leave only a void within.

So that’s how anger destroys our likeness to our Creator. It subverts the process of practical reason by which we live reasonably in this world, it destroys the ways in which we live peaceably with our neighbor, and it destroys our connection to God. That the trifecta of sin: sins against self, against neighbor, and against God. Anger is bad.

Another way to chart the course of anger is to look at the way it manifests in St. Augustine’s “sin trifecta,” by deed, by word, and by desire. There are of course the familiar, frustrating physical manifestations of anger–the racing heart, the shaking body, the tied tongue, the contorted face–but these are only bodily signs of anger and not of primary interest here. The physical deeds of wrath, the punching and the kicking and biting and whatnot, St. Gregory moves over quite quickly. Perhaps we still have some small bit of restraint against such deeds, or perhaps our fear overpowers our anger. The far more common sin of anger is by word, the tongue being so much more easily and fearlessly set loose to curse. St. Gregory, following the teaching of Christ in the Sermon on the Mount, is emphatic–in our cursing we implore a neighbor’s destruction and so we commit a murder even when we keep our hands by our sides. To restrain from such murderous cursing may be a sign of virtuous discretion but there is also the silent rage which becomes a sin of desire. There is a silence which is abhorrence and which we employ louder than words. There is also a silence which conceals an anger growing ever more into true hatred. It is the hidden realm of imagined arguments, self-provocations, endless exasperations in which we argue with and hate and kill a fantasy over and over again. The thoughts of the angry are a devouring brood of vipers (St. Gregory cites without reference here but I think he means the mind-bending work of Prudentius, the Hamartigenia).

After all that it is time to start bringing things around to the practical and the remedial. He begins with a simple observation about the different ways anger takes hold of people. The onset of anger can be either slow or quick, and its departure likewise. That gives us four basic types, and four general personalities when it comes to anger. Each corresponds with a certain kind of burning. Some people get angry very quickly and get over it just as quickly, like a burning reed or a piece of paper or hair. Some people are slow to anger but once they burn they burn long, like the heaviest log in the fire. The worst and least natural would be those who are quick to anger like the reed but slow to calm like the log, while the best and closest to virtue would be those who are slow to anger and who get over it quickly. In some sense these are givens of personality but, much more importantly, they are also the product of virtue and vice. Any of us can become any of these with enough repetition.

The most interesting part of St. Gregory’s treatment, to my mind, is how to take control of our anger. How do we slow its onset and hasten its departure? How do we weaken its intensity and preserve the inner God-likeness it tends to destroy? There are two basic ways and they are maddeningly simple.

First, anger draws its power from surprise. When adversity, annoyances, frustrations, and oppositions take us by surprise, we get angry. When we see them coming, we don’t! Or at least we get much less angry. So the first and most basic thing to do is always remember that these things are going to happen. That’s not just a general slogan that “adversities must come.” It’s not just a theological or spiritual awareness that even God Incarnate was despised and rejected and opposed and beaten and killed. Both of those are true and worthy of remembrance. What St. Gregory counsels is that, whenever we undertake any task, we first fix in our minds all the ways we are likely to “meet with contradiction.” Be specific! Be concrete! My son is going to leave his laundry on the sofa again. My students are going to talk in class. Someone is going to realize he is in the wrong lane and hit the brakes and put on a turn signal and make me wait. Don’t be ambushed by the things that make you mad, because then you definitely will get mad and the battle for calm is already lost. Be more realistic and foresightful about things–learn to be more realistic and foresightful about things–and you will become more patient.

Second, you annoy people all the time. Anger arises when we feel wronged; it is the judgment, anger’s judgment, that someone or something has wronged us. The hidden corollary to this is that anger draws its strength from the conviction that we are right. But we’re wrong all the time! We are constantly in need of the forbearance of others. Sometimes we only realize later how wrong we were and wish people would forgive us; so do the same now. Sometimes we know we are messing up while we do it and are genuinely regretful of being a problem for someone else; so treat your so-called “obstacles” that way. Sometimes we aren’t actually wrong and the person is mad at us unreasonably; that might be you this time! When we recall that we have faults in need of both amendment and the patience of those around us, we (hopefully) find we can bear with the faults of others. I’ve disregarded the reasonable requests of my parents; I’ve talked when I should have been listening; I’ve been the driver in the wrong lane making the wrong decision. So in order to be more gentle and mild with those around us, we need to begin with a self-critical eye. It turns out when Jesus said things about specks in the eye and loving neighbor as self He was, among other things, teaching us how to control our anger.

Finally, St. Gregory has some words about a different kind of anger, the kind that originates in zeal for the good. This zealous anger is on display throughout Scripture, most notably in the way Christ deals with the money changers at the temple. St. Gregory chooses to cite only Phinehas from the book of Numbers as a positive example of zeal and Eli from I Samuel who lacked this zeal and who was thereby ruined. The fundamental idea here is simple: zeal is the emotional energy with which we oppose evil. This is the unexpected way to interpret the simple command in Psalm 4, “be angry and sin not.” First and foremost it is the way we oppose our own evils; every warlike command of Scripture is primarily a command to do battle against our own sinful ways. But St. Gregory makes a surprising and uncomfortable extension of this idea. If we are commanded to love our neighbors as ourselves, and part of our self-love is anger at our sins, then we are commanded to be angry with the sins of our neighbor.

The anger that is zeal for virtue does disturb the mind, but because it is in the service of true justice it is a disturbance that leads to catharsis. We lose the world of contemplation in this zeal, but we regain it with an even keener vision. It is an ointment applied to cure our blindness; at first our vision blurs because of the ointment, but then the ointment is washed away and we can see better than before. This is part of St. Gregory’s larger treatment of the active and contemplative (a post for another day!) in which the active life is necessary for us to grow in the contemplative life. Basically, if you find contemplation of truth difficult, you should probably try loving your neighbor and see if that helps. This discussion of zeal is just a particular application of that larger idea that our spiritual and intellectual lives must proceed by stages that mutually empower each other. Only the one who loves justice can see the truth clearly, and only the one who does justice loves it. Zeal is our emotional love for justice.

This zeal, however, is still anger and therefore still requires the moderation of reason. It is only zeal when it is an instrument of reason; as soon as it becomes the master it is no longer zeal but the destruction of our God-likeness. All our familiar concerns about zealotry arise here, in the mistaking of a hot temper for a virtue. The zeal of Christ we are meant to imitate is a meek and reasonable zeal in which the one who punishes or challenges or corrects faults must first be conqueror of self, not so much in terms of faults to be corrected–who could ever be done with such a task?–but rather in terms of the vehemence of anger. It is easy to go astray under the influence of either kind of anger.

So that’s a little taste of how St. Gregory looks at anger. It’s a bit wild and intense compared to the easier, more systematic treatment you find in someone like Aquinas. There are plenty of questions worth pursuing in all manner of directions from here, but that’s how St. Gregory works: inspiration. Most of the thinking is for you to do.