“The great spiritual theologians such a Evagrius of Pontus, Gregory of Nyssa and Maximus the Confessor are ignored by most theologians and pastors. Have we utterly lost them, and many others, because of the rise in modern times of a secular mind that makes them appear old-fashioned? Has the progressive emergence of world culture made them seem provincial? Actually, it is not modern developments that have led us to discard a great deal of our heritage, but church teachings themselves.. It was my theological, not my secular, education that limited me so. I was taught a great deal about the sources used by writers of the Bible, for example—so much that I was afraid to rely on any verse because if I looked around, I expected to find some scholar or other who would say that it was a later addition, with the implication that it could not be relied upon. Both biblical study and theology were cluttered with so many options and so many issues that conversation in the seminary and other academic gatherings resembled the plight of people after the disaster of the tower of Babel rather than the deep communion brought by the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.”

Diogenes Allen, Spiritual Theology: The Theology of Yesterday for Spiritual Help Today (Lanham, MD: Cowley Publications, 1997), 4.