Evangelical counsels

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The evangelical counsels or counsels of perfection are poverty, chastity, and obedience. In various branches of Christianity, they are regarded not as rules of life and conduct which must be practiced by every one of Jesus's followers as the necessary condition for attaining to everlasting life, but principles which Jesus expressly stated were not to be considered as binding upon all, or as necessary conditions without which heaven could not be attained, but rather as counsels for those who desired to do more than the minimum, in supererogatory acts.

Henriette Browne "Nonnen im klösterlichen Arbeitsraum"

Those entering the monastic life had, and have, to take monastic vows, voluntarily committing themselves to these counsels.

Some branches of Christianity have maintained that all Christians are at all times bound, if they would keep God's Commandments, to do their utmost, and even so will fall short of perfect obedience, and so no distinction between precepts and counsels can rightly be made. This opposition cites such texts as Luke, xvii, 10, "When ye have done all that is commanded you, say, we are unprofitable servants". It is impossible, they say, to keep the Commandments adequately. To teach further "counsels" involves either the absurdity of advising what is far beyond all human capacity, or else the impiety of minimizing the commands of Almighty God.

Those who support the distinction point to the young man in the Gospel, who asked what he should do to obtain eternal life, and Jesus told him to "keep the commandments", but when the young man pressed further, Christ told him: "If thou wilt be perfect, go sell what thou hast, and give to the poor". (It is from this passage that the term "counsel of perfection" comes.) Again in the Gospels, Jesus speaks of "eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven", and added, "He that can receive it, let him receive it". St. Paul presses home the duty incumbent on all Christians of keeping free from all sins of the flesh, and of fulfilling the obligations of the married state, if they have taken those obligations upon themselves, but also gives his "counsel" in favour of the unmarried state and of perfect chastity, on the ground that it is thus more possible to serve God with an undivided allegiance.

Indeed, the danger in the Early Church, and even in Apostolic times, was not that the "counsels" would be neglected or denied, but that they should be exalted into commands of universal obligation, "forbidding to marry" (1 Timothy 4:3), and imposing poverty as a duty on all.

Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, Am Klostertor

These counsels have been analyzed as a way to keep the world from distracting the soul, on the grounds that the principal good things of this world easily divide themselves into three classes. There are the riches which make life easy and pleasant, there are the pleasures of the flesh which appeal to the appetites, and, lastly, there are honours and positions of authority which delight the self-love of the individual. These three matters, in themselves often innocent and not forbidden to the devout Christian, may yet, even when no kind of sin is involved, hold back the soul from its true aim and vocation, and delay it from becoming entirely conformed to the will of God. It is, therefore, the object of the three counsels of perfection to free the soul from these hindrances. The love of riches is opposed by the counsel of poverty; the pleasures of the flesh, even the lawful pleasures of holy matrimony, are excluded by the counsel of chastity; while the desire for worldly power and honour is met by the counsel of holy obedience. Abstinence from unlawful indulgence in any of these directions is forbidden to all Christians as a matter of precept. The further voluntary abstinence from what is in itself lawful is the subject of the counsels, and such abstinence is not in itself meritorious, but only becomes so when it is done for the sake of Christ, and in order to be more free to serve Him.