Monastic discipline, in the course of time, became a symbolic way of living by means of which one could attain this ideal of perfect love of God and neighbor. Only a few especially disciplined persons, however, have been able to live according to the path that leads to the ideal of perfection. The masses, on the other hand, are inwardly and outwardly incapable of exercising the required ascetic discipline. Therefore, the monastic rules of life are not generally binding “commands” but rather only “counsels” directed to those called to lead an ascetic life. The essential distinction between command and counsel is found in the words of Jesus: he did not command men to “make themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven,” but rather he recommended this condition only to those who were “able to receive this (counsel)” (Matthew 19:12). Unmarried ascetics were recognized as a special class in the early church, forming the core of many Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches. Later, with its distinction between counsel (subsume) and command (iussum), as in the writings of Tertullian in the late 2nd century, the church found itself in full accord with the oldest Christian view.

During the latter part of the 2nd and the beginning of the 3rd century, the combination of asceticism and mysticism, which was to become the spiritual basis of later monasticism in the East and in part also in the West, was emphasized by Clement of Alexandria and Origen. By the 4th century, monasticism had become an established institution in the Christian Church. This was not because of the decadence of the people of late antiquity, as has wrongly been asserted, but rather because monasticism was sustained by the resilient and culturally unexhausted rural populations of Egypt and Syria, who had developed an enthusiasm for asceticism ideal itself.

Certain writings that captured the spirit of monasticism further enhanced the development of this way of life in the church. Athanasius of Alexandria, the 4th century's most prominent conventional bishop in terms of ecclesiastical politics, wrote the Life of St. Antony, which described the hermitic (hermit) life in the desert and the awesome struggle of ascetics with the demons as the model of the life of Christian perfection. This work indicates that the church sanctioned and propagated monasticism. We have no comment about how Arius and Arianism might have differed in their perception this kind of asceticism.

Certainly, Celtic Christianity revered their monks and encouraged and strengthened their monasteries such as on Ionia and others. A former Roman soldier of the 4th century, Pachomius, had created the first monastery in the modern sense. He united the monks under one roof in a community living under the leadership of an abbot (father, or leader). In 323CE he founded the first true monastic cloister in Tabennisi, north of Thebes, in Egypt, and joined together houses of 30 to 40 monks, each with its own superior. Pachomius also created a monastic rule that served more as a regulation of external monastic life than spiritual guidance. During the remainder of the 4th century, monasticism soon developed in areas outside Egypt. Athanasius brought the monastic rule of Pachomius to the West during his banishment (340–346) to Trèves in Germany—which was as a result of his support for the imperially banned heretical doctrines of Arianism. (Mar Awgin, a Syrian monk, introduced the monastic rule in Mesopotamia, and Jerome established a monastic cloister in Bethlehem.

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