Some Principles for Interpreting the Bible

I was thinking about how we might be able to look at patristic exegesis for ourselves today, particularly in deploying spiritual exegesis without it becoming simply arbitrary – and how, even when arbitrary, there can be some guardrails to ensure spiritual exegesis and its application are nonetheless helpful in the quest for theological and spiritual truth and participation in the life of God.

I have brainstormed six headings for this little investigation:

Regula fidei
Caritas
Ad litteram
Moralia/Theologia/Symbola – Consideratio and some contemplatio
Typologia
Allegoria

Regula Fidei

Any exegesis we make should be in line with the rule of faith, the canon of the faith, the regula fidei – encapsulated in the creeds today. This approach emerges from St. Athanasius of Alexandria in his Orations Against the Arians, where he argues that Arian exegesis of Proverbs 8 must be false because it undermines the rule of faith. In essence, he is following the logic of Irenaeus’ use of the rule of faith in its application not just to specific doctrines and dogmas but to the exegesis of the sacred text itself.

Now, this may seem to be putting the cart before the horse. After all, as the Articles of Religion state, the three creeds are proved by most excellent warrant of Scripture, not the other way around, right? Well, be that as it may, it is also the case that our earliest regulae fidei are themselves concurrent with discussions of what counts as Scripture, and it is fairly clear that the two questions coinhere. That is to say, if something goes contrary to the regula fidei, it can’t be Scripture, and vice versa.

Furthermore, if we take it as given that the creeds are proved by Scripture (and therefore true), a sound interpretation of Scripture will not run counter to the creeds

This principle of the rule of faith comes first because we are heirs to Scripture and members—embodied, living organs—of a wider body than just ourselves and our tools. Whatever else we do, it is done as part of the living community of the faithful.

Caritas

This principle is from Augustine, Confessions and On Christian Teaching (De Doctrina). The principle is that if our interpretation of a disputed/ambiguous passage promotes love and charity with our neighbour, then it cannot be “wrong” in a particular sense, for it is, at least, promoting the greatest Christian virtue.

The inverse is also true—if a reading of Scripture promotes un-love, then it is false.

Now, this position can be misused today, which is why it has to work in tandem with the rule of faith. Our culture today is confused about what counts as love—at times, simply saying, “Doing x is morally wrong,” can be considered un-love. At other times, speak truth in a crude way is considered “Love.” To my mind, neither of these is correct. The moral teaching of Scripture and tradition is not loving or unloving based upon how it makes people feel.

The very possibility of someone misusing Augustine’s teaching in this way is disturbing, to be sure, but also quite real.

Ad Litteram

The next principle is doing the work of reading the text, not simply ad litteram but also ad grammatica. That is to say, reading the texts in their historical-grammatical context. What is the genre? What does the story mean in terms of its historical meaning?

The great allegorists of the patristic era were engaged in this kind of reading as the foundation for their spiritual interpretations. Origen spends a lot of time looking at grammar and semantics to establish the meaning of the text. Bede finds lessons in the historical sense of Scripture. Gregory of Nyssa establishes the historical account of the Life of Moses before the allegory. Augustine shows us in his sermons as well as exhorting us in On Christian Teaching that we should establish the basic, historical meaning of the text first.

This means using the tools available to us—Augustine used Jerome’s On Hebrew Names, for example. The tools today are more abundant, but the task is essentially the same. It also means taking history seriously. While Origen is famous for those moments when he denies the historicity of the biblical story, those moments are rare. He almost always affirms the reality of the story in Scripture, the event as the sure foundation of the allegory.

Moralia/Theologia/Symbola – Consideratio and some contemplation

With these three tasks done, we can actually do a lot of teaching without having to move along into typology and allegory. These stages are what Evagrius would consider the lower levels of theoria or contemplatio, and what the last of the fathers, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, calls consideratio.

At this level, we are doing what most preachers do. What are the moral, theological, and symbolic meanings of this text? What does it show us about how to live? What does it teach us about who God is and what God has done? What symbolic resonances does it have with other parts of Scripture and the world around us?

This is the kind of preaching that St. John Chrysostom is most famous for, but all of the ancient preachers did it, whether they were also allegorists/typologists, or not. With this knowledge, we are raising our vision above just a bunch of historical data and facts to the grand overarching reality of the God who acts then and now, speaks then and now, is actus purus and here with us today. Sometimes we can miss doing this, thinking that a bunch of historical facts and grammatical data are exegesis.

As much as I like history – whether we’re thinking Mesopotamia or the Roman Empire, I enjoy learning this stuff – stopping with the historical data and not seeing God in it is to miss the whole point of sacred Scritpure. God speaks to the exegete and the congregation through Scripture, and the preacher discerns his voice in this way.

To do this well is a form of contemplatio, that inner seeing of the mind, or theoria, that the mystics promote. It is also St. Bernard’s consideratio, the idea that you look around you at the world and other humans and discern your right relationship to them (as opposed to using them as a ladder to God, which Bernard would think of as a level of contemplatio). All of this is good and beautiful and true, and we should never reject it.

We begin the ascent of Mt. Sinai.

Typologia

Typology is seeing something in the Old Testament fulfilled in the new, usually Christ. The technical terminology is used in 2 Peter of Noah’s Ark as a typology of baptism. This approach is used by Jesus himself of the bronze snake Moses raised up in the Desert. When used responsibly, typology sees Christ as the key to all the mysteries of the Old Testament but also acknowledges that sometimes a piece of wood is just a piece of wood.

This type of exegesis is popular with Presbyterians to this day. In the ancient church, it is prominent in the On Pascha by Melito of Sardis and informs a vast swathe of the hymns of St. Ephrem the Syrian, such as the Hymns on Paradise and the Hymns on the Incarnation, as well as finding manifestation in the hymns of St. Romanos who is a Greek recipient of St. Ephrem’s tradition.

Typology is a legitimate form of spiritual exegesis that Our Lord and the Apostles used. It helps bring together the full narrative of Scripture, intersecting with the person of Christ.

Allegoria

The finding and making of allegory (allegoresis) is the most controversial level of spiritual exegesis, although some find typology equally so. It was practised by Christians who were also what we often call “mystics” today – Origen, the Cappadocian Fathers, Ambrose, Augustine, Bede. These “mystics” were also all similarly “ascetics.” This union of the mystical and the ascetical strikes me as significant.

Anyway, with the guardrails of the above all in place, I believe that even a modern preacher can start to prayerfully find allegories in Scripture, so long as the main goals of all exegesis and all preaching are kept in mind.

All of these have two goals:

1. Caritas
2. Divine participation

Caritas

Caritas is both method and goal in exegesis, as it is likewise in the contemplative tradition. I’ve already spoken of Augustine in this regard. In The Cloud of Unknowing, a 13th-century work strongly influenced by the Carthusians, there is a statement that if someone does not come away from contemplation or what we today might call “mystical experience” with a greater love for fellow human beings, that person has not truly encountered God in any meaningful way.

So also with the interpretation and application and preaching of Sacred Scripture. The goal is to fulfil the great commandments, to love God above all else, and our neighbour as ourselves. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

Divine Participation

For the Fathers, from the Apostolic Fathers to Bede and even Bernard (to keep the old Cistercian view alive!), salvation is not merely getting out of Hell free. It’s not simply “going to heaven.” The redeemed life itself is not simply the life of a bad person whose spot in future glory is secured. That is to say, it’s not simply transactional: God accepts my faith and puts me into a right relationship with him.

Rather, God accepts my faith (which He himself has given), puts me into a right relationship with him, and transforms me through this relationship, since a right relationship with God means participating in divine life. This divine participation means growth in holiness and love for God and for neighbour. It means finding the disciplines easier as time goes on. And it is always preceded by God’s grace, surrounded by God’s grace, resting on God’s grace. God’s unmerited favour towards us empowers us to be united with him and filled with him.

This is the purpose of understanding Scripture for the individual Christian – to know God more and more. This is why St. Gregory of Nyssa saw the Life of Moses as an allegory of the whole Christian life – to empower Christians to climb Mt. Sinai and find God there in the cloud of unknowing. This is why Origen likened the church to the bride in Song of Songs. We are drawn to our divine love and find wholeness in his embrace. This is what Scripture is for – it is for empowering us to live the with-God life, transfigured by our encounter with Christ.

Christ, after all, is the God Word, and thus the words about Him have real power in our lives. We need good expositors to open them up and help us find Him.

This spiritual approach to scripture is likened by St. Maximus the Confessor, in his Ecclesiastical Mystagogy, to a different mountain from Sinai. For Maximus, it is Mt. Tabor, the mount of Transfiguration that is the goal of understanding Scripture. The bare words are taken away, and the divine reality of Christ shines forth from behind them.

Early Christian Worship: Ritual and Space in the Ancient Church

Next term at Davenant Hall, starting the week of April 8, I am teaching “Early Christian Worship: Ritual and Space in the Ancient Church“. Registration ends in two days, on Good Friday, March 29! And I realise that I’ve not really given you much of a taste here, although I’ve referred to it a few times. Now, if you’re into videos, my YouTube video plugging the course is at the bottom of this post.

Worship is central to what it means to be a disciple of Jesus, the Christ. It defines who we are, and it transforms us as well. But what is worship? Latreia? Proskynesis? Doulia? Servitus? Cultus? Adoratio? Veneratio? What do these Latin and Greek terms signify? How do they map onto what we do? These are some of the grounding questions we’ll approach in this course.

One thing we need to realise regarding “worship” is that the words our early modern forebears rendered as worship are words wherein we do things. Worship isn’t just some sort of internal state or positioning — although the inner person matters at worship. It involves the body of the worshipper. Bowing. Kissing. Sacrificing. Eating. Drinking. Lifting holy hands. Raising eyes heavenward. Dancing. Singing.

And all of these embodied realities take place in space. In the Temple. In synagogues. In houses, upper rooms, workshops. Basilicas. Martyr shrines.

In this course, then, besides examining descriptions of services and liturgical texts and the teaching of the ancient church on prayer and the sacraments (all the things you’d expect from a good Anglican like me!), I’m bringing in archaeology and architecture and asking about how ritual actions and ritual space are part of the picture.

My hope is to give us a holistic picture of whatever it is early Christian worship was.

And my hope for students is to help them worship with greater reverence, and if they lead or help plan worship, find wisdom for today in the teachings and practices of the ancients. Register today!

The Church Year

It’s Palm Sunday today. We are about to enter the busiest season of the church year. The Book of Common Prayer has a collect, epistle reading, and Gospel reading for every day from now until next Sunday, Easter. While many won’t be able to make it to church every day this week, there are quite a few of us who will make it to Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, maybe also a vigil on Easter Even/Holy Saturday.

One year in high school I had an orchestra concert one of the nights of Holy Week (Maundy Thursday, maybe?). I commented to a fellow musician that my dad wouldn’t be able to make it because there was church every day that week as we remember the different events from Palm Sunday to Easter. The response was that we should remember those things every day.

Well, yes, of course.

But we can’t actually have a church service that covers every. single. thing. every. single. day. Or even every. single. Sunday.

Instead, we have the Church Year, the big version of sacred time. Sacred time, of course, has multiple layers. In terms of marking it, we have the daily rhythms of Morning and Evening Prayer, the weekly rhythm of every Sunday being a mini Easter (and in some traditions, fasts on Wednesday and/or Friday), and the yearly rhythm of the many feasts and fasts.

My brother and I already have a podcast episode about the meaning of the seasons and feasts, so I wish to go a different direction, one that turns us back to my trombone-playing comrade of c. 2001.

The absolutely central reality of Christianity is the fact that God became man so that man might become God. Our manifold sins and wickedness are healed by this reality. Our great potential is fulfilled by this reality. Our understanding of Who God Is is bodied forth by this truth. Everything surrounding this reality — the events of Jesus’ life on earth, the preparation and history of God’s people leading up to it, the record of those events, the ongoing life of Christ in the Church through the centuries — is bound to the fact that God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

Indeed, from the beautiful reality of the Incarnation comes also the beautiful doctrine of the Most Holy Trinity.

Because God became man, we are disciples of the God-Man, Jesus the Christ. We, Christians, are bound to the divine life. We participate, in our own small way, in eternity. We grasp at infinity, and God gives us what we can handle. Because God took on humanity in every way except sin.

As Christians, as disciples of Jesus, we are called to remember this reality and keep it at the forefront of our devotion. Our devotion is not to a set of ideals or “values”. Our devotion is not to some generic unmoved mover we call “God”. Our devotion is not to the Bible. Our devotion is to the very specific, very real God Who became a man so that we might participate in the divine life. Our worship and our prayer and our moral lives and our everything is meant to be devoted to Christ Jesus Our Lord.

And as humans, we need this to be constantly brought before our hearts and minds, imprinted on our souls, filling us to overflowing.

As humans, we live in the ebb and flow of time. Every twenty-four hours, the earth completes a rotation, a day comes and goes. From the earliest days of our faith, we have ordered our days and our prayers with this rhythm — one of our earliest hymns is a hymn to Christ for eventide, the “Phos Hilaron”. We also have a cycle of daily hymns from Prudentius in the fourth century, not to mention the daily cycle of prayer mentioned in second- and third-century sources such as Tertullian, Origen, The Apostolic Tradition. We fill certain times of day with the remembrance of the God who became man so as not to lose sight of him.

But that’s not enough. Our cycle, based upon the harmony of the universe revealed in Scripture, also includes the seven-day week. And on a specific day of the week, our salvation was wrought for us as Christ trampled down death by death and rose from the dead. And so every Sunday, the first day of the week, we celebrate the resurrection. We keep Jesus and his salvation for us at the front of our minds in our communal gatherings.

But God’s salvation is too big to cram it all into a single day each week. We just can’t do it. And so we have the year-long cycle. Every 365 1/4 days, the earth completes a circuit around the sun. And so we remember the deeds wrought by Christ to save us in the course of the year, commemorating his deeds and teachings, recalling the teachings of his apostles and prophets as well.

This yearly cycle enables us as Christians to keep our hearts and minds focussed on Jesus and his saving grace, his saving acts, his saving of us. God became man so that man might become God. We need to remember this. If left to our own devices, many of us may simply preach through the book of Romans for six years. Or examine only the moral teachings of Jesus. Or double down on the Psalms.

But the church year fixes our eyes not just on the teachings of Jesus but on the God-Man Himself. The church is forced through its cycle of seasons and feasts and fasts and readings from the lectionary to confront the God-Man Himself and not shunt Him off to the side.

Christianity is not about the teachings of Jesus. Its about Jesus Himself. We need to keep Him, the Person of Jesus the Christ, God the Word Incarnate, at the centre of our vision, of our ethics, of our worship, of our Bible-reading, of our prayer.

The Church Year does that for us. This is the pastoral role of the church year. This is why we have the feasts and fasts, why we have seasons of Advent, Christmas, Epiphanytide, Gesimas, Lent, Eastertide, Ascension, Pentecost, Trinity, as well as Michaelmas, All Saints Day, the saints’ feasts, the feasts of our Lord. These are there to keep us focussed on Him and His salvation for us.

Christianity is not about ideology, ideals, or ideas.

It is about God becoming man so that man might become God.

Have a blessed Holy Week.

The Comprehensiveness of the BCP

I am currently undergoing training to officially become a lay reader. The other night, our training consisted of learning/talking about the two main service books of the Anglican Church of Canada, The Book of Common Prayer (1962), and The Book of Alternative Services.

While my priest was discussing the BCP, the idea came to me that the BCP is thorough and comprehensive, showing us what to do, in large part because of its early modern, Reformational origin. I’m the sort of guy who likes to emphasise the continuity of the BCP with the past — from Hippolytus to the Use of Sarum and laterally to Luther’s Mass — but I realised that some of what I like about it arises in part (but not in whole) from its emergence as the first English liturgy at a time of great religious upheaval.

Consider the task before Cranmer. The Prayer Book is not simply a rendering into English of the Use of Sarum. It is, to a large extent. But there are also some shifts — some new prayers here and there, some old prayers cut, greater Scripture reading in the daily office, some rephrasing and rewording in traditional collects, and so forth.

These shifts and changes are sometimes doubtless targeting the Roman Church of the sixteenth century, at least in terms of how people worshipped and believed if not the formal teaching of said church. But the fact that the absolution, for example, comes with an explanation of how this is something Christ commanded, clearly signals that the uneducated or those infected with enthousiasmos are also targeted. That is, the Prayer Book doesn’t just correct late medieval/Renaissance errors, it seeks to instruct the whole People of God.

This makes sense, for the people of God will be hearing the liturgy in a language such as they understandeth for the first time in centuries (in English, the first time ever for those not learned in Latin). The Prayer Book, then, is on the leading edge of instructing the people in the faith alongside things like The Book of Homilies (regardless of how one feels about the latter). The Prayer Book is a manifestation of lex orandi, lex credendi — the law of prayer is the law of belief.

Therefore, the people of God are taught wonderful things as they go to church week in and week out, or even day in and day out:

• Humans “are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under [God’s] table”
• But it is a divine “property … always to have mercy”
• Humans have committed “manifold sins and wickness”
• But God has “manifold and great mercies”
• Indeed, God “of thy tender mercy didst give thine only Son Jesus Christ to take our nature upon him, and to suffer death upon the Cross for our redemption; who made there, by his one oblation of himself once offered, a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world”
• As a result, “by the merits and death of thy Son Jesus Christ, and through faith in his blood, … all [God’s] whole Church may obtain remission of our sins, and all other benefits of his passion”

Alongside these truths, one could go through the Collects of Thomas Cranmer and put together the attributes of God as well as a rich theological anthropology.

And at Eucharist on Sundays and Black Letter Days, they will hear the drama of Scripture year after year. Such as go to Morning and Evening Prayer will encounter the entire Book of Psalms every month and the entire Bible every year. Suddenly, from being banned in England, the English Bible becomes the most precious thing this world affords.

It is truly a wonderful book, teaching the theology of the catholic faith to the people of England through the life of prayer, assembled together, that it may get into their lifeblood and thus become truly common.

And it is meditations such as this that have led me to turn back to the ancient liturgies and now to offer a course on them. Sign up while you still can!

Prayer (I) by George Herbert

Besides Caedmon, we also commemorate the great English language poet George Herbert in February — apologies that this commemoration is one day late. I present you his poem “Prayer (I)”, which I used as my definition of prayer in my sermon of February 16: Prayer the church’s banquet, angel’s age,God’s breath in man returning to […]

Prayer (I) by George Herbert

Worship in Space & Time

I’ve mentioned before that at my Anglican parish, we have a good amount of stained glass, much of it depicting our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. This physical space provides a certain head space, and I am grateful for it. In most places I turn, I am struck with a reminder of Jesus, the God-Man who became incarnate to save us, such as the trio below, St. Thomas (our patron) flanked by the Christ:

The stained glass windows serve as a visual reminder of what we’re at church to do — to worship Christ our God. It helps us gain and maintain reverence. As I say, it has an impact upon how we worship.

This is in contrast to St Columba’s Free Church of Scotland where I worshipped in Edinburgh, a building with no stained glass, no images, nothing of that sort. It still had a Victorian Gothic beauty, but a beauty undistracted by figural ornamentation. Here, the focus was on the word as heard in the big Bible on the pulpit, as preached by the teaching elders, as sung in the Psalms. The beautiful, relatively simple, space of the Free Church helped with that focus.

Neo-Gothic Pulpit, St. Columba’s Free Church of Scotland

Each is good in its own way.

In Cyprus, I met a third way that is parallel to my Anglican upbringing, at times touching it. Throughout the Troodos Mountains of Cyprus you will find a series of churches that form a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Their interiors (and one interior!) are adorned with frescoes from the late Byzantine/Venetian era, sometimes early Ottoman. Centuries old, these images depict not only Christ, but his saints as well.

Image from Panayia Podithou, Troodos, I believe

When I visited these churches with my friend Fr. Ioannis, himself an iconographer, he explained that an Orthodox Church such as these (see also St John’s Cathedral in Nicosia) are covered in images of the saints because we do not worship alone. These frescoes represent the Great Cloud of Witnesses of Hebrews 11. And on the walls of the apse of many Orthodox churches, they have icons of Sts John Chrysostom, Basil of Caesarea, and Gregory the Theologian (of Nazianzus) to remind the priest that he is concelebrating holy communion with the Fathers.

Sts Nicholas, Chrysostom, Basil

These three traditions have all shaped the way I worship God. Having grown up Anglican and worshipped in churches with at least one stained window of Christ most of my life, He is enthroned in my heart as God and King and Lord of All. Having spent years with the Wee Frees, I have learned to attune my heart to the God who is beyond all images and sights, to His Word as proclaimed and sung, seeping into my heart (like a Cistercian of old). And having been in and out of Orthodox churches for the past 19 years, I have learned to keep the saints in mind, that great cloud of witnesses surrounding me at prayer, praise, worship.

These questions are permeating my mind a lot right now because I’m preparing to teach “Early Christian Worship: Ritual and Space in the Ancient Church.” I didn’t simply want to do a course on liturgical texts. I wanted to seek out a way to help students sink their teeth, hearts, minds, wills into the material of ancient worship and thence go deeper and meet the one, true, and living God in the heritage of our Church, in the life of ancient faith.

• How did coming from the Temple to the assembly of saints affect the early church?
• How did “house” churches affect worship? (What does that mean?)
• What went on in the catacombs?
• How did they adorn their earliest edifices?
• How does worship in a Christian basilica differ from in a pagan temple?

This is one angle you’ll get to explore with me! So sign up today!

Ritual & Ceremony in Religious Identity

Subtitle: Constantine bans sacrifice – paganism dead in a century

A bull is led to sacrifice, Ara Pacis, Rome 1st c. AD

Constantine banned public, pagan sacrifice. The traditional sacrificial rites of the cities of the Roman Empire were banned from his reign until a brief pagan revival under Julian in the early 360s before being suppressed again. There is some counterevidence to this, provided by Libanius in the later 300s, but the laws of Constantine’s sons state as much. And they should know.

Anyway, Constantine banned sacrifice. He also built churches and gave benefits to Christian clerics. These are very public acts.

The elimination of public sacrifice from Roman religion, from “paganism”, ripped out its heart. It would only be a matter of time before it would die without sacrifice. The last generation of pagans, the last pagans of Rome, would have no sacrifices, few if any memories of them. For them, paganism would be literary — Virgil, Varro, philosophy. They had nothing else left. And, as Augustine and the Cappadocians show us, that literary heritage was available to Christians as well.

We should never underestimate the power of ritual, the cultic, and its public performance in the spiritual and religious lives of people.

Roman religion was very much about the legal arrangements of the sacred, about performing one’s duties to the gods. Once that’s removed, things will start to fall apart. If all that remains is a love of Virgil and Neoplatonism — well, again. That’s Augustine. That’s Lactantius. If you’re Greek and Homer’s your thing, that’s Gregory of Nazianzus.

Plus, you can see this conquest of your gods by the Galilean, can’t you? Santa Maria Maggiore on the Esquiline. Santa Sabina on the Aventine. San Pietro on the Vatican. The entire city of Constantinople. Temples plundered for their works of art, useful metals, bits of masonry.

Maybe, like in the city of Aphrodisias in modern Turkey, you have lovingly and carefully buried the cult statues of your gods.

But you’ve still buried them.

Meanwhile, they’re building the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and a monastery on Mount Sinai.

The rituals of paganism were killed, and the rituals of Christianity promoted.

Of course people converted.

How and when and even where we worship shape us, define us in ways we are not always conscious of. Catechesis is important, but our subconscious ideas of God are shaped very much by cultus. Bow down and worship. Sit comfortably. Stand in a crowd outside a temple and watch the spray of blood as the priest slits the bull’s throat. Feast on that bull’s meat later on. Fast.

Eat. Drink. Watch. Breathe.

Rinse.

Repeat.

These things make our religious identities.

PS: I’m teaching a course on early Christian worship next term…

Bow down and worship

In my current course, “Constantine the Conversion of the Roman Empire,” I just gave a lecture about imperial ceremony, including, amongst other interesting points, the act of proskynesis or, in Latin, adoratio. Often rendered into English as worship. It looks like this.

If you’ve read the history of Alexander the Great — whether by a modern or by Arrian or Curtius Rufus — you will know that when Alexander started even thinking about requiring what one translator calls “obeisance” (proskynesis), the Greeks and Macedonians would have none of it. This was a Persian custom, but one suited to a god, not a human who, however lofty his position, was, after all, simply an ontological equal.

It’s precisely the sort of thing Augustus would have rejected.

Getting on your knees, and then your hands, and then pressing your forehead into the ground in front of someone. Un-Roman. The Emperor, after all, was the princeps, the chief man, the leading man. But a man. Just … the head of the Senate, the revered (Augustus) leader of the Roman people. The Imperator of the army. But a man. Just like you.

Well, let’s fast forward to the period I teach. The act of proskynesis was added to imperial ceremony by Diocletian (much to the distaste of his contemporaries, in fact — see Eutropius 9.26 and Aurelius Victor, Caesars 39.4), and it passed on from his period (the system called the Tetrarchy) to that of Constantine and the Christian emperors. There was, in fact, a specific instance of proskynesis, the adoratio purpurae. A person of sufficient rank who had waited the right length of time was allowed into the presence of the Sacred Person of the Emperor. He performed adoratio/proskynesis, and then he got to kiss the purple hem of the emperor’s robe.

This helped set the Imperator apart, a transcendent figure like one of the … gods …

Oh, dear.

Constantius in the Chronograph of 354

In Lactantius (Christian tutor to Constantine’s son), On the Deaths of the Persecutors we read:

The older Maximian had a son, Maxentius, who was in fact son-in-law to the younger Maximian; he was a man of dangerous and evil outlook, so proud and stubborn that he used not to do homage [solitus sit adorare] either to his father or to his father-in-law – and for this reason he was disliked by both of them.

Lactantius, De Mortibus Persecutorum, 18.9, trans. J. L. Creed

In his commentary, Creed notes that this is somewhat surprising, particularly since Lactantius says this elsewhere:

Let no one trust in riches, no one in badges of authority, no one even in royal power: these things do not make a man immortal. For whosoever shall cast away the conduct becoming a man, and, following present things, shall prostrate himself upon the ground, will be punished as a deserter from his Lord, his commander, and his Father. Let us therefore apply ourselves to righteousness, which will alone, as an inseparable companion, lead us to God; and “while a spirit rules these limbs,” (Virgil, Aen. 4.336) let us serve God with unwearied service, let us keep our posts and watches, let us boldly engage with the enemy whom we know, that victorious and triumphant over our conquered adversary, we may obtain from the Lord that reward of valour which He Himself has promised.

Lactantius, Divine Institutes 7.27.15, from CCEL

If you read Ammianus, it is clear that Christian emperors continued this practice.

As you are no doubt aware, the act of proskynesis is part of the liturgical fabric of our brothers and sisters in the Eastern churches. During Great Lent, for example, the Eastern Orthodox perform proskynesis as part of this prayer attributed to St Ephrem the Syrian:

O Lord and Master of my life, take from me the spirit of sloth, despair, lust of power, and idle talk.

But give rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience, and love to Thy servant.

Yea, O Lord and King, grant me to see my own transgressions, and not to judge my brother, for blessed art Thou, unto ages of ages. Amen.

Text taken from Orthodox Church in America

What I want to know is when did Christians incorporate literal, technical adoratio/proskynesis/obeisance into worship — or was it always there?

And, on a related note, I sometimes think there is interesting cross-fertilization between imperial ceremonial and Christian liturgy. As the emperor becomes like a transcendent icon, as his sacer status is more and more highlighted, I don’t doubt this affects how you treat the truly transcendent God who is the most truly sacer Person in the universe.

Speaking of icons, I think this is also related in a long, historical trajectory of ritual actions and images and treatment of persons.

Constantine and the Conversion of the Roman Empire

I am pleased to finally get around to announcing here that I am teaching “Constantine and the Conversion of the Roman Empire” for Davenant Hall this January. You can sign up here — auditors are always welcome and don’t even have to tune in live! (Although you’ll get more out of discussion time by actually … discussing…)

This course is very timely — people on the Internet and in books and now even in movies are discussing something called “Christian Nationalism”, and whatever that is, it involves Christians holding some form of political power and framing laws relative to Christian morality. However one feels about that term or those who use it or what on earth it actually means, the question of Christians and political power is one that will never go away.

Alternatively, for those of us in the UK and the Commonwealth Realms, on 6 May we had the opportunity to witness the coronation of a new king — the first coronation in 70 years! There we also saw a vision of temporal, earthly power and its relationship to God and Christianity, as the King was presented with a Bible at one point and promised to uphold the Protestant Reformed Church of England, and then anointed with oil and crowned by the Archbishop of Canterbury. He was also handed an orb surmounted by the cross, itself a symbol that the true ruler and power over the world is Jesus of Nazareth.

In countless ways, we can consider how the politics and culture of Europe and her outposts (North America, Australia, etc) have been deeply transformed by Christianity over the centuries. In the great chain of events as we go back in time, so much of this can be traced to Constantine, who ruled the Roman Empire (or parts of it) 306-337.

From at least 312, if not 310, Constantine was pursuing policies that would not only favour Christianity but set the stage for the Christianisation of the Roman Empire. From 312, he himself was publicly a Christian. He had Christian advisors, chose a Christian tutor for his son, gave all sorts of favours to the administration of the Christian Church, banned public sacrifice at pagan temples.

In my course, we are going to spend seven weeks exploring the life and policies of Constantine with a topical lecture from me and discussion of the primary sources — Eusebius’ Life of Constantine, Lactantius’ On the Deaths of the Persecutors, panegyrics praising the emperor, letters from the emperor, laws by the emperor, a speech of his called The Oration to the Saints, as well as some dissent from the other side plus a bit of art and coinage (you know an ancient historian loves a good coin!).

What did his legacy look like? How did the rest of the fourth century play out? The final weeks of the course will look at his sons, especially Constantius II, and then the Emperor Julian (the last pagan emperor), finally closing with Theodosius I. We’ll look at these emperors and their religious policy through their laws, through the writings of Julian and the pagan orator Libanius, more panegyric, and the works of Athanasius against Constantius and then Ambrose of Milan on two counts — the dispute over the Altar of Victory in the Senate and then his speech On the Death of Theodosius.

All of this is interesting in and of itself, but it’s also important. If we want to know how to help advise or even rule wisely, how to pray for our leaders in government, we need to figure out sound political theology. Here in these sources are the foundational moments of Christian history for such an endeavour. The need is real. The time is now. Come, study with me — registration ends Friday!

Because any reference to the Christian rulers of Rome requires Constantine’s big, giant head

Beautiful orthodoxy in Athanasius

This is just an unformed thought that needs fleshing out, at least as regards parallels with Protestants.

In On the Incarnation by St Athanasius of Alexandria, God does not simply come down from heaven to be with us, He takes up human life into divinity. The paraphrase of this teaching, common to Athanasius and the second-century theologian Irenaeus of Lyons, is, “God became man so that man might become God.” What this means is that, by the power of His incarnation, death, and resurrection, Jesus has gathered us up into the divine life, and we can participate in that divine life through faith in Jesus, when His blood has cleansed us of all our sins.

This is a teaching that can be easily misunderstood today, but it is no different in essence from the Reformed teaching of Calvin and Owen of union with Christ. It is a beautiful orthodoxy, for it points us not only at what we are saved from—death itself—but what we are saved for—life in and with God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.