History of Christianity 5: 1700-Today

Today I posted the final video in the History of Christianity on YouTube, taking us from 1700-2020, from “Christendom” to Global Faith, focussing on Methodists, Russians, and Nazis.

 

Bibliography

The World As 100 Christians

Methodists
John Wesley, “The Means of Grace.”
—. “The Duty of Constant Communion.”
—. “When You Fast.”
—. Complete Works of John Wesley.
John and Charles Wesley, Hymns on the Lord’s Supper.

Russians
Anthony Bloom. Beginning to Pray. London, 1970.
Isaac the Syrian (or Isaac of Nineveh). Mystic Treatises. Trans. A. J. Wensinck. Wiesbaden, 1969.
Andrew Louth. Modern Orthodox Thinkers from the Philokalia to the Present. London: SPCK, 2015.
Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain and Makarios of Corinth. The Philokalia. Vols 1-4, trans. G.E.H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, Kallistos Ware. Faber & Faber.
The Way of a Pilgrim and The Pilgrim Continues His Way. Trans. Helen Bacovcin. New York: Image, 1978.
NB: I confess that my source for the missionaries was OrthodoxWiki!

Nazis
Barmen Declaration
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. The Cost of Discipleship. 1937. English trans from 1959 by R H Fuller and Irmgard Booth.
MacLeod, Dayspring. Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Spoke in the Wheel. 2018.
ten Boom, Corrie with John and Elizabeth Sherrill. The Hiding Place. 1971.

Steve Foster!
Michael Hoskin, The Benefit of Steel: The Life and Times of Dr. Steve Foster.

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Virtual communion: Christ and the means of grace

This morning, the Free Methodist Church I attend celebrated virtual communion. The pastor admitted to not being sure about what it means theologically, but he wanted to do it at this time, to celebrate Christ’s death and resurrection through the sacrament of Holy Communion. So we all had our tiny cups of grape juice and bits of bread at home.

I’m not sure about this theologically, either.

And I don’t know what John Wesley, who had a high view of the sacrament and recommended receiving it weekly (as often as possible, in fact), and would receive it daily during Christmastide, himself, would have thought, either. His sermon “On the Duty of Constant Communion” is worth reading, though!

Nonetheless, a few thoughts that I had about doing this ran as follows.

At the most basic, if we set aside the questions of Real Presence and what a sacrament is, Holy Communion — we can all agree — is a memorial of Christ’s precious death and glorious resurrection. Therefore, even if someone were to definitively prove that there was no mystery in the bread and juice I consumed this morning, no special grace or Presence of the Lord, it would still service as a vibrant and tactile reminder of our salvation.

That alone might make it worth doing, so long as we aren’t cheapening the sacrament in doing this. (Are we?)

My next thought, however, tells me that, in fact, Holy Communion, even from a symbolist or memorialist position (which I do not hold), is never “just” bread and wine, and never “just” a remembrance. Through the enacting of the recapitulation of the Last Supper and recollecting the body broken and blood shed, in reading and praying the very words of Scripture, the words of the Word, we encounter Him. He meets us.

And in receiving bread and wine in faith, we encounter Him. He meets us, enters us.

Now, is it the same as when we are truly the ecclesia, the assembly of God’s people, constituted precisely in being taken out of the world and gathered together in one place and, as Christ’s mystical body, mystically consuming His body? No, I don’t think so. I’m not sure I can articulate how it is different.

Different isn’t wrong, though.

Taking up dear John Wesley again, he preaches in The Means of Grace that there are three chief means of grace:

1. Prayer
2. Reading the Bible
3. Holy Communion

He says:

By “means of grace” I understand outward signs, words, or actions, ordained of God, and appointed for this end, to be the ordinary channels whereby he might convey to men, preventing, justifying, or sanctifying grace.

In a service of virtual communion, we are engaged in at least two out of three means of grace. So when we eat that bread and drink that wine, when we hear our minister pray the words of sacred Scripture, the words of institution from Our Lord Himself, when we pray the other prayers — I think we meet with Jesus.

Reading Clement of Alexandria, in fact, I am realising that the Church Fathers are not always uniform in their interpretation of Scripture (no surprise), and I also realise the polyvalence of certain passages, especially John 6 — “I am the bread of life,” etc. I cannot, at this stage of church history and raised an Anglican, I cannot read John 6 as anything but Eucharistic. Clement of Alexandria, I have found, reads this sometimes as Eucharistic, sometimes as about encountering the Word in Scripture, sometimes about meeting Him in prayer.

All three of Welsey’s means of grace are means of encountering Jesus as the Bread of Life from John 6, as far as Clement is concerned.

I have also noticed that the mystic and ascetic Evagrius Ponticus also sees encountering Christ at prayer as equal to meeting Him in the Eucharist. Furthermore, Origen also believes that we can meet and commune with Christ in Scripture as well as we can in the Blessed Sacrament.

So, at this weird moment in history, when virtual communion is all we can get — Jesus will be there with us, in us, through us, for us.

Taste and see that Lord is good. (Ps. 34:8)

‘Progressing in piety’ – life after joining the church

Ladder of Divine Ascent: 12th-c. icon, St Catherine’s, Sinai

In The Apostolic Tradition, the author (Hippolytus? of Rome?) writes at the end of the baptismal rite:

And when these things are done, let each hurry to do good works, to please God and to live properly, being devoted to the church, putting into action what he has learnt and progressing in piety. (21.38, trans. Stewart-Sykes)

The phrase that struck me as I read this was ‘progressing in piety’. One of the features of ancient, medieval, Byzantine Christianity is its belief that the ongoing life of faith involves progress. We are not simply ‘saved’ and baptised, but, now that we are made right with God and adopted as His children, we have the opportunity to ‘progress in piety’.

The standard of perfection, for example, is God. And God is eternal and infinite. Therefore, argues St Gregory of Nyssa (d. 394) in the passage excerpted by Richard Foster in Devotional Classics, the human pursuit of perfection is endless and infinite as well. We will never arrive; even in eternity we will have room for limitless growth in glory.

In some Protestant circles (usually the Reformed), a fear of ‘works righteousness’ and the legalism or false sense of personal achievement that attend it have led to a rejection of the idea of progress in holiness — although they acknowledge that something like it occurs, as Spurgeon did when he rejected the phrase ‘progressive sanctification’ as unscriptural, speaking of growth in grace instead.

St John Climacus’ Ladder is all about this progress, after all. Indeed, the ascetic literature, while it can at times tend towards legalism of the harshest kind, is piercingly aware of growth in holiness, portraying it as a ladder or an ascent or steps towards God. Simultaneously, there is an acknowledgement of the necessity of grace for this growth in holiness. (St Theophan the Recluse, the nineteenth-century Russian always comes to my mind when I think about this.)

We are commanded to progress in piety, but we need the grace of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit will empower our spiritual disciplines so that we can strive for the heights of John Wesley’s Christian perfection. (A concept, when rightly understood, I am not opposed to — but I do wonder if anyone ever received so much grace.) This is synergeia, synergy, and it is not a rejection of grace but a way of viewing how it operates.

“Cherubim with sleepless eye”

Abba Bessarion, at the point of death, said, ‘The monk ought
to be as the Cherubim and the Seraphim: all eye.’

–Sayings of the Desert Fathers, Bessarion 11 (trans. B. Ward)

Today is the Feast of St Ephraim the Syrian, of whom John Wesley wrote, ‘the most awakened writer, I think, of all the ancients’ (Journal 12 October 1736), and ‘the greatest poet of the patristic age, and, perhaps, the only theologian-poet to rank beside Dante’ (quotes found here).

Cherub from the Cathedral of Cefalu, Sicily (c. 1200)

I thus felt it quite fitting that my iPod Shuffle got around to ‘Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence‘ (whence comes the title of this post) this morning as I prepared to work — for that hymn is taken from the Divine Liturgy of St James, an ancient Levantine liturgy. There is something in the fecund soil of Syria-Judaea that expresses Christian truth in a particularly way when writing poetry.

And St Ephraim is one of the greatest patristic poets.

For some reason, Cherubic imagery always makes me think of St Ephraim — perhaps it’s the combination of the saying of Abba Bessarion quoted above with the title of Sebastian Brock’s book about St Ephraim (which I’ve yet to read), The Luminous Eye.

It is worth thinking of, for St Ephraim’s highly-charged, deeply theological poetry is, in fact, hymnography. Hymns are meant to be sung — to be sung, in fact, in praise of Almighty God. While Bessarion’s reference to the Cherubim is most likely a reference to the need for vigilance (a la St Isaiah the Solitary, d. c. 470), I think it is more appropriately, in fact, praising Almighty God without end.

For this is what the Cherubim with their sleepless eye do, is it not?

Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of Hosts! Heaven and earth are full of the majesty of thy glory. Hosanna in the Highest!

St Ephraim, then, could be called Cherubic in this truest and highest sense of the word.

In his Hymns on Paradise, number XI, Ephraim writes in the first stanza (trans. Sebastian Brock):

The air of Paradise
is a fountain of delight
from which Adam sucked
when he was young;
its very breath, like a mother’s breast,
gave him nourishment in his childhood.
He was young, fair,
and full of joy,
but when he spurned the injunction
he grew old, sad and decrepit;
he bore old age
as a burden of woes.

The response: Blessed is He who exalted Adam / and caused him to return to Paradise.

Paradise for Ephraim is not a physical place. Ephraim’s Adam is like George Herbert’s:

For sure when Adam did not know
To sinne, or sinne to smother,
He might to heav’n from Paradise go,
As from one room t’another.

–from ‘The Holy Communion’

In the third stanza of St. Ephraim’s hymn we meet the Cherubim:

The fence which surrounds it
is the peace which gives peace to all;
its inner and outer walls
are the concord which reconciles all things;
the cherub who encircles it
is radiant to those who are within
but full of menace to those outside
who have been cast out.
All that you hear told
about this Paradise,
so pure and holy,
is pure and spiritual.

With this spiritual reading of Paradise, the Cherub is no longer solely ‘full of menace’ as at the end of Genesis 3, but now ‘radiant to those who are within’. We can encounter this Paradise; it is the telos of the Christian life, where we hope to abide for Eternity with our Lord Christ.

For now, let us seek to hymn our Lord, being vigilant not merely to avoid sin, but to praise God at all times — perhaps St Ephraim can be an entry into praise for you today (read him here)!

Let us, then, praise our holy, holy, holy God like the Cherubim — with sleepless eye.

Some patristic quotations on predestination

Last night before bed I was reading the Ancient Christian Devotional for Year A, and the following quotations were part of the patristic commentary on Romans 8:26-39, pp. 177-178:

This text does not take away our free will. It uses the word foreknew before predestined. Now it is clear that “foreknowledge” does not by itself impose any particular kind of behaviour. What is said here would be clearer if we started from the end and worked backwards. Whom did God glorify? Those whom he justified. Whom did he predestine? Those whom he foreknew, who were called according to his plan, that is, who demonstrated that they were worthy to be called by his plan and made conformable to Christ. -Diodore of Tarsus, Pauline Commentary from the Greek Church

Not all who are called are called according to God’s purpose, for the purpose relates to God’s foreknowledge and predestination. God only predestined those whom he knew would believe and follow the call. Paul refers to them as the “elect.” For many do not come, even though they have been called, but no one comes who has not been called. -St Augustine, On Romans 55

Those whose intention God foreknew he predestined from the beginning. Those who are predestined, he called, and those who were called, he justified by baptism. Those who were justified, he glorified, calling them children: “To all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.” Let no one say that God’s foreknowledge was the unilateral cause of these things. For it was not foreknowledge which justified people, but God knew what would happen to them, because he is God. -Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Interpretation of the Letter to the Romans

First of all, let it be said that Diodore was condemned at the Second Council of Constantinople in 553 for his Christology, not his teaching on predestination.

What I find interesting about this selection is that all three of them, even Augustine, corroborate the (Arminian) teaching of John Wesley, that the foreknowledge is the prerequisite to the predestination, thus not overriding our freewill.

I don’t know anything about the volume’s editor, Cindy Crosby’s, confessional allegiance. However, the General Editor IVP’s Ancient Christian Stuff, especially the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture whence the readings from the Fathers come in this volume, is Thomas C Oden, a United Methodist — and someone who would, obviously, follow Wesley’s teaching on this issue. Oden has also been known to put together things like The Justification Reader that present patristic seeds of Protestant doctrine without necessarily giving the other side a hearing. That is to say, the patristic witness given in these passages is not entirely balanced, and with Oden’s name on the cover, one is not necessarily surprised.

Not that I’m wishing to see predestination being published profusely — however, when so many Calvinists and Arminians get so worked up about the issue, it would be refreshing to see Protestant publications covering both sides at once.

Providence and Predestination 2: Predestination

Yesterday I blogged about providence, highlighting the difference between this teaching and that of predestination, providence being the notion that God is in control of all of human history to work his own ends.

Predestination, on the other hand, is a related concept but distinct and has to do with theological anthropology, not human history at large. The doctrine approaches the question of human salvation in relation to two tricky concerns — the absolute grace of God that justifies the human person and human responsibility.

The pre-Augustinian position which is held by the Eastern churches to this day as well as some Protestants, and which was maintained by many of the ecclesiastics in southern Gaul against Augustinianism (the Gallic Chronicle of 452 refers to ‘the heresy of the predestinationists’ while also opposing Pelagianism) draws upon a specific reading of Romans 8:28-30:

And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to thsoe who are the called according to His purpose. For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified. (New King James Version)

Although he is not a Church Father, my preferred explication of these verses from a non-Predestinationist view (‘Arminian’ in modern terms) is John Wesley, who, like Origen and Hilary of Poitiers and Ambrosiaster as well as the young Augustine before him, sees God’s foreknowledge as being the prerequisite to the predestination. God in his infinite wisdom sees all of human history, and he sees those who will have a natural turning towards Him; to these who are already inclined to love Him and put faith in Him, He gives His grace to help them turn more fully to him, thus predestining them for salvation due to His divine omniscience. (See here: http://www.umcmission.org/Find-Resources/John-Wesley-Sermons/Sermon-58-On-Predestination)

John Cassian, the monastic founder in Marseille, also addressed this issue ca. 435 in the 13th book of his Conferences. He sets out a vision of predestination that says that all humans have enough of the original image of God in them (fr. Gen 1) that they are able to turn towards God, yet God does not withhold His grace from them, but rather provides this grace to help those who have started to turn to turn all the way. In the early modern period, this view was wrongly termed ‘semi-Pelagian’, and others who share it with Cassian are Faustus of Riez (who is a shockingly insistent rigorist when it comes to post-baptismal sin; some excerpts of Faustus’ letters are in an appendix to Ralph W Mathisen’s TTH book Ruricius of Limoges and Friends) and Vincent of Lérins (Commonitorium).

Boniface Ramsay, in his commentary to the Ancient Christian Writers translation of the Conferences calls Cassian’s view ‘semi-Augustinian’, interestingly enough. These people are often called Massilian because of their southern Gallic origins; they resist both extreme Augustinianism and Pelagianism. I have sympathies with their enterprise to do justice both to God’s grace and human responsibility/freedom. I’ve blogged on Cassian and this issue before.

Augustine’s view started to shift, largely through confrontation with Pelagians such as Julian of Eclanum, while he was Bishop of Hippo. There is a fully-fleshed vision of Augustinian predestination that would be pressed after his death by supporters such as Prosper of Aquitaine and enshrined at the Council of Orange in 529 (albeit local councils do not have universal jurisdiction; the Council of Orange is therefore not binding for the western Church in terms of developed Canon Law vs. certain early modern Protestants; the canons are here: http://www.ewtn.com/library/COUNCILS/ORANGE.htm). This is the version most people think when they hear ‘Augustine. Predestination.’ The teaching is that the human will is fallen and cannot of itself turn towards God, therefore grace is necessary for every step of human salvation, including good deeds.

Pelagius is somewhat in fashion these days; he was a presbyter in Rome who, upon hearing a line of Augustine’s, was a bit worried that people would slip in moral laxity if they simply relied on grace with no works for their salvation. While the current scholarly consensus is that he was not an exponent of the heresy that bears his name, Pelagianism, to put it crudely, is the teaching that the human will is not actually fallen, and that we all do bad stuff simply because of bad examples. If we had truer knowledge, we would be able to will properly and thus live properly. Since God’s grace would nullify free will, Pelagianism teaches that we do not receive any and that it is up to our own work to become holy and attain to salvation. The best description of Pelagianism I have read is in A M C Casiday, Tradition and Theology in St John Cassian.

Over time, and through controversy both with Pelagians and the Massilians, Augustine’s view on predestination was moderated, as seen in his tract On Grace and Freewill (available in the Ancient Christian Writers translation series from Paulist Press). This latter piece argues almost for both positions — humans are responsible, yet we rely entirely on God’s grace. Augustine will still lean more towards grace alone, but he makes room for compromise with people such as Cassian.

In response to rumours of Pelagians at large in northern Italy, Leo the Great sent his first, second, and eighteenth letters, saying:

And since they pretend to reject and put aside all their definitions to help them sneak in, they seize on this with all their art of deceit, unless they are understood, that the grace of God is felt to be given according to the merits of the recipients. Which, of course—unless it were given gratis—is not grace, but payment and recompense for merits: as the blessed Apostle says, ‘You were saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves but it is the gift of God, not from works, lest perhaps some be exalted. For we are his handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God has prepared that we may walk in them.’[1] And so every bestowal of good works is a divine preparation: because no one is justified by virtue before grace, which is the beginning of justice, the fount of good things, and the origin of merits for one and all. But by these men, therefore, it is said to be anticipated by that innate industry so that which was clear by its own zeal before grace, seems not harmed by any wound of original sin; and it is false which Truth said, ‘For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save that which had perished.’[2] -Ep. 1.3, my trans.

[1] Ephesians 2:8-10.

[2] Luke 19:10.

For information, the official stance of the Anglicans on the issue is:

Predestination to Life is the everlasting purpose of God, whereby (before the foundations of the world were laid) he hath constantly decreed by his counsel secret to us, to deliver from curse and damnation those whom he hath chosen in Christ out of mankind, and to bring them by Christ to everlasting salvation, as vessels made to honour. Wherefore, they which be endued with so excellent a benefit of God be called according to God’s purpose by his Spirit working in due season: they through Grace obey the calling: they be justified freely: they be made sons of God by adoption: they be made like the image of his only-begotten Son Jesus Christ: they walk religiously in good works, and at length, by God’s mercy, they attain to everlasting felicity.

As the godly consideration of Predestination, and our Election in Christ, is full of sweet, pleasant, and unspeakable comfort to godly persons, and such as feel in themselves the working of the Spirit of Christ, mortifying the works of the flesh, and their earthly members, and drawing up their mind to high and heavenly things, as well because it doth greatly establish and confirm their faith of eternal Salvation to be enjoyed through Christ, as because it doth fervently kindle their love towards God: So, for curious and carnal persons, lacking the Spirit of Christ, to have continually before their eyes the sentence of God’s Predestination, is a most dangerous downfal, whereby the Devil doth thrust them either into desperation, or into wretchlessness of most unclean living, no less perilous than desperation.

Furthermore, we must receive God’s promises in such wise, as they be generally set forth to us in holy Scripture: and, in our doings, that Will of God is to be followed, which we have expressly declared unto us in the Word of God. (Article of Religion XVII)

To close, if any Pelagians happen upon this blog, I am open to clear explications of the Pelagian position. However, I will not suffer ad hominem attacks on myself, my intellect, or St Augustine. If you troll, your comments will be removed.

Corpus Christi

‘Communion of the Apostles’ — I’m pretty sure this is Panayia Podithou, Troodos, Cyprus (I couldn’t take a photo of my own when I visited)

Today is Corpus Christi. Because Baden-Würrtemberg is fairly balanced between Protestants and Roman Catholics, it’s a holiday here. So for the first time I’m aware of this feast and not by accident.

A few weeks ago, when the upcoming holidays were under discussion, someone asked what Corpus Christi is. I said that it celebrates the Body of Christ.

I was asked, ‘Yes, but what does it celebrate?’

I said, ‘The Body of Christ. The Eucharist.’

‘That’s what it celebrates.’

‘Yes, it’s a special feast just for the Eucharist, and Thomas Aquinas wrote a liturgy and a number of hymns for it. They had just come out of a time of debate about what the Eucharist is, and this feast was a way of celebrating the church’s official line. Although I wouldn’t go as far as a Roman Catholic about how it’s the Body of Christ, but that’s what Corpus Christi celebrates.’

‘I guess you would be the one to know!’

‘I guess so.’

Somehow, I remember my interlocutor asking about three times, ‘What does it celebrate?’ and me stubbornly say, ‘The Body of Christ,’ but I wonder if I’m remembering falsely, because that sounds dumb.

Anyway, it’s Corpus Christi, the feast of the Body of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, flesh historically broken on a Cross and mystically broken in bread.

A worthy celebration, whether you believe in Transubstantiation like the Roman church or in consubstantiation, or are defiant against saying more than, ‘Is means is,’ or believe that we eat it only after a heavenly and spiritual manner (Article of Religion XXVIII), or believe it is only a symbol — the celebration is worthy.

Why should we celebrate the Body of Christ? Why rejoice and commemorate the Eucharist? Because it is one of the two sacraments ordained of Christ during his lifetime on Earth, and the word sacrament signifies thus:

I mean an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace given unto us, ordained by Christ himself, as a means whereby we receive the same, and a pledge to assure us thereof. (Catechism, 1662 BCP)

Unlike baptism, this is a way we can repeatedly join with Christ in an outward and visible way, receiving his inward, invisible grace. We are psychosomatic unities; sacraments are how God uses our bodies to touch our spirits. And, if the Prayer of Humble Access from the BCP has anything to say about it, he can also touch our bodies:

… that our bodies may be made clean by his Body, and our souls washed through his most precious Blood, and that we may evermore dwell in him and he in us.

It is commended to us by Scripture, by both Jesus and St. Paul, and is repeatedly commended to us by the Fathers, mediaeval saints, magisterial Reformers, and more. John Wesley believed that weekly communion was important, and every day during certain feast periods of the church.

So be happy about the Body of Christ today!

I leave you with two things, then, this Corpus Christi. One is ‘Panis Angelicus’, one of Aquinas’ hymns for the feast, as sung by Pavarotti. The other is a quote from J. R. R. Tolkien, a devout Catholic:

Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament … There you will find romance, glory, honour, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves upon earth. –The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien

Holiness: A Reflection on All Saints’ Day

Typically, in the liturgical churches of Protestantism, we are reminded on All Saints’ Day or All Souls’ Day (which is tomorrow) that all Christians are saints, based on how St Paul uses the word, not just those who get ‘the big ST’. This is true, but what does that ‘big ST’ mean?

Saint comes from the Latin sanctus and means holy.

There are different ways of looking at holiness, and I don’t think they are mutually exclusive. One is the typically Protestant way of viewing it, jumping off from Luther’s ‘justified by faith alone’ — we are viewed as being already holy, set apart, by God in light of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection, and our putting our trust in Him. Something similar is maintained by Maximus, that we do not merely imitate Christ but become like Christ through faith in him (as blogged by me here).

The other is the idea of our ability to progress in holiness. This is sanctification. We are being made clean or set free from the presence and power of sin in this lifetime, as Bp Eddie Marsh once said in a sermon; justification is our being set free from the penalty of sin; glorification is the final liberation from the presence of all sin on Judgement Day.

This type of holiness is something we are all to strive towards, ever mindful of the need for the grace of God. It is, I believe, what St Paul means when he says to work out our salvation in fear and trembling (Phil. 2:12). Resting in the power of God to transform us, we are to lead holy lives, trusting in the grace of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to transform our inner person.

The sorts of things that are part of holiness are, I believe, going beyond basic moral virtues as we think of them. We tend to think of morality being a question of the Ten Commandments and attendant actions, of being nice to others, of honesty, of ‘putting ourselves in the other fellow’s shoes’. These are certainly part of a holy life.

But I think Christ calls us beyond that to more, to a holiness where we can actually turn the other cheek, rejoice when others persecute us, never look at a woman lustfully, never gossip, pray without ceasing, pray for our enemies, bless those who persecute us, refrain from speaking and thinking ill of others, and so on and so forth. I’m not espousing Wesley’s ‘Christian Perfection’ here, but I think holiness is a goal we are to seek, what Cassian in the fifth century calls ‘purity of heart’.

Holiness is, therefore, a matter of our hearts and minds. Our thoughts are to be turned to Christ at all times and in all things. As the title of a Serbian Orthodox book says, Our Thoughts Determine Our Lives. I believe that the classic spiritual disciplines are a valuable aid in helping us pray continually and set our minds on things above.

Besides the obvious discipline of prayer, in his book Celebration of Discipline, evangelical Quaker writer Richard Foster lists meditation, fasting, study, simplicity, solitude, submission, service, confession, worship, guidance, and celebration. I am better acquainted with some of these than others, but I can say that days I start with prayer or pray early on, days I fast, days I spend in Scripture or devotional books, days I choose the simple over the complicated and unnecessary, days I actually submit to others and seek to serve — these are the days I feel nearer to Christ and more ready to tune my heart and thoughts to him.

I encourage you to take up a new spiritual discipline as of today. Perhaps fast once a week? Pray at the canonical hours (whether with a liturgy or not)? Start volunteering at a homeless shelter? Spend time meditating on different Scriptural passages throughout the week? If you’re not in a Bible study, can I recommend you join one?

Today I remembered to pray Morning Prayer — a discipline I want to cultivate but frequently forget. What will you do?

Evangelicals read the Fathers ’cause they’re awesome

When I posted ‘Why Should Evangelicals Read the Fathers?’, I got some feedback to the very question from friends on Facebook. Scott, a pastor with the Church of the Nazarene, gave two answers I quite liked: ’cause they’re awesome and because they say things that are relevant to people today. Frank, formerly a pastor and now a PhD student in the field of New Testament studies, gave the challenging response: So we can learn how not to do exegesis.

I thought it would be fun for me to give my musings off these three springboards. You, too, can join in on the comments!

The topic now is thus the awesomeness of the Church Fathers.

This is probably one of the best reasons to read the Fathers. I suppose there is a certain utility in the Fathers — drawing us nearer to God, exhorting us to holier living, clearer theological thinking, a more spiritual understanding of Scripture, an appreciation of the history of doctrine. But why do anything save the sheer … greatness of it?

I was once in a van with some IV people back in high school. One of the university students wanted to know why I wanted to study history. I gave all the pious, useful reasons. He said that the best reason to study history was because one liked it and found it interesting.

This is true of many fields.

Evangelicals should read the Fathers because the Fathers are awesome. And don’t just take my word for it. Take that of Prudentius:

Of the Father’s love begotten, ere the worlds began to be,
He is Alpha and Omega, He the source, the ending He,
Of the things that are, that have been,
And that future years shall see, evermore and evermore!

At His Word the worlds were framèd; He commanded; it was done:
Heaven and earth and depths of ocean in their threefold order one;
All that grows beneath the shining
Of the moon and burning sun, evermore and evermore!

There we have one of the most theological, poetical Christmas carols. Written by M. Aurelius Clemens Prudentius, a Latin poet who lived from 348-413. Ancient Christian poetry is among the wonders of the ancient world, writing down the wisps of knowledge grasped by human minds in the meters and images of their cultures (Greek, Latin, Syriac, Coptic), the honey of poetry as the honey on the cup of theology. Read Prudentius or Ephraim the Syrian or Gregory of Nazianzus.

Awesome.

If theology stirs you, I refer you to my translation of bits of Leo’s christology for Christmas yesterday, or to Clement of Alexandria from December 4. Amongst the Fathers we find the keen minds of Athanasius and Cyril of Alexandria, of Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, and Basil of Caesarea, of Origen and Evagrius — men who had both the keen philosophical parsing of words, phrases and syllogisms as well as the mystical insight of hours spent at prayer before the Triune God.

Awesome.

Then we come to the prayers of the Fathers, such as the following by St. Clement of Rome:

Almighty God, Father of our lord Jesus Christ, establish and confirm us in your truth by your Holy Spirit. Reveal to us what we do not know, perfect in us what is lacking; strengthen us in what we know; and keep us faultless in your service; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord.

St. Paul exhorts us to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. Is not this plea of St. Clement’s in keeping with the apostolic exhortation? The Fathers call us to deep lives of prayer through their liturgies, found in Hippolytus, or their practices of prayer as found in the Desert Fathers and the ascetic works of Basil of Caesarea. The classic Evangelical call has been to lives soaked in prayer, as we see in John Wesley rising at four o’clock in the morning to prayer for two hours before breakfast. It is a practice heartily recommended by the ancient Christian witness.

Awesome.

The Fathers inhabited a different thought-world than ours. These men and women were to sort of people who have visions, to dream dreams. Their philosophy was more than the keen exercise of the logical aspect of the mind, but a force of will, of prayer, of contemplation, of imagination, of ethical behaviour. The mystical call of Evagrius, Cassian, Origen, the Cappadocians — this is awesome, if foreign to far too many Evangelicals.

The Fathers are awesome. They are not perfect in ethics or in morals or in theology or in prayer or in mysticism or in asceticism. But they are awesome, even if more than a little odd upon first acquaintance. I hope you will make your acquaintance with them a long one and deep.

Fighting the Demons 2: Saint Savvas

Our first examination of the fight with demons was that of St. Antony, the locus classicus of the monastic fight with the Devil in the ancient world (here with an older post here), followed by an unplanned post on Shenoute’s violent treatment of “the Devil”. Our second look at fighting the demons is from another Greek biography of a desert saint, the Life of Savvas by Cyril of Scythopolis.

St. Savvas (we met him here before) was a Palestinian monk who founded several monasteries including the Great Laura which is still operational today. Savvas had as his custom to spend Lent away from the lauras and coenobia he had founded and live a life of austerity and prayer in the Judean Desert. One Lent, Savvas went to Castellion, the site of an abandoned Roman fort:

He underwent on this hill many trials inflicted by the demons. Doubtless he himself, as a man subject to fear, would have wished to withdraw, but He who had formerly appeared to the great Abba Antony appeared also to him, bidding him have confidence in the power of the Cross; so, taking courage, he overcame by faith and endurance the insolence of the demons.

While he was persevering in uninterrupted prayer and fasting, towards the end of Lent, when he was keeping vigil one night and begging God to cleanse the place from the impure spirits that lurked there, suddenly the demons began to make a beating sound and to display apparitions in the likeness sometimes of snakes and wild animals and sometimes of crows, wishing through such apparitions to terrify him. Since they were thwarted by his perseverant prayer, they departed from the place, shouting in human speech the words, ‘What violence from you, Sabas! The gorge you colonized does not satisfy you, but you force your way into our place as well. See, we withdraw from our own territory. We cannot resist you, since you have God as your defender.’ With these and similar words, they withdrew from this mountain with one accord at the very hour of midnight, with a certain beating sound and confused tumult, like a flock of crows. (Ch. 27, pp. 119-120 in English, trans. R. M. Price)

Following Savvas’ ordeal at Castellion, the old remains of the fort were converted into a coenobium, a monastery where the monks share together a communal life.

Our first point is to see that Christ again, as with St. Antony (but not Shenoute), plays a role. He appears to Savvas and gives him courage, calling him to “have confidence in the power of the Cross.” Christ is the true champion defender of the Christian. He fights alongside us and gives us the strength we need, whether our battle be with demons on a hilltop or the darkness of sin in our own souls. Christ is there to give his followers the strength they need.

The power of Christ is given to us in the power of the Cross. As I mentioned in my post “From what are we saved?”, Pope Leo saw in the Cross, alongside the defeat of sin and death, the defeat of the Devil and his minions. When we put our trust in Christ, our trust in his sacrifice at Golgotha, he gives us the benefits of his most precious death and resurrection. This includes power not only over sin and death but over the Devil.

Thus, trusting the great power of Christ in His Cross, Savvas was able to withstand the forces of the demons.

And what is in the saint’s arsenal against the demons as he trusts in Christ’s Cross? Prayer, fasting, vigils. These are the standard weapons in the battle against the demons. As we trust in the power of the Cross, we pray, we fast, we stay up through the night. Through these actions, in the battle against evil, be it demons appearing as snakes or late-night porno on the internet, the Christian is able to overcome the evil of the world.

Prayer is a given. I think most Christians pray. My (Anglo-Catholic) uncle once said that if you don’t pray and read your Bible, what business do you have calling yourself a Christian?

Fasting is less popular today. It is one of the neglected disciplines, even though Christ seems to imply it is something that his followers will do after the Ascension (see Mt. 6:16-18). If you are interested in fasting, I recommend you read Wesley’s sermon on the subject.

Vigils are even less popular. Oddly, some of the monks of the Desert believed that sleep deprivation was a help in the fight against demons, even though I, personally, find myself stirred up to irascibility much more easily when I haven’t got enough sleep. Nonetheless, I think that sometimes maybe we should organise groups of people to spend the entire night praying. Or to ensure that the entire time a particular event is occurring that there is someone praying, night and day. This soaking of the world in prayer is, I believe, a way to keep us focussed on the spirit, a way to keep us alert against the demons and the evil within us and around us.

These, then, are the lessons we can gain from the example of St. Savvas and the demons.