Anglicanism and Eastern Orthodoxy

The other day, a Baptist on Twitter said he had a friend looking at Eastern Orthodoxy and was looking for recommendations. I recommended Kallistos Ware’s two book The Orthodox Church and The Orthodox Way, plus Andrew Louth, Introducing Eastern Orthodox Theology, and then, after that, The Way of a Pilgrim and some time looking at the Divine Liturgy of St John Chrysostom.

Another Baptist jumped in asking why I was only recommending pro-Orthodox books. My response was that I read them without converting, so I’m totally comfortable recommending them to others. I also admitted that I’ve never read a single anti-Orthodox book. Anti-Orthodox books are probably like those anti-Catholic tracts or the chapter on Roman Catholicism from Fast Facts on False Faiths — inaccurate, easily taken down by the informed Orthodox/Catholic, and sowing dissent amongst fellow believers. Just a hunch.

I also said that I have not been converted to Eastern Orthodoxy in part because I know the western tradition. I know the BCP and the Articles. I am rooted in Anglicanism such that I know what my own church (officially) teaches on a lot of disputed points.

When I first started getting to know Orthodoxy, I lived in Cyprus and was only 22. But even then I had with me my trusty 1962 BCP (a gift from Grandad on my confirmation!), and when I read a book that claimed to be “What Every Protestant Should Know about Eastern Orthodoxy”, I found myself not fitting the beliefs the author (a former Southern Baptist) touted out as “Protestant”, whether he was discussing sacraments or the Bible or the atonement. I would double check my BCP and the Articles and say, “Well, Anglicans don’t believe that!”

So this is the first point of tonight’s meditation. If ever asked why I’m not Orthodox (which would probably happen someday, given the presence of icons in my life, a komboskini in my pocket, and a few other hints), my answer would now shift from before. Before — I think I blogged about it here once — I would list things about Orthodoxy with which I disagree, most especially the fact that they claim to be the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church (and no one else to be).

But now, if asked, the answer is because I am convinced of the truths of Anglicanism. It is the same reason, mutatis mutandis, that I am not a Baptist, frankly. For example, one of my favourite personal quotations from a conversation long ago, and a belief I still hold, is, “I am a follower of Richard Hooker.” I embrace his articulation of the doctrine of justification by faith alone — which is not the same as the caricatures produced by many of this doctrine’s opponents and which I believe is a natural following through of the teachings of St Augustine of Hippo.

To choose a second example, I also believe in the historic articulation of the Articles that Holy Scripture contains everything necessary for salvation — but, as an Anglican, I also believe in the place of the Church’s tradition as the interpreter of Scripture as well as the provider of things that are not, strictly speaking, necessary for salvation, yet nevertheless good for us and not be set aside lightly. For example, the Book of Common Prayer! Singing the Te Deum! Facing East at prayer! Anselm on the Atonement! Thomas Aquinas on the doctrine of God! All these things are available to the Anglican, but they are not, so far as I understand it, necessary for salvation (re Anselm and Thomas, I mean in terms of the very specifics of their teaching).

Over my many years of being Anglican and praying with the BCP and learning about my English spiritual heritage, simultaneously going into the Fathers but also the monastic fathers, medieval theologians, and the Eastern Orthodox tradition, I have become rooted in seeing the BCP as a rule of life, as an ascetic system that also provides us with so much positive truth (as I blog here often).

Part of why I have become rooted in this way is precisely that dance with Eastern Orthodoxy that I began almost 19 years ago. I have had my times when I seriously considered converting, sitting with Andrew Louth in his study, drinking coffee out of Beatrix Potter mugs, or being taught about icons by Fr Ioannis, being shown how to do prostrations by Fr Raphael and being given his teaching on the Jesus Prayer.

One of the things that often bothers me when people convert from one church to another is that they don’t always seem to know what they’ve left behind. As a lifelong Anglican of a Levitical family, I made it a point to learn what Anglicanism — both in its particularities but also an expression of western, catholic Christianity — actually teaches and has taught.

One result of this is a very different response to John Zizioulas, Being As Communion, from that of the former Southern Baptist I mentioned above. He read Zizioulas and his mind was blown. “We have nothing like this in Protestantism!” I read Zizioulas, and I loved it, and I saw how the teaching on the Trinity in that book was compatible with my comfortable, disturbing Anglican heritage. Why leave?

I and many other Anglicans have benefitted so much from our engagement with Orthodoxy, our friendship with Orthodox Christians, our attendance at Orthodox services, our conversations with Orthodox clerics, and our reading of Orthodox books. As a result, I can post things like this without feeling like I’m betraying my Anglican heritage:

Posting that, amusingly, got me accused of superstition. Apparently, I am supposed to burn my Manual of Eastern Orthodox Prayers. Right.

But positioned within Anglicanism, I see no reason why I should not pray the prayers in that book that are beautiful expressions of orthodox faith common to all Christians. Nor why I should not use a komboskini for the Jesus Prayer. It is much easier to pray the Prayer with one than without.

To close, because I have had positive experiences with the Eastern Orthodox Church, I do hope other Anglicans encounter them and see what we have in common and what they have to offer us, especially in how they treat the Fathers as living voices for today (something classic Anglicans used to do as well!) and in the practice of the Jesus Prayer, combined with the wider Eastern hesychastic tradition.

Such encounters, I believe, will help us grow deeper in our union with Christ (itself a strong Puritan theme…). Perhaps we can see revival in our churches as a result of an Anglican hesychastic movement!

Your Own, Personal Theologians

Over on Twitter, James Wood tweeted yesterday (@jamesrwoodtheo1):

After Christ and your family, committing to a few key theologians is a profoundly life-giving enterprise.

My studies have been largely framed by Augustine, Calvin, Torrance, and de Lubac. I imagine these figures will always be with me.

I had to pause and think about which theologians I am or would like to be committed to. I scribbled on a Post-It note thinking about who are the people who have framed my own studies. I came sideways into theology as a philologist and historian — which I principally am! Who are the theologians I circle back to, though? They must be there, at one level.

Some, I circle back to in my mind. Others I reread or read more of. I don’t have the Post-It with me, but as I recall contenders were:

• Athanasius
• Augustine of Hippo
• Leo the Great
• Boethius
• Maximus the Confessor

And then I thought — but wait! I spend so much time with ascetics and mystics…

• Cassian
• Evagrius
• Bernard
• Benedict

This leaves out Anselm, though, a man whose work I circle back to in my head and heart quite often. I never got around to even writing down Gregory Palamas.

It was also noteworthy that James listed some 20th-century greats on his list. Am I not influenced by people after St Bernard?? What about my own Anglican tradition?

I looked at my calendar and realised that the next day — today — was the commemoration of Richard Hooker. His Learned Discourse of Justification is something that sticks with me. It’s the only piece of modern stuff I have published on, after all! But also, of course, the Prayer Book. The single theological text I have read the most.

So I settled with Hooker but also reflected that there are two lists. Athanasius, Augustine, Leo, Anselm, and increasingly Maximus and Boethius with Hooker on the one hand, and then Cassian, Evagrius, Bernard, Benedict with the BCP on the other. It may seem like a lot of theologians to invest my time in. No doubt they will settle with time. But the one list is the guys I read for theology-as-argument, the others I read for, well, theologia — “If you truly pray, you are a theologian.” Not that the two categories are hard and fast, as any reader of them knows.

Before pondering, “Why these?” you may ask: Why the experiment?

I think James is right in this. It’s an idea a friend once floated at Davenant as well. Devote yourself to a few whom you will read deeply and repeatedly. Get to know them as friends and companions. See their various facets from multiple angles. Love them. Engage with their ideas. Disagree with them.

Doing this will train your intellect and hopefully also your delights and loves. It will help you focus your mind as well. There is so much out there to read and know, coming back to one person and finding his resonances and particular themes and shades and variations and transformations helps train the mind beyond the chaos that our modern social media age creates.

It also teaches us to read deeply, and to reread deeply. My most-read explicitly spiritual books (so not Homer, Virgil, or The Lord of the Rings) are the Confessions of St Augustine, On the Incarnation by St Athanasius, the Life of St Antony approved by St Athanasius, The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius, the letters of Pope St Leo the Great, and the Rule of St Benedict. I go back to them over and over. There is something new every time. Or things I’ve forgotten. This is why these authors. I choose these specific books as companions because they delight me.

I am also exploring the vast, spreading corpus of Augustine, including multiple readings of De Doctrina Christiana, The City of God, and hopefully soon De Trinitate. I would not have wanted Augustine on my list of contenders 10 years ago. But I’ve had to grapple with him because of his importance and because teaching him is, I believe, important. And I’ve come to love the Bishop of Hippo.

The wider Athanasian corpus I also delved into for the “historical theology” and anti-Arian stuff but found much more hiding there about the doctrine of God and the Trinity than a standard, pop-level church history book could ever give a whiff of.

Why Leo? Good golly. I have sat with the medieval manuscripts of the letters. I have probably read his famous Tome more times than any other piece of ancient theological writing! That’s “Why Leo?”! I also appreciate his ability to synthesize, not to mention his evident rhetorical skill.

The newcomer Maximus is burned into my mind because he came to me like an electric strike of lightning and set me on fire. As you may know, my original patristic loves were the monks (hence Cassian, Evagrius, Benedict, Bernard). And then I began working away at Christology, greatly enjoying the work of Cyril of Alexandria, Severus of Antioch, and others. When I met Maximus, it was both of these worlds colliding at once. The ascetic and the mystical wedded strongly to what we today call theology, explicating the beauty of the hypostatic union and Chalcedonian Christology, all within a trajectory clearly set by Athanasian Triadology! The blossoming of the legacy of both Athanasius and Evagrius.

Finally, though: Hooker and the BCP. I’m not sure if Hooker will be my long-term Anglican companion. But I’d like to find one. I am Anglican, after all. I pray with the Prayer Book. I sing Anglican hymns. I read Herbert and Donne. I listen to Purcell and Orlando Gibbons. And I once upon a time proposed the idea of an Anglo-Patristic Synthesis! But I think Lancelot Andrewes might end up being my Anglican theologian. Maybe Jeremy Taylor? We’ll see.

This doesn’t mean I won’t read others. Of course not! But these will probably be my mainstays, even as I go further with the Cappadocian Fathers or St Ephrem the Syrian or the scholastics or Palamas.

Who are your theological companions?

The Dogmatic Consciousness

St Silouan the Athonite (1866-1938)

I have been taking a long, disjointed journey through St. Sophrony of Essex’s St. Silouan the Athonite. One of the ideals/ideas that St. Sophrony expresses, one of St. Silouan’s teachings, is the idea of “dogmatic consciousness.” He writes:

The dogmatic consciousness I have here in mind is the fruit of spiritual experience, independent of the logical brain’s activity. The writings in which the Saints reported their experience were not cast in the form of scholastic dissertations. They were revelations of the soul. Discourse on God and on life in God comes about simply, without cogitation, born spontaneously in the soul.

…

Dogmatic knowledge, understood as spiritual knowledge, is a gift of God, like all forms of real life in God, granted by God and only possible through His coming…

St. Sophrony, St. Silouan the Athonite, pp. 186-87

I do not think that St. Sophrony is here criticising the scholarly pursuit of knowledge and structured argumentation in our thought about God. He himself uses logic in his writings, after all, as do the great fathers of the Greek church, including mystical theologians such St. Gregory of Nazianzus, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Maximus the Confessor, and St. Gregory Palamas.

Rather, he describing something else — something that may even be superior (without disparaging the dialectical pursuit of theological truth). He is saying that you can, by grace, come into a consciousness, a cognizance, a true knowledge, of real theologia without reasoning yourself into it. This would be the kind of noetic knowledge that, when people try to make distinctions, is the deeper knowing, more intimate, less distanced than modern conceptions of “intellectual” knowledge.

And before anyone starts going off on or for scholastics in light of this, it is worth noting that two of the biggest and best scholastics, Sts Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure, both had mystical experiences and, I would put forward, experienced this kind of dogmatic consciousness — famously, St. Thomas stopped writing because of a mystical experience (which may actually be an indictment of his works…).

Anyway, a couple of pages later, St Sophrony says:

It is clear from the Staretz’ writings that without any inconsistency he lived the One God in Three Persons. In his prayers he applied the same names — Father, Lord, Master, King, Creator, Saviour, and so on — to each separate Person of the Holy Trinity, as also to the Three in One.

The Staretz testified categorically that the Divinity of Jesus Christ is made known in the Holy Spirit. The knowledge of Christ’s Divinity thus acquired through spiritual experience enables man to comprehend in Christ the unfused union of two natures and two wills. The uncreated nature of Divine Light and the other dogmas of our faith are likewise made known through inner experience in the Holy Spirit. …

Ideal — abstract — conceptions may correspond to the facts of existence but, separated from positive experience of grace, they are not that knowledge of God which is actual life eternal. Yet they, too, are precious for at any moment they may afford help to a man in his spiritual life.

St Sophrony, St Silouoan the Athonite, p. 189

That last section of the quote is just to show you that St Sophrony is not opposed to theological writing such as what I do.

The earlier sections, on the Trinity and Christology, hit at an idea that I first found articulated by Fr. Andrew Louth, either in Discerning the Mystery or Introducing Eastern Orthodox Theology. The idea is this: Although the doctrine of the Trinity was not articulated until the fourth century, and the homoousion was not a major term (indeed, even Athanasius is no big user of it at the beginning of his career), it corresponded to the experience of the church at prayer and at Holy Communion through the ages, and so when Arius challenged it, people rose up. And when the likes of Athanasius and the Cappadocians started articulating it, they were putting the formal logical/philosophical shape and articulation to what the church, the Body of Christ, had always known to be true.

And so, while I am a huge fan of theological study (come study Augustine’s preaching with me this autumn through Davenant Hall!), we need to invest ourselves in seeking God Himself and not just our ideas of Him.

Catholic Anglican thoughts (again)

13th-c mosaic on loggia, Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome

I think that perhaps one of the great problems with our society is that too many of us spend time thinking about our identities. For me, I spend time thinking about my religious identity. In particular, I often find myself feeling somewhat alone as a catholic Anglican — and not an Anglo-Catholic.

Like the majority tradition of Anglicanism, I embrace the teachings of the Fathers, the 39 Articles, the BCP, and what I’ve read of the Books of Homilies so far. I agree with Richard Hooker so much I wrote an essay recommending him for a real publication (as opposed to just another blog post). Moreover, I cherish the poetry of Donne, Herbert, and Guite, as well as the hymns of Charles Wesley and JM Neale. I recently called Lancelot Andrewes a saint, so there’s that in the mix, too!

Most of this doesn’t really make me much of “catholic”, though, does it? I mean, it mostly makes me an Anglican. I reckon John Wesley liked those things, too, except for the ones from after he died.

But what if I told you, despite spending 8 years as a Presbyterian, the only other church that seemed truly enticing was the Eastern Orthodox Church? That an Orthodox priest (now bishop!) once said that I am Orthodox in all but name? Although this actually isn’t true (I don’t seek saints to intercede for me [filed under: 39 Articles] or believe in tollhouses [filed under: umm…], to grab two really quick examples), I do have enormous respect for the Eastern Church and think that we can learn a lot from them in the West after a few centuries of Enlightenment and Romanticism under our belts.

So, yeah, I read St Sophrony, St Porphyrios, Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica, Metropolitan Anthony Bloom, Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, Father Andrew Louth, The Way of a Pilgrim, and others in my devotional time. I love the Greek Fathers, and sometimes I think I’m a Palamite. Byzantine chant and Byzantine icons, yes, please. I love the Divine Liturgy of Our Father Among the Saints John Chrysostom. Once when I was in a foul mood, I read the Divine Liturgy of Our Father Among the Saints Basil the Great just to cheer me up. And it’s beautiful and rich and makes anything from the West post-Vatican II (BAS and Common Worship, I’m looking at you) look like wading in shallow water when God has given us the skills requisite and necessary for surfing (or something like that).

I embrace the ancient and medieval heritage of the church — as interpreted through the 39 Articles and the BCP. Give me St Augustine. Give St Maximus the Confessor. Give me St Anselm and St John of Damascus and the Venerable Bede and St Benedict of Nursia and St Symeon the New Theologian and St Gregory of Nyssa and The Cloud of Unknowing and St John of the Ladder and St John of the Cross and St Bernard of Clairvaux and St Gregory of Nazianzus and St Basil of Caesarea and Origen of Alexander and St Athanasius of Alexandria and St Irenaeus of Lyons and Pope St Leo the Great and Pope St Gregory the Great and St Cyprian of Carthage and St Francis of Assisi and St Bonaventure and Stephen Langton and Julian of Norwich and Richard Rolle and Walter Hilton and Aelfric of Eynsham and Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Pearl and The Dream of the Rood.

Give me the Ruthwell Cross. Give me Mt Athos. Give the Benediktinerstift Sankt Paul im Lavanttal. Give me St Paul’s in London. Give me Durham Cathedral. Give me the Durham Gospels.

Give me these things, clothe them in the music of Tallis or Purcell or Gibbons. I’ll kiss your icons. I once kissed the alleged crozier of St Gregory. Give me the Real Presence of Christ in the Sacrament. Give me a little incense.

Give me these things, for when I encounter these things, I find Jesus in them.

Most of all, then: give me Jesus.

And I find that Jesus is found in this catholic Anglicanism. I find him there better than elsewhere — whether because of my own temperament or something in the nature of the catholic tradition itself. But Jesus comes to me in the poetry of John Donne and the teachings of the Orthodox monks. He comes when I read Pearl and I am drawn up to him through the architecture of a place like York Minster.

IRL, one finds oneself with almost no Anglicans round about, and few digging deep into this.

But Jesus comes amidst them, anyway — of course.

This is part of the secret of the catholic tradition, that God is always right there waiting for you. If you can cultivate hesychia and find, by grace, some level of purity of heart, you will find Jesus wherever you are, and not just listening to Byzantine chant on Spotify or with fellow catholics on Twitter, but at your own local parish.

Watch out for him. He’s there. Pray the Jesus Prayer. Memorise a poem or two by John Donne. Like St Pachomius, see God wherever He is, especially in your brother in Christ. He’ll be there — he has promised he will.

Richard Hooker and Union with God

My latest YouTube video was made on the commemoration of Richard Hooker on November 3. In it, I discuss his Christology in relation to Chalcedon but most especially in relation to you and your union with God and participation in the divine life. Enjoy!

Boethius and monks on YouTube

I recently finished off Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy, and I really felt that he laid out the philosophical foundations for monasticism in the book. So I made this YouTube video. Enjoy!

My most recent YouTube video: Syriac!

In my most recent upload to YouTube, I give a wee, rough introduction to Syriac. Enjoy!

Books I talk about:

Ancient

Hymns on Paradise by St Ephrem the Syrian, trans. Sebastian Brock

The Syriac Fathers on Prayer and the Spiritual Life, trans. Sebastian Brock

Modern

Robert Murray, Symbols of Church and Kingdom

Sebastian Brock, The Luminous Eye: The Spiritual World Vision of St Ephrem the Syrian

Reformed catholic? (Part two)

In my last post, I talked a bit about my slow development to a willingness to use the term “Reformed” — but what about catholic? How is a person both? Well, this has sort of a broad, historical answer, and a narrow, personal answer.

Broad, historical answer

The broad, historical answer is that the Reformers and others in the early Protestant movement considered themselves “catholic”. And a lot of them would have considered those whom we commonly call “Catholics” today Romish or Popish or Papist or at least members of the Roman Church. Now, we don’t need to get into the latter part. It is enough to note that the early Protestant movement saw itself as catholic.

Catholic, as you may know, means universal. The magisterial Reformation (Lutherans, the Reformed, Anglicans), tended to see themselves as the continuing life of the apostolic church. That strand in the Church of England that would come to define Anglicanism (and, thus, for self-definition, something that matters more for me than would the ideas of Luther or Melanchthon or Calvin or Knox) frequently saw itself as restoring the Church of England to an existence prior to the abuses of the later Middle Ages.

Matthew Parker (Archbishop of Canterbury, 1559-1575) was really into this vision of the Church of England. For example, he argued that what the reforms were doing was bringing the church back to how it was in 597 under St Augustine of Canterbury. This, sadly, is not true. But it’s a lovely idea, and it shows the ideals of the English Reformation. He also, notably, printed the sermon of Aelfric of Eynsham (d. 1010) on the Holy Communion to argue that transubstantiation was a later addition to the dogma of the church, and that the C of E was just restoring the ancient doctrine of the church on this matter. In this way, the Reformational, or even Reformed, Church of England was very catholic, seeking to stand in continuity with the universal church in history.

Similarly, Richard Hooker, who is often cited as being the progenitor of real “Anglican” theology, litters The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity with references to the Fathers. His treatment of the Eucharist, for example, cites many of the early fathers in support of his position. That said, you could just as easily deploy a different set of fathers against Hooker’s position, so his catholicity is not as cut-and-dried as all that.

Finally, it is worth remembering that the catholic church of medieval Latin Christendom was deeply and thoroughly Augustinian. Sts Augustine and Gregory the Great are the two most cited and read fathers throughout the entire Middle Ages. Whatever else went on in the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, both movements were a reinvestment in the teachings of St Augustine of Hippo in the church’s approach to questions of justification, grace, merit, etc. Both sides are Augustinian, they just read him differently.

There’s more that could be said about the relationship of the early Protestants to Scholasticism and to the Eastern Churches and to more recent things like St Thomas a Kempis and the Devotio Moderna, but I’ll just leave it there, simply noting that a vast quantity of medieval theology and medieval piety was part of the inheritance of the Reformers and the Protestant Scholastics.

Narrow, personal answer

As I said in the last post, when I was going through a bit of a spiritual crisis during my year in Durham, my brother called me a “catholic Anglican”, and a friend sent me a copy of Alexander de Hale’s commentary on Peter Lombard about grace. Moreover, I had coffee with Father Andrew Louth at his home in Darlington. Father Andrew is a great man — he writes good, important books full of big thoughts, but is also ready to sit with a cup of coffee in his study with a young man searching for help and answers.

Anyway, those three facts about the hard year in Durham are indicative of my personal, spiritual trajectory for many years. I read books by desert monks and modern Athonite elders. I pray the Jesus Prayer. I sometimes (less than I’d like) pray Morning and Evening Prayer. I read medieval mystics. I sometimes attend Orthodox Vespers, maybe even the divine liturgy.

Add to this my embrace of the patristic heritage, including the spiritual sense of Scripture, not to mention the wonders of St Maximus the Confessor as he draws deeply from the Cappadocian well, bringing forth the beautiful synthesis of the trajectories of both Athanasius and Evagrius, and you start to see how I am pretty … catholic.

Nevertheless, I affirm the Articles of Religion, which excludes me from being Roman Catholic. I believe in justification by faith in a Luther kind of way. I also hold to a historically Anglican understanding of the relationship between Scripture and tradition. Some days, I admit that I’m not wholly certain about the Eucharist — but not because Baptist memorialists sway me to be “more ‘Protestant'”, but because St Cyril sways me to be less. Or, maybe, to be more Luther.

So, yes. Catholic. Most assuredly.

Those medieval mystics!

My own copy of The Cloud of Unknowing

Last Monday, I had the joy and delight of giving a lecture about medieval mysticism, focussing on some foundations (so, Evagrius and Cassian, basically) and then really on the fourteenth-century English mystics — Walter Hilton, Richard Rolle, Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe, The Cloud of Unknowing, The Abbey of the Holy Ghost. All of my students were required to read a large chunk of Julian of Norwich, and for-credit students will also have read one of the others for an essay assignment.

One student read The Cloud of Unknowing, Rolle’s Fire of Love, and then The Cloud of Unknowing again while working on the essay, and then Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love for class. She declared that she wanted to become a medieval mystic. Another student admitted to being bitter a lot of the time, but that reading The Cloud and Julian filled him with sweetness.

I, too, am fond of reading medieval mystics. Of those covered for this class, I like best Julian of Norwich and The Cloud of Unknowing. I also have a fondness (almost typed fandom!) for early Cistercians, especially St Bernard of Clairvaux and William of St-Thierry. I have to admit, though, that my exposure to St Hildegard is too shallow, and the promising beginning I made in reading St Catherine of Siena was cut short by other affairs.

As you may guess, the contemplative/mystic types I spend more time with are late antique and Byzantine besides modern Orthodox pray-ers — St Theophan the Recluse, St Porphyrios, St Sophrony, Met. Anthony Bloom, and others.

I must confess, however, that I am very poor mystic/contemplative. Reading about high ideals stirs my heart, makes me want to climb those mountains and put in that hard labour. But acedia sets in. Sloth is easier than asceticism, right?

I recently went through a stretch where I had not been reading any Orthodox elders or late antique monks. One night, I decided to push through a portion of St Silouan the Athonite by St Sophrony (a very dense but powerful book). And I felt my spirits lightened and my resolve quickened by this experience. Reading holy literature is not wasted.

I remind myself of a story from the Egyptian desert about a monk complaining to an old man that he listens to the elders and hears the Scriptures but can’t for the life of him remember the teachings. The old man told him to take two clay pots that were dusty and dirty. Leave one alone, and pour oil into the other. Then pour the oil out. Then repeat several times. “Which is cleaner?” the old man asked. “The one I poured the oil into,” was the response.

Let’s bring this back to the mystics, then. I have expressed my misgivings about us unspiritual meatheads reading The Cloud of Unknowing on this blog. Yet perhaps the story from the desert is telling us that if we have the will or desire for these good things, then even advanced books like that are not lost on us.

So go on reading your medieval mystics, gentle reader. May you be made more pure of heart as a result.

A Form of Medieval Catholicism that Never Existed

A while back, @MilitantThomist announced on the Twitter that he and his wife were going to start attending their local SSPX church (if you don’t know what they are, here’s their site). One of his detractors went on to accuse him of following a form of medieval Catholicism that never existed.

I like that phrasing. As some of you know, a friend of mine once dreamt that I was the priest at a church plant that followed the medieval Roman rite according to the Use of Sarum (you can read about that dream here), which is the liturgy of medieval England. Of course, the Middle Ages are kind of one of my things. So, really, if you were to ask, “What’s your preferred religion?”, the answer would be:

“A form of medieval Catholicism that never existed.”

Why? Well, because there are lots of things I like about the medieval church that we lost with modernity, whether Protestant or Catholic. My post about the Sarum dream mentioned some of these, and how their loss in our wider practice of the faith means that no amount of liturgical reconstruction or study of personal application of medieval spirituality will ever bring us back to the High Middle Ages.

I was going to list the specific things about the Latin Middle Ages and her spiritual world, about my love of Cistercians, of high liturgy, of vernacular preaching rooted in the Fathers, of so on and so forth. And about bringing all of it together into a living, breathing, heaving community of the faithful who love Christ and want to just reach out and touch him and swallow him and live his life.

To whatever extent my description would match any real, single moment of medieval life in Latin Christendom, it would hide the dark underbelly of medieval Catholicism, of criminous clerks, of promoting unfit clerks to high office, of uncatechised lay people, of abuses, of some doctrines being dangerously underdetermined (I am, in the end, still actually a Prot). And that’s part of how it would not be medieval Catholicism as it existed. It would be my favourite bits.

But what do we want when we dig into St Bernard or St Anselm or the Stowe Missal or St Bede or saints’ lives? What are we seeking when we prop up a postcard of a rose window on our bookcase? What is it that drew me into Durham Cathedral day after day after day? What do I think I might meet in Richard Rolle or Julian of Norwich that I won’t meet at St Paul’s Anglican Church on Sunday?

Why do some of us like to get medieval? What drives us to these false medieval catholicisms? The thoughts that follow are not restricted to the Middle Ages, which is part of the point:

I think we are drawn to a bigger, stronger sense of the transcendent.

We are drawn to the idea of a united Latin Christendom, undone in the 1520s and sundered forever.

Some are drawn to the crystalline precision of Scholasticism.

Some are drawn to the vast mystery of Cistercians and Carthusians.

We are drawn to the beauty and drama of now-dead liturgical practices.

We long for a united, believing community not just internationally but locally.

We long for that “inner experience” that the mystics had.

We wish for clear boundaries of “in” and “out” that medieval canon law gave the church.

I tell you the truth: We can meet them today, and the medievals can be our guide. (Even for Prots. Shhh!)

But there is no return to a form of medieval Catholicism that never existed.

Indeed, there there is no return to a form that did exist.

This is basically my life’s goal.