Category Archives: Spirituality

Artist Missing the Point

So I’m flipping through an online Book of Hour in the Library of Congress’s collection. One of the standard items is the seven penitential psalms. Traditionally, these were ascribed to David as part of his remorse over the seduction of Bathsheba, the killing of Uriah the Hittite, and the subsequent death of David’s son.

The introductory image to the seven penitential psalms is a full frontal nude of Bathsheba in her bath with David looking on.

Call me crazy, but it seems like the illustrator is kind of missing the point and, were this my devotional book, I might have some trouble staying focused on my psalter…

On Doxology

I wanted to spend a few moments considering the point at the end of the last post, specifically the model of liturgical professionalism that arose throughout the medieval period, its organization in cathedral structures in the Late Sarum period, and its continuation in some contemporary practices of regular but low-attendance parish services like daily masses or the public Daily Office.

I have to begin by identifying what I understand to be part of the reluctance or resistance to this system. Jumping back to my own “proper” field for a moment, I want to steal some theory from a recent work, Among the Gentiles by Luke Timothy Johnson. (If you are interested in the New Testament or in the Early Church this should definitely be on your reading list! This is Johnson the scholar at his best—taking his exhaustive knowledge of Greco-Roman religious literature and condensing it into a brilliant synthesis, then using it to shed new light on Jewish and early Christian texts.) Based on his work with the sources, Johnson identifies four main non-exclusive ways of being religious in the Greco-Roman milieu:

  • A: the way of participation in divine benefits
  • B: the way of moral transformation
  • C: the way of transcending the world
  • D: the way of stabilizing the world

In his application of this synthesis to the New Testament and early Christianity, he finds that the New Testament emphasizes most strongly types A and B. With legitimation of the Church, the post-Constantinian writings seem to make a shift to A and D. (Particularly in the sense that D can be seen as the “supply side” of A—the benefits come through the ritual process and priestcraft of D.) He suggests in a concluding chapter that many of the Reformation movements were strongly of type B and were reacting to the types A and D of late medieval Catholicism and that some of our own Anglican struggles between the Puritans and the High Churchmen concerned appropriate levels of B and D in our own body.

And that’s where I’d identify some of the current discomfort—my own and Isaac’s: the system of endowed choirs and certain groups of professionals doing liturgy without the conscious and active participation of the majority of the community (a definite type D way of doing religion) affronts some of our type B inclinations. That is, if we’re not being edified or transformed, is this system a legitimate expression of the faith we hold?

I want to argue that is legitimate, and worth doing and supporting in our present situation.

God does not need our prayers and liturgies. God is God without them. The prayers and liturgies are for our benefit—but benefit and edification are not always the same thing.

The Morning Offices of the Western Church are, to me, our clearest documents of purpose. Mat(t)ins begins thus: Open thou our lips, O Lord/And our mouth shall proclaim thy praise. Then the Venite itself issues a call to praise God as the One who holds all creation in being and the One who guides his people as a flock. The festal Te Deum offers us a doxological perspective of the created order, showing us our place as beings most fully alive when oriented with the rest of creation in its uncorrupt state towards and in praise of God. Finally the ultimate Lauds psalms (from which the Office earns its appellation) echo and expand the Te Deum.

There are two reasons that we praise. The first is because we are creatures offering the praise due our Creator. As made beings, we owe our existence to the One who made us and who should be praised for it. The second is thanks to our Baptism: in our Baptism we are consciously and intentionally joined to and made aware of our membership within the Body of Christ. We become conscious participants within the life of God. Within these our boundaries our praises take on a deeper and greater valence—we participate in the internal dialogue of the Trinity. Expressed most perfectly in the Eucharist, we as the divided members of the Body of Christ come together as part of the eschatological Body of Christ who offers his own self and praises to God the Father in and through the Holy Spirit.

Now—creation continues without our praise; the dialogue of the Trinity continues without us. However, we as individuals and as a community most clearly express our nature when we are oriented in praise towards God.

Paul calls us to “pray without ceasing.” To pray without ceasing is to be in constant awareness and embodiment of life in contact with God. It is to live the praise of God in all of our actions, proclaiming through daily virtues the victory of God in Christ and the triumph of love and light over darkness, hatred, and all the forces that seek to corrupt the works of God. It is for us to recall our right mind—for the Body of Christ to be directed by the Mind of Christ. (That there would be my own type B inclinations coming up to the surface…)

While this is our goal, we fall short of its embodiment. While Anglican spirituality as laid out by Martin Thornton in English Spirituality gives us the central tools to direct us in this way—formal periodic liturgies in combination with habitual prayer of recollection—as individuals in the world we will fail to reach our aspirations while on this side of the veil. Thanks be to God, however, that we are not alone in this task. I think not only of the Te Deum but of its paraphrase in the hymn “Holy God we praise thy name” where, in Walworth’s words, “And from morn to set of sun/Through the Church the song goes on.”

We are members of the Body of Christ. And one of the ways that this is expressed locally is that we are members of a liturgical community. In our corporate nature, the living organism in which we subsist can more completely embody prayer without ceasing than any of its constituent members apart from the whole. We are just starting up public daily Evening Prayer at our parish. Some days it’s just two of us. Other days it’s five or six (when M and I and the girls can be there; G insists on doing one of the Scripture readings; H’s task—since she’s still learning to read—is to start the Lord’s Prayer). As our priest said when announcing the effort at church, we’re doing corporately and publicly what the rest of us should be doing individually at home. When it may just be the two of us—or even one solitary person—standing in the choir of the cold sanctuary, we are indicating our community’s commitment to a corporate liturgical life and the hope and promise of a life turned towards God. It doesn’t mean that we’re succeeding, that we’re meeting Paul’s challenge of praying without ceasing. What it does means is that we are making a public proclamation that the effort is worth doing, that we recognize that a life of praise is one of the central aspects of the Christian life.

The medieval system with its endowed cathedral choirs was a corporate social expression of this ideal. Public monies supported public prayer which offered a public encouragement to a life of prayer. As members of a larger organism we can look to those edifices and to the services held at our own parishes in our absence and know that some are praying even when we cannot. The services are to and for our benefit—not solely through the edification of the words uttered and understood, but through the example they enact of the life to which we are called.

That’s where I’ll stop for now, but there’s more to be said here. In particular there’s quite a bit to be said about the early monastic concept of the resurrection life being patterned upon the angelic life, with the angelic life being primarily defined by the ceaseless praise of the beings around the throne as presented in Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Revelation, but at the moment I have neither the time nor the brain cells to give that topic the treatment it deserves.

CWOB Posts: A Post-Mortem

My presentation for the Society of Catholic Priests on Communion without Baptism (CWOB) went up on the Episcopal Cafe last week. Due to its length, it was broken up into three parts:

The goal was to provoke thought about the issue and I think we did. Jim tells me that as of today, the pieces have a received a total of 5,800 page views. (How many of those were unique I don’t know,  but it’s still a lot of pondering…)

I think we reached a record on number of comments as well. Over the course of the series we had 138 comments. Editorial conflation of some edits drops the true number to 134.

What’s significant is that of these 134 comments, there were only 25 total commenters. Of these 25, 8 were responsible for 74% of the comments (100).  Within these, there were some clear “identities”.

  • 28 were from a couple who chooses to play the role of “village atheist” on the site
  • 34 were supporting the piece and were advocating for the traditional order of things (16 of these were my own comments)
  • 24 were defending the communing of the unbaptized from the “liberal establishment”
  • 14 were from a fellow contributor who seems to agree more with the traditional position but who was playing the role of “gadfly”

So—the comments display sustained argument within a small group with set convictions. While there was much discussion, I think there was little true give-and-take. I’m not about to change my position and neither were my interlocutors. On the whole, then, we may well have produced more heat than light in the comments.

A few thoughts on what I did see in the comments…

  1. Lack of Engagement. I didn’t see much engagement with the issues I was raising in the main body of the text. In particular, I think my main contribution to the debate was the notion of purpose, that “Discipleship, communal transformation into the Mind of Christ and love of God, is the fundamental pattern in the sacramental economy.” That’s not to say there was no engagement—Sara Miles and Donald Schell did address this topic albeit insufficiently to my mind. Far and away, though the conversation continually  returned to the notion of “inclusion”. Note this and note it well. What I take from this finding is that the center of the discussion about CWOB is not around sacramental theology. This is fundamentally not a debate about theology. If we continue to argue it as if it were a theological debate, we will go unheard and the majority of the church can and will be persuaded that CWOB is a good idea.
  2. The Proper Place of Inclusion.  I believe that most of the people arguing for CWOB believe that they are doing so for the right reasons, and I think that this movement is driven far more by identity issues than theology issues.  The Episcopal Church is branding itself as the welcoming church, the inclusive church. As this concept filters through the body, practices that appear to be unwelcoming or uninclusive are viewed by more and more as anti-Episcopal. I think that most people in our pews want to be nice and make people feel welcome. Too, they want to believe that their parish is the kind of place that makes people feel welcome and included (whether unbaptized people ever show up or not). One of the brief one-off comments encapsulates this view perfectly: “Perhaps giving communion to the unbaptized is the community welcoming the stranger?” This is the view that has and is taking root. Now—we don’t want to argue against inclusion for two reasons: 1) it really is part of the full Gospel message—that’s what the movement of grace to the gentiles is all about; 2) no argument is going to be won from a rhetorical perspective by being “anti-inclusion” or “anti-welcoming.” It’s just not going to fly (especially since it’s not what we really mean either). So—the discussion needs to be re-framed somehow. If, in a discussion around the topic of CWOB, you find yourself being portrayed as the “anti-” side in an argument for or against inclusion or welcoming, you got to take a step back and re-frame the debate. How—well, that’s the question, isn’t it? My current strategy is to move from Communion to Baptism. We are very inclusive when it comes to Baptism. We do want to welcome and include people at the altar and the way that we do that is by not only welcoming them to the altar but welcoming them to the font (first). Additional re-framing thoughts are welcome.
  3. What You Call It Matters. I noticed a new tack I hadn’t seen before in the comments: referring to Communion Before Baptism. I find this term very unhelpful because it elides away a major problem. One of the central problems of CWOB is that it does not take place within a communal sacramental framework that leads through Baptism to Discipleship. The use of “before” instead of “without” implies that Baptism will follow. And I simply don’t believe that the implication is true. I would be somewhat less concerned if I believed that follow-through were occurring and that those who communed out of ignorance or through misguided hospitality were directed from there to Baptism and discipleship—but that follow-through is fundamentally not on the radar for most places doing CWOB. And this may be one of the big differences between a place like St Gregory of Nyssa and other parishes. My sense is that St Gregory’s does do a better job at follow-through and, as a result, Donald Schell can point to people like Sara Miles who did come to discipleship through this process. But St Gregory’s is not the norm for places that offer CWOB.

Those are my thoughts—what are yours?

Bits on the Night Office

A few thoughts on the Night Office, some from the previous post, others not.

On the Patristic Readings

Within the early medieval English system with which I’m most familiar, a regular ol’ weekday ferial Office usually had one nocturn. A nocturn is a hunk of psalms, then a reading broken up by 3 (secular) or 4 (monastic) responsaries. On a weekday, this single nocturn took its reading from Scripture, hearkening back to the Night Office lectionary of Ordo XIII or one of its derivations.

On Sundays and feast days, there were usually 3 nocturns. The first nocturn was often like a regular night, meaning that its reading came from Scripture. The second nocturn had a patristic reading that, in Paul the Deacon’s system at least, was referred to as a sermo and was a general seasonal text from a patristic source or a was a particular sermon about the feast being celebrated. Again, in Paul’s system, Leo and Maximus were often favorite sources (and some of the sermons traveling under the name of Maximus were actually by Caesarius of Arles). The third nocturn was an exposition of the appointed Gospel for the feast. Paul seems to have called this the omeilia or “homily.” [The distinctions we think Paul was trying to draw broke down fairly quickly and the terms “sermo” and “omelia” tended to be used in an interchangeable fashion by the 10th century.] Paul’s go-to guys for the omeilia were Gregory and Bede with some Jerome and Augustine thrown in where warranted (i.e., Augustine’s tractates on John and exposition of the Sermon on the Mount; Jerome from his commentary when a Matthew text popped up with no other texts from Gregory or Bede).

So—on special occasions, there were two patristic pieces in the Night Office, one focused on the season/event, the other on the appointed Gospel text.

Patristic Creep: Office to Mass

Perhaps the greatest conceptual shift in the study of early medieval preaching in the last half of the twentieth century was the recognition of the role of Night Office homiliaries (collections of sermons typically from patristic sources often but not always in liturgical order) within apparently Mass-focused preaching. Determining how patristic homiliaries functioned is tricky. Some, it’s clear, were used for the second and third nocturns of the Night Office. Some were clearly used for spiritual reading in lectio divina. Whether and how they were used at masses in the period is a complicated question with few easy or clear answers.

We can say three definite things about mass preaching in the Late Anglo-Saxon/Benedictine Revival period in England.

  1. There was an expectation that preaching was supposed to happen. English editions of the Rule of Chrodegang require that secular canons (so, priests at cathedrals) preach at least every other Sunday and on feast days. Furthermore, the Canons of Ps.-Egbert which Aelfric quotes in one of his letters on clerical duties states that clergy should preach every Sunday and on major feast days. Manuscript evidence supports these mandates (but says nothing about their fulfillment…) in that Aelfric’s two cycles of Catholic Homilies and supplemental sermons gave preachers texts to read on these occasions. Furthermore, Ursula Lenker’s work has proved to my satisfaction that the Old English Gospels were used by canons for sermon preparation.
  2. It’s clear that Aelfric uses patristic materials from the Night Office and specifically re-purposes them for proclamation at Mass. In a sense, I think the written sermons of Aelfric (in the vernacular) give us a sense of what most of the preachers did. That is, those who were bilingually competent took their homiliary from the Night Office into the pulpit with them and used the Latin as source material for a vernacular sermon, either translating on the fly, or trying to hit the major points in a loose paraphrase. The problem is that not all of the clergy at the time were that competent in Latin—a situation Aelfric bemoans on a regular basis and is the reason for his English homily collections.
  3. Sometimes the preaching had no relation to the Night Office (or the texts at all…). The mass of anonymous vernacular Old English homilies shows quite a bit of disparity. Some are exegetical with patristic sources. Some are composites where a preacher patched several things together. Some are basically direct translations of banned apocryphal works. (What, you think when your preacher starts working off The Shack that this is a new thing? Hardly…)

So—among preachers who cared about passing on orthodox Christian teaching, there was often quite a bit of carry-over between what the clergy and monks heard in the Night Office and what the laity heard at Mass. But that wasn’t necessarily the case and it might have been spotty.

On the Night Office Lectionary

I believe that Ordo XIII and its later evolution into breviaries has had and continues to have a significant impact on how we understand the readings for the Daily Office. In particular, I think we can identify four major characteristics of the “Ordo XIII pattern” that have significance for how we assess any modern Office lectionaries:

  1. Maximum Coverage. The goal of reading was to move systematically through the entire canon.
  2. Yearly Cycle. One of the defining features of the the early medieval pattern is that it demonstrated a clear intent to get through all of Scripture within the space of a single liturgical year. This is one of the points that Cranmer and other Office reformers have consistently gone back to.
  3. Liturgical Coherence. The books read tend to have a seasonal connection with the Church Year. Particular books are read at particular times because the text as a whole has a coherence and significance with the time.
  4. Blocks of Text. In the Night Office, you get a long stretch from a single book. There’s a continuity of narrative or, at least, text. Of the four main characteristics I identify, this is the one that tends to be honored the least in modern schemes. That is, while Cranmer legislated a narrative flow in taking sequential texts from OT, NT, and Gospel works, he divided them up at the start so that the readings were disjointed. So at each Office you read an OT reading, then an NT—the flow was broken up.

There’s no particular point I’m trying to make at the moment about these, I’m just identifying these four characteristics and holding them up for discussion.

Formation and the Ecclesia Anglicana

One of the perennial Anglo-Catholic hobbies  is constructing and maintaining an acceptable myth of origins. That is to say, if you are going to argue that there is a historical and theological validity to the use of certain catholic principles, doctrines, and ceremonies—but not others—within Anglican churches, you need to have some reason to hand that accounts for it.

One of the classic favorites is the notion of the Ecclesia Anglicana. This is the concept that English Christianity is just a bit different from Roman Catholic Christianity—always has been, always will be—and that the Anglican Churches are simply the current expression of this separate but equal way of being. As a result, adherents of this view claim a certain freedom by identifying the differences between Roman and English practice.

I’ve always quite liked this notion in a big-picture kind of way, but have had all sorts of problems with it on a historical level. It’s one thing to assert it with a side-order of nostalgic Victorian nationalism, it’s another entirely to document it in a convincing fashion in the historical and liturgical record.

It’s with this background (a love for the concept but a weighty skepticism concerning its historical realities) that I surprised myself last night while washing dishes by coming up with a potential liturgical-historical argument in favor of it…

If you’re going to argue a difference between “English” and “Roman,” liturgical and historical evidence supports an approach that sees “Western” as a super-category made up of a number of related theological and liturgical traditions one of which is “English” and one (actually several that fuse into one) which becomes dominant as “Roman.” Part of the question, then, is in the matter of definitions: what’s “English” and what’s “Roman” and how are these situated in relation to what’s “Western”?

Then, once that’s been teased out, what are the things that can be identified as granting a fundamental theological distinction between them? (Understanding liturgy in its proper place as the kinetic side of the theological coin…)

One way to crack the nut is to point to the formative aspects of the liturgy, and I’d approach it this way. The Sarum strand is identifiably and recognizably English in locale granted that its roots straddle both French and earlier English practice. When you compare Sarum sources against Continental Western texts and the materials designated “Roman” by the Council of Trent, one of the differences that you find is the Mass Gospel Lectionary. If I recall correctly (and this came to me while washing dishes, mind you, and I haven’t consulted my tomes yet), there are differences at least in Advent, Epiphany, and in post-Pentecost.

What makes this difference major and important is not the Mass, however—it’s the Office. The Mass Gospel Lectionary appears in the third nocturn of the Night Office and determines the patristic homily found therein. A different Mass Gospel lectionary suggests that the nocturn lessons may be different with the possible result that the Sarum-using folk were being formed by reading different patristic texts at different times and were being formed and normed differently than their “Roman” brethren. If you are trying to argue for a theological and practical difference between the Ecclesia Anglicana and the Roman Church especially defined by its Tridentine liturgy, one of the best ways to do it would be a thorough audit of the nocturn texts.

Come to think of it, I recall that in Advent, at least, the second nocturn readings don’t quite cohere either. I seem to recall a Maximus of Turin text where the Tridentine/Roman sources have the Jerome text on Isaiah quoted below. The significance there is that the Sarum source seems to be drawing on an older “Western” strand as the Maximus likely is a hold-over from Paul the Deacon, the official Night Office collection from the Carolingian period.

So—to make a sustained and historically verifiable argument for a theologically distinct Ecclesia Anglicana one possible route could be a thorough comparison of the Night Office texts between the English and Continental sources. What you’d have to find in order to make a strong case is greater coherence between Sarum, Hereford, and York sources (perhaps Hyde Abbey as well?) than what you find in Continental sources, particularly those that feed into the Tridentine Breviary. Then, if you could further isolate a difference in perspective—so, a preponderance of a particular father or set of fathers over others—between “English” and “Roman” breviaries, then I’d be willing to give more credence to the notion of a theologically distinct Ecclesia Anglicana that contains demonstrable theological and formational tendencies from its Continental counterparts.

St Charles Borromeo on Parish Work

Speaking of S Clement’s… One of its former members, Br. Stephen, posted a great selection yesterday from the writings of St. Charles Borromeo whom we celebrated at mass last night. Again, I confess, I don’t know the writings of the Counter- and Post-Reformation Roman saints very well. What little time I have for study these days tends to go to the patristic and medieval saints who, happily, we have in common. In any case, these words deserve to be more broadly circulated:

Would you like me to teach you how to grow from virtue to virtue and how, if you are already recollected at prayer, you can be even more attentive next time, and so give God more pleasing worship? Listen, and I will tell you. If a tiny spark of God’s love already burns within you, do not expose it to the wind, for it may get blown out. Keep the stove tightly shut so that it will not lose its heat and grow cold. In other words, avoid distractions as well as you can. Stay quiet with God. Do not spend your time in useless chatter.

If teaching and preaching is your job, then study diligently and apply yourself to whatever is necessary for doing the job well. Be sure that you first preach by the way you live. If you do not, people will notice that you say one thing, but live otherwise, and your words will bring only cynical laughter and a derisive shake of the head.

Are you in charge of a parish? If so, do not neglect the parish of your own soul, do not give yourself to others so completely that you have nothing left for yourself. You have to be mindful of your people without becoming forgetful of yourself.

My brothers, you must realize that for us churchmen nothing is more necessary than meditation. We must meditate before, during and after everything we do. The prophet says: I will pray, and then I will understand. When you administer the sacraments, meditate on what you are doing. When you celebrate Mass, reflect on the sacrifice you are offering. When you pray the office, think about the words you are saying and the Lord to whom you are speaking. When you take care of your people, meditate on the Lord’s blood that has washed them clean. In this way, all that you do becomes a work of love.

This is the way we can easily overcome the countless difficulties we have to face day after day, which, after all, are part of our work: in meditation we find the strength to bring Christ to birth in ourselves and in other men.

One of the enduring problems that I see in the Episcopal Church is this confusion about the role of the priest. Most parish expectations are not clear, diocesan expectations are not clear, and in the seminaries where I’ve been this topic seems to be assumed far more than discussed. As a result, most clergy come out thinking that they are a mash-up somewhere between non-profit CEO, social activist, witch doctor, and entertainer. Throw in “being missional” into the mix and you have a guaranteed recipe for confusion.

One of the most encouraging things I heard from M concerning our diocesan clergy conference was that our bishop emphasized the importance of clergy as people of prayer. Prayer is not something that clergy should do when they have time to fit it in around the tasks of ministry—rather, it is one of the fundamental tasks of ministry. Now all we need is for the bishop to post that prominently on the diocesan website to inform congregations and vestries and to remind the clergy…

Discernment or Death: The Interpretation of 1 Cor 11:27-34

In the discussion of the Communion without Baptism, at some point the discussion inevitably turns to—or at least towards—1 Cor 11:27-34:

Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a man examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some of died. But if we have judged ourselves truly, we should not be judged. But when we are judged by the Lord we are chastened so that we may not be condemned along with the world. So then, my brethren, when you come together to eat, wait for one another–if any one is hungry, let him eat at home–lest you come together to be condemned. (RSV)

What exactly is Paul saying here? I think sometimes th first section is pulled out of context—but. Paul is connecting unworthy reception of the Eucharist to becoming ill and dying and to waiting for one another.

What I haven’t seen recently in the debate is a sufficient unpacking of this cluster of thoughts. What’s the connection between reception and death? Paul is being allusive here. Is he alluding to a supernatural punishment for those who eat and drink unworthily? Is he alluding to a social problem in the community where some are sick and weak from lack of food and Paul is complaining that the social & ecclesial dimensions of the Eucharistic feeding are being lost?

How do you read what’s going on here?

New Café Piece

I’ve got a new post up at the Café. Given the state of things I’ve found it difficult to collect coherent thoughts, so this is more of a spur-of-the-moment reflection based on a bit of NPR. Since I was driving to and from storage with stack of boxes, I heard the report twice and each time noticed myself yelling the same things at the radio—so I decided to write it down…

Posts containing more substance are in the works.

New Post at the Cafe

I have a new partial post up at the Episcopal Cafe. This one is on the Blessed Virgin and, specifically, the arguments around the word “virgin.” The way Jim divided the piece, today’s chunk focuses on the virgin birth of Jesus which means tomorrow or—more likely—Wednesday’s section will deal with the issue of the perpetual virginity of Mary, the arguments over whether Mary had more children after Jesus. If today’s seems a little skimpy, that’s because the heart of the discussion and the pay-off is located at the end of the next chunk.

More on the Trinity, Metaphors for God, and Devotion

The thread on M’s sermon has engaged some of the issues around the naming of God. If I may summarize what I read there, I think all participants are in agreement that “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” is the normative means for naming the Trinity in our public worship; the discussion turns then to whether this is the only metaphor or whether others are to be used, in what settings, and to what degree.

Frequently during discussions of this topic, I’m reminded of the Anthropomorphite controversy. This is one of the spin-offs of the long-standing Origenist controversy that rocked Alexandria for quite a while. The basic question seems to be whether Origen had taken allegory too far—what, in descriptions of God, were metaphor and what were literal? When the Scriptures speak of “God’s outstretched arm” is this purely a metaphor or is there a physical divine member in view here? In particular, this controversy caused some real difficulties in the first few generations of the monastic movement among the monks who were wise and holy—but not particularly learned. While you get sprinkles of this controversy in a variety of places in the literature, my thoughts this morning turn especially to John Cassian’s Conferences 10.1-5.

I think this section is worth citing in full so here it is from the venerable NPNF:

Introduction.

Among the sublime customs of the anchorites which by God’s help have been set forth although in plain and unadorned style, the course of our narration compels us to insert and find a place for something, which may seem so to speak to cause a blemish on a fair body: although I have no doubt that by it no small instruction on the image of Almighty God of which we read in Genesis will be conferred on some of the simpler sort, especially when the grounds are considered of a doctrine so important that men cannot be ignorant of it without terrible blasphemy and serious harm to the Catholic faith.

Chapter 2

Of the custom which is kept up in the Province of Egypt for signifying the time of Easter.

In the country of Egypt this custom is by ancient tradition observed that— when Epiphany is past, which the priests of that province regard as the time, both of our Lord’s baptism and also of His birth in the flesh, and so celebrate the commemoration of either mystery not separately as in the Western provinces but on the single festival of this day, — letters are sent from the Bishop of Alexandria through all the Churches of Egypt, by which the beginning of Lent, and the day of Easter are pointed out not only in all the cities but also in all the monasteries. In accordance then with this custom, a very few days after the previous conference had been held with Abbot Isaac, there arrived the festal letters of Theophilus the Bishop of the aforesaid city, in which together with the announcement of Easter he considered as well the foolish heresy of the Anthropomorphites at great length, and abundantly refuted it. And this was received by almost all the body of monks residing in the whole province of Egypt with such bitterness owing to their simplicity and error, that the greater part of the Elders decreed that on the contrary the aforesaid Bishop ought to be abhorred by the whole body of the brethren as tainted with heresy of the worst kind, because he seemed to impugn the teaching of holy Scripture by the denial that Almighty God was formed in the fashion of a human figure, though Scripture teaches with perfect clearness that Adam was created in His image. Lastly this letter was rejected also by those who were living in the desert of Scete and who excelled all who were in the monasteries of Egypt, in perfection and in knowledge, so that except Abbot Paphnutius the presbyter of our congregation, not one of the other presbyters, who presided over the other three churches in the same desert, would suffer it to be even read or repeated at all in their meetings.

Chapter 3

Of Abbot Sarapion and the heresy of the Anthropomorphites into which he fell in the error of simplicity.

Among those then who were caught by this mistaken notion was one named Sarapion, a man of long-standing strictness of life, and one who was altogether perfect in actual discipline, whose ignorance with regard to the view of the doctrine first mentioned was so far a stumbling block to all who held the true faith, as he himself outstripped almost all the monks both in the merits of his life and in the length of time (he had been there). And when this man could not be brought back to the way of the right faith by many exhortations of the holy presbyter Paphnutius, because this view seemed to him a novelty, and one that was not ever known to or handed down by his predecessors, it chanced that a certain deacon, a man of very great learning, named Photinus, arrived from the region of Cappadocia with the desire of visiting the brethren living in the same desert: whom the blessed Paphnutius received with the warmest welcome, and in order to confirm the faith which had been stated in the letters of the aforesaid Bishop, placed him in the midst and asked him before all the brethren how the Catholic Churches throughout the East interpreted the passage in Genesis where it says, “Let us make man after our image and likeness” Genesis 1:26 And when he explained that the image and likeness of God was taken by all the leaders of the churches not according to the base sound of the letters, but spiritually, and supported this very fully and by many passages of Scripture, and showed that nothing of this sort could happen to that infinite and incomprehensible and invisible glory, so that it could be comprised in a human form and likeness, since its nature is incorporeal and uncompounded and simple, and what can neither be apprehended by the eyes nor conceived by the mind, at length the old man was shaken by the numerous and very weighty assertions of this most learned man, and was drawn to the faith of the Catholic tradition. And when both Abbot Paphnutius and all of us were filled with intense delight at his adhesion, for this reason; viz., that the Lord had not permitted a man of such age and crowned with such virtues, and one who erred only from ignorance and rustic simplicity, to wander from the path of the right faith up to the very last, and when we arose to give thanks, and were all together offering up our prayers to the Lord, the old man was so bewildered in mind during his prayer because he felt that the Anthropomorphic image of the Godhead which he used to set before himself in prayer, was banished from his heart, that on a sudden he burst into a flood of bitter tears and continual sobs, and cast himself down on the ground and exclaimed with strong groanings: “Alas! Wretched man that I am! They have taken away my God from me, and I have now none to lay hold of; and whom to worship and address I know not.” By which scene we were terribly disturbed, and moreover with the effect of the former Conference still remaining in our hearts, we returned to Abbot Isaac, whom when we saw close at hand, we addressed with these words.

Chapter 4

Of our return to Abbot Isaac and question concerning the error into which the aforesaid old man had fallen.

Although even besides the fresh matter which has lately arisen, our delight in the former conference which was held on the character of prayer would summon us to postpone everything else and return to your holiness, yet this grievous error of Abbot Sarapion, conceived, as we fancy, by the craft of most vile demons, adds somewhat to this desire of ours. For it is no small despair by which we are cast down when we consider that through the fault of this ignorance he has not only utterly lost all those labours which he has performed in so praiseworthy a manner for fifty years in this desert, but has also incurred the risk of eternal death. And so we want first to know why and wherefore so grievous an error has crept into him. And next we should like to be taught how we can arrive at that condition in prayer, of which you discoursed some time back not only fully but splendidly. For that admirable Conference has had this effect upon us, that it has only dazzled our minds and has not shown us how to perform or secure it.

Chapter 5

The answer on the heresy described above.

Isaac: We need not be surprised that a really simple man who had never received any instruction on the substance and nature of the Godhead could still be entangled and deceived by an error of simplicity and the habit of a longstanding mistake, and (to speak more truly) continue in the original error which is brought about, not as you suppose by a new illusion of the demons, but by the ignorance of the ancient heathen world, while in accordance with the custom of that erroneous notion, by which they used to worship devils formed in the figure of men, they even now think that the incomprehensible and ineffable glory of the true Deity should be worshipped under the limitations of some figure, as they believe that they can grasp and hold nothing if they have not some image set before them, which they can continually address while they are at their devotions, and which they can carry about in their mind and have always fixed before their eyes. And against this mistake of theirs this text may be used: “And they changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of the image of corruptible man.” Romans 1:23 Jeremiah also says: “My people have changed their glory for an idol.” Jeremiah 2:11 Which error although by this its origin, of which we have spoken, it is engrained in the notions of some, yet none the less is it contracted in the hearts also of those who have never been stained with the superstition of the heathen world, under the colour of this passage where it is said “Let us make man after our image and our likeness,” Genesis 1:26 ignorance and simplicity being its authors, so that actually there has arisen owing to this hateful interpretation a heresy called that of the Anthropomorphites, which maintains with obstinate perverseness that the infinite and simple substance of the Godhead is fashioned in our lineaments and human configuration. Which however any one who has been taught the Catholic doctrine will abhor as heathenish blasphemy, and so will arrive at that perfectly pure condition in prayer which will not only not connect with its prayers any figure of the Godhead or bodily lineaments (which it is a sin even to speak of), but will not even allow in itself even the memory of a name, or the appearance of an action, or an outline of any character.”

I’m struck by the narrative qualities of this passage—by how Cassian chooses to tell this story.Clearly, he considers himself to be orthodox and champions the position which was deemed orthodox. Yet he paints a very sympathetic picture of Abba Sarapion but, unlike many stories of this ilk, he decides to close the story in a rather ambiguous fashion. Instead of relating that henceforth Abba Sarapion lived in quietude and orthodox faith, our final glimpse of the anchorite is a burst of grief and a spiritual dilemma: “Alas! Wretched man that I am! They have taken away my God from me, and I have now none to lay hold of; and whom to worship and address I know not.”

Cassian does this deliberately and skillfully for he sets up his topic perfectly. Those who mine writings like these solely for their history of theological arguments miss quite a lot if they do not consider the context. The discussion of the controversy is not accidental; this whole conference is on prayer and, specifically, what images we should form in our mind as we pray. That is, as we pray, how do we conceive of the One with whom we communicate?

Cassian uses this episode to hammer home the ascetic implications of bad doctrine. The wise and holy ascetic risks losing his years of spiritual labor because he has thought wrongly and grounded his spirituality in a theologically deficient framework.

Abba Isaac goes on in the Conference to portray a spirituality grounded in the incomprehensible God who, nevertheless, reveals himself to those who seek him with diligence and earnestness. It seems to me—and I speak with less than perfect knowledge here—that what is described in this Conference dovetails nicely with what we find in On the Divine Names by Pseudo-Dionysius where he presents a brilliant introduction to God’s self-revelation that carefully balances the cataphatic and apophatic approaches to God.

So—bottom line—this theology stuff matters because of the way that our spiritual lives are shaped by it. We do well to not fall into the Anthropomorphite error and to take sufficient safeguards against it. God as beyond materiality is beyond gender. God is not “he”. I use “he” when I speak about God, and, no doubt, there are some seminaries where I would get into trouble for doing so. (Far too often the various ways around the male pronoun turn our language about God into a stilted mess rather than something beautiful, prayable, and singable. I have severe reactions against the seminary phrase “God God-self” for its horrible infelicities as an English expression.) I am no Anthropomorphite, and have no plans of becoming one—and yet casual use  becomes habitual formation. I don’t think that God is a dude. And yet, with frequent enough repetition and no checks in other directions, concepts of God-ness and dude-ness will become linked whether I’m intending it or not. And herein lies the danger, and therefore the need to remember and to utilize, when appropriate, alternate language for and about God.

This is another area of theology and public liturgical speech which has been negatively impacted by the incessant culture wars which swirl around and through the church. The rejection of masculine language has become a cause celebre for certain liberal types. This has prompted a backlash from certain conservative types who will then insist on nothing but masculine and sometime deliberately,  antagonistically patriarchal language for God. Both of these groups are distorting our theology to score political points. (And I kindly request them to stop now. There. We’ll see how far that gets me…)

I’d like to point back to Cassian and to Pseudo-Dionysius as both an appeal for a reason why a return to a more civilized discussion is needed. We cannot now God as God is. We only know God as God has been revealed in Scripture through metaphor and we then use these metaphors as keys to understanding our personal experiences of God and our glimpses of the divine life. One of the foremost ways God has chosen to reveal himself and his triune nature is as “Father, Son, and, Holy Ghost” and, as such, this is what our forebearers have enshrined in our liturgies. We do well to follow them.

But we must also be firmly reminded that in no way do these epithets exhaust both the potential and the edifying metaphors and names for God. No, Cassian and Pseudo-Dionysius are not collaborators in some devious feminist plot (despite what some choose to think…).  I don’t think that conscious Anthropomorphism is a danger in today’s world; subconscious Anthropomorphism is alive and well—and perhaps even promulgated by those who can only start prayer with “Father God…” In our teaching then and perhaps in our private prayers other names and metaphors should be cultivated and remembered not to displace other formulations, but to fill out a more robust understanding of the One of whom Dionysius says, “Mind beyond mind, word beyond speech, it is gathered up by no discourse, by no intuition, by no name. It is and it is as no other being is. Cause of all existence, and therefore transcending existence, it alone could give an authoritative account of what it really is.” (DN 588B 1).