Category Archives: Patristics

Leo: Sermon 40.1

1. Progress and improvement always possible

Although, dearly-beloved, as the Easter festival approaches, the very recurrence of the season points out to us the Lenten fast, yet our words also must add their exhortations which, the Lord helping us, may be not useless to the active nor irksome to the devout. For since the idea of these days demands the increase of all our religious performances, there is no one, I am sure, that does not feel glad at being incited to good works. For though our nature which, so long as we are mortal, will be changeable, is advancing to the highest pursuits of virtue, yet always has the possibility of falling back, so has it always the possibility of advancing. And this is the true justness of the perfect that they should never assume themselves to be perfect, lest flagging in the purpose of their yet unfinished journey, they should fall into the danger of failure, through giving up the desire for progress.

And, therefore, because none of us, dearly beloved, is so perfect and holy as not to be able to be more perfect and more holy, let us all together, without difference of rank, without distinction of desert, with pious eagerness pursue our race from what we have attained to what we yet aspire to, and make some needful additions to our regular devotions. For he that is not more attentive than usual to religion in these days, is shown at other times to be not attentive enough.

Being a sorry back-slider, I for one, feel glad at being incited to good works… No martial metaphors here. Instead, a fair amount of reference to “the perfect”. I’m not sure how to read this. Being the postmodern that I am, I read it a little ironically, and assume that Leo is setting up a rhetoric ideal for us to measure ourselves against—and fall short. Thus, I see Leo making an appeal to our own spiritual self-seeking. This is perhaps a little questionable as methods for motivation go, but as a mentor (the Jumping One) once noted if you’re talking about virtues and other such habitual actions, even base motives can assist us in forming holy habits.

Leo: Sermon 39.6

VI. The right use of Lent will lead to a happy participation in Easter

Accordingly, dearly-beloved, being mindful of our weakness, because we easily fall into all kinds of faults, let us by no means neglect this special remedy and most effectual healing of our wounds. Let us remit, that we may have remission: let us grant thepardon which we crave: let us not be eager to be revenged when we pray to be forgiven. Let us not pass over the groans of the poor with deaf ear, but with prompt kindness bestow our mercy on the needy, that we may deserve to find mercy in the judgment. And he that, aided by God’s grace, shall strain every nerve after this perfection, will keep this holy fast faithfully; free from the leaven of the old wickedness, in the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth 1 Corinthians 5:8, he will reach the blessed Passover, and by newness of life will worthily rejoice in the mystery of man’s reformation through Christ our Lord Who with the Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen.

A satisfactory Leonine conclusion. He pulls in some summarizing thoughts and wraps it up neatly.

Leo: Sermon 39.5

V. Abstinence not only from food but from other evil desires, especially from wrath, is required in Lent

Relying, therefore, dearly-beloved, on these arms, let us enter actively and fearlessly on the contest set before us: so that in this fasting struggle we may not rest satisfied with only this end, that we should think abstinence from food alone desirable. For it is not enough that the substance of our flesh should be reduced, if the strength of the soul be not also developed. When the outer man is somewhat subdued, let the inner man be somewhat refreshed; and when bodily excess is denied to our flesh, let ourmind be invigorated by spiritual delights. Let every Christian scrutinise himself, and search severely into his inmost heart: let him see that no discord cling there, no wrong desire be harboured. Let chasteness drive incontinence far away; let the light of truth dispel the shades of deception; let the swellings of pride subside; let wrath yield to reason; let the darts of ill-treatment be shattered, and the chidings of the tongue be bridled; let thoughts of revenge fall through, and injuries be given over to oblivion. In fine, let every plant which the heavenly Father has not planted be removed by the roots Matthew 15:13 . For then only are the seeds of virtue well nourished in us, when every foreign germ is uprooted from the field of wheat. If any one, therefore, has been fired by the desire for vengeance against another, so that he has given him up to prison or bound him with chains, let him make haste to forgive not only the innocent, but also one who seems worthy of punishment, that he may with confidence make use of the clause in the Lord’s prayer and say, Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors . Which petition the Lord marks with peculiar emphasis, as if the efficacy of the whole rested on this condition, by saying, For if you forgive men their sins, your Father which is in heaven also will forgive you: but if you forgive not men, neither will your Father forgive you your sins.

Leo: Sermon 39.4

IV. The Christian’s armour is both for defence and for attack

So, dearly-beloved, let us who instructed in Divine learning come wittingly to the present contest and strife, hear the Apostle when he says, for our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of this dark world, against spiritual wickedness in heavenly things Ephesians 6:12, and let us not forget that these our enemies feel it is against them all is done that we strive to do for our salvation, and that by the very fact of our seeking after some good thing we are challenging our foes. For this is an old-standing quarrel between us and them fostered by the devil’s ill-will, so that they are tortured by our being justified, because they have fallen from those good things to which we, God helping us, are advancing. If, therefore, we are raised, they are prostrated: if we are strengthened, they are weakened. Our cures are their blows, because they are wounded by our wounds’ cure. Stand, therefore, dearly-beloved, as the Apostle says, having the loins of your mind girt in truth, and your feet shod in the preparation of the gospel of peace, in all things taking the shield of faith in which you may be able to extinguish all the fiery darts of the evil one, and put on the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God Ephesians 6:14-17 . See, dearly-beloved, with what mighty weapons, with what impregnable defences we are armed by our Leader, who is famous for His many triumphs, the unconquered Master of the Christian warfare. He has girt our loins with the belt of chastity, He has shod our feet with the bonds of peace: because the unbelted soldier is quickly vanquished by the suggester of immodesty, and he that is unshod is easily bitten by the serpent. He has given the shield of faith for the protection of our whole body; on our head has He set the helmet of salvation; our right hand has He furnished with a sword, that is with the word of Truth: that the spiritual warrior may not only be safe from wounds, but also may have strength to wound his assailant.

Leo: Sermon 39.2

II. Use Lent to vanquish the enemy, and be thus preparing for Eastertide

Accordingly, dearly-beloved, that we may be able to overcome all our enemies, let us seek Divine aid by the observance of the heavenly bidding, knowing that we cannot otherwise prevail against our adversaries, unless we prevail against our own selves. For we have many encounters with our own selves: the flesh desires one thing against the spirit, and the spirit another thing against the flesh . And in this disagreement, if the desires of the body be stronger, the mind will disgracefully lose its proper dignity, and it will be most disastrous for that to serve which ought to have ruled. But if the mind, being subject to its Ruler, and delighting in gifts from above, shall have trampled under foot the allurements of earthly pleasure, and shall not have allowed sin to reign in its mortal body, reason will maintain a well-ordered supremacy, and its strongholds no strategy of spiritual wickednesses will cast down: because man has then only true peace and true freedom when the flesh is ruled by the judgment of the mind, and the mind is directed by the will of God. And although this state of preparedness, dearly-beloved, should always be maintained that our ever-watchful foes may be overcome by unceasing diligence, yet now it must be the more anxiously sought for and the more zealously cultivated when the designs of our subtle foes themselves are conducted with keener craft than ever. For knowing that the most hallowed days of Lent are now at hand, in the keeping of which all past slothfulnesses are chastised, all negligences alerted for, they direct all the force of their spite on this one thing, that they who intend to celebrate the Lord’s holy Passover may be found unclean in some matter, and that cause of offence may arise where propitiation ought to have been obtained.

Leo moves from typology to psychology and anthropology now. The key is that prevailing against our (demonic) enemies is only acheived by first prevailing over the self. The image that he moves to now is less martial—or at least less agonistic as there’s no direct combat involved—and more organizational. Leo cites Gal 5:17 bringing in the familiar dichotomy between the flesh and the spirit. We need to notice a few things about this, though:

  • Leo shifts the dichotomy. The language changes from flesh vs. spirit to flesh vs. mind (animus or mens).
  • This is not a simply equation between the physical and the spiritual (or mental). Leo doesn’t get into much “will” language here but when he says, “the flesh desires one thing against the spirit, and the spirit another thing against the flesh” the desire language lets us know that this is about the will, and not just a rejection of materiality in a shallow dualistic fashion.
  • Submission of the body (or the desires of the body) to the mind and its will are preferred. But it doesn’t—and can’t—stop there. In addition, the mind and its will must be in submission, through grace, to the will of God. Supremacy of the mind alone is not enough.

So, Leo here advocates fasting as tool to assist in the process of putting the body under submission to the rational will in order to properly order the whole person, forming a strong defense against temptation.

Leo: Sermon 39.1

In former days, when the people of the Hebrews and all the tribes of Israel were oppressed for their scandalous sins by the grievous tyranny of the Philistines, in order that they might be able to overcome their enemies, as the sacred story declares, they restored their powers of mind and body by the injunction of a fast. For they understood that they had deserved that hard and wretched subjection for their neglect of God’s commands, and evil ways, and that it was in vain for them to strive with arms unless they had first withstood their sin. Therefore abstaining from food and drink, they applied the discipline of strict correction to themselves, and in order to conquer their foes, first conquered the allurements of the palate in themselves. And thus it came about that their fierce enemies and crueltaskmasters yielded to them when fasting, whom they had held in subjection when full. And so we too, dearly beloved, who are set in the midst of many oppositions and conflicts, may be cured by a little carefulness, if only we will use the same means. For our case is almost the same as theirs, seeing that, as they were attacked by foes in the flesh so are we chiefly by spiritual enemies. And if we can conquer them by God’s grace enabling us to correct our ways, the strength of our bodily enemies also will give way before us, and by our self-amendment we shall weaken those who were rendered formidable to us, not by their own merits but by our shortcomings.

The paradigm that Leo chooses with which to begin his Lenten reflections is holy war. In what appears to be a reference to 1 Samuel 7, he uses the struggle of the Israelites against the Philistines as a type for how Christians need to deal with the demonic attacks of sin: as fasting enabled the Israelites to triumph over their historical foes, so fasting will enable Christians to triumph over their spiritual foes.

A Leonine Lent

Ok—after consulting my NPNF, I have decided on a schema for holy reading for Lent. I’ll be reading through the sermons for Lent from Leo the Great as translated in the venerable NPNF series. Rather than doing a sermon a day, I’ll be doing a section a day. I’ll be posting them—so feel free to read along…

My plan is to go through all of the sermons for Lent, then to read specific sections of his Passiontide/Holy Week sermons to fill out the rest of the time. I’m doing selections because, while they contain many gems of spiritual wisdom, Leo the Great’s sermons on Holy Week are an afront to Christian charity and partake deeply of the sin of anti-Semitism.

I’m not being overly sensitive here lest you wonder—he says some really vile things.

As a result, I’ll not be meditating on the more offensive sections as their only value towards edification is in examining the depths of our own sin and seeing how sin has entrenched itself within our ecclesial institutions.  While I do think there is value in this, enough of his anti-Semitism remains in sections that I will be present that we will have an opportunity to name it, condemn it, and—hopefully—root out similar failings on our own lives…

That having been said, Leo was termed “the Great” for a reason and is a tremendous preacher. In particular, Leo is strong on the disciplines of penitence, explaining how the three great Lenten disciplines of fasting, almsgiving, and prayer interrelate and lead us to a deeper following of Christ.

We start on Ash Wednesday.

On the Apostolic Succession

St Irenaeus, the second century Father who wrote against heretics, and the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral, a nineteenth century agreement on what makes Anglicans Anglicans, have something in common. Here’s the most relevant part of the latter which can be found in full in your Book of Common Prayer:

But furthermore, we do hereby affirm that the Christian unity . . .can be restored only by
the return of all Christian communions to the principles of unity exemplified by the
undivided Catholic Church during the first ages of its existence; which principles we believe
to be the substantial deposit of Christian Faith and Order committed by Christ and his
Apostles to the Church unto the end of the world, and therefore incapable of compromise
or surrender by those who have been ordained to be its stewards and trustees for the
common and equal benefit of all men.

As inherent parts of this sacred deposit, and therefore as essential to the restoration of unity
among the divided branches of Christendom, we account the following, to wit:

1. The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as the revealed Word of God.

2. The Nicene Creed as the sufficient statement of the Christian Faith.

3. The two Sacraments,–Baptism and the Supper of the Lord,–ministered with unfailing use of Christ’s words of institution and of the elements ordained by Him.

4. The Historic Episcopate, locally adapted in the methods of its administration to the varying needs of the nations and peoples called of God into the unity of His Church.

Both Irenaeus and the Quadrilateral affirm that it’s not enough to hold a canon of books. Because, as postmodern theory will happy demonstrate, reading requires some hermeneutical guidelines if the purpose in reading is to find shared meaning. A classic case from the patristic period is the Gnostic tract On the Origin of the World which is a very creative reading of the Garden of Eden story wherein God is the evil demiurge and the serpent is, of course, Jesus… Reading communities, therefore need guidelines. The guard against readings like these is the regula fidei, the rule of faith, which we find embodied in our creeds. But creeds will only get you so far. And this, I submit, is where the third item, the apostolic succession or (in the words of the Quadrilateral) the Historic Episcopate becomes necessary.

What exactly is this for and why is it necessary?

I’ll suggest that it has two main purposes that flow from the apostolic age. First, it was a means of enuring that the bishop you were inviting into your midst really did know what the heck he was talking about. In an age of wandering preachers and evangelists, local churches needed some kind of assurance that the preacher who turned up on their doorstep was someone who should be trusted and who was rooted in the faith. Apostolic succession means that we know who your teacher was, and his teacher, and so on back to the apostles themselves. The point is that you didn’t dream up your spiritual teaching in a cave somewhere (or by the shores of the Black Sea…) and decide to call it Christianity. Rather, you had been taught, trained, and sent out by those who really knew what they were talking about. Irenaeus himself shows us how this worked. He studied at the feet of Polycarp who in turn sat at the feet of John the Elder. He can thus certify that his grasp of the faith is a legitimate one. Yes, bishops can depart from this teaching (can you think of any? Hmm… ) but for the most part, this was a fairly secure way of working.

Second, the succession isn’t just about teaching, it’s also about the transmission of spiritual power. Scripture tells us of the apostolic laying on of hands that conveyed the Holy Spirit to those set apart for leadership. How this transmission of the Spirit differs from the transmission of the Spirit in Baptism is entirely unclear in Scripture, and this raises issues later…

So, in nuce, apostolic succession is the assurance that the people raised up as bishops have a solid grasp of the faith as transmitted from the beginning and receive a share of the Holy Spirit passed by the apostles to those who are leaders in the Church.

These three safeguards are the marks of the church: the canon, the creeds, the apostolic succession.

To use the case that YF mentioned below, Mormons fail on all three counts: they receive Scriptures other than the Old and New Testaments, they do not hold the creeds, and they do not follow in apostolic succession.

So how about Lutherans…? They hold the first two—but what about the third? Bishops only moved to the Lutheran cause in Sweden; in Germany, Denmark and other places there was a break in succession from bishop to bishop for the early Lutherans had no bishops. Luther declared them theologically unnecessary. In a famous statement Luther declared that by Baptism and its granting of the Spirit any Christian is priest, bishop, and pope and that the priesthood marked a difference in roles rather than in ontology. Lutherans (at least, those who care about such things) understand themselves to remain in apostolic succession in that they believe that their faith and practice is in consonance with the faith and practice of the apostles. Remember, the Lutheran and other Reformation orders of service were not simply rejections of Roman cult—they were also attempts to get back to the basics of apostolic practice as seen in the texts of Scripture. (If I recall correctly, the writings of Irenaeus did not become widely available until a point in the midst of the Protestant controversy.)

Now, the reason I bring all of this up is to engage the question of Christian belief. Is it explicitly or implicitly stated in the writings of the Fathers that there is content to the “faith once delivered to the saints” that goes beyond the creeds folded into the notion of apostolic succession? Or, is there an agreement that the bishops hand on a more general Christian ethos—one that is subject to variation based on the cultures in which the Gospel is taking root?

For what it’s worth, the Anglican Fathers of the nineteenth century cited above didn’t seem to think something more comprehensive was included therein identifying: “The Nicene Creed as the sufficient statement of the Christian Faith

Unity and Diversity in Early Christianity

In response to yesterday’s post and continuing the discussion on this off-site post by the Rev. Coggin, let me say that we need to recognize a few important facts.

First, yes, there was diversity of thought in Early Christianity. Just like there was in Medieval Christianity. Just like there is in Modern Christianity. Historical distance often has a flattening effect leading to all sorts of over-generalizations about what was or was not believed in various times and places–especially if we try and lump several centuries and many thousand square miles containing different languages, cultures, societies, etc. into one little box.

Second, we scholars of the New Testament and Early Christianity can and have identified quite a number of different theological trajectories in the writings of the New Testament and in the writings of the Early Church. The field of New Testament scholarship has, for most of its life, existed as a subfield within the History of Ideas. As such, it has focused on who came up with what ideas when and how these were then transmitted. This means that the methodological focus of the field is on teasing out, separating, and isolating various theological themes. The key word here is “isolating”. It’s much easier to tease out a singe theme than to understand how it operated within an organic whole and related to a constellation of ideas around it. Since the separating task is logically and pragmatically prior to a synthetic task, it receives most of the focus. Axiom: it’s a lot easier to tease distinctions out than to weave them back together!

Indeed, we in the field have a mania for drawing out distinctions. There are schools of scholars who have identified as many as five different strata in Q—a hypothetical work that we’re not certain even existed… With the recent trends that combine redaction and social scientific methods, independent communities are posited for every single theological trajectory that someone thinks they can detect in a group of texts. Or even in a single text. The much learned and well-respect Ray Brown took this entirely over the top in his Community of the Beloved Disciple which attempted to map out a complex history of the Johannine community based on little clues sprinkled in the Gospel and Epistles of John that may or may not signal what he suggested they did.

Another mania that we find especially in the left-wing of the Third Quest for the Historical Jesus (best represented by the Jesus Seminar, Burton Mack, Marcus Borg, et al.) is an evangelical Arianism that is ever on the lookout for texts or communities (or communities implied by texts) that didn’t consider Jesus divine. A classic example is how scholars view the Epistle of James. Some will tell you it represents a community that didn’t think Jesus was divine (as claimed by Rev. Coggin). A more accurate reading will reflect that it’s not an issue discussed by the text. A close reading of the text notes the equation between God and Christ in the first verse—remarkably similar to how Paul uses it—and the appearance of “our Lord Jesus Christ the Glorious” in 2:1. No, James doesn’t come out and say: “My community and I believe that Jesus was divine in just that way that Ecumenical Councils will decide he was in the coming centuries”. However, the use of what appear to be common formula with someone like Paul who does explicitly discuss the divinity of Jesus, makes the anti-divine position much harder to sustain.

Third, the whole project of teasing out distinctions sometimes fails to note what seem to be cases of dialogue between items of different “trajectories” Take, for instance, the Book of James (since we’re thinking about it already…). James discusses the issue of faith and works. How interesting—Paul also discusses faith and works especially in Galatians. So what do we have here—two texts that independently take differing positions on a major issue of the faith? Two texts that stand in polemic opposition? Or two texts that offer correctives to one another? Those who prefer to emphasizes the diversity will suggest that we have polemic opposition. Let’s not forget, however, that we find the two books bound into the same canon… Whatever their intent (and I don’t think the texts present definitive clues one way or the other), the retention of both signals that the broader community decided that they could and should be read together. Rev. Coggin states that this Jewish Christian group “loathed” Paul. But I don’t think the text of James supports that. (How the writer of Revelation felt is a different and open question but even there we have hints that can be read as against Paul but nothing clear or definitive.) Yes, there was diversity—but not necessarily antagonistic disagreement. Remember, the church settled on our four different gospels—but only four—by the time of Irenaeus in the mid-second century. Several different theological strands can still be united in faith and practice.

Fourth the notion of diversity sometimes presented—and certainly presented in Rev. Coggin’s text—fails to recognize that the early church itself made distinctions about what kind of diversity was permissible and what was not. The text of the NT itself reflects distinctions between true and false teachers. The very earliest texts that we have (Paul’s letters) display an awareness that there are boundaries to Christian belief. When I approach a text as a New Testament scholar interested in uncovering the history of ideas connected to Christianity in the early empire I draw no distinction between texts on the basis of “orthodoxy”. When I approach a text as a believing Anglican looking for ways to understand my faith and how my ancestors in the faith understood their faith, these distinctions do come into play.

When I look at the texts, I find an urgency and an emphasis on the truth of the incarnation—that Jesus came in the flesh. And, I see a number of passages that seem to me to be creedal formulations that concern themselves with a divine incarnate, enfleshed, Jesus. As we move from the first to the second century, these solidify. Both Tertullian and Irenaeus present clear creedal statements. Also, the baptismal creeds that we’re familiar with (like the Apostles’ Creed) appear then. Finally, as we move further, the creeds become the normative method for setting theological boundaries.

As far as I can see, this is the intent of “the faith once delivered to the saints”. That is, “the faith” as a body of content is the set of boundaries that focus on who and what Christ is—and is not.

I could say more but I think I’ll stop here for now…

Words of the Fathers

“I am resolved to avoid every meeting of bishops, for I have never seen any synod end well, nor assuage rather than aggravate disorders.”

–St. Gregory Nazianzen, Ep. ad Procop., Migne, Pat. Græc., No. cxxx.