Author Archives: Derek A. Olsen

AAR/SBL Meet-up

M and I are looking forward to San Diego very much. It’ll be the first trip without kids since we’ve had kids… It’s a wonderful destination by all accounts and our hotel sounds great! We’re imagine some nice meals without children, sleeping without said children or cat waking us up or hogging the bed (that’d be the cat…), and generally spending some quality time together amidst going to the book room, sessions, receptions, the book room, and such. And did I mention the book room? (In previous years this is normally where we’ve run into AKMA…)

In view of the fact that this is a place to meet people, network, etc., M has graciously relinquished Sunday lunch from just being “us” time and we’ll do a meet-up for those interested.

I’ve never done one of these events before let alone “hosted” one so I’m not entirely sure of the protocol. In terms of both convenience and budget, I’m thinking that if there is a foot court/feeding area in the main hotel that should be our venue. I’ll say 12 arbitrarily as I don’t have a schedule in front of me to know if that’s a logical time or not. Please leave logistical suggestions in the comments if you know of a good way to arrange all of this. In any case, if you’re interested and available, shoot me an email at the address listed on the side-bar so I have an idea of how many we’re looking at.

Musing on Sacraments and Saints

Here’s a thought I’ve been rolling around a bit recently: The higher your sacramental theology, the more necessary it becomes that you have a robust theology of the saints.

That is, if we understand Baptism as a true joining of the self into the reality of God through Jesus, then we must (or perhaps “should”?) take more seriously our mystical connection with our fellow baptized. If we understand Eucharist as the share of the one bread that joins us in the one Body (as 1 Cor speaks about it) then—again—our relation to the “communion of the Saints” is that much more important. In essence, we must posit a stronger eschatological bond between the members of the Body.

But, a thoughtful evangelical student pushed me on this when I mentioned it in a class discussion of the saints: does this mean that a sacramentally higher church has a “better” understanding of Christian community than a sacramentally lower church? Furthermore, does it necessarily have a better embodiment of Christian community?

My answer was that it is not necessarily better—it is just different. I think it can be said that a higher sacramental theology requires a less individualistic understanding of spirituality and salvation—but does it play out this way in reality? And in how we embody our theologies communally?

Martinmas

Once again Martinmas has rolled around. It means that a new year is waiting in the wings, ready to get underway. As the signal-day for the old six-week version of Advent, we’re reminded to locate our Year 2 Office materials and to find some decent selections for our Advent hymnody. Yes, some suggestions may even be forth-coming in the next few days as I start casting about myself…

St. Martin is one of the great heroes of Gallican monasticism so this is a good time to recall some of the other monuments from that source and to point you to the famous Life of Martin: these can be conveniently found together in this volume (which happens to be one of my favorites in the whole set…). In addition to the importance of Gallican monasticism, the Life of Martin became a template of sorts that, in conjunction with Athanasius’s Life of Antony, set a pattern for Western hagiography that blossomed in the centuries that followed.

I said a while ago that I would take a break from documenting our ongoing inter-Anglican feud until today. The time off has been good for me. While I may comment on such matters, I don’t see them occupying a whole lot of space here—I’d rather use it for something edifying instead…

Great Find by bls

…well, ok, great if you’re an Anglo-Saxon liturgy geek… (so maybe “invaluable” is a little extreme, but since I don’t have consistent access to Milfull you have no idea how helpful this is to my dissertation.)

bls directs us to the Anglo-Saxon Hymnarium produced by the Surtees Society under the editorship of the Rev. J. Stephenson reprinted as the volume for 1851. (Here’s the alphabetical index if you want to check for any particular hymns. [Important note: this text contains only the Latin and the Old English gloss. It does not contain modern English translations/paraphrases/equivalents.])

What this means is that yes, it contains a transcription of the Durham Hymnal; no, it does not necessarily follow current editorial standards–caveat lector! So, for basic information this is a great reference to have sitting on your hard-drive; for academic citation, go look it up in Milfull first.

This is also helpful and fascinating for those with an interest in the history of the Ritualist/Anglo-Catholic movements. In terms of “what did they know and when did they know it”, this date establishes the available presence of a classical Anglo-Saxon hymn cycle before the first publication of Hymns Ancient and Modern (TOC here) which first appeared in 1861 (in planning since 1858) and which included some Anglo-Saxon options in the Sarum Office Hymn list of 1904.

For the Aelfric folk in the crowd, there are some interesting connections between the Durham Hymnal and Aelfric. For instance, I believe that the Hymnal was bound with an edition of Aelfric’s Grammar—which may make the glossing that much more interesting since his grammar included a glossary (a list of Latin words and their Old English equivalents). When the two texts were bound together I cannot answer and should look up… Furthermore, the order of hymns in this hymnal can be compared with the list that Aelfric gives in the Letter to the Monks at Eynsham the temporal cycle of which I mostly reproduced here. IIRC, they are similar but by no means identical (reminding us once again of the inevitable variation in medieval liturgy).

Christian Chastity

Christopher has posted some very helpful observations on the the current Anglican issues. No, I’m not getting into those now, rather, he makes an important point in the realm of theology and morals that bears being lifted up.

Much of the struggle is focused on what constitutes acceptable sexual morality for Christians; that is, how do we employ our human sexual urges in light of the resurrection and the call of the Gospel?

The chief battleground seems to be the “traditional” mores most often defined by saying the only acceptable context for the expression of sexuality is in a lifelong marriage between one man and one woman. The Episcopal Left has called for moving from this standard; the Episcopal Right is for maintaining it. These things are well known.

The reason why I put “traditional” in scare-quotes above is because Christopher is lifting up something in Fr. Haller’s recent writings that I have also noted in my patristic and scriptural studies. “Traditional” Christian sexual ethics are far more complicated than one man and one woman. For quite a while it was assumed that the correct Christian moral stance was celibacy. For everyone. Don’t trust tradition? That’s fine—it’s in Scripture too. Check 1st Corinthians for starters. Marriage between one man and one woman wasn’t the ideal—it was the tolerated lesser of two options.

Furthermore, Jesus never promotes marriage—he just says that divorce is a bad deal. The best the Church Fathers could do was to note that Jesus attended the wedding at Cana thus showing he didn’t actively oppose the institution. Less well known in our day, however, is their identification of the apostolic evangelist John as the bridegroom—who, upon seeing the miracle of the water turned to wine, left behind his bride in their never-consummated marriage and lived his long life as a virgin. (Ælfric refers to this quite a number of times throughout his corpus, for example, as part of his argument for clerical celibacy…)

What I see Christopher doing is something that I haven’t seen the Episcopal Left do—at least not well. They propose doing away with current standards but I have not heard them talk in a clear and compelling manner about what should take their place. Christopher’s answer is to return to the virtue ethics inhabited by both Paul and the Fathers and to ask us to consider once again the meaning of Christian chastity.

The central hallmark of Christian chastity as found again and again in both Testaments of the canon is covenant faithfulness. Time and again, Scripture uses the metaphor of God the husband and Israel the bride; time and again the problem is infidelity and promiscuity—egregious breaches of the covenant. The images in Ephesians and Revelation of the Church as the bride of Christ participate fully within this thematic trajectory. The Church must be faithful to Christ her spouse and not be as Babylon. Christian marriage is acceptable in so far as it models the relationship between Christ and his Church and thus marked by self-giving love and fidelity—constancy.

Christian chastity is yet another virtue which—to my mind—is only capable of being cultivated within classical Benedictine lines: it can only flourish in an environment marked by stability, obedience, and conversion of life.

This, friends, this is the direction in which our discussion needs to move. What are the practices that faithfully reflect Christian chastity and how do we as congregations help engender and enable Christian chastity for those within our walls and common life?

Incense

Here’s a good incense source from NLM.

Take particular note of the first comment. The charcoal used is critical. Many people (and choirs in masse) are under the impression that they are allergic to incense. Some of them actually are—but most are not. Rather, they have a reaction to bad charcoal! The self-lighting stuff will work in a pinch, but should not be used for a proper liturgy. Smokey Mary’s smoke room has an electric table-top burner on which they light up regular briquettes of Kingsford to stoke the thuribles there. I’d even go the extra step and get natural, less-processed charcoal. This can be obtained rather easily at places like Whole Foods.

All the hypoallergenic incense in the world will not help if you are burning it on bad charcoal…

Office Music Posts

In lieu of substantive content, I’ll point you to those who have it…

bls has discovered a cool music search tool and has been busily putting it to work. Here’s a first post on Office Hymns and mp3s; here’s a second.

On bls’s topic—the search for tunes that fit the Office Hymn texts—I’ve been intending for a while now to scan and post the hymnal of the Order of Julian of Norwich; Fr. John-Julian created a number of fresh translations and adaptations of the classical material and fit them to traditional tunes in square notation chant. Unfortunately, every time I think I have time to start on it something else intervenes…

Fr. Chris offers up a good review of this attractive—yet pricey—book.

Maybe if we beg nicely, Scott and others will add their wisdom to this topic as well…

Brief Notes

  • Halloween was great! The girls were really cute and M did an amazing job decorating the house. I may post some pictures once I get them out of the camera.
  • I had a post brewing on the importance of All Souls—but then the Lutheran Zephyr posted a nice piece that drew on something I wrote a few years ago. No use being a broken record so I’ll just refer you there…
  • Life is on rocket rails until the end of the semester; posting will continue to be light.
  • Who all will M and I see at the Society of Biblical Literature meeting this year?

Life

Life is, at the moment, kicking us around a bit–especially M. So if y’all could spare some prayers I’d appreciate it. And if you know her IRL, an email/phone-call/get-together would be greatly appreciated…