Category Archives: Patristics

Further Thoughts on Preaching

In the continuing discussion on preaching and originality (begun here and continued here), I have another piece to add from a comment M made while working on a sermon for Trinity.

She reminded me that it is often in the context of writing and attempting to communicate to others we both do our intellectual work and the theological synthesis that connects our studies and meditations with embodied life.

This is an important piece of the puzzle especially when the daily grind of parish ministry seems to devalue intellectual and contemplative work.

Again, I think there’s much attractive about working from patristic and other models for our proclamation. But this observation cuts to one of the things that makes me uncomfortable about it. Bringing up the riches of the past for the edification of our current congregations should not become an excuse to avoid the intellectual and contemplative work–and it certainly doesn’t have to. I fear with most of the Internet borrowing, though, it does… If the integrative work is not done, the priests own spiritual growth and depth suffers and when that happens, it impoverishes the congregation as well.

On Kneeling in Easter

One of the major changes that the American ’79 BCP wrought was a look Eastward. The mainstream of BCP tradition was that of the Western Church as filtered through the Sarum Rite. Furthermore, the previous great movement towards Big-T Tradition–the various parts of the Anglo-Catholic movement–took the high medieval West as their paradigm. Something that I’ve heard from the time I started frequenting Episcopal Churches is that you don’t kneel during Easter. But what I’ve observed at many traditional churches–and even at a few liberal ones–is that the common culture is to kneel during the prayers of the People and after the Sanctus as usual.

We ran into this on Sunday. The congregation was split from what I could tell…

I’ve been told that the move to not kneel in Easter is an ancient decision of the Church codified in the Ecumenical Councils of which–according to Andrewes’ dictum–we recognize the first four (though most Anglo-Catholics retain the first seven…). I have to admit a certain degree of suspicion here, though. One of the things I’ve noted in the VII revision and its Protestant offspring is a desire to de-emphasize the penitential and to emphasize the joy and rejoicing throughout the Christian year. Insofar as this is a reaction against an overly sober and somber way of being the people of God, I’d agree. But, like many things, I want to make sure the pendulum doesn’t swing to far. Get too far on the other side and we capitulate to the cultural message that we’re all just fine the way we are, no repenting, no introspection, no cultivation of virtue needed (and when in doubt, blame somebody else…). So I got curious about this and thought I’d look it up…

Now, what I had in mind was John Cassian’s comments. This is what he says in the Conferences:

But it is now time to follow out the plan of the promised
discourse. So then when Abbot Theonas had come to visit us in our cell during
Eastertide after Evensong was over we sat for a little while on the ground and
began diligently to consider why they were so very careful that no one should
during the whole fifty days either bend his knees in prayer or venture to fast
till the ninth hour, and we made our inquiry the more earnestly because we had
never seen this custom so carefully observed in the monasteries of Syria. (Conf. XXI.11)

What I’ve taken away from this is that not kneeling during Easter was a custom assiduously observed among the desert monastic communities in Egypt–but apparently not in Palestine and maybe other places as well (Rome?).

In essence, this seems to recommend what I’ve received, to wit, not kneeling during Easter was an ancient custom practiced in the time of the Fathers particularly in the East.

So far, so good.

But then there’s the reference to the Ecumenical Councils… Here’s what we find in the canons of the First Ecumenical Council in Nicea:

Canon XX

Forasmuch as there are certain
persons who kneel on the Lord’s Day and in the days of Pentecost,
therefore, to the intent that all things may be uniformly observed
everywhere (in every parish), it seems good to the holy Synod that
prayer be made to God standing.

Ancient Epitome of Canon XX.

On Lord’s days and at Pentecost all must pray
standing and not kneeling. (First Ecumenical Council, Canon XX)

[As a note, it must be said that “Pentecost” was used as the name of the season between the Day of Resurrection and the Day of Pentecost (cf Tertullian).]

Hmmm… This does mention not kneeling during the whole 50 days–but also on every Sunday! While I’ve heard the first part of the custom proclaimed, I’ve not heard this–nor would I want to, really. I find kneeling to be a very effective way of kinesthetically experience the liturgy and it does help the proper attitude of supplication. I think the key to remember here is the principle of balance. This canon assumes a culture of near constant liturgical activity with numerous prostrations every single day. For them, then, not kneeling or prostrating themselves was a celebratory shift from a more penitential norm. But that’s so not our case… When I say the Office by myself I sit, not kneel, and in my experiences of the Office in community at Smokey Mary we didn’t kneel either. For us to obey the canon’s letter seems to miss its spirit in terms of kneeling and prostrations.

The canon’s explicit spirit isn’t about kneeling, though. It’s about liturgical uniformity. I find this interesting particularly in light of Cassian’s comments above: he was writing about a hundred years after Nicea… Whatever uniformity the council hoped to establish didn’t take.

So where does that leave us? Well, it means that:

  • there is ancient Eastern precedent for not kneeling in Easter (Egypt)
  • but also ancient Eastern precedent for kneeling (Syria/Palestine).
  • There’s also Western precedent for kneeling in Easter.
  • An appeal made to the Council seems specious on a few grounds.
    • First, it makes a really selective reading that undercuts the authority of the canon.
    • Second, the canon seems to make sense within a very different liturgical environment than we have today.
    • Third, the canon attempts to create–or impose–a liturgical uniformity that did not obtain throughout the Church.

So, if you’re going to try and use this custom in your parish, it’s really not a good idea to appeal to the council. (Here’s where my earlier suspicions come in to play about motive…) Furthermore, competing precedents show no clear voice on the matter from the practice of the early church. There’s no reason why, all other things being equal, East should trump West.

My personal feeling? Actually, I think I’m for not kneeling during Easter…(but for kneeling the rest of the time, naturally). I think our current problem in the church is forgetting that Easter is fifty days long. We are able to remember that Lent is forty days, but have misplaced the fact that Easter is fifty… Things like using the Pascha Nostrum as the invitatory at Morning Prayer and standing at Mass do actually help with this by shifting our routine for the length of the season. But we should teach accordingly–that is, tell people why we’re doing it and how it ties in with a proper and joyful remembrance of the resurrection…which is the point of this whole exercise anyway…

On Monastic Interpretation

A junior colleague of mine stopped me in the hall after a class we teach together and wanted to get my advice on the history of New Testament interpretation. He’s in the usual graduate seminar that surveys such things. Now, my program is such that it actually gives an entire semester to the pre-Reformation history of interp. I don’t think most other programs do this, considering such “pre-critical” readings as not useful for modern NT scholars. Anyway, he’s been assigned to present on medieval monastic interp and want to pick my brain for a bit. His first question was essentially that which any NT scholar would ask: “They’re just reading the Fathers and using that, right?”

My answer was a classic yes–but no. It took a while…

In the aftermath, I was thinking through how I would go about teaching medieval monastic exegesis to try and communicate just what was going on. Here’re some initial thoughts:

  • Give them a sense of monastic life as life within an intentional liturgical community.
    • Yes, have the students read the section in the Rule on the Offices to give them a sense of Benedict’s concept of the monastic cursus.
    • Then, have them read a corresponding section from the 10th century Regularis Concordia to show them how different and how much more complicated the monastic liturgical life was than Benedict had ever envisioned.
    • Then give them some photocopies from the Breviary to reinforce that a) all liturgy is not just your Sunday morning liturgy; b) Scripture is constantly in juxtaposition with other Scripture and with non-Scriptural texts; c) this is far more complex in practice than it sounds.
  • Give them a sense not just that the patristic authors were used but how and in what contexts
    • Remind them about manuscript production costs, then emphasize and re-emphasize that the monastics didn’t have the Patrologia Latina at hand. Or even the Ante/Post Nicene Fathers. No–Paul the Deacon’s homiliary for the Night Office & Cassiodorus on the Psalms really were the sources for 90% of what 90% of medieval monks knew of the Fathers.
    • Yes, some monks probably read the Fathers for study material but the paradigmatic encounter with them was in the liturgical setting. The sermons, homilies, or commentary extracts would be interrupted four times for responsaries thematically tying the third Nocturn back into the main biblical content of the first Nocturn as determined by the liturgical season… The main point being: their encounter with the patristic interpretation was in a far different setting than either ours or even the works’ original contexts–and that would effect how they would hear it.
    • Have them read a homily by Bede or Gregory–then have them read the corresponding “adaptation” by somebody like Aelfric. Highlight, too, that what was on the page was not necessarily what was heard…
  • Give them a sense that biblical interpretation in this setting is not fundamentally about data and information. Rather, it was about experiencing the text and its transformative potential through an elaborate and interconnected system designed for this purpose.
    • This is underscored and reinforce by how the many lectionary cycles fit together. The way (as I was saying before) the Mass Epistle shows up in the versicles & responses for the Little Hours and verses from the Mass Gospel appear as the Canticle antiphons through the week…
    • Guiding and directing a lot of this is the liturgical year. The seasons themselves are interpretations of biblical events and texts and the texts within the seasons were chosen to fit within them–but, at the same time, their actual content nuances the meaning of the seasons. Furthermore certain kinds of interpretive material either appear or disappear based on the season…

It’s complicated. And, in many ways, this is my chapter 3–to lay all of this out in a (more or less) comprehensible fashion.

One of the major themes that I see running through my pedagogical attempts is interpretation and appropriation through recontextualization. That is, yeah, they used patristic material–but in a different way from which it was intended which has the effect of altering its purpose so the same text is acting in a new way and producing a new result.

Another major theme I see is reinforcing the alien nature of the interpretive culture. This kind of interpretation is not about a guy at a desk with a book. Its about a communal experience and embodiment of the text. There’s a reason why so much of the monastic exegesis can be classified as “moral”–it’s because a major focus was not on “thinking thoughts” about the text but rather on how to put the text into practice. Maybe what we label the “moral sense” might be better labeled “the sense capable of being embodied”…

 

Lent and Atonement Theories

As Holy Week progresses some blogs (Fr. Jake among others) are visiting the usual theologies of the atonement. Responses tend to fall along fairly predictable lines…

So–I’ll throw something completely different in the mix but in a similar vein: a thought about Lent. As you know, the First Sunday in Lent always features the Temptation account. Under the old system it was always Matt 4:1-11. Gregory’s sermon is a fascinating one. He skips his usual line-by-line approach, preferring instead a more thematic approach. What he does is to talk about the Fall in the Garden. Adam, he says, fell prey to three temptations and so humanity fell under the devil’s control. By way of contrast, Christ–the second Adam–was tempted not in a garden but in a wasteland. There he faced the same three tests but instead of being overcome, overcame. Christ in that exchange conquer the devil’s three greatest temptations by purely human means, preeminently in the correct and appropriate interpretation of Scripture.

By constructing his interpretation this way, Gregory shows the temptation episode to be one of Christ’s salvific acts. While it may not be atonement in the conventional sense, it certainly does cut to God’s victory over the devil and the liberation of humanity. Furthermore, it highlights the salvific acts that occurred throughout Christ’s life–not just at the end.

Think on these things, on the imitation of Christ and the cultivation of virtue in these final days before Triduum…

Update:  More people have jumped in on this conversation on other blogs. I just want to hold one minor thing up for our recollection… We’re the Episcopal Church, right? The one where it’s often said that we have no fixed theology, we just agree to worship with the same texts? Yeah, well, whenever things heat up between the substitutionary atonement and moral influence crowds, I like to remind them that there really is a classical Anglican position on this and here it is:

Almighty God, who has given thine only Son to be unto us both a sacrifice for sin, and also an ensample of godly life; Give us grace that we may always most thankfully receive that his inestimable benefit, and also daily endeavour ourselves to follow the blessed steps of his most holy life; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

That from the 1662 BCP, appointed for the Second Sunday of Easter. You’ll find in in the ’79 book at Proper 15…

Dissertation Work

Things have progressed to the point where I’ve been able to designate some brain cycles to dissertation work again. (I’ve had it–it *will* be finished by the end of the summer if it kills me. So far the odds are 50-50.)

Whereas before I started with more methodological stuff, I’ve dived into Æ’s sermons directly. What this has helped me see is that some of the stuff I pruned out before absolutely has to be put back into my re-formed chapters 2 and 3. Fr. Director thought that some of my work on patristic homilies was smoke-chasing; I’ve determined that it’s completely critical to the project.

Traditionally, early medieval homileticians have been accused of simple plagiarism. Indeed, Henri De Lubac’s only comment on Æ

is that he is a plagiarist of Gregory’s work. Rather, my work on the patristic material identifies not simply content but method and the purpose that derives from the method. What this let me do is to look at Æ’s sermons and to show that while, yes, he is recycling some content, he is using it in a very different way and with its own quite distinct method that throws light on what an early medieval preacher thought that he was creating.

My use of the Breviary has also been helpful. I now know I need to revisit some of my earlier liturgical work and look for some new evidence in different places.