Shrewd as Serpents

I have refrained for quite a while from commenting on Anglican affairs, but the time has come to speak my piece.

The presenting topic is, of course, the Jerusalem Declaration, but I think it worth the time to step back and take a bigger picture view of what is going on. I will, however, begin with that document.

The Jerusalem Declaration is the declaration that the emperor—or archbishop, rather—has no clothes. That is, regardless of whether the Archbishop of Canterbury has the power or authority to discipline, the declaration challenges whether he has the will to discipline. It makes sense from their perspective: after begging him for five years to discipline the American and Canadian Churches, they have decided that they, in like fashion, will go ahead and do what pleases them, emboldened by the complete lack of consequences to us.

Technically speaking, a schism has not occurred in that no-one has broken with Canterbury—they’ve simply declared him irrelevant. Pittsburgh will still be leaving; Fort Worth will still be leaving. No doubt Quincy and others will soon attempt to follow. Parish departures will increase. While schism has not happened I think we’ll find that the incursions of foreign prelates will increase in the coming months.

Which will call forth a response… Yes, the GAFCON crowd has been shrewd—but they are not alone in their shrewdness.

At a particular point—and I’m sure a careful review of news stories could tell you exactly when, one or more liberal Episcopalians discovered an interesting use of antitrust law. They determined that the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation could be used as leverage. In a nutshell (from a non-lawyer here), this legislation means that, in order to prevent Enron-type malfeasance, a much wider group of people are responsible for checking on what the organization as a whole is doing. In nonprofit circles, it means that the board is also liable if a president is up to something untoward. Within our little circle, the interested parties realized that these laws could be used to apply leverage to bishops; if they negotiated with dissidents and did something like—say—selling them their property at fair market value, they could be sued for breach of fiduciary responsibility.

Now, whether a threat of this sort was actually made or whether it was simply detected, I don’t know. What I do know is that dioceses in negotiations abruptly ended them at roughly the same time and embarked on a national policy of litigation.

So many people are being so shrewd these days—by my reckoning too shrewd by half.

Litigation won’t help me. It won’t help us. Rather, it reminds me what’s at the bottom of all this. I’m sorry, but I really don’t think this is about “inclusion” or about the “authority of Scripture”, or even about the “faith once delivered”. Some in the pews may see it that way, but at the end of the day the sense that I get is that this is about whose clique calls the shots. I see it as a power game, pure and simple. And that’s what makes me most angry. I see two groups at the highest levels in a pissing contest that has pulled in the entire Anglican world. We’re burning through literally millions of dollars in big international gatherings and conferences and lawsuits while we stand on the brink of something much bigger and much more dangerous.

America is heading into a recession. Of that I have no doubt. And, if the peak oil people are right—and I’m becoming more and more persuaded that they are—than it will be longer, harder, and deeper than anything we’ve seen in a very long time. There are going to be a lot of people who will need help: covering rent, covering bills, families who have lost jobs, houses, and hope. How much do our squabbles and litigations cost when measured out in bags of flour and gallons of milk?

Not only will we need money to face the challenges of social change, we’ll also need grounding. We’ll need a rooted, grounded faith to proclaim as everything else is shifting.

How are we doing there?

Today is the first day that Seabury-Western officially has no faculty. Bexley Hall is collapsing back into rented quarters at a Lutheran school and EDS is selling off buildings. Not exactly hopeful for the well-trained clergy of tomorrow… How much do our squabbles and litigations cost when measured out in faculty salaries or credit hours?

I’m not happy with our leadership—and I don’t see these trends reversing anytime soon. But I’m not going anywhere. I’ve already swum the Channel from the Lutherans and could plausibly head across some other body of water but I’ve burnt my ships. I’m staying put and the church will have to deal with it.

Caelius may say he’s wondering what to do, but I think he already knows—at least the outlines—and I do too. There’s no point in waiting for the pointy-hats to come around. Lay people and local people need to:

  1. Rediscover the Book of Common Prayer. As a broadly catholic and evangelical document, the Prayer Book in its many forms holds together the essentials of our theology, our doctrine, and the necessarily disciplines of a robust spiritual life.
  2. Teach the Book of Common Prayer. We cannot rely too much on the clergy. Clergy are already swamped with what they do and, frankly, not all have been blessed with the gifts to teach and inspire others with regard to our basic documents and history. And no, you can’t teach the prayer book with out simultaneously teaching Scripture, history, and theology—they all flow together.
  3. Recover Practical Rhythms of Life. A deeply grounded spirituality does not happen apart from regular ol’ life as we know it. Spiritual rhythms are sustainable rhythms. And that goes back to knowing who and what you are and where your priorities lie.
  4. Recover Communities of Faith as Communities of Practice. Modern Americans are notorious for rejecting social opportunities (the Bowling Alone phenomenon). And yet, churches are places where people gather and form a community in spite of themselves. As things get worse—whether short term or long term—local communities will become more important. People and communities weather crises best when supported by effective habits and disciplines. The time to get these up and going is now, not later. Do things together. Do things that instill healthy, simple, practical practices together. Does your church have a garden? Does it landscape with herbs and/or edibles? Is there a compelling reason why not? Even if the fossil fuels last another three hundred years is there a good excuse for not doing some of this now?
  5. Collect and Craft the Necessary Resources. All of the above things are good (in my eyes), but none of them are simple. They’ll take work. To do them poorly may be as bad as not doing them at all. There’s simply no point in attempting them without adequate preparation. And this is where we find ourselves now. The internet provides the perfect place to collect resources, instructions, and histories of projects successful and unsuccessful gathered into a common place. It’s time to start collecting and it’s time to start creating.

On Apocalyptic Rhetoric

Time for a quick refresher here…

Apocalyptic is a kind of rhetoric that faith communities deploy at various times and places. Here are some of its basic characteristics: It sees current situations in the life of the community as small events set within the much larger context of a cosmic battle. We’re bit players, but what we do is nevertheless quite important. It’s fundamentally dualistic—the conflict is between the forces of good and evil. There’s no grey area; you’re either with us or against us and it’s your behavior that shows which side you’re on. Things may be bad now (or in the near future) but things are about to get a whole lot worse, usually including world-wide cataclysm. There is good news, though, there is a remnant who will be saved and it’s those who are on the side of good now—who behave correctly now.

Oversimplification, of course, but this is what we see in the book of Revelation, sprinkled throughout Gregory the Great’s homilies, etc.

It’s not a purely ancient phenomenon though, and the faith communities that use it need not be religious. Ideological faith communities deploy it also. Early Communism certainly did with the narrative of the class struggle and the future paradise of the workers. Cold War America did with us against the Evil Empire with the threat of thermonuclear war hanging over it all.

It’s also alive and well today and I catch hints of it in some current discussions of peak oil—like in this broadcast that bls has up.

So, what do we make of this? I’d like to offer two points to keep us on an even keel when dealing with apocalyptic:

  1. Just because it’s apocalyptic doesn’t mean it’s wrong. Apocalyptic is a form of rhetoric designed to produce results. It uses the concept of future worldwide disaster as a means of increasing urgency and putting day-to-day often very mundane actions as important on a cosmic scale. While the urgency may be misplaced, it doesn’t mean the actions promoted are necessarily out of line.
  2. Watch the dualism. Apocalyptic tends to derive a lot of its power through the deployment of dualistic categories and this is precisely where its greatest danger lies—in the demonization of those not among the “good” or the “pure”. It’s the “if you’re not part of my solution then you’re part of the problem” mentality.

I’m all for local organic gardening and for folks raising more of their own food. I’m all about teaching my daughters what my parents taught me about gardening, weeding, canning, preserving, etc. There may indeed by a worldwide cataclysm in the coming years based on a lack of cheap oil, but that’s not what fundamentally will drive my behavior. I prefer to root it in something simpler—good stewardship of God’s world.

One of the classic debates over the last half-century in biblical studies is whether apocalyptic comes from prophecy or wisdom circles. I don’t think it matters ultimately, but one takeaway that I see is that wisdom lit often enjoins the same kind of behavior as apocalyptic, just without some of its rhetorical excess. I like to think a more moderate path of living well really is the path of wisdom…

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…

Early Christianity and Anglican Rhetoric

I’ve seen quite a few links recently heading off to a particular post at Desert’s Child but I’ve been crazy busy over the weekend and haven’t been on-line enough to check it out.

I finally did.

I’m dismayed.

I left a comment…

It’s a post that attempts to counter the Diocese of Fort Worth’s claims concerning the “faith once delivered” with an historical expose, if you will, demonstrating that such a thing (the faith once delivered) never existed. While I am also opposed to the path that DioFW is committed to, this isn’t the way to handle it.

First, it’s incorrect. There are quite a number of factual errors and misrepresentations of scholarship that undercut the point of what they’re trying to do. I am used to people getting things incorrect. I fully acknowledge that I continue to get things incorrect. But these are big things, basic things. We (clergy, lay leaders, interested informed communicants) should know the basic framework of our history. And—by and large—we don’t. I’m trying to do my bit to remedy that with my current series on Church History for the Episcopal Cafe (I’m finishing up a past-deadline piece on the Council of Nicea right now, actually), but more needs to be done.

Second, I read the overall rhetoric of the piece (and of pieces like it) as trying to defeat those they see as traditionalists by overturning and devaluing what they see as tradition. This is a fundamentally wrong-headed approach. I also see it with Scripture. Those who seek to argue against fundamentalist readings seek to overturn and devalue Scripture. Again–huge mistake. A far more proper and more helpful response is to learn more about them! In truth, most fundamentalists don’t know Scripture half as well as they’d like you to think. And the very same is true with many traditionalists as well! Tradition is not the enemy. How some deploy some portions of the tradition for their own ends is the problem.

I truly fear this binary spectrum that we Anglicans seem to have created for ourselves. It makes us do things and say things that we shouldn’t. This politically-driven use of opposites does not help us. Where it seems to be heading is that the conservatives claim Scripture and Tradition and the liberals respond by repudiating both. What’s wrong with this picture!?!

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.

Which Culture Infiltrating Which?

Doug at MetaCatholic has an interesting discussion of an anachronistic reading inadvertently committed by a significant English New Testament scholar. I see his main point being that it is very easy—even for the brightest and best educated among us—to fall into anachronistic blunders while reading the Scriptures from time to time, but the one he has identified here was much broader and deeper implications.

That is, Thisleton writes about the Corinthian correspondence concerning : “…the seductive infiltration into the Christian church of cultural attitudes derived from secular or non-Christian Corinth as a city.” After noting the odd and anachronistic equation of “secular” with “non-Christian”, Doug gets to the meat of the issue:

More seriously problematic is the idea that the church is sufficiently well established and developed for ideas to “infiltrate it” as alien, or that what Paul thinks is “church culture” and what the Corinthians think are alien cultural misperceptions. Partly the Corinthians are new converts, and conversion of mind, practice and culture is always a long drawn out and imperfect process, however impassioned the conversion of commitment and heart is. Partly Paul is one of many people trying to work out what a Christian vision is (and other equally prominent people in the new movement are articulating rather different ones).

Paul comes from a long-standing Jewish communal tradition which has considerable experience of singing the Lord’s song in strange land, and is working out how that is transformed by his Messiah Jesus. The Corinthians have no real idea they are living in a strange land, and in so far as they might think in these terms it is not an idea of being in exile, but one of being a colony, there to teach everyone else to sing the Roman song.

Finally, there is nothing other than personal charisma and persuasive argument to say who is doing any misperceiving: Paul or the Corinthians. There is no orthodoxy for the Corinthians to be seduced away from. What will later (in varying degree) become orthodox emerges in part from Paul thinking on his feet. It is not apparent to me that if the Corinthians hadn’t provoked Paul to argument, the church would ever have so strongly committed to belief in the resurrection of the body. It is equally arguable that in some historical periods aspects of the Corinthian view of the body and sex, say, have been at least as close to mainstream Christianity as Paul’s. (“It is well for a man not to touch a woman.” 1 Cor 7:1)

In short, Thiselton makes it sound as though what was happening on the ground was straightforward and obvious. I think it was a mess, in which people (especially in this context) Paul and the Corinthians are contending for the appropriate cultural forms of Christian practice and thought in a non-Jewish culture, one partly alien to Paul, in which the Corinthians are fully at home. I also think that’s much more like most of our own situations, whether in the traditional “mission-field” situation or in our very non-traditional one, where the culture has changed under our feet, and there are competing visions about how much to change with it.

Reading this particular scriptural case as the “seductive infiltration into the Christian church of cultural attitudes” encourages us to do the same today, and engage in name-calling our opponents. Me Paul, you Corinthian. I argue that the reality of what’s going on is more complex, then and now, and if we’re less anachronistic about then, we might be more constructive about now.

The last couple of paragraphs contain the pay-off—and where I’d like to head off in the direction Doug indicates. We modern Americans and Europeans live in what has been referred to as a post-Constantinian culture. And we could debate whether, when, and how these contemporary cultures are Christian, non-Christian, or anti-Christian., but I’d rather go from the other direction.

Do we know what a truly Christian culture to be manifested by the church looks like? Do we have a sense of its markers, signs, virtues, and values? To make the task easier, do we know what a liturgical Christian culture would look like with its own kalendar, ways of marking rhythms and times, and paths of virtue?

One of my mentors states that the job of theologians and religiously committed biblical scholars is to imagine the world that Scripture imagines. While I like this formulation, I think it needs rhetorical tweaking. This is how I’d define the real goal of preaching: to invite the congregation into the world that Scripture describes. “Imagine” is a good enough word, but “imagination” is too easily paired with “reality” as an antonym. An implication I’d rather avoid is that Scripture imagines what doesn’t exist in reality. I’d rather say that Scripture describes some things that are real and some things that are in the process of coming into being. There is a reality, a way of living, of thinking, of believing, of being that Scripture describes and that we experience (albeit fleetingly) in the church’s liturgies. What can we do as people in the church to coalesce these ways of being into an intentional culture that can speak with its own voice—serving when conditions require as a community of resistance?

Now let me be clear—I’m not suggesting that we cultivate a fortress mentality that pits us “enlightened saved” against the “malevolent heathen”. Nor am I envisioning a collective where we listen exclusively to Contemporary Christian Music (saints preserve us!). Attempts to describe or to be intentional about a distinctive Christian culture that have arisen in some conservative Christian movements seem both overly oppositional in some areas and unreflectively complicit in others.

Perhaps the problem is when we start with an attitude of opposition, of describing what we’re against. I’d rather see us do things like embracing the rule of life that seems to proceed from the rhythms of the Prayer Book and being both intentional and explicit about what this would look like, and starting from who we think we are than who and what we think we’re not.

I suppose where I’m actually meandering is here: perhaps we do need to begin constructing and sharing rules of life. Not as legislative documents, not as holier-than-thou checklists, but as ways of framing what it means to be intentional Christians with our own distinctive charisms and callings. I love Benedict’s Rule. I love Cassian’s Institutes. Neither of them function for a household with two working parents, two energetic preschoolers, and an emotionally needy cat. I’ve felt a pull to doing this before, and here it comes again, perhaps even stronger than before…

Barnabas

Speaking to the Soul at the Episcopal Caf has a snippet from the Epistle of Barnabas up for the feast of the same today. The Epistle is most likely not by Barnabas, of course, but is considered a legitimate writing of the Apostolic Fathers. The Epistle is primarily a work against Judaizing tendencies and pushes hard a very allegorical reading of the Law.

I have a rather intimate familiarity with this text since it was the one I chose to focus on for my Patristic Greek exam. My favorite part is the section on the allegorical interpretation of weasels…