My "important parts" of this book is extensive and what I've notated below is at most the tip-of-the-iceberg. This is a history book that lives today.
8/16/2008: the more a read this book, and Hall's ".....with the Church Fathers," the more I realize I have not begun to touch the surface. History gives so much to learn about those that have gone before us and their struggles, triumphs, and revelations. I continue to realize how little I've been taught, and how little I'm passing on.
8/24/2008: reminder that, unless noted otherwise, what is written below is quoted from the book. I don't understand some of what the context. Much of it, like the sacrements (and most of whole window chapter) is foriegn to the teaching I've had to date.
8/20/2008: I just wrote up the notes for the chapter on "Word: The Spirtuality of the Reformers." The summary Sittser gives on the Reformers treatment of the Word is really good.
9/19/2008: I haven't finished this.....yet. The past few weeks' events have brought this book to my thoughts many times; the importance of the sacraments, church..what is it?, worship services, the importance of scripture reading in a church service?, leadership, fearing God.
3/1/2009: This book led me back to thoughts I had while reading Christopher Hall's Reading Scripture with the Church Father's. I've since gone back and listened to an interview Dave Moore had with Hall, which led me to the series Ancient Christian Commentaries on Scripture. I've purchased two, Proverbs/Ecclesiates/Song of Soloman and James, 1-2 Peter/1-3 John/Jude - what great reads!
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From the book;
Introduction -
Page 18: Every generation of believers faces the risk of becoming a prisoner to its own myopic vision of the Christian faith, assuming that how it understands and practices faith is always the best. C.S. Lewis cited this problem as a reason for reading old books. "None of us," he wrote, "can fully escape this blindness, but we shall certainly increase it, and weaken our guard against it, if we read only modern books," for modern books (as well as the ideas and practices they convey) only tell us what we already know and thus reinforce our blind spots and prejudices.
History will show us that there is more to the Christian faith than what we think and have experienced.
Page 20: Augustine once wrote that the only way to understand something is to love it first, that is, to study it with sympathy, patience and appreciation.
Page 23: The purpose of this book, after all, is to explore the diversity of Christian spirituality. Still, however diverse these various traditions are, there is an underlying truth that unites them. From the apostolic age to the present, the vast majority of Christians have believed that God has revealed himself in Jesus Christ, that Jesus Christ is both divine and human, and that God is therefore one in community. My goal is to explore how these various spiritual traditions - ascetic, monastic, sacramental, evangelical and the like - reveal who God is, how we can know him intimately, and what we can become in and through him.
Witness -
Page 30: Discipleship implies suffering, leads to persecution, tests mettle, demands steadfastness, requires endurance and even leads to death. It demands that we confess Jesus as Lord.
Page 32: There was something about this one religion that set it apart, making it an obvious target; AD 313, when Emperor Constantine issued an edict that gave Christianity legal protection.
Page 33: Justin Martyr, noteworthy 2nd century theologian and apologist, became a Christian after he had watched the brutal execution of several Christians in Rome. He was moved by their courage and serentiy, and he was intrigued by a faith that could engender such uncompromising conviction.
Belonging -
Page 60: The church did not try to separate religious ritual and public donduct, as most ancient religions appeared to do. The Christian faith mandated that all of one's life be submitted to God.
Page 65: Finally, pastors helped to create a sense of belonging by functioning as shepherds of the flock, providing pastoral care from cradle to grave....Christian pastors attended to the practical concerns of everday life. They taught the Scriptures, visited the sick, provided for the destitute, comforted the afflicted, maintained church unity, administerd the sacraments and disciplined errant church members.
Page 70-71: Can the church be renewed? We must believe it can because it is God's church and it has a great history. Our knowledge of the early church can point the way. First, the church today can strive to become as inclusive as the early church was. Second, the church can respond with compassion and actin to catastrophic suffering, just as the early Christian community did when plagues swept through the Roman world.
Struggle (the spirtuality of the desert saints) -
Page 74-75: they believed that struggle is normal, necessary and even healthy in the spiritual life. St. Mark the Ascetic, summed up this positive view of struggle, "He who does not choose to suffer for the sake of truth will be chastened more painfully by suffering he has not chosen."
"This is the great task of man," Antony said to his disciples, "that he should hold his sin before the face of God, and count upon temptation until his last breath."
Page 82: They also believed that discipleship engenders conflict and difficulty because it demands a way of life that contradicts natural desires.
Page 88: They prayed too, even while they worked, thus fulfilling the biblical command to "pray without ceasing,"
Page 90: God can use virtually any setting to do his deeper work in us in order to help us reach a state of imperturbable calm. The true test of discipleship involves how believers live for God wherever they are....
Page 91: "Even if our mouths stink with fasting, and we have learned all the Scriptures, and memorized the whole Psalter, we still lack what God wants - humility and charity."
On one occasion Macarius was accused of seducing a young woman, which ruined both her and his reputation. Though the accusation was false, Macarius refused to defend himself. Instead, he provided for her needs, which gave the impression that he was in fact guilty. Some time later the truth came out, thus vidicating Macarius. But Macarius fled in order to avoid the praise he was about to receive.
Page 93-94, the Modern Desert: It will be in our homes and schools and places of work. But the struggles we face are the same. We too must battle against the world, the flesh and the devil. We too must confront th darkness within, our persistent egoism. The desert will also enable us to see how unfriendly modern culture is to the spiritual life. It seduces us into being too busy, too ambitious and too self-indulgent. We never seem to be satisfied; we always seem to want more.....people seem to be in constant need of activity and success. Many people fail to make progress in the spiritual life, he said, because "they are attached to activities and enterprises that seem to be important."
The desert saints call us to resit these cultural values by seeking solitude, which might separate us just enough from modern culture to allow us to recognize, expose and combat our vulnerability to its seductive power.
"The self always dies hard," Martin Luther.
Rhythm -
page 97: God calls us to seek his face in prayer and to do his work in the world. Monastic spirituality affirms that we must do both activities if we hope to fulfill the purpose for which God created us.
Page 99: Rhythm is at the very heart of biblical faith. God established a rhythm from the first moment of creation. The fourth commandment, Ex 20:8-11, mandates that God's people follow this divine rhythm too.
Page 101: ...there has always occurred a revolt of some or many against what seems to them prevailing laxity; they choose the narrow way, in the words of Jesus, leading to eternal life."
The structure of these monasteries evloved over time, though the foundation laid at the very geninning has endured to this day. The rhythm of prayer and work has always characterized the movement....Most followed a pattern of prayer and work...The disciples would spend time alone - praying, practicing "the discipline" and doing common labor.
Page 104: Basil laid the foundation....Like other monastic founders, he struck a balance between prayer and work.
Page 105: Augusinte...like Basil, he believed that living with others is necessar for the cultivation of spiritual maturity. Perfection in the spiritual life is impossible to attain as long as a person lives alone, for how can that person learn how to love?
Page 107: Benedict required monasteries to practice both work and prayer....Consequently, the abbot was to show the monks "by deeds, more than by words, what is good and holy."
Page 110-111: "All the monk's activities," writes Jean Leclercq, "including his literary activity, can have no motivation other than spiritual, and spiritual motives are always call upon to justify his actions."...Benedict did not consider knowledge an end in itself, as if it were a virtue......Benedictine monasticism always had this tension runnng through it - " on the one hand, the study of literature; on the other, the exlusive search for God, the love of eternal life, and the consquent detachment from all else, including the study of literature. This tension could only be transcended by "raising it to the spirtual order," namely by doing the work of study in a spirit of prayer.
Rhythms in Mondern Life, page 114-116: God calls his people to two principle duties-prayer and work. Prayer draws us to God; work sends us into the world. Prayer centers and quites us; work energizes us. Prayer restores us to God; work allows us to participate in God's restoration of the world. Jesus himself followed this rhythm.
We divide these two activities at our peril. On the one hand, without work, prayer becomes rote, vacuous and irrelevan, an empty discipline that shows little evidence of a deep concern for the world. It loses its purpose, lacks passion, turns inward, serves the self. We mouth the words, but there is nothing at stake. It does not seem to matter much whether our prayers are answered or ignored. On the other hand, without prayer, work becomes an idol. We work to make money, to gain power and presitige, to advance in our careers. We become presumptuous too, thinking that our work can accomplish good things without actually relying on God for wisdom and power. But work that pleases God and serves the common good of humanity must have God involved in it, for only God can accomplish what thas transcendent value and eteranl significance....All work, regardless of who does it-pastors, parents, teachers, coaches, scholars, executives, secretaries, engineers,....-needs God's help for lasting impact. Without God, even our best efforts are in vain.
THe monastic rhythm of prayer and work establishes a routine that monasteries have followed for centuries. Routine means repeating the same activities time and time again; we pray and the we work, day in and day out. Such routine creates the conditions for God to do subtle, deep and transformative work in our souls and in the world. It requires patence and endurance. Routine can make us impatient; we wish that there was an easier and faster way to maturity of faith and fruitfulness of life. We want to take shortcuts; we look for entertainment along the way; we expect to be dazzled by the rapid speed of our progress.....Routine, however boring and wearisome, is necessary. Mastery comes from persisting in some endeavor when everything in us wants to quit.....
The rhythm of prayer and work will enable us to relish the present moment as a gift from God, give ourselves completely to the one thing at hand and surrender our work to God through prayer..........here is the importance and dignity of work. Study, chores, jobs, volunteer work, service, stewardship are all examples of work, which we should strive to do with excellence and humility. But we should never neglect prayer.
Holy Heroes (The Spirituality of Icons and Saints) -
(DS Note: there is so much of this chapter that is new to me, that I am unable to know the "high points.")
Page 118-119: It seems a strange world, at least to outsiders. Its churches are adorned with portraits of people who appear to beloen to another world; worship follows customs and rituals that thake us back to a former age; liturgical incanations sound archaic.....Does it offer us anything rlevant and useful for today? Eastern Othodoxy is perhaps the most unfamiliar of the Christain traditions explored in this book.
Its most sacred term - defication - not only describes what in fact the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ was intended to accomplish in believers, which is moake us holy, but also reflects a central truth found in the New Testament....we will become like God through the saving work of Jesus Christ; believers will some day share in Christ's resurrection glory-his power, beauty and perfection.
The Eastern Orthodox faith teaches that this process of transformation has already begun. Even now believers are being transformed "from one degree of glory to another," as the apostle Paul described it. God's power is already at work in us, restoring the divine image. Deification is a present reality; Christians are saints in the making.
Saints in the Making - Page 120: Hebrews 12:1 "Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us."
The author (of Hebrews) exhorts us to look to Jesus, "who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God." Athanasius argued that Christ became incarnate to repair the damage that was done to God's creation and to restore the divine image in fallen humanity. God did not want to see his creation waste away, nor witness the corruption of his image. He wanted to see human nature rejoined to the divine so that there could be complete restoration.
So Christians are in fact destined for perfection and glory. Christ is not only the mens of this restoration; he is also the end.
The stories of saints in eastern Orthodoxy remind us that such transformation is possible. If it happened to them, sinful as they were, it can happen to us.
The purpose of this chapter is to use three examples to explore the concept of "deification" in the Eastern Orhocox traditio, which emphasizes the important role that saints have played and will continue to play in the life of the church.This great tradition uses two mediums in particular - icons and spiritual biographies - to draw us into the world of the saints and to provide us with examples to follow.
Icons are paintings that accomplish this purpose by inviting us to gaz upon the portraits of people whose human nature has already been transformed into something unspeakably glorious.
Spiritual biographies or hagiographies serve a slightly different purpose. They tell the stories of saints to show haow this transformation actually taks place in people who know and trust Christ as Savior and Lord....their central purpose...is to inspire the faithful to imitate the saints and to embark on the same journey of faith.
Page 121: The Icon of St. Macrina the Younger - Deification points to the ultimate destiny of believers, who will someday share in Christ's resurrection glory and become "like him for we shall see him as he is (1 John 3:2). Iconography is intended to provide an artistic vision of that destiny.
Page 123: ...all icons of Christ depict a person, Jesus of nazareth, who has two distinct bet related natures, one divine and the other human. They show tha Jesus was not simply divine, not a mere abstraction, nor a phantom but a real person - Jesus of Nazareth, the perfect God-man. The image we see in the icon points beyon itself to the reality of the person, the incarnate Son of God, who transformed thematerial creation into a vessel for the divine. The icon of Christ depicts the results of this transformation of earthly matter.
Icons of saints like Macrina serve a slightly idfferent purpose. They demonstrate that, as God became truly human for the sake of our salvation, human beings can likewise share in the divine nature and reflect the divine golry, and thus be restored to what God always intended human being s to be, beareers of the idivine image.
(DS note: I had to look up "deification." It means; One that embodies the qualities of God. I will have to spend extra time getting a grip on this idea.
From Peter Kreeft's Heaven; The Heart's Deepest Longing -
"Galaxies revolve and dinosaurs breed and rain falls and people fall in live and uncles smoke cheap cigars and people lose their jobs and we all die - all for our good, the finished product, God's work of art, the Kingodm of Heaven. There's nothing outside heaven except hell. Earth is not outside heaven; it is heaven's workshop, heaven's womb."
Earth is heaven's workshop, Kreeft says, which implies tha God uses all things to change us for the better.. It follows that how we respond to our circustances, however unwelcomed, carries significant weight. Life in this world is like a divine workshop; the stuff of daily experience - marriage, children, responsibilities and opportunities..... - the tools that Gode uses; the artist is God himself, who will sculpt the block of marble that we are into something extraordinary.
This divine plan requires us to be attentive to the process of deification. Daily we should ask, What is God trying to do in my life? How is God using the stuff of ordinary experience to change me? What choices can I make to give him freedom to work? The Christian faith is not self-help religion, and mature Christians are not self-made people....True maturity must be God's doing....God calls us to trust him, pray to him, surrender ourselves to him, respond to his initiative and obey his commands. Above all, we should remind ourselves daily of the goal, which is complete trasformation. What God has started, God will surely finish Phil 1:6. We can be sure that this is true because we have works of art from the past to inspire us and to show us the way. The lives of the saints prove that God will transform us, perfect us, deify us.....We will become living icons; our biographies will tell stories of transformation; our lives will bear witness, in word and deed, to the power of the gospel.
Windows page 139
Page 142 Sacramental Life
The central purpose of these Gothic buildings was to provide a proper setting for the administration of the sacraments...
Gothic cathedrals were constructed to direct attention to the altar, the place where the sacraments were administered to the believing community.
...It is not surprise, therefore, that cathedrals were designed to convey the sacredness and power of the sacraments themselves.
Page 144: Controversies have swirled around the sacraments for many centuries...Theologians have also tried to do what the Bible itself does not do; explain exactly how the sacraments work metaphysically.... We might not be able to understand their operation, but we can understand their effect. The sacraments are a source of genuine spiritual life and an objective means of grace.....The sacraments join material and spiritual together into a seamless whole, just as the incarnation does.They are windows that allow us to gaze into another world and receive the grace that pours from that world into ours.
It is a profound mystery. As I file forward with my children..I meditate on the blessing of God that rests on our family, a blessing that has nothing to do with us - the kind of father I am, the kind of children they are, the kind of Christians we are. I reflect on the journey we have taken together as a family, and I ponder the challenges and difficulties we have faced in the past and will continue to face in the future.I realize that, as God has given us grace in the past, he will continue to in the future. The evidence of that grace is in the bread and cup....the bread and the cup...God is at work in that moment to cleanse me, renew me and transform me, always in and through Jesus Christ, who suffered and died to unite me - all of us - to himslef. I say, "Thanks be to God."
Page 158: Reclaiming the Sacraments
The faith of the medieval church was essentially sacramental. It reminded people that the gospel is objective, rooted in the events of salvation history and offered to us therough the means of grace that Christ himself established. How can we reclaim the sacraments for the church today?
First, the sacraments are quintessentially material, which reminds us of the material nature of the Christ faith. Christianity confirms that God created the mterial universe, and that he created it good. Everything in it somehow manifests his greatness and glory...Psalm 19. Human beings are material too. We were created to live in the material world, and we are called to take care of that material world.
Jesus used examples from the material world to illustrate his kingdom teaching; sower, seed, father, and son, he was a teacher, he slept, he ate. Jesus Christ is God come in person, true flesh and blood. The sacraments are symbols of the ongoing presence of the material Christ who lived, suffered and died for our sake. Every time we see a person baptized, we are physically reminded of the cleansing that Jesus offers through his death. This is not abstract, ambiguious, sentimental, ephemeral kind of spirituality. It is body and blood; it is water, bread and wine.
Page 160: Second, the sacraments also teach us that grace comes to us as an objective reality. The Bible does not tell us how the sacraments actually communicate grace, only that they doe. It is all a mystery.
Every person brings his or her own story to the sacrament and finds grace to keep believing, hoping and enduring for another week because in the end the Christian faith concerns what God has done - and continues to do - for us and in us, not what we do for God.
Page 161: Third, the sacraments have the power to transform us into living sacraments to the world. Gothic cathedrals were intended to represent in material form the reality of heaven, especially through two fundatmental qulities - harmonious proportion and luminosity. As sacrements to the world, we are called to exhibit those same qualities. Harmonious proportion has to do with how we order our lives under God's will and rule. We put first things first, live according to proper priourities, channel our resources toward worthy ends, and hallow the world as God's good creation. Luminisity in ture has to do with how we let God's light shine through us.
Page 162: It is all a mystery. How did God become a human being? The first disciples were certainly not expecting the incarnation. It was only the bodily resurrection of Christ that persuaded theem of the truth of it. How doe water, bread and wine feed us with the grace of God? It is a truth beyond our ability to understand. How can we become a sacrament to the world? It is a task beyond our ability to accomplish. Yet God can and will transform us by his grace so that we become living sacraments to the world. Christ joined material and spiritual together into a perfect, seamless whole. He nourishes us with the material and spiritual stuff of the sacraments. He calls us to be material and spiritual agens of redemption in the world.
Chapter 7: Union
The sacraments appeal to the sense, mysticism to intuition; the sacraments emphasize the means of grace, mysticism the end; the sacraments remain firmly rooted in the concreteness of earthly reality, mysticism soars into the ephemeral and ethereal realm of heavenly reality.
Of all the traditions explored in this book, the mystical way is the most foreign to my temperament...it is for this very reason that mystical spirituality has the most to teach me, for the tradition to which I am least attracted is the one about which I should be curious. History itself bears witness to the significance of this traditions Some of the wisest and eepest writers in the history of the church have been mystics who reached summits of spiritual insight and experience that I have been able to glimpse only from afar. It could be that by studying their writings I will be able to follow in their footsteps.
Page 166: Christian mysticism can trace its roots to the ancient philosopher Plato. According to Plato, the human sould is preexistent. In its original state of bliss, it contemplates the eternal truth of God in perfect purity. But creation, birth and embodiment causes the soul to forget its true, original, primal knowledge, engulfing it in materiality. Because the sould is still divine, containing some spark and memory of true being, beauty, goodness and oneness, it longs to return to the divine realm, as if it were a lost child wanting to return home. This process of return requires detachment from everything material so that, released from its earthly imprisonment, the sould can ascend to its divine source, contemplate ultimate reality in pure ecstasy and gain a knowledge that is beyond all knowlede.
Page 177: The Gospel of John
The Gospel of John shows how the transcendent God of the universe revealed himself once and for all in Jesus Christ. The mystery of the divine identity - the divine Word of Greek philosophy and the I am of Judism - become concrete revelation in the incarnation.
John tells a series of stories about people...whose encounters with the human Jesus truns into encounters with God. At first they think that Jesus is only a man. But by the end of the story they confess that he is much more. In Jesus Christ they encounter the living God, for Jesus, they discover, is God in human flesh. The man Jesus is seen as the divine Word and the great I Am.
But John does not stop even there. He leaves not room for doubt when he quotes Jesus referring to himself with the divine Name. "I am the bread of life." "I am the light of the world." "I am the good shephere." "Before Abraham was, I am." "I and the Father are one." "Beloved," says the author of 1 John, "we are God's children now; what we will be has not been revealed. What we do know is this: twhen he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as his is" (1 John 3:2).
Page 178-179: Bernard of Clairvaux
He believed that Jesus Christ makes a union of relationship possible. Bernard argued that God's love engenders in us the desire to love God in return.
Our love for God, however, is far from perfect. It must grow by degree. In fact, our first impulse of love is not directed toward God at all. It focuses on the self. When we manifest this first and lwest degree of love when we love ourselves for our own sake.....Thus we pass to the second degree of love, which is to love God, though still for our own sake. We discover that God cares about us and meets our needs, whcih draws us to God as the source of everything we truly long fore. We love God; but it is a love that has self as its primary motive and concern. In the third degree of love we adore God for the goodness that he is, not simply for the good things he gives. We love God for God's sake.....Surprisingly, Bernard believed that such unselfish love for God is not the highest degree of love. We experience the fourth degree of love when we love ourselves for God's sake. We cherish ethe image of GOd that is being restored in us and the reflection of God's perfection and beauty that transforms us. Here Bernard exults in the union of relationship that exists between lover and beloved, the one giving life and the other receiving it.
Pge 180: We know and experience GOd's love through Jesus Christ..."All love begins in the debt of gratitude. So love od God begins in a recognition of what God has given to the human race. And the greatest gift, the greatest manifestation of God's love, is Jesus the incarnate Word....True union with God consists in knowing, worshiping, enjoying and loving Jesus Christ.
Page 182: The Way of Prayer
If this union of relationship is possible, how can we begin to experience it as a pattern of life, not someday in the future but today, not when we live in the light of God's goodness but while we struggle in the darkness of the world? Through the discipline of prayer. God himself, Julian argued, prompts us to Pray. Prayer is simply the human response to the prior call fo God, which we hear in Jesus Christ. God speaks to us; his voice reverberates inour souls like an echo. The sound of his voice makes us want to reply. Prayer is not a complete leap into the dark. The Christian fithe teaches that we do not pray as if speaking into an empty, nameless void. We pray to a God we know, for God made himself known in Jesus Christ. In Jesus we see the face of God.
The most natural and familiar expression of prayer is petition. The Lord's Prayer provides us with the perfect mode. It is a practical prayer that addresses daily life.
There is nothing magical about petitionary prayer. It involves little more than inviting God to become active in our lives. We need God. "Pray wholeheartedly," Julian wrote...
But there is another kind of prayer, which, though less familiar to us, is far more central to mystical spirituality. It is contemplative or wordless prayer, which flows out of darkness, silence and a deep awareness of the supremacy, beauty and aqpuity of God. Thomas Merton writes of such prayer, "It is a vivid realization of that fact that life and being in us proceed from an invisible, transcendent and infinitely abundant Source. Contemplation is, above all, awareness of the reality of that Source." Like most mystics, Merton believed that contimplative prayer is not a spiritual technique or intellectual exercise or natural process, as if we could learn to master it in the same way we learn to speak a language or to play a sprot. "It si not the fruit of our own effort. It is the gift of God Who, in His mercy, completes the hidden and mysteriousl work of creation in us by enlightening our minds and hearts.
Page 184
Mystics argue, in fact, that the way to contemplation is not through effort but through darkness. John the Cross wrote several books on spirituality....in thes books he argued that the great enemy of the spiritual life is our natural inclination to become attached to things that, however good in themselves, keep us from God. Surprisingly, even religious rituals, exercises, and beliefs can have a negative effect on the spiritual life...
Page 185
We cannot, therefore, reach union with God through human effort alone. Still, we do not have to be entirely passive either. We can, for example, surrender ourselves daily to God as he does his deep work in us. We can practice the spiritual disciplesn, like fasting and meditation. We can also trust tha, when we do pass through periods of darkness, God has not abandoned us but is in fact drawing us into more intimate communion with him. Finally, we can learn to wait in prayerful silence. "For God alone my soul waits in silence, for my hope is from him. He only is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall not be shake. On God rests my deliverance and my honor; my might rock, my refuge is God" (Psalm 62: 5-7).
The prayer of silence is not natural. Our attempts to pray this kind of prayer will expose how trivial and superficial our thoughts are, how noisy our world is, how inattentive we are to the reality of God's presend. Mystics urge us to turn these distractions into prayers and to repeat a line from Scripture to quiet the sould and direct our thoughts to God. It taks time and practice. Even then, we will discover that consistent practice is not enough. Only God can make himself known to us. Contemplative prayer......is a discipline we practice; it is a gift we recieve. Such prayer - wordless, silent, patient, confident, secure - will empty us and fill us, break us and restore us, plunge us into the darkenss and draw us into the light, separate us from God as we know him through creation so that we can be united with God as we know him in Christ, and thus experience the union with him for which our souls truly long.
Ordinariness: The Spirituality of the Medieval Laity
"And whateverr you do, in word or dee, ado everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him." - Colossians 3:17
Page 187: It seems that in every generation a few Christians rise above the rest of us....Their names....read like a Who's Who of Christian heroes. I love to tell the stories of these saints to my students....But then it always happens. Some student blurts out, "So what?" That simple and stark question drives the discussion in a different direction. Students begin to ponder the problem of sainthood. Who can imitate these extraordinary people?...
Is it possible for ordinary people to be true disciples too?
Page 188: The World of the Laity
For this reason, I have decided to write a chapter on the spirituality of the late medieval laity, which focuses attention on the people who did not reach the level of "sainthood." Most Christians, after all, live as ordinary people who attend church and marry and buy homes and raise families and work rgular jobs. Surprisingly, the church has often failed to address the needs and concerns of this large number of people. So much time and energy is put into relegious concerns - church buildings, church committees, church programs and activities - that the secular world suffers from pure neglect. But it is in that very worl Christians spend most of their time. If the Christiian faith is goin to have any kind of impact at all, it must address how believers live in the secular world. Ordinary people must learn to live as disciples of jesus when they are not at church.
The history of Christianity tteaches us that the Christian movement thrives when the needs, interests and aconcerns of ordinary people are taken seriously. The early church lacked most of the material resources and cultural advantages that the Western church enjoys today, yet in very short order it spread thoughout the Roman world because it appealed to and attracted everyday people
In the second and third centuries the church continued to grow, even under difficult circumstances, because ordinary Christians prov ed to be effective witnesses.
The movement proved difficult to suppress because nonelites were so successful in spreading the message of Christianity.
Rome officials wanted to snuff it out and therefore targeted pominent leaders fo persecution, assuming that if they attacked the elites then they would eliminate the problem.....it was like an epidemi that spread from one person to the next. Rome wanted to ontrol the spread of the disease. But the most effetive carriers, as it turned out, were the laity, not the leaders. So the faith ontinued to thrive. Rome could not tell how it happened, why it attrated attention or even whom it included.....
The Christian movement became extraordinarily influential through the work of ordinary people.
Page 189-190: The Medieval Hierarhy
The church continued to grow numerially after Constantine seized power in A.D 312.
Conditions in Europe began to change in the later Middle Ages (1200-1450)
A new movement emerged in the later Middle Ages that forever altered the course of the Western church. Mendicants (ascetics who lived in the worl, begged for food and preached the gospel)
The mendicant movement awakened a popular interest in spiritual things that took on a life of its own. In some cases laypeople took matters into their own hands, initiating movements that allowed them to live the Christian faith as active participants, not as passive spectators.....in their minds ordinary life had dignity because God himself had become an ordinary human being.
Let this be our principle that the use of God's gifts is not wrongly directed when it is referred to that end to which the Aughor himself created and destined them for us, since he created them for our good, not for our ruin."
Martin Luther cited Christ as the primary example to follow, especially in the way he lived as an ordinary man.....
"that Christ always and in all things pleased his Father is true. His eatin, drinking, and sleeping pleased his Father as much as his great miracles, for the Father sees not the works but the intent in the works."
Luther that the one thing expected of believers is that they live by faith, even when doing distinctively secular activities. Only faith enables believers to live in the world as God intends.
The Reformers addressed the needs, problems and responsibilities of ordinary people.
The purpose of faith is not to require peopel to withdraw from the world or to enable people to succeed in the world, but to empower people to claim the world for God's kingdom.
Page 205-208: A Lay Spirtuality
How can ordinary believers begin to live in the secular world as serious followers of Christ?
First -
We still need saints, only of a different kind. The kind of saint needed today is the secular saint - the parent, the teacher, the coach, the lawyer, the politician, the neighbor, the volunteer, the exective - who believes tha how Christians live in the world matters to God....
Now more that ever the world needs people who treat secular life as part of God's rightfull domain....
The Christina faith cannot be confined to the church and religious activities without contradicting itself.
Disciples ware never content to keep faith at church. They cannot help but apply it to the world.
Word: The Spirituality of the Reformers
Page 211 - 212
Not that Calving ignored or dismissed evidence that confirms the reliability of the biblical record. If anything, he was well aware of external proofs that could reinforce what the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit reveals....but such evidence, however convincing, is of secondary importance.
Pages 221 - : The Burden of the Preacher
Both Calvin and Luther believed that the proclamation of the Word of God is the Word of God. "God does not wish to be heard, but through the voice of His ministers," Calvin argued.
Luther went so far as to argue that preaching plays a role that not even Scripture can play, for preaching gives God an audible voice.
The Refomers had much to say not only about preaching but also to preachers.
The Reformers believed that their sermons had to speak first to the person doing the preaching. Their sermons often had a humble, human quality to them.
Luther often pointed to the lowliness of Jesus as a source of comfort and encouragement. Luther knew that his congregation comprised mostly ordinary people. In his mind it was not right to preach to the elites and ignore everyone else.
Though highly educated, Luther spoke in a way that ordinary epople could understand, using idioms and illustrations that came from their world
Page 227 - : The Word of God for Us
The Reformers labored to preach well because they had a high view of the Word of God.
How should we respond to this Word?
First...
In the end they kept returning to one central message - Jesus Christ is the very Word of God who came to reveal God and make us right with God.
Conversion: the Spirituality of Evangelicals
Pages 231 -
No movement in the history of Christianity has been more energetic, creative,m diverse and complex than evangelicalism. It has grown so dramatically over the past two hundred years that it now encircles the globe.
Evangelicals believe that true spirituality requires more than church attendance, liturgical practice, sacramental observance and creedal assent. These are important disciplines, to be sure; but they also tend to remain formal and external, which can easily engender nominal faith.....At the heart of evangelical spirituality is the conversion of the whole of one's life to God.
Page 238 -
I write this chapter, therefore, as an insider, which makes me more keenly aware of both the weaknesses and the strengths of this tradition. On the one hand, evangelicalism can easily trivialize the meaning of conversion. Over the years I have witnessed many superficial conversions. I know too many evangelicals whose conversion marked the end rather than the beginning of their spiritual pilgrimage, whose grasp of truth goes no deeper than knowledge of a handful of Bible verses and self-help formulas, and whose commitment tochrist requires little more than occasional church attendance. I feel an acute sense of embarrassment when I consider how often this great tradition has been abused or perverted. On the other hand, evangelicalism emphasizes a central truth that should never be compromised. The Bible makes it clear that we much be converted to Jesus Christ.
Page 240 - What is Conversion?
The idea of conversion suggest a turn, achange of direction, a new course for one's life. The word itself does not appear in the Bible, though several synonyms do. The two most important are repentance, which implies a change of heart, mind and direction, and new birth, which connotes a kind of second coming to life, this one spiritual in nature. Conversion can happen in a variety of ways too. It can be dramatic or quiet, emotional or thoughtful, sudden or drawn out. What truly matters, however, is not how people are coverted but that they are coverted. The true test of its authenticity is the long-term results.
Three 17th century movements, all originating in Europe, emphasized the importance of results. These movements laid the foundation for modern evangelicalism.
C0nversion is a process. The Puritans defined conversion as a process. Puritanism first emerged in England as a reaction to the religious policy of Elizabeth I, who followed a moderate course of church reform - the "Middle Way."......the Puritans did not succeed. They were opposed by the crown, harassed by church authorities and wracked by disagreements and dissension from within their own ranks. By the early 17th century the movement began to fragment.
The Puritans produced many formidable theologians, writers and pastors, both in England and the colonies. None became more famous than John Bunyan.
The Puritans believed that conversion sometimes happens in a moment of time. But they also affirmed that conversion is a process that God uses to draw us ever closer to himself and to make us ever more like himself. They called this process "owning the covenant." In their minds conversion has a kind of narrative qulity to it, which is why, especially in the American colnies, Puritan pastors required candidates for church membership to provide a narrative of their conversiuon before they wsere allowed to become church memnbers and receive the sacrament of communion. Pators looked fore more than an event; they wanted to see evidence of a life that had been converted to God.
Conversion to holiness of life. As a process, therefore, conversion is supposed to have an effect - that is, engender holiness of life (or piety). The Pietist movement, which began in Germany emphasized this particular aspect of conversion. As devout Lutherans, Pietists believed that salvation comes through Christ alone, faith alone and grace alone, all of which we know through Scripture alone. But they did not stop there. Deeply aware of the problem of nominal religion that was rampant in the state church of Germany......they also emphasized heartfelt taith and personal holiness. They believed that conversion to Christ implies living for Christ.
The most notable leader of the movement was Philipp Jakob Spener......To encourage growth in personal holiness, he established "Colleges of Piety" or small groups, which became one of the distinguishing features of the movement. Spener believed that true conversion requires more than assent to a creed; it mandates the cultivation of genuine faith and holiness.
Page 242 - Conversion to the world. Genuine conversion should inspire us to care about the world too, the world "for whom Christ died," as the apostle Paul put it. It is not simply our conversion that matters to God but the world's conversion. No group in the history of Christianity has taken this aspect of conversion more seriously than the Moravians, expecially under the able leadership of Count Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendort, a scion of one of the great families of Europe.
Zinzendorf purchased an estate and formed a community (Herrnhut) that eventually included Catholics, Lutherans, separatists and Anabaptists as well as Moravians. He organized little "banks" for prayer and Bible study, drafted a constitution to regulate the life of the community and arranged for the election of twelve elders......it thrived and spread to other parts of Europe.
Herrnhut, within 10 years (by 1742), sent 70 missionaries to Greenland, the Guinea Coast of Africa, South Africa, Algeria, Ceylon, Romania, and Constantinople, thought the little community numbered only six hundred people. By 1760, the Moravian Church had deployed 226 full-time missionaries around the world to preach the gospel and serve the needy.
Zinzendorf dedicated himself to obeying the Great Commission.
Like the Puritans, Zinzendorf understood conversion as a process, not simply an event. He learned from the Pietists that conversion should lead to holiness of life. But he also believed conversion called him - and the entire church - to the world.
These three movements - Puritanism, Pietism and Moravianism - established the foundation on which evangelical spirituality is built. Evangelicals call for personal commitment to Christ, hough, unlike the Puritans, they often emphasize experience over process; the encourage holness of life, though sometimes erring on the side of legalism; and, ore than any other group in the history of Christianity, they pursue the task of world missions with unusual energy and convictions.
Page 244 -
What makes Conversion Authentic?
Many people who appear to have experienced a genuine conversion eventually return to their former way of life......These reversals have forced evangelicals to clarify what makes a conversion authentic and why some conversions, though they appear to be sincere, fail to last.
One theologiean in particular pondered this problem throughout his illustrious career....Jonathan Edwards. Edwards noted that people from all walks of life experienced conversion. He also observed the pattern that the conversions seemed to follow - conviction of sin, commitment to live a better life, repeated failures, feelings of utter helplessness and guilt, and finally an experience of grace, which overshelmed the converts with confidence, rapture and live. He was convinced that the awakening was the work of God.
The awakening came to an abrubt end when Edwards's uncle committed suicide, two women went mad and people began to exhibit wild swings of emotion, from despair to elation. Criticism soon followed. Elites from Boston charged that the awakending was the product of religious enthusiasm, not genuine - that is, rational - faith. Edwards conceded that there were problems but still defended the awakening as genuinely supernatural.
His central argument is simple and elegan. "True religion, in large part, consists of holy affections." Edwards defined the "affections" as a natural and intense reaction - whether positive or negative - to things of real consequence to us. By its very nature religion involves things that are profoundly significant and supremely consequential, for religion is concerned with the being of God, who is ineffably glorius, beautiful and holy. It is impossible to claim to know such a being and not be overcome with delight, longing and love. Thus the only appropriate response is "holy affections" - the intense inclination of the soul toward God. Such is the nature of true religion or conversion.
Edward believed that these holy affections will be visible and obvious, like heat and light from a fire.......but he was careful to distinguish between signs that prove conversion is authentic and signs that prove nothing at all......In the end, however, Edwards identified one sign as superior to all the rest. That sign is consistent practice of faith, which manifests itself in holiness of life, delight in God and love for neighbor.....It is therefore the outcome of conversion - its impact on how wel ive, love and serve - that establishes the authenticity of conversion. "You will know them by their fruits, " Jesus said.
Ironically, Edwards waas not able to persuade his own congregation to accept his ideas.......the conflict went on for several years, finally ended when the church asked him to leave. He accepted a call to become a missionary to Indians in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. It was at this wilderness outpost that Edwards wrote his most mature works.
Pge 248 - Who is Responsible for Conversion?
Edwards believed that he did not in any way plan or cause the awakening that swept through his church. He did nothing different in 1734 from what he had done in 1730 or would do in 1745. Yet something happened in those 6 months that transcended mere human effort. It was, as he said, a isurpising work of God, the result of divine, not human, intervention. But many evangelicals who followed Edwards seemed to want less surprise. They turned conversion into a hmuan eterprise, though never denying that it was divine work too. Two changes occurred.
First, evangelicals put increasing stress on the experience of conversion, believing that the intensity of the experience would somehow authenticate the reality of it.This led them to use methods that made conversion as predictable and convenient as possible.
Second, they developed strategies to win and disciple converts, which truned evangelicalism in an entrepreneurial direction. Both experience and strategy became the distinguishing characteristics of evangelicalism in the nineteenth century.
In 1740 Edwards invited the famous and flamboyant George Whitefield to preach in his pulpit....he seemed to win countless people to Christ every time he opened his mouth. His impact....was sensational. Sarah Edwards mentioned the visit in her journa. "It is wonderful to see what a spell he casts over an audience.....I have seen upwards of a thousand people hang on his words with breathless silence, broken only by an occasional half-supressed sob." Edwards agreed.....but had reservations too, which he expressed in a series of sermons he preached on the parable of the sower shortly after Whitefield had left. He noted that the transient naure of itinerancy tended to produce transient results - "sudden conversions are very often false," he said.....Whitefield's style was apt to produce more hypocrites than true converts. In the end Edwards affirmed the role that Whitefield played, but his concerns anticipated changes in the evangical movement that were about to occur.
Page 250- Experience: Whitefield's style appeared to prevail. His approach to ministry has influenced the evangelical movement ever since. John Wesley's dramatic conversion became the prototype.......
The importance of experience motivated the nineteenth-century American evangelist Charles G. Finney to develop "new measures" to ensue that his evangelistic work would yield concrete results. He conducted crusades in cities that lasted up to six weeks. This prolonged exposure to the gospel created a sense of excitement that swelled the size of the crowds......he urged converts to get involved in local churches after the campaign ended. In his famous book, Lectures on Revivals of Religion, he argued that a revival is not a miraculous occurrence, as Edwards had argued, but a natural on, the result of the proper use of the divinely ordained menas. In short, he turned revivals into a scientific enterprise.
Page 251 - Strategy: Whitefield and his heirs used a variety of innovative techniques to win and disciple converts too. He turned the pulpit - or the platform, as was more often the case - into a kind of stage and captivated listeners with his dramatic style and winsome message. He was the first evangelical to try open-air preaching.
John Wesley preached some 40,000 sermons during his lifetime.....he was a genius at making the gospel simple, understandable and compelling, which increased his effectiveness in reaching members of the English working class. He and his brother, Charles, built chapels and held midweek services to reach people who did not feel welcomed and comfortable in established churches.
John Wesley was a superb organizer as well. He adapted the structure of the Holy Club to nurture converts in the faith.....these classes of smal groups of twelve met regularly for confession of sin, Bible study, prayer, mutual accountability and strict discipline. Wesley was especially committed to the exercise of discipline. "Is it any wonder that we find so few Christians for where is Christian discipline?.......Now, wherever doctrine is preached, where there is no discipline, it cannot have its full effect upon its hearers." He even provided a list of questions that leaders were to use when members of the class gathered for their weekly meeting.
Wesley appointed and trained laypeople to lead these classes, which generated a large supply of ready and able leaders as the movement expanded.......In essence it turned his large-scale ministry of evangelism into a small-scale ministry of discipleship.
Page 253 -
Evangelical Spirituality Today
The global impact of evangelical spirituality has been nothing short of astounding....Dwight L. Moody became the most famous evangelist in the late 19th century; Billy Graham has been the most successful evangelist in history, preaching to hundreds of millions around the world. We are profoundly indebted to these evangelicals for their courageous efforts. The Christian world will never be the same because fo their deep commitment to the truth of the gospel, to the authority of Scripture and to innovative ministry.
But the movement has now gone global. Since the early 20th century the most dynamic evangelical movement has been Pentecostalis. America produced the seed of Pentecostalis, to be sure; but the world has become the soil......it has spawned thousands of thousands of indigenous churches in virtually every country around the globe. The growth of Pentecostalism demonstrates that non-Western Christians have in many ways taken over leadership of the evangelical movement.
Like Wesley and other early pioneers, this new generation of evangelicals is committed to conversion. It is not enough, they would say, to preach the message of salvation; we must also call people to respond to that message. But these leaders are equally committed to a holistic understanding of conversion, which is exactly what true conversion means. Conversion to Christ might be a singular event. That is certainly where it often begins. But true conversion does not stop there. It demands that ehw hole of our lives...........be surrendered to God. It is an endless process. When Jesus called his disciples, he told them to deny themselves, take up the cross and follow him. As C. S. Lewis once wrote, God does not want something from us; he simply wants us. Once again, at the heart of evangelical spirituality is the conversion of the whole of our lives to God.
John Newton's story illustrates the power of authentic conversion - his whole life was transformed by the gospel. His was a complete conversion, which is what conversion ought to be. Still, it was not something he could accomplish on his own, for it was beyond him. As he discovered, he could not achieve perfect genuineness or reach a point of total surrender or manifest the marks of "true religion." Newton's hymn, after all, is not about him, not even about conversion. It is about grace. God's grace found him, gave him sight, taught him to fear and relieved him of fear, delivered him from danger, and led him home. Grace promised him good and infused him with hope. Grace gave him the gift of eternal ife. It was grace that converted him. Grace is powerful and perfect because it comes throguh Jesus Christ, God's Son, our Savior and our Lord.
8/16/2008: the more a read this book, and Hall's ".....with the Church Fathers," the more I realize I have not begun to touch the surface. History gives so much to learn about those that have gone before us and their struggles, triumphs, and revelations. I continue to realize how little I've been taught, and how little I'm passing on.
8/24/2008: reminder that, unless noted otherwise, what is written below is quoted from the book. I don't understand some of what the context. Much of it, like the sacrements (and most of whole window chapter) is foriegn to the teaching I've had to date.
8/20/2008: I just wrote up the notes for the chapter on "Word: The Spirtuality of the Reformers." The summary Sittser gives on the Reformers treatment of the Word is really good.
9/19/2008: I haven't finished this.....yet. The past few weeks' events have brought this book to my thoughts many times; the importance of the sacraments, church..what is it?, worship services, the importance of scripture reading in a church service?, leadership, fearing God.
3/1/2009: This book led me back to thoughts I had while reading Christopher Hall's Reading Scripture with the Church Father's. I've since gone back and listened to an interview Dave Moore had with Hall, which led me to the series Ancient Christian Commentaries on Scripture. I've purchased two, Proverbs/Ecclesiates/Song of Soloman and James, 1-2 Peter/1-3 John/Jude - what great reads!
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From the book;
Introduction -
Page 18: Every generation of believers faces the risk of becoming a prisoner to its own myopic vision of the Christian faith, assuming that how it understands and practices faith is always the best. C.S. Lewis cited this problem as a reason for reading old books. "None of us," he wrote, "can fully escape this blindness, but we shall certainly increase it, and weaken our guard against it, if we read only modern books," for modern books (as well as the ideas and practices they convey) only tell us what we already know and thus reinforce our blind spots and prejudices.
History will show us that there is more to the Christian faith than what we think and have experienced.
Page 20: Augustine once wrote that the only way to understand something is to love it first, that is, to study it with sympathy, patience and appreciation.
Page 23: The purpose of this book, after all, is to explore the diversity of Christian spirituality. Still, however diverse these various traditions are, there is an underlying truth that unites them. From the apostolic age to the present, the vast majority of Christians have believed that God has revealed himself in Jesus Christ, that Jesus Christ is both divine and human, and that God is therefore one in community. My goal is to explore how these various spiritual traditions - ascetic, monastic, sacramental, evangelical and the like - reveal who God is, how we can know him intimately, and what we can become in and through him.
Witness -
Page 30: Discipleship implies suffering, leads to persecution, tests mettle, demands steadfastness, requires endurance and even leads to death. It demands that we confess Jesus as Lord.
Page 32: There was something about this one religion that set it apart, making it an obvious target; AD 313, when Emperor Constantine issued an edict that gave Christianity legal protection.
Page 33: Justin Martyr, noteworthy 2nd century theologian and apologist, became a Christian after he had watched the brutal execution of several Christians in Rome. He was moved by their courage and serentiy, and he was intrigued by a faith that could engender such uncompromising conviction.
Belonging -
Page 60: The church did not try to separate religious ritual and public donduct, as most ancient religions appeared to do. The Christian faith mandated that all of one's life be submitted to God.
Page 65: Finally, pastors helped to create a sense of belonging by functioning as shepherds of the flock, providing pastoral care from cradle to grave....Christian pastors attended to the practical concerns of everday life. They taught the Scriptures, visited the sick, provided for the destitute, comforted the afflicted, maintained church unity, administerd the sacraments and disciplined errant church members.
Page 70-71: Can the church be renewed? We must believe it can because it is God's church and it has a great history. Our knowledge of the early church can point the way. First, the church today can strive to become as inclusive as the early church was. Second, the church can respond with compassion and actin to catastrophic suffering, just as the early Christian community did when plagues swept through the Roman world.
Struggle (the spirtuality of the desert saints) -
Page 74-75: they believed that struggle is normal, necessary and even healthy in the spiritual life. St. Mark the Ascetic, summed up this positive view of struggle, "He who does not choose to suffer for the sake of truth will be chastened more painfully by suffering he has not chosen."
"This is the great task of man," Antony said to his disciples, "that he should hold his sin before the face of God, and count upon temptation until his last breath."
Page 82: They also believed that discipleship engenders conflict and difficulty because it demands a way of life that contradicts natural desires.
Page 88: They prayed too, even while they worked, thus fulfilling the biblical command to "pray without ceasing,"
Page 90: God can use virtually any setting to do his deeper work in us in order to help us reach a state of imperturbable calm. The true test of discipleship involves how believers live for God wherever they are....
Page 91: "Even if our mouths stink with fasting, and we have learned all the Scriptures, and memorized the whole Psalter, we still lack what God wants - humility and charity."
On one occasion Macarius was accused of seducing a young woman, which ruined both her and his reputation. Though the accusation was false, Macarius refused to defend himself. Instead, he provided for her needs, which gave the impression that he was in fact guilty. Some time later the truth came out, thus vidicating Macarius. But Macarius fled in order to avoid the praise he was about to receive.
Page 93-94, the Modern Desert: It will be in our homes and schools and places of work. But the struggles we face are the same. We too must battle against the world, the flesh and the devil. We too must confront th darkness within, our persistent egoism. The desert will also enable us to see how unfriendly modern culture is to the spiritual life. It seduces us into being too busy, too ambitious and too self-indulgent. We never seem to be satisfied; we always seem to want more.....people seem to be in constant need of activity and success. Many people fail to make progress in the spiritual life, he said, because "they are attached to activities and enterprises that seem to be important."
The desert saints call us to resit these cultural values by seeking solitude, which might separate us just enough from modern culture to allow us to recognize, expose and combat our vulnerability to its seductive power.
"The self always dies hard," Martin Luther.
Rhythm -
page 97: God calls us to seek his face in prayer and to do his work in the world. Monastic spirituality affirms that we must do both activities if we hope to fulfill the purpose for which God created us.
Page 99: Rhythm is at the very heart of biblical faith. God established a rhythm from the first moment of creation. The fourth commandment, Ex 20:8-11, mandates that God's people follow this divine rhythm too.
Page 101: ...there has always occurred a revolt of some or many against what seems to them prevailing laxity; they choose the narrow way, in the words of Jesus, leading to eternal life."
The structure of these monasteries evloved over time, though the foundation laid at the very geninning has endured to this day. The rhythm of prayer and work has always characterized the movement....Most followed a pattern of prayer and work...The disciples would spend time alone - praying, practicing "the discipline" and doing common labor.
Page 104: Basil laid the foundation....Like other monastic founders, he struck a balance between prayer and work.
Page 105: Augusinte...like Basil, he believed that living with others is necessar for the cultivation of spiritual maturity. Perfection in the spiritual life is impossible to attain as long as a person lives alone, for how can that person learn how to love?
Page 107: Benedict required monasteries to practice both work and prayer....Consequently, the abbot was to show the monks "by deeds, more than by words, what is good and holy."
Page 110-111: "All the monk's activities," writes Jean Leclercq, "including his literary activity, can have no motivation other than spiritual, and spiritual motives are always call upon to justify his actions."...Benedict did not consider knowledge an end in itself, as if it were a virtue......Benedictine monasticism always had this tension runnng through it - " on the one hand, the study of literature; on the other, the exlusive search for God, the love of eternal life, and the consquent detachment from all else, including the study of literature. This tension could only be transcended by "raising it to the spirtual order," namely by doing the work of study in a spirit of prayer.
Rhythms in Mondern Life, page 114-116: God calls his people to two principle duties-prayer and work. Prayer draws us to God; work sends us into the world. Prayer centers and quites us; work energizes us. Prayer restores us to God; work allows us to participate in God's restoration of the world. Jesus himself followed this rhythm.
We divide these two activities at our peril. On the one hand, without work, prayer becomes rote, vacuous and irrelevan, an empty discipline that shows little evidence of a deep concern for the world. It loses its purpose, lacks passion, turns inward, serves the self. We mouth the words, but there is nothing at stake. It does not seem to matter much whether our prayers are answered or ignored. On the other hand, without prayer, work becomes an idol. We work to make money, to gain power and presitige, to advance in our careers. We become presumptuous too, thinking that our work can accomplish good things without actually relying on God for wisdom and power. But work that pleases God and serves the common good of humanity must have God involved in it, for only God can accomplish what thas transcendent value and eteranl significance....All work, regardless of who does it-pastors, parents, teachers, coaches, scholars, executives, secretaries, engineers,....-needs God's help for lasting impact. Without God, even our best efforts are in vain.
THe monastic rhythm of prayer and work establishes a routine that monasteries have followed for centuries. Routine means repeating the same activities time and time again; we pray and the we work, day in and day out. Such routine creates the conditions for God to do subtle, deep and transformative work in our souls and in the world. It requires patence and endurance. Routine can make us impatient; we wish that there was an easier and faster way to maturity of faith and fruitfulness of life. We want to take shortcuts; we look for entertainment along the way; we expect to be dazzled by the rapid speed of our progress.....Routine, however boring and wearisome, is necessary. Mastery comes from persisting in some endeavor when everything in us wants to quit.....
The rhythm of prayer and work will enable us to relish the present moment as a gift from God, give ourselves completely to the one thing at hand and surrender our work to God through prayer..........here is the importance and dignity of work. Study, chores, jobs, volunteer work, service, stewardship are all examples of work, which we should strive to do with excellence and humility. But we should never neglect prayer.
Holy Heroes (The Spirituality of Icons and Saints) -
(DS Note: there is so much of this chapter that is new to me, that I am unable to know the "high points.")
Page 118-119: It seems a strange world, at least to outsiders. Its churches are adorned with portraits of people who appear to beloen to another world; worship follows customs and rituals that thake us back to a former age; liturgical incanations sound archaic.....Does it offer us anything rlevant and useful for today? Eastern Othodoxy is perhaps the most unfamiliar of the Christain traditions explored in this book.
Its most sacred term - defication - not only describes what in fact the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ was intended to accomplish in believers, which is moake us holy, but also reflects a central truth found in the New Testament....we will become like God through the saving work of Jesus Christ; believers will some day share in Christ's resurrection glory-his power, beauty and perfection.
The Eastern Orthodox faith teaches that this process of transformation has already begun. Even now believers are being transformed "from one degree of glory to another," as the apostle Paul described it. God's power is already at work in us, restoring the divine image. Deification is a present reality; Christians are saints in the making.
Saints in the Making - Page 120: Hebrews 12:1 "Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us."
The author (of Hebrews) exhorts us to look to Jesus, "who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God." Athanasius argued that Christ became incarnate to repair the damage that was done to God's creation and to restore the divine image in fallen humanity. God did not want to see his creation waste away, nor witness the corruption of his image. He wanted to see human nature rejoined to the divine so that there could be complete restoration.
So Christians are in fact destined for perfection and glory. Christ is not only the mens of this restoration; he is also the end.
The stories of saints in eastern Orthodoxy remind us that such transformation is possible. If it happened to them, sinful as they were, it can happen to us.
The purpose of this chapter is to use three examples to explore the concept of "deification" in the Eastern Orhocox traditio, which emphasizes the important role that saints have played and will continue to play in the life of the church.This great tradition uses two mediums in particular - icons and spiritual biographies - to draw us into the world of the saints and to provide us with examples to follow.
Icons are paintings that accomplish this purpose by inviting us to gaz upon the portraits of people whose human nature has already been transformed into something unspeakably glorious.
Spiritual biographies or hagiographies serve a slightly different purpose. They tell the stories of saints to show haow this transformation actually taks place in people who know and trust Christ as Savior and Lord....their central purpose...is to inspire the faithful to imitate the saints and to embark on the same journey of faith.
Page 121: The Icon of St. Macrina the Younger - Deification points to the ultimate destiny of believers, who will someday share in Christ's resurrection glory and become "like him for we shall see him as he is (1 John 3:2). Iconography is intended to provide an artistic vision of that destiny.
Page 123: ...all icons of Christ depict a person, Jesus of nazareth, who has two distinct bet related natures, one divine and the other human. They show tha Jesus was not simply divine, not a mere abstraction, nor a phantom but a real person - Jesus of Nazareth, the perfect God-man. The image we see in the icon points beyon itself to the reality of the person, the incarnate Son of God, who transformed thematerial creation into a vessel for the divine. The icon of Christ depicts the results of this transformation of earthly matter.
Icons of saints like Macrina serve a slightly idfferent purpose. They demonstrate that, as God became truly human for the sake of our salvation, human beings can likewise share in the divine nature and reflect the divine golry, and thus be restored to what God always intended human being s to be, beareers of the idivine image.
- If the icon of Christ epics the divine descent, God becomeing human, then the icons of saints depict the human ascent, humans reflectin the very nature of God, which is made possible through the incarnation and the work of the Spirit.
- The process of sanctification begins in the saint's earthly life.
- The Holy Spiriet fills and illumines and transforms ordinary person,s conforming them to the image of Christ.
- Thus saints are not suddenly changed, as if by magic; they grow into sainthood through the work of the Holy Spirit
- Icons are not so much works of art as works of devotion
- They function as a window that allows us to see spiritual qualities in additon to mer earthly geings
- The presence of the all-sanctifying grace of the Holy Spirit, holiness, cannot be depicted by any human means, since it is invisible to exteranl physical sight.
- Icons must therefore use symbols to communicate the glory, luyminosity and inner beauty of a saint, one whose human nature has not been diminished but transformed by the work of the Holy Spirit.
- The icon symbolizes the reality of the kindom of God and invites us to enter in.
- "There is more," it seems to be saying to us. "So much more."
- Eastern Orthodox iconographers view their art as a spiritual exercise.......a holy calling not just for anyone.
- The biographer had a spiritual purpose in mind
- this biography describes the process of her transformation
- it is obvious the Melania the Younger was not a typical believer.The Christian faith, if taken seriously, promises to change a person's life.
- The earthly must yield to the heavenly, the real must give way to the reality of the kingdom
- The strangeness draws attention to the mysterious process that leads to sainthood
- God plans to transform us into glorious creatures
(DS note: I had to look up "deification." It means; One that embodies the qualities of God. I will have to spend extra time getting a grip on this idea.
- Deification is not a mere abstract idea.
- It is meant to challenge and inspire believers today
- The ancient saints have left us a legacy in print
- 5th century noteworthy Bible scholoar, pastor, leader and preacher
- his family (led by father) had problems with his choice of career
- He used his office to serve the needs of the entire city, not just those in position of power
- He fed the poor, built hospitals and supported widows
- He took on the task of reforming the clergy
- He confronted bishops for financial mismanagment
- He preached against popular culture and indulgent us of wealth
- He threatened to wihold communion from those who intinued in immorality
- He paid special attnetion to those who worked secular jobs who had to raise families, and who faced the dull routine and difficulties of living in the world
- The Bible, he said, was intended for the regular people, not for clergy and monks
- He felt it was never too late to repent and to receive God's forgiveness
- His preaching made enemies and he could be harsh on the upper class
- False charges were brought against him by a bishop
- His final days included persecution by the government; the public rioting on his behalf
- Icons, spiritual biographies and voices from the past remind us that the destiny awaiting believers is beyond earthly imagination and human achievement.
- C.S. Lewis wrote that Christians should realize that they are destined for absolute perfection.
- No possible degree of holiness or heroism which has ever been recorded of the greatest saints is beyond whaat He is determined to produce in every one of us in the end
- The job will not be completed in this life; Be He means to get us as far as possible before death
- The process is as important as the outcome
From Peter Kreeft's Heaven; The Heart's Deepest Longing -
"Galaxies revolve and dinosaurs breed and rain falls and people fall in live and uncles smoke cheap cigars and people lose their jobs and we all die - all for our good, the finished product, God's work of art, the Kingodm of Heaven. There's nothing outside heaven except hell. Earth is not outside heaven; it is heaven's workshop, heaven's womb."
Earth is heaven's workshop, Kreeft says, which implies tha God uses all things to change us for the better.. It follows that how we respond to our circustances, however unwelcomed, carries significant weight. Life in this world is like a divine workshop; the stuff of daily experience - marriage, children, responsibilities and opportunities..... - the tools that Gode uses; the artist is God himself, who will sculpt the block of marble that we are into something extraordinary.
This divine plan requires us to be attentive to the process of deification. Daily we should ask, What is God trying to do in my life? How is God using the stuff of ordinary experience to change me? What choices can I make to give him freedom to work? The Christian faith is not self-help religion, and mature Christians are not self-made people....True maturity must be God's doing....God calls us to trust him, pray to him, surrender ourselves to him, respond to his initiative and obey his commands. Above all, we should remind ourselves daily of the goal, which is complete trasformation. What God has started, God will surely finish Phil 1:6. We can be sure that this is true because we have works of art from the past to inspire us and to show us the way. The lives of the saints prove that God will transform us, perfect us, deify us.....We will become living icons; our biographies will tell stories of transformation; our lives will bear witness, in word and deed, to the power of the gospel.
Windows page 139
Page 142 Sacramental Life
The central purpose of these Gothic buildings was to provide a proper setting for the administration of the sacraments...
Gothic cathedrals were constructed to direct attention to the altar, the place where the sacraments were administered to the believing community.
...It is not surprise, therefore, that cathedrals were designed to convey the sacredness and power of the sacraments themselves.
Page 144: Controversies have swirled around the sacraments for many centuries...Theologians have also tried to do what the Bible itself does not do; explain exactly how the sacraments work metaphysically.... We might not be able to understand their operation, but we can understand their effect. The sacraments are a source of genuine spiritual life and an objective means of grace.....The sacraments join material and spiritual together into a seamless whole, just as the incarnation does.They are windows that allow us to gaze into another world and receive the grace that pours from that world into ours.
It is a profound mystery. As I file forward with my children..I meditate on the blessing of God that rests on our family, a blessing that has nothing to do with us - the kind of father I am, the kind of children they are, the kind of Christians we are. I reflect on the journey we have taken together as a family, and I ponder the challenges and difficulties we have faced in the past and will continue to face in the future.I realize that, as God has given us grace in the past, he will continue to in the future. The evidence of that grace is in the bread and cup....the bread and the cup...God is at work in that moment to cleanse me, renew me and transform me, always in and through Jesus Christ, who suffered and died to unite me - all of us - to himslef. I say, "Thanks be to God."
Page 158: Reclaiming the Sacraments
The faith of the medieval church was essentially sacramental. It reminded people that the gospel is objective, rooted in the events of salvation history and offered to us therough the means of grace that Christ himself established. How can we reclaim the sacraments for the church today?
First, the sacraments are quintessentially material, which reminds us of the material nature of the Christ faith. Christianity confirms that God created the mterial universe, and that he created it good. Everything in it somehow manifests his greatness and glory...Psalm 19. Human beings are material too. We were created to live in the material world, and we are called to take care of that material world.
Jesus used examples from the material world to illustrate his kingdom teaching; sower, seed, father, and son, he was a teacher, he slept, he ate. Jesus Christ is God come in person, true flesh and blood. The sacraments are symbols of the ongoing presence of the material Christ who lived, suffered and died for our sake. Every time we see a person baptized, we are physically reminded of the cleansing that Jesus offers through his death. This is not abstract, ambiguious, sentimental, ephemeral kind of spirituality. It is body and blood; it is water, bread and wine.
Page 160: Second, the sacraments also teach us that grace comes to us as an objective reality. The Bible does not tell us how the sacraments actually communicate grace, only that they doe. It is all a mystery.
Every person brings his or her own story to the sacrament and finds grace to keep believing, hoping and enduring for another week because in the end the Christian faith concerns what God has done - and continues to do - for us and in us, not what we do for God.
Page 161: Third, the sacraments have the power to transform us into living sacraments to the world. Gothic cathedrals were intended to represent in material form the reality of heaven, especially through two fundatmental qulities - harmonious proportion and luminosity. As sacrements to the world, we are called to exhibit those same qualities. Harmonious proportion has to do with how we order our lives under God's will and rule. We put first things first, live according to proper priourities, channel our resources toward worthy ends, and hallow the world as God's good creation. Luminisity in ture has to do with how we let God's light shine through us.
Page 162: It is all a mystery. How did God become a human being? The first disciples were certainly not expecting the incarnation. It was only the bodily resurrection of Christ that persuaded theem of the truth of it. How doe water, bread and wine feed us with the grace of God? It is a truth beyond our ability to understand. How can we become a sacrament to the world? It is a task beyond our ability to accomplish. Yet God can and will transform us by his grace so that we become living sacraments to the world. Christ joined material and spiritual together into a perfect, seamless whole. He nourishes us with the material and spiritual stuff of the sacraments. He calls us to be material and spiritual agens of redemption in the world.
Chapter 7: Union
The sacraments appeal to the sense, mysticism to intuition; the sacraments emphasize the means of grace, mysticism the end; the sacraments remain firmly rooted in the concreteness of earthly reality, mysticism soars into the ephemeral and ethereal realm of heavenly reality.
Of all the traditions explored in this book, the mystical way is the most foreign to my temperament...it is for this very reason that mystical spirituality has the most to teach me, for the tradition to which I am least attracted is the one about which I should be curious. History itself bears witness to the significance of this traditions Some of the wisest and eepest writers in the history of the church have been mystics who reached summits of spiritual insight and experience that I have been able to glimpse only from afar. It could be that by studying their writings I will be able to follow in their footsteps.
Page 166: Christian mysticism can trace its roots to the ancient philosopher Plato. According to Plato, the human sould is preexistent. In its original state of bliss, it contemplates the eternal truth of God in perfect purity. But creation, birth and embodiment causes the soul to forget its true, original, primal knowledge, engulfing it in materiality. Because the sould is still divine, containing some spark and memory of true being, beauty, goodness and oneness, it longs to return to the divine realm, as if it were a lost child wanting to return home. This process of return requires detachment from everything material so that, released from its earthly imprisonment, the sould can ascend to its divine source, contemplate ultimate reality in pure ecstasy and gain a knowledge that is beyond all knowlede.
Page 177: The Gospel of John
The Gospel of John shows how the transcendent God of the universe revealed himself once and for all in Jesus Christ. The mystery of the divine identity - the divine Word of Greek philosophy and the I am of Judism - become concrete revelation in the incarnation.
John tells a series of stories about people...whose encounters with the human Jesus truns into encounters with God. At first they think that Jesus is only a man. But by the end of the story they confess that he is much more. In Jesus Christ they encounter the living God, for Jesus, they discover, is God in human flesh. The man Jesus is seen as the divine Word and the great I Am.
But John does not stop even there. He leaves not room for doubt when he quotes Jesus referring to himself with the divine Name. "I am the bread of life." "I am the light of the world." "I am the good shephere." "Before Abraham was, I am." "I and the Father are one." "Beloved," says the author of 1 John, "we are God's children now; what we will be has not been revealed. What we do know is this: twhen he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as his is" (1 John 3:2).
Page 178-179: Bernard of Clairvaux
He believed that Jesus Christ makes a union of relationship possible. Bernard argued that God's love engenders in us the desire to love God in return.
Our love for God, however, is far from perfect. It must grow by degree. In fact, our first impulse of love is not directed toward God at all. It focuses on the self. When we manifest this first and lwest degree of love when we love ourselves for our own sake.....Thus we pass to the second degree of love, which is to love God, though still for our own sake. We discover that God cares about us and meets our needs, whcih draws us to God as the source of everything we truly long fore. We love God; but it is a love that has self as its primary motive and concern. In the third degree of love we adore God for the goodness that he is, not simply for the good things he gives. We love God for God's sake.....Surprisingly, Bernard believed that such unselfish love for God is not the highest degree of love. We experience the fourth degree of love when we love ourselves for God's sake. We cherish ethe image of GOd that is being restored in us and the reflection of God's perfection and beauty that transforms us. Here Bernard exults in the union of relationship that exists between lover and beloved, the one giving life and the other receiving it.
Pge 180: We know and experience GOd's love through Jesus Christ..."All love begins in the debt of gratitude. So love od God begins in a recognition of what God has given to the human race. And the greatest gift, the greatest manifestation of God's love, is Jesus the incarnate Word....True union with God consists in knowing, worshiping, enjoying and loving Jesus Christ.
Page 182: The Way of Prayer
If this union of relationship is possible, how can we begin to experience it as a pattern of life, not someday in the future but today, not when we live in the light of God's goodness but while we struggle in the darkness of the world? Through the discipline of prayer. God himself, Julian argued, prompts us to Pray. Prayer is simply the human response to the prior call fo God, which we hear in Jesus Christ. God speaks to us; his voice reverberates inour souls like an echo. The sound of his voice makes us want to reply. Prayer is not a complete leap into the dark. The Christian fithe teaches that we do not pray as if speaking into an empty, nameless void. We pray to a God we know, for God made himself known in Jesus Christ. In Jesus we see the face of God.
The most natural and familiar expression of prayer is petition. The Lord's Prayer provides us with the perfect mode. It is a practical prayer that addresses daily life.
There is nothing magical about petitionary prayer. It involves little more than inviting God to become active in our lives. We need God. "Pray wholeheartedly," Julian wrote...
But there is another kind of prayer, which, though less familiar to us, is far more central to mystical spirituality. It is contemplative or wordless prayer, which flows out of darkness, silence and a deep awareness of the supremacy, beauty and aqpuity of God. Thomas Merton writes of such prayer, "It is a vivid realization of that fact that life and being in us proceed from an invisible, transcendent and infinitely abundant Source. Contemplation is, above all, awareness of the reality of that Source." Like most mystics, Merton believed that contimplative prayer is not a spiritual technique or intellectual exercise or natural process, as if we could learn to master it in the same way we learn to speak a language or to play a sprot. "It si not the fruit of our own effort. It is the gift of God Who, in His mercy, completes the hidden and mysteriousl work of creation in us by enlightening our minds and hearts.
Page 184
Mystics argue, in fact, that the way to contemplation is not through effort but through darkness. John the Cross wrote several books on spirituality....in thes books he argued that the great enemy of the spiritual life is our natural inclination to become attached to things that, however good in themselves, keep us from God. Surprisingly, even religious rituals, exercises, and beliefs can have a negative effect on the spiritual life...
Page 185
We cannot, therefore, reach union with God through human effort alone. Still, we do not have to be entirely passive either. We can, for example, surrender ourselves daily to God as he does his deep work in us. We can practice the spiritual disciplesn, like fasting and meditation. We can also trust tha, when we do pass through periods of darkness, God has not abandoned us but is in fact drawing us into more intimate communion with him. Finally, we can learn to wait in prayerful silence. "For God alone my soul waits in silence, for my hope is from him. He only is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall not be shake. On God rests my deliverance and my honor; my might rock, my refuge is God" (Psalm 62: 5-7).
The prayer of silence is not natural. Our attempts to pray this kind of prayer will expose how trivial and superficial our thoughts are, how noisy our world is, how inattentive we are to the reality of God's presend. Mystics urge us to turn these distractions into prayers and to repeat a line from Scripture to quiet the sould and direct our thoughts to God. It taks time and practice. Even then, we will discover that consistent practice is not enough. Only God can make himself known to us. Contemplative prayer......is a discipline we practice; it is a gift we recieve. Such prayer - wordless, silent, patient, confident, secure - will empty us and fill us, break us and restore us, plunge us into the darkenss and draw us into the light, separate us from God as we know him through creation so that we can be united with God as we know him in Christ, and thus experience the union with him for which our souls truly long.
Ordinariness: The Spirituality of the Medieval Laity
"And whateverr you do, in word or dee, ado everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him." - Colossians 3:17
Page 187: It seems that in every generation a few Christians rise above the rest of us....Their names....read like a Who's Who of Christian heroes. I love to tell the stories of these saints to my students....But then it always happens. Some student blurts out, "So what?" That simple and stark question drives the discussion in a different direction. Students begin to ponder the problem of sainthood. Who can imitate these extraordinary people?...
Is it possible for ordinary people to be true disciples too?
Page 188: The World of the Laity
For this reason, I have decided to write a chapter on the spirituality of the late medieval laity, which focuses attention on the people who did not reach the level of "sainthood." Most Christians, after all, live as ordinary people who attend church and marry and buy homes and raise families and work rgular jobs. Surprisingly, the church has often failed to address the needs and concerns of this large number of people. So much time and energy is put into relegious concerns - church buildings, church committees, church programs and activities - that the secular world suffers from pure neglect. But it is in that very worl Christians spend most of their time. If the Christiian faith is goin to have any kind of impact at all, it must address how believers live in the secular world. Ordinary people must learn to live as disciples of jesus when they are not at church.
The history of Christianity tteaches us that the Christian movement thrives when the needs, interests and aconcerns of ordinary people are taken seriously. The early church lacked most of the material resources and cultural advantages that the Western church enjoys today, yet in very short order it spread thoughout the Roman world because it appealed to and attracted everyday people
In the second and third centuries the church continued to grow, even under difficult circumstances, because ordinary Christians prov ed to be effective witnesses.
The movement proved difficult to suppress because nonelites were so successful in spreading the message of Christianity.
Rome officials wanted to snuff it out and therefore targeted pominent leaders fo persecution, assuming that if they attacked the elites then they would eliminate the problem.....it was like an epidemi that spread from one person to the next. Rome wanted to ontrol the spread of the disease. But the most effetive carriers, as it turned out, were the laity, not the leaders. So the faith ontinued to thrive. Rome could not tell how it happened, why it attrated attention or even whom it included.....
The Christian movement became extraordinarily influential through the work of ordinary people.
Page 189-190: The Medieval Hierarhy
The church continued to grow numerially after Constantine seized power in A.D 312.
- Its rate of growth increased
- outstripping its ability to nurture maturity of faith amount ordinary church members.
- Easy growth.....came to an end in the fifth century with tribal groups carving up territories....empire became less wealthy, less educated, less stable
- In wake of collapse, churches and monasteries emerged as the most stable institutions in a world otherwise falling apart
- Ordinary believers (liaty) occupied the lowest position because they spent most of their time doing secular tasks
- The clergy, the seculars, occupied the middle position, though serving the church, they nevertheless had to live in the world
- The religious (monks and nuns) occupied the highest position because they lived apart from the world and spent their days in worship and prayer
- He considered it a concession to human weakness that the laity married and had children
- It would have been better by far had the laity been able to devote themselves exclusively to living as monks; but such was not always possible.
- There was some questions whether anyone living outside the monastery could be saved at all
- The laypeople....provided support of the monks in their spiritual endeavors and would ask the monks to intercede for them.
Conditions in Europe began to change in the later Middle Ages (1200-1450)
- Laity emerged ever so slowly as a visible and influential force in the church
- Laity were becoming more educated, more urban, more prosperous, more traveled and more sophisticated
- Laity were were searching for a more robust spiritual life that would address life as they had to live it in the secular world, a world that not all of them were willing to abandon for a religious vocation
- Laypeople wanted a new model of the Christian life, one more relevant to life outside the church and monastery.
- Over thime the needs of ordinary believers forced the church to set a new course for itself, one that would embrace the secular worl as a rightful part of God's domain
- They did not rejecte the traditional spirituality
- They continued to receive the sacraments, venerate relics, embark on pilgrimages, read biographies of the saints and practice various rituals
- They were looking for something else too
- They expected the curch to reflect a higher degree of cultral sophistication
- Viritually every monastic renewal movement that emerged in the eleventh and twelth entuies emphasized ascetic devotion and separation from society
A new movement emerged in the later Middle Ages that forever altered the course of the Western church. Mendicants (ascetics who lived in the worl, begged for food and preached the gospel)
- They introduced a new spirit into the religious life of Europe.
- They aspired to follow the example of Jesus
- They invited laypeople to do the same
- They devoted themselves to imitating the life of Christ
- Jesus was poopr; they pursued poverty
- Jesus lived with the people; they chose to move to the city
- Jesus lived a simple life; they gave their possissions to the poor
- Jesus preached the gospel to common people and outcast; they told the gospel story to anyone who would listen
- Jesus sacrificed is life to honor God and serve humanity; they did likewise
- They lived in utter simplicity and poverty, all before a watching world
- The movements demonstrated that laypeople were eager to experiment with and experience new forms of religious life.
- They helped to make an active and vital spiritual life accessible to ordinary people.
- These movements gravitated to the city.
- They addressed the unique needs and problems of laypeople, who responded to them with enthusiasm
- Everyone was affected by what was happening across Europe
The mendicant movement awakened a popular interest in spiritual things that took on a life of its own. In some cases laypeople took matters into their own hands, initiating movements that allowed them to live the Christian faith as active participants, not as passive spectators.....in their minds ordinary life had dignity because God himself had become an ordinary human being.
- they fought wars
- Practice the spiritual disciplines
- Made money and gve it away
- They did their common work...all in the name of God
- began to identify and elevate exceptionally holy laypeople to sainthood
- Lay saints lived like monks and nuns....remaining though in the world
- The city became eheir desert
- The home served as their cave
- The marketplace played the role of the devil's tempter
- They deprived themselves of food and sleep
- They shunned worldly honors
- They avoided the company of others
- They equaled, even surpassed, the austerity of the desert saints
- Some practiced virginal marriage....they vowed not only to remain faithful to their spouse but also to practice celibacy in marriage
- Some pursed an alternative - they had children first.....then vowed to remain chaste for the rest of their married life
- moved in a more redical direction
- closed down monasteries
- Dified church hierarchy and urged ordinary blievers to live as serious disciples of Christ in the world
- They blieved that true faith applied as much to secular life as it did to religious life
Let this be our principle that the use of God's gifts is not wrongly directed when it is referred to that end to which the Aughor himself created and destined them for us, since he created them for our good, not for our ruin."
Martin Luther cited Christ as the primary example to follow, especially in the way he lived as an ordinary man.....
"that Christ always and in all things pleased his Father is true. His eatin, drinking, and sleeping pleased his Father as much as his great miracles, for the Father sees not the works but the intent in the works."
Luther that the one thing expected of believers is that they live by faith, even when doing distinctively secular activities. Only faith enables believers to live in the world as God intends.
The Reformers addressed the needs, problems and responsibilities of ordinary people.
- They believed that the world belongs to God
- No arena of activity falls outside God's redemptive purpose
- Ordinary duties matter just as much to God as fasting, solitude and celibacy.
- Luther argued that marriage is part of God's divine plan
- Calvin viewed secular emplyment similarly.
- Calvin argued that God assigns ordinary believers to a "sentry psot" in which they can use their gifts to serve God in the world
- "Secular" work is just as important to God as the work of the clergy
- It provides an opportunity for laypeople to contribute to God's kingdom work in the world.
- All work has dignity and purpose
- All work can bring glory to God
- God calls, equips and uses ordinary people for his extraoridinary work.
The purpose of faith is not to require peopel to withdraw from the world or to enable people to succeed in the world, but to empower people to claim the world for God's kingdom.
Page 205-208: A Lay Spirtuality
How can ordinary believers begin to live in the secular world as serious followers of Christ?
First -
- we can lern to view ordinary life as a legitimate arena of discipleship
- in God's eyes theree is no division between teh secular and the sacred
- all spheres of life belong to him
- the most mondane tasks we do have a divine purpose to them.
- how do we turn these duties into holy activites?
- we honor God with our best efforts, pray even as we work,
- love those around us,
- serve the common good of society,
- bear witness to our faith in Jesus Christ and
- thank God for every gift he has given to us
"And whatevery you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him" - Colossians 3:17
Second -
- we can devote our resources to God, who has given us these things as gifts to invest in his kingdom work.
- God owns everything, we own nothing
- We are accountable to God for what belongs to him
Calvin said "let this, therefore, be our rule for generosity and beneficence; We are the stewards of everything God has conferred on us by which we are able to help our neighbor, and are required to render account of our stewardship. Moreover, the only right stewardship is that which is tested by the rule of love."
Third -
- we can cultivate what could be called, however misleadingly, "secular" disciplines that serve a spiritual purpose
- Spiritual disciplines include solitude, fasting, celibacy and meditation - useful habits because they dicipline our appetites and guiet our hearts
- Secular disciplines have value too, for they prepare and empower ordinary Christians to serve God in the secular world
- Discipline of hospitality welcomes the outsider into our homes as a cherished friend
- Discipline of service meets the practical needs of people who are unable to take care of themselves
- Discipline of leadership envisions what can be accomplished for God's kingdom work in the world
- These secular disciplines help the faithful to claim the world for God because the world is God's
We still need saints, only of a different kind. The kind of saint needed today is the secular saint - the parent, the teacher, the coach, the lawyer, the politician, the neighbor, the volunteer, the exective - who believes tha how Christians live in the world matters to God....
Now more that ever the world needs people who treat secular life as part of God's rightfull domain....
The Christina faith cannot be confined to the church and religious activities without contradicting itself.
Disciples ware never content to keep faith at church. They cannot help but apply it to the world.
Word: The Spirituality of the Reformers
Page 211 - 212
- The Reformers considered preaching considered preaching their primary duty and highest calling, which in turn reflected their belief in the Word of God.
- The Reformers believed that God, out of his infinite love and mercy, chose to reveal himself to us - for the sake of his glory and our salvation.
- The Reformers never assumed that the Word belonged to them alone. They wanted to get it out to the people, which is why they not only preached the Word.
- They believed we should take this Word seriously - study it diligently, ponder it day and night, believe it in the heart as well as the mind, and surrender out lives to it, trusting that it is not a Word from God but the Word of God.
- They believed it is God's final revelation of himself to us, which came to us in Jesus Christ, God's Son, and was recorded for us in Scripture and continues to speak to us through proclamation and sacraments.
- Broad movement of religious reform that flourished in sixteenth-century Europe.
- Luther and Clavin might be the most familiar Reformers to us now, but they represented only one wing of the movement.
- Martin Luther spent years in a monastery...which he eventually left as a result of his conversion the the Reformation faith.
- John Calvin studied the liberal arts at one of the leading universities of his day, which set him on a course that also led to his conversion to the Reformation faith.
- Luther was profoundly aware of his sinfulness, and he practiced penance with special vigor to conquer the problem. He confessed sin for hours and however vigorously he practiced penance, it never seemed vigorous enough.
- Luther's study of the Bible awakened him to a new truth.
- One verse in particular, Romans 1:17, perplexed and vexed him.
- One phrase, "the righteousness of God" siezed and stood in his way.
- Luther was overwhelmed by the discovery that "the righteousness of God" refers to God's passive righteousness, that is, the gift of righteousness that God graciously lavishes on sinners, and that "the righteousness live by faith" means that faith makes people righteouse, not that righteous people have faith.
- John Calvin became the Reformation's primary theologian and organizer.
- Like Luther, Calvin believed that God revealed himself to humanity through the Word
- In this act of self-revelation God chose to "accommodate" himself to our human capacities, limited as they are, as if speaking in our earthly language.
- Being both divine and human, Jesus is the perfect Mediator between God and humanity.
- Calvin argued "hence it is clear that we cannot trust in God save through Christ, In Christ God so to speak makes himself little, in order to lower himself to our capacity; and Christ alone calms our consciences that they may dare intimately approach God.
- Calvin further argued that God did not stop there, but that by his providence he guided the process by which the story of salvation was written down.
- The Scriputres too are the Word of God because they contain the record of God's saving activity in Jesus Christ.
- though clearly subordinate to Christ, the revelation of God in Scripture is as certain and reliable as the revelation of God in Jesus Christ.
Not that Calving ignored or dismissed evidence that confirms the reliability of the biblical record. If anything, he was well aware of external proofs that could reinforce what the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit reveals....but such evidence, however convincing, is of secondary importance.
Pages 221 - : The Burden of the Preacher
Both Calvin and Luther believed that the proclamation of the Word of God is the Word of God. "God does not wish to be heard, but through the voice of His ministers," Calvin argued.
Luther went so far as to argue that preaching plays a role that not even Scripture can play, for preaching gives God an audible voice.
- Luther claimed the ears, not the eyes, are the primary organ for receiving the Christian message. Hearing is more fundamental than seeing, for God, once visibly present on earth in Jesus Christ, has chosen to continue to reveal himself throught proclamation of the Word. God calls people to himself through the preaching of the Word.
The Refomers had much to say not only about preaching but also to preachers.
- They urged fellow preachers to become good stewards of the Word of God, which required the cultivation of certain disciplines.
- They considered gaithfulness to the gospel as primary
- Calvin reasoned that preaching is the Word of God only if the sermon itself actually proclaims the Word of God.
- Calving used words like ambassador and steward to define the role of preachers
- Preachers must know Scripture, understand doctrine, demonstrate godliness of character and possess the gift of teaching.
- Preachers also have to be conscientious students.
- Calvin regarded lack of preparation as a particularly dangerous and presumptuous fault.
- Luther used an expository method of preaching. He looked for the central meaning of the text and then explained that meaning of the text then explained that meaning in light of the larger context.
- Calvin preached through the Bible one verse at a time, one book at a time. He covered and average of four verses a sermons
The Reformers believed that their sermons had to speak first to the person doing the preaching. Their sermons often had a humble, human quality to them.
Luther often pointed to the lowliness of Jesus as a source of comfort and encouragement. Luther knew that his congregation comprised mostly ordinary people. In his mind it was not right to preach to the elites and ignore everyone else.
Though highly educated, Luther spoke in a way that ordinary epople could understand, using idioms and illustrations that came from their world
Page 227 - : The Word of God for Us
The Reformers labored to preach well because they had a high view of the Word of God.
How should we respond to this Word?
First...
- We should make it our own
- The Bile tells a story of human resistance and God's persistence.
- The story is full of flawed heroes and strange twists of plots, of the wretchedness of evil and the triumph of good
- What God accomplished then he can accomplish now because he is the same God who works in the same way
- Thus, for the sake of our own spiritual health, we must learn this story well by reading it time and again, not only to master the basic facts but also to understand it devotionally..and apply it to our lives
- Memorize important passages such as Ps 27; Is 55; Mt 5-7; Rom 8; Phil 3, and meditate on these passages throughout the day
- These disciplines change the students, for the story of the Bible becomes their story too
- We must learn to listen to the Word, for "faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the Word of Christ (Romans 10:17)
- Listening uses the ears, reading the eyes
- Listening is a communal exercies, reading is solitary
- Listening is an interpersonal act, it involves two or more people in fairly close proximity (E. Peterson)
- What is in the written word began did not start out written at all. The story was spoken and heard.
- We need to recover the art of listening to the Word of God, allowing that Word to address us as if God were the speaker, we the hearers. When we read, we maintain control; when we listen, the Word has control.
- We also need to learn how to listen to the preached Word
- Laypeople should take the pulpit as seriously as pastors, if not more so, because their spiritual well-being depends on it.
- We should apply the written Word to life
- When we study the Word, preach the Word and listen to the Word, we should do so with the needs of the world in mind
In the end they kept returning to one central message - Jesus Christ is the very Word of God who came to reveal God and make us right with God.
Conversion: the Spirituality of Evangelicals
Pages 231 -
No movement in the history of Christianity has been more energetic, creative,m diverse and complex than evangelicalism. It has grown so dramatically over the past two hundred years that it now encircles the globe.
Evangelicals believe that true spirituality requires more than church attendance, liturgical practice, sacramental observance and creedal assent. These are important disciplines, to be sure; but they also tend to remain formal and external, which can easily engender nominal faith.....At the heart of evangelical spirituality is the conversion of the whole of one's life to God.
Page 238 -
I write this chapter, therefore, as an insider, which makes me more keenly aware of both the weaknesses and the strengths of this tradition. On the one hand, evangelicalism can easily trivialize the meaning of conversion. Over the years I have witnessed many superficial conversions. I know too many evangelicals whose conversion marked the end rather than the beginning of their spiritual pilgrimage, whose grasp of truth goes no deeper than knowledge of a handful of Bible verses and self-help formulas, and whose commitment tochrist requires little more than occasional church attendance. I feel an acute sense of embarrassment when I consider how often this great tradition has been abused or perverted. On the other hand, evangelicalism emphasizes a central truth that should never be compromised. The Bible makes it clear that we much be converted to Jesus Christ.
Page 240 - What is Conversion?
The idea of conversion suggest a turn, achange of direction, a new course for one's life. The word itself does not appear in the Bible, though several synonyms do. The two most important are repentance, which implies a change of heart, mind and direction, and new birth, which connotes a kind of second coming to life, this one spiritual in nature. Conversion can happen in a variety of ways too. It can be dramatic or quiet, emotional or thoughtful, sudden or drawn out. What truly matters, however, is not how people are coverted but that they are coverted. The true test of its authenticity is the long-term results.
Three 17th century movements, all originating in Europe, emphasized the importance of results. These movements laid the foundation for modern evangelicalism.
C0nversion is a process. The Puritans defined conversion as a process. Puritanism first emerged in England as a reaction to the religious policy of Elizabeth I, who followed a moderate course of church reform - the "Middle Way."......the Puritans did not succeed. They were opposed by the crown, harassed by church authorities and wracked by disagreements and dissension from within their own ranks. By the early 17th century the movement began to fragment.
The Puritans produced many formidable theologians, writers and pastors, both in England and the colonies. None became more famous than John Bunyan.
The Puritans believed that conversion sometimes happens in a moment of time. But they also affirmed that conversion is a process that God uses to draw us ever closer to himself and to make us ever more like himself. They called this process "owning the covenant." In their minds conversion has a kind of narrative qulity to it, which is why, especially in the American colnies, Puritan pastors required candidates for church membership to provide a narrative of their conversiuon before they wsere allowed to become church memnbers and receive the sacrament of communion. Pators looked fore more than an event; they wanted to see evidence of a life that had been converted to God.
Conversion to holiness of life. As a process, therefore, conversion is supposed to have an effect - that is, engender holiness of life (or piety). The Pietist movement, which began in Germany emphasized this particular aspect of conversion. As devout Lutherans, Pietists believed that salvation comes through Christ alone, faith alone and grace alone, all of which we know through Scripture alone. But they did not stop there. Deeply aware of the problem of nominal religion that was rampant in the state church of Germany......they also emphasized heartfelt taith and personal holiness. They believed that conversion to Christ implies living for Christ.
The most notable leader of the movement was Philipp Jakob Spener......To encourage growth in personal holiness, he established "Colleges of Piety" or small groups, which became one of the distinguishing features of the movement. Spener believed that true conversion requires more than assent to a creed; it mandates the cultivation of genuine faith and holiness.
Page 242 - Conversion to the world. Genuine conversion should inspire us to care about the world too, the world "for whom Christ died," as the apostle Paul put it. It is not simply our conversion that matters to God but the world's conversion. No group in the history of Christianity has taken this aspect of conversion more seriously than the Moravians, expecially under the able leadership of Count Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendort, a scion of one of the great families of Europe.
Zinzendorf purchased an estate and formed a community (Herrnhut) that eventually included Catholics, Lutherans, separatists and Anabaptists as well as Moravians. He organized little "banks" for prayer and Bible study, drafted a constitution to regulate the life of the community and arranged for the election of twelve elders......it thrived and spread to other parts of Europe.
Herrnhut, within 10 years (by 1742), sent 70 missionaries to Greenland, the Guinea Coast of Africa, South Africa, Algeria, Ceylon, Romania, and Constantinople, thought the little community numbered only six hundred people. By 1760, the Moravian Church had deployed 226 full-time missionaries around the world to preach the gospel and serve the needy.
Zinzendorf dedicated himself to obeying the Great Commission.
Like the Puritans, Zinzendorf understood conversion as a process, not simply an event. He learned from the Pietists that conversion should lead to holiness of life. But he also believed conversion called him - and the entire church - to the world.
These three movements - Puritanism, Pietism and Moravianism - established the foundation on which evangelical spirituality is built. Evangelicals call for personal commitment to Christ, hough, unlike the Puritans, they often emphasize experience over process; the encourage holness of life, though sometimes erring on the side of legalism; and, ore than any other group in the history of Christianity, they pursue the task of world missions with unusual energy and convictions.
Page 244 -
What makes Conversion Authentic?
Many people who appear to have experienced a genuine conversion eventually return to their former way of life......These reversals have forced evangelicals to clarify what makes a conversion authentic and why some conversions, though they appear to be sincere, fail to last.
One theologiean in particular pondered this problem throughout his illustrious career....Jonathan Edwards. Edwards noted that people from all walks of life experienced conversion. He also observed the pattern that the conversions seemed to follow - conviction of sin, commitment to live a better life, repeated failures, feelings of utter helplessness and guilt, and finally an experience of grace, which overshelmed the converts with confidence, rapture and live. He was convinced that the awakening was the work of God.
The awakening came to an abrubt end when Edwards's uncle committed suicide, two women went mad and people began to exhibit wild swings of emotion, from despair to elation. Criticism soon followed. Elites from Boston charged that the awakending was the product of religious enthusiasm, not genuine - that is, rational - faith. Edwards conceded that there were problems but still defended the awakening as genuinely supernatural.
His central argument is simple and elegan. "True religion, in large part, consists of holy affections." Edwards defined the "affections" as a natural and intense reaction - whether positive or negative - to things of real consequence to us. By its very nature religion involves things that are profoundly significant and supremely consequential, for religion is concerned with the being of God, who is ineffably glorius, beautiful and holy. It is impossible to claim to know such a being and not be overcome with delight, longing and love. Thus the only appropriate response is "holy affections" - the intense inclination of the soul toward God. Such is the nature of true religion or conversion.
Edward believed that these holy affections will be visible and obvious, like heat and light from a fire.......but he was careful to distinguish between signs that prove conversion is authentic and signs that prove nothing at all......In the end, however, Edwards identified one sign as superior to all the rest. That sign is consistent practice of faith, which manifests itself in holiness of life, delight in God and love for neighbor.....It is therefore the outcome of conversion - its impact on how wel ive, love and serve - that establishes the authenticity of conversion. "You will know them by their fruits, " Jesus said.
Ironically, Edwards waas not able to persuade his own congregation to accept his ideas.......the conflict went on for several years, finally ended when the church asked him to leave. He accepted a call to become a missionary to Indians in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. It was at this wilderness outpost that Edwards wrote his most mature works.
Pge 248 - Who is Responsible for Conversion?
Edwards believed that he did not in any way plan or cause the awakening that swept through his church. He did nothing different in 1734 from what he had done in 1730 or would do in 1745. Yet something happened in those 6 months that transcended mere human effort. It was, as he said, a isurpising work of God, the result of divine, not human, intervention. But many evangelicals who followed Edwards seemed to want less surprise. They turned conversion into a hmuan eterprise, though never denying that it was divine work too. Two changes occurred.
First, evangelicals put increasing stress on the experience of conversion, believing that the intensity of the experience would somehow authenticate the reality of it.This led them to use methods that made conversion as predictable and convenient as possible.
Second, they developed strategies to win and disciple converts, which truned evangelicalism in an entrepreneurial direction. Both experience and strategy became the distinguishing characteristics of evangelicalism in the nineteenth century.
In 1740 Edwards invited the famous and flamboyant George Whitefield to preach in his pulpit....he seemed to win countless people to Christ every time he opened his mouth. His impact....was sensational. Sarah Edwards mentioned the visit in her journa. "It is wonderful to see what a spell he casts over an audience.....I have seen upwards of a thousand people hang on his words with breathless silence, broken only by an occasional half-supressed sob." Edwards agreed.....but had reservations too, which he expressed in a series of sermons he preached on the parable of the sower shortly after Whitefield had left. He noted that the transient naure of itinerancy tended to produce transient results - "sudden conversions are very often false," he said.....Whitefield's style was apt to produce more hypocrites than true converts. In the end Edwards affirmed the role that Whitefield played, but his concerns anticipated changes in the evangical movement that were about to occur.
Page 250- Experience: Whitefield's style appeared to prevail. His approach to ministry has influenced the evangelical movement ever since. John Wesley's dramatic conversion became the prototype.......
The importance of experience motivated the nineteenth-century American evangelist Charles G. Finney to develop "new measures" to ensue that his evangelistic work would yield concrete results. He conducted crusades in cities that lasted up to six weeks. This prolonged exposure to the gospel created a sense of excitement that swelled the size of the crowds......he urged converts to get involved in local churches after the campaign ended. In his famous book, Lectures on Revivals of Religion, he argued that a revival is not a miraculous occurrence, as Edwards had argued, but a natural on, the result of the proper use of the divinely ordained menas. In short, he turned revivals into a scientific enterprise.
Page 251 - Strategy: Whitefield and his heirs used a variety of innovative techniques to win and disciple converts too. He turned the pulpit - or the platform, as was more often the case - into a kind of stage and captivated listeners with his dramatic style and winsome message. He was the first evangelical to try open-air preaching.
John Wesley preached some 40,000 sermons during his lifetime.....he was a genius at making the gospel simple, understandable and compelling, which increased his effectiveness in reaching members of the English working class. He and his brother, Charles, built chapels and held midweek services to reach people who did not feel welcomed and comfortable in established churches.
John Wesley was a superb organizer as well. He adapted the structure of the Holy Club to nurture converts in the faith.....these classes of smal groups of twelve met regularly for confession of sin, Bible study, prayer, mutual accountability and strict discipline. Wesley was especially committed to the exercise of discipline. "Is it any wonder that we find so few Christians for where is Christian discipline?.......Now, wherever doctrine is preached, where there is no discipline, it cannot have its full effect upon its hearers." He even provided a list of questions that leaders were to use when members of the class gathered for their weekly meeting.
Wesley appointed and trained laypeople to lead these classes, which generated a large supply of ready and able leaders as the movement expanded.......In essence it turned his large-scale ministry of evangelism into a small-scale ministry of discipleship.
Page 253 -
Evangelical Spirituality Today
The global impact of evangelical spirituality has been nothing short of astounding....Dwight L. Moody became the most famous evangelist in the late 19th century; Billy Graham has been the most successful evangelist in history, preaching to hundreds of millions around the world. We are profoundly indebted to these evangelicals for their courageous efforts. The Christian world will never be the same because fo their deep commitment to the truth of the gospel, to the authority of Scripture and to innovative ministry.
But the movement has now gone global. Since the early 20th century the most dynamic evangelical movement has been Pentecostalis. America produced the seed of Pentecostalis, to be sure; but the world has become the soil......it has spawned thousands of thousands of indigenous churches in virtually every country around the globe. The growth of Pentecostalism demonstrates that non-Western Christians have in many ways taken over leadership of the evangelical movement.
Like Wesley and other early pioneers, this new generation of evangelicals is committed to conversion. It is not enough, they would say, to preach the message of salvation; we must also call people to respond to that message. But these leaders are equally committed to a holistic understanding of conversion, which is exactly what true conversion means. Conversion to Christ might be a singular event. That is certainly where it often begins. But true conversion does not stop there. It demands that ehw hole of our lives...........be surrendered to God. It is an endless process. When Jesus called his disciples, he told them to deny themselves, take up the cross and follow him. As C. S. Lewis once wrote, God does not want something from us; he simply wants us. Once again, at the heart of evangelical spirituality is the conversion of the whole of our lives to God.
John Newton's story illustrates the power of authentic conversion - his whole life was transformed by the gospel. His was a complete conversion, which is what conversion ought to be. Still, it was not something he could accomplish on his own, for it was beyond him. As he discovered, he could not achieve perfect genuineness or reach a point of total surrender or manifest the marks of "true religion." Newton's hymn, after all, is not about him, not even about conversion. It is about grace. God's grace found him, gave him sight, taught him to fear and relieved him of fear, delivered him from danger, and led him home. Grace promised him good and infused him with hope. Grace gave him the gift of eternal ife. It was grace that converted him. Grace is powerful and perfect because it comes throguh Jesus Christ, God's Son, our Savior and our Lord.
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