Author: Mike Aquilina

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It’s Ardor Than I Thought

Hey, check out the new blog on the patristics block. James Siemens, a former Anglican clergyman now RC, has set up shop at East to West: A Respository of Thoughts on Theology and History. He intends to post things relevant to his doctoral dissertation on Theodore of Tarsus, “which means my focus will be ‘pan-mediterranean’ — that is, from Edessa to Canterbury.” James hosts another blog, Fides et Ardor: Thoughts on Faith, Culture, and the World in General. Both blogs are highly recommended.

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Heart of Hearing

Earlier this week I praised The Listening Heart: Vocation And the Crisis of Modern Culture, by the Baptist theologian A.J. Conyers. I’m back today to give you another sampling of the author’s treatment of the Fathers. He’s speaking specifically of the liberality of their thought and contrasting it with modern ideas of tolerance. This is no “lazy air of relativism,” he says, but rather “the openness of theology” which “always points to something deeper.”

It points to truth rather than holding it captive. This habit of thought has deep roots in the Christian tradition and helps to illuminate what is meant by the practice of toleration. It is an openness toward what is true, recognizing that the truth of God is true for all people, and to the extent that other cultures or religions have been illuminated by truth it is none other than the truth of the one God, the God to whom Jesus himself gives full and incarnate witness.

An example of this early practice is found in Justin Martyr (d. 165) who came to the Christian faith by way of Stoicism and Platonism. For him Christian faith is the “touchstone” of truth. He believed that the identification of Christ as logos in Scripture opened the way to understanding even pre-Christian philosophies as bearing a measure of truth. Explains the historian Henry Chadwick, “Christ is for Justin the principle of unity and the criterion by which we may judge the truth, scattered like divided seeds among the different schools of philosophy in so far as they have dealt with religion and morals.”

Clement of Alexandria provides another witness. Like Philo on behalf of Judaism more than a century before, he incorporated the best works of Hellenistic literature and philosophy in his own Christian teaching. The writings of Clement that remain to us contain more than seven hundred quotations from an excess of three hundred pagan sources. At the same time, it was perfectly clear that Scripture was his authority. His arguments would explore the world of Homer or Heraclitus, but then he would resolve the issue beginning with the words “it is written.” Thus his thought was not syncretistic, but synthetic. There was, for him, a “chorus of truth” upon which the Christian might draw. This multiple source did not replace Scripture, but it illuminated its pages. All philosophy, if it was true philosophy, was of divine origin, even though what we receive through philosophy is broken and almost unintelligible. All truth, Clement would argue, is God’s truth. In his Stromata (Miscellanies) he wrote, “They may say that it is mere chance that the Greeks have expressed something of the true philosophy. But that chance is subject to divine providence. . . . Or in the next place it may be said that the Greeks possessed an idea of truth implanted by nature. But we know that the Creator of nature is one only…” While Clement’s Alexandrian tradition had enormous influence on the church, the tendency toward a tolerant habit of thought was not found in Alexandria alone. Gregory of Nazianzus (330-389), whose ministry ranged from Athens to Constantinople, argued for the universality of the knowledge of God, who is “in the world of thought, what the sun is in the world of sense; presenting himself to our minds in proportion as we are cleansed; and loved in proportion as He is presented to our mind: and again, conceived in proportion as we love Him … pouring Himself out upon what is external to Him” …

Modern times … lost the earlier understanding of a higher connection among different ways of thinking and believing. Thus modern people tended to know no way of tolerating alien thought other than to say that all opinions are of equal value since they merely illuminate the mind of the individual doing the thinking. Or, to put it less starkly, they confined certain kinds of thought, religious and moral thought specifically, to the realm of the private. By contrast, Augustine could understand that his earlier Neoplatonist books taught him something about God, even though it was incomplete: “In the same books I also read of the Word, God, that his birth came not from human stock, not from nature’s will or man’s, but from God. But I did not read in them that the Word was made flesh and came to dwell among us.” And he continued to comfort Christians who are conscience stricken about intellectual “meat offered to idols,” saying, “Let every good and true Christian understand that wherever truth may be found, it belongs to his Master.” Toleration, which in this sense, and not the modern sense, means listening rather than speaking too quickly, so that one might rightly evaluate what is said, was seen by St. Augustine as the normal habit of a Christian mind:

“And what else have many good and faithful men among our brethren done? Do we not see with what a quantity of gold and silver, and garments, Cyprian, that most persuasive teacher and most blessed martyr, was loaded when he came out of Egypt? How much Lactantius brought with him! And Victorinus, and Optatus, and Hilary, not to speak of living men! How much Greeks out of number have borrowed! And prior to all these, that most faithful servant of God, Moses, had done the same thing; for of him it is written that he was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians (Acts vii. 22) … For what was done at the time of the exodus was no doubt a type prefiguring what happens now.”

It is not true, of course, that first millennium Christianity was tolerant in any thoroughgoing manner. A famous example of a dissenting voice was Tertullian, who objected to all this philosophizing by asking trenchantly “Quid Athenae Hierosolymis?”—What has Athens to do with Jerusalem? One finds skepticism regarding the role of other philosophies and beliefs in arriving at the truth throughout the history of the Church. But a tolerant habit of mind was, as any can see, an important part of the picture prior to late medieval Christianity when the talent for such thought began to be diminished. It is important for us to see that the diminishing of such a powerful tool as toleration came not with the “dark ages” as popular myth holds, but with the dawn of modernity. And if we should gain it once again, we must recognize the difference between an authentic practice and the poor substitute of a modern doctrine.

That’s a nice chunk. But you really need to see what I left out. Conyers shows how Christian theology’s “openness” led to profound developments in the doctrine of the Trinity. He marvels — and he leads his readers to marvel — as he shows how brilliantly thinkers like Basil the Great assimilated Aristotle’s notion of form. Yet Conyers manages to do this in a way that’s accessible to readers who don’t have a whit of philosophical training. In the pages of this book, we see a master teacher at work, and we have the privilege of learning from him. It’s the kind of joy those long-ago hearers of Justin and Clement must have felt.

A. J. Conyers learned well from his patristic masters, and from the Master he shared with them. Like the greatest of the Fathers, he lived in a large world — God’s world — and he walked that world with the confidence of a Son of God. Now he bids us to join him and to live large.

Even though it’s Lent, don’t deny yourself the pleasure of reading The Listening Heart. It’s a valuable guide in discerning God’s call for the rest of your life — no matter where you are in life — and that’s a lot. But it’s much more than that.

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Take a Letter

Unless you spent yesterday in a cave, you know that Pope Benedict XVI promulgated Sacramentum Caritatis, his apostolic exhortation on the Eucharist. It’s a thoroughgoing treatment of its subject, examining the sacrament in light of theology, spirituality, history, and morals. It’s very practical, too, touching on points of refinement in celebrating the Eucharist, receiving the Eucharist, and observing the fasts and feasts. Like everything Benedict does, it’s steeped in the doctrine of the Fathers. He invokes Ignatius, Polycarp, Irenaeus, Cyprian, Jerome, Augustine, and Chrysostom, as well as the martyrs of Abitina. Consider a small sample:

13. Against this backdrop we can understand the decisive role played by the Holy Spirit in the eucharistic celebration, particularly with regard to transubstantiation. An awareness of this is clearly evident in the Fathers of the Church. Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, in his Catecheses, states that we “call upon God in his mercy to send his Holy Spirit upon the offerings before us, to transform the bread into the body of Christ and the wine into the blood of Christ. Whatever the Holy Spirit touches is sanctified and completely transformed.” Saint John Chrysostom too notes that the priest invokes the Holy Spirit when he celebrates the sacrifice: like Elijah, the minister calls down the Holy Spirit so that “as grace comes down upon the victim, the souls of all are thereby inflamed.” The spiritual life of the faithful can benefit greatly from a better appreciation of the richness of the anaphora: along with the words spoken by Christ at the Last Supper, it contains the epiclesis, the petition to the Father to send down the gift of the Spirit so that the bread and the wine will become the body and blood of Jesus Christ and that “the community as a whole will become ever more the body of Christ.” The Spirit invoked by the celebrant upon the gifts of bread and wine placed on the altar is the same Spirit who gathers the faithful “into one body” and makes of them a spiritual offering pleasing to the Father.

As if he had read my recent posts and listened to my recent MP3s on the martyrs ;-) … His Holiness sketched the profound relationship between Eucharist and martyrdom.

85. The first and fundamental mission that we receive from the sacred mysteries we celebrate is that of bearing witness by our lives. The wonder we experience at the gift God has made to us in Christ gives new impulse to our lives and commits us to becoming witnesses of his love. We become witnesses when, through our actions, words and way of being, Another makes himself present. Witness could be described as the means by which the truth of God’s love comes to men and women in history, inviting them to accept freely this radical newness. Through witness, God lays himself open, one might say, to the risk of human freedom. Jesus himself is the faithful and true witness (cf. Rev 1:5; 3:14), the one who came to testify to the truth (cf. Jn 18:37). Here I would like to reflect on a notion dear to the early Christians, which also speaks eloquently to us today: namely, witness even to the offering of one’s own life, to the point of martyrdom. Throughout the history of the Church, this has always been seen as the culmination of the new spiritual worship: “Offer your bodies” (Rom 12:1). One thinks, for example, of the account of the martyrdom of Saint Polycarp of Smyrna, a disciple of Saint John: the entire drama is described as a liturgy, with the martyr himself becoming Eucharist. We might also recall the eucharistic imagery with which Saint Ignatius of Antioch describes his own imminent martyrdom: he sees himself as “God’s wheat” and desires to become in martyrdom “Christ’s pure bread.” The Christian who offers his life in martyrdom enters into full communion with the Pasch of Jesus Christ and thus becomes Eucharist with him. Today too, the Church does not lack martyrs who offer the supreme witness to God’s love. Even if the test of martyrdom is not asked of us, we know that worship pleasing to God demands that we should be inwardly prepared for it. Such worship culminates in the joyful and convincing testimony of a consistent Christian life, wherever the Lord calls us to be his witnesses…

95. At the beginning of the fourth century, Christian worship was still forbidden by the imperial authorities. Some Christians in North Africa, who felt bound to celebrate the Lord’s Day, defied the prohibition. They were martyred after declaring that it was not possible for them to live without the Eucharist, the food of the Lord: sine dominico non possumus. May these martyrs of Abitinae, in union with all those saints and beati who made the Eucharist the centre of their lives, intercede for us and teach us to be faithful to our encounter with the risen Christ. We too cannot live without partaking of the sacrament of our salvation; we too desire to be iuxta dominicam viventes, to reflect in our lives what we celebrate on the Lord’s Day. That day is the day of our definitive deliverance. Is it surprising, then, that we should wish to live every day in that newness of life which Christ has brought us in the mystery of the Eucharist?

I have often made these points, citing Robin Darling Young’s brilliant study, In Procession Before the World: Martyrdom As Public Liturgy in Early Christianity. Of course, the Pope (as Cardinal Ratzinger) also explored this thesis in his book Pilgrim Fellowship Of Faith, in a section titled “Martyrdom as a Way in Which the Christian Can Become a Eucharist.”

The pope spends a good deal of ink imploring the Church to take up the ancient practice of mystagogical catechesis (see number 64). This is something my friend Scott Hahn and I have pledged our days to reviving. (See especially our book Living the Mysteries: A Guide for Unfinished Christians. Mystagogy is not just a phase of RCIA. It’s a way of life. I love this description from the French Historian Henri Marrou: “The catechumen system developed gradually as new converts came in … it involved a long probationary period lasting three years during which a carefully graded course of instruction was given … Religious training did not end with baptism, of course; in a sense it went on through the whole of life, getting deeper and deeper all the time — witness the importance of readings and preaching in the Church’s liturgy.”

Witness this document — please! It deserves our closest, prayerful reading in the coming weeks. Make it your lead-up to Holy Thursday.

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Going on Vocation

A beautiful book just landed on my desk: The Listening Heart: Vocation And the Crisis of Modern Culture, by the Baptist theologian A.J. Conyers. He’s pondering our culture’s loss of the sense of a providential plan — of each person’s “calling” from God. Conyers was by all acounts a great man. His counsel on discernment in this book is rich. Of course, he makes frequent recourse to the writings of the Fathers.

In these works — and I am thinking particularly of Origen, Athanasius, and Augustine — the idea of vocation, of being “called” is a rich and powerful idea. Really, one should say that it goes beyond the “idea.” It is something evocative of an experience of being drawn, pulled, tugged, newly fashioned, almost if not completely killed, for the sake of that which calls you on. It has to do with the whole person, body and soul, transported in a way that is at once profoundly disordering and profoundly ordering. It is the word that means, at once, death and life, the loss of freedom and the discovery of freedom in a new way, setting one at once against the community to which you are born, and yet done so for the sake of that community. The Church Fathers recognized that such a sense of “calling” was the very essence of the Church. For to be called to follow Christ was to be called to die on a cross: the fellowship of the Church was the communion of those who had, in a profound sense, accepted the sentence of death in order to transcend it in a new life.

That’s the story not only of Origen and Athanasius and Augustine. It’s the story of my life and yours — the story of God’s plan for us and our response. Thank God for this book. It articulates a process so universal, yet universally obscure. The Listening Heart is a rarity: both beautiful and practical. It’s a book that belongs in the hands of everyone, because everyone has a calling from God, but especially in the hands of thoughtful young people who wish (or should wish) to discern that calling.

Later this week, I’ll post Conyers’ thoughts on the patristic roots of the virtue of tolerance. I wish I had discovered this author years ago. He died of cancer at age 58 in 2004, just days after finishing the manuscript of The Listening Heart.

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To Coin A Phrase

My neighbor Zee Ann Poerio is in the news again. Zee teaches at a nearby Catholic elementary school, where she’s founded a Latin club and pioneered teaching methods using ancient coins. My kids and I saw her Latin club present a pageant at local Barnes & Noble. It was a knockout. The students sang in Latin, staged skits based on the ancient myths, and at the end of it all raffled off real ancient coins. Zee is one of the directors of Ancient Coins for Education. We use old coins in homeschooling our kids, too. They love it. We used this kit.

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Sharp Objects

A friend wrote to ask me what was my favorite guide to Rome. For very practical details, I like the Blue Guide. But for Church Geek stuff — trivia and oddities, like where the saints liked to hang out — I’m fond of a long-out-of-print title, Mary Sharp’s Traveller’s Guide to the Churches of Rome. I see that there are many used copies available on Amazon and elsewhere. I see, too, that the author also turned out A Traveller’s Guide to Saints in Europe, which I have not read.

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Have a Nyssa Day

Today is the memorial of St. Gregory of Nyssa. Unlike the memorials of the other Cappadocian Fathers, Gregory’s day doesn’t appear on the calendar in the United States, so I let this one slip by. Gregory was born, in the mid-fourth century, into a family with a remarkable Christian pedigree. His grandparents had been martyrs; his parents would one day be venerated; his siblings were bishops, nuns, and great saints of the Church. Gregory entered religious life by fits and starts. He married; but then he and his wife decided to live “as brother and sister.” Gregory became one of the leading theologians of his time — and of all time. He wrote one of the earliest catechisms, as well as mystical interpretations of Scripture, letters on practical matters, and treatises on prayer. He also became a bishop, but his work in that capacity was less than memorable. He suffered much, sometimes because of the sins of his flock (and fellow bishops), and sometimes because of his own shortcomings.

I’ve posted on him before, in various contexts. I wrote about his intellectual brilliance and administrative incompetence. I wrote about his interpretation of the Song of Songs. I wrote about his eulogy for his sister, Macrina, and about his relationship with the other Cappadocians, his brother St. Basil the Great and St. Gregory Nazianzen.

You want to read something, right? The best place to begin is with From Glory to Glory: Texts from Gregory of Nyssa’s Mystical Writings — an amazing book. Then go on to his Life of Moses (in the Classics of Western Spirituality series).

Gregory plays a leading role in two of my books, The Fathers of the Church, Expanded Edition and Living the Mysteries: A Guide for Unfinished Christians.

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Deutsch Treat

With a Bavarian in the Vatican, it was a sure bet that you and I would soon hold, in our very own hands, Der Heilige Gral.

The German edition of my book The Grail Code: Quest for the Real Presence is now on the shelves in a bookstore near you — if you happen to be in Munich. The publisher is Gütersloher Verlagshaus.

The new German translation joins the English, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese and Canadian French versions already in print. Coming soon are Croatian, another French (for France), and another Portuguese (for Portugal).

As my co-author, Chris Bailey, points out: It’s getting harder and harder to find an excuse not to read the book.

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The Patrologist Pope

Yesterday the pope continued his series of catecheses on the origins of the Church. He’s moved now from the apostles to the Apostolic Fathers, specifically Clement of Rome. As I pointed out in an earlier post, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger once defended the earlier dating of Clement’s Letter to the Romans, a position advocated by John A.T. Robinson and others. If he’s right, then Clement wrote his missive in the 60s rather than the 90s of the first century. Vatican Information Service, however, seems to be favoring the later date, and perhaps this signals a change in the opinion of the Holy Father. It will be interesting to read the full text, when it’s available. In any event, we know that Pope Benedict is a scholar who has spent quality time with Clement. It’s a good thing so many people turned out to hear him do patrology. Some 16,000 attended yesterday’s audience. Here’s the scoop from Vatican Information Service:

The Pope turned his attention to the figure of St. Clement, the third successor of St. Peter after Sts. Linus and Anacletus, who reigned in the late first century. Clement, as Bishop St. Irenaeus of Lyon writes, had known the Apostles personally and “still had their preaching in his ears and their tradition before his eyes.”

The author of an important Letter to the Corinthians, which represents “the first exercise of the primacy of Rome after the death of Peter,” Clement returns to “the perennially important theological dialectic between the indicative of salvation and the imperative of moral commitment.” And he invites people to respond to “the announcement of salvation with a generous and courageous journey of conversion.”

The Letter gives Clement the possibility to describe “the identity of the Church and her mission” and, recalling the liturgy of ancient Israel, he “unveils his idea of the Church,” in which “the clear distinction between the laity and the hierarchy does not mean conflict but the organic interconnection of a body, an organism with various functions.”

For this Apostolic Father, the Pope went on, “the Church is not a place of confusion and anarchy,” but “an organized structure in which each member undertakes his or her mission according to their vocation. … St. Clement highlights how the Church has a sacramental and not a political structure. The action of God, which we draw near to in the liturgy, precedes our own decisions and our own ideas.”

The “great prayer” with which the Letter ends is particularly important, said the Holy Father, being “an invocation on behalf of political leaders. After the texts of the Old Testament this is the oldest prayer for political institutions,” and contains “a teaching that, down the centuries, has guided the attitude of Christians towards politics and the State.”

Clement wrote his Letter shortly after the death of the emperor Domitian and his persecution of Christians who, “though aware that the persecutions would continue, did not cease to pray for those same authorities that had unjustly condemned them.

“Praying for the authorities,” the Holy Father added in conclusion, “Clement recognized the legitimate authority of political institutions in the order established by God. At the same time he expressed his concern that those authorities … should exercise their power with peace and gentleness, Caesar is not everything. There is another kingship, the origin and essence of which are not of this world.”

UPDATE: Click below for the full text of the papal address.
Continue reading The Patrologist Pope

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The Consolation of Photography

Adrian Murdoch offers us an image of Boethius from the philosopher’s own lifetime. The image was etched in ivory during his consular year, 510, many years before he fell afoul of Theodoric. In prison awaiting execution he wrote The Consolation of Philosophy.

The Arian Theodoric suspected the Catholic Boethius of conspiring with the Byzantines. The Catholics of Italy honor their man as a martyr, as they have since the time of his death.