Sulpicius Severus, Letter II- To the Deacon Aurelius- Part 1

Here is the second of the three letters of Sulpicius Severus on St. Martin

Translation:
After you left me in the morning, I had settled down in my cell and that thought stole up to me which often has occupies me- the hope for the future and the aversion to the present; the fear of  judgement and the dread of punishment- and, what follows and from where the whole thought descends, the record of my sins returned to me, sad and worn out. (2) Then, after laid out my limbs, tired because of my anguished mine, on my little bed,, as I am mostly accustomed to do out of out of sorrow, sleep crept up- which as it is lighter and uncertain in the early morning, so it, wavering and doubtful, was scattered through my limbs, as what does not happen in any other sleep, almost awake, you perceive yourself sleeping--(3) When, suddenly, I seemed to see bishop Martin, adorned in a white toga, with a fiery face, eyes like stars and bright red hair. In this way, he seemed to have the appearance and form of a body in which I knew him so that, what is different is difficult for us to day, he could not be examined, while he could be recognized. Smiling at me, he held in his right hand that little book which I wrote about his life. (4) I, embracing his holy legs, as usually, I asked his blessing. I felt his hand placed on my head with a very soft touch, when, among the solemn words of blessing, he repeated that name of the cross in an intimate way. Soon, with my intent on him, I could not be satisfied with his face or his visage, suddenly being taken up, he was snatched from me until, in the immense vastness of the sky I followed him travelling in a sweet cloud. He was received into open heaven and could not be seen beyond.

(5) I saw, not much later, the blessed priest, Clarus, his disciple, who recently died, climb by that same road as his master. I, rashly desiring to follow, tried to struggle towards them on high and woke up. I, roused from sleep, began to congratulate myself on my vision which I had seen, when a young relative came to me, his face sadder for speaking and giving pain.

 (6) I said "What do you bear so sadly to say?"

 He said, "Two monks are here now from Turo. They announce that lord Martin is dead" I admit, I fell and I wept very much with tears springing up. Truly, even while I write this to you, brother, tears flow. Nor do I allow any solace for this, my unendurable pain. Truly, when it is announced to you, I wanted you to share  my grief, you who are an associate of my love.

(7)  I cam immediately to myself so that we mourn equally whom we love equally, although I know that, of all men, Martin must not be mourned. (He is one), after the world is conquered and the age triumphed over, to whom the crown of justice will be granted. (8) However, I am not able to rule over myself. I am in pain. Indeed, I sent ahead my patron, but I lost the solace of my present life.

Commentary:

Letter #2 is the first of the two letters dealing with the death of St. Martin and is clearly the most emotional of the two. As we'll see in the next segments, Sulpicius gives vent to his grief to a point which can legitimately be considered excessive even in the less emotionally inhibited context of the late Roman period. Indeed, the whole of the third letter is explained by the suggestion that perhaps he gets a bit carried away in this letter.

In our passage, however, we see a fairly standard after death appearance of the a saint to a faithful disciple. There is an echo of this in the Life of Martin, when Martin sees the rising of a far-off bishop. Here, Sulpicius is supernaturally blessed by Martin before the news of his death has reached Sulpicius' monastery. This is, of course, logical, given Sulpicius' role as St. Martin's literary agent and protector and, no doubt, would have the effect of building up Sulpicius' spiritual credentials for continuing in this capacity. This sounds needlessly cynical, perhaps, but there is a disturbing undertone to this story which makes one wonder.

Watch for the second installment of this letter in a short while.

Sulpicius Severus, Letter 1 Part 2

Welcome to the second installment of the first letter of Sulpicius Severus. The first installment can be found here. In this excerpt, we get a clear account of the incident which opponents of St. Martin were trying to use against him.

Translation:

9. but, however, I will not allow (myself) to hide that about which the question came to light and I will report the whole affair as it was done so that we will, by chance, seem to bypass intentionally that which could expose that blessed man to blame.

10. When, in almost the middle of the winter, Martin arrived at a certain diocese for a solemn custom, just as it is the custom for bishops to visit their churches, the clerics prepared a resting place in the sanctuary of the church and put much fire under a rough and weak floor. They  heaped up a bed with much straw. Then, when Martin placed himself to lie down, he shuddered at the unaccustomed softness of the soothing bed, seeing that he was accustomed to lie down on bare ground with one goat-hair cover spread over him. (11) Thus, disturbed as if having received an injury, he threw off the whole covering. By chance, it heaped part of the chaff which he had moved over the oven. He himself rested, as was his custom, on the bare earth due to the urging of his tiredness from the journey. As we said, at almost the middle of the night, the burning fire seized the burning straw through the broken flooring. (12) Martin, roused from his sleep unexpectedly, with a very great and two-fold danger, as was reported, hindered by the devil's ambush and urging, fled to the help of prayer more slowly than he ought. For, desire to break down the door, when, struggling for a very long time with the bolt with which he shut the door, he perceived a very serious fire around him to such an extent that the fire caught his clothes which he wore. (13) At last, coming to his sense, knowing that his help was not in flight, but in God, taking up the shield of faith and prayer, he turned himself and gave himself completely to God. he prayed with him unharmed in a circle of flames. The monks, who were at the door, after (hearing) the roaring,crackling sound of fire, broke down the bolted doors and, with the fire extinguished, brought Martin out the midst of the flames. although he was thought to have been consumed by such a long-lasting fire. (14) Yet, and God is the witness to my words, Martin himself reported to me and admitted not without a groan, that he was deceived in this situation by the skill of the devil so that, shaken out of sleep, he did not have a plan by which he might fight the danger through faith and prayer. Finally, for as long as the fire raged around him, he, disturbed in his mind, tried to break down the door. (15) When he sought the standards of the cross and arms of prayers, in the middle, the flames ceased and he, then noticed sprinkling water which fought the fire. From this, whoever reads this understands that Martin was tempted by that danger indeed, but he was truly proven by it.    

Commentary:

With this passage, after much rhetorical flourish, we finally get to the incident which has created the occasion for Sulpicius' discussion about saintly power and its limitations. The incident itself, I think, is reasonably simple to reconstruct. An accidental fire was caused by Martin throwing off what was, to his mind, overly soft bedding which fell into the furnace. The fire caught the walls and, while trying the obvious route of escape- the door-, Martin was injured. When he fell back into the room, aided by a mysterious 'dew', Martin found he was safe from the flames until the monks in the rest of the house were finally able to break into the room and save the beleaguered saint.

To us, this story seems almost trivial. Of course, Martin should have watched where was kicking his bedding, but past a warning about fire safety, is this really something to get so worked up over? There is, however, an odd hint of the supernatural implied in how Martin was saved from the flames. As long as Martin struggled against the door, he was, apparently, relying on his own strength. When Martin stopped fighting with the bolt and retreated into the midst of the fire, not only did he get away from the flames, but a sprinkling of water helped keep him safe. The suggestion is that the fire was, actually, a diabolical test of Martin's confidence in God  and that, as soon as he stopped acting on his own will to save himself and started praying, he was victorious. The fact that he didn't immediately see it as a spiritual trial is merely a confession of Martin's human weakness, especially, one must conclude, when roused from a sound sleep by a raging inferno. Of course, he overcame the temptation and the danger which is the point of  the power of his saintliness. Or, at least, this is what Sulpicius wants us to take from this story.

Of course, it is exactly this sort of spiritualizing natural events which drives many people these days crazy. Are we really expected to believe that God saved St. Martin from an everyday house fire because he prayed his way to safety? What about those faithful people, God only knows how many, who have died in fires over the ages? Were they not faithful enough? Doesn't this prove that faith, as conceived by Sulpicius and many of his peers, was merely some sort of magic which has no place in our scientific world of material cause and effect? Why shouldn't we just reject this story as yet another puerile miracle story?

I'm not sure if I have a definitive answer to these questions. Clearly, the conception of the 'holy man' which we discussed in the last post should influence how we read Sulpicius' interpretation of this event. To the 'holy man' and his supporters, even the most trivial thing is spiritual, so it is natural to look whether the spiritual forces of evil were in play during particular events in a way that we wouldn't in this post-Enlightenment age. And I do think we have to take this automatic spiritualizing of natural events as a warning when we are tempted to tell a person that their illness was the result of their lack of faith or other such nonsense. Or, for that matter, when we insist that the survival of one person amid a disaster was a sign of God's favour, when many others, possibly as faithful, perish. I'm not entirely sure I see the difference between this and Sulpicius' spiritualizing of this house fire.

What humbles me about this incident is the recognition that not all that much has changed in the world. It is easy to latch onto this episode's miraculous, almost magical character and use it to assure ourselves that we are so much smarter, so much less credulous than our ancestors. Yet, if we are entirely honest, we have to recognize that, as Christians, we can't escape the real question that Sulpicius raises here: what is the relationship between the physical dangers of this world and our spirituality. While I think, in his desperate attempt to depict St. Martin as a archetypical 'holy man', Sulpicius over-reads the spiritual into this story, his main point is that even godly people like the apostles suffer from the physical injury without losing their status as godly people. In many ways, Sulpicius seems to be trying to answer the age-old question of why do bad things happen to good people- or, at least, here, saintly people. To my eyes, it doesn't look, despite our presumed greater knowledge and sophisicated, like we have any greater insight into that question.

Peace, Phil

First Letter of Sulpicius Severus- Part 1

As promised here is the first installment of the 1st Letter of Sulpicius Severus:

Text:
(for those of you who are interested, here is the link to the Latin (p.138ff)

1. Yesterday, when many monks came to me, in the midst of continuous stories and a long conversation, mention of my little book which I published about the life of the blessed Bishop Martin came up. I listened with great pleasure that it was eagerly read by many. 2. Nevertheless, it is reported to me that someone, caught up by an evil spirit, had asked why Martin, who had raised the dead and drove flames away from houses, had himself recently been burned by fire and suffered a dangerous injury.

3. O that wretch, whoever he is! We recognize the treachery and speech of the Jews in his words, who mocked the Lord, placed on a cross, with these words "He saved others; he cannot save himself" (Matthew, 27,42). Truly, had that man, whoever he is, been born in those times so that he, who falsely abused the holy man of the Lord in the similar way for example, could speak to the Lord with those words. 5. What, then, who ever you are, is Martin not powerful for that reason? Is he not holy that that reason, because he was tried by fire?

O blessed man, similar in all things to the Apostles even in the insults of men! Without a doubt, the gentiles were reported to think this about Paul, when a viper bit him: "This man must be a murderer whom the fates did not allow to live after being saved from the sea" (Acts 28,4). He, after he shook off the snake into the fire, suffered no evil. Rather, when they saw nothing evil touched him, turning to him, they said he was God. Yet, by examples of this type, most unlucky of all mortals, you must prove your treachery so that, if scandal moved you because Martin seemed to be touched by the flame of a fire, you report his merits and spiritual power tainted because, surrounded by fire, he did not die.

6. Understand, wretch, understand what you do not know, that almost all holy men are more proven by their dangers. Indeed, I see Peter, powerful by faith, with stubbornly passed over the sea with his feet and pressed the unstable water with a human step. Nor did the prophet of the nations, whom the waves swallowed and restored him after three days and as many nights, emerging from the deep, seem to be less to me for that reason, whom the waves swallowed and restored him, . I do not know whether, as I may say, he who lived in the deep or who crossed over the depths of the sea was greater.

7, But I think you, you idiot, did not read this or, if you had read them, did you understand (these stories). Nor did the blessed Evangelist bring an example of this type by divine plan in his sacred letters unless that the human mind should be educated by these calamities of shipwrecks and serpents and, just as the Apostle reported, who was glorified by the nakedness, hunger and dangers of brigands, all of these things are common things to endure for holy men, but there was always power for the just to endure and conquer these things. While they endure through all their trials and, so much more bravely do they, who are always unconquered, conquer, by so much they endure more difficulties.

8. Hence, what is called the weakness of Martin, is full of worth and glory, if only because, being tried by a very dangerous fate, he overcame. In this respect, no one should be astonished that I left this out in my little book which we wrote about his life, when, in that very place, I admitted that I did not embrace all of his deeds: because If I had wanted to pursue everything, I would have published an immense volume to my readers. Nor were these things so few which he did that everything could be included. Nevertheless, I will not allow this to be hidden and I will report the whole story as it was done so that, by chance, we should seem to pass by intentionally this incident which could be presented for criticism against that blessed man.    

   
Commentary:

This letter raises several interesting issues. To start with, we get a glimpse of how Sulpicius' the Life of St. Martin was received. In a way, the Life of St. Martin is a peculiarity because, not only is it written when those who knew Martin were still alive, but, even more unusual, it was written when its subject was still alive. Martin was a highly controversial bishop in his days as the Life itself indicates, so it is inevitable that there would be critics of so laudatory a work as the Life. While Sulpicius makes it clear that most monastics liked his Life, he has to address criticism of his portrayal and, more importantly, his casting of Martin as an archetypal 'holy man' in the already developing monastic tradition emerging out of Egypt and Syria. The criticism is double-edged- first an attack on Martin's status as a holy man through what looks like a lapse in his spiritual power (virtus), but, just as importantly, an attack on Sulpicius' credibility because he failed to report this damaging evidence.

This last point has some point to it, of course. The Life is so laudatory, so positive in its claims for Martin that it is hard not to believe that Martin has his lapses as well. While contemporary Western society seems to have the daft notion that saints are perfect (probably nurtured by well meaning nonsense from within the Church), it is clear to anyone who investigates it that, while saints might reflect an extraordinary devotion to God, they had as many flaws as anyone else. Yet, what is interesting is the implication that the criticism of Sulpicius' omission of this story comes from a source which also knew Martin and his community well enough to dredge up this seemingly damaging evidence. There is no indication who the critic is, although it is difficult to believe that Sulpicius didn't know. The continued coy repetition of 'whoever he is' in the early part of the letter makes me thinks Sulpicius knew very well who the critic is, but he just didn't want to say. For my money, I wonder if it isn't Brice (later Martin's successor as bishop and, oddly, also a saint, but, at this time, a fierce critic of Martin who went so far as to question Martin's grip on reality) or someone associated with him. That is speculation and, given the opposition we know Martin stirred up, the criticism could have come from other directions.

Yet, the real point of this letter is not a critic catching Sulpicius out. The more important point is that this story forces Sulpicius to talk about the how we know a 'holy man'; a spiritual stereotype which governed much monastic literature in the fourth century. There has been quite a bit written about the holy man in Late Antiquity over the last thirty or forty years, so I can't hope to replicate that literature. However, briefly, the figure of the 'holy man' becomes important fairly early on in the history of monasticism with St. Anthony and various other Egyptian and Syrian monastics who adopted a severely ascetic lifestyle. Some of these figures began to emerge as spiritual leaders by virtue of their miraculous powers (as reported by the literature) and their wisdom developed through prayer. As a result, in their village communities, they became important intercessors with God, but, also, with the secular and ecclesiastical authorities on a whole range of issues. Indeed, both bishops and civil authorities all the way up to emperors would opt to visit these holy men in the hopes of receiving their blessing and, possibly, their support. The implication is that the monastic 'holy man' gained power through his special relationship with God, which allowed him to do all sorts of things; some miraculous, because of their special spiritual power.

Sulpicius' Life can be understood as an attempt to encourage the spread of monasticism in 4th century Roman Gaul by portraying him as a native-born 'holy man' in the tradition of the Desert Fathers. As a result, Sulpicius makes much of Martin's miraculous healings, supernatural battles with the 'gods' of the countryside and his dealings with Emperors and near-Emperors to buttress the claim that Martin had the extraordinary spiritual power, gained through his conquest of his own passions and faults. This conquest of his human limitations makes him a valued spiritual guide and, more importantly for Sulpicius' hope to encourage the ascetic life in Gaul, spiritual authority. So, it was important for Martin's spiritual authority to always be able to overcome the dangers put in his way. He does this throughout the Life, but, here, he seems to fail. Why is this a problem?

The problem with this failure is the unstated suggestion that this fire may have had a supernatural origin. It is a common place in hagiography that fire often is deployed by evil spirits, particularly when they arise suddenly and spread unpredictably fast. For example, in the Life, Sulpicius depicts Martin, while on one of his expeditions to clear of pagan altars, turned aside a tree set on fire by a demon which threatened to destroy a whole pagan village (Life, 14-). The irony, of course, must have been too good to resist, of course, that Martin who turned aside a flaming tree on one occasion proved to be helpless later one, when surrounded by flames. Where, one can almost hear being asked, is Martin's power now!

What is interesting with this criticism, however, isn't the deployment of evil spirits and/or demons to explain what would strike us as natural phenomena or coincidence. Rather, it is the implication that the saint demonstrates his power, at least partly, by his invulnerability whether physical or spiritual. The 'holy man', according to this view, has to have such power that he cannot be injured by the machinations of evil in this world. If he is, he is not really a 'holy man'.

Of course, this position, if it was truly held, is absurd. Sulpicius easily refutes it by noting the multitude of times that the Apostles or, even Christ himself, suffered from the attacks of evil in this world. Nobody can earn immunity from suffering in this world, so the implication that Martin's authority is somehow injured by being burned in a raging fire flies in the face of clear examples of holy men and women being injured or killed in this world. Sulpicius refers back to the Apostles and prophets to emphasize that God's holy ones might be injured, but those injuries were evidence of their endurance and faithfulness and turned out for their and the church's building up. And that is leaving off the voluntary suffering of Christ which used the force of evil to break evil's hold on the world.

Yet, this is the point when the 'who cares?' question needs to be asked. Isn't this just a moment in the arcane disputes about sainthood and who wins the prize in the ascetic Olympics (okay, you're sitting on a 10 foot pole. I'll beat that. I'll sit on a 50 foot pole! Luxury, you think a 50 foot pole is bad! I....). For me, however, what we're really talking about here is the problem of suffering and the Christian life. For so many people, both those practicing a faith and those not, faith serves as some kind of invisible shield from bad things. God is the cosmic cop who prevents bad things from happening to us because we have preferred status as his children. One look at the headlines in Egypt or a glance at a parish prayer list should make that claim an absurdity, but the delusion of faith giving immunity to suffering remains a prevalent temptation. If God himself doesn't avoid suffering or a saint can't avoid injury, then who are we to think we can? Faith isn't magic. It is, instead, a hope which will carry us through the suffering that is so much a part of this beautiful, but damaged world. Sulpicius' well-chosen examples reinforce this because the sufferings and failings of Paul, Peter, Jonah and others, ultimately, are made good in encouraging us to persevere in the face of difficulties. They represent a reflection of the Cross' divine 'judo' which takes the force of the evil in this world and uses it to overthrow it. And it is the hope implicit in this turning of evil to good that sustains me throughout the struggles that I experience in my ordinary life.

Watch for the second installment of this letter in a few days!

Peace,
Phil

St. Martin in the Letters of Sulpicius Severus

I've decided now that I've finally finished the three letters of Sulpicius Severus on St. Martin, that I'd publish a draft translation of them for comment or, at least, to help me think through some of the linguistic and/or historical issues with them. So, I'm intending to publish them, section by section with commentary, as it occurs to me. I should note that this is not incredibly well researched commentary, but just things that popped into my head as I translated. So, consider both it and the commentary as a work-in-progress.

There is, of course, a bit of a history to this project. Way back in 2009, I finished posting my translation of Sulpicius Severus', Life of St. Martin. You can find that translation and commentary series right here. My intention was that I'd do a few more revisions, work-up a decent translation and self-publish a serviceable Letters of Sulpicius Severus, the Dialogus by the same author, bits of the same author's Chronicle and Gregory the Great's much later biography of Martin. My rationale for this is that these works aren't generally as well known as the Life, but give important supplementary information. My observations on my preliminary reading of this material can be found in my Return to St. Martin post from last July.

translation as a gift to the two St. Martin-in-the-Field churches' I've attended (in West Toronto and London, Ont). However, last year, it got into my head that I'd like to add the other sources which discuss St. Martin such as the

So, the Letters are first. These are, presumably, part of a larger collection of letters which have not survived. I suspect that these letters survive because they were preserved with manuscripts which also contained the Life (I will check on that, of course). By any measure, they are peculiar. They pick up where the Life leaves off. Indeed, the First Letter purports to answer sceptical critics of the Life and of St. Martin, while St. Martin was still alive. In this letter, Sulpicius Severus rebukes an critic who scoffed at Martin's presumed status as a holy man because he had been injured in a fire whereas, if he was truly blessed and/or powerful, he should have escaped injury. The criticism exploits the common view of the monk as holy man who had almost magical powers because of God's favour. Sulpicius Severus rebukes this conception and, of course, defends his hero.

The next two letters deal with Martin's death. The Second Letter passes on the bad news to a colleague. Severus is in the depths of grief, so the writing is highly rhetorical and emotional. Modern readers might be a little put off by the extremes of emotion and rhetorical flash. Indeed, to judge from the introduction of the Third Letter, so were some contemporaries including, possibly, Severus' own mother. The Third Letter gives a more sober account of Martin's death, albeit with flashes of the grief from the previous letter.

My procedure with the Letters will be to break them into digestible chunks, publish the translation and commentary together. So, this will take a few weeks to manage, but I hope you'll enjoy exposure to the story of St. Martin as told by Sulpicius Severus.

Practical Patristics

Summer's here again and so is the time for blogging. Well, it isn't quite that bad, but close. Certainly, the summer is the time when I have the most time to reflect on what I've been reading and thinking for the times in the year in which there isn't much time to sit down and write.

What has come back into my mind is a slip of the tongue I made one day about a year or so ago, when I was talking to my wife about St. Vladimir's Popular Patristics series and said, instead, Practical Patristics. We laughed, of course, but it did get me thinking about what does Practical Patristics, actually, look like.

Of course, there are people (many people, I suspect) who might well think the idea of practical patristics is oxymoronic. Isn't patristics just a bunch of dead old white guys spouting off about stuff that no one actually cares about; that is, when they aren't actively oppressing anyone who doesn't agree with them? Didn't the Fathers put those darned angels on the pin for the scholastics to count because of their tedious philosophizing on the Christological and Trinitarian heresies? How would that be practical?

I get what people like this are saying. There are a lot of highly technical, highly philosophical patristic treatises on the fine points of Trinitarian theology, often including very difficult to follow polemics against those unfortunate enough to stray from the author's own sense of orthodoxy. I admit that, to this day, I haven't been about to get more than five pages into St. Cyril of Alexandria's On the Unity of Christ (also available through St. Vlad's Popular Patristic series). The fault, I hasten to add, isn't in St. Cyril, but in my own not particularly philosophical mind. I am still a fan of the hypostatic union and I think I get it, but don't ask for the philosophical underpinnings because, as soon as I think about it, my head starts hurting and I get sleepy.

Yet, focusing only on these works, as critics and academic fans alike often do, ignores not only the sheer variety of patristic writings, but the attention that the Church Fathers gave to the pastoral side of their ministries. It is a very different experience to read, say, St. Basil's technical treaties on the Holy Spirit and to read his sermons. Or, for that matter, consider all those sermons by so many Church Fathers which discuss the nitty-gritty of Christian life. St. Basil's or St. John Chrysostom sermons on social justice will curl your hair and make you wonder if you are giving enough or doing enough for the poor. I could multiply examples, but the practicality of these authors is difficult to escape.

Nor are the Father's only about moral admonition. Take the very way that they assume that theology is done; through the lens of prayer. This sounds odd to us in the modern age who seem to think that theology as an academic pursuit can be done in the absence of prayer or those who have thought (and may continue to think) that it is best done that way. Yet, the aridities of many modern theologians are part of the reason why theology has a bad name these days because one can detect the disconnect between faith and theology. The patristic example offers a way to fuse these back together and, I suspect, explains the modest revival among some evangelical, Catholic and Orthodox theologians of the past twenty or thirty years.

Furthermore, the modest revival in interest in the Desert Fathers- those monastic figures whose teachings come to us in collections of saying from the Egyptian and Syrian desert communities- also reveals the relevance of patristic teachings on prayer. The advice and insights given by these monastic writers are intensely practical guides to the obstacles to prayer which betray such a subtle understanding of human psychology that they remain useful even today. Indeed, one of the books which has fed my reflections in this post, Father Alexis Trader's Ancient Christian Wisdom and Aaron Beck's Cognitive Therapy, directly parallels the teachings of the Fathers on prayer with cognitive behavior therapy, which is one of the leading therapy methods for depression, addiction and anxiety. The parallels are intriguing and suggest a usefulness in the teachings of the Desert Fathers which is rather under appreciated.

Alright, but is any of this practical? It depends on perspective, I suspect. If we mean practical as in something which will make us money or famous, then, probably not. If we mean practical as in something that we can take from the pages of a book and actually apply it in real time, make it part of our Christian praxis, then, yes, I think so. One of the glories of patristic thinking is that firm belief that theory and practice (theoria and praxis) aren't at odds, but should constantly feed each other. The trick is figuring out how.

Wrongs that are so wrong that there is nothing you can do to make them right

Over the last few weeks, I've been mulling over a particularly striking phrase employed in a video of Stanley Hauerwas talking at Azuza Univeristy (the part I'm thinking about starts around the 9:45 minute point in the attached video). In a discussion of his discomfort with being called the best theologian in America, Hauerwas explains that "America is a country which has no idea of what to do with wrongs so wrong that there's nothing you can do to make it right". While his discussion goes on to what Hauerwas perceives as the American inability to come to terms with its past wrongs, I was struck with his phrase 'wrongs so wrong that there's nothing you can do to make them right'. That's a striking phrase in the Hauerwasian vein--provocative and memorable. Yet, I admit, on reflection, that its meaning isn't necessarily so clear.

What I think Hauerwas is getting at are wrongs that strike at the heart of who we are as people in a God-made world. That is, they challenge what God is trying to do in this world by elevating our self-interest and drive for power to the place that it overrides the justice and compassion that we are called to exercise in this world. They are, in that sense, the wrongs committed while we are imprisoned by the idolatry of ourselves and our place in the world. That makes them, I think, one of the multiple milestones that we hang over our own necks as we seek our will to the exclusion of God's and our neighbours. The fallout of these wrongs distort our relationships, create new conflicts, perpetuate old ones and, ironically, make it increasingly difficult to face up to our wrongs because of our need to create a self-justifying narrative to avoid admitting to our weakness and need for forgiveness. The result is that it is frightfully difficult to break out the cycle of these wrongs which are so wrong that there's nothing you can do to make them right', partly because it is easier to ignore them than to face up to our capacity for evil and partly because they tend to be the start of a string of such wrongs by all sides in a situation. So, these wrongs merely feed the cycle of violence, injustice and brokenness which characterizes not only the political realm which is Hauerwas' focus, but our communal and personal lives.

Anyone who reads Christian history knows that we, like most other groups of people, have any number of wrongs so wrong that there is nothing that we can do to make them right. It isn't difficult to generate a list: the Crusades, religious wars, treatment of Jews and other religious minorities etc.. Nor have we been immune from the temptation to whitewash them as we think about our past. That is, I think, one reason why ecclesiastical history has such a bad name in the historical profession because all too often our historians have tried to spin our wrongs to blame our victims and cast ourselves as the injured in too many cases. No wonder even a whiff of Christian theology is likely to cause other historians to dismiss what we have to say.

Yet, as Hauerwas points out, Christians have a unique understanding of these 'wrongs that are so wrong that there's nothing you can do to make them right' because of our participation in the passion of Christ. In fact, the Cross may represent the ultimate wrong that is so wrong that there's nothing we can do to make them right because it represents the moment when humanity rejected the Son of God and inflicted our injustice and violence on an entirely innocent God. There is nothing that we can do to make it up that humanity, nearly as one, cried 'Crucify Him' when they confronted God as Man.

What is more the phrase continues to percolate down from the level of our faith communities and into our own lives. Wrongs that are so wrong that there's nothing that we can do to make them right are also legion in the lives of individuals, Christian or not. We have all, I think, done damage to our relationships and each other by insisting on our own will and disregarding or overriding those around us whom we will hurt in consequence. We can come up with all sorts of excuses for that like "I felt led to do that' or the 'The Lord told me...' or 'I had no choice....' or 'I had to live my truth....', but the damage is no less real. Relationships break, resentment grows, the desire for revenge is sparked and soon we're in a tit-for-tat exchange of wrongs. Christian or not, this is a sad reality in our lives.

Yet, what is remarkable about Hauerwas' discussion is not that he identifies these wrongs, but that he identifies what solves it--the ability to be forgiven and the consequent commitment to speak truthfully about our wrongs. The temptation in these wrongs is to sweep them under the rug, possibly by affected cluelessness about the impact of our decisions, or denial that it even mattered, or by angrily blaming the person we have wronged, or by framing the resistance of those we've wronged as aggression, or by tireless self-flagellation without any attempt to seek forgiveness. All of these attempts to sweep aside these wrongs are founded upon a rejection of the humility needed to admit one's sins and seek forgiveness. It is hard to be honest enough to admit even to oneself the depth of our wrongs. And so the poison of resentment or self-righteousness can seep in our lives and blight everything we see and we love. Receiving forgiveness is a hard remedy to many of us, but the disease which results from these kinds of wrongs, not only in the one who suffers the wrong, but the one who perpetrates it, is so much worse.

Wrongs that are so wrong that there's nothing we can do to make them right, in whatever form they take, the collective or the individual, are scary things. They're scary because, not only because they reveal the truth of how we all sin and fall short of the the good God made us to do, but also because they are demonstration of our powerlessness in the face of our failings. No one goes out to commits these kinds of wrongs. They almost always appear when we seek our advantage or the advantage of those around us without regard for the bigger picture; when the good we seek becomes greater than the good God would have us do. It happens when what we seek becomes the idol and God and his children becomes the means to feed that idol. They are the relational fallout of our will to power and they can only be fixed by an equally scary emptying of our desires and 'needs' to seek the restoration of relationship through forgiveness. That effort demands both humility and rigorous honesty. And a hefty supply of divine help.

Arrivals

I woke up thinking about arrivals this morning which is entirely appropriate, given the season. Many people travel this season- by plane, by car, by bus- so, there are a lot of arrivals in peoples' life right now. Many of us are planning arrivals or waiting for arrivals or have already arrived at our Christmas destinations. It is the right time of year for these reunions and for time spent with family and friends.

 



In the Christian calendar, it is, also, Advent which recalls the long wait for possibly the most significant arrival in history- the birth of Jesus, the Son of God. We spend this season listening to the prophets and John the Baptist telling us of the imminent arrival of our Saviour. We wait with Mary, as she expects her child, promised with such awe and mystery. Indeed, we arrive with her and Joseph in Bethlehem. We go with her into the manger as she begins to feel the labour pains of the coming salvation of the world. That is a lot of waiting. That is one very important arrival.

Arrivals come in all sorts and moods. Many arrivals are joyful; the reunion of friends and family who haven't seen each other for too long. Some arrivals add the joy of arriving after the fatigue of an arduous and difficult journey. Some arrivals retain their joy in seeing friends and family, but may be tinged with sadness or grief because of illness or absence of some of those we love. Some arrivals are difficult as one is reminded by strained relationships or loss which makes joy difficult this time of year. . Yet, they all share the journey and the anticipation inherent in travel. When we arrive, we pause for a moment in our travels and realize that we are where we intended to be.

For Mary and Joseph, however, the arrival of Jesus was a difficult one. They, too, did their stint of holiday travel; travelling to Bethlehem at the behest of the Roman authorities. Several days on a donkey while heavily pregnant is hardly a recipe for a peaceful and relaxing trip. Then, there was the hassle over accommodations which ending in the couple bedding down in the manger with the animals instead of in a private room in the inn. Then, as soon as they arrived, it became obvious is was Mary's time and Joseph had to stumble out into the night again to find a midwife to help his wife hundreds of miles from home. I'm sure as he stumbled through the darkness, Joseph was wondering whether things could get worse and whether the arrival of his son would be a safe one.

Still, despite the problems, this arrival was joyful, the most joyful known to humanity. All Creation, tradition tells us, held its breath and time paused for a moment the instant Jesus was born; a valuable tip-off for Joseph that he'd better give up his search for a midwife and get back to his wife and new son. Mary welcomed the child whose extraordinary birth she had agreed to months earlier and had awaited for so long with eager anticipation. . Angel choirs descended upon astonished shepherds in the hills near Bethlehem, sing 'Glory to God' for the arrival of Mary's child. The shepherds joyfully sought out this wonderful child as did kings from the East, bringing gifts to celebrate this arrival. Even the animals back at the manger, valued members of God's Creation, were welcoming the child and hoped that this arrival meant the beginning of the end of the rift between humanity and the world God made. . Did they, as mediaeval legend encourages to believe,  greet Jesus, enjoying the temporary power of human speech or did they assure Him of their love in their own tongues. Jesus' arrival began with difficulty and worries, but ends in a joyous celebration, not only of the happy parents, but of all people and creatures within reach of the news- angels and humans, poor and rich, animals and, I'm sure, the very earth itself.

Advent, the time we remember the arrival of Jesus to this earth, is almost at an end and we ready ourselves for Christmas Day. Another arrival is waiting in the future, but, for now, we celebrate how God arrived on earth as a helpless newborn and began to the process which will see the world and all in it redeemed and restored. May God grant you a blessed Christmas and peaceful holiday.

Phil

Readings

Over the last year or so, I've been diversifying my reading a bit. I'm still reading mostly church history, except for the professional or dual-purpose Classical reading, but I'm reading a bit more in periods other than Patristics. A little Mediaeval, a bit more Reformation and a bit of the Enlightenment (sorry, 19th  and 20th century, I'm just not up for you just yet- not quite over the aversion from my university days). That has been good for me because, while I continue to love the Church Fathers, it is possible to get a little too familiar and insular about my interests. Yet, much of my interest in these periods tends to be how did we go from the Fathers to now. That is, how did we wind up in this mess, Christianly speaking?

I don't, I should warn you right away, have any brilliant answers to that question. The current post-Christian moment in history has been the result of millions of little decisions and circumstances, but my historian's heart still hopes for answers. So, it has been good to wander through various stages in the Church's life, looking at this or that thread, reflecting on the decisions made and where they led. That search sometimes me to feel that we have wandered so far and so long that we've lost sight of our starting point. That is, of course, the experience of most of us in our own lives, so it shouldn't be entirely surprising that this is true for us communally. Of course, there are those pivotal moments which we see as influential in our own lives or our communal lives. Sometimes, these events serve as pivots, clearly demarcating different phases of life. In our Christian history, that could be the Reformation or some such event, whose impact was so great it completely changed how millions of people lived their faith. In our own lives, it might be getting married, a conversion, a death or facing up to something we have long denied. Still, most of our lives, and the life of the Church, is lived in the mundane world of work, family and everyday life where faith is the unspectacular foundation we live with and we can wander from that faith so easily that it is hard to know where we are.

In my reading, what I've seen is millions of faithful people working, praying and living out their Christian lives over hundreds of years; sometimes well, sometimes badly. In the history of the Church, we see saints and sinners worshiping and working together, each mixing their good and bad motives together. We see the Church bonded to cultural limits which distort its faithful witness to the world and, every once in a while, we see it transcend those limitations spectacularly and in a life-changing way. And we see that promise sink back into the mire of human culture and sin, only to flash out again in a blaze of grace. Somehow God's work still gets done and the rich incarnational parade (to borrow a phrase from novelist Maggie Helwig) continues.

The funny thing is that that parade, in all its messiness and disorder, gives me hope for the future. It reassures me that God is still working in the life of the Church and the world. He hasn't given up on us because somehow he still works through us. The fact that we still see both sinners and saints in the pews with us each week should reassure us that God's healing of the world is continuing because we sinners learn this is a place for healing and redemption so we can reclaim the memory that we are all potentially among the saints. The messiness of Church history is the messiness of a world which, whatever it says about faith, tries to heal itself without God. Despite these obstreperous patients, God keeps working his healing and redemption of this world, step by step, person by person. The history of Christianity tries to track this process. While admitting where we have failed and knowing that we can't truly know its end, we seek to see God's fingerprints on how we humans have interacted.

Perhaps this is all too lyrical for some; too pious for others. Our failings as a church are grim enough, we all can set out those failings in detail. And those who reject Christianity and the Church are always happy to remind us, if we've forgotten. We live in an age where Christians don't want to remember our Christian past because it is too fraught and it has fallen to non-Christians to remind us of our failings. Yet, I wonder why we Christians let others tell our story for us. Why is the history for the Church left so often for those who have little interest in the Church as it is now? There has been some magnificent work done on church history in the last hundred or two hundred years, but do we need to go back and find again our Christian narrative, not papering over our sins and faults, but confessing them and looking for God's purpose in it all? What would a history look like which would celebrate faith and service to God, recognize sin and error, but still be essentially hopeful and faithful? How can we bear witness to the love of God in this world over our long history and offer hope for the future of our Christian lives?

These are more questions I don't have answers for. Yet,  I suspect that part of the answer is my own difficulty in seeing my own story in the way that I set out for Christian history. I would prefer to justify, to plead innocence and paper over my own failings. I know what the harder, and better, path is, but I rarely want to go down it. Yet, God is working in my life and others, as I know well. How to bridge the all too common reluctance to admit one is a sinner with the recognition of God in my life and those around me? And, if I can't do it, how can I speak to the broader question of our communal life as a Church?

We are all, in a sense, historians- most often of our own lives, but sometimes with a call for a broader vision. How would you tell your story, I wonder? How would you tell our story?

Pondering....

Generally, one warning that a blog is not receiving enough attention from its author is when it is deluged by spam. Another warning is when a blog is when it is mentioned as past tense as a defunct blog (I appreciate the praise, incidently, and concede the defunct). Yet, ultimately, I'm not entirely sure what I think about continuing this blog. Clearly, my energy and willingness to blog has been at a premium over the last few years, but I'm still hesitant about letting this blog go. Perhaps, I'm just being stubborn. Perhaps there is something else I should be doing with this. I don't know.

Anyway, what I hope is that the readers I have left would add me to whatever prayers they make as I discern what to do with this blog. Suggestions, of course, are also welcome, but anything I take up has to a. excite me and b. be managable given my life.

Still pondering and praying....

Phil

Translating

It has been nice to be back to translating this week, even if it is going quite slowly. Translating well is a slow process at the best of times because it requires great sensitivity in both languages and the sense of knowing when to stay literal and when to loosen up. Rendering Latin into good idiomatic English, while retaining the sense of the original, is challenging. I can crank out an accurate and very literal translation of Sulpicius Severus reasonably easily. The grammar and vocabulary he employs is not extremely complex and he doesn't write high poetry like Vergil or highly rhetorical prose like Cicero. Yet, many, many times, I find myself struggling to get the best sense out of him and into the English without it sounding awkward and forced.

For example, consider what I was working on last night in the (probably) vain hope that I can post the Sulpicius' 1st Letter. I sat down to work on it and, in the first sentence, ran into one of these 'I-know-all-the-grammar-and-vocabulary-but-how-do-I-say-it-in-English' problems. Here is the passage in Latin (for my readers who know it-the rest will just have to take my word for the problems I relate):

Hesterna die, cum ad me plerique monachi uenissent, inter fabulas iuges longumque sermonem mentio incidit libellli, quem de vita beati uiri Martini episcopi edidi, studioseque eum a multis legi libentissime audiebam.

English speakers will, of course, wonder at the length of the sentence and the multiplication of subordinate clauses, but anyone familiar with Latin or ancient Greek will recognize this as a sentence of rather average length. Latin does allow compression of thought, but it  tends to like subordinate clauses, although, here at least, the number of participles is down to a minimum. (Later Latin tends to like main verbs in subordinate clauses more than Classical Latin). So, really, the grammar is pretty straight forward as far as that goes.

Here is a pretty literal rendering of the passage:

Yesterday, when very many monks came to me, amid fresh tales and long conversation, mention of my little book, which I published on the life of Bishop Martin, the blessed men, occurred and I was listening very gladly that it was read by many enthusiastically.

As for as it goes, this isn't a terrible translation nor is it overly literal. I did take some liberties to clarify the English, but something about that second clause bothered me. It just didn't sound quite right. It took some time, but I realized that the problem was with the way that mentio and incidit were interacting. mentio is a fairly straightfoward word. Not surprisingly, it is the Latin equivalent of 'mention' in English. That makes sense because it is clearly the Latin root of the English word.

incidit was a rather more difficult word to deal with. The basic meaning of it is 'to fall in, fall, light upon', but its meaning extends to 'occurs, happens', which explains my initial translation. However, the more I thought of it, the more my translation sounded odd. Does a mention occur? Doesn't sound right, does it? Besides, my first translation of incidit really wasn't getting the tone of the word the way I wanted. incidit has the feeling of something which just, well, happens. That is, it has an almost random quality to it, so, in employing it, Sulpicius is trying to say that he didn't bring it up the subject of his book on Martin , it just happened that people started to talk about (and praise) it. This tone is in keeping with the studied modesty of Sulpicius Severus which is a feature of the Life itself (see particularly, the Preface of the Life of Saint Martin for a demonstration of this rather affected modesty). Indeed, this tone is already reflected in the choice of rather self-deprecating use of libellus- little book- to describe the book. incidit falls in with that tone.

So, what did I finally do about it? I had to adjust both the meaning of mentio and incidit beyond the standard dictionary meanings to get the English idiom I needed. Here is what I came up with (for now):

Yesterday, when very many monks came to me, amid new stories and a long conversation, the subject of my little book which I published about the life of the blessed bishop Martin, happened to come up. I heard with very great pleasure that it had been read with enthusiasm by many.

Better. The subordinate clauses are still piling on top of each other in odd ways. Particularly, the 'my little book which I published...' part sounds like odd English (if my students wrong something like this, I'd tell it was Latlish- not quite English, not quite Latin). And I'm tempted to change that last clause from the passive voice to the active because the active voice sounds better in English. Or not. That passive (to be read) fits with the sense that Sulpicius is trying to distance himself from praising himself. I still need to think that out a bit.

 I know that this blog entry has been rather a long discussion of what looks like very little. Yet, I think we can get rather blasé about the process of translating, partly because of the wide availability of translations of ao much of world literature and partly because we modern North Americans, as a consequence, don't think it necessary to pursue language study, even at the graduate student level, in its own right. So, we become language phobes who are afraid to do serious language study. That is a dangerous position to take because, while the language in, say, our Latin texts doesn't change, our language, the target language, does and there is a need to retool and refit translations with each generation. All one has to do is to read translations from even a generation ago and one will find them hard to follow. Regular updating of translations enables us to engage more fully with the literature from other culture - whether ones that have passed away or those which continue alongside us. Translating isn't an easy activity, but it is a culturally important one and one which deserves to be taken more seriously.

Return to St. Martin

For as long as this blog has been around, I've been working on a translation of Sulpicius Severus' Life of St. Martin. To be accurate, I've been working on it, off and on, for longer than that, but I spent time in 2007-2009, posting chapter by chapter of the Life which I gathered into a final posting in Feb, 2009. And, then, I set it on the shelf, intending to get back to it in a while. It has been a while and high time to review the whole project.

The project has, in the interim, expanded. I realized that I probably should translate the Letters and Dialogues of Sulpicius Severus because they shed considerable life of St. Martin as we have it. And, while I'm at it, there is St. Gregory the Great's work on St. Martin, which would supplement Sulpicius Severus' account. I haven't got very far on these last pieces, but now that it is summer I thought I'd spend some time on it.

Last night, I found the CSEL volume free on Google Books and have duly printed off the relevant portions of that volume. I thought I would post the translations as I proceed. Comments are always welcome, of course, and, just like the portions of the Life, I'll provide commentary to give a preliminary interpretation to the passages I'm translating.

With that intent in mind, I thought I'd take a post to reflect on what I've observed and learned about this particular enterprise.

1. The biography of St. Martin as remembered by many Christians is limited to one or two incidents. Of course, most people know about the cloak and the beggar incident (Life, 3). This incident has a particular resonance among many Christians these days as an expression of social justice. Of course, giving half one's cloak to a beggar is social justice and particularly striking when done by a Roman soldier, who were not, generally, well-known for acts of social justice. If one hangs around pacifists, one might quote approvingly about Martin's defiant refusal to fight in the late 350s in Gaul (Life 4). And that is about it. The balance of the life which describes St. Martin's episcopate in Tours and his reputation as a holy man is not as well known.

2. Following on this point, there are reasons why the balance of St. Martin's life isn't well known. If one reads it as either a modern or a post-modern, there is much about which to be offended or dismissive. The many miracles of St. Martin are bound to cause modernist readers to dismiss the whole life as fantastic and useless as a historical document. Martin's relentless campaign to root out paganism in the countryside around Tours, involving the destruction of altars and such like, are bound to offend post-moderns, who are liable to see this as an expression of power, not piety. So, one feels when reading the Life that one has the alternative of being credulous or oppressive- neither which are popular shortcomings these days.

3. What is interesting to me about the body of literature on St. Martin is that there is a reflective sense, if only because Sulpicius Severus wasn't content with just writing an saint's life, but he felt it necessary to answer his critics. Not every one of St. Martin's contemporaries agreed with Sulpicius Severus' take on St. Martin. Even in the life, we see opposition to St. Martin's approach to the episcopate, even if that opposition was condemned as being wordly. In the Letters and Dialogues, we see how deep that opposition went, even into St. Martins' own community which elected as his episcopal successor one of the most vociferous critics of St. Martin while alive. That is one of the reasons why I want to translate these works because they give a fuller picture of St. Martin and raise interesting issues such as Martin's mental competence at the end of his life (when, incidentally, Sulpicius Severus knew him).

4. Yet, this complexity is also unsettling. One of the reasons why I embarked on this project back almost a decade ago was that I attend a St. Martin-in-the-Fields (West Toronto, as it happens, not the original in London, England) as well as I attended in London, Ontario. It was, and is, in my mind to give a translation of the Life to both churches as a gift, but I find it is a rather odd one. Simply stated, I would not be giving a plaster saint for the edification of all, but rather a flawed, but, I firmly believed, deeply faithful saint, whose life raises many, many questions which are uncomfortable for us to answer such as our belief in miracles, attitudes to other religions, attitude to the military and, quite possibly, our attitude to mental illness as well as the more satisfying reflections on social justice and faith. I'm not sure I'll be thanked for raising these issues, but I'm also convinced the role of a Christian scholar, even an amateur as myself, is to tell our stories, no matter how unsettling they might be.

That is, for what it is worth, is where I am right now with what I've called elsewhere, the Martiniana. Hopefully, I'll be able to post the first letter before the end of the week and then work my way through the Letters and Dialogues in the  course of the summer. That's the plan at any rate.

Observations on history, faith and 'real life'

As I'm sure my readers have noticed, I've decided to refresh the look of uperekperissou a bit, with a changed format done and some tinkering with the sidebars planned. More to the point, I'm also anticipating a summer in which I might be able to do rather more blog writing than I've managed in the school year- a low bar, I know. One of the nice things about summer is that the crush of work in the school year abates and I get more time to reflect and, more to the point, read. So, that is what usually generates blog spots.

So, for today, I thought I'd be a bit self-referential and talk about my new subtitle. The alert reader will have already noticed this change and, I hope, approved of it. Living the Tradition, while reflective of my placement inside a dynamic Christian tradition, is rather a clunky and pompous slogan to go by. I mean, who do I think I sound like, a Tractarian or something? So, when I started to contemplate my summer writing, I thought of this subtitle as rather more reflective of what I do here on this blog. However, it does still bear some explaining, if only because those three subjects don't always go together.

For many, I'm sure, it is the history element of this triad that causes the problem. History, in the experience of very many people, is so removed from 'real life' that how could it possibly be related with it, even with faith serving as an intermediary. Of course, historians hasten to justify themselves with everything from vague, but ominous warnings about being doomed to relive the more unpleasant elements of our history or the quest for historical 'truth' or about redefining narratives et cetera. Or, if they're particularly pious, perhaps making observations about the morality of our present age by comparing us with the spiritual giants of the past or the spiritual villains, depending on one's theology and inclination. Yet, none of these justifications ring true with me. What motivates me to continue to study history, particularly Christian history is the inspiration that earlier Christians give me in their efforts to live out their faith in their own time and the salutary dislocation of my own modern (or post-modern, if you like) assumptions about what faith should be, based, no doubt, on my own accommodation with the cultural around me. What Christian history has taught me is that there are many, many different ways of being a Christian- most of which are as faithful and unfaithful as our own time-, so raises the question of whether I believe I have a lock on the truth. History reveals the cloud of witnesses which tell me to stop assuming that I've got this faith thing locked down.

The faith element, on the other hand, should cause no  consternation among Christians, but academically trained historians must now be wincing. Some of that discomfort is probably right. Anyone who has read any ecclesiastical history over the ages knows the piety of some authors has tended to overshadow their historical judgement.. Yet, faith isn't a substitution for using one's brain and, indeed, I would argue that any Christian should be alive to the danger and temptation of perpetrating pious frauds, if they should study history. The impulse to make Christianity look as good as possible is always there as is the impulse to use history polemically against our more vociferous cultural opponents. Yet, I think faith is ill-served when we engage upon any kind of deception (self- or otherwise) about our past. Faith is about trust and, I would argue, it doesn't work if the reasons why we trust are fraudulent.

Besides, my faith is central to how I look at the world and it should surprise no one that I'm going to want to write about it. Really, when push comes to shove and I have to explain why I have faith in God, my answer really has to be that I've found nothing else which give me hope that the evil that I see in the world will not prevail and that this mess that we call human life will be redeemed into something indescribably better. And it is that hope that sustains me in my daily life and pushes me to find a way to contribute to that redemption- through seeking out the dark places in my own soul and through seeking out God's peace in the world where we live.

That brings me to daily life. Ultimately, my faith doesn't allow me to live in a vacuum, but it has to be lived out as I go about my daily routine. I am blessed with work which also is my vocation and, where the rubber hits the road is my daily life. That is where I can see if what I believe comes out in my life or not. Can I live out a faithful life amid the concerns and pressures of my job? Can I trust God even when I really want to control my life and do what I want to do? Do my standards of right really measure up with God's? When I can answer those questions, I'm a lot further on in discerning what I need to do to continue in faith.

So, as I contemplate new posts, I'm hoping to combine these ideas, largely because the best of my posts in the past have done that. I have, as I've discovered, neither the leisure nor the exact skills to be a professional historian. I don't have the sense of detail needed to write history well at the highest level. Nor am I a giant of faith- I'm only trying to apply the little I know about faith and God to my life. However, I find hope and inspiration in finding the connections between the witnesses who preceded me and the witnesses who are before my eyes. If those connections prove helpful to my readers as well, then my task on the blog is done.

An Advent Meditation

Things have been quiet here on hyperekperissou, mostly because things haven't been very quiet for me over the last few months, as I had anticipated back in the summer. Once school resumes in September, I'm usually quite busy, but the addition of our second son in May and the fact that he isn't the best sleeper in the world (not the worst, I recognize and am duly grateful), has meant that on those occasions on which I felt inspired, I was also exhausted and physically not up to writing. The sleeplessness is abating, albeit slowly, but the speed of my life remains faster than I would like. Of course, I suspect that the fault for at least some of that rests with me. I find it difficult to slow down and to let go my work when I do get those chances. This is, I think, the dark side of vocation- if one thinks that one is doing what one is called for, it is difficult to see the need to slow down, even when it is apparent that one would do one's work so much better with some rest once in a while. That is how, of course, vocation becomes a treadmill, instead of the joy that it is supposed to be. Now, in the dying days of December, I'm feeling that need for rest which I rarely want to acknowledge the rest of the year. That is why, of course, Advent comes to me at the perfect time- when I know I need to slow down, look around me and wait.
Yet I've been wanting to write the last few weeks, partly to assure my readers that I'm not dead, but also to review what has been going on with me over the last couple of months. Amid the busyness, I've been blessed with the opportunity for more reflection than most years, so I did want to share a few things along the way.

One of the blessings this fall has been my involvement in a course at church- the Life with God series through the Evangelical Centre for Spiritual Wisdom- which has provide much needed focus in my spiritual life when the challenges for keeping on an even keel have stepped up, what with lack of sleep and adjusting to a new routine and rhythm of life. It is hard to describe simply what this course is; the closest I can get is to call it group spiritual direction. The intention is to explore, first, the goodness of God in our lives, then to begin the exploration of the obstacles to letting us realize that goodness in our lives. Mind you, one of the things that I realized in the first part of the course was that, when compelled to consider God's goodness, my natural tendency is to get grumpy and gloomy. Part of that might be trying to do interactive projects late in the day or in the evening when I'm feeling grumpy at the best of times, but I think there is also a reluctance on my part to recognize the good that God has given the world; a reluctance which goes deeper than my conscious thinking. Perhaps this shouldn't comes as a surprise to me. I remember several years ago when I was working with a friend on spiritual issues, he kept asking me what I was grateful for and I kept wanting to lean across the table and slap him. I didn't and I did start asking myself that question often enough that I am grateful, most of the time. It seems I just need to remind myself more often than other people

Besides this course, I've also been keeping up my reading. I find myself conflicted here as well sometimes because I wonder sometimes how much my reading/projects are an escape from people and how much it is part of a spiritual discipline. I think sometimes I retreat into books as a way of escaping people, who I find are much more unpredictable and challenging (odd that!). Other times, I feel I discover things that I help me understand myself, my faith and my life better. And that isn't even getting into learning for my profession. One of the things that struck me this year, however, is that I have to maintain a careful distinction between a project and the spiritual discipline of study.  A project is bad for me, partly because I don't have time for a project (are you kidding me, I'm barely managing what I need to do), but also because the project becomes about me showing off my spectacular intelligence, proving my brilliance or some such nonsense. Study as spiritual discipline, however, builds up my faith and brings me the joy of learning just 'cause. It is the very uselessness of spiritual study- no apparent object, no apparent reason- that helps me take away my ego and my desire for affirmation.And, if I am ever to share what I have learned, it is from that uselessness that I think I have to share from.

Lastly, I've been reflecting about blessings and curses. Our study leader commented last week about the power of curses and blessings in our lives. She pointed out that the world around us gives us curses aplenty from the religious ones like "Goddammit!" to more every day ones like "idiot" (Raca! as Jesus pointed out) or 'you won't amount to anything' or 'you're useless'. Blessings, however, are much harder to find and much more needed in this world of ours. That made me think about my use of blessings and, yes, of curses. One thing that I realized in this reflection is the ubiquity of curses in education and my own guilt in that. One that has touched me especially is the "telling the future curses"- 'I've seen the road you're on and this is how it will turn out'. I've been thinking about that one because this is the time of the year that the first signs of trouble appear in my first year Latin course. And it is the time of year that I get frustrated and start making comments like that. Looking back, even on last year which was a fairly quiet year, I realized that every single kid I said that to went the way I predicted - the curse had, unfortunately, worked and no wonder. If someone told me that I was heading a certain dire route, how motivated would I be to change that? Or how motivated was I, on the occasions that happened? What would have happened, if, instead of cursing or "telling the future", I blessed those students and looked to see what was wrong. I don't know, but, with God's help, I hope to find out.

As usual, I've gone on rather longer than intended, but I'll leave you, my readers, with a wish for a peaceful and happy Advent.

Peace,
Phil

Reading 1 Clement: The Problem with Envy

I left off the last entry with the question of what caused the formerly healthy Corinthian church to fragment into discord and schism. Yet, this is a question that Clement seems to view in quite a different way that we would. Clement's letter is that never really indulges in that all too common (and modern) vice of wanting to name names or report incidents. One presumes that, if he was writing the letter in the first place, he has some idea about what was happening, but, past a general note about the division between the established leaders of the community and, presumably, a younger faction, we know little about the circumstances of the issue in Corinth. This, of course, continues to frustrate church historians. What is more, Eusebius, the father of church history, does nothing help. Indeed, all he does it to note the dissension and report that Hegesippus adequately covered the dispute (which is no help to us, given that we don't have Hegesippus).

In his discussion of this crisis, Clement is more concerned with considering spiritual causes for the Corinthian church's. What is interesting and chilling for us is that Clement charts these causes not as the flaws of certain bad individuals, but the direct consequence of the prosperity of the Corinthian Church. This robs us from the luxury of blaming others for our problems. Clement, however, doesn't let us off the hook because he argues that the very success of the Corinthian church contained in it the seeds of its own self-destruction. This success brought with it arrogance and a greater sense of self-importance which could only spell disaster for a spiritual community. If our success convinces us that, somehow, we deserve or, worse, caused our success; then, we are liable to stop recognizing our dependence on God and to start to think that our power is real. That, then, leads to power struggles as we fight over who should wield the power that, really, we don't really have. The result is that we spend more time trying to impose our vision of how we should employ our non-existent power rather than seeking God's will and direction about how to live out His Kingdom values. Self-will, as a result, runs riot and all we manage to prove is that we do that we aren't God and we don't know better.

For Clement, that process of the ecclesial self-destruction works itself out quite logically. First, the prosperity of the church encourages competitiveness, zelos and phthonos. This is interesting in itself because the two words, while frequently paired and almost synonymous, have very different tones to them. zelos is, more or less, positive, representing the kind of positive competition which draws out the best in people through competitive virtues going back all the way to Homer. phthonos is the destructive mirror image of zelos; the destructive competition which encourages cheating, lying and treachery. Yet, Clement pairs them as equally destructive and unjust. This implies that the kind of competitiveness which characterized the drive to succeed in Classical societies and, in rather different guises, our own has no place in the church. We do not strive to outdo each other in our Christian lives, but, rather, to be faithful servants of God. Our value is not found in our place in a hierarchy, whether ecclesiastical or spiritual, but, rather, in our faithful service to God and our neighbour.

Yet, if we are to be completely honest, competitiveness is a real temptation in a church. It is all to easy to look at someone serving in the church and be jealous of the accolades that they get in their service. It is all to easy to decide that someone else doesn't deserve their position of trust because we all know I can do that just as well or better. Jealousy and envy is alive and well in today's church because it is alive and well in me...and in many more people than me.

Perhaps this is why Clement spends so much time tracing out the examples of the impact of jealousy in the Old Testament, in the lives of Peter and Paul and even in the stories of Greek mythology. The destructiveness of these emotions becomes evident in these examples, by showing how ties of family, ethnicity and even faith cannot survive the destructiveness of jealous and envy.

Furthermore, this envy and jealousy leads directly to the kinds of dissensions and strife which Clement is trying address in this letter. This makes sense, of course. If we are looking askance at our neighbour and envying him, we are already storing up hostility and, ultimately, war against our neighbour. How can we contemplate peace and harbour jealousy in our hearts? Sooner or later, we will abandon peace and seek to 'restore' the balance of what is owed to us. Envy and jealous are the preludes to civil war, even ecclesial civil war such as the one evidently experienced by the Corinthian church and, arguably, the multiple ones experienced by churches today, large and small.

The logical result of this progress from our own individual jealousies and envy to the communal disruption of schism ultimately comes down to the weakening of our ability to live of what God has called us to be: the first-fruits of his kingdom. One of the most persistent scandals of the modern church is the scandal of church division. By this, I don't mean the diversity of worship styles, theological explanation or, even, ecclesiastical structure. Within certain limits, this diversity is a good thing. Rather, I refer to our inability as Christians to live with our differences and work together on what really is our common mission- seeking to further God's kingdom in the world today. While the ecumenical movement has softened the traditional denominational differences, we, all too often, allow ourselves to become distracted by the new fault lines of liberal-conservative, progressive-fundamentalist and such like. We all serve the same Lord, so why can't we work out a way to serve Him together?

In our next entries, we'll consider what Clement has to say about what we need to do just that: serve God together.

Reading 1st Clement: The Ideal and the Problem (1 Clement 1-4)

Last week, we started to discuss the 1st Letter of Clement to the Corinthians, its context and my aims in this series. This week, I want to get into the letter itself and see what it has to say about what the problem was in the church at Corinth at the time of Clement.

In some ways, Clement's opening is unusual. After the customary greeting and a cursory apology for not writing earlier, Clement begins his discussion with a picture of the Corinthian church's past which looks, I must confess, pretty idyllic. Here, Clement suggests, is a church in which justice, peace and good order reigned. Here, the Christian virtues of mutual submission and brotherhood controlled how church members interacted. Here we have, if we follow Clement's imagery, the return of the post-Pentecost church, transposed to a Gentile setting- at least, until the troubles began.

This is a little odd, of course, because we do know something of the history of the Corinthian church. We know that Paul had enough problems with the Corinthian church that he felt he had to send two letters to them to get them back onto the right track. We know that the Corinthian church at the time of Paul was also torn by the same kind of division which Clement identifies in his own time. If that is so, just when was this idyllic past of the Corinthian church? What is Clement trying to accomplish here?

Perhaps we can explain this discrepancy by suggesting that Paul's letters and visits eventually did do some good in Corinth and that a period of peace followed Paul's correspondence which lasted right up to Clement's time. At this time, the Corinthian church was at its most fruitful and zealous, but, eventually, as the new generation began to chafe under the oversight of the older one, the younger Corinthian Christians began to try to remake the church in their own image; thus, falling into conflict with their elders.

Perhaps Clement is indulging in a kind of 'prince's mirror' in which he is trying to induce the very virtues which he assigns to the Corinthian church at a time when it distinctly did not have them. By setting out these ecclesial virtues, Clement may have hoped to provide the Corinthians with the vision of peace, justice and order which he wanted them to enjoy.

Regardless of which theory to explain Clement's image of the Corinthian church before this crisis, he is clear about what the problem- church division. For whatever reason (Clement doesn't really say), the Corinthian church broke into factions, quarrelling and strife which caused all the marks of the ideal church which the Corinthian church to rapidly unravel. With the collapse of justice and peace, faith weakens, doing one's Christian duty falls by the wayside and individual Christians begin to go their own sinful way. The Corinthian church was rapidly de-constructing itself, to the horror of Clement and, one presumes, the rest of the Christian world.

I'm not sure that we understand how visceral this Corinthian scandal must have been in Clement's day. In many ways, this kind of church division, while regrettable, is a rather common occurrence today. We have normalized church division to the extent that there are, literally, hundreds of thousands of Christian denominations, with more arising each year. One of the most common reactions to disagreement and conflict in many churches today is to split off form the 'unholy' segment of one's community. It is true that this is a peculiarly Protestant disease, but, really, if we look at it, even those churches which claim an adherence to a catholic ecclesiology have experienced church division as Orthodox and Anglicans split from the Roman Catholics and splinter groups which result perpetuate the division or divide anew.

Furthermore, I don't think that church division ends only here with the division of a community or a communion. Can we see it in our modern propensity to church shop for a community which satisfies our theological, aesthetic or political tastes? Can we see it in our willingness to dismiss a Christian brother and sister as too 'liberal, or too 'conservative' or too 'moderate'? Can we see it in our assurance in our own sense of spiritual self-sufficiency which causes us not to share our real selves with the world? This is to say nothing about muttering about the diocese or the bishop or the denomination's paper. Whatever divides us or causes us to pull back from our fellow Christian, is that not an injury to the community? And am I not as great a sinner in this area as anyone else? Of course.

Yet, we also aren't called to the opposite extreme of placing community ties so high on our priorities that we stamp out our individual conscience and discernment. There are times when the Spirit calls us to confront sin in our church and, at those times, we need the virtues of truthfulness and humility to lead us through the conflict which will result. But does conflict necessarily entail division? Does this conflict come from a moving of the Spirit or from our own sinful desire to dominate the opposition or even to set ourselves up as the authority in the church? I'm not sure it is very easy to know and that should call us to humility and patience as we discern the way forward. Unfortunately, neither humility nor patience are the strong suits of the modern church, even if they remain indispensable for a faithful church.

But how did the Corinthian church break apart? What caused it to turn its back on its own ideals and to descend to chaos? That is the topic for the next post.

Reading 1 Clement: An Introduction

In my last post, I noted my 'epiphany' about my study time; that it is a much more productive use of my time to merely read the Fathers in the original and not worry about any project for now. Part of the reason for that decision was lack of time, but there is also the realization that, unless I read the Fathers in the original (or as close as I can), I wouldn't be able to take myself very seriously. And that means, working on vagaries of Christian Latin and Greek. Those vagaries aren't so much vagaries in language structures or, very often, even of vocabulary, but it is that of context. So, I've decided to embark on a long-range reading program of the Fathers- not an exhaustive one, but hitting the highlights in apologetics, sermons, history and ecclesiology. And, logically, the place to start is Clement's 1st Letter to the Corinthians.

My intention in this first post is to give a bit of context, some idea where I'm going with this series and, honestly, to give the first insights into why anyone should care. That last point is an important one because, at the end of the day, I see my reading of the Fathers both as a way to deepen my understanding of my faith today and as a service to the Church to help us ask the questions that we may have forgotten to ask for so long or which we've forgotten what the answers were.

So, what is my context?

1 Clement is a letter to the church at Corinth (the same one addressed by the Apostle Paul in two letters for very similar reasons), probably in the 90s AD. The author is usually assumed to be Clement, the bishop of Rome, third in succession to Peter. This identification is, of course, something of a stretch in that the text itself mentions no Clement, but, rather, its introduction makes it clear that it is the church of Rome writing to the church of Corinth. Clement is consistently cited in manuscripts as the author and, if I'm not incorrect, this is followed by Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History. The date is established by this letter's apology that the church of Rome had been unable to write because its own problems- usually, taken as a reference to Domitian's measures against Christians in the 90s AD.

It might strike the casual observer that all this is rather a slim groundwork to base a discussion of context. Agreed, but, to someone who has done any Classical work, it has to be conceded that our information about many ancient authors is probably no better than this and, often, much worse. Caution is, of course, indicated, but, ultimately, one has to decide whether the manuscipt writers and/Eusebius had have known a thing or two more than we did about this letter.

Where am I going with this series?

This letter is, in many ways, a founding document in the establishment of a catholic theory of the church (ecclesiology). Note the small 'c' whose use is an attempt not to get bogged down in Protestant-Catholic apologetics which in both insist on using this letter and other patristic texts on ecclesiology like a tennis ball. The idea of a catholic ecclesiology centres upon a belief that all Christians are linked to each other by bonds of doctrine, liturgy and common history. As Vincent of Lerins puts it 'what is believed everywhere, always and by all'. Of course, that definition too has become a theological tennis ball because it is suitably vague. What it means to a Roman Catholic is not precisely what it means to an Orthodox person nor to a Protestant. Yet, we see attempts to work towards it, from the Roman Catholic insistence on the infallibility of the Pope in moral questions, or Orthodoxy's refusal to give up the term or C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity' and evangelicalism's comparative lack of interest in denominational boundaries. There is a hunger to return to 'catholicity', even if, too often, we want to do it on our own terms.

In this series, I hope to look at what it means to be catholic, not primarily from a theoretical view, but from an eminently practical way. Clement, in this letter, is addressing a real problem in Corinth, a schism arising from a power struggle in the Corinthian church- a problem not so uncommon in our multi-denominational universe. What I want to examine is the spiritual habits and practices which draw Christians together, not to use the letter as an apologetic weapon to defend my own claim to catholicity or my own desire to overcome an opponent in a debate. In that light, I welcome dialogue and discussion from those who have different traditions from me.

But who cares?

We all should. I firmly believe that the present divisions among Christians are a scandal, albeit a scandal with a long, difficult history filled with sincere and devout Christians believing that they had no alternative, but to split from a segment of Christ's body. Yet, it is a scandal that a group of people who, in the 2nd century AD, was described a people who drew the astonished cry of "See how they love each other' to a people who not only were willing to throw verbal darts at each other at the drop of a hat, but, from to time, to kill to prove their point (creating all sorts of dissonance with what Christ taught us about being godly human beings, much less His followers). Perhaps, if we can see ourselves in the dysfunctional and divided Corinthian church, we can start asking ourselves how we have come off track and what we need to do to get back on track individually as well as corporately.

All this is a tall order and, of course, I certainly don't expect to abolish church division in the matter of a few months. No, my aim is much more humble: to ask questions, have discussions and reflect on what it is to be a catholic church today. That is more than enough for any series.

Peace,
Phil