tregallion

Hereby is held forth an evident demonstration (and the greatest one that could have been given unto men) of the everlasting continuance of God’s mercies unto men, by this, that God is for everlasting become a man; and so we thereby assured that he will be merciful unto men, and that for ever. For as his union with our nature is for everlasting, so thereby is sealed up to us the continuation of his mercies, to be for everlasting; so that he can and will no more cease to be merciful unto men, than himself can now cease to be a man; which can never be. And this was the end [goal] of that assumption [of our nature to himself].

Thomas Goodwin, The Heart of Christ in Heaven Towards Sinners on Earth (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2011), 88.

A yew tree was planted in 1136 in the grounds of Dryburgh Abbey, the same year as the first stone was laid in the abbey itself.

We had walked once round the abbey, had climbed the spiral staircase, had sung the Gloria Patri underground in the echoey chapter-house. I thought about the yew. The old stones.

The kids were playing tig on the grass, their laughter and screams bouncing off the walls, ringing freely into the roofless sky, bothering the old lady who had paused to read a plaque. Would the monks have liked it? The noise? Savoured the sound of joy and mischief? Or would they too have scowled, and returned to their contemplations?

I called the kids over to me, on the bench in the open square where, once, monks chanted psalms and planted winter vegetables. I tried to explain to the kids how much has happened in the lifespan of this tree, what cataclysms and revolutions have unfolded even in our own land while these stones stood still and silent, patient. Inventions, uprisings, wars, kingdoms. How many lives of men have risen and passed.

I faltered, not knowing how to find a fingerhold in their minds for such thoughts. The printing press, William Wallace, the Reformation, Oliver Cromwell. Enlightenment. Union of Crowns. Steam. Empire. Electricity. The kids were unimpressed.

I too fell silent. They returned to their game of tig in the empty cloister.

There are many reasons we don’t pray. Likely you’re familiar with the common ones: I don’t have time, I forget, I find it boring, I get distracted, I don’t know what to say.

And by describing them like this, I don’t mean to dismiss them. These are significant barriers for some. Another reason not to dismiss them is the malevolent mind behind them — for the Devil hates it when we pray, and will present all sorts of suggestions and reasons for why we can’t do it or shouldn’t bother. Even better than that, in the Screwtapian sense of ‘better’, is when he helps us not to even consider that we might pray. No need for excuses why we can’t, if the possibility of doing so never occurs.

But for the sensitive conscience (I would include myself in that category) there is a further and higher hurdle to dive over on the way to prayer, and that is when the Devil tries to convince you that you must not pray. That prayer is a privilege to which you have no right. That it would be dangerous to pray. Because how can such a wretched sinner as you, dare to presume upon the listening ear of God?

Bunyan writes at great length about the internal warfare he faced in his long approach to saving faith. Grace Abounding is largely about the torments of conscience he suffered — too convinced of the truth of Scripture to go on without God, too conscious of his sinfulness and failure to approach God. And underneath it, not yet understanding or believing in the power of Christ to save.

Here he writes of how the Devil tempts him to despair, telling him that to pray would be pointless. And then he writes of the turn of will given him by God, to just pray anyway.

Now while these Scriptures [the threatenings of the law] lay before me, and laid sin anew at my door, that saying in Luke 18.1 with others, did encourage me to prayer:

Then the Tempter again laid at me very sore; suggesting, That neither the Mercy of God, nor yet the Blood of Christ, did at all concern me, nor could they help me for my sin; therefore it was but in vain to pray.

Yet, thought I, I will pray:

But, said the Tempter, your sin is unpardonable.

Well, said I, I will pray.

‘Tis to no boot, said he.

Yet, said I, I will pray.

So I went in prayer to God; and while I was at prayer, I uttered words to this effect,

Lord, Satan tells me, that neither thy Mercy, nor Christ’s Blood is sufficient to save my Soul: Lord, shall I honour thee most, by believing thou wilt and canst; or him, by believing thou neither wilt nor canst? Lord, I would fain honour thee, by believing thou wilt and canst.

John Bunyan, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1907), 62.

Let [a bishop] therefore, if it is possible, be well educated; but if he be unlettered, let him at any rate be skilful in the word, and of competent age.

Apostolic Constitutions, II.1 (~375AD). From the Complete Ante-Nicene & Nicene and Post-Nicene Church Fathers Collection, Kindle edition, loc. 138659.

It was apparently not considered essential, at least by the pseudepigraphical author of the Apostolic Constitutions, that a bishop or overseer of the church should need to be especially well educated. From the sound of that quotation — depending on what exactly is meant by ‘unlettered’ — it may not have been considered essential that these pastors could even read. It was desirable, certainly — ‘but if he be unlettered, let him at any rate be skilful in the word.’ Note also that this comes after two paragraphs considering the character of the candidate. My assumption is that the unlettered pastor would know the scriptures well simply by hearing them read, taught, and discussed, and having been instructed and catechised orally. It’s well established that, until the Reformation, the spread of the printing press, and the sudden affordability of printed Bibles, most Christians would never have laid eyes on a copy of the Bible, much less have been able to read it.

The idea of a pastor who couldn’t read would likely be a bit shocking to us in the literate (post-literate?) West, but doubtless there are churches today in other parts of the world where godly men of good character but little education are faithfully pastoring churches to the glory of God, and doing so to great effect. And there will also be those who can read, but have never received even the scantiest formal education.

The Constitutions acknowledge the distinction between biblical competency and erudition. One of the men I studied with when training for the ministry was a real academic iconoclast, who frequently summed up his rejection of the often speciously sophisticated theological reasoning of our classmates by pulling a face and saying, ‘I just cannae see it’. He’ll never be a professional theologian, but he loves the Lord, and he loves the Bible, and he’s a fine pastor.

I used to think that it would be crazy to consider appointing a pastor who didn’t have a theological degree. And to be sure, I would still think that a candidate for the ministry ought to have as firm a grasp on the Bible, biblical interpretation, theology, and church history as possible. But if he’s a godly man, who loves the Lord, and is ‘skilful in the word’ — that is to say, if he’s good enough to serve in Sierra Leone or rural Nepal — I’m with the Constitutions.

The reason I came across this in the first place was while researching what the Church Fathers had to say about women in the office of pastor/bishop. Egalitarians often argue that one of the reasons women in that culture weren’t permitted into the pastoral office was because they had no access to education. But if the Constitutions are anything to go by, lack of education was no significant barrier to ministry in the patristic church, and even the illiterate man might be considered for the pastoral office so long as his character was godly and his handling of the scriptures was skilful. He certainly didn’t need to have a formal education. In this, the Constitutions chime well with the qualifications for pastors and overseers in the Pastoral Epistles — lots of emphasis on character, a requirement to be able to teach, and no mention of a classical education.

I just finished Ecclesiastical History of the English People, written in 731 by the Venerable Bede, who was a Northumbrian monk. (Don’t forget to read the primary sources!) Michael Haykin considers Bede as the last of the Church Fathers.

This is the first of a few thoughts on Bede and his History.

Uniformity of practice.

Pursuit of uniformity in doctrine is not that strange in the contemporary church, though it’s less sought after in some wings than in others. It’s an occasional emphasis in the History, particularly around the Monothelite controversy that affected the whole of the Christian church in the 7th century. Bede reports on the Synod of Hatfield in 680, the council where the English bishops affirmed the orthodox position regarding the two wills of Christ, in order to report their position back to Rome.

But Bede is incredibly concerned about the pursuit of uniformity in practice, and that is a much greater theme in the History. The Monothelite controversy is hardly mentioned compared to the real bees in Bede’s bonnet, which are the dating of Easter and the shape of monastic tonsures.

His disdain for the deviant practices of the British (what we might call Welsh) and the Irish churches runs throughout. He views the Irish Christians a bit more favourably, because they regularly sent missionaries to the various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, and some of Bede’s great heroes, like Adamnan, Aidan, and Columba came from the Irish churches. He has no such patience for the British! He can’t stand that they refuse to accept the Catholic Easter, or the Catholic tonsure, and he holds against them still that the British Christians refused to send missionaries to the Anglo-Saxon incomers in the 5th century.

We’re downstream of the Reformation, the Peace of Westphalia, and (in the Anglosphere) the Act of Toleration of 1689. We’re used to a wide variation of practice, to the extent that a strong insistence on uniformity of practice is quite off-putting, perhaps even a red-flag of a disturbed mind. The same could be said for our attitudes to doctrinal uniformity.

But part of the benefit of reading old books is that they expose your assumptions simply by not sharing them.

Would I be bothered if another Baptist church celebrated Easter in a different week? For instance, the elders in that church decided that there was biblical support for the Julian calendar instead of the Gregorian? Or if they changed it in order to appease the consciences of a new minority of Eastern Orthodox believers who are attending the church?

I probably wouldn’t be bothered, because I’m not persuaded that we have to celebrate Easter at all — it’s nowhere commanded in Scripture. But should I be bothered? First of all about the celebration of Easter, secondly about such an easy acceptance of a variation of practice?

Carl Trueman posed a question about the difference in priority between the church’s didactic and doctrinal emphases in the 4th century and today:

“Ask yourself this: if my church put on a conference about how to have a great Christian marriage and fulfilled sex life, would more or fewer people attend than if we did one on the importance of the incarnation or the Trinity? The answer to that question allows an interesting comparison between the priorities of the church today and that of the fourth and fifth centuries.”

Carl Trueman, The Creedal Inperative (Wheaton: Crossway, 2011), 37.

Trueman’s point is — and in the wider context of his book, this is really key — that a deep connection to the history of the church, especially as expressed in the creeds and confessions, roots us in the life of the church before ourselves, and offer a corrective against the myopia and the elitism-of-chronology that is so characteristic of our age. Connection to the history of the church relativises our concerns, by showing that our highest priority was not always considered to be so, even by Christians who loved the Lord as much as or more than ourselves.

None of this is to say that Bede was right about tonsures. For all the historical perspective I’ve gained, I still feel pretty comfortable in my conviction that haircuts are no cause for Christian fissiparousness. But it is to say that I’m less comfortable than I was in dismissing concerns for uniformity as a red-flag. And I admit: Baptists are especially poor on this. The faintest gesture towards uniformity is likely to be taken as an assault on congregational autonomy. The monepiscopal structure of the Western church in Bede’s day was well enough established that the phrase ‘congregational autonomy’ would sound like rank nonsense to him — as nonsensical as the striving for a single liturgical practice and one monastic hairstyle from Galway to Galatia sounds to us.

This exposure to the priorities and emphases of the English church in the 8th century has provoked in me an unsettling question: is my casual appeal to conscience, liberty, and religious tolerance more a product of my context than of the Bible and the historic faith? Is the old trope about being boring if we were all the same just that — an old trope, the bogeyman of Conformity that we were taught so thoroughly to detest as we grew up after the rise of counter-culture?

I need to go and think about this more.

I repeat: read old books.

I have found as a tutor in English Literature that if the average student wants to find out something about Platonism, the very last thing he thinks of doing is to take a translation of Plato off the library shelf and read the Symposium. He would rather read some dreary modern book ten times as long, all about “isms” and influences and only once in twelve pages telling him what Plato actually said.

The error is rather an amiable one, for it springs from humility. The student is half afraid to meet one of the great philosophers face to face. He feels himself inadequate and thinks he will not understand him. But if he only knew, the great man, just because of his greatness, is much more intelligible than his modern commentator.

The simplest student will be able to understand, if not all, yet a very great deal of what Plato said; but hardly anyone can understand some modern books on Platonism.

C. S. Lewis, from the introduction to Athanasius, On the Incarnation.

I came across this a couple of years ago and decided to take Lewis at his word. The Renaissance clarion-call “Ad fontes!” still rings.

You know what? Lewis was right.

I have J. A. Froude’s Life of John Bunyan, and I have Bunyan’s autobiography, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners. The Froude book is dull and unfailingly complimentary about the Great English Man of Letters. It’s like Protestant hagiography. But when I read Grace Abounding? It was like Bunyan had read my diary. He broke my heart by telling me what was in it.

I have James K. A. Smith’s On the Road with Saint Augustine, and I have Augustine’s Confessions. I couldn’t even finish Smith; I can’t stop coming back to Augustine.

I ground my way through Mary Beard’s SPQR; I raced through Suetonius’ Twelve Caesars.

I’m still early in this, to be fair. But I’m really enjoying going back and reading these old books.

Collects are the beautiful, short prayers most associated (at least in the English-speaking world) with the Book of Common Prayer. I’ve been praying this one over the last few days. I’d really recommend delving into the BCP and incorporating some of the collects into your prayer life.

Grant, we beseech thee, merciful Lord, to thy faithful people pardon and peace; that they may be cleansed from all their sins, and serve thee with a quiet mind; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, the Collect for the Twenty-First Sunday after Trinity.