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The Early Church Fathers and the Cure and Care of Souls

I recently had to write something on the pastoral theology and practices of the Early Church Fathers. Much of what they thought, wrote, did and understood now seems strange, from another world, unenlightened in the view of post enlightenment minds! And yet.

The pastoral heart is evident in
many of the Church Fathers. The inevitable tensions between compassion and discipline, the intellectual and spiritual wrestling over the relationship between the life of grace, the struggle with sin, the holiness and mystery of the Triune God, and the nature of prayer, worship and Christian living as the proper response to the love of God in Christ.Their primary goal and foundational value was
growth in the love of God, towards the perfect love of God and all inclusive love of neighbour.

The route to this love was a
long training, an instilling of spiritual disciplines to train the personality
in the fruits of the spirit, to educate the soul in self-critical ethical
scrutiny, to co-operate with God in the restoring of the image of God, which
though marred remains the defining truth of every human being. To be made in
God’s image is to be able to know God choose the good and learn to love – it is
to have the capax dei, to train the passions by spiritual discipline in
order to love God with that balance of mind, heart strength and will.

Reading some of the Fathers today is an exercise in strangeness, but sometimes that's what a church which is now overfamiliar with God needs; and a church confident of the can do approach to theology can be reminded that living for God isn't about our can do, but about God's enabling grace; and a humbling corrective to theological and pastoral practitioners, that in the end we are all unprofitable servants, and what we seek to practice is a life rooted and grounded in the eternal love of the Triune God, seeking to know and make known the love that is beyond knowledge.

So we ignore the Fathers to our
loss. In the history of the cure of souls they had their own spiritual
psychology, their unique sense of the sacred, a profound sensitivity about sin
but matched by a diamond edged view of grace sufficient to cut and shape
character towards Christlikeness.

26 November 2012
Haiku, the Sea, and Grace Sufficient

You know the bit in Psalm 23 where the Psalmist finds peace beside the still waters and the green pastures? Sometimes that works for me too. But more often when I need a place of solace, silence and solitude, I find it on the edge of the sea.

This has been a week of sadness following a family bereavement. By the end of the funeral yesterday and then the journey home I was tired and inwardly out of sorts. No surprise there.

But this morning I knew what I wanted to do. Sheila and I went down to the front, bought a capuccino to go, and walked awhile. Then I stopped, Sheila walked on and i sat awhile listening to the rhythm of the waves, watching the play of sunlight on water, sand and stone. Few things for me, reconfigure the mind and restore the rhythms of the heart more gently than the sounds and sights of this ancient toing and froing of the sea. I almost never come away from the beach without a stone – shaped and smoothed by the faithful monotony of wave, after wave, after wave – patiently, persistently and playfully rolling rocks against each other, the lapidary friction defining the grain and structure of each stone.

And maybe, just maybe, minds overtaxed and overtired learn again the significance of slowness; hearts carrying excess baggage lighten up in the sunlightl; and that fragile reality we call the self recovers equlibrium and the soul is restored. I often find that the presence of God becomes more tangible, or discernible, in those places where you can lose yourself – by which I mean, for a short time let go of that self-preoccupation that silences other voices and obscures the reality of the God who, as Nicholas Lash says, 'does not shout'.

Haiku, The Sea, and Grace Sufficient.

PRAYER

Not our neat rhythmic prose

but sunlight on sand and stone

speaks our heart's true need.

HOLINESS

The gentle rumble

of stone on stone; the sea's gift

of polished granite.

HEALING

The liquid mercy

of waves, the sand's kind friction,

grace that heals, and saves.

(C) Jim Gordon

I took the photo while finishing a wonderful capuccino to go from The Pavilion Cafe.

24 November 2012
When the Aim is an Ethos and a Discipline: Further Thoughts on the Order of Baptist Ministry.

While at the Second Convocation of the Order of Baptist Ministry we spent some good time reflecting on the aim of the Order. I had come to the Convocation because the intimation and invitation
seemed a good way of creating space to gather my thoughts and allow the
sediment of a too full life to settle a little. Too much sediment and water becomes
worryingly opaque.

What follows is a personal reflection shared with the others, and providing a basis for further reflection. During the discussion of the aim of the order the sediment settled enough for me to see that such an Order
would provide and important alternative to other understandings of ministry
prevalent within our own communities of faith. That is, the Order would provide an alternative living out of Baptist
Ministry that, with intentional seriousness of purpose, seeks to pay close
attention to both words, Baptist and Ministry, thereby offering a framework of
relationships which will enable, encourage and enhance ministry in a self-consciously
Baptist way.

Not that
Baptist is the only way, or even the best way. But if we take our identity
under God seriously, then we are called to be Baptist in those essential
convictions and practices which are inhabited, and lived out, in the gift and
calling of our varied but shared ministries within Baptist communities.

This means
that the Aim of the Order would be neither critical of other expressions of ministry,
nor satisfied with our own ways of living out our vocations. Ministry is too
rich, varied and expressive of the diversity of the Body of Christ to be
captured or constrained by any particular model or embodiment. Baptist however
is a term we consciously own, as the talent entrusted by the Lord to our
particular communities of faith. While the name Baptist is rightly contested,
and understood in Baptist communities in different ways, the Order seeks to
give lived expression to the theology, practices and spirituality that are
quarried from the rich seams of our own historic and theological peculiarities.

By being
faithful to our own Baptist particularity we remain alert and obedient to God
who called us to follow and serve Christ in ministry. We do this precisely by
seeking to sustain authentic Baptist ministry as a gift to the whole Church of
Christ. Calling is always a gift, and the Aim of the Order, it was felt, ought to articulate
the specific peculiarity of what we believe is God’s gift to us. Therefore we
commit ourselves to walk together under the rule of Christ, faithfully
following after the Great Shepherd of the sheep, as Baptist Christians
encouraging and accompanying each other in fulfilling the vision of service we
believe is entrusted to us.

Nevertheless,
and that word is a decisive caution and qualifier – nevertheless we recognise
humbly and gratefully the richness and necessity of other forms of ministry,
which have their own validity, and which are God’s varied gifts to the Church as
the Body of Christ. As Baptist we gladly acknowledge our
dependence on the insights and resources of the Church Catholic, and seek to
sustain and enrich Baptist ministry by appropriating the gifts and spiritual
resources of the wider ecumenical consensus of faith in the Triune God. The Order aims to explore and enrich Baptist pastoral spirituality by conscious indebtedness to the rich catholicity of Christian thought and experience: building upon disciplines of prayer in the Daily Office, developing and sustaining a pastoral disposition that is both attentive and contemplative, and pursuing in prayer and study, a humble receptiveness to the knowledge and wisdom of the Triune God.

The Order
aims to give faithful expression to a vision of Baptist ministry and therefore
the aim could be stated: To embody, encourage and enable ministry
that is intentionally Baptist, vocationally pastoral, and spiritually faithful,
under the rule of Christ.

20 November 2012
Ancient texts and Digital Photos

He leads me beside still waters: He restores my soul….

Devotions by photograph often works for me! Especially when the photo carries with it memories of significant moments.

In more reflective moments of whimsical "what ifs" I wonder what the Gospels might have looked like if they had been illustrated with photos taken by Peter or Mary.

How good would a time delay photo series have been in those key moments at Cana when water became wine, huh?

Or if one of the Magi had taken a few holiday snaps of the living conditions of ordinary people in Bethlehem?

Then, what if Mary Magdalene had used her smartphone to snap the gardener early in the morning?

More seriously, the juxtaposition of personally taken photos with personally significant texts is just one other possibility for a contemplative hermeneutic.

As I look for ways of slowing down, paying attention, thinking thoughtfully rather than rapidly, I am finding music, paintings and now photos provide occasions of prayerfulness.

17 November 2012
Google – and a moment of unexpected and accidental theological insight!

Looking for a poem online ( because my own collection of Elizabeth Jennings' poems is at home) I Googled the line "Forgiveness – the word we live by". Still the mighty Google couldn't give me the poem I want. So it made a polite suggestion that maybe I meant something else. "Did you mean 'Forgiveness – the world we live by'?"

Oh well, yes! And no. But Oh my Lord, Yes! The insertion of one letter magnifies the entire idea of forgiveness into one that has global consequences, worldwide opportunities to begin again, intimations that at last, spears might yet become pruning hooks.

So I said the Lord's Prayer in the Office this morning ( the prayer cycle not my College study – though I say the Lord's Prayer there too) with knowing smirk at the subversion of that word, 'forgive', its potential to change a world, whether my inner world of resentments and walls of remembered hurt, or that big world out there where Gaza, Israel, Syria, Afghanistan, and any other elsewhere where dividing walls of hostility still contradict the peace made by the blood of the cross.

Your will be done…our daily bread…as we forgive our debtors….deliver us from evil….for thine is the kingdom, and your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as in heaven. No wonder that prayer holds countless gigabytes of the truths and realities by which the world lives.

Forgiveness – the word we live by. Forgiveness – the world we live by. So that forgiveness isn't the occasional giving in to our better nature and letting go the odd grudge – it is a way of life, and the way to life.

The photo is from Minsteracres Retreat Centre – "God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself."

15 November 2012
The Book Pyramid is an Architectural Triumph.

As a bibliophile, one who prefers a library to a shopping mall, and who believes libraries should attract the most creative and sympathetic architects, this is a beautiful place. As a statement of the continuing importance of books, it is a resounding rejoinder to the digitalisation of everything. And this is a public library, a place of beauty, quiet, learning, light and culture, housed in glass, like an educational greenhouse where people can grow.

Follow the link here for a guided tour of The Book Pyramid, a building of hope where the love of possibility and learning are made into a statement of intent. . e

13 November 2012
The Second Convocation of The Order for Baptist Ministry.

I spent the last couple of days at Minsteracres Retreat Centre near Consett at the second Annual Convocation of the Order of Baptist Ministry. It came at an awkward time for me, half way through Semester but I wanted to be there to explore and discuss the purpose and motivation for such an Order. The members of the Order can explain best what it is all about, and why this particular way of following faithfully after Christ in ministry has commended itself as a significant expression of pastoral spirituality today.

The background and the plans for the future are explained here.

The climax of the time together was when a number of members took vows and entered the novitiate, a way of exploring if this way of ministry is right for them. This was both solemn and informal, taking place within a communion service, and affirmed and supported by others who were there. One of the strengths of the Order is the Daily Office – you can see the text for these on the website, and you are free to experiment and try them for yourself. I now use them and try to be faithful in observing the Office, in fellowship with others.

I guess I have some questions and hesitations, but I also find something compelling and attractive and urgent about a group who wish to root their ministry in the spirituality of a Daily Office, to journey in the supportive company of fellow travellers, and to explore for themselves a contemplative and attentive approach to ministry that is resourced from the wide and cathholic tradition of Christian theology and spirituality. I am both a critical and sympathetic friend, but the word critical is not in any sense negative or carping. It is encouraging and curious, humbly inquisitive and gently excited by the fusion of Baptist ministry with contemplative reflection, and the combination of Daily Office and spiritual welcome to insight and nourishment from across the Christian traditions.

I met up with people I love and respect as friends of some time, and others I hadn't met before who were immediately friendly and welcoming. I came away with food for thought, and with a spirit already nourished by the food of shared vision, hopes and struggle. It was a good time.

The self portrait was taken standing inside concave steel mirrors – I took the photo:)

9 November 2012
"The doctrine of the Trinity declares –

and that is the point it stands up for on its fighting front –

that and how far

He who reveals Himself to man according to the witness of Scripture

can be our God,

that and how far

He can be our God."

Like a compacted gem of enigmatic Zen poetry, Barth pursues the truth of the Trinitarian love of God, aware he will never find, and even if he could would never find the words, to adequately explain, extol or adore the mystery. But mystery or not, Barth has unabashed confidence that this God of love and mystery, of distance and nearness, of transcendent power and inexhaustible love, this God is for us.

And this Lord can be our God,

He can meet us and unite us to Himself

because He is God in these thrtee modes of existence

as Father, Son and Spirit,

because creation, reconciliation, redemption,

the entire being, language and action,

in which he wills to be our God,

is grounded and typified in His own essence,

in His goodness itself."

(Quoted from German original in Karl Barth, David Mueller, Peabody: Hendrickson, 1972, page 69)

Nobody does it better!

8 November 2012
The Chief Rabbi, and Sitting at the Feet of Gamaliel.

"The story I am about to tell concerns the human mind's ability to do two quite different things. One is to break things down into their constituent parts and see how they mesh and interact. The other is to join things together so that they tell a story, and to join people together so that they form relationships. The best example of the first is science; of the second, religion. Science takes things apart to see how they work. Religion puts things together to see what they mean."

The voice of Jonathan Sacks is one of wisdom, reasoned thoughtfulness, passionate conviction tempered by humility, and generous judgement which is neither naive nor cynical. Reading him in books like this is to encounter a man of humane learning whose worldview accommodates diversity of viewpoints, and yet whose intellectual hospitality retains integrity of mind and truthfulness of heart. In my lifetime I judge the Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, to be one of very few outstanding religious leaders in Britain. For me, and I may exaggerate ever so slightly, it is like sitting at the feet of Gamaliel, whose own wisdom was to be patient and see whether this, or that, is of God. If it is, it will propser; if not, then why get worked up about is. When someone writes books with titles such as, The Persistence of Faith, The Politics of Hope, The Dignity of Difference, then we hear an essential voice faithfully teaching us things we need to learn, or remember, which have to do with blessing and that lovely word, shalom. As I read this book, I'll likely feel the urge to say more about it here!

6 November 2012
Wisdom – “a breath of the power of God”

The long passage at the end of this post, from The Wisdom of Solomon, was in the background when I was designing and working the Sophia Tapestry. Amongst the most important resources for living well and living as disciples of Jesus in the 21st Century, is an entire biblical tradition of Wisdom. Not just the often prudential and pragmatic Proverbs (which are no less true of moral for that), where alongside such social realism there are hymns to the splendour and glory of wisdom as one of the fundaments of existence, and a Divinely appointed originator of creation itself.

But the Book of Job as the cry of the human heart to the One who is always acknowledged as God, yet interrogated by a faith that will not settle for rational argument, theological subtlety, or emotional blackmail, from friends or God.

And the wonderfully astringent ascetic acid of Ecclesiastes, who through the questioning and scepticism, the occasional cynicism and pervasive disillusionment, hangs on to the truth that "Thou hast put eternity in human hearts" – for all his agnosticism about the meaning of life, Qoheleth still addresses "Thou", the God we encounter at the deepest levels of the personal.

And the Psalms contain an entire range of theologies – pastoral, liberation, green, natural, spiritual, practical, systematic (in an unsystematic form!), aesthetic, confessional – and the entire book is laced with Wisdom, what is coming to be known as sapiential theology.

That such literature is a crucial reflective resource for a post-modern culture saturated with information, fascinated and increasingly attached to technology as the clue to the human future, is for me, excuse the term, a no-brainer. By which I mean, the Church in seeking to understand the cultural forces and realities with which we live and move and have our being, requires a way of seeing the world that transcends the narrow vision and finite limits of post-modern techno-communication, global economics, ethical recession and spiritual disintegration. Perhaps one of the greatest poets of Modernity has some wisdom of his own to share:

Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
Bring us farther from GOD and nearer to the Dust.

T S Eliot, The Rock.

In any case, wisdom is one of those virtues that isn't so much a single virtue as both a fruit of virtuous living and a goal of life lived well. Of course the Wisdom of Jesus is far from pragmatic and prudential – which is another post for another time. For now, here is a celebration of Wisdom as the pervasive vision and vitality of human life lived towards God.

The
Nature of Wisdom

There is in wisdom a spirit that is
intelligent,

holy, unique, manifold, subtle, mobile,
clear, unpolluted,

distinct, invulnerable, loving the good, keen, irresistible,
beneficent, humane,

steadfast, sure, free from anxiety, all-powerful,
overseeing all,

and penetrating through all spirits that
are intelligent, pure, and altogether subtle.

For wisdom is more mobile than any motion;

because of her pureness she pervades and
penetrates all things.

For she is a breath of the power of God,

and a pure emanation of the glory of the
Almighty;

therefore nothing defiled gains entrance
into her.

For she is a reflection of eternal light,

a spotless mirror of the working of God,

and an image of his goodness.

Although she is but one, she can do all
things,

and while remaining in herself, she renews
all things;

in every generation she passes into holy
souls

and makes them friends of God,…..;

for God loves nothing so much as the person
who lives with wisdom.

She is more beautiful than the sun,

and excels every constellation of the
stars.

Compared with the light she is found to be
superior,

for it is succeeded by the night,

but against wisdom evil does not prevail.

5 November 2012