Dead Christians Society

“Patron Saints” class question on Gregory:

Q:     Did Gregory consider pride to be underlying most other sins (a more serious sin) – was that Church teaching at the time?

A:    The seven deadly sins, also known as the capital vices or cardinal sins, were first introduced when Greek monastic theologian Evagrius of Pontus drew up a list of eight offenses and deadly human passions, the sins as eight “passions”, and they were, in order of increasing severity: gluttony, lust, avarice, anger, acedia, vainglory, and pride. Evagrius saw the escalating severity as representing increasing fixation with the self, with pride as the most egregious of the sins. Acedia (from the Greek “akedia,” or “not to care”) denoted “spiritual sloth.”

In the late 6th century, St. Gregory the Great reduced the list to seven items, folding vainglory into pride, acedia into sadness, and adding envy. His ranking of the Sins’ seriousness was based on the degree from which they offended against love. It was, from least serious to most: lust, gluttony, avarice, sloth, anger, envy and pride (abbreviated into the mnemonic palegas).

“Capital” here means that these sins stand at the head (Latin caput) of the other sins which proceed from them, e.g. avarice gives rise to theft and lust gives rise to adultery. Later theologians, most notably Thomas Aquinas, would contradict the notion that the seriousness of the sins would be ranked.

Pride (vanity) — A desire to be important or attractive to others or excessive love of self (holding self out of proper position toward God or fellows; Dante’s definition was “love of self perverted to hatred and contempt for one’s neighbor”). In the Latin lists of the Seven Deadly Sins, pride is referred to as superbia.

Two penance-related questions from students on the reading of Gregory’s Pastoral Care, and my answers:

Q1: In what ways can the postmodern church learn from Gregory’s call to penance? Is penance an area of Christianity that we have been neglecting for a good reason or are there things about penance in which we could benefit from spiritually?

A1: I love this question. Let’s open it for discussion. If we stray too far from what Gregory taught about penance, we can return to the notes I provided on Gregory and penance, as part of the Gregory presentation last week [see below]. But the real question here is whether we have lost something by getting rid of the idea that as a part of your penance (or if you like, repentance) for sin, you must necessarily do some kind of work of “satisfaction”—a physical or at least active re-balancing of a world that you have impacted by your sin; perhaps restitution to those you have harmed, or some such.

[We did discuss this--I can't remember that we came to any particular conclusions. I'm getting old and my memory is going. But it's still worth discussion. Anyone?]

From the previous week’s notes, on Gregory & penance:

[These are verbatim from Oden's introduction to Gregory, in the former's Care of Souls in the Classic Tradition. For more from that book, see another blog post below, on how pastoral should change from its encounter with the classic tradition. The numbers heading each paragraph are page numbers from Oden's book]

51 His theology stressed penance as reparation. he thought that some active behavioral response was required for the proper reception of the Eucharist. Later this view became decisively influential in medieval doctrines of penance and purgation. This behavioral realism anticipates modern notions of behavior modification. For if you are serious about behavior change, G thought, you will work incrementally by small steps to modify actually revisable behavior as evidence of your earnest desire for change. [Compare this to later penances on the order of "say twelve Hail Marys and fourteen Our Fathers . . ."] One cannot truly repent and then sit around and do nothing. Where that happens, repentance has been misunderstood.

52 G . . . was not proposing the unPauline view that one can merit God’s forgiveness through good works. Rather through good works we show evidence of our seriousness about God’s forgiveness. The omnipotent God visits the contrite through the grace of compunction [that is, "Godly sorrow for one's sins"], and the pastor declares the truly penitent absolved as a representative pastoral act. But this absolution does not abruptly end the task of soul care. For the penitent does well to show behavioral evidence of an earnest determination to live out the life of forgiveness. [In medieval parlance, he or she does acts of "satisfaction."]

52 [Of course,] this is a distortable idea. It does not mean that our satisfaction supplants the satisfaction of God through Christ, but rather means that we work to amend the pain that our sin has caused by concrete acts of reparative penance. The truly penitent not only has a change of mind and a confession of the mouth, but also proceeds with some visible, demonstrative acts of restorative reparation, or deeds of penance.

52 In G we therefore have the kernel of the medieval doctrine of penance, the abuses of which Luther was later to recognize and struggle against. Otherwise G’s theology is strongly Augustinian, although less complex and philosophically sophisticated than Augustine’s. [STOP and ask: what would this mean—for those of you who have done HS 101—to say that someone's theology was "strongly Augustinian"? (stress on divine sovereignty, predestination vs. free will, monergism rather than synergism—God alone saves, and that through grace, just as the Reformers would later insist, against the de facto Pelagianism of the late medieval church)]

Q2: To what degree was physical penance such as self-mutilation present in Gregory’s day?

A2: On penance in the late ancient and early medieval period, I refer to Bernard McGinn, The Growth of Mysticism, p. 22: “The system of private penance . . . was pioneered within Celtic monasticism, a development of the master-disciple relationship found in early monasticism. The abbot of the monastery functioned as the “soul-friend” for his monks, assigning penance for faults after confession of sins and giving spiritual advice. By the mid-sixth century, this practice had become more formalized and had given rise to the penitential books . . . which listed categories of sins and their appropriate penances (more serious depending on one’s position in the church). The practice spread to the Anglo-Saxon church in the seventh century, and, through both Irish and English missionaries, to the continent soon thereafter. Nothing was more influential—and more characteristic—of medieval Christianity than private penance. The penitential discipline, even more than preaching, was the main instrument in attempts to spread and enforce Christian moral behavior in the early Middle Ages.”

Those Celts certainly did do some pretty bizarre things to their bodies, in penance. My impression is that Roman Christians tended to stay away from extreme self-discipline or physical penance—that will develop much more at later phases in medieval history—particularly in the 10^th century and again in the 13^th.

The following is also related to questions raised by a couple of you on Gregory and sexuality (e.g., was carnal lust itself the root of original sin):

Same source, pp. 46-7: “Early Christian attitudes toward the body and its relation to the soul are complex and often misunderstood. . . . The scriptural sense of “flesh” (Greek sarx; Latin caro) as opposed to “spirit” (pneuma; spiritus), which understood flesh as the total fallen human and not as body contrasted to soul, was never forgotten in early Christianity, though it did interact in varying ways with other understandings of the body. . . . Gregory the Great can be seen as the central figure in the creation of a new understanding of caro and carnalis, a monastic one centering on the opposition between this world and the world to come.

As a good exegete, Gregory was well aware of the scriptural uses of homo, and especially of caro. “In the sacred text,” he noted, “flesh is used one way in relation to nature [Gen 2:3 and John 1:14 are cited] and another way in relation to sin and corruption” [Gen 6:3; Ps 77:39; and Rom 8:9]. Gregory’s Moralia [his long sermon/commentaries on Job] are filled with passages that not only reflect the traditional hierarchy in which soul is superior to body . . ., but which also talk in disparaging fashion of the body as the soul’s prison . . ., as the weight that drags it down . . ., and as something weak, vile, and base. . . . But Gregory never forgets that the body . . . was created as something good, and that the flesh is integral to humanity and its salvation. Speaking of the Incarnation, he says: “What is his garment [referring to Rev 19:16] except the body he assumed from the Virgin? He is not one thing and his garment another. Our garment is also called flesh, but we ourselves are the flesh that clothes us.” The miracle of the union of the invisible and the visible, of spirit and earth, by which “the spirit droops when the flesh is weakened and the flesh wastes away when the spirit is afflicted,” was of central importance to Gregory, so that . . . the body becomes a particular focus of Gregory’s spirituality.

Hence, it is not surprising to find Gregory intensely concerned with the relation between the body and the soul in the path to salvation. Because of Adam’s fall, this relation is now sadly askew and will remain so until Christ’s return and the resurrection of the body, when God’s original plan for perfect harmony between spiritus and limus of the body will be triumphant. In good Augustinian fashion, Gregory sees sin as originating from within, that is from the mens carnalis, the spirit’s refusal to submit to God, which in turn grounds the disharmony and struggle between the flesh and its desires and the soul. This disharmony is not the source of sin, though it is the place where sin manifests itself most directly and experientially. As we struggle forward toward the goal of reintegration, which will be completed only at the resurrection, the body and soul are meant to function as partners in what Gregory acknowledges as the supremely difficult work of overcoming sin. The continuing frailty of fallen flesh (caro iuxta corruptionem) is both a curse and an opportunity. Sin always remains an evil, but during the course of life the inherited weakness of the flesh, the tendency toward sin, and even our faults themselves when repented become necessary parts of the suffering that purifies the soul and the humility that wears down pride, the ultimate enemy. . . . Equilibrium will not be attained in this life, but we must continue always to struggle toward it as a goal. Thus, pain and struggle are the mark of the human condition—militia est vita hominis super terram, as Job said (“Human life on earth is warfare” [Job 7.1]).

Here’s a list from Tom Oden’s 1984 Fortress Press book Care of Souls in the Classic Tradition. First, Oden argues modern pastoral care has become hopelessly muddled and weakened by a process of disassociation from its historical, theological roots. It must encounter “the classic tradition”–represented in particular by the book given to all Western bishops for a millennium: Gregory the Great’s Pastoral Care. Oden argues that when modern pastoral care encounters this classic tradition, it will realize that it must change in some fundamental ways. And it will gain the resources to effect that change:

Remember as you look at this list that Oden had trained and practiced in both liberal theology and the many faddish techniques of counseling and psychotherapy that were so popular in the 1960s and 1970s. What a wonderful transformation he had experienced through his encounter with what he calls “the classical tradition of pastoral care”—that is, his readings in some of the people we would call “the church fathers”:

Pastoral care must be reconstructed so that it becomes [the following is verbatim]:

—informed by Christian theology;

—able to provide a credible pastoral theodicy;

—able to work through difficult cases of conscience;

—aware of the dialectic of grace and freedom, gospel and law;

—able to point saliently to the providence of God in the midst of our human alienations;

—aware of the intrinsic connections between community, healing, and proclamation (koinonia, therapeia, and kerygma); and

—well-grounded in the classical understanding of the triune God.

If we listen to the classical tradition as we prepare to do modern pastoral counseling, Oden asks, what kinds of practical differences would we expect this would make in our counseling?

—Intercessory prayer would again become an important aspect of pastoral counsel.

—The antinomianism of contemporary pastoral care (under the tutelage of hedonic pop psychologies) would be more effectively resisted by a more balanced dialectic of gospel and law.

—Marriage counseling would tend to function more within the framework of a traditional Christian doctrine of matrimony rather than essentially as a hedonic cost/benefit calculus.

—Empathy training for pastoral counseling would be more deliberately and self-consciously grounded in an incarnational understanding of God’s participation in human alienation.

—Out of our recent history of exaggerated self-expression, compulsive feeling disclosure, and narcissism, we may be in for a new round of experimentation in askesis, self-discipline, self-denial, and rigorism, which might in turn threaten to become exaggerated in a masochistic direction and thus again need the corrective of a balanced Christian anthropology.

—The diminished moral power of the previously prevailing momentum of individualistic autonomy and self-assertiveness may call for a new emphasis in group process upon corporate responsibility, mutual accountability, moral self-examination, and social commitment, an emphasis that would be undergirded by studies in Bible and tradition.

—We are ready for a new look at the traditional Protestant pattern of regular pastoral visitation, which could enter many doors now closed to most secular therapists.

—Pastoral counsel would work harder than it is now working to develop a thorough and meaningful pastoral theodicy that takes fully into account the philosophical and moral objections to classical Christian arguments on the problem of evil and the meaning of suffering, yet with new attentiveness to the deeper pastoral intent of that tradition.

—The new synthesis would interweave evangelical witness more deliberately into the process of pastoral conversation rather than disavowing witness or disassociating proclamation from therapeutic dialogue.

—Group experimentation would continue, but be rooted with more awareness of classical Christian understandings of witness, service, and community.

—Older therapeutic approaches such as fasting, dietary control, meditation, and concrete acts of restitution would have new importance.

—The now atrophied concept of call to ministry may need to be thoroughly restudied and reconceived as a hinge concept of the pastoral office and of ordination.

—Contemporary pastoral theology in dialogue with the classical tradition may learn to speak in a more definite way about the spiritual and moral qualifications for ministry, reflecting the tradition’s persistent concern for moral character, humility, zeal, and self-denial.

—The arts of spiritual direction that have been developed, nurtured, reexamined, and refined over a dozen centuries of pastoral experience may be due for serious restudy. Efforts could be made to bring these resources back into contemporary pastoral interactions that presuppose post-Freudian understandings.

—Pastoral care would become less prone to messianic faddism, because it would have built into it a critical apparatus more deeply rooted in the Christian tradition.

—The term “pastoral counseling” would again be reclaimed as an integral part of the pastoral office, intrinsically correlated with liturgy, preaching, and the nurture of Christian community and relatively less identified with purely secularized, nonecclesial, theologically emasculated fee-basis counseling.

A key source I used in preparing for class discussion of Margery Kempe —is a book by Martin Thornton, an Anglican priest/scholar, Margery Kempe: An Example in the English Pastoral Tradition (London: SPCK, 1960). Thornton, by the way, is a “priest of the Oratory of the Good Shepherd.”

Thornton appears in a book of Eugene Peterson’s, where he lists some of his own favorite books in the area of spirituality (do check out this treasure of a book!) Peterson is a professor of spiritual theology at Regent College, and a prolific writer in that field. From a blog: “Peterson’s suggestions about who/what you should read are, of course, subjective. He admits that. But I like his breadth, and depth. His favorite authors: Barth, Bonhoeffer, Buechner, Chesterton, Kierkegaard, Kenneth Leech, C.S.Lewis, Martin Luther, Martin Thornton, von Balthasar. Now that’s some list!”

My observation: I don’t know about any of Thornton’s other books, as I haven’t read them. But this one shows an uncommon mixture of pastoral wisdom, psychological and theological insight, and historical knowledge, especially about “the English tradition” of spirituality–stretching back through the medieval era. Especially useful is Thornton’s careful survey of the theme of prayer in Margery’s book–he attends to the particular, systematically used language about prayer: the many different terms Margery uses for kinds of prayer she experiences, and their meanings. Also golden is the “classified skeleton commentary” of Margery’s whole book, included as an appendix. In brief entries that breathe his own enjoyment and close engagement with Margery’s thought, Thornton lays out for us some wonderful keys to Margery’s experience, thought, and background.

This book of Thornton’s was first published in 1960 by SPCK and has apparently long since gone out of print. But I recommend it highly. In fact, I’m going to go off and write an email to Wipf & Stock right now, recommending that they reprint it! (If you don’t know about Wipf & Stock’s yeoman service to all thinking Christians–reprinting countless classic texts related to Christian history and theology–you owe it to yourself to browse the catalog on their website.)

Some of his other books, as listed on Amazon.

In the “Patron Saints” class this week we spent time discussing Margery Kempe. Some great questions were asked in advance and as the discussion proceeded. Here’s one that really made me think again about the strong visual and physical/tactile element in medieval devotion. The student’s question comes first, then my thoughts in answer (including a clip on the medieval Corpus Christi festival). The page number reference is to the Penguin edition of Margery’s Book, translated and introduced by B. Windeatt–a wonderful introduction, by the way:

On page 113 Margery witnesses a women who has an image of Jesus. This woman lets some of the other towns women dress it up and revere the image. Was this kind of thing common? I thought that the Western church didn’t uphold use of icons, is this something different?

Medieval piety was intensely visual. I don’t know about “revering images,” but Francis’s innovation of the crèche, the elaborate tapestries often unfurled and used as backdrops by traveling preachers, and of course the story-based stained glass and statuary in the churches themselves all communicated spiritual things in visual ways. On the other hand, at the festival of Corpus Christi, we move from image as instruction or visual aid to the veneration of the Body and Blood of Jesus himself, by way of the theology of transubstantiation:

[clipped from the very helpful glossary of Margery Kempe's Book]: Corpus Christi became a universal Christian feast in 1317. Celebrating the sacramental body and blood of Jesus Christ, the feast day typically involves eucharistic processions.  This was a highly popular late medieval feast; its focus was the Passion and redemptive act of Christ and it brought all of a town together for communal activities. Margery Kempe speaks of a “solemn procession with many candles and great solemnity (that) went through the town” (MK Ch. 45).  [Essentially carrying the consecrated bread and wine around the town in a special receptacle, which was a focus of worship.] Often dramatic performances were associated with it, such as the “interlude” paid for by the city of Lynn in 1384 for the embellishment of the feast. 

A more general observation is that the strongly visual and tactile devotion of Margery’s day is strongly related to the emotional nature of that devotion. Among the different aspects of our human nature, our emotions seem especially closely tied with our physical bodies. We use the same word, “feeling” or “being touched,” for the physical senses and for emotional experiences.

My question is: Where has the sense of “touch,” of “physicality” gone in today’s culture? Does it, can it ever, communicate anything true or spiritual? We have plenty of vision in our TV- and movie-soaked culture. But how often do we experience anything significant through touch? The most intense, ecstatic touch-experiences, those of sex, have been devalued and dehumanized through obsessive attention and being made the commodities of the impersonal marketplace. I think our sex- and violence-saturated culture has contributed to making us leery of committing anything so serious and foundational as our religious lives to this realm of the tactile and the emotional. It’s not that we’re Gnostic, denying the reality or goodness of the physical. It’s that we’re super-saturated by vulgar, meaningless exploitations of the sense of touch, the sense of vision (especially, for males, associated with sexuality), and the emotions.

So it becomes very difficult for us to relate to such practices as pilgrimage, for example. When I described, in a class at Gordon-Conwell during the mid-90s, the huge influxes of eager believers, every day, by the busload, to the Azusa Street Revival of 1906 that launched Pentecostalism, and the long streams of eager “pilgrims” that made their way to the Toronto Airport Vineyard church in the [80s? 90s?] and the Brownsville/Pensecola revivals of the [90s?], one student asked, with obvious disbelief in his voice, the following question: “Why do Pentecostals and charismatics feel that it’s so important to actually go to the place where a revival is supposedly happening, to ‘bring back’ that revival to their home churches?”

The answer, it seems to me, resonates strongly with the medieval practice of pilgrimage: people go where God is reputed to be moving in a special way because they recognize the essentially personal, visual, tactile, and emotional nature of this historic faith of Christianity. God continues to incarnate himself in Christ—in the body of Christ—which is his people, his “living stones,” wherever he chooses to build them together. We may not venerate Saints today or seek out their relics, but we do crave the kind of physically and emotionally mediated contact with Christ that comes to us in special gatherings of his people—his body—where he seems to be doing special things uniquely “for our time and place.” However un-Protestant, or at least un-Reformed-Protestant, that may seem, I believe it reflects a deep truth about the incarnational nature of our faith.

Here’s another student question, and my answering ruminations, from our class’s discussion of Margery Kempe:

Q: The weeping, etc. seems similar to some charismatic movements in terms of being characterized with outward emotional manifestations of the Spirit? Are movements similar to these found at other times in church history?

A: When I first encountered the stories of the life of St. Francis, for example in the near-contemporary accounts in The Little Flowers of Saint Francis, I was struck by how similar that spirituality was to modern charismatic spirituality: visions, prostrations, prophecies, miraculous signs like levitations and healings, a vivid sense of the presence of God by his Spirit—all are present in Francis’s 12^th-century spirituality. There are other examples too. This is from a newsletter I wrote while at Christian History:

Stanley M. Burgess is a professor of religious studies at Southwest Missouri State University and editor of The New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements (Zondervan, 2002). That indispensable tome displays prominently on its cover an abbreviated timeline of Pentecostal prehistory.

At the Dictionary’s back, Burgess presents in an absorbing 8-page chart a much fuller timeline—a highly concentrated summary of his three-volume study, The Holy Spirit: Ancient Christian Traditions; Eastern Christian Traditions; and Medieval Roman Catholic and Reformation Traditions.

What follows is a sampling from that chart. As with the Spirit-seeking Protestants in last week’s newsletter, none of these Catholic and Orthodox folks can be called “Pentecostal” or “charismatic”—this would be a misleading anachronism. But the career of each one speaks out for the claim that the Holy Spirit has empowered ordinary Christians through the centuries—with jaw-dropping results:

1^st century
“Writers of the Didache and the Shepherd of Hermas [two inspirational books used widely in the early church] witness so much charismatic activity they find it necessary to distinguish between true and false prophets. At about the same time, the writer of Pseudo-Barnabas suggests prophetic ministry is normative in the church.”

2^nd century
“[Christian apologist] Justin Martyr argues that God has withdrawn the Spirit of prophecy and miracles from the Jews and has transferred it to the church as proof of her continued divine favor.

Irenaeus of Lyon describes the gifts of prophecy, discernment of spirits, and exorcism in his Gallic church, and even mentions that individuals have been raised from the dead. He warns against certain false Gnostics who fabricate spiritual gifts to win favor with the naïve.”

3^rd century
“Origen of Alexandria says healings, exorcisms, and validating signs and wonders continue to be experienced in the church. Just as miracles and wonders added to the credibility of 1^st-century apostles, so they continue to draw unbelievers into the Christian fold.”

4^th century
“Augustine [of Hippo], in The City of God, reports contemporary divine healings and other miracles. These he links directly to the conversion of pagans.”

10^th-11^th centuries
“Symeon the New Theologian (949–1022), perhaps the most famous Eastern [Orthodox] charismatic Christian, reports his most intimate spiritual experiences, which include a ‘baptism in the Holy Spirit’ accompanied by gifts of copious tears, compunction, and visions of God as light. [Burgess provides a resume of this influential leader's life and teachings on p. 1112 of the Dictionary.]“

12^th-14^th centuries
“The sermons of Thomas Aquinas are frequently confirmed by miracles, and he often experiences ecstasy, especially in the last months of his life.

Bonaventure reports that Francis of Assisi, while an unskilled speaker, is empowered by the Holy Spirit while ministering. Wherever he goes, his sermons are accompanied with miracles of great power, including prophecy, casting out devils, and healing the sick. As a result, his hearers pay attention to what he says ‘as if an angel of the Lord was speaking.’”

16^th century
“Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits), frequently receives divine communication in visions. He also experiences a gift of tears—often in such abundance that he cannot control himself—and the gift of loquela, which a few modern scholars associate with today’s charismatic phenomenon of sung glossolalia [tongues].”

17^th century
“Jansenists, belonging to a radical Augustinian movement in the Roman Catholic Church from 1640 to 1801 [its most famed adherent was the French scientist and apologist Blaise Pascal], become known for their signs and wonders, spiritual dancing, healings, and prophetic utterances. Some reportedly speak in unknown tongues and understand foreign languages in which they are addressed.”

18^th century
“Seraphim of Sarov (1759-1833), the Russian Orthodox charismatic leader, asserts that the goal of the Christian life is the reception of the Holy Spirit. Seraphim’s ‘evidence’ for a baptism of the Holy Spirit is a transfiguration experience—being transformed, while still in the flesh, into divine light. Seraphim also is remembered for a gift of healing.”

When viewed in its impressive entirety, Burgess’s list suggests something important: The church has rarely lacked for witnesses, from the widest variety of camps, who have proclaimed that the Holy Spirit is alive, well, and gifting believers in his church.

Again, though, this is no cadre of cookie-cutter charismatics. A rousing debate would ensue if we could work a little Steve-Allen-”Meeting-of-Minds” magic and bring these folks to the same table to discuss the details of the Spirit’s extraordinary works.

But despite their theological diversity, these witnesses of past centuries join in claiming for the church the same “promise of the Father” Jesus held out to his Apostles:

“Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 1:4–5)

In the Patron Saints class’s discussions, I ask students to hand in questions in advance. The “uber-question” most people asked–in some form–after reading Margery Kempe was this: How are we to deal with the influence of medieval Catholic theology and practice on Margery’s spirituality?

I jotted a few thoughts in response:

I sense behind this question, for some of you at least, some degree of fear: If we start messing with this Catholic stuff, will we end up taking in some theological poison? Can we really learn from people from whom we as evangelical Protestants have historically differed so much? I’m not going to try to answer those questions here—–we really can’t try to do that, or we’ll get too far afield.

I do want to point you to the best brief contemporary survey I have seen on Catholic-evangelical dialogue as it now stands. This is a recent Books & Culture cover article which is a concise condensation of a recent book.

—I have the book out of the library and really, really want to get to it. We can’t even read or skim this article together now, but I want to point it out to you before we continue. Please remember that it refers to modern Catholicism, which is in many ways a different animal than the Catholicism of Kempe’s time–—and that doesn’t bother RC’s at all, because despite that aberration of “papal infallibility” promulgated by a nervous pope in the 19^th century, Roman Catholics cherish the idea that tradition develops over the centuries, gaining a more and more helpful and accurate understanding of the Gospel.

The article, Is the Reformation Over? by Mark Noll and Carolyn Nystrom, is in the July/August 2005 issue of Books & Culture. [I wish I could give an online reference for the whole article, but if you'll click on the title above, you'll get a preview.]

Now, on this matter of how we assess or test religious experience, and how our pre-set categories of thought affect the way we experienced God and the way we talk about those experiences, nobody is better than the VERY Protestant 18^th-century American theologian Jonathan Edwards. Here is what Edwards says about the way people tell their conversion experiences (this is a snippet of his Treatise on Religious Affections, as cited in a footnote of the early 20th-century author William James’s Varieties of Religious Experience):

“A rule received and established by common consent has a very great, though to many persons an insensible influence in forming their notions of the process of their own experience. I know very well how they proceed as to this matter, for I have had frequent opportunities of observing their conduct. Very often their experience at first appears like a confused chaos, but then those parts are selected which bear the nearest resemblance to such particular steps as are insisted on; and these are dwelt upon in their thoughts, and spoken of from time to time, till they grow more and more conspicuous in their view, and other parts which are neglected grow more and more obscure. Thus what they have experienced is insensibly strained, so as to bring it to an exact conformity to the scheme already established in their minds. And it becomes natural also for ministers, who have to deal with those who insist upon distinctness and clearness of method, to do so too.” Treatise on Religious Affections.

In other words, our experience is always conditioned by the social cues we pick up from other people—including doctrinal cues, but also all kinds of cultural cues.

Now, to go directly to your question: I don’t want to be accused of heresy here. But is it wrong or unbiblical to think of Jesus’ mother? How are we to interpret the words “all generations shall call you blessed?” In editing the issue of Christian History on Mary in the imagination of the church, I found that thinking about Mary helped medieval Christians understand more of who God and Jesus were. I would dare to say that many Protestants as well as Catholics who viewed Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ gained a new heart insight of who Jesus was by seeing him through Mary’s eyes.

Of course, I would not follow medieval or modern RC practice and pray to Mary or ask her to intercede for me.

But I would ask this: if we always jump to draw theological lines and use those to strictly judge what is and is not a “legitimate Christian experience,” then aren’t we telling God how he can and cannot speak to us? In other words, I agree that if a supposed communication from the Holy Spirit clearly contradicts Scripture, we should reject it. So if someone tells me that Jesus told them to pray to Mary, I would reject this. But does this mean I reject everything else that person says they experienced?

You ask whether the inconsistency between Catholic and Protestant experience should marginalize Kempe’s experience. I would ask, are we sure that Protestant experience is always biblical experience? And Catholic experience is always unbiblical experience? That, I think, is the real test. And it’s only fair to make it carefully and impartially.

A final note–the issue of Christian History & Biography magazine on “Mary in the imagination of the church” won an Evangelical Press Association award as one of the best theme issues of an evangelical magazine for its year (indeed, Eastern Orthodox priest Patrick Henry Reardon’s article on Mary at the cross won the EPA’s first prize for best expository article!) Check it out! Last time I checked, if you click on “Mary in the imagination of the church,” above, you’ll get to a page that links to the full text of all of that issue’s articles, free! But they shuffle these articles behind the “pay curtain” pretty quickly–so look now if you’re interested.

A friend stumbled across this brief conversation on a fellow-traveling blog triggered by the recent www.christianitytoday.com article mentioned below. Links there lead to responses from both poles: very pro-emergent, very anti-emergent.

A new column will be appearing on www.christianitytoday.com related to this “Patron Saints for Postmoderns” blog, book, & course. The first installment is here.

Welcome to a blog that really is Grateful to the Dead! If you are new to the blog, I suggest you click through a couple of the categories in the left-hand “category” area.

The category “THE BOOK: Patron Saints for Postmoderns” contains the ur-post–my original explanation of what this blog is all about.

The category “THE COURSES” has been one of the most active areas, drawing comments and exchanges from students in the Bethel Seminary course I am currently teaching that has the same name as the book. It also contains some further introductory material clipped from the notes for a brief course I taught at the wonderful Cornerstone Festival in Illinois this past summer.

Of course, feel free to browse through any of the categories that bear the names of the nine “patron and matron saints” who will be featured in my book (eight of these are the focus of the Bethel course).

If you want to vote for a favorite “patron or matron saint” as the tenth figure for the book, feel free to respond to this post with suggestions. (See THE BOOK category for my criteria in selecting the other nine.)

Thanks for dropping by.

Peace,

Chris Armstrong
associate professor of church history, Bethel Seminary
senior editor, Christian History & Biography