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The Study of Spirituality

Edited by Cheslyn Jones, Geoffrey Wainwright Edward Yarnold, SJ Oxford University Press New York * Oxford -iii-

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Oxford University Press Oxford New York Toronto Delhi Bombay Calcutta Madras Karachi Petaling Jaya Singapore Hong Kong Tokyo Nairobi Dar es Salaam Cape Town Melbourne Auckland and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Copyright 1986 by Oxford University Press, Inc. First published in 1986 by Oxford University Press. Inc., 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016-4314 First issued as an Oxford University Press paperback, 1986 Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The Study of spirituality Includes index. 1. Spirituality. I. Jones, Cheslyn. II. Wainwright, Geoffrey, 1939- III. Yarnold, Edward. BV4490.S78 1986 248 86-8380 ISBN 0-19-504169-0 ISBN 0-19-504170-4(pbk.) 10 Printed in the United States of America -iv-

Questia Media America, Inc. www.questia.com Publication Information: Book Title: The Study of Spirituality. Contributors: Cheslyn Jones - editor, Geoffrey Wainwright - editor, Edward Yarnold - editor. Publisher: Oxford University Press. Place of Publication: New York. Publication Year: 1986. Page Number: iv.

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CONTENTS
Illustrations Contribution Preface Abbreviations Part One The Theology of Spirituality Part Two The History of Spirituality I INTRODUCTION B PHILOSOPHICAL ROOTS -vxiii xvii xxi xxvii 1 45 47 90

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II THE EARLY FATHERS III THE LATIN FATHERS IV THE EASTERN FATHERS A GREEK WRITERS FROM THE CAPPADOCIANS TO JOHN OF DAMASCUS 1 Introduction 159 KALLISTOS WARE -vi-

102 131 159 159

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V INSULAR TRADITIONS VI THE EASTERN TRADITION FROM THE TENTH TO THE TWENTIETH CENTURY A GREEK VII THE MEDIEVAL WEST A MONASTIC SPIRITUALITY -vii-

216 235 235 277 277

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E ITALIAN SPIRITUAL WRITERS F TEUTONIC MYSTICISM VIII THE MODERN WORLD A THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION -viii-

309 315 342 342

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B THE CATHOLIC REFORMATION I SPAIN II FRANCE C LATER PROTESTANT SPIRITUALITY -ix-

357 357 379 431

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IX OTHER RELIGIONS X CURRENT SPIRITUALITY -x-

491 519

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Part Three Pastoral Spirituality I PASTORAL APPLICATIONS OF SPIRITUALITY II TYPES OF SPIRITUALITY 592 GEOFFREY WAINWRIGHT Index of Subjects Index of Names Index of Biblical References -xi-

563 565 606 619 633

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[This page intentionally left blank.] -xii-

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2 The Cappadocians ANDREW LOUTH Texts and translations Ascetic Works of St Basil, ed. W. K. L. Clarke. London, SPCK; New York and Toronto, Macmillan, 1925. Basil, (ET) On the Holy Spirit, Crestwood, N.Y., St. Vladimir's 1980. Basil, On The Holy Spirit, French tr. SC 17 bis. From Glory to Glory, ed. H. Musurillo. New York, Scribner, 1961; London, J. Murray, 1962; selections from Gregory of Nyssa in ET with useful introduction by J. Danilou. Gregory of Nyssa, Life of Moses, tr. A. J. Malherbe and E. Ferguson. CWS 1979. Gregory of Nyssa, Life of Moses, French tr. SC 1 ter. Gregory of Nyssa, On the Lord's Prayer and the Beatitudes, ed. H. Graef, ACW XVIII. Works of Gregory of Nyssa, critical edn by W. Jaeger et al. Leiden, 1921-Studies Amand D., L'Ascse monastique de S. Basile. Maredsous, 1948. Clarke W. K. L., St Basil the Great. CUP, 1913. Danilou J., Platonisme et thologie mystique. 2nd edn Paris, 1953. Morison E. F., St Basil and his Rule. London, OUP; New York, H. Frowde, 1912. pidlik T., Grgoire de Nazianze: Introduction l'tude de sa doctrine spirituelle. Rome, 1971. Vlker W., Gregor von Nyssa als Mystiker. Wiesbaden, 1953. For further bibliography see s.v. in Quasten and Altaner. The achievement of the Cappadocian Fathers in the realm of dogmatic theology is usually seen as that of consolidating the work of Athanasius and securing the acceptance throughout the Church of the dogmatic settlement of the Council of Nicaea: as Athanasius' life was spent in defending Nicene Orthodoxy, so the Cappadocian Fathers secured its final triumph at the Second Ecumenical Council, held at Constantinople in 381. What the Council of Nicaea meant for Athanasius can be summed up as on the one hand a clear recognition of the absolute ontological gulf separating the divine, which consisted simply of the three consubstantial persons of the Blessed Trinity, from the creaturely order, which has been created out of nothing by God, and on the other hand an understanding of redemption as wrought by God himself in the incarnation in which the Son shared the fragility of the human, created condition and offered humankind participation in his own blessed life: 'He was made man that -161-

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we might be made God', as Athanasius puts it in his De Incarnatione. Such an emphasis on the gulf between God and humankind called in question hellenistic ideas of human kinship with God, in virtue of which human beings could attempt to ascend to God--ideas found in Origen, for example. For Athanasius deification no longer meant restoration of our natural state but the realization of a new possibility offered to us by God through the incarnation. In Athanasius' own writings such traditional Greek concepts as contemplation (theria), in which humans realize their kinship with God, fall into the background: the emphasis is on God's condescension to us rather than on our ascent to God. An important part of Athanasius' achievement was in his championing of the ascetic movement which saw such a remarkable growth in the fourth century. In his widely influential Life of St Antony (see p. 120) he presented an understanding of the ascetic life less in terms of a human search for God than as the way in which the war against the forces of evil, in which God had achieved the decisive victory through the cross and resurrection, was continued in the Church of his day. Such a position as that of Athanasius in which orthodox theology and a demanding spirituality mutually inform one another lies behind the efforts of the Cappadocian Fathers. Basil the Great (c. 330-79) and his brother, Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335-c. 395), were the sons of devout parents. Basil received a good hellenistic education, studying finally in Athens where his friendship with the third of the 'Cappadocian Fathers', Gregory of Nazianzus ( 329-89), blossomed. He then forsook the world for the ascetic life and after a year spent visiting monasteries in Syria and Egypt, in 358 he settled as an ascetic at Annesis by the river Iris in Pontus, where Gregory of Nazianzus joined him from time to time. During his time there he founded a number of monasteries. In 370 Basil became bishop of Caesarea and for the rest of his life was at the centre of ecclesiastical administration and controversy. Gregory of Nazianzus shared Basil's education and his calling to the ascetic life, but was a very different kind of person, by temperament suited to a life of withdrawal and only with reluctance involved in matters of ecclesiastical politics. Gregory of Nyssa had a rather different background from the others: he did not have their brilliant educational career, but seems to have been taught by his brother. Originally destined for the priesthood, he became a teacher of rhetoric and married. Basil tried to persuade him to join him at Annesis, but there is no proof that he succeeded or that Gregory ever lived a monastic life: it would seem on the contrary that he continued to live with his wife even after he became a bishop in 372. It is Gregory of Nyssa who was the most brilliant intellectually of the Cappadocian Fathers: we find in him a depth and breadth of thought that surpasses the -162-

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others. He seems to have played a decisive role at the Second Ecumenical Council, and in the years after that council enjoyed a brief period of influence and imperial favour. All the Cappidocian Fathers manifest the influence of Origen (see pp. 115-19) and Neoplatonism, especially the thought of Plotinus (see pp. 96-9), as well as the influence, already mentioned, of Athanasius and the contemporary ascetic movement. Indeed towards the beginning of Basil's period of monastic retreat he and Gregory of Nazianzus prepared a collection of extracts from Origen's writings, called the Philokalia. Origen and Neoplatonism provide them with a conceptual framework within which their ascetic doctrine seems at times to fit very neatly, but the impact of Nicene orthodoxy is ever present, though it is perhaps only Gregory of Nyssa who sees clearly its bearing on spirituality and works out its implications thoroughly. It must not be forgotten either that the pressure of the Scriptures, which is the professed source of their ascetic theory and practice, is always felt and often gives a very different twist to what otherwise sounds very hellenistic. Basil principal ascetic work is the two sets of monastic rules: the Longer Rules (or Detailed Rules: Regulae fusius tractatae--abbreviated as F) and the Shorter Rules (Regulae brevius tractatae--B). Despite (or perhaps because of) his knowledge of Syrian and Egyptian monasticism, the kind of monasticism adumbrated in these rules is somewhat different, as we shall see. Others of Basil's writings important for his spirituality are: his letters, the treatise On the Holy Spirit (S), and not least his Liturgy, for the Liturgy of St Basil, still celebrated in the Eastern Orthodox Church, goes back to Basil himself, and indeed even further, for Basil's work was essentially that of revision. Gregory Nazianzen's writings comprise letters, sermons and a great deal of verse; but although the writings of the 'Theologian' have perhaps been more influential than those of the other two, it is difficult to avoid the impression that the Nazianzen only says more elegantly what is found expressed more deeply in the others. Gregory of Nyssa's intention in his spiritual writings was, as Werner Jaeger has shown, to give a mystical orientation to the monastic movement organized by his brother. His De lnstituto Christiano sets out the fundamental spiritual doctrine of Basil, but his late writings, especially his Commentary on the Song of Songs (C) and the Life of Moses (M), develop what might be called the mystical vision informing such spiritual teaching. Perhaps the simplest and most direct way to characterize the spiritual teaching of Basil, and a way that recalls that he was the author (or reviser) of the Liturgy that bears his name, is to say that it is essentially eucharistic: that is, humanity's relationship to God is to be one of thanksgiving. This -163-

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comes out clearly at the very beginning of the Longer Rules when he discusses the nature of love towards God. This is something natural, implanted in us by God at our creation, which cannot be taught, but is rather a spontaneous response to the divine beauty and the divine goodness. In a passage which, as Lowther Clarke remarks, recalls in its language the anaphora of the Liturgy of St Basil, Basil runs through all that God has done for humankind, from creation to redemption, and concludes: When I think of all this . . . I fall into a fearful shuddering and terror, lest haply through carelessness of mind or absorption in vain things I should fall from the love of God and become a reproach to Christ ( F 2:339B). Corresponding to the eucharistic anamnsis, the heart of man's spiritual life is the remembrance (mnm) of God and thanksgiving for his gifts to us. So in the Shorter Rules we read: 'For what cause does a man lose the continuous remembrance of God? By becoming forgetful of God's benefits and insensitive towards his Benefactor' ( B244). There is, however, another way in which the Liturgy seems to be significant for Basil's understanding of the spiritual life. Like Origen, he sees the Spirit peculiarly at work in the sanctification of the Christian, in the renewal of the image in which humankind was created. So in a letter to his monks he sums up the progress of the soul thus: 'The mind being enlightened by the Spirit looks up to the Son, and in him as in an image beholds the Father' ( Ep.226). This working of the Spirit is hidden: it is not explained in written formulations but witnessed to in the unwritten tradition of the Church--an unwritten tradition which, as Basil explains in his work On the Holy Spirit, consists almost entirely of liturgical practices, so that it is in taking part in the liturgy that the Spirit brings to people 'understanding of spiritual gifts . . . and the summit of their desires: to become God' ( S ix.23). The way by which, according to Basil, this is to be pursued is expressed concisely in a letter ( Ep.2) he wrote at the beginning of his time of retreat at Annesis, encouraging Gregory of Nazianzus to join him there. The aim of the ascetic life is to 'keep the mind in tranquillity (hsuchia)' and the way to attain this is to avoid distraction. To achieve this it is necessary to separate onself from the world altogether, which means a severance of the soul from sympathy with the body and a readiness to receive in one's heart the impressions engendered there by divine instructions. To this end solitude (ermia) is the greatest help 'since it calms our passions and gives reason leisure (schole) to sever them completely from the soul'. On the positive side, the 'discipline of piety', that is the daily round of prayer and praise by which the ascetic 'imitates -164-

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on earth the anthems of the angels' choirs', nourishes the soul with divine thoughts and brings it to a condition of joy, five from grief. Through this practice of tranquillity the soul is purified and, withdrawing into itself, ascends to the contemplation of God. Ravished by the divine beauty, the soul applies itself through reading and meditating on the Scriptures to the acquisition of the virtues. So God comes to dwell in the soul by our holding God continually in the memory, and we become temples of God. There is much in this that reminds one of hellenistic philosophical ideals, especially when one contrasts this life of withdrawal and leisure given over to contemplation with the picture of the life of the desert fathers with their dramatic struggle against the onslaughts of the demons (about whom Basil is noticeably silent). But one point of contrast with the desert fathers brings out the special contribution of Basil to the history of monasticism, and that is his rejection of the eremitical life in favour of the coenobitical life. The seventh of the Longer Rules is a long attack on the solitary life and a defence of the ideal of the coenobitical life, life in community. With the desert fathers the solitary hermit appears to have been the supreme vocation, and even the coenobia of Pachomius (see pp. 128-30) seem more like encampments of hermits than an attempt at community life as a good in itself. Evagrius (see pp. 168-73), a friend of the Cappadocians who was ordained to the diaconate by Basil, reflects this estimate of the eremitical life in the prologue to his Praktikos, where he depicts the solitary as one who fights hand to hand with the demons. For Basil the solitary life is a dangerous temptation, for the aim of the Christian life is love, whereas 'the solitary life has one aim, the service of the needs of the individual', which is 'plainly in conflict with the law of love'. 'Whose feet wilt thou then wash?' exclaims Basil, 'Whom wilt thou care for? In comparison with whom wilt thou be last if thou livest by thyself.' But, further, the solitary will have no one to correct him for his defects, and (what is perhaps for Basil the most serious point) the solitary will neither be able to share his spiritual gifts with others, nor benefit from theirs. ( Basil's concern for spiritual gifts is one of several points in which he invites comparison with the contemporary Messalian movement (see p. 160).) Basil compares the solitary to the man in the parable who buried his one talent. For Basil the mutual support and correction provided only by a community are essential to the life of the monk: something developed further in his stress on the place of spiritual direction. In the communities there are to be monks 'entrusted with the task of caring for weak souls tenderly and sympathetically', and to them all things, 'even the secrets of the heart', are to be made known. This is not exactly sacramental confession--for it is not just sins that are confessed, nor is there any evidence -165-

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that such confessors were to be priests--but it is a means, pastoral and practical, of healing the wounds inflicted by sin. Life in such communities was to be severe, but there was no place for the exceptional severities of the desert. The principal means of asceticism was obedience to the superior (or the senior monks), for the aim of asceticism is to strike at the root of self-will. Basil lays great stress too on the importance of continence (enkrateia) which he praises as 'the beginning of the spiritual life, the introducer of eternal blessings' ( F17), the one commandment round which 'all the commandments are grouped as in a chorus' ( F16). The mutual love that such communities existed to foster was not confined to their members: the monasteries ran hospitals and were places of hospitality and relief for the poor and needy. In the Rules Basil quotes frequently from the books of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, but once only from the Song of Songs when he speaks of the yearning the divine beauty arouses in the soul, a yearning so keen and intolerable that the soul cries out with true affection, 'I am wounded with love!' ( F 2:337B). Origen regarded the three books of wisdom--Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs--as belonging to the three successive stages of the soul's spiritual ascent, and in this he is followed by Gregory of Nyssa: the early stages, which Basil is principally concerned with in his Rules, correspond to Proverbs and Ecclesiastes; beyond lies the fruition of the soul's life with God of which the Song of Songs sings, and with which Gregory of Nyssa is principally concerned, especially in his commentary on that book. For Origen the three stages of the soul's ascent were the movement away from sin in which the soul learns the virtues, the stage of natural contemplation in which the soul sees the created order in God, and beyond that contemplation of God himself (which Evagrius, who follows Origen closely, called theologia, a usage sometimes found in Gregory of Nyssa). For Origen this was a movement of increasing illumination: the soul moves from darkness to light to still greater light. Gregory of Nyssa takes over Origen's three stages, but for him they are a movement from light to darkness. In speaking of the three stages he often compares them with three stages in the life of Moses (his whole treatise, the Life of Moses, is built round this idea): the revelation at the Burning Bush, and then Moses' two ascents of Mt Sinai, the first into the cloud, the second into the darkness where he asked to see God face to face (see C xi: 1000-1). Moses moves from the revelation of light (phis), to the darkness of the cloud (nephel), and beyond that to the thick darkness (gnophos) 'where God dwells'. The reason for this reversal of Origen is quite simple. For Origen the soul's ascent to God was its restoration to its original state, a movement from the darkness and confusion of its fallen state; for Gregory the soul's ascent to God is its drawing closer and closer -166-

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to One who is utterly different from it, One who is absolutely unknowable because there is no natural kinship between the Creator God and his creatures. In this Gregory is exploring the consequences of the orthodoxy of Nicaea with greater consistency than the other Cappadocian Fathers, neither of whom develops the radical implications of the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo (creation from nothing): they remain, with Evagrius, closer to the doctrine of Origen. For Gregory of Nyssa the doctrine of God's unknowability means that the soul's ascent to God is in ascent into the divine darkness. Although in speaking thus of the divine darkness Gregory is drawing on Philo (see pp. 94-6), he goes beyond him in the way he explores the implications of this theme for the spiritual life. We cannot see in the dark, but for the Platonic tradition contemplation was an attempt to understand the way the intellect (nous) grasps true reality by analogy with sight, the 'keenest of the senses' ( Phaedr.250D; cf. Rep. vi. 508B). To say that the closer we come to the truest of all reality, God, the darker it gets, is to overthrow all this. And this is what Gregory does, and he explores its implications. Plunged into the dark, we feel terror and giddiness: the soul which comes close to God finds itself as it were on the edge of 'the slippery, steep rock that affords no basis for our thoughts' ( Hom.vi on the Beatitudes). Gregory depicts vividly the bewilderment, despair and longing that possesses the soul that seeks God. In the dark we can form no finished conception of what is there: this experience is interpreted by Gregory in terms of an endless longing for God, continually satisfied yet always yearning for more, which the soul knows that embarks on the search for the unknowable God. Danilou has called this experience epectasis--a continual reaching out after God. So Moses learns that 'the true vision of God consists in this, that the soul that looks up to God never ceases to desire him' ( M ii.233). And since in the dark we cannot see, Gregory is led, encouraged by the sensuous imagery of the Song of Songs, to try and express the experience of the divine darkness by drawing on the analogy of the other senses: of smell, taste and touch (not, significantly, hearing). For Gregory the experience yielded by these spiritual senses is basically one of obscure, but certain, presence--and a presence that is disclosed to us, rather than something we seek out. The soul is encompassed by a divine night, during which the Spouse approaches, but does not reveal himself . . . He gives the soul some sense of his presence, even while he eludes her clear apprehension, concealed as he is by the invisibility of his nature ( C x: 1001BC) This obscure sense of presence, of possession, or rather of being pos-167-

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sessed, is most adequately understood as the soul's awareness of her being the object of God's love, a love which awakens within herself a passionate response of love as she senses the beauty of God which transcends any apprehension: the bride then puts the veil from her eyes and with pure vision sees the ineffable beauty of her Spouse. And thus she is wounded by a spiritual and fiery dart of love (ers). For agap that is strained to intensity is called ers . . . The bride glories in her wound, for the point of this spiritual yearning has pierced to the depths of her heart. And this she makes clear when she says to the other maidens: I am wounded with love ( C xiii: 1048CD). The mysticism of the divine darkness in which the soul is united in love with the unknowable God is the summit of the spirituality of the Cappadocians, a spirituality the lineaments of which are derived from their reflections on the nature of the Christian God which helped shape the Church's dogmatic tradition. 3 Evagrius and Macarius SIMON TUGWELL EVAGRIUS (with abbreviations) A = Antirrhtikos; B = the eighth letter in the collection of Basil's letters; G = Gnstikos; K = Kephalaia Gnstika; L = Letters; M = works edited by J. Muyldermans in Muson 44 ( 1931) (M1) and 51 ( 1938) (M2); N = Nonnenspiegel; O = De Oratione (text taken essentially from MS Paris, Coislin 109); P = Praktikos; S = J. Muyldermans, Evagriana Syriaca. Louvain, 1952. Evagrius Ponticus, Praktikos; Chapters on Prayer, ET J. E. Bamberger. Spenser, Mass., Cistercian Publications, 1970. Guillaumont A. and C., ed., Evagre le Pentique: Trait Pratique, SC 170-1; contains a critical edition of the Praktikos and a substantial bibliography of Evagrius' works. Hausherr I., Les leons d'un contemplatif. Paris, 1960. Palmer G. E. H.; Sherrard P.; Ware K. T., ed. (ET) The Philokalia, vol. 1 ( London and Boston, Faber, 1979), pp. 29-71. Tugwell S., Ways of Imperfection ( London, DLT, 1984), pp. 25-36. MACARIUS (with abbreviations) B = Makarios/Symeon, Reden und Briefe, ed. H. Berthold. Berlin, 1973. C = E. Klostermann and H. Berthold, ed., Neue Homilien des Makarius/Symeon. Berlin, 1961. -168-

Questia Media America, Inc. www.questia.com Publication Information: Book Title: The Study of Spirituality. Contributors: Cheslyn Jones - editor, Geoffrey Wainwright - editor, Edward Yarnold - editor. Publisher: Oxford University Press. Place of Publication: New York. Publication Year: 1986. Page Number: 168.

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