What I Should Have Already Known (Annual Reflections From A Marathoner)
As I try to express relatively clearly & oftenly on all of my various forays into the internet, when I share things, it’s typically because I happen to be interested in them… full stop. I’m convinced this is likely to be a strong reason why my social media influence will remain somewhat static. Clarity is king in building audiences. I’m not terribly interested in building an audience at the cost of shoehorning my interests. So, here we are.
I say this because most of my posts are about biblical studies, or Christian worship, or something sociological, or sometimes something paranormal, or even arts-based. And then, about once a year, I get into something related to running. I started running very lightly 6 or 7 years ago, amped it up (like so many did) during the pandemic, and ran my first marathon in 2022, running one marathon per year since then. As such, just a couple weeks ago was my 4th annual attempt to convince myself this is a good idea.
I know people who run marathons so regularly that reflecting upon them in depth would be unfeasible. At my current rhythm, there tends to be plenty of time to allow for it. That said, though I’ll keep this brief, no hard feelings if you skip this one ‘cause it just ain’t for you. I could prattle on about all kinds of things I learned this year, but I think I’ll just stick to three short lessons:
The first lesson I learned this year was to ALWAYS DOUBLE CHECK THE RACE’S START TIME.
My family tends to make a weekend out of these events. This year we were not far away in Fredericton, New Brunswick, but nonetheless we got a hotel with a pool for the kids and a continental breakfast (which almost always pleases them more than my own Saturday morning pancakes tend to). I rarely sleep well in hotels, especially not when something important is coming up the next day. So, I was up with plenty of time in the morning for my 8 o’clock race time. Got out of bed, stretched, had a light breakfast, got suited up, got the fam up, and headed down to the car for the short drive towards the starting line. We pulled into our parking spot around 7:30, which would ideally have left me just enough time to lightly jog the 600-800 metres towards the starting line as a warm up, maybe use the bathroom one more time, and get my running paraphernalia (watch, phone, headphone, sweatbands, etc) all tuned up. As I get out of the car, in the distance, I hear the loudspeaker announce that the race was gonna get started “in a few minutes”. I assumed that was a colloquialism for “in a half hour”, but started my light jog in that direction anyway. Then, out of nowhere, I hear the starting horn accompanied by loud cheering and my heart rate spikes as my light warmup jog evolves into a full-out sprint towards the starting line! Obviously, I had gotten the start time wrong, though I still have no idea how. I got towards the starting line almost 2 minutes after the gun had fired, swooped my way across it as the last of the nearly 3,000 runners were starting (to ensure that my tracking chip was picked up), and then proceeded to spend the first several kilometres getting myself set up for the long haul ahead while bobbing & weaving my way ahead of the crowds who were either running different distances or different paces than I was, all the while trying to calm myself down from my scheduling blunder that could have potentially cost me the opportunity to fully participate in the race that I’d spent the better part of the last year preparing for!
So: always double check the race’s start time.
The second lesson is this: WE ARE ONLY AS STRONG AS OUR WEAKEST LINK. Not a terribly revolutionary lesson, I know. In fact, I’m pretty sure I’ve learned this lesson before. Maybe you’re wiser than I am, but I tend to need to learn lessons multiple times before they’re truly internalized.
As I mentioned, I’ve been training for this marathon in one way or another since last year, but more concertedly since January. I can’t say how many dark & cold miles I logged to be able to feel as confident as I did rolling into this marathon, but it was a lot. All indications are that I would significantly trim down my time from last year. I did trim my time… but not significantly. Why? Why did I “hit the wall” the way I did around the 32km mark? My pace started to crumble, adding some necessary walking along with my hampered jogging, dragging my 5:00 pace all the way down to closer to 7:00 by the end. My heart rate was fine (actually better than fine), and I’d done all the right things as far as my nutrition was concerned, so why? Why?!?!?!
My legs were weeeeeeeak.
In the mid-winter I started to notice a little swelling in my right knee, so I booked an appointment with a physiotherapist. After some inspection, he said that I had meniscus strain. I didn’t (and still don’t fully) understand what that meant, but the bottomline was that as long as I stretched better and used ice on it after running, it wouldn’t develop into an injury. But why did this happen? He said it was in large part due to the overall weakness of my leg muscles, leading to too much load on my knees. That hurt. I didn’t think my legs were weak, but it didn’t take him long to prove the point. He provided me with some exercises to help build my leg strength at home, and they were actually pretty easy. Did I do them? Infrequently & half-heartedly, at best. Did I reap what I sowed? I did.
For me, there must be no more “skipping leg day”. If I want to improve my overall performance, I can’t ignore any portion of the process. The analogies between this and any other area of life are so obvious that I won’t even bother trying to draw out a few examples. It’s just the way it is. You can’t thrive overall if you’re not thriving over all.
Last lesson: IT’S MORE FUN TOGETHER
You can run 42.2km any time of day and in any location you want to, but part of the reason there are organized marathons (beyond the ability & desire to responsibly validate completion times) is that most things are way more fun when there’s a crowd around. It’s more fun together.
However, being alone in a crowd is not the same thing as being a part of a community. The way that my life & schedule are lined up means that I’m very rarely able to run “in a pack” (as part of a running crew of any sort). But the weekend before this marathon, I joined with a small handful of people from my church to join in with hundreds of others to do a fundraising fun-run called the Run For Women. According to my training schedule I wasn’t even supposed to run that day, but it was just a 5k, and one of the members of our crew is an absolutely phenomenal women who is handily into her 8th decade of life, so we took it pretty slow. Quite slow. In fact, I’m honestly not sure if I’ve ever run a 5k that slow (though I’m sure I will again someday). Often I associate a “good run” with a difficult trail or a fast time. On that cool Sunday morning in early May 2025, my “good run” was measured by sticking together with a crew. And you know what? It was a super good run, and I could almost say I had more “fun” that morning than the Sunday morning that followed it.
"What Would Jesus ____?" // The question / theme behind Imagine '24, this year's arts fest @ MW Church
(The above is an AI-generated image in response to the prompt “What would Jesus dance?” 🤦♂️)
When I was growing up, I read a book that was published about a century before my time. In His Steps is a story of a small town pastor who challenges his church to not do anything for a whole year without first stopping, waiting, and asking the question: “What would Jesus do?” Not-so-coincidentally, when I was a teenager, there was a fad that quickly swept the world simply known as the WWJD bracelet. What may have begun as a deep & searching question became dollar-store merchandise. That doesn’t make the question less meaningful, though it may have rendered it less valuable.
Of course, most people would be inclined to consider the above question in moral terms. WWJD becomes “How would Jesus respond to the person who just cut me off in traffic?”, or “What would Jesus do with this paycheck?”, or even “How would Jesus behave ‘romantically’ if He were in the kind of relationship I’m in?”. But as an artist, as a creative, I wonder…
What would Jesus…
…draw?
…sing?
…dance?
…write?
…recite?
…sculpt?
…build?
“Would Jesus ‘do’ anything when it comes to creativity?”, you might ask. It may seem like a silly question, but according to the texts of the New Testament, Jesus was something like a carpenter or a craftsman. What types of artefacts would Jesus have been inclined to produce? Do you suppose aesthetics mattered, or was usefulness His only metric? Where might He come down on the “function —> form” debate? Certainly, we don’t remember Jesus for His chairs or tables, but we do often remember Him for His storytelling. The parables of Jesus are intentionally crafted tales. Do they exist purely for didactic reasons (for their “morals”), or were there stylistic or affective considerations at play? What’s more, could Jesus be considered an orator, or even a performer? He’s remembered for having audibly delivered some significantly impactful content via public address (the Sermon on the Mount being the prime but not sole example). Was Jesus an “artist”?
Maybe these questions are enough to make you wonder about whether or not Jesus could have been considered an artist. Maybe not. Either way, a further question remains:
Does Jesus care about art? Does He care about artists?
During this year’s installation of Imagine, we hope to be able to explore these questions, along with many others. If you are an artist and are interested in submitting some work for consideration, please know that the theme is more of a “conversation starter” for those who are looking for a creative prompt to get their juices flowing. We as a team are open to considering any & all art submitted, regardless of its connection to such questions. It will be enlightening (if not also uncomfortable) to consider each piece submitted in light of the question:
Would Jesus create this?
(*to submit work for consideration for Imagine ‘24, please visit mw.church/imagine*)
Sometimes You Win, Sometimes You Lose, Sometimes At The Same Time (Reflections On Running The 2023 Fredericton Marathon ✌️)
I intended to write some reflections on this run within a few days of the marathon, but then life got in the way. That's ok, though, since I happen to love the life that got in the way. It's almost 5 weeks later, now, as I type this. A potential challenge here is that I may already be too far from the event to be able to recall it well or accurately (note: there is a difference between recalling something "well" and "accurately"). Alas, I'll do my best on both counts. For this to be recalled "well", it means for it to be useful. I have poured a LOT of hours into this whole running thing, and (for good or for ill) I don't tend to invest in areas I don't see growth. So, I will aim for this reflection to be particularly useful for my own growth as a runner (which will likely be boring for anyone else reading) as well as my own growth as a human (which, I'd hope, would be a little more transferable).
I ran my first marathon in May of 2022, in Fredericton. This was after 2+ years of slow but steady work building up to it, with Covid and some intentional friendships (lookin' at you Joel & Cerol) pouring fire on it. I had a private goal of being sub-4 hours and a public goal of "finishing". I was able to meet both, barely, by coming in at 3:58 'n change. The confidence I gained from that finish allowed me to finally begin to answer the question "Are you a runner?" with something other than dissembling. I continued to hold to my near-embargo on social media running posts, but was much more free in conversation. I also used it as an opportunity to begin periodically joining group runs in the Greater Moncton Area Running community, something I was reticent to do before. Esther was so surprised by how I seemed the day after I finished the race (I think she was expecting me to not be able to get outta bed the next morning) that, again, my confidence was boosted. So, right away, I signed up for the 2023 Fredericton Marathon and began working hard.
Virtually once a week from that time on, I ended up running something equivalent to a half-marathon. The only official half-marathon I ran was in October of 2022, though, and I was quite pleased with that result. I embarked on a few intentional training plans throughout the year, not least of which was a fairly intense plan leading up to May 2023. I felt good going into the race. I had done the work, I had gotten the rest, I had eaten the food, I had stuck to the plan. I was by no means expecting titanic results, but was optimistic that I could shave about 15 minutes off of my 2022 time.
When I showed up at the starting line, I looked for the right "pace bunny" (a silly name, I know, but they're actually helpful people who do their best to keep a group of people on a projected pace... and sometimes where bunny ears). I found a group that was aiming somewhere around 5:15 min / km. The man who was in charge was consistent, to be sure, though he was also running us a touch hotter than advertised. The truth? It didn't bother me. I was feeling fine! Honestly, I was feeling more than fine. I was feeling like I had it in the bag. I also had to pee.
One of the things that is strongly recommended before heading out on a long run like this is to empty both your bladder and your bowels. Thankfully, I was able to do the latter (as someone who's been diagnosed with colitis, you probably would NOT want to run alongside me if that had not been the case). I had obviously emptied my bladder that morning, as well, but right before the race I needed to go again. The lineups for the portapotties were longer than the Nile, so I knew I wouldn't have time. I told myself I'd just stop along the road somewhere, no big deal. I'd done the same thing last year. However, since I was enjoying the group I was running with so much, I didn't want to lose them. So, I was in a bit of a pickle. More on that pickle ahead.
Most of the time when I'm running, I'm listening to a podcast. Sometimes I listen to music, and sometimes I go intentionally silent / meditative, but never on long runs. On long runs, I listen to people chatting about things I'm interested in, or (occasionally) I'll carry on such a conversation with an unlucky run partner. However, the day before we went to Fredericton, I'd read Steve Magness' Do Hard Things. It's a great read, written by a runner, but not exclusively about running (I actually intend to write some more direct reflections on that book elsewhere). One of the things he does mention in the book, though, is that he's consistently found that elite runners tend not to "distract themselves" (i.e. listen to podcasts) when they're running. He gives lots of great reasons why. So... that kinda got in my head, to be honest. As such, when I would normally have switched on the pod, I didn't, and tried to remain "in the moment" as it were. If I had my time back, I'd have experimented with that in training before I tried to implement it in the race. It was truly interesting interoceptively, but... it quite likely played a part in the cumulative effect of my outcome.
The Fredericton Full Marathon is just two loops of the Half Marathon course. Pace Bunnies aim to guide you through the first half, but you're on your own for the second half. Early on in the run, a woman next to me overheard me chatting about my time goal with the Pace Bunny and said she had a similar goal. It was obvious that a few others in the cluster did as well, and so as we rounded the end of the first half, bade farewell to our pacer, and then carried on into the second half, I muttered something to the effect of, "Let's try that again, shall we?". Out of nowhere, a new runner hopped onto the course. It turns out she was a personal pacer / trainer that one of the cluster had brought along. I asked if they minded if I tagged along, and they did not. All was going according to plan. Our pace had started to settle a little around the 18km mark, but not much, and we were able to keep a sub-5:30 well into the second round. However, around the 25km mark, I started to notice the pacer and the paced moving eeeeeever so slightly away from me. I wasn't slowing down much, but for some reason I couldn't seem to match pace exactly with them, regardless of how much I tried. I finally stopped to pee, which took less than a minute, but when I was done, I was on my own.
I carried on at that pace, though, until I approached the 30km mark, at which point it became clear that something was not right with my body. What was happening? I had literally never felt this way before, and I'd run a 30km distance at least a dozen times. My legs started to feel like they were being caked with mud, like I was running through 18 inches of water... or 18 inches of wet cement. I started getting slower and slower until suddenly, around 33km, my legs cramped up to the degree that I couldn't bend them anymore. I was standing, by the side of the trail, with both legs as stiff as they could be, and in intense muscle pain. I had no idea what to do. I tried rubbing them, I tried stretching them, but it didn't seem to alleviate the pain. For a moment, the thought crossed my mind to grab my phone and call Esther to try and meet me. I was stuck.
After the initial pangs of fear, I thought to myself, "Well, I guess I could just try and walk." So I did. One step at a time. I cannot say how long this painful pace lasted. This is not just because the run was over a month ago, but also because even in the moment time was squirrelly. I do have the benefit of looking back upon the record of the race via my phone & watch, though, and those objective numbers are at odds with the way I felt in the moment. Not to easily or unnecessarily moralize everything, but point of privilege here:
Pain isn't unreal or unreliable, but it can be deceptive. Pain is useful as a warning indicator, but its usefulness is greatly increased if our systems are "calibrated". In other words, pain is giving us great information, but how useful that information is will likely depend upon how well we do or even can "know ourselves".
I personally think it's insane to have a "Never give up!" mentality on things that are not literally life or death. A race is not life or death (or, at very least, it should not be). At the end of the day, if that 33km marker was the end of my day, I should have been able to sleep ok that night. Failure is not final, as they say. But, even though it's ok to quit sometimes, many of us quit well before we have to... or, indeed, sometimes we quit before we even should. Each situation will have different stakes and different metrics, but the principle will hold true: Knowing the difference between when you should throw in the towel and when you should wrap it around your fist... that's an awful lot like wisdom.
So, one foot in front of the other for a kilometre or so, and then slowly but surely, things started to loosen up a little. I was still in pain, but my legs were cooperating with me, at least. I bottomed out at a whopping almost 9:00/km, but by 35km I was back up closer to 6:30/km. I hobbled up 'n down 'n around that pace for the remainder of the race. During that last stretch of the course, I was passed by a number of people who I'd passed earlier on in the race. Again, if I may:
"It's not how you start; it's how you finish." For the most part, this is true. As a philosopher friend of mine would be wont to point out, this is likely universally true, if not absolutely true. When I think of faith journeys or marital relationships, there's a degree to which this aphorism really speaks to me. But when you've had any exposure to what can (and usually does) happen to a person's body & mind as they age, the unyielding application of the principle seems unkind, if not untrue. There's a middle ground, here. There's a middle ground everywhere.
That said, here's a moral absolute: There is nothing to be gained by looking down upon another person for any reason whatsoever. It only ever hurts. Full stop. "Pride goeth..."
There was a smile on my face as I crossed the finish line (I purposefully smile while I'm running), but I was not happy. I almost collapsed into Esther's arms. All the time & effort, the hopes & plans, and I finished 5:50 slower than last year. I was lightly devastated. I couldn't understand what had happened. When I got back to the hotel, I started draining what was left in my hydration backpack. I drank, and I drank, and I drank. I couldn't believe how much was left in there... it must have been well over a litre. Then, it dawned on me... I was to blame. Remember how I said I needed to pee even before the race began? And remember how I said I didn't wanna lose my pace group? Well, with some thought but not ENOUGH thought, I made the decision to ease my need to evacuate by lowering the amount of intake. In other words, I drank less than I should have during the race. This lack of fluids (combined with the above-planned pace of the first half) came home to roost when my legs bricked on me. After the 2022 marathon, I was pretty much fine the next day. In 2023, I was showing signs of dehydration up to two days later. And so:
Solutions often bring with them new problems. If we could see all the intended and the unintended consequences of every decision we make, we'd not only be expected to be good; we'd be expected to be God. This doesn't let us off the hook entirely, but it does change the hook.
Once I realized that this was likely what had happened (it's obviously a narrative, and one that I can neither prove nor disprove), I gave myself a day or two to "bemoan" it, and then... I got back on the horse, so to speak, training for the next race.
I am not a full-time runner. This is not what I do for any part of my living, and nor is it the only thing I do in my spare time. I have a long list of priorities that go above running. My involvement with the sport is there to serve me (my health & my personal development, to the benefit of my family & my broader community), not the other way around. It's important to me to keep my level of involvement in perspective. For the most part, it is unhelpful to compare yourself to other people. Sometimes, of course, comparing to others is actually unavoidable and can even be beneficial, but knowing the contexts of those being compared is important. This is one of the things I like most about running: That I'm able to benchmark against myself. However, this virtue almost became a vice when I compared my year over year times. Once I was able to step back, though, some perspective allowed me to see that I had grown as a runner over the year, regardless of what the final numbers showed. I will be able to use this lesson, learn from it, and grow more in the year ahead. I hope to be able to run my third marathon next Spring, though... maybe not in Fredericton.
That's just a goal. I like goals. But we need to hold goals loosely. Again, they're there to serve us, not the other way around.
Those reflections were perhaps a shade longer than I'd intended, so if you've stuck around to the end, you deserve a victory lap. One last thing to note before I sign off, though. All the above... it's all about the privileged experience of running an unnecessary race. I am grateful that I have a family and a job that allowed me the flexibility to be able to train and execute. I am grateful for the finances that were required to get me there. And I am grateful for the baseline degree of health that allowed me to push through to where I am. I do not take any of those factors for granted.
The week of the 2023 marathon, I was invited to the hospital to pray with someone who'd just been diagnosed with cancer. I didn't realize it until I got there, but a few days before I went in, she'd had her right leg amputated. As I write this sentence, I reflect upon the fact that she passed away two days ago, and the funeral is a mere four days from now. Life is unpredictable, and time is the fastest, most reliable runner of all. Sure, the Bible is pretty stocked with running metaphors, but at the end of the day, they're just metaphors. Running matters, but (regardless of what some t-shirts may say) it is not "life"... at least, it's not my life. Not today, not ever. I love to run, but if it ever becomes an obstacle or an idol, then may it be snatched away from me before I participate in the ruin of myself or anyone else. "Run to live", not "live to run".
The first time I opened Tik Tok on my phone, within minutes, I was in stitches from laughing at the parade of “dogs being hilarious” videos that streamed across my screen. Later that day, I was speaking with a friend of mine who’d been dabbling in Tik Tok much longer than I, and he said, “I don’t think I’ve seen a single dog video on there”.
Social media is anything but a uniform experience for people. In fact, it may be worth remembering here that “media” is a plural noun. Through these various mediums, each of us have the potential illusion of engaging in a democratized information exchange, but in actuality it’s a kind of kingdom where we are the kings or queens… and yet there are (often nefarious) courtiers pulling strings behind the scenes that we have no idea about.
But hey, this isn’t a critique of social media, so don’t worry! The only reason I even brought that up is because on my particular social media feeds it looks as though everyone in the world has already read Kristin Kobes Du Mez’s Jesus & John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted A Faith & Fractured A Nation, and I’m just late to the party. Now, I know that’s not exactly the case (I don’t think my parents have read it yet), but I also know that if someone wanted to have a summary of the book or even engage deeply with its contents, there are countless blog posts out there which have already done that, and likely better than I could. A little over a year ago, I wrote up some reflections on Beth Allison Barr’s The Making Of Biblical Womanhood, and I’ve been gratefully following Scot McKnight’s engagement with these topics and authors recently as well.
So, below, I will toss in a veritable grab bag of quotes, reflections, and takeaways from Du Mez’s work, but before I get to that, I want to try and summarize my biggest takeaway from this book, and it’s one that really surprised me, since it wasn’t in the text at all.
It was by reading this book that I was most clearly confronted with an issue that plagues me in general. I’m not sure what the technical term is for it (though there almost certainly is one), but it’s something like "information-association-bias"… but, that’ll never catch on, so we may wanna workshop that later. Essentially, it means that I tend to consider pieces of information (surveys, arguments, opinions, even words) differently based upon associations. Those associations could be related to the person presenting the info, the means by which that info is presented, various terminology or imagery nested within that information, or (and perhaps most difficult to see) typical or assumed associations between that information and other information. Basically, it means I’m never just encountering data as it is, but always in relation to other data.
I know I’m more neurotic than your average guy, but… I bet I’m not alone with this issue.
In a way, it’s a question of hermeneutics, the lenses through which we view not only texts but the world around us. Any post-modern kid who’s made it through a high school English class knows this. But what I hadn’t noticed before was a subtle trick my mind has been playing on me for quite a while now. When someone presents data that I find questionable or that offends my sensibilities (you know this is happening when, instead of having a rational reaction to someone or something, you feel it in your stomach), I can tend to use that as an excuse to write-off other connected truth claims. I can also assume that if someone critiques a situation, they are in some sense promoting whatever might be the “opposite” of that situation. This last part is extra-ironic, since I am the consummate devil’s advocate. Perhaps a single example from the book will do to shed some more practical light on what I mean.
Throughout the book, Du Mez spends time exploring evangelicals’ connections to both anti-abortion campaigns and the so-called “purity movement”. Christians have long been pushed-back upon for promoting views against abortion, but the reaction to the purity culture of the 1990s/2000s is relatively recent (at least in trending terms). Du Mez presents a number of well-documented stories that illustrate how this section connects with and feeds into the overall narrative of the book. Though there are no particular sentences I noticed wherein she comes out and makes judgmental commentary on either of these issues, it feels clear from how the text is laid out that they are at least being framed as contributing factors to the overall negative outcome the book’s subtitle makes clear, if not intrinsically negative themselves.
And so, enter my previously mentioned bias. If being “anti-abortion” is framed as negative, then I implicitly feel that being “pro-abortion” is being framed as positive. If “purity culture” is a bad thing, then obviously “impurity culture” must be a good thing, right? Personally, I do not want to promote abortion, nor do I want to promote an "impurity culture", so I obviously can't learn anything from this book... right?
Obviously, no, this is not obvious, and once I realized that my mind was reading connections & comments that were not in the text (like, “reading between the lines”, as literally as this is possible to do), I became freed up to engage with what was actually in the text.
In Jesus & John Wayne, there are several assessments that I disagree with, and a handful of sources I am dubious of, but there is also a tremendous amount of story that is worth wrestling with and sifting through, some of which I pray will not escape my imagination until it has shaped me for the better.
If I had to guess, I’d say that Du Mez’s goals for this book would be something like:
1- Try and explain how Donald Trump not only became the president of the United States of America, but did so with the blessing of so many people who blatantly call themselves "Christian".
2- Try and distinguish Christianity in America from Nationalism and/or “culture”.
In my humble opinion, largely successful, on both counts.
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As promised, below is merely a repository of notable quotables and incomplete thoughts from the book. Hit me up if you have any questions!
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“Drawn to [Trump’s] populist appeals, white evangelicals demonstrated a preference for rejecting political compromise, for strong, solitary leadership, and for breaking the rules when necessary.” (pg 5)
“‘There is no American that I admire more than Richard Nixon’, Graham proclaimed at one of his crusades that year.” (pg 44)
“Fine doctrinal differences that may have separated Nazarene from Southern Baptist, evangelical from fundamentalist, made little difference when it came to Dobson's growing empire. [Focus On The Family] avoided divisive theological issues, and tuning in required no conversion experience, statement of faith, or claims of exclusivity.” (pg 85)
“Conservative political operative Ralph Reed described [Oliver] North’s appeal in this way: ‘Part of politics is having the right friends, but an important part of politics is having the right enemies.’ Conservative Christians loved him for the enemies he’d made.” (pg 124)
“‘Character DOES matter,’ Dobson opined. ‘You can't run a family, let alone a country, without it.’” (pg 143, in response to Bill Clinton)
“...Ralph Reed advised members to ‘avoid hostile and intemperate rhetoric’, and to instead embrace a more tolerant posture, emphasizing inclusion. ‘We have allowed ourselves to be ghettoized by a narrow band of issues like abortion, homosexual rights and prayer in school’, he warned, and it was time for a new direction.” (pg 149)
“‘What if we told men up front that to join the church of Jesus Christ is... to enlist in God's Army and to place their lives on the line? This approach would be based on the warrior spirit in every man, and so would offer the greatest hope for restoring authentic Christian manhood to the Body of Christ.’” (pg 161, Gordon Dalbey)
“Feminized men don’t walk into burning buildings. But masculine men do.” (pg 181)
“...chaplains would refrain from proselytizing, ‘but we reserve the right to evangelize the unchurched.’ [Brig Gen Richardson] distinguished the two by suggesting that evangelizing ‘is more gently sharing the gospel’, as opposed to ‘trying to convert someone in an aggressive way.’ it was a distinction without a difference.” (pg 213)
“But in truth, evangelical leaders had been perfecting this pitch for nearly 50 years. Evangelicals were looking for a protector, an aggressive, heroic, manly man, someone who wasn't restrained by political correctness or feminine virtues, someone who would break the rules for the right cause.” (pg 253, on the election of Donald Trump)
“When you are in a war mentality, you say ‘who is going to stand up where we need to stand up.’” (pg 263, Eric Metaxas)
“...it is the relationship between the centers and the margins that demands scrutiny. Those who occupy what center there is have largely failed to define themselves against the more extreme expressions of ‘biblical patriarchy’, and there are reasons for this.” (pg 293)
“Evangelicals may self-identify as ‘Bible-believing Christians’, but evangelicalism itself entails a broader set of deeply-held values communicated through symbol, ritual, and political allegiances.” (pg 297) // On the following pg, she asks if men were “defending patriarchy because they believed it to be biblical, or were they twisting the scriptures in order to defend patriarchy?”
“If you believe that America is God's chosen nation, you need to fight for it and against others, [Don Jacobson] realized. But once you abandon that notion, other values begin to shift as well. Without Christian nationalism, evangelical militarism makes little sense.” (pg 303)
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She explains how John Wayne did not live a virtuous life by the standards of evangelicals, but was embraced by them nonetheless as a paragon of their type.
On pg 22 she posits that disparate & diverse evangelicals became a cohesive group in large part because of a sense of embattlement. Pg 202 has a great section on how cessationists and continuationists were willing to lay aside those differences as long as they maintained complementarianism as a doctrine, since “desperate times call for desperate measure.”
Coming after Elisabeth Elliot was a tough pill to swallow for me, as someone who grew up reading Through Gates Of Splendor...
On top of parachurch organizations, the role of Christian publishing, bookstores, and pop culture play an interesting role. There is something to be said about the involuntary need for hierarchical leadership and/or overall connectedness, the fractious nature of protestantism…
As an Amway kid, I was surprised by the mention of Rich Devos on pgs 89 & 103.
My ignorance is overwhelming; I was surprised to find that many Christians actively touted Ronald Regan as the “Christian choice” for president (ch 6). I was also somewhat surprised to learn how relatively recently some of these developments happened; namely, the post-1954 amendments to the pledge of allegiance, and the shift towards the Republican party being the favoured choice of Christians.
On pg 131, she talks about the fact that military superiors were “evangelizing” their subordinates. This is a highly problematic scenario, because of the power differential, but it left me to wonder how we are to evangelize or even educate our children if power differentials are disqualifying… We see some pushback on this practice on pg 210.
On pg 147, she mention that in 1987 the FCC’s “Fairness Doctrine” was repealed, which allowed for the launch of partisan talk-radio, like Rush Limbaugh. I found myself wondering what radio and tv news were like BEFORE that, and to what degree left voices grew at the same time.
Now, as a Promise Keepers kid, all the PK talk in ch 9 was also hard for me.
On pg 156, she draws a line from war metaphor to sport metaphor… which seems astute.
By ch 9, we start to see the (more) modern calls for men to be masculine, like Eldredge’s “Wild At Heart”. It hadn’t occurred to me until then that folks like Jordan Peterson are perhaps swimming in similar streams with all their talk of calling men to “adventure”.
On pg 169, the talk of the so-called “Danvers Statement” and how it rooted patriarchy in a pre-Fall existence was useful. By contrast, she later (on pg 175) mentions relatively conservative folks (like James K A Smith) who disagree with this call, and say that since violence is a consequence of the Fall, then being a “warrior” cannot necessarily be intrinsically human / male.
It was surprising to me that in ch 14 she made explicit that it seems both B Obama and H Clinton were Christians, just not the right type of Christians.
Pg 244, she cites Eric Metaxas’ view that (post-Vietnam) we can no longer valourize people but only tear them down based on their sins. I’m not sure what to do with this, but I view it as a large problem. It reminds me of the problem hagiography, and the problem of what to do without it.
On pg 266, she cites how some non-Trump evangelicals were trying to claim that many of the co-called evangelicals that voted for Trump were not “real evangelicals”. I can’t help but think that, at the end of the day, if our churches have contributed to the formation of these folks, then like it or lump it, we might have to claim them… although, this is a slightly more complicated issue then that simple statement might let on.
“There are no atheists in foxholes”, so the saying goes. In How God Works, David Desteno shows that while that may not be true, there are likely less atheists in those foxholes today than in the recent past. Desteno is just one of what seems to be a growing assortment of academics from a variety of disciplines who are writing in defense of (if not promotion of) what was once in low-regard amongst their kind: religion.
I was introduced to Desteno’s research through the fabulously produced How God Works podcast series, and was easily convinced to pick up a copy of the book bearing the same name. I consumed the book relatively slowly, trying to grapple with the content as I went. I even did a podcast conversation with a friend of mine, Jeremy MacDonald, about a particular section of the book on rites of passage from childhood to adulthood. On the whole, I found the book stimulating, challenging, and helpful. I would definitely recommend people engage with the podcast and/or the book… with caveats, that is.
Desteno is a professor of psychology at Northeastern University who got his PhD from Yale and (in addition to his classroom work and public work) seems to still find the time to practice behavioural psychology through his own “Social Emotions Lab”. So, he’s a pretty smart cookie. If his website is to be believed, the thesis of his work in general is to understand the mechanisms that underlie human virtue and how science can “nudge” them. Clearly, then, he wishes to move beyond the mere philosophical understanding of how things work and into the more practical application of those principles in an almost technological sense; to move from passivity to activity. In fact, in this book in particular, he frequently refers to what he calls “spiritual technologies”, which are essentially religious rituals.
The structure of the book takes the lifespan of a human and breaks it up into seven sections:
1 - Infancy: Welcoming & Binding
2 - The Formative Years: Learning What’s Right & Wrong
3 - Coming Of Age: Adulting Isn’t Easy
4 - Transcending the Twenties & Thirties: Love, Connection, and (Maybe) Ecstasy
5 - The Business of Midlife I: Maintenance for the Body
6 - The Business of Midlife II: Maintenance for the Soul
7 - Saying Goodbye: All That Lives Must Die
In each section, Desteno lays out some of the psychological needs that present themselves specifically in each phase of life in question. He then takes the reader upon an anthropological tour of the various ways that world religions seem to have created or curated solutions to those needs. There is a very non-judgmental, utilitarian tone to these reflections, which is pretty well in-line with the vision & mission of one of Desteno’s major financial backers for this project, the John Templeton Foundation:
“Our vision is to become a global catalyst for discoveries that contribute to human flourishing. Our purpose is to enable people to create lives of purpose and meaning.”
I will not delve too deeply into the JTF here, though I plan to reflect more upon their unique place in the world of modern scholarship in the future. For our purposes here, the point is to say that Desteno’s work is not so much about what is true or false, but more so about what works. As an example, after surveying a number of different ways that various religious rituals seem to have a measurable impact on the growth of what would be deemed positive character traits in young people, Desteno lays out a potential path forward for parents who wish to reap the rewards of these so-called “spiritual technologies” without believing in the deities behind the religions in question:
“...it's true that many of these religious nudges depend on people already holding certain beliefs. For example, nudges provided by prayer instill honesty only in people who already believe in God. This doesn't mean that using multiple-nudge strategies to enhance character requires belief in God. Gratitude, awe, and elevation can increase honesty, generosity, kindness, and other ethical behaviors in any context, including secular ones.” (pg 62)
The word “nudge” here seems to be a hyperlink to a behavioural-psychological concept known as “nudge theory”. The way Desteno uses it, it seems to mean something like: any action or choice taken to consciously make certain outcomes more likely. Religious rituals are like this, the book argues, because they are designed to make certain feelings and actions more likely in the long run. But non-religious rituals are also like this, for the very same reason. As such, the above quote goes on to propose potential secular rituals to stand-in for the various religious rituals that were weighed in the chapter:
“While the result might not be as finely tuned a package as many religions use, it will still help you shape your children's character while also nudging your own.” (ibid)
Here is the twist that (for me) makes this book worth recommending with caveats. If I went through the text and highlighted then shared the sections that spoke well of Christianity and its rituals, you could be inclined to think that this book was written by a Jesus-believer:
“…Christians have a point in saying that suffering can serve a greater purpose... This doesn't mean, of course, that you should look for ways to suffer. Rather, it means that when suffering does come, as it invariably will for each of us when we lose someone we love, we should accept it. Sit with it. Don't rage against it. Recognize the ways it unites you with others…” (pgs 181 & 182)
In fact, though Desteno was raised Catholic and speaks positively about Christian ritual, he appears to be a self-professed agnostic. Plus, he not only speaks well of Christian ritual but of Jewish and Muslim and Buddhist and Hindu and Native American rituals. But if I tweeted any number of paragraphs from his book and simply edited via ellipsis, then I could easily convince you that Desteno is someone you’d want to bring in to preach at your church next Sunday! If you’re engaging with aspects of this content from that vantage point, you could then read sentences like, “Simply put, thinking about God made religious people calmer” (pg 17) or, “Saying you're religious doesn't matter much for health and happiness... It's being religious – taking part in the rituals and practices of a faith – that makes life better” (pg 4) and subconsciously replace the words God/religion with Jesus/Christianity. This is not what Desteno is teaching, exactly. As far as I can tell, in his worldview, there is a relationship between these concepts, but that relationship is more dynamic than static, more correlative than causal. Christianity participates in a pattern more so than it defines a pattern.
As someone who considers himself not merely a believer in but also a follower of Christ, I am always pleased to see & hear people speak well of Jesus, of His Church, and of the legacies entailed. Since I believe God loves everyone and wants human flourishing, I am inclined to put forward much of the work of this book. I would not, however, recommend that people start citing this work as a Christian apologetic. Desteno (in ways similar to folks like Tom Holland or Jordan Peterson) speaks positively about Christianity without affirming the theology behind it. In other words, he may or may not believe that Jesus is divine… or, that there even is a God (knowable or otherwise). As such, I think it would be wise to treat this work in much the same way I would treat the work of a biblical scholar who is not a “confessional Christian”; to look for the Truth within it, without necessarily believing the truth-claims behind it1. In recent years, I have noticed a fair amount of Christians who have been drawn to certain statements that politicians or celebrities or academics have made that seem to intersect with their own Christian beliefs, unquestioningly using those statements to defend those Christian beliefs, and then unknowingly supporting a person or a system that is (at bottom) unChristian. I believe that here we might be seeing a tension that can allow the author of the Gospel of Luke to quote Jesus as saying both “whoever is not against you is for you” (Luke 9:50) and “whoever is not with me is against me” (Luke 11:23).
So, this is the first caveat I would make, then. Something like: Consider the source. The second caveat is less obvious, yet perhaps a tad more problematic. It would be something like: Mind the hack. A running theme throughout this book is the belief that once we feel we can understand how a religious ritual produces certain desired results, we can either adopt or adapt that ritual for ourselves (regardless of our own theological beliefs) to produce the same results. What’s more, the conclusion of the book makes the reader aware of the fact that there are companies out there (such as Sacred Design Lab) who partner with other organizations to specifically create rituals to meet certain needs. In some respects, you could consider this to be a “life hack” approach to religion, looking for ways to beat/cheat the system in order to improve your results. Another word for it might be magic.
Oftentimes, spiritual or religious people are accused of “magical thinking” by naturalists, making no distinction between gods & goblins, luminaries & leprechauns. In such a worldview, prayer is equated with sorcery; humans trying to manipulate the divine. But from a Christian perspective, there is a fundamental difference between magic & religion. Magic is trying to heedlessly bend the will of God, while religion is trying to align ourselves with His will. There is more nuance here, to be sure, but roughly speaking the distinction (I believe) stands. Throughout the Bible, both in the Old & the New Testaments, we see many examples of magical thinking. For Christians, perhaps the prototypical example of such transactional model would be the man oft-known as Simon The Sorcerer (Acts 8:9-24). He was sympathetic to the way Jesus was presented by Phillip the Evangelist, and even went so far as to be baptized into the Church. But when Peter came to visit and prayed for the believers in their area to be filled with the Holy Spirit, Simon tried to purchase this ability for himself. There are more blanks to fill in and than we are able to or have time to, but needless to say, Simon receives a significant rebuke for this request, and not likely because Peter wanted to jealously guard this power for himself. Rather, Simon’s mistake was likely that he thought he could control God. Peter didn’t use God, but he was used by God. The early Church so identified with this subtle but real distinction that traditions began early on that Simon Magus was the origin point for all sorts of heresies. Simon may have been a standout, but he was not unique.
While I confess that I’m not extremely well-versed on the topic, my understanding is that we have extant copies of so-called “magical texts” going as far back as the 5th century BCE, and they are characteristic of a tradition that was alive at the time of Christ, carries through to the medieval period, and (much to the amazement of many) on to today. These texts tend to prescribe not just what one ought to say or how they ought to say it, but also what actions ought to accompany what words, and what one ought to be able to expect based upon successful and correct completion of the ritual. The degree to which these magical practices compare and contrast with what we might think of as more “religious” practices encircling the beginning of the common era (religion often referred to today as “pagan”) is too complicated to tease out here.
The reason for this diversion into a brief consideration of magical practices is that, in my opinion, the kind of approach that Desteno is essentially illuminating (if not advocating) is one where if we do or say the right things in the right way then we’ll likely reap the desired outcomes. The analogs to magic are hard not to see. A potential disjuncture between ancient magical thinking and the intentional application of spiritual technologies (as defined by Desteno) might be something like faith. It seems unlikely that one would go through the rigamarole of reciting a spell to Isis or Athena if they did not believe those entities existed, but the book in question seems to imply that one can work through certain rituals and attain certain benefits whether or not one believes the only unseen power behind those mechanisms happens to be the way unseen neurons fire inside our skulls.
So, if not magic, then what? “Spiritual technology”, that’s what. Leaving aside that “spiritual” here is not so much an antonym for “material” but more so a synonym for “religious”, I still haven’t really justified my stated concern above about the so-called “hacking” involved. Desteno himself refers to the purpose of the book as “religioprospecting” (pg 13), exploring the existing fields of religions and mining for things that will “work” outside of their natural habitats. It is this self-conscious approach that I am most wary of, since it seems to me that it places the burden of determining what “works” onto the shoulders of the person who will also be responsible for implementing the practice. So I determine what I want and then I choose how I will get it. It’s almost a type of eugenics aimed at personality more than physicality. In the case of the chapters on parenting, it’s not even exclusively self-experimentation, but also involves how we experiment on our children.
You might say I’m being dramatic, to which I might reply, “Who? Meeeeeeee?!?!?” Listen, I don’t actually begrudge Desteno for advocating this religioprospecting approach. He didn’t invent it out of thin air. This sort of self-conscious self-creation coupled with materialist utilitarianism is likely just a natural extension of our culture’s trajectories. Charles Taylor might describe it as a natural consequence of “the bind of modernity”. Jacques Ellul might describe it as “technique run amok”. Either way, it would make me sound like a nutjob to imply that we should have no role in mapping our individual & collective destinies. To simply fall-in-line with any way of life, wholesale, without even questioning that way of life’s underpinnings… that’s just running away & joining a cult, right? Obviously, I’m not advocating that. The truth is that I can’t foresee exactly how we as a society can deescalate this “I make me” arms race we find ourselves in. I am optimistic that (by God’s grace) there is a way to step things backward. All I feel equipped to do at the moment, though, is to chime in with the growing choir of people who are noticing the problem, and trust that solutions will present themselves in time.
So, in summation, I would absolutely recommend How God Works to anyone who is interested in religion and social change. It’s a deep & well-researched work, but it’s also a light & enjoyable read. If you’re more of a listener, the audiobook is read by the fabulous Arthur Morey, and the “How God Works” podcast series is phenomenally produced by PRX and features the voice of Desteno himself. You are virtually guaranteed to garner some valuable insights by engaging with the work. If you consider yourself to be a devout follower of any religion (not merely Christianity), I would merely suggest that you consider approaching this religioprospecting with a positively critical frame. It is always good for people to discover that they have things in common, but we need not assume that those commonalities render our distinctives unimportant. With time & patience, we can deduce a lot of things, but I’m not sure we’ll ever fully understand how God works… at least, not on this side of eternity.
Last weekend, I did something that was unthinkable (and uninteresting) to my younger self: I ran a marathon.
I was overwhelmed by the positive reactions of so many when I posted my results online, but one of my favourites was definitely, “Wow Marc, that is quite something to go from not running at all to running a marathon!” This wonderful & well-intentioned person seemed to assume that I woke up that Sunday morning and thought, “Hmm, well, I’ve got nothing else on the go today… maybe I should try running for four hours straight?” The fact that I was not very public about my training coupled with the fact that I have never been described as “athletic” made it seem as though this was an aberration instead of part of a journey I have been on.
When I was about 35 years old, I realized that I was the same weight I was in high school, but when I reached the top of a flight of stairs I was huffin’ & puffin’ like nobody’s business. For too long I’d equated being “thin” with being “healthy”, but that illusion was finally shattered. So that year I got a used elliptical machine from someone in Moncton and started using it about 15 minutes a day a few days a week, eventually upping my time and frequency (I actually talk about this step and the surprising transformation it yielded for me in my first “sermon”). Within a year or two, some friends had coaxed me to start joining them on short runs, a few kilometers at a time. Slowly but surely I worked up my distance and speed, and by the end of last summer I had unofficially completed a half-marathon. Up until that point, I had honestly never really considered a marathon a possibility or a desire, but I have been surprised to find that having goals for my exercise times increases my commitment and my enjoyment. Hence, the marathon.
Don’t worry, I have no intention of trying to push beyond this into the unthinkably difficult ultramarathon range. I do hope to continue to work on my technique and time over the next few years, and I do have other goals, but I have a faint grasp on my own limits. Also, you needn’t worry that all of a sudden my blog / podcast / social media feeds will suddenly become runner-centric. There are lots of really great people out there delivering that content excellently, so y’all don’t need that from me. That being said, while processing through last weekend, I have to admit there were a fair amount of thoughts running through my head (pun-intended), and so I wanted to take the opportunity to unabashedly reflect upon them here in this venue. Thus, fair warning, that is what the remainder of this post will be: a running commentary (for audio or video versions of this, check out my social feed or back at marcjolicoeur.substack.com).
Intentionality – I heard someone say the other day, “If you want to meditate well in the evening, begin preparing for it in the morning.” This thought interacted with my reading through Pete Scazzero’s Emotionally Healthy Leader book where he talks about how much preparation has to go into even practicing the sabbath if you want to do it well. Might be a little close to home for some little ears, but if you and your spouse are hoping to not just make love in the evening but make love well in the evening, there is very likely going to have to have been some intentionality on behalf of both parties throughout the day to prep themselves and each other for the moment. Basically, almost nothing good “just happens”. An athletic 20 year-old might have been able to run a marathon on a whim and gotten outta bed the next morning; this 40 year-old could not have. So, all I’m trying to say is this experience helped me realize that if we have visions in our mind of preferred futures, things we believe are valuable, then we may want to strongly consider how taking steps towards those things will make their attainment much more possible than not.
Reality – “I have seen something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all.” (Ecclesiastes 9:11, NIV) The previous paragraph was like the book of Proverbs, but the Bible’s got Ecclesiastes to reckon with, too. At about the 30km mark, I saw a very fit and very fast runner keel over suddenly. It looked as though he suffered an injury in his calf muscle. I do not know if he finished the race, but I can tell you that if he did so it was likely with a time that was significantly higher than he’d hoped for. Was his injury his “fault”? It’s conceivable. I obviously do not know this man from Adam, but it’s possible he did not train properly or did not run wisely. It is equally possible that his injury was completely unmerited & unpredictable, and that (for all intents & purposes) it just happened. I hope this is a helpful counterpoint to the intentionality piece. I have a friend that I was messaging with on the day before the race who was one of the most athletic people I know, an absolute athletic rockstar. At this point, through absolutely no fault of his own, he is suffering from a disease that is making it virtually impossible for him to walk let alone run. For him, it doesn’t matter how much “intentionality” he pours forth, barring a miracle, a marathon is not in his future. When things are just “working” for you, it can sometimes be hard to imagine any reason why things might not be “working” for others beyond their own choices. But as Arcade Fire is currently chanting (channeling deeper truths):
It's not up to youSome you win, some you loseYou don't get to chooseSome you win, some you lose
Evaluation – I mentioned earlier that I find having a goal to be motivating as far as exercise is concerned, and that this was surprising to me. For many this would by no means be revelatory, but I have tended to be a little anti-driven in many respects, being averse to “just do it”, high-paced, alpha-style mentality. I continue to be averse to those things, even while acknowledging the power & value of having goals. A fear for me would be to accidentally trip over into an identity where I feel the need to earn my value by achievement rather than by relationship. As such, when I look to set goals, I intend for those goals to be based upon self-comparison and not other-comparison. For this reason, I prefer to not really think of these runs as “races” against anyone but myself. My son & daughter were particularly confused about this in advance. They kept asking if I was going to “win”. I told them that a “win” for me would be finishing the race. Now that I’ve done that, you might say that next time a “win” for me would be to finish the race slightly better than I did last time. If I’ve said it once I’ve said it a hundred times: Comparison kills. I’ve seen it time & again with my children. One of them will get a half of a freezie, and in that instant their life is improved… until a few moments later when their sibling gets the other half of the freezie and it turns out to be 1.5 millimeters smaller than the other one. Suddenly, their joy is robbed and their life impoverished, all because they took the time to compare. I finished this race in just under 4 hours. The fastest person who completed did it in just under 2.5 hours. That is a chasmic difference! That said, the slowest person to finish the race was just shy of 7 hours. I know nothing about either one of these people. I don’t know their training regimens, their ages, their breakfasts, their names. Trying to evaluate my own success based upon their unknown realities is nonsensical. That said, there is a too-far that one can go in the “just be the best you you can be” spirit, and that should be acknowledged… I just don’t think I’ve neared that edge at this point (feel free to let me know if you disagree).
Speculation – It’s amazing to me how little I knew what to expect when I showed up at the race site that morning. I had heard of “pace bunnies” before, but had put absolutely no thought into what group or pace I should put myself in, nor how doggedly I should stick with that group. That morning I wide-eyedly looked around, saw a number that seemed just about right, and then basically chose to stick with that pacesetter until even he crumpled a little around the 32km mark. I say this with all humility & deference: I could have run faster. For most of the first ¾ of the race, I had substantial gas in the tank, but I chose to keep with the pace. Now, for the last leg of the race, it is clear that my tank had neared empty (in fact, there was a wonderful moment in the last couple of kilometers where a woman who appeared to be in her 60s steadily zoomed past me as though I had almost stopped moving… a truly beautiful & humbling gift to me, as I receive it). The question looms in my mind, though: What if I’d paced up earlier? Is it possible I’d have still run out of gas at the same time, but after having moved further faster? Like everyone who owns a car these days, I am keeping my eye on the fuel gauge with renewed intensity, and I have noticed that when it comes to gas mileage, the concern is less about the speedometer and more about the rpms. So, all that to say… there is a significant “What if?” factor that can creep in in scenarios like this. Of course, none of us are immune to whatiffery. A certain amount of reflection can be helpful for us all as we move forward, potentially helping us ensure we avoid unnecessary pain & frustration (for ourselves and/or others) in the future. Some people seem to be opposed to any such reflection since it smacks of self-judgment. I get that. But the truth as I see it is that honest self-evaluation is the only way forward in every area of life, be it spiritual, relational, financial, or physical. Placing limitations on our reflection to avoid it becoming speculation, that’s likely the key to avoiding the path to pathology.
And thus, this time of reflection was for me the limitation of such reflection. I already have a few next-step plans for my exercise regimen (after some Higdon-prescribed rest and relaxation), and I’ve celebrated the milestone. Soon, it’ll be time to move on, carrying these learnings with me not only into my future training but every area of my life. For me, personally, I don’t live to run: I run to live. The life that Christ has called me to and bought for me is about way more than speed & endurance, but it turns out that running is a pretty good metaphor for it, according to the Bible:
“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” (2 Timothy 4:7, NIV)
(*this is the seventh of seven posts walking through St Teresa of Avila’s Interior Castle*)
“This Presence is not of course always realized so fully – I mean so clearly – as it is when it first comes, or on certain other occasions when God grants the soul this consolation; if it were, it would be impossible for the soul to think of anything else, or even to live among men.” (pg 150)
One of the questions that most stood out to me as we were approaching this last post in the series was this: What (in Teresa’s view) constitutes arrival at the centre of this castle, the soul, from whence shines the light of Christ? If I understand her correctly, I might be inclined to say that here is where we attain most fully to “union with Christ”. But since she describes a variety of transcendent states leading up to the Seventh Mansions and (as the lead quote from this post illustrates) she does not seem to mean that arrival at the centre is somehow a state of perpetual heavenly rapture, then how can we know that we have “arrived” and what impact does this have on the remainder of our earthly lives? In the postscript to this work, I believe she gives a hint:
“…take your delight in this interior castle, for you can enter it and walk about it at any time without asking leave from your superiors.” (pg 168)
It seems likely that in Teresa’s understanding, once we have attained to & experienced what it is to be truly & fully connected with Christ, it is a place we can remain in our spirit, even as our souls / lives still interact with the external world:
“Each of us possesses a soul, but we do not prize our souls as creatures made in God's image deserve and so we do not understand the great secrets which they contain.” (pg 146)
“…there is some kind of difference, and a very definite one, between the soul and the spirit, although they are both one.” (pg 150)
“The soul (I mean the spirit of this soul) is made one with God, Who, being likewise a Spirit, has been pleased to reveal the love that He has for us by showing to certain persons the extent of that love, so that we may praise His greatness.” (pg 152)
In my faith tradition, a potential analog for this union might be what was once more popularly called “entire sanctification”. This was sometimes viewed as a charismatic experience and other times viewed merely as a cognitive-level expression of faith, but either way the idea usually centred around someone who was fully “devoted” to God and was thus basically about as close to Him as one could be this-side-of-eternity. In my sense, the idea/hope that people should even try to attain to such a place in this life has largely fallen away from our popular consciousness and teaching. There are no doubt many reasons for this, but at least one of them is a history of what has been perceived as a combination of legalism & hypocrisy, with a dose of “holier-than-thou”. Teresa gives us a potent antidote to viewing ourselves (at least) in ways that could be perceived by others along those lines:
“…how little one should think about resting, and how little one should care about honours, and how far one ought to be from wishing to be esteemed in the very least if the Lord makes His special abode in the soul.” (pg 163)
“Do you know when people really become spiritual? It is when they become the slaves of God and are branded with His sign, which is the sign of a cross, in token that they have given Him their freedom.” (pg 164)
In fact, she reminds us that this union with God is not for us (alone/primarily), but for others:
“We should desire and engage in prayer, not for our enjoyment, but for the sake of acquiring this strength which fits us for service. Let us not try to walk along an untrodden path, or at the best we shall waste our time: it would certainly be a novel idea to think of receiving these favours from God through any other means than those used by Him and by all His saints.” (pg 165)
It is conceivable that this last sentence is speaking to the use pharmacological aids (the use of natural & unnatural substances to bring on transcendence had been in play long before this time), but whether or not that’s the case, Teresa is pointing out the dangers in trying to shortcut to the centre of the castle by either blazing your own trail or by following non-trustworthy leaders. God has been revealing Himself through His people in various ways since the dawn of Creation, and we should not ignore those revelations any more than we should think that we can somehow make our own way towards Him by human might or wisdom:
“It is true that, however strong you may think yourselves, you cannot enter all the mansions by your own efforts: the Lord of the Castle Himself must admit you to them.” (pg 168)
In closing, the reason I have felt compelled to share my own reflections on Teresa’s vision is that it has proven meaningful & challenging in my own life, not merely cerebrally, but experientially. There is something rational and yet beyond-reason about the way she expresses her vision, about how the animating life of God pours into & through us into the world, and it stirs my own soul to want to better understand & experience that source of life. Our world is experiencing a drought of meaning, and if we’re to be able to offer any direction towards a Source, we’ll benefit from better connection to that Source ourselves
“…just as a great stream of water could never fall on us without having an origin somewhere, as I have said, just so it becomes evident that there is someone in the interior of the soul who sends forth these arrows and this gives life to this life.” (pg 154)
Notable Quotables:
“…if you have this in view you must not build upon foundations of prayer and contemplation alone, for, unless you strive after the virtues and practice them, you will never grow to be more than dwarfs. God grant that nothing worse than this may happen – for, as you know, anyone who fails to go forward begins to go back, and love, I believe, can never be content to stay for long where it is.” (pg 164)
“…the devil sometimes puts ambitious desires into our hearts, so that, instead of setting our hand to the work which lies nearest to us, and thus serving Our Lord in ways within our power, we may rest content with having desired the impossible.” (pg 167)
“Apart from praying for people, by which you can do a great deal for them, do not try to help everybody, but limit yourselves to your own companions; your work will then be all the more effective because you have the greater obligation to do it… By your doing things which you really can do, His Majesty will know that you would like to do many more, and thus He will reward you exactly as if you had won many souls for Him.” (pg 167)
“…we must offer the Lord whatever interior and exterior sacrifice we are able to give Him, and His Majesty will unite it with that which He offered to the Father for us upon the cross…” (pg 167)
“If you find anything good in this book which helps you to learn to know him better, you can be quite sure that it is His Majesty Who has said it, and if you find anything bad, that it has been said by me.” (pg 168)
“…I beg you, in my own name, whenever you read this, to give great praise to His Majesty and beg him to multiply His Church and to give light to the Lutherans and to pardon my sins and set me free from Purgatory, where perhaps, by the mercy of God, I shall be when this is given you to read…” (pg 169)
I can’t say exactly why, but it seems the closer we get to the centre of Teresa’s Interior Castle, the more she has to say about it. Perhaps this quote from the Sixth Mansions has a little something to do with it:
“Moses … could not describe all that he saw in the bush, but only as much as God willed him to …” (pg 105)
It calls to mind Paul’s words to the Corinthian church regarding their readiness to hear the deeper truths of God. I can’t say for sure that that’s what’s happening here, but it makes the most sense to me. This understanding of things, though, places me in a similarly awkward spot to Teresa, even though it’s from a different vantage point. Priests in her life basically begged her to write this stuff because even though she was evidently quite humble and hesitant to claim that she herself had arrived (another Pauline move), she was convinced to speak as one with experience & authority. I have less of both, and no one is begging me to write about my mystical experiences. I do not claim to have made it to the centre of the castle, or at least I make no pretense to have spent significant time there, and yet I feel compelled to learn from and help translate parts of Teresa’s experience for my own benefit, as well as for the benefit of others. I am learning from her, and my hope is that you will too.
There is far, far, FAR too much content in this section to work through it in the way I have for previous posts. Rather, I have pulled out six quotes which I’ll comment upon below, and then a whole host of quotes that I’ll append at the end, uncommented upon.
“…to find itself publicly and unmeritedly described as good is an incomparably greater trial than any of those already mentioned.” (pg 88)
We’ve heard that “power corrupts”, but so too does praise & recognition, most especially praise & recognition that is received out of proportion with one’s character. I will not link any news articles from the past few months to make the point… you can fill in your own blanks. The truth is, though, that this need not be the nail in one’s coffin. This unmerited praise can be used by God to drive us closer to Him, if we’ll allow such affliction to run its best course.
“The Lord is also in the habit of sending the most grievous infirmities … God gives us no more than we can bear, and he gives patience first.” (pg 89)
I do not know where this saying first came from (it’s treated as though it's scriptural, though I don’t believe that’s the case), but this is a likely candidate for most cited. That being said, I’ve never heard the tag-on (“…and he gives patience first”) before. This, to me, seems like something worth dwelling upon. Affliction can breed patience, but affliction thrown into a life with no patience seems to rarely push one closer to God. From whence, then, the baseline patience?
“…do not think that, even if your locutions come from God, you will for that reason be any the better. After all, he talked a great deal with the Pharisees: any good you may gain will depend upon how you profit by what you hear … Whether they come from within, from above or from without, has nothing to do with their coming from God.” (pg 97)
This is a MASSIVE point that ties in with my confession from yesterday’s post on the Fifth Mansions. Whether or not people have divine encounters or display supernatural manifestations is not ultimately the defining marker of a life characterized by, leading towards, and/or promoting Christ. “Test the spirits…”
“…she feels that she would not intentionally commit so much as a venial sin, even were she to be cut in pieces; and thus she is greatly distressed to find that, without being aware of the fact, she cannot avoid committing a great many.” (pg 115)
I had a conversation yesterday with a friend and scholar who is doing significant work in understanding the major Reformation thinkers in general (and Melanchthon in particular), and so our conversation naturally headed towards distinctions between Reformed theology and Arminian theology (the short-hand way of referring to the type of theology Wesleyan churches hold… on paper, at least). I’ll be posting that conversation quite likely next week on my podcast feed, but I’ll just set it up here by saying: I always get excited when I discover that different Christian faith traditions actually seem to believe virtually the same thing, even though terminology & application make it seem as though there’s a chasm.
“…a woman in this state will be distressed at being prevented from doing this by the obstacle of [gender] and very envious of those who are free to cry aloud and proclaim abroad Who is this great God of Hosts.” (pg 115)
Speaking of my podcast, I had a wonderful conversation a few months back with my friend Tanya Nace about the challenges & benefits of women in leadership & ministry, and I couldn’t help but think of it when I read this quote. 16th century RC Spain is not 21st century evangelical NA, yet “those who have ears to hear, let them here”.
“…even if these things be not of God, they will do you no harm if you are humble and have a good conscience. His Majesty is able to bring good out of evil and you will gain by following the road by which the devil hoped to bring you to destruction.” (pg 135)
This is more than just a paraphrase of Romans 8:28; it is a practical development of it, and a particularly helpful one for an overthinker like me. It is good to be mindful of the source of what comes our way, but it is ultimately impossible to know with certainty whether or not some things (be they perceived as goods or bads) come from God. Yet if we follow after that which we believe to be the revealed will & Word of God, then whatever befall us can be used for His purposes. So we don’t need to check our God-given reason at the door, nor fall prey to fatalism, but we also don’t need to be paralyzed by uncertainty. In the end, God’s got it. May He also have us.
Notable Quotables:
“…experience shows it clearly how people will speak well of others as readily as ill, and so it takes no more notice of the former class than of the latter.” (pg 88)
“This great God desires us to know that he is a King and we are miserable creatures…” (pg 91)
“The devil … can give pleasures and delights which seem to be spiritual, but it is beyond his power to unite pain – and such a great pain! – with tranquility and joy in the soul.” (pg 95)
“It may seem to the soul that everything is moving in the contrary direction to what it had been led to expect, and yet, even if many years go by, it never loses its belief that, though God may use other means incomprehensible to men, in the end what He has said will come true; as in fact it does.” (pg 98)
“…for betrothal with the King of Heaven I must warn you that there is more need of courage than you imagine…” (pg 103)
“…true though it is that these are things which the Lord gives to whom He will, He would give them to us all if we loved Him as He loves us. For He desires nothing else but to have those to whom He may give them, and His riches are not diminished by His readiness to give.” (pg 108)
“For His sake, sisters, I beseech you, to whom His Majesty has granted these favours or others like them, not merely to receive them and then grow careless, but to remember that anyone who owes much has much to pay.” (pg 111)
“…emotional people, who weep for the slightest thing; again and again they will think they are weeping for reasons which have to do with God but this will not be so in reality.” (pg 117)
“I seem to hear you asking whatever you are to do, as I'm telling you there is danger in everything.” (pg 117)
“Let the tears come when God is pleased to send them: we ourselves should make no efforts to induce them.” (pg 118)
“…as long as we live in this mortal body we shall always have failures.” (pg 121)
“There are some people … on whom our Lord bestows perfect contemplation and who would like to remain in possession of it forever. That is impossible; but they retain something of this Divine favour…” (pg 122)
“…nor is it a good thing to expect miracles…” (pg 123)
“…life is long and there are many trials in it and we have need to look at Christ our pattern, and also at his Apostles and Saints, and to reflect how they bore these trials, so that we, too, may bear them perfectly.” (pg 125)
“…I thought I was on the proper road, until one day, when I was telling a person who was a servant of God about my method of prayer, he gave me some counsel.” (pg 126)
“…though we know quite well but God is present in all that we do, our nature is such that it makes us lose sight of the fact…” (pg 129)
“…if you know such a person, it is best to consult one both spiritual and learned.” (pg 130)
“…there is no ground here either for approval or for condemnation. We must base our judgments on the virtues. The saintliest will be she who serves our Lord with the greatest mortification and humility and purity of conscience. Little, however, can be known with any certainty about this on earth, nor until the true Judge gives each his deserts.” (pg 131)
“We do not prize it any the less for not having seen it, because we have found by experience that it has cured us of certain illnesses for which it is a sovereign remedy.” (pg 132)
“O, Lord, how little do we Christians know Thee!” (pg 133)
“…the devil can disturb the soul, but he cannot shake the firmness of its belief.” (pg 134)
“The devil is a skillful painter... However evil the painter be, one cannot fail to reverence the picture that he paints, if it is of Him who is our only Good.” (pg 135)
“His Majesty also communicates Himself in other ways, which are much more sublime, and are also less dangerous, because, I think, the devil cannot counterfeit them. But, being very secret things, they are difficult to describe, whereas imaginary visions can be explained more readily.” (pg 138)
“…it is absolutely true to say that we have no good thing in ourselves, but only misery and nothingness; and anyone who fails to understand this is walking in falsehood.” (pg 140)
As we saw yesterday in the reflections upon the Fourth Mansions, the ability to make our way through these mansions towards the centre is not inherent within us, nor does it fully rest upon us. It is crucial to remember that “it is God who works in” us to desire & to act. And yet, as we enter into the Fifth Mansions, Teresa pushes back upon our preconceptions in another direction:
“…although this work is performed by the Lord, and we can do nothing to make His Majesty grant us this favour, we can do a great deal to prepare ourselves for it.” (pg 70)
This “preparing” (in Teresa’s 16th century, Roman Catholic, monastic world) involves things that may be foreign to some of us and more familiar to others:
…frequent confessions, good books and sermons ... these are the remedies for a soul dead in negligences and sins and frequently plunged into temptation. (pg 71)
The point stands, though, that our God-given free will can either be used in ways that align with God’s plans or resist God’s plans for us and for His world.
This section of the book is rich with encouraging, convicting and (at times) confusing words. For example:
“…the devil, who gives peace to the soul in order later to wage a far severer war upon it.” (pg 73)
One might initially wonder “How can the devil give ‘peace’ to the soul?”, and… well, I, too, wonder this. There is a frequent theme throughout the book that not all “favours” (a term we unpacked more deeply here) are from / for God, that sometimes “the feels” or even a deep sense of “being true to ourselves” or “following our hearts” can be not cooperation with the loving Creator of all, but cooperation with His epoch-long foe. It might feel like a favour, but the strings attached to it might lead to destruction.
Another radically counter-cultural quote to throw into the mix today might be something liiiiiiiike:
“…there are fewer than there used to be who think of the Lord's honour! We are so very fond of ourselves and so very careful not to lose any of our rights!” (pg 83)
A jab that follows this setup:
“[God] will give you more even than you can desire. You must do violence to your own will, so that your sister’s will is done in everything, even though this may cause you to forgo your own rights and forget your own good in your concern for theirs, and however much your physical powers may rebel.” (pg 80)
It may be wise to remind ourselves here that the original audience of this text were nuns who lived in convent-community and had all consciously agreed to a style of living that is wildly different than the one you & I likely live. But though this may have had different implications for them and for us, the point remains all-too-valid, in my opinion: if our rights trump our love, then we likely have not yet fully understood & appreciated the work of Christ for us… nor achieved full union with Him.
There’s too much here to comment upon it all, and so I’ll throw a few notable quotables at the end, but to close today, I’d like to highlight one of the sentences that stood out the most to me from this entire book:
“…trust God more and more, and do not consider whether those to whom He communicates His favours are bad or good.” (pg 68)
Over the last few years, I’ve begun to put some thought into some gnawing feelings I’ve had for much longer, and these words from Teresa crystallize them for me. I have, at times, noticed that some of the people who seem to have some of the most charismatic gifts can occasionally (and I want to be delicate here) not project as being the type of people I’m drawn to emulate. This has been hard for me to come to terms with, since I think I had some sort of unconscious bias towards the actual value of these charismatic expressions, and thus was conflicted when I would seem them displayed in people whom (merely being viewed through flawed, human eyes like my own) did not seem to be displaying many of the other signs of the same Spirit as listed in the letter to the Galatians. I felt conflicted, like I was unavoidably being drawn to conclude that either I was mistaken about the nature of the gifts or I was mistaken about their validity in the life of this individual believer, neither of which felt like the right way forward (nor a healthy approach to community). And then BOOM, Teresa’s work & words paints a way for me to understand these favours as given by the hand of God according to His plan & purposes, whether for the building up of the individual or of the community, that even the withholding of such gifts can be for the same purposes, and that (even though our choices do have an effect upon how/when/where God acts in our lives) ultimately our character is not what drives the reception of these gifts… and that my job is not the judge the recipient but to be drawn to the Giver.
Notable Quotables:
“In difficult matters, even if I believe I understand what I'm saying and I'm speaking the truth, I use this phrase ‘I think’, because, if I am mistaken, I'm very ready to give credence to those who have great learning. For even if they have not themselves experienced these things, men of great learning have a certain instinct to prompt them.” (pg 67)
“…we cannot be sure if we are loving God, although we may have good reasons for believing that we are, but we can know quite well if we are loving our neighbour. And be certain that, the farther advanced you find you are in this, the greater the love you will have for God…” (pg 78)
“I like the way in which some souls, when they are at prayer, think that, for God's sake, they would be glad if they could be humbled and put to open shame – and then try to conceal quite a slight failure. Oh, and if they should be accused of anything that they have not done—! God save us from having to listen to them then!” (pg 79)
“…what the Lord desires is works…” (pg 80)
“…love is never idle, so failure to advance would be a very bad sign.” (pg 84)
“…if you would progress a long way on this road and ascend to the Mansions of your desire, the important thing is not to think much, but to love much; do, then, whatever most arouses you to love.” (pg 49)
The Fourth Mansions are the midway marker towards the centre of St Teresa’s Interior Castle, and if you’re just joining us now on this leg of the journey, you may want to hop back to the start to understand where we’re going). At the midway point, we may be inclined to hear in the back of our minds (if we were raised in a Western evangelical church, that is) the modern classic “I Have Decided To Follow Jesus”, since this could be construed as the point of no return. It is, of course, not the point of no return. There are those who end up living in the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Mansions, as well as those who visit there and return outwards. But the midway point could be a time where we fruitfully allow the so-called “sunk cost fallacy” to work in our favour: “Since I’ve come this far, why not keep going?” Christ’s words to us through Luke 14 are wise to heed in advance, that we should “count the cost” before moving ahead, but so too are His words from Luke 9 that remind us while even on the journey to “not look back”.
In this section, Teresa continues to push back on notions that attaining oneness with Christ or “holiness” is just about our own wellbeing or exclusively about some sort of moral purity, but it is about love. Love for God and love for neighbour.
She also pushes back here on some of the common misconceptions about meditation. Namely, that it happens by “trying harder”:
“Do not suppose that the understanding can attain to Him, merely by trying to think of Him as there.” (pg 57)
“…the person who does most is he who thinks least and desires to do least: what we have to do is to beg like poor and needy persons coming before a great and rich Emperor and then cast down our eyes in humble expectation.” (pg 58)
The point that I take from this is that we are so often inclined to think of spiritual disciplines (and of any sort of life-improvement in general, really) as an act of addition. “What can I add into my life that will make things better?” Meditation can be approached like this, both in the sense that it can be one more thing we add into our schedules and also in the sense that the very act of it is trying to add a thought in to focus more on. While, in a sense, this latter point is partially true, it can also be understood as a process of subtraction. “What can I remove from my life that will make things better?” Meditation can be a process of uncluttering, of removing excess thoughts, and thus allowing God’s thoughts / voice to enter into our space. Which is, of course, impossibly difficult:
“…the very effort which the soul makes in order to cease from thought will perhaps awaken thought and cause it to think a great deal.” (pg 59)
Impossibly difficult for us, that is.
“…thoughts, as a rule, fly so fast that only God can restrain them…” (pg 49)
As with meditation so with salvation: Though we have a part to play in receiving & claiming this work, we are helpless to initiate or perfect either. This is not a trail we blaze but a path we follow.
In closing, I’d like to highlight here a shining example of Teresa’s epistemological humility:
“It may be that in writing of these interior things I am contradicting what I have myself said elsewhere … perhaps the Lord is now giving me a clearer realization of these matters than I had at first. Both then and now, of course, I may be mistaken in all this, but I cannot lie about it… “ (pg 54)
(*for previous posts in this series, you can visit marcjolicoeur.com*)
“…we have in no way obliged our Lord to grant us such favours; but rather that, the more we have received of Him, the more deeply do we remain in his debt.” (pg 39)
As we move into the third set of mansions, we continue to wrestle with Teresa’s conception of “grace”. Throughout the work, she constantly refers to “favours”1, without shedding much clarity on the term. From what I can cobble together, it seems likely that these are what we might be inclined today to call charismatic experiences, ranging from the subtle (“sensing God’s presence”) to the extreme (manifestations akin to being “slain in the spirit” or “speaking in tongues”). A less spiritual terminology that might be equally descriptive would be something like “feelings of transcendence”. It’s important to view these “favours” as 1) desirable and 2) coming from God, or else the way Teresa uses the term in these quotes will make no sense.
“For often, as you have read, it is to the weakest that His Divine Majesty gives favours, which I believe they would not exchange for all the fortitude given to those who go forward in aridity. We are fonder of spiritual sweetness than of crosses. Test us, O Lord, Thou who knowest all truth, that we may know ourselves.” (pg 40)
Returning to the opening quote from this post, though, Teresa is pushing back against the idea that by the traveller’s prayers or deeds they have somehow purchased from or convinced God to provide these favours.
“…It should never enter our heads that we can deserve anything.” (pg 38)
What’s more, there are times where God’s “withholding” of favours is for our good.
“For often it is God's will that His elect should be conscious of their misery and so He withdraws His help from them a little – and no more than that is needed to make us recognize our limitations very quickly.” (pg 40)
Once again, though, to return to our opening quote: though the argument for obligation does not run the way some wish it did, this does not mean that it does not run the other way. In the circles in which I grew up, I bounced between a tradition that was caricatured as speaking of a “radical grace” (God gives freely, without expectation of your behaviour in return whatsoever) and a tradition that was caricatured as being “legalistic” (God’s grace is actually only given when you behave in certain ways). On paper, neither of these traditions likely articulated such caricatures, but the images show the tension within Protestantism in general about how we conceive of God’s gifts to us. Recent scholarship has taken great pains to push back upon our understanding of grace as a no-strings-attached-freebie towards more of a patron-client-relationship. In the latter, the client simply does not have the capital or capacity required to initiate any kind of ask: they cannot buy from the patron. The patron, thus, by necessity has to gift to the client that which they need… but this by no means implies that the patron has no expectations of the client in return. It is a gift, yes, but not a “gift among equals”. Depending upon your own understanding of grace, this may line up perfectly for you… or it may cause some significant pushback to rise up within. Take it up with Teresa.
There are too many valuable & provocative sections to deal with here today (check out the “Notable Quotable” section below for more), but I’ll close here today with this humdinger of a quote that slaps a closeted totalitarian like myself smack in the face:
“Let us look at our own shortcomings and leave other people's alone; for those who live carefully ordered lives are apt to be shocked at everything and we might well learn very important lessons from the persons who shock us. Our outward comportment and behaviour may be better than theirs, but this, though good, is not the most important thing: there is no reason why we should expect everyone else to travel by our own road and we should not attempt to point them to the spiritual path when perhaps we do not know what it is.” (pg 45)
Notable Quotables
“Beseech His Majesty, my daughters, always to live within me, for otherwise what security can there be in a life as misspent as mine? And do not let it depress you to realize that I am like that …” (pg 36)
“Words are not enough, any more than they were for the young man when the Lord told him what to do if he wished to be perfect.” (pg 38)
“When we proceed with all this caution, we find stumbling-blocks everywhere; for we are afraid of everything, and dare not go farther, as if we could arrive at these Mansions by letting others make the journey for us!” (pg 43)
“…we shall be making a great mistake if we worry over our health, especially as it will not be improved by our anxiety about it – that I well know. I know, too, that our progress has nothing to do with the body, which is the thing that matters least.” (pg 43)
“…perfection consists not in consolations, but in the increase of love…” (pg 44)
“It is a great advantage for us to be able to consult someone who knows us, so that we may learn to know ourselves. And it is a great encouragement to see that things which we thought impossible are possible to others…” (pg 45)
1 At least, what her translator is rendering in English as such
“It is absurd to think that we can enter Heaven without first entering our own souls – without getting to know ourselves, and reflecting upon the wretchedness of our nature and what we owe to God, and continually imploring His mercy.” (pg 33)
Yesterday we began a seven-day journey along the spiral path of St Teresa of Avila’s Interior Castle, and so today we find ourselves in the area she refers to as the Second Mansions. This is among the briefer sections of the book, and thus will also be among the briefer commentaries I shall make. I will begin by noting, though, that yesterday I mistakenly titled the reflections First Mansion, in the singular, whereas the text makes it clear that there are indeed mansions. I take this to mean that (in Teresa’s conception) there is plenty of room for everyone on this journey… whether or not that was what she’d grammatically intended.
The opening quote above is a powerful support to Teresa’s general thesis: namely that if Christ lives within us, then to be able to fully appreciate and commune with Him we cannot help but also go within ourselves to meet Him there. Thus the emphasis upon prayer and contemplation, but not merely in isolation. Teresa’s audience would have been doing so in the community of their holy orders, and she would no doubt expect any external readers to take advantage similarly of relationality in the process of introspection. When we’re left to ourselves, we can fool ourselves. When we’re open & honest with people who care about us and have our best interests in mind, it is harder (though not impossible) to fool them.
Another potential misunderstanding when we approach Teresa’s worldview is that it’s exclusively about Mark 12:30 and not about Mark 12:31 (aka all about “love God” and none about “love neighbour”). We might be tempted to see Teresa as condoning a worldview wherein if your “heart is right” then your actions won’t matter at all. Pray & meditate, but don’t worry about treating others well:
“For what can be the value of faith without works, or of works which are not united with the merits of our Lord Jesus Christ?” (pg 34)
Here, Teresa brilliantly threads the needle between a James-like “dead faith” and a Paul-like “predestination” that calls to mind the great Dallas Willard quote:
“Grace is not opposed to effort, it is opposed to earning.”
So, for me, the takeaway from the Second Mansions is this: The process of introspection is not an optional one on the road with Christ. It is as necessary as breathing in. However, it is only half of the story, and a completely useless (if not impossible) half without its counterpart. Just as we cannot breathe in without having first breathed out, we should not think that we can come to know ourselves better without using that knowledge to love God all the better by loving His creation(s). Love for God = love for neighbour.
Notable Quotables:
“All that the beginner in prayer has to do ... is to labour and be resolute and prepare himself with all possible diligence to bring his will into conformity with the will of God.” (pg 32)
“…unless we have peace, and strive for peace in our own home, we shall not find it in the homes of others.” (p 33)
(*I gave a general introduction of Teresa’s work and my plans for talking about it here, for context, so now I’m just gonna jump in to some brief reflections upon what she refers to, through a translator, as “the first mansions”*)
Before entering the mansions proper, Teresa gives us a few caveats in her preface that seem notable to me:
“I write as mechanically as birds taught to speak” (pg 13).
Throughout the book, Teresa gives us a vibe that she’s acutely aware of her limitations. It’s unclear as to whether or not these self-deprecating comments are just humility or possibly intentional ways of playing a sort of politics. There are times she references biblical content while stating that she is unaware of where it is found, for example. To me, it seems likely that she is conscious of her gender at play, and that even though she is writing to other women, she is aware that “learned men” will be playing a role in the dissemination of this information. This awareness (coupled with her lack of formal education and the mystical nature of her writing) leads to the second caveat in question:
“If I should say anything that is not in Conformity with what is held by the Holy Roman Catholic Church, it will be through ignorance and not through malice” (pg 14).
Now, into the mansions proper. I will merely make comment upon two quotes, but will append a number of notables from this section.
“As far as I can understand, the door of entry into this castle is prayer and meditation: I do not say mental prayer rather than vocal, for, if it is prayer at all, it must be accompanied by meditation. If a person does not think Whom he is addressing, and what he is asking for, and who it is that is asking and of Whom he is asking it, I do not consider that he's praying at all even though he be constantly moving his lips. True, it is sometimes possible to pray without paying heed to these things, but that is only because they have been thought about previously…” (pg 18)
Right away (depending upon your faith background, I suppose) you’re likely struck with a bit of a disjointing thought. “Prayer must be accompanied by meditation?” I sense that the latter term has essentially become disconnected from religious tradition in my neck of the woods & era. One can easily hear popular atheists like Sam Harris talk about his practice of meditation, and “mindfulness” is the topic of elementary school education and top-grossing apps. This leads me to wonder if the Christian church has consciously or unconsciously distanced themselves from the term. In fairness, it is a squishy term, and sitting on the floor in a transcendental state need not necessarily be what “meditate” means here (although, in fact, it also could be what it means here). From a biblical perspective, the passages in the Psalms that often end up in English utilizing the term could be understood to mean something like focusing on God/His Law/His deeds in a regular and intentional way. Externally, this would not necessarily look different than what our popular conception of meditation would look like. Internally, some forms of meditation are more about reduction (removing any object of focus) than they are addition (making sure that we add in and zero in on one thing in particular to focus on), but the main area in which these potentially competing versions of meditation differ is on purpose. The express purpose of Teresa’s vision of meditation (a purpose which, it seems, lines up well with the Christian tradition in general) is not merely to improve one’s life, nor to generically lead one towards some sense of transcendence, but rather to lead one closer to direct contact with the Trinitarian Godhead.
I felt that needed a modicum of clarification, since meditation and prayer are (as Teresa says above) “the door of entry” into this castle and thus into the discussions that follow. Briefly, then, let me also note that in the above quote she is likely not deconstructing the use of written prayers (an attack that many in my faith tradition would enjoy) any more than she is setting up some sort of jabs against extemporaneous or even ecstatic tongues-like prayers. Her point seems to be that whether or not one is praying out loud, using prepared texts, or even making sounds that seem to them less-than-intelligible, what will have made it “prayer” is the fact that it will be part of a continuum, a pattern, a lifestyle of consciously & intentionally focusing on & addressing the God who is exemplified for us in Jesus Christ.
“He inspires a sister with the yearning to do penance, so that she seems to have no peace save when she is torturing herself. This, in itself, is good; but, if the prioress has ordered that no penance is to be done without leave, and yet the sister thinks that she can venture to persist in so beneficial a practice, and secretly orders her life in such a way that in the end she ruins her health and is unable to do what her Rule demands, you see what this apparently good thing has led to…” (pg 26)
I had to bring this quote out since, again, it stands out as so unusual. It does us no good to forget who the original audience of Teresa’s work was; nuns. Catholic nuns, at that. In my world, “penance” is a dirty word, and so this paragraph can read as non-sensical. But replace it with a potential holy-cow for many in my world (myself included): family. The “he” in the above quote is our adversary, Satan, who is using good things to distract us from what we’re called to. You may have heard it said that good is the enemy of great, and this may be what Teresa’s angling towards. So, in my case, if I know that I’m called to serve in a particular capacity in my community or if God is leading me towards a certain spiritual discipline but the Enemy (be that something inside me or something outside me) is tempting me to use that time or those resources on something which is also a “good” (i.e. my family) in a way that is disordered and leads to breakdown… that’s an imperfect analogy, but hopefully it will draw out a little more of what Teresa is saying in a way that we can understand for our contexts.
So, for me, the takeaway for the First Mansions is this: If I wish to not only feel united with the Divine but actually be united with the Divine, it likely won’t happen by accident. Prayer and meditation (with the Bible and towards the Person of Jesus Christ) are the first step of the journey.
We’ll be back tomorrow with some thoughts from the Second Mansions.
Notable Quotables:
“Though [genealogical ignorance] is great stupidity, our own is incomparably greater if we make no attempt to discover what we are, and only know that we are living in these bodies, and have a vague idea, because we have heard it and because our Faith tells us so, that we possess souls.” (pg 16)
“He grants these favours, then, not because those who receive them are holier than those who do not, but in order that his greatness maybe made known…” (pg 17)
“…souls without prayer are like people whose bodies or limbs are paralyzed…” (pg 17)
“O souls redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ! Learn to understand yourselves and take pity on yourselves!” (pg 20)
“I once heard a spiritual man say that he was not so much astonished at the things done by a soul in mortal sin as at the things not done by it.” (pg 21)
“The reader must have patience with me, as I have with myself when writing about things of which I know nothing; for really I sometimes take up my paper, like a perfect fool, with no idea of what to say or how to begin.” (pg 21)
“…without humility all will be lost.” (pg 22)
“…one can have too much of a good thing… [in reference to the pursuit of ‘self knowledge’]” (pg 23)
“They think that all these misgivings, and many more that I could describe, arise from humility, whereas they really come from our lack of self-knowledge. We get a distorted idea of her own nature, and, if we never stop thinking about ourselves, I'm not surprised if we experience these fears and others which are still worse.” (pg 24)
This video was part of a year-long series of videos produced for the church at which I serve (Moncton Wesleyan), entitled "Songs We Pray". This one in particular used the lens of Ash Wednesday to talk about the Matt Redman song "10,000 Reasons". This Lent, it feels just as relevant to me.
I was recently blessed to have had the opportunity to chat with Dr Steve Lennox about a number of things, chief of which is this excellent & eye-opening book of his, "A Holiness Hermeneutic". That conversation will be featured on episode 14 of the "Jolly Thoughts Podcast". But, as I read through the book, I highlighted an underlined SO MANY THINGS that I figured I ought to collate them into a single area for reflection/consideration.
In essence, the book is a way of explaining how many people from the so-called American "holiness movement" in the 19th & 20th centuries read the Bible, why they read it that way, and how those readings may have spilled forward into a number of strands of Christianity today (such as The Wesleyan Church, for example). I was greatly interested in the distinction between fundamentalism and these readings, and how these readers might have informed/morphed into strands of the evangelicalism(s) we see today. But enough of my words, here are load of Lennox's:
"God works through persons, through individual souls, instead of committees, and federated bands, or great organizations. The strongest force on earth is the individual soul”. One result of this process of individuation has been to set the individual in opposition to society. (quoting George Watson on pgs 4-5)
“The populist hermeneutic was individualistic in that it granted to each person the right to interpret the Bible for himself or herself. It was not simply individualistic, however, for in many ways it actually exalted the common person above the scholar. This approach to the Bible was both democratic… and privatistic…” (pg 8)
“The Holiness movement, as with all movements, interpreted the Bible using certain presuppositions. Four that played a very important role in shaping Holiness interpretation were the immanence of God, the centrality of the Holy Spirit [or pneumatocentricity], the unity of the Bible, and it's more-than-literal nature.” (pg 13)
“...by emphasizing sola scriptura and the Bible's perspicuity… the Reformers were not doing away with authority. Rather, they were handing over that authority to the individual Christian, as led by the Holy Spirit.” (pg 16)
“Methodists preachers were notoriously uneducated…” (pg 24)
“There is, therefore, one recipient of truth within, and one source of truth without – a conscience and a Bible. The former, without the latter, is but an erring guide; the latter, without the former, is but a lifeless letter. But when both mingle their mutual light and influence, hope dawns upon the world.” (pg 26, quoting a Methodist minister from 1842)
“The Lord hath more light yet to break forth out of his holy word …” (pg 27, quoting John Robinson)
“...once the slate was wiped clean, others felt free to write their own interpretations there. It is somewhat ironic that while the Authorized Version liberated Puritans to carry out their vision of a new society in which public dissension was not tolerated, it also liberated others in Puritan society to disagree with the establishment and arrive at their own interpretations.” (pg 28)
“These leaders were not so much anti-intellectual as they were anti-elite. It was the common sense of the people, not the classical education of the few, that was a sure route to truth. Consensus, more than theological coherence, was now the litmus test of right doctrine.” (pg 31)
“Common Sense Realism emphasized that basic truth is essentially the same for all persons of all times and places. This meant that the Bible could best be understood through inductive study, using the same method proposed for the study of science by the 17th century English philosopher Francis Bacon.” (pg 34)
“Those passages difficult to understand should be interpreted by reading the obscure in the light of the clear…” (pg 35, as a comment upon Moses Stuart’s view of Common Sense Realism)
“The power to persuade became even more important than theological acumen, and common preaching thrived.” (pg 36)
“...Americans had to be suspicious of a hermeneutic that allowed both sides to encourage and defend such a bloody conflict [as the Civil War]...” (pg 37)
“...Fundamentalist leaders assured believers that scholarly assistance was unnecessary, but then initiated the followers into an interpretive approach that was very difficult to follow without help like that provided by the notes in the Scofield Reference Bible.” (pg 41)
“...to eyes not anointed, the Bible is largely a sealed book.” (pg 42, quoting Phineas Bresee)
“Wesley… shared an Enlightenment-era confidence in the ability and potential of humanity. That it was an optimism of grace, not an optimism of nature, preserved it from Pelagianism.” (pg 44)
“Wesley produced a generation of seekers after holiness, Palmer produced holiness professors. Those who followed Wesley focused on how to seek for holiness; Palmer's followers focused on how to live the holy life.” (pg 49)
“Perfectionist teaching also appealed because it was practical and produced results, qualities admired by American Christians who wanted a faith that did something.” (pg 51)
“A theology which emphasized perfection was itself a criticism of the status quo and a platform from which further critiques could flow, such as those offered by feminism.” (pg 53)
“It is far more revealing, for example, to examine their assumption that the Bible is one unified piece of divine revelation than to ask whether they always interpreted a passage and its historical context.” (pg 61)
“What emerged was less a quadrilateral and more a bilateral between the Bible and experience. The ‘furnaces’ of reason and tradition, having produced questionable workmanship in the past, were avoided and at times vilified.” (pg 62)
“The Holiness movement was far more comfortable speaking about common sense than it was about reason…” (pg 70)
“It was Wesley's appreciation for tradition … that enabled Wesley to maintain his catholic, tolerant spirit.” (pg 70)
“Wesley considered tradition as the work of God among his people in the past, drawing from it insight and correction. The Holiness movement considered tradition primarily as God's way of keeping the truth of holiness alive until their day.” (pg 72)
“One experience in the converted or sanctified life ... is worth ten thousand theories … “ (Carradine) // “...an open Bible, interpreted in the light of a spiritual experience …” (Steele, both on pg 73)
“Experience outweighs Theory; faith makes philosophy kick the beam… some scripture passages can only be unlocked by experience” (quotes from pg 74)
“The Holiness movement …” considered “the truest understanding of scripture to await, not conversion alone, but the experience of entire sanctification.” (pg 74)
“The literature of the Word is not the Word. The critical examination of texts and translations is not the beholding of the glory of the Lord.” (pg 76, quote from Joseph Smith’s “From Glory To Glory”)
“Watson considered that the 32,000 promises in the Bible ‘cover every condition and every case that can be imagined in this world, and every single promise is secured by the atonement.’ A book of promises is meant to be experienced, both by ‘claiming’ them and living out their fulfillment.” (pg 77)
“Unsaved formalists advertise their deplorable blindness by opposing demonstrations that are of celestial birth. The hallelujahs and Amens of the holiness movement here below are simply scintillations which fly down from the similar meetings above.” (pg 79, quoting Martin Wells Knapp)
“The Holiness movement was a movement built on one doctrinal distinctive, the experience of entire sanctification. This being true, a greater reliance on experience is not at all surprising.” (pg 80)
“At times, experience became more important than the Bible and shaped its interpretation.” (pg 81)
An observation by Smith on pg 84 that “a ten day camp meeting was equivalent to a year in seminary…” speaks to the understanding of formal education.
“As a rule the most intellectual people are not the most efficient soul-savers. A prominent doctor of divinity told me that in a ministry of thirty years he did not know that he had been instrumental in saving a soul …” (pg 85, quote of Godbey)
“Like the adherents of the populist hermeneutic that preceded them, they described the Bible as ‘plain’, by which they meant it was simple, used unsophisticated language, and could be clearly understood.” (pg 88)
“The Bible is a plain book, needing nothing but common sense and the Holy Ghost to understand it.” (pg 90, quoting Godbey)
“Often the reader was called to return to primitive and Apostolic Christianity, to live according to New Testament simplicity or New Testament discipline, or to live according to the book of Acts.” (pg 92)
“If your creed is true, you do not need it, as the Bible includes it; if untrue, throw it away, lest it lead you to hell.” (pg 95, quoting Godbey)
“As evidenced by the diversity of eschatological viewpoints, for example, variability in biblical interpretation was far more tolerable than variability in the experience and explanation of entire sanctification.” (pg 98)
“The presuppositions that people bring to the Bible, consciously or unconsciously, serve as the foundation and framework for their biblical interpretation.” (pg 100)
“These writers continued to see in scripture the scarlet thread of redemption but took as their mission the task of pointing out another thread running through the word. ‘It is the white one of the promise of the Pentecostal outpouring of the Holy Ghost. Of all the promises of the Bible God exalts this as The Promise of all the ages.’” (pg 104, quoting Knapp)
“Christians living in this age were crowned with a privileged perspective…” (pg 105)
“The Spirit's work included the ‘double inspiration’ of the Bible, both of the original authors end of the modern interpreter, the latter being there by granted ‘an astonishing insight into the holy scriptures.’” (pg 106, partially quoting Steele)
“Steele counselled seekers to ‘trust the written word of God till you have the spoken word of the Spirit in your heart.’” (pg 106)
“As sanctification came to be more controversial within Methodism later in the century, the force of the conflict drove the parties to extremes, erasing Wesley's more balanced presentation.” (pg 107)
“It explained why the New Testament authors use the aorist tense of the Greek language when they speak of sanctification, a tense which ‘always denotes an instantaneous action, forever annihilating the gradualistic theology of sanctification out of the Bible.‘“ (pg 112)
“Most Christians, up through the period under consideration, continued to read the Bible as God's word to humanity, while the scholarly world came increasingly to read it as humanity's word about God.” (pg 114)
“The Bible was not written by haphazard, nor by chance. There is a marvellous arrangement everywhere.” (pg 116, quoting Watson on “Scriptural Unity”)
“Because he assumed revelation was progressive, Steele regarded 1st John – thought by him to be the last New Testament book written – as the key to interpret the entire Bible … There was even some feeling within the Holiness movement that God was continuing to reveal his truth… “ (pg 117)
“Robinson and others made special appeals to God to show them something new in the Bible.” (pg 121)
“Those things ‘imbedded [sic] and hidden away in the Bible for the recognition and future use of all generations’ are the ‘deep truths.’” (pg 121)
“One wonders how much of the Holiness movement’s appreciation for the hidden had to do with the fact that they were hidden…. Those on the unpopular side should take heart, for ‘the majority has always been wrong and the minority has always been right on the moral questions of the day.’” (quoting Robinson on pg 122)
“By deemphasizing reason and church tradition, the Holiness movement neglected moorings that would have protected them from the abuses that are common to more-than-literal interpretation.” (pg 123)
“...taking everything figuratively, until there is nothing historical and real; it is all mystical. There is no real devil, no real Christ, no real cross.” (Watson on “over-spiritualizing, pg 124)
“The prohibition against the garment mixed with wool and linen and the process of cleansing the leper were understood to teach entire sanctification.” (pg 125)
“Like Israel, believers can break God's covenant and be forced to vacate the promised land, going ‘out of Canaan into Babylon.’” (pg 127)
“The syllogism ran like this: since Holiness is central, it should appear throughout the Bible. Holiness does not appear clearly stated in the Old Testament, as found in the New Testament. Therefore, Holiness must be stated symbolically in the Old Testament, requiring appropriate methods to unlock it.” (pg 128)
“They considered it more important that an interpretation agree with the central teaching of the Bible than that it agree with its immediate context.” (pg 129)
“...experience, an indispensable aid in biblical interpretation, is not easily kept in its proper place; without necessary safeguards, it may take control.” (pg 131)
“As the Holiness movement was retreating to the margins of the ecclesiastical world while the ecclesiastical world was retreating to the margins of society, the movement was left doubly isolated. Its isolation prompted it to turn inward. It's spoke to itself rather than its world because the world was not listening ... It made an effort to impact society by living a holy life, but it's candle was barely visible from the margins.” (pg 134)
“The Holiness movement maintained the view that the Bible alone was not the word of God, but only the Bible as enlivened by the Holy Spirit.” (pg 137)
“The holiness movement while recognizing the historical and human elements of the Bible regarded it primarily as a divine book. The higher critics may have affirmed the Bible's message, but they choose to treat it primarily as a human book.” (pg 140)
“The Holiness movement’s shift from isolation to respectability has... prompted a redefining of holiness away from an emphasis on a second crisis experience and toward an emphasis on the state of perfect love.” (pg 142)
“...the question has been raised as to whether a doctrine of inerrancy in matters of science and history has any place in the history and message of the holiness movement.” (pg 142, in respects to fundamentalism)
“...while Wesley did not believe there were mistakes in the Bible, he did recognize the possibility of errors.” (pg 143)
“...Schenck describes the Bible as a sacrament… God meets us where we are in scripture... As he does in the ordinary bread and wine of communion. Reading a passage in its literary and historical context is not required in order to hear from God.” (pg 148)
“We must ... ‘employ critical methods, but not uncritically. Critical tools have a ministerial, not magisterial, function in biblical interpretation.’” (pg 148, quoting Vanhoozer)
"Polyvalence contradicts a cardinal rule of biblical scholarship: seek only the meaning the original author intended. To claim that the biblical texts had any meaning other than the literal sense was and is, for many biblical critics, an error of the grossest sort.” (pg 150)
“...what more liberal and more fruitful provision could God have made in regard to the Sacred Scriptures than that the same words might be understood in several senses, all of which are sanctioned by the concurring testimony of other passages equally divine.” (pg 151, quoting Augustine)
“No true interpretation will differ from Apostolic tradition, what has been believed by all Christians, throughout Christendom, from the beginning of Christianity.” (pg 152)
"Irenaeus offered an analogy of how the rule of Faith was meant to operate within the church. A mosaic is just a collection of small stones, tesserae, until one assembles these stones into the intended picture. To know how to arrange the tesserae required a key, in Greek, a hypothesis. The rule of Faith serves as this key, permitting one to properly arrange the various parts of scripture into the picture God intended us to see. More recently, the rule of faith has been defined as ‘a basic summary of the biblical story centred on identifying God to be Triune.’ It represents the ‘sum content of apostolic teaching’, essentially what we find in the Nicene or Apostles Creed.” (pg 153)
"Augustine's ‘rule of love’: “Whoever, then, thinks that he understands the holy scriptures, or any part of them, but puts such an interpretation upon them as does not tend to build up this twofold love of God and our neighbour, does not yet understand them as he ought.” (pg 154)
“The church and the rest of society have settled the matter, determining that slavery is immoral and should be resisted at all costs. God has shed more light from his holy word.” (pg 156)
“...transformed souls are both the goal of interpretation and a means toward achieving that goal.” (pg 157)
**This article was originally written a few years ago as a paper (hence the references and the Reading List at the end… and maybe the “stuffier language” than usual, for me, throughout), but… feel’s helpful for me to dig it out today. I talk a little more as to why on Episode Twelve of the Jolly Thoughts podcast.**
In this essay I will walk through some of my initial thoughts about the nature of the Church (through the lenses of the Bible, church tradition, and theology), synthesizing them into an applicable model of my own, and then briefly discussing how such a model might speak to my current context.
The Greek word that is translated as “church” in most English versions of the NT is a handful of variations on “ἐκκλησία” (ekklésia), which appears to originally have had a range of meanings that speak primarily to political and/or group gatherings, not necessarily of a religious nature. A comparison of the uses of the term in the book of Acts will reveal what appear to be references to localized congregations of Jesus-followers (Acts 8:1), non-localized affiliations of Jesus-followers (Acts 9:31), as well as groups that have no direct association with Jesus whatsoever (Acts 7:38, 19:32-41). LXX manuscripts and other ancient Jewish texts reveal “...ekklēsia was used for various assemblies of, and even as a supra-local identity for, the ethno-religious nation of Israel, for publicly accessible gatherings of Jews during the Hellenistic (Judea) and Imperial periods (Judea and Alexandria), and for the permanent group identity of at least one semi-public association in Philo’s Alexandria” (Korner 2017, 263). This helps explain the arrival of the term in the NT and helps contextualize its potential application, but the entity that comes to be known as “the Church” is not merely present in the NT through the term itself. Though the only times Jesus is quoted as using the term are three instances in Matthew (16:18 & 18:17), he nonetheless makes several other references to “those who will believe in” him (John 17:20, NIV), as do Peter (1 Peter 2:9-10), James (James 2:1-2), and John (1 John 1:6-7). All this is to say that a biblical conception of the Church is not sufficiently arrived at by concordance alone, but by taking in the whole scope of the scriptures (OT & NT) and synthesizing a canonically-informed hermeneutic.
There is a long history of Christians thinking about and articulating ecclesiology, much more so than could be robustly dealt with in this paper. Near the beginning of the second century, Ignatius of Antioch was writing to various local churches about the need to “abjure all factions” and to follow their bishops “as obediently as Jesus Christ followed the Father” (Louth 1987, 103). Ignatius’ concern appears to be less about the governance of the Church and more about her unity: “Where the bishop is to be seen, there let all his people be; just as wherever Jesus Christ is present, we have the catholic Church” (ibid, 103). These words were written to the church at Smyrna, the church from which sprang (merely a few decades later) Iranaeus of Lyon, whose landmark work Adversus Haereses developed this ecclesiological marker of unity further, expounding upon the preservational and anchoring connections between the Church and “the faith”, and expanding Ignatius’ christological imagery to include the pneumatological: “...where the Church is, there is the Spirit of God; and where the Spirit of God is, there is the Church...” (Kärkkäinen 2002, 23). These local expressions of ecclesiology found their most universal expression when they were synthesized with others via ecumenical councils like the one held at Nicaea in 325, whose titular creed has provided for us four “classical marks” or “notae” of the Church: unity, holiness, catholicity, and apostolicity (Stackhouse 2003, 81).
Though there certainly were dissenting & competing voices from within and without “the Church” in the years between 325 and 1517 (the year that Martin Luther began his protestation in proper), the reformations that followed in the wake of the publication of Luther’s 95 Theses opened hitherto seemingly unavailable opportunities to reconsider all historically transmitted theologies, not least those pertaining to the Church. The accrued institutionality of the Church (and her observable unfaithfulness) led Luther to intentionally use different language when referring to her, preferring sammlung (“assembly”) and gemeinde (“congregation”) over kirche (“church”). His own most famous definition (one that he would likely claim was harkening back beyond the Nicene statements to the so-called Apostles’ Creed) says that the Church is “the gathering of all believers, in which the gospel is purely preached and the holy sacraments are administered in accord with the gospel” (Kärkkäinen 2002, 40). Though there is a long and winding road between Luther and my local context today, it seems clear to me that 21st Century Wesleyans owe much of their ecclesiology to the minimalist tendencies that many ensuing Reformers brought to bear.
The Bible speaks with varying (perhaps even inconclusive) voice about the Church, as does Christian tradition. As such, a unifying theology that neither discards nor distorts either of the former may be helpful in forming a practical ecclesiology for today. Two potential models I engaged with throughout this course were social trinitarianism and kingdom theology. In the former, we see the view that the selfless and loving communion of the triune God “is always creative, expansive, and transitive” (Harper and Metzger 2009, 22), and so when a God who is himself community comes into relationship with various individuals, his very essence knits them together into a reflective community. In the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (referring to Genesis 1:26): “likeness, the analogy of man to God, is not analogia entis [analogy of being] but analogia relationis [analogy of relation]” (ibid, 21). So just as God created us in the beginning, when he recreates us, there is no doubt that it will be into a deepened and widened community, not into isolation. “The only time in the creation story where God says something is not good is in Genesis 2:18, where God says it is not good for man to be alone” (ibid 24). Thus, social trinitarianism speaks of the Church as a natural consequence of our redemption.
Proponents of kingdom theology root their ecclesiology as a consequence of the inbreaking of the kingdom of God, an idealized NT reign of God that is continuous with OT textual expectations (cf Snyder 2001, 17–76), inaugurated in the work of Christ, and thus able to (at least in part) be realized through his Spirit-filled / mission-formed body, the Church. “Although theirs was a delegated power, the same power of the Kingdom worked through them that worked through Jesus … the church is the instrument of the Kingdom” (Ladd 1993, 114). In contrast to social trinitarianism (where our social relationship with God can be said to be the glue for church cohesion), here “...entrance into the kingdom means participation in the church”, with the corresponding disclaimer that “...entrance into the church is not necessarily synonymous with entrance into the Kingdom” (ibid 111). In these theological models, I would argue that we see significant potential causal explanation of the Church, even if the descriptions of her nature and/or prescriptions for her behaviour seem incomplete.
Given the amount of ink that has been spilled over this topic in the last two millennia, it seems that it has always been an issue of import to the people of God, and quite naturally so. If one finds oneself drawn to faith in Christ or even just born into any number of nominal Christian situations, then one will consciously or unconsciously have to either adopt or adapt an ecclesiology, and that ecclesiology will form part of a label that they wear; a label which will not only be read by those outside the Church (and thus help form their perceptions of those inside the Church) but will also be read by the label-wearers themselves whenever they look in the mirror (and thus help form the behaviours of those inside the Church). In the light of the way our current global situation has brought to the fore several different challenges to a classical view of the church while simultaneously highlighting exactly how “white unto harvest” the world truly is, I feel a burden to be able to articulate an accurate and functional ecclesiology for our people, one that will neither diminish the estimation of Christ’s bride nor inhibit the growth of his body. This, it would seem to me, is the balancing act at hand. When I take the pulse of many of my co-labourers, the general sense I get is that many of them feel even our current limited emphasis upon “the Church” vs “this church” leans towards stifling institutionality. The driving passion for multiplication (as it expresses itself through one-on-one discipleship, church planting, campus expansions, and congregational renewals) seems often to ironically carry with it a low view of the Church, as though this is a prerequisite for a high view of The Spirit. Our lack of concern (or respect) for what the Church is may be due, in part, to our total concern for our church(es), since we believe these groups of “two or more” are the future of the kingdom. While there is wisdom in this entrepreneurial approach to evangelism, what it might not take into account is the long term ramifications of atomizing the community of God’s people. In the words of D. A. Carson:
“The metaphor of the church as an organism -- at least two distinctive uses of ‘body’, for instance, not to mention pictures of the church as a unit being the bride of Christ -- makes one wonder if one is doing full justice to the word ‘church’ if it can be said to refer to two or three Christians who happen to meet at a bus stop and happily exchange a biblical verse or two. No doubt Christ is with them, but does this small collective of Christians function the way the church does in the New Testament?” (Carson 2012, 151)
My current reality is that I help pastor a church that now has (for all intents and purposes) “members” who may not only never set foot in one of our buildings, but may never occupy the same physical space as a single other “member”. They (like the rest of us) need to know that their union with Christ is a union with both their church and the Church, that these instances differ in perception not in actuality. In the words of Millard Erickson: “The church is not a sum or composite of the individual local groups. Instead, the whole is found in each place” (Harper and Metzger 2009, 34). Where a church is, the Church is.
General ecclesiology is not exactly a hot topic, even for most people who labour in the Church, but in this season many are wrestling with or actively trying to redefine what a church is. As such (and in light of all of the above), I would like to suggest that, in fact, a church is a gathering of two or more people in the name of Jesus, since there Jesus is present, and where he is present his body is present, and his body is the Church. The tricky part, then, is what it means to be gathered in the “name” of Jesus. Carmen Imes has done significant work helping illuminate the “name-bearing” nature of the ancient Israelites and how that role of theirs carried over into Second-Temple Judaism and onward to the early Jesus movement itself (cf Imes 2019). In short, meeting in the “name” of Jesus in this sense has nothing to do with pronunciation or calligraphy and everything to do with representing his character. There are numerous facets to Christ’s character that the Church may be called to “bear”, but I would like to briefly highlight three here: his vocation, his relation, and his submission.
Christ came to “seek and to save the lost”, and to “proclaim freedom” for the oppressed. At least in part, his mission during his initial coming was to inaugurate the kingdom of God. As such, people who are gathered in his name will partake in that vocation, being both “fishers of men” and enactors of jubilee-style justice. Christ is the eternal Son, One of the Three persons of the Triune Godhead, and wherever he is it is always in relation to the Father and to the Spirit. Likewise, those gathered in his name will be unavoidably present to not only the Godhead but also to those other countless individuals (on either side of eternity) who together constitute the body of Christ by “inclusion” through the Holy Spirit, to the glory of God the Father. Finally, while Christ is indeed the King of all Kings, Lord of all Lords, and the eternally begotten Son of God, he “did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant,” and “humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” Those gathered in his name will mimic his submission to God, to each other, and to the world through cruciform living.
As has already been alluded, these three character markers are far from exhaustive when it comes to the person of Christ, but it is my hope that they are a constructive starting point on the road to understanding what it might practically mean for a group of people to gather “in the name of Jesus”. Until you have been asked to define something, you may not realize how truly difficult a task it can be. I walked into this project thinking that I would come down with a more hierarchically defined ecclesiology, and though I may still be inclined in that direction, I fully empathize with the boots-on-the-ground mentality of my tribe. However one defines the Church, a living, breathing, growing follower of Jesus Christ must necessarily be (in some way) attached to it, just as a fruit bearing branch must necessarily be connected to the vine. The question is not whether we have an ecclesiology, but rather how our ecclesiology reflects back upon the “name” our churches bear.
Reading List:
Carson, D. A. 2012. Christ and Culture Revisited. Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co.
Eastlack, Anita, and Wesleyan Publishing House, eds. 2016. The Discipline of the Wesleyan Church 2016. Indianapolis, Indiana: Wesleyan Publishing House.
Harper, Brad, and Paul Louis Metzger. 2009. Exploring Ecclesiology: An Evangelical and Ecumenical Introduction. Grand Rapids, Mich: Brazos Press.
Imes, Carmen Joy. 2019. Bearing God’s Name: Why Sinai Still Matters. Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Academic, An Imprint of InterVarsity Press.
Kärkkäinen, Veli-Matti. 2002. Introduction to Ecclesiology: Ecumenical, Historical & Global Perspectives. Downers Grove, Ill: InterVarsity Press.
Korner, Ralph J. 2017. The Origin and Meaning of Ekklesia in the Early Jesus Movement. Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity, volume 98. Leiden Boston: Brill.
Ladd, George Eldon. 1993. A Theology Of The New Testament. Rev. ed. Grand Rapids, Mich: Eerdmans.
Louth, Andrew, ed. 1987. Early Christian Writings: The Apostolic Fathers. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England ; New York, N.Y., U.S.A: Penguin Books.
Schwarz, Christian A. 2000. Natural Church Development: A Guide to Eight Essential Qualities of Healthy Churches. 4th ed. Carol Stream, IL: ChurchSmart Resources.
Snyder, Howard A. 2001. Kingdom, Church, and World: Biblical Themes for Today. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock.
Stackhouse, John G., ed. 2003. Evangelical Ecclesiology: Reality or Illusion? Grand Rapids, Mich: Baker Academic.
