The Spirit, the Affections, and the Christian Tradition [1 ed.] 0268100047, 9780268100049

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The Spirit, the Affections, and the Christian Tradition

THE SPIRIT, THE AFFECTIONS, AND THE CHRISTIAN TRADITION

Edited by

DALE M. COULTER AND AMOS YONG University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame, Indiana

University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame, Indiana 46556 www.undpress.nd.edu Copyright © 2016 by University of Notre Dame All Rights Reserved Published in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Coulter, Dale M. (Dale Michael), 1970– editor. Title: The spirit, the affections, and the Christian tradition / edited by Dale M. Coulter and Amos Yong. Description: Notre Dame : University of Notre Dame Press, 2016. | Include bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016032989 (print) | LCCN 2016033475 (ebook) | ISBN 9780268100049 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 0268100047 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780268100063 (pdf ) | ISBN 9780268100070 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Emotions—Religious aspects—Christianity— History of doctrines. Classification: LCC BV4597.3 .S66 2016 (print) | LCC BV4597.3 (ebook) | DD 248.2—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016032989 ISBN 9780268100063 ∞ This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

This e-Book was converted from the original source file by a third-party vendor. Readers who notice any formatting, textual, or readability issues are encouraged to contact the publisher at [email protected].

To Stanley M. Burgess who envisioned a renewal of Christian history through a historiography of renewal

CONTENTS

Preface

ix Introduction: The Language of Affectivity and the Christian Life Dale M. Coulter

1

CHAPTER 1

Blessed Passion of Love: The Affections, the Church Fathers, and the Christian Life Robert Louis Wilken

29

CHAPTER 2

Redeeming the Affections: Deconstructing Augustine’s Critique of Theater James K. A. Smith

41

CHAPTER 3

The Beauty of Holiness: Deification of the Passions in the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom Bradley Nassif

65

CHAPTER 4

Holy Tears: A Neglected Aspect of Early Christian Spirituality in Contemporary Context Michael J. McClymond

87

CHAPTER 5

The Transformative Role of Emotion in the 113 Middle Ages: Deliverance from Lukewarm Affections Elizabeth A. Dreyer

CHAPTER 6

Aquinas on Sanctifying the Affections: Participating in the Life of the Spirit Craig A. Boyd

143

viii

Contents

CHAPTER 7

Letting Go of Detachment: Eckhart’s Gelassenheit and the Immanence of the Spirit Sharon L. Putt

161

CHAPTER 8

The Bondage of the Affections: Willing, Feeling, and Desiring in Luther’s Theology, 1513–1525 Simeon Zahl

181

CHAPTER 9

“Movements of the Heart”: Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) on Affections Klaas Bom

207

CHAPTER 10

“But to know it as we shou’d do”: Enthusiasm, Historicizing of the Charismata, and Cessationism in Enlightenment England Paul C. H. Lim

231

C H A P T E R 11

Orthokardia: John Wesley’s Grammar of the Holy Spirit Gregory S. Clapper

259

CHAPTER 12

Jonathan Edwards on the Affections and the Spirit Gerald R. McDermott

279

Conclusion: The Affective Spirit and Historiographical Revitalization in the Christian Theological Tradition Amos Yong

293

List of Contributors Index

303 305

P R E FAC E

This collection derives from ongoing discussions between the editors about how to develop the theoretical underpinnings of renewal Christianity for the study of Christian history and the history of Christian theology. Each of us has either taught in (Amos) or continues to teach in (Dale) the relatively new and emerging field of renewal studies, uniquely situated at Regent University School of Divinity. Regent University itself is deeply shaped by neo-pentecostal and charismatic renewal, leading in 2003 to the establishment of a PhD program in the School of Divinity with a methodological focus on renewal and renewal movements in the history of Christianity. Because of the history of the institution in which this program is situated, its central focus has always been the global pentecostal and charismatic renewal. Yet the seminary is also explicitly transdenominational, broadly evangelical, and even ecumenical in its ethos, including faculty and students from Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox traditions. What binds together faculty and students is a shared commitment to promoting the renewing work of the Holy Spirit. Hence, while renewal studies surely includes the pentecostal and charismatic movements derived from the Azusa Street revivals at the beginning of the twentieth century, it is also much more than that. The faculty has adopted an explicitly methodological definition of renewal for its programmatic self-understanding. The Regent University School of Divinity Ph.D. program understands Renewal Studies as a methodological approach to global Christian engagement with discourses in the academy, church, and world as informed by critical reflection derived from charismatic movements and their practices throughout the history of God’s people. ix

x

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Note here that renewal is not reducible to the twentieth-century pentecostal or charismatic revivalist traditions; rather, it is committed to researching, studying, and reflecting on charismatic renewal movements “throughout the history of God’s people”—which means not only going “behind” the twentieth century to the broader history of Christianity, but also behind the first century into the history of ancient Israel. As one Old Testament faculty member pointed out, the main plot lines of the Hebrew Bible are also uniquely shaped by themes of renewal, restoration, and revitalization. How then to theorize renewal in the history of Christianity and the field of historical theology? More precisely, how does foregrounding the renewing work of the Holy Spirit shape scholarship in these arenas? What kinds of research projects and questions emerge when such a renewalist and pneumatological lens is focused historiographically in these areas? One such area was the intersection between the divine and human in the Christian notion of salvation. To put it in Gerhart Ladner’s terms, it meant a return and deeper exploration of the idea of reform within the human person through a specific focus on the affections. The benefit of this area was that it opened up a broader exploration of moral psychology, the erotic and ecstatic dimensions of the divine-human encounter, and the development of notions of affectivity in the history of Christianity. The chapters in this book offer some preliminary analyses of these topics in the context of an “ecumenical” exchange of ideas about the Christian tradition that draw on a range of discourses in the academy. Many of the chapters in this book were first presented as special lectures at Regent University in 2011–12 or as plenary presentations at our conference “The Holy Spirit and the Christian Life,” held March 1–2, 2013. We are grateful to former School of Divinity deans Michael Palmer and Tammie Wade for supporting the lectureships and the conference and to Wolfgang Vondey, former director of the Regent University Center for Renewal Studies, for hosting them. Thanks also are due to the School of Divinity staff and graduate assistants who helped with the events: Katie Lohmann, Robert Smith, and Vince Le. Enoch Charles, Paul Palma, and Donald Bufford, other graduate assistants, also worked hard on the formatting of the book. Hoon Jung, Amos’ graduate assistant at Fuller Theological Seminary, helped with the indexing of the volume.

Preface xi

Last but not least, the staff at the University of Notre Dame Press also deserve kudos: Charles Van Hof, Robyn Karkiewicz, and Stephen Little and their team have been great to work with. Two anonymous reviewers for the Press helped strengthen the chapters and connect the dots. Needless to say, we as editors are indebted to our authors for their contributions in the following pages. The editors dedicate this volume to our former colleague, Dr. Stanley M. Burgess, recently retired from the School of Divinity. Stan, an encyclopedist extraordinaire of contemporary renewal movements, has long been at the forefront of asking what we call renewalist and pneumatological questions regarding Christian historiography, and he was instrumental in helping establish the PhD program at the School of Divinity. His ongoing scholarly output remains a staple for students in the history of Christianity doctoral track. Stan has been a mentor and exemplary renewal scholar and scholar of renewal. We trust that this volume, only a small token of our appreciation for his work, will be received as the meager complement to his oeuvre that it is intended to be.

I N T RO D U C T I O N The Language of Affectivity and the Christian Life

D A L E M . C O U LT E R

Over the past several decades there has been a virtual renaissance in the study of emotion and desire occurring in different disciplines and for diverse purposes.1 Part of the challenge of this resurgence is that many of these scholarly trajectories remain confined to particular traditions of inquiry or religious traditions without significant interaction.2 There is a need to bring together investigative analyses that span historical periods, Christian traditions, and scholarly agendas, which this current volume attempts to do. The chapters in this volume offer a more or less chronological exploration of affectivity within Christian tradition by scholars who inhabit different parts of that tradition. It is the most straightforward way to follow various developments within the tradition. In this sense, as a whole, this volume represents an initial effort at a kind of ecumenical and interdisciplinary conversation through ressourcement. What results from this endeavor is not only a closer inspection of affectivity in relationship to inward change and the work of the Spirit but also what may be termed a renewal historiographical lens. As a burgeoning approach, renewal historiography underscores the methodological 1

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import of sensitivity or orientation to the charismatic dimension of Christian existence that informs the critical reading and interpretation of texts and ideas. This basic understanding branches out into three general areas of concern for those engaged in “renewal studies”: (1) the historical phenomena surrounding and giving rise to social and ecclesial reform and renewal, including a focus on religious populism and popular modes of communication; (2) the role of the charismatic in relation to internal renewal that facilitates ongoing conversion; and (3) theological reflection upon the Holy Spirit as the central factor in such an encounter. While not all the writers in this volume consciously operate by means of this method, as Amos Yong’s conclusion attempts to demonstrate, their contributions collectively exemplify the interpretive sensibilities and modalities embodied in it. All religious traditions experience periods of decline in which the foundational ideas become blurred or the growth of the religion stagnates. On the social level, “renewal” refers to the way in which movements within religions recover central concerns that revive the commitment of individuals and propel the tradition into further phases of growth. Such renewal movements more often than not derive from the forms and concerns of populist religiosity, which subsequently gives rise to deeper theological reflection. This reflection can remain at the level of “folk theology” or spirituality, such as the advice of John Climacus, the visions of Hadewijch of Brabant, or the sermons of John Wesley. It can also exist in the tradition’s basic religious or liturgical practices. Several of the chapters in this volume thus explore affectivity in the folk theologies and spiritualities of important writers, thereby underscoring the importance of sensitivity to religious populism as part of a renewal approach. Moreover, with chapters directed to the nonspecialist, this volume also embodies popular modes of communication that a renewal method attempts to exemplify. Some chapters are more general, and others dive deeply into affectivity; nevertheless, all retain the nonspecialist approach. Thus this volume seeks to contribute to the renewal of the study of affectivity, as well as retain a sensitivity to forms of populist religiosity that have given rise to movements of renewal and folk theologies. Christian existence has as its central concern the salvation of the human person through an inward renewal that both heals and elevates the

Introduction

3

soul. While this conversio to God as the final end occurs in the cognitive and affective dimensions, it is the latter that became the focus of Christian writers. Personal renewal was associated with practices that integrated the reorientation of human love, the therapy of desire, and the encounter with God through the Spirit in its sanctifying and charismatic dimensions. With its goals of ecstatic embrace and union, the mystical life attested to the fusion of the charismatic, internal transformation and affectivity. Ecstasy, in particular, referred to modes of charismatic encounters as well as sanctifying moments. Many of the chapters in this volume explore how particular writers in the tradition understood this relationship, revealing how a sensitivity to the charismatic can provide a new window onto the development of Christian ideas about the affective life. By retrieving the complex discussion about affectivity in Christian tradition and bringing its diverse voices into dialogue in a contemporary ecumenical context, these chapters also point toward a number of research trajectories that fill out the picture of a renewal method and need further exploration. One particularly important theme that emerges from the whole is the need to get back behind the shift in the analysis of emotion and desire that occurred in the late eighteenth century. From the emergence of a “sentimental culture” that McClymond highlights to Clapper’s desire to tame the dominance of a “feeling” theory of the emotions, several chapters address the conceptual challenges that arose at the turn of the nineteenth century. In addition, they illuminate the diachronic shifts in the language of affectivity, which remains an important area of further investigation. They point to the need for additional work on the psychology of conversion as a feature of charismatic existence, especially with respect to analyses of sin and salvation as a therapeutic enterprise in which the Spirit heals and empowers the soul. Finally, several chapters underscore how probing the role of affectivity in relation to union with God, ecstasy, and the erotic remains important throughout Christian tradition. This introduction sets the tone for the chapters that follow by briefly noting research trajectories on affectivity in the past forty years, exploring developments in the terms used to describe the affective life, and identifying the important ideas that flow through the book as a whole.

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Research on Affectivity

The past three decades have witnessed a proliferation of studies reexamining the intellectual history of affectivity. In many respects, Robert Solomon’s argument in 1976 that emotions are constituting judgments that shape human identity and supply meaning to life launched a discussion of the philosophy of emotion in Anglo-American circles.3 Central to Solomon’s project has been an effort to overcome the divide between emotion and rationality as though the former has little to do with the latter. Simultaneous with this development and influenced by it, a retrieval of ancient philosophical views on the emotions began in the late 1970s that set the stage for a deeper exploration of emotion in relation to human flourishing and the therapy of desire.4 The use of historical analysis in constructing philosophical accounts of emotion and their relationship to human action and flourishing has now become a cottage industry with a body of literature so large that it is difficult to keep pace. The resurgence of cognitivist accounts of the emotions has opened the door to studies in diverse historical periods as well as those of an interdisciplinary nature. Within scholarship specifically devoted to an exploration of the Christian tradition, there are similar trends at work. In the past decade alone a number of studies have appeared that trace out broader trends in Christian writers and their efforts to provide accounts of emotion and desire in light of the Christian doctrines of sin and salvation and the psychology of conversion. Some studies, such as Simo Knuuttila’s, follow Richard Sorabji by analyzing philosophical accounts of emotion and desire in ancient and medieval thinkers.5 Representing a second approach, Thomas Dixon has argued that the history of emotion in the West involves a slow separation of theological and philosophical accounts buttressed by the rise of psychology and the “feeling” theory of William James.6 Thomas Dixon describes this “feeling” theory as involving a turn to more materialist accounts in which emotions are visceral and involuntary movements that begin in parts of the body and are felt passively.7 Dixon’s work affirms Solomon’s desire to recover cognitivist accounts of emotion by offering a critique of the historiography supporting that ac-

Introduction

5

count. Whereas Solomon had argued that the antagonism between emotion and reason stemmed from antiquity, Dixon counters that it was primarily a result of nineteenth-century developments. What emerges from studies like Knuuttila’s and Dixon’s is that Christian thinkers had complex discussions of emotion and desire that tracked more with views of emotion as cognition rather than of emotion as feeling.8 There have also been studies that focus on a cultural history of emotion and how diverse communities understood the roles that emotions play. Barbara H. Rosenwein’s work, for example, examines the early Middle Ages with a focus on how communities describe and shape emotional life.9 More specifically, she attempts to counter Nussbaum’s overly negative assessment of medieval ideas about emotion. As Dreyer’s chapter in this volume indicates, analyses like Rosenwein’s combine a focus on spirituality, gender, the body, and mysticism.10 The result of such studies is to reveal a deeply affective piety in the Middle Ages with broad cultural roots that hold together the Occitania culture of the troubadours and fin’amor, the rise of courtly love in Anglo-Norman culture, and the spirituality of love characteristic of male and female medieval religious writers. To study this history of emotion scholars must wrestle with notions of ecstasy, the erotic, love, and union with God more than with philosophical accounts of emotion and desire. Finally, a number of trajectories have emerged in the past several decades that study emotion and desire in the context of a specific tradition of Christianity. His effort to capture John Wesley’s focus on experience led Theodore Runyon to coin the term orthopathy to describe how right affections fuse right beliefs (orthodoxy) and right practices (orthopraxis) within Wesley’s thought.11 Runyon’s suggestion was picked up by a number of Wesleyan and pentecostal historians and theologians to describe the dynamics at work within revivalist settings and the connection between divine encounters and the process of Christian development.12 Moreover, Samuel Solivan’s effort to bring the transformation of the affections (orthopathos) into dialogue with Latino/a theology has borne fruit among liberation theologians whose interest has been the praxis of Christian faith.13 These efforts signal a trend across pietist, Wesleyan, and pentecostal traditions of greater attention to the formation of right affections as the center of Christian existence.

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The focus on affectivity over a range of studies in Christian scholarship raises the question of pneumatology in a way that challenges prevailing assumptions among constructive theologians about a pneumatological deficit in Western Christianity. These charges began to appear in a series of criticisms by Orthodox émigré theologians such as Vladimir Lossky and Nikos Nissiotis, both of whom referred to a Christomonism in Western theology that stemmed at least in part from the perceived implications of filioque.14 Sweeping claims to a pneumatological deficit first surfaced in ecumenical dialogue, but these tracked with German concerns over Barth’s focus on Christology, which centered on what Moltmann described as a “forgetfulness of the Spirit.”15 The Orthodox and German concerns found a receptive home in the work of a number of theologians who became connected with the Research Institute in Systematic Theology at King’s College, London, in the early 1990s and who tended to favor a social model of the Trinity. Colin Gunton, Robert Jenson, John Zizioulas, and Christoph Schwöbel, each in his own way, advanced the criticism. Among these thinkers Gunton’s claims were the most extreme, laying the entire problem at a depersonalizing of the Spirit in Augustine, while Jenson offered a much more nuanced position that saw the problem more in terms of a failure to emphasize Pentecost as a distinct event coupled with the thirteenth-century shift toward an infused disposition at baptism (created grace).16 By the early part of the twenty-first century Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen could summarize these streams as leading to the recognition that the Western tradition suffered from a deficient pneumatology.17 While the criticisms surrounding filioque have been subjected to a sustained critique, the question of pneumatology in the Western tradition beyond the patristic period remains outstanding. This volume underscores the need for an ecumenical and crossdisciplinary exploration of affectivity in relationship to pneumatology and the transformation of the human person. Examining the Western tradition through a renewal lens shows how discourses on the affections became connected to trinitarian discourse because, as Peter Abelard succinctly put it in his Romans commentary, “the gift of God, which [Paul] calls grace, is called the Holy Spirit.”18 Augustine forged a strong connection between grace, love, and the Spirit when he argued that the Spirit formed Christ in the soul by transforming the affective life. For Augus-

Introduction

7

tine, original sin is a hardening of the initial disobedient motion in the first humans, which is how human nature becomes vitiated.19 The death that occurred when grace forsook the original parents resulted in their being bound by their own delight (delectatio) to created realities. As Augustine states elsewhere, “The soul can be changed, not indeed spatially [localiter], but nonetheless in time [temporaliter] by its affections [suis affectionibus].”20 As a kind of weight in the soul, delight impacts the affective dimension, introducing order or disorder. Thus, Augustine calls the “delight of the carnal senses” (carnalium sensuum delectatio) a “habit of the soul made with the flesh by means of carnal affective states” (animae consuetudo facta cum carne, propter carnalem affectionem), which occurs through the punishment of mortality.21 The initial impetus to disobedience through delight engendered by the suggestion of the devil, once consented to, prompted a hardening in the soul from which it can no longer escape. The remedy is the therapy of desire through the Spirit who, as divine charity, draws forth a delight in the law of God. The Spirit serves as the intersection between divine affectivity (Spirit as bond of love) and human affectivity. This places pneumatology front and center in the discussion of affectivity.

The Language of Affectivity

We aspire in this volume to an ecumenical and interdisciplinary dialogue that draws on a number of research trajectories; however, we recognize that exploring affectivity across the Christian tradition brings into stark relief the problem of terminology. Introductions to English translations usually catalog the difficult choices translators must make in rendering original-language terms into good English. Much of the philosophical discussion about affectivity has occurred under the category of emotion as a concession to current nomenclature, even though scholars recognize that there is no Greek or Latin term that strictly translates into “emotion.” Many of the chapters in this volume echo Boyd’s pronouncement at the outset of his analysis of Aquinas that “what we call ‘emotions’ or ‘affectivity’ is problematic for us.” Moreover, as McDermott’s and Clapper’s chapters make clear, the problem of interpretation is not simply reducible

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to issues of translation. Interpreters will misunderstand Edwards’s and Wesley’s use of affections apart from a careful analysis of what they meant in the eighteenth century. The shifts in meaning are difficult to track because of the complex development of vocabulary in the Christian tradition, which means that hermeneutical issues begin with the problem of translation. While the volume as a whole signals a preference for affectivity and affective movements as overarching descriptors of emotion and desire, individual authors have made decisions as to how best to achieve terminological and conceptual clarity. The problem of finding an overarching descriptor stems in part from the lack of any rigid division between emotion and desire as internal movements in many ancient and medieval thinkers. Instead, the divisions have more to do with the origin of these movements in the body or different dimensions of the soul. Even here care must be taken to avoid misleading suggestions that imply these internal movements form self-contained units (“parts”) when they are more like the deep currents found in the world’s oceans, observably distinct and yet flowing in and out of one another. It is for this reason that one can understand why Augustine would gravitate toward psychological analogies to describe the perichoretic nature of trinitarian relations. To describe these movements as affective is a heuristic move designed to maintain a critical distance between modern and premodern accounts. It is also the case that the language of affections was paramount in eighteenth-century revivalist literature and continued to serve as the primary conduit of older traditions in the subterranean channels of nineteenth-century holiness movements. Using descriptors like affections and affective movements maintains the connection between accounts of emotion and desire by revivalists like John Wesley and Jonathan Edwards and the early modern, medieval, and ancient use of affectus on which they draw. While the terms identifying affective movements seem rather straightforward in Greek ( pathē ) and Latin ( perturbatio, affectio/affectus, passio), they form a small sample of the words employed by ancient and medieval writers to describe the affective dimension of the human person. These writers also employed a second set of terms that in general referred to fundamental impulses or drives (hormē, orexis, impulsus, appetitus) and the

Introduction

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movements or mental events to which they gave rise (kinēsis, motus animi/ motus animae), as well as a third set of terms to refer to various kinds of desire (boulēsis, epithumia, voluntas, cupiditas/libido, concupiscentia, desiderium). On top of this vocabulary, one might introduce a further set of overlapping terms that describe internal movements as various forms of love or affection for something or someone (eros, agape, amor, caritas). What holds these diverse ways of describing the affective dimension together is that they all begin with the assumption that humans have sets of internal movements (physiological and psychological) that work together to produce action and yet can become defective in some way. These movements emerge from basic dispositions in the human constitution related to the unique relationship between the body and the soul. Determining precisely how persons coordinate these internal movements into action separates one thinker from another. Aristotle, for example, employs orexis to refer to the fundamental inclination or drive found in all animals because internal movements are “forms of objectdirected, active inner reaching-out.”22 At the same time, orexis remains a desire; indeed, it is desire in its most basic sense of an internal movement of attraction toward something. Because Aristotle concludes that orexis is a single, basic drive, he locates it in all forms of desire. Rational wish (boulēsis), appetite (epithumia), and irascibility (thumos) are all forms of “reaching-out” (orexis).23 The rational (reasoning and calculative) and the nonrational (appetitive and irascible) sources of action express this drive and translate it into forms of “reaching-out” that include passions. This occurs through phantasia, which functions both to present perceived images to the mind and to interpret them.24 It is important to note that for Aristotle, as well as Plato, the soul had rational (logos) and nonrational/ irrational (alogos) sources of action within it. By the second century CE Plutarch and Galen would postulate that the rational and nonrational sources were in reality different features of the soul that came into conflict with one another, at times associating these features with bodily organs. While such movements were foundational to action, in human persons they became voluntary when combined with deliberative choice in the form of some sort of consent, which could be implicit or explicit. Stoic accounts, conversely, begin with impulses (hormai) to mental events that happen on the basis of impressions to which consent is given.25

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This consent corresponds to some belief about the impression that takes the form of a syllogism in the mind. As Margaret Graver states, “To act is to endorse a certain kind of proposition” like X is good or X is bad.26 Stoic writers saw passions (pathē) as excessive impulses because they were powerful interior movements that overwhelmed the person. This is why Cicero rendered pathē as perturbatio (disturbances) and commotio animi, whereas he remained content to describe impulse simply as a motion of the soul (motus animi ).27 For Cicero, Stoic hormē pointed to a natural appetite (naturalis appetitio) that was itself a good of nature. The entire role of practical reason ( prudentia) was to determine the ends that awakened hormē (appetitus animi) and from such proximate ends to discern an ultimate end.28 As a basic dispositional appetite for the good, hormē became synonymous with orexis in Cicero’s mind and thus could be rendered into appetitus, appetitio, and motus animi.29 Passions, conversely, were negative impulses when they were excessive, and this excessive quality stemmed from false ascriptions of value about the world. Since passions denoted a generic category, Stoics came up with large classification systems that identified various species of passion. Cicero summarizes the four primary passions, which Wilken labels “cardinal passions” in his chapter: “those arising from goods are desire [libido] and gladness [laetitia], gladness being directed at present goods and desire at future goods; while those arising from evils are fear [metus] and distress [aegritudo], fear being directed at future evils and distress at present ones.”30 In all of these categories, value judgments grounded in beliefs about the world give rise to emotional explosions in the soul. These emotional explosions are beyond the boundaries of reason taking the form of “unbridled desire” (cupiditas effrenata) in Cicero’s mind.31 The complex metaphor fuses an untamed animal with the image of a horse that has broken free of its reins and bolts across the landscape.32 Yet these same movements can occur in accordance with reason, in which case Cicero classifies them as voluntas, which is his translation of boulēsis (rational wish). The goal is to make the movements consistent or harmonize with reason so that the interior dimensions flow as a unified whole. It is to achieve a kind of tranquillitas or constantia mentis with its evocations of calm winds and the steady ripples across a serene body of water.33 Alongside biblical texts, this rich vocabulary of the interior life became the basis on which Christian writers developed their accounts of

Introduction

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human action. Clement of Alexandria, for example, employs many of these terms: Impulse [hormē] is then the movement of the mind [phora dianoias] to or from something. A passion [pathos] is an excessive impulse [pleonazousa hormē] that exceeds the measures of reason [ta kata ton logon metra], or an impulse [hormē] that is unbridled and disobedient to reason. Passions [ta pathē], then, are a movement in the soul [kinēsis psuchēs] contrary to nature, in disobedience to reason. This rebellion, this disaffection, this disobedience is in our control, just as obedience is in our control. This is why acts of the will are subject to judgment. If anyone were to pursue each of the passions individually, he would find them all non-rational impulses [alogous orexeis].34 While Clement operates with a basic Stoic vocabulary, he interchanges the terms with Aristotelian vocabulary so that hormē and orexis are different ways of referring to the same mental movement that can become excessive and unbridled or not, depending on whether there is a harmonious correspondence with reason. When one examines the dialogue between Gregory of Nyssa and Macrina, passions are clearly negative but impulses (hormai) that arise from a fundamental appetite (orexis) can become virtuous or vitious.35 Belonging to the natural constitution of the human person, these impulses must be directed by the power of reason or choice toward their proper end. Macrina will employ Plato’s image of the rational dimension of the soul as the charioteer who must preside over the natural impulses by turning them into virtue instead of allowing them to become uncontrolled passions as with animals. She refers to such impulses as movements within the soul (kinēseis) that can become rational or nonrational. When they become the latter, Macrina associates them with the passionate movements of brute beasts, thereby employing a common image of the untamed animal. While impulses remain natural movements in the human constitution, they can become passionate when they break the boundaries of reason in an immoderate motion toward ends unbefitting the whole human person, such as when love becomes solely directed toward the enjoyment of sensory delights. Nevertheless, to understand Gregory’s thought on affectivity requires that one investigate the role of

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appetite in relation to impulses, desire, and love. Gregory and Macrina fuse Stoic and Aristotelian vocabulary in their conversation and the interior movements of the person. One finds something similar occurring in Augustine’s thought. Recently Sarah Byers has made a strong case that Augustine uses voluntas for hormē, which he fuses with Platonic notions of love as eros, and thus his theory of action is a Stoic-Platonic synthesis.36 This would mean that Augustine largely rejected Cicero’s translation of boulēsis as voluntas, preferring instead to think of voluntas in terms of a dispositional appetitus (hormē). An early definition of will Augustine offers may buttress Byers’s case in which he defines it as “a movement of mind (motus animi) that no one compels either not to lose something or to obtain something.”37 Will is an interior movement that results from the way the mind hovers between the two impulses of fear (metus) and desire (libido/cupiditas), which points toward the analysis of sin as inordinate desire (culpabilis cupiditas) in the first book of De libero arbitrio. As Byers notes, Augustine translates hormē as “impulse” or “appetite for action” (impulsus vel appetitus actionis).38 It could be that Augustine associates voluntas with motus and appetitus if those terms are synonymous and equal to hormē.39 At the same time, Augustine defines a good will as “a will [voluntas] by which we desire [appetimus] to live rightly and honorably [recte honesteque] and to attain the highest wisdom,” which seems closer to boulēsis as a rational appetite.40 What remains clear is that affections emerge from the will as a dispositional impulse. Augustine will describe these affections in terms of the love for some object and the delight that arises in concert with this love. The terminological mixing that begins with Clement, coupled with the theological challenges Christians faced, prompted a need to gain some control of the various terms inherited from ancient writers. One can begin to see this control in the thought of John of Damascus, who mediates the Greek tradition and whose On the Orthodox Faith was translated into Latin by Burgundio of Pisa in the twelfth century and retranslated by Robert Grosseteste in the thirteenth century. The Damascene is less important for his originality than his effort to systematize and transmit an understanding of affectivity, centered on a notion of will, which he inherited from the Greek patristic tradition that flowed to him from the Cappadocians and Nemesius of Emesa through Maximus the Confessor.

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To understand how John views the affective dimension requires an examination of his view of the will and the passions. He identifies the passions of the soul as desire (epithumia/concupiscentia) and anger (thumos/ ira).41 These passions are movements of the appetitive power (kinēsis tēs orektikēs /motus appetitivae virtutis) while also stemming from the sensory side of the human person. For this reason, John will call the passions nonrational movements that even animals possess, noting that they are particularly intense motions although in humans reason can control them. In addition to the passions, humans possess a natural will ( psukē thelēsis/ naturalis voluntas) that John identifies as a rational impulse (orexis logikē/ appetitus rationalis). He also refers to the will with the Aristotelian term for rational desire (boulēsis). The appetitive power (orektikōn/appetitivis) can be divided into passionate movements that are nonrational and a rational movement also called the will. It is because of the latter that humans remain naturally attracted to what is good for them, which prompts John to indicate that boulēsis always concerns the end as an object of desire such as good health, not the means to that end. To speak of the appetitive is to identify how John understands affectivity, and this encompasses the will as a rational appetite, nonrational movements, and the passions that can erupt from them. Given John of Damascus’s terminology, one can understand why Boyd follows Nicholas Lombardo’s work in distinguishing between the “affections” and the “passions” in Aquinas.42 This is in part because Thomas was attempting to fuse Augustinian vocabulary with the more Aristotelian description he inherited from the Damascene, Nemesius of Emesa, and the Latin translations of Aristotle. While Aquinas operates with Latin terms (passio, affectio/affectus) that were originally a translation of pathē, he attempts to make sense of the tradition as it has come down to him through multiple trajectories. By the time the discussion reaches Luther in the early sixteenth century, there is a decided preference to move away from the carefully formulated technical distinctions of scholasticism and return to a more simplified vocabulary. In his analysis of Luther’s thought, Zahl spells out how Luther fuses together affectus, impetus, appetitus, and even voluntas, although these terms could denote distinct movements within the soul such as pathē (affectus), hormē (impetus), orexis (appetitus), and boulēsis (voluntas) depending on the thinker in question. As Zahl makes clear, Luther’s “back-to-the-sources” approach prompts a simplification of this

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vocabulary around the designation of the appetitive, affective, or volitional side of the soul. Luther’s favorite metaphor for this group is the biblical idea of the heart as the seat of affectivity. This simplification allowed Luther to describe the bondage of the will in reality as bondage of the affections, which is to import basic Augustinian ideas into the sixteenth-century context. The will is the various appetitive or affective movements in the soul that flow out from the heart. With this thesis firmly in place, Zahl reframes the debate between Luther and Erasmus in terms of the diverse theories of action at work. Although this survey of the terminological shifts is necessarily brief, it suggests how complicated the discussion can become. Apart from an awareness of these shifts, it becomes extremely difficult to understand the tradition that Edwards and Wesley inherited in the early seventeenth century. In his account of Edwards, McDermott argues that the affections are fundamental dispositions that form the springs of motion in the soul, thereby uniting intellect and will. They are inclinations insofar as they remain connected to intellectual conceptions and thus must be object directed. In his chapter, Clapper similarly provides evidence from Wesley that the affections are “dispositions of the mind.” On occasion, Cicero rendered hexis, which could mean condition, disposition, or even virtue, into habitus or affectio, thereby associating the meaning of disposition with affectivity.43 One finds this meaning also in the Cistercians Bernard of Clairvaux and William of St. Thierry, and it seems to have remained part of the semantic range of the term “affection” well into the seventeenth century. For Edwards and Wesley, the affections are dispositional springs of motion, which combines the meaning of affectus as disposition with affectus as affective movement. Taken together the studies in this volume underscore the importance of moving back behind the German and Scottish Enlightenments of the late eighteenth century in order to understand the role of affectivity in the Christian tradition. Not content merely to borrow concepts and terms from ancient writers, Christian writers also modified and extended their meaning as part of a detailed analysis of the human person. The hope is that these offerings will stimulate the more expansive treatment of the history of affectivity needed by examining in greater detail the terminological shifts from ancient to medieval to early modern accounts.

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Illuminating Affectivity across Christian Tradition

Against the background of terminological shifts, this final section provides a synopsis of each chapter while trying to keep insights that emerge from the whole volume in view. As a historiographical lens, “renewal” in this volume refers to the way in which these chapters explore social, ecclesial, and internal renewal within folk and academic theologies. The language of affectivity allowed Christian writers to affirm that Christ experienced emotion and desire without transgressing the law of God. It also meant that there was a proper order for love that could function within the human person without any disease of the soul. The language of passions as diseases of the soul intersected with scriptural notions of sin as involving states of desire (epithumia) and internal “laws” at work that directed human behavior. As the work of grace within the human heart, salvation pointed toward a process of transformation grounded in the affective dimension of the person. This is the heart of Augustine’s understanding of the Spirit as love who enables persons to reorder the affective life toward its proper end. Ongoing conversion meant the full reorientation of the affective life in such a way as to liberate the person from disordered desires that enslave. This sanctifying pilgrimage into the self and upward to God was both ecstatic and erotic, as Christian writers sought to understand how all of the internal movements of desire and emotion flowed into the blessed passion of love. In an important sense, Christian writers affirmed that fundamental impulses could become passionate movements without being unbridled or disordered because they were directed toward their proper end. This is how eros/amor could be integrated into tranquillitas even though from an Ovidian perspective amor was a passionate impulse of a sexual nature, as summarized in the twelfth century by Andreas Capellanus’s definition (“love is something like an inborn passion proceeding from the sight and unmeasured thought of the comeliness of the opposite sex”).44 Affectivity became a way to explain how the human person could become enslaved to the creation as well as the process of liberation by the Spirit of God. This is the vision that each of the chapters in this volume articulates through a focus on a particular thinker or period.

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Robert Louis Wilken explores the various ways in which Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, and Maximus the Confessor employ the vocabulary of love to show how God tames the passions through the complete fulfillment of desire. As Wilken notes, Gregory and Macrina agree that desire (epithumia), which in the terminology of Paul and James became the tinderbox of sinful activity, must be caught up in something more stable than created realities. In answer to Gregory’s concern that removing nonrational movements akin to the beasts meant the elimination of emotion and desire, Macrina states that in its deiform state the soul will “no longer need desire’s movement [tēs kat’ epithumian kinēseōs] to lead the way to the beautiful.”45 All of the soul’s interior movements point it toward the infinite as its true ground, which, once found, render the flight of desire no longer necessary. Utilizing Stoic vocabulary for virtue, Macrina suggests that what remains is a stable condition (diathesis) arising from charity. Charity concerns the fulfillment of desire, not its extirpation, which means that apatheia concerns the stable movement of love. For Gregory and Macrina, interior movements of emotion and desire stem from the fact that all creaturely existence is in movement and that finitude always points toward a lack in creation. The stable disposition of charity emerges when those creatures find that which does not lack and is therefore always capable of fulfilling desire. This is the beauty of the infinite God. Wilken’s chapter demonstrates the extent to which patristic writers were committed to a passionate existence even though they understood the need to be healed from the passions that exploded within the soul. Centering the problem of sin and the gracious transformation of the human person on affectivity was not without its challenges. There is a measure of ambiguity in many writers on the difference between the active and the contemplative, the physical and the spiritual, and the temporal and the eternal. While most Christian writers located the psychological problem of sin in a fixation on the temporal and the need to turn to the eternal, many blurred this analysis with the relationship between the body and soul. The movement toward the eternal could be interpreted more as a movement away from embodied existence toward a kind of mental contemplation of the divine. Thinkers such as Augustine worried that the movement from the temporal to the eternal or from created realities to the uncreated would always short circuit in the temporal be-

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cause of the weight of desire, and it is this “problem” of human existence that prompted their reservations about the arts, education, and other human inventions designed to focus on the temporal world. James K. A. Smith’s chapter shows how this problem unfolded in the competing impulses of Augustine’s thought. Arguing that Augustine viewed the theater analogous to rhetoric insofar as both forms “traffic in images” that can lure the person away from the eternal, Smith critiques Augustine’s approach to the performing arts by revealing the tension between the bishop of Hippo’s understanding of the Incarnation and the vestiges of Platonism in his ontology. The scenes that unfold in a theatrical performance move the affections and thus inculcate a bond with the temporal that further enslaves rather than liberates. This leads Smith to resist an aesthetics purely connected to disembodied notions of beauty and move toward incarnational modes of the beautiful as embodied in iconography. While acknowledging Augustine’s worry over the idolatrous in the theatrical that can enslave affectivity to the temporal, Smith argues that Augustine’s own dramatic literary account of his life speaks to the possibility that the arts can lead to enjoyment of God as the proper end of the human person. By exploiting the tension in Augustine’s thought, Smith reads Augustinian notions of affectivity against Augustine’s negative assessment of theater. The moves that Wilken discusses in his chapter inform the basis from which Bradley Nassif launches his discussion of the deification of the passions. His chapter sticks closely to the generic language of the liturgy to show its evangelical ground and unpack its deeper meaning. The purpose of the divine liturgy is to transform the passions into the blessed passion of love, even though the liturgy avoids the technical vocabulary of affectivity. Nassif quotes John Chryssavgis’s definition of apatheia approvingly as the resting of all desire in the kingdom of heaven, which is closely aligned with Gregory of Nyssa’s understanding of love as the summation of rightly directed desire. By setting the divine liturgy in a broader context of bestowal of sacramental grace, the centrality of scripture, and the use of the icons, Nassif unpacks a divine pedagogical strategy in which the Spirit dispenses grace, which is then further released over the course of the pilgrim’s earthly sojourn. The movement toward the good is simultaneously an assimilation to the good by which the soul’s movements of

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desire (epithumia) develop into a disposition of love, and in turn create a natural affinity for beauty. The divine pedagogy, centered in the liturgy, takes the soul on its journey through particular goods to the one Good who is the triune God. Deification, then, is the redirection of desire by taking it up into the blessed passion of love. Michael J. McClymond’s chapter on holy tears supplies the monastic counter to Nassif ’s focus on the liturgical formation of affectivity. Arguing that “holy tears were a religious practice combining intentionality with spontaneity,” McClymond demonstrates how Christian writers from John Climacus to Hildegard of Bingen saw holy tears as part of a pedagogical strategy to bring therapy to the soul. While Stoic writers had originally classified penthos as a passionate impulse that was a form of distress (lupē/aegritudo) over the sudden death of someone, Christian writers expanded the range of the term. Penthos expressed simultaneously sorrow over one’s sins in relation to God and hope in the full restoration of the eschaton. Hence John Climacus introduced the idea of “joybearing grief ” to describe the way in which eros wounded the person in pursuit of God in such a way as to induce a kind of blessed madness, the madness of ecstasy.46 Tears could flow hot like fire in the context of ecstatic encounter. This allowed for certain kinds of emotional explosions in the soul that were not “passions” in the strict sense of “unbridled desires.” Because of the relationship between tears, grief, and the pursuit of paradise with God, Evagrius saw holy tears as enabling the person to overcome the passions rather than a passionate movement. McClymond thus shows how affections reorient and are reoriented in the context of prayer as part of a pedagogical strategy. Returning to the problem of describing sinful desires and the transformation of the human person, Elizabeth A. Dreyer’s analysis builds on Smith’s critique by showing how certain medieval writers recovered a more incarnational approach that took the role of the body seriously. Through a deep exploration of the ecstatic and erotic, medieval spiritual writers recovered a more embodied Christianity that rejoiced in creation and the humanity of Christ. In particular, Dreyer explores the bridal mysticism of Hadewijch of Brabant and Bonaventure’s focus on the humanity of Christ. Hadewijch combines the spirituality of love from twelfthcentury writers like Bernard of Clairvaux and Hugh of St. Victor with the

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erotic tones of troubadour poetry and courtly love in the work of Andreas Capellanus and the verse of Chrétien de Troyes. The human Christ becomes Hadewijch’s lover, and yet Love becomes the pedagogue of her identity as a warrior knight whose passions must be tamed and redirected. As a deeply erotic and embodied spirituality, the Eucharist is central to Hadewijch’s encounters with Christ. Like Hadewijch, Bonaventure focuses on the humanity of Christ, channeling his energies to the image of the crucified. Christ’s wounds on the cross become the wounds of love for the soul, shaping and forging affectivity so that the person journeys into God. For both Bonaventure and Hadewijch, ecstasy is more than a mental severance from temporal realities but a demonstrative and emotive experience in which the soul becomes consumed with divine love “by ecstatic anointing and burning affections.” Craig A. Boyd’s chapter on Aquinas continues to explore the relationship between affectivity and transformation in the context of nature and grace. Central to Boyd’s exploration is the way in which the Spirit elevates the will as uncreated grace that forms charity in the will so that this disposition of love becomes the basis of participation in God and the sanctification of the soul. Branching out from the will as a rational appetite now affectively oriented toward God by the Spirit, the “passions of the soul” and the natural love that directs humans toward created goods become integrated into a friendship with God that perfects the soul. This integration continues through the virtues and gifts of the Spirit that conform grace to the shape of the soul so that the affective dimension always remains intact. In this way, Aquinas extends the notion of grace as charity from the Spirit to the dispositions into which the Spirit shapes the interior movements of emotion and desire. While ecstasy does not play a prominent role in Eckhart’s thought, Sharon L. Putt’s chapter shows how Eckhartian detachment places the person in a state of continuous union with God. In an important sense, Eckhart’s thought serves as a high point in the movement toward an incarnational ontology with his call for a continuous incarnation that Putt interprets as a “transcendent immanence.” As Putt states, “The soul that bears the Son of God, that loves as God loves through the Holy Spirit, transcends self-will, desire, and ego and lives a life of immanence and solidarity with others.” It is important to note that this transcendent

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immanence represents the completion of four movements of love, the final of which is a pouring forth back into the world by means of a detachment from the world. What spiritual writers like Bernard of Clairvaux, Richard of St. Victor, and Bonventure saw as the culmination of a pilgrimage in which the soul, after experiencing the momentary bliss of ecstatic union, is thrust back into the world infused with love, Eckhart reworks into a continuous condition through his notion of detachment. For Luther, detachment is the freedom of a Christian that the Spirit brings in and through the work of faith alone. In his chapter on Luther’s theology, Simeon Zahl argues that the bondage of the will is in reality a bondage of the affections. Because human appetite (appetitus) is captive, the will cannot conform to the precepts of the law. Luther interchangeably uses appetitive power, will, love, and affection to refer to the human heart. In good Augustinian fashion, Luther will insist in the debate with Erasmus that the Spirit must liberate the internal affective motions through love before the person can begin to delight in God’s law. While Luther shifts the definition of grace to mercy and divine benevolence in his 1522 preface to Romans, he claims that the gift (donum) is the Spirit who is poured forth into the heart. Faith is nothing less than a living movement in the heart from which all other motions spring, which is why Luther will proclaim that it is a continuous trust in God’s mercy toward the believer. Apart from the gift of the Spirit stimulating the affections, faith will not spring forth. Union with God, then, is an affective union achieved in and by the Spirit of God who liberates the will from bondage. The focus on union with God as involving an affective encounter continues in Klaas Bom’s chapter on Blaise Pascal. Here the examination of a pedagogy of the affections has to a certain extent come full circle. In arguing that “the affections, touched by union with God through the Holy Spirit, play a central role in unifying human life from the heart,” Bom notes that Pascal seeks to moderate and orient the affections by balancing them in relation to one another. Joy must be brought into relation with fear and grief, which calls to mind Climacus’s notion of “joy-bearing grief ” that McClymond analyzed. Moreover, Pascal’s effort to balance the affections remains grounded in holding together humans as grace-filled and fallen. For Pascal, a Christian vision of the human person implicitly holds within it a pedagogical strategy that brings therapy to the soul. This

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strategy is not simply a mental one grounded in bringing doctrines in relation to one another, but an embodied one in which the soul encounters God sacramentally in a way that enlivens the affections and creates spiritual senses. Central to Bom’s approach to Pascal is situating him within the medieval mystical tradition, which further highlights the importance of viewing these thinkers in terms of the trajectories that inform their thought. Paul C. H. Lim’s chapter reveals how the tension between the temporal and the eternal and the physical and the spiritual worked its way into seventeenth-century debates over enthusiasm. In its original Greek context, enthusiasmos entailed the madness of the poets under the inspiration of the god. It was a mode of ecstasy associated with mania or in Latin with furor, which pointed to a kind of Bacchanalian fervor. Even in a writer like Augustine, ecstasy was equated with prophetic inspiration because it explained how the prophet underwent a mental rupture (alienatio) while being caught up in the presence of the divine. This mental rupture was analogous to the lover’s temporary break with everything else when the passion of amor was let loose. Yet, as Lim demonstrates, in seventeenth-century England there was a severance of inspiration from enthusiasm on the part of establishmentarian defenders of the Church of England in order to distance inspiration from Quaker claims to prophecy. Inspiration became the calm, orderly, and therefore rational, work of the Spirit for men like Richard Baxter and John Owen over against the hotblooded fantasies and delusions of enthusiasm. It was tranquillitas divorced from amor. Enthusiasm and its connection to direct revelation from God was viewed as a threat to the established order and Anglican hegemony, which ultimately framed arguments for the cessation of the charismata that now inhabits conservative Protestant circles. Thus Lim’s piece shows how embodied forms of ecstasy continued to be problematic within seventeenth-century Protestantism, which sets the tone for Edwards’s and Wesley’s concerted efforts to recover affectivity and free it from charges of enthusiasm. Gregory S. Clapper’s and Gerald R. McDermott’s chapters on Wesley and Edwards provide a suitable stopping point to the volume. In his analysis of affectivity in Edwards, McDermott explains why the Puritan preferred the term “infusion of the will” to “illumination.” This is because

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“the continued presence of the Spirit as grace-ful affections becomes a ‘disposition to holy acts.’” Since the will and affections are different expressions of the same inclination, the Spirit as love enlivens them as an internal principle so that the person participates in the Spirit affectively. Wesley would claim that such a participation entails an internal affective state, which brings an immediate cognitive awareness of the person’s new identity as a child of God. This is what Clapper identifies as orthokardia, or Wesley’s focus on heart religion. Clapper and McDermott bring the volume full circle to the association of a cognitive view of emotion, pneumatology, and the psychology of conversion. Finally, as stated at the outset, these chapters provide fertile terrain for what Yong describes as a new methodological orientation. Readers interested in developments in the field of renewal studies and its related methodologies might well gain from consulting his concluding reflections and working backward through the volume in that way. What Yong highlights is the sustained attention in this volume to the role of the Spirit in relation to affective transformation. It would be difficult to read these chapters and conclude that there was a pneumatological deficit within Western Christianity since the Spirit as love intersected with the affective life by which individuals came to participate in the triune life of God. To explore affectivity within the Christian tradition requires a greater sensitivity to pneumatology, and a renewal methodology requires such sensitivity. To be sure, even taken together, the twelve chapters of this book are no more than an introduction to the intersection where the themes of renewal, pneumatology, and affectivity, each broadly construed, meet. Much more could be said in each chapter even as we are aware of the gaps that remain, not only historically, but also theologically and philosophically. For instance, post-tridentine Roman Catholic traditions are absent from the discussion, as are explorations of how the oral spirituality of majority world Christian cultures might illuminate the volume’s themes. Our hope is that this book precipitates further research on the Spirit and affectivity in the Christian tradition rather than conclude with any final word. In summary, this experiment in a diachronic conversation between different Christian traditions points in a number of directions. It under-

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scores the need for greater cross-disciplinary and ecumenical interaction by scholars operating within different parts of Christian tradition. Closely associated with this need is a recognition of the importance of shifts in the terminology of affectivity as Christian writers fused ancient theories of emotion and desire with Christian doctrines like sin and salvation. Apart from an examination of the terminology the writer employs, it becomes difficult to determine how that writer is receiving and transmitting the tradition. Exploration of the affections occurs in the context of developing pedagogical strategies for the therapy of the soul. Not only is grace viewed in terms of medicine that reorders human affectivity, but the liturgy and other spiritual practices such as holy tears foster the movement inward into the self and upward into God. Even in those writers most influenced by Stoic thought, this movement represents the fulfillment of emotion and desire as the fundamental impulses of the human person are taken up into the blessed passion of love. The claim that the telos of human existence is a passionate movement into the triune dynamic of love raises questions about embodied states of ecstasy. Moreover, several chapters reveal how that debate runs through a number of periods in the history of Christianity over the proper ordering of the temporal and the eternal alongside the relationship between the body and the soul. As a form of charismatic existence, modes of ecstasy and the erotic reveal a corrective within the tradition to a more incarnational ontology that revels in creation, embodied spirituality, and the humanity of Christ. Laced throughout the whole is a pneumatology that seeks to explore the proper relationship between the Spirit as love and the affective life of the human person. It is at this point that participation in the life of God becomes a concrete reality, since the formation of affectivity is how the human person becomes conformed to God and so takes on the form of the Word in the power of the Spirit. This pneumatological frame of reference that runs through the whole supplies an ecumenical subtext to the entire project and underscores the importance of renewal as facilitating a sensitivity to the charismatic and ecstatic as well as the pneumatological dimensions of Christian tradition.

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Notes 1. Given the brevity of this introduction, I have had to focus on Englishlanguage scholarship. For a brief discussion of Francophone scholarship with a view to emotion in the twelfth century, see Damien Boquet, L’Ordre de l’affect au Moyen Âge: Autour de l’anthropologie affective d’Aelred de Rievaulx (Caen: Crahm, 2005), 11–27. 2. There are exceptions, for example, Sarah Coakley, ed., Faith, Rationality, and the Passions (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012). 3. Robert C. Solomon, The Passions: Emotions and the Meaning of Life (Garden City, NY: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1976). 4. As an introductory point, see the work of Margaret R. Graver, Stoicism and Emotion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007); Brad Inwood, Ethics and Human Action in Early Stoicism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985); Brad Inwood, Reading Seneca: Stoic Philosophy at Rome (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008); David Konstan, The Emotions of the Ancient Greeks: Studies in Aristotle and Classical Literature (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006); Martha Nussbaum, Love’s Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990); Martha Nussbaum, The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994); Martha Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of the Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); and Richard Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). 5. Simo Knuuttila, Emotions in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004). 6. Thomas Dixon, From Passions to Emotions: The Creation of a Secular Psychological Category (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). 7. See also Nussbaum, Therapy of Desire, 79, in which she develops her cognitivist account in contradistinction to the “modern view” of emotions as unlearned bodily reactions that cannot be trained. Following Ronald de Sousa, Nussbaum places the blame for this view on Locke. See Ronald de Sousa, The Rationality of Emotion (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987). 8. See also the brief discussion in Nicholas E. Lombardo, O.P., The Logic of Desire: Aquinas on Emotion (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2011), 8–15. 9. Barbara H. Rosenwein, Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006). 10. See note 16 of Dreyer’s chapter, this volume.

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11. Theodore Runyon, “A New Look at Experience,” Drew Gateway (Fall 1987): 44–55; Theodore Runyon, The New Creation: John Wesley’s Theology Today (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1998). 12. Examples are Richard Steele, ed., “Heart Religion” in the Methodist Tradition and Related Movements (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2001); Randy Maddox, Responsible Grace: John Wesley’s Practical Theology (Nashville, TN: Kingswood Books, 1994); Steven J. Land, Pentecostal Spirituality: A Passion for the Kingdom (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993); Henry H. Knight III, The Presence of God in the Christian Life (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 1992); Cheryl Bridges Johns, Pentecostal Formation: A Pedagogy among the Oppressed (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993); and Gregory S. Clapper, John Wesley on Religious Affections: His Views on Experience and Emotion and Their Role in Christian Life and Theology (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1987). Clapper prefers the term “orthokardia” (see his chapter below). 13. Samuel Solivan, The Spirit, Pathos, and Liberation: Toward an Hispanic Pentecostal Theology (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998). See also Eduardo C. Fernandez, La Cosecha: Harvesting Contemporary United States Hispanic Theology (1972–1998) (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000), 85–87; Roberto S. Goizueta, “U.S. Hispanic Popular Catholicism as Theopoetics,” in Hispanic/Latino Theology: Challenge and Promise, ed. Ada María Isasi-Díaz and Fernando F. Segovia (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress, 1996), 267. 14. Vladimir Lossky, A l’image et á la ressemblance de Dieu (Paris: AubierMontaigne, 1967); Vladimir Lossky, In the Image and Likeness of God, ed. John H. Erickson and Thomas E. Bird, introduction by John Meyendorff (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1985); Nikos Nissiotis, Die Theologie de Ostkirch im ökumenischen Dialog (Stuttgart: Evangelishes Verlasgwerk, 1968); Nikos Nissiotis, “The Main Ecclesiological Problem of the Second Vatican Council and Position of the Non-Roman Churches Facing It,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 6 (1965): 31–62. 15. Jürgen Moltmann, The Spirit of Life: A Universal Affirmation, trans. Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1992), 1–3. 16. Colin E. Gunton, The Promise of Trinitarian Theology (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1991), 31–57; Robert Jenson, Systematic Theology, vol. 1: The Triune God (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 146–61; Robert Jenson, Systematic Theology, vol. 2: The Works of God (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 178–83. 17. Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Pneumatology: The Holy Spirit in Ecumenical, International, and Contextual Perspective (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2002), 16–19.

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18. Peter Abelard, Expositio in epistolam ad Romanos 1.7; for English translation, see Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, trans. Steven R. Cartwright, Fathers of the Church, Mediaeval Continuation 12 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2011), 106. 19. See De civitate Dei 13.13, 15, in which Augustine talks about the first couple’s awareness of a new motion of the flesh (novum motum inobedientis carnis suae), which becomes a disobedient movement (inobediens motus). For further exploration of the constructive potential of the Spirit as love in Augustine, see Amos Yong, Spirit of Love: A Trinitarian Theology of Grace (Waco, TX: Baylor Press, 2012), 3–19. 20. De vera religione 10.18. 21. De musica 6.9. The claim in De musica 6.10–11 that “delight is a kind of weight in the soul” (delectatio quasi pondus est animae) becomes “my weight is my love” (pondus meum amor meus) in Confessions 13.9.10. 22. Martha Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 275. 23. De anima 432b. 24. See Brad Inwood, Ethics and Human Action in Early Stoicism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), 11–14. 25. On the differences with Aristotle as well as the conflation of the terms by later writers, see Inwood, Ethics and Human Action in Early Stoicism, 250–57. 26. Margaret Graver, Stoicism and Emotion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 38. 27. Tusculan Disputations 3.17. 28. De finibus 4.39; 5.17; De officiis 1.101–2. In the latter treatise, Cicero sees the two powers of the soul as ratio and appetitus in which appetitus is hormē. 29. See also Margaret Graver, Cicero on the Emotions: Tusculan Disputations 3 and 4 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), xxxviii. 30. Tusculan Disputations 4.11; translation taken from Graver, Cicero on the Emotions, 43. 31. Tusculan Disputations 3.11; 4.12, 15; De finibus 3.36. Cicero uses “unbridled” in reference to libido, cupiditas, and iracundia. 32. Seneca uses “unbridled” and “untamed” in reference to anger as a passion (adfectus). The image he employs is of a soldier who refuses to follow orders and will not have any discipline imposed. See De ira 1.9. One definition of sin Augustine employs is “blind and untamed longing” (caeca et indomita concupiscentia). See Enchiridion 27. 33. Tusculan Disputations 5.16. Gregory the Great will employ tranquillitas and constantia mentis in his work to describe the virtuous soul. On Gregory, see

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Carole Straw, Gregory the Great: Perfection in Imperfection, Transformation of the Classical Heritage 14 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 76, 236–56. 34. Strom. 2.13.59. Translation taken with some modification from Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis, bks. 1–3, trans. John Ferguson, Fathers of the Church 85 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1991), 198–99. 35. Gregory of Nyssa, De anima et resurrectione (PG 46.57B–68A). See On the Soul and the Resurrection, trans. Catharine P. Roth (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2002), 54–60. 36. Sarah Catherine Byers, Perception, Sensibility, and Moral Motivation in Augustine: A Stoic-Platonic Synthesis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 88–95, 217–31. 37. De duabus animabus 10.14; for English translation, see The Manichean Debate, introductions and notes by Roland Teske, S.J., ed. Boniface Ramsey, The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century I/19 (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2006), 127–28. 38. Byers, Perception, Sensibility, and Moral Motivation in Augustine, 87. See Augustine, De civitate Dei 19.4. 39. See in particular Augustine, De diversis quastionibus octoginta tribus 40; English translation Responses to Miscellaneous Questions, introduction, translation, and notes by Boniface Ramsey, ed. Raymond Canning, The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century I/12 (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2008), 55. Augustine talks about the same voluntas changing in terms of its appetitus, which suggests a close relationship. 40. De libero arbitrio 1.12. Translation taken from Augustine, On Free Choice of the Will, translated with introduction and notes by Thomas Williams (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1993), 19. 41. John of Damascus, On the Orthodox Faith 36. Greek text taken from Jean Damascène, La Foi orthodoxe 1–44, texte critique B. Kotter, introduction, traduction et notes P. Ledrux, Sources Chrétiennes 535 (Paris: Cerf, 2010), 328. For Latin translation, see E. M. Buytaert, ed., Saint John Damascene: De fide orthodoxa. Versions of Burgundio and Cerbanus (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute Publications, 1955). 42. Nicholas Lombardo, The Logic of Desire: Aquinas on Emotion (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2011), 1–19; see also Paul Gondreau, The Passion of Christ’s Soul in the Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas (Muenster: Aschendorff Gulag, 2003). Both Gondreau and Lombardo note that Aquinas’s account principally draws on Aristotle, Augustine, Nemesius of Emesa, John of Damascus, and Albert the Great.

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43. Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, 4.29. 44. Andreas Capellanus, De amore 1.1: amor est passio quaedam innata procedens ex visione et immoderata cogitatione formae alterius sexus. 45. Gregory of Nyssa, On the Soul and the Resurrection, 89–91. 46. On this point, see John Chryssavgis, John Climacus: From the Egyptian Desert to the Sinaite Mountain, 141, 207–8.

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B L E S S E D PA S S I O N O F LOV E The Affections, the Church Fathers, and the Christian Life

RO B E RT L O U I S W I L K E N

Besides Psalm 23, The Lord is my Shepherd, no passage in the Bible is more familiar than 1 Corinthians 13, the great chapter on love. As Psalm 23 is often recited at funerals, so 1 Corinthians 13 is often read at weddings. Though some of its phrases, “understand all mysteries” or “now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face,” may seem otherworldly to the bride and groom, everyone perks up when the reader reaches the final words of the chapter: “So faith, hope, love abide, these three, but the greatest of these is love.” Understandably this verse resounds in the minds and hearts of all. But the line in the chapter that stands out most conspicuously to me, and bids me to ponder St. Paul’s word, comes earlier. It reads, “love never ends,” or in another translation, “love never comes to an end.” What can that possibly mean, especially if one takes love in the conventional sense most familiar to us, love between a man and a woman, between parents and children, between friends, or love of neighbor. In all these cases love does come to an end. The person who filled your life with sunlight and music turns away, loses interest, or dies. Our lives change and we find new 29

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loves. And even the love of children or the love of parents comes to an end. How can love reach beyond the grave? If one looks closely at the chapter, it is clear that the line “love never ends” is a turning point in the flow of thought. For the first part of the chapter speaks about love shown to human beings—“love is patient and kind,” love is not “jealous or boastful”—but the second half shifts the focus to God. It speaks about the marks of a mature faith when knowledge of God deepens and we no longer see things dimly as in a glass darkly. St. Paul calls up the language of Psalms to say that one day we shall see “face to face,” as, for example, Psalm 42, “When shall I come and behold the face of God,” or Psalm 105, “see his face always.” When St. Paul says “face to face” he is talking about seeing the face of God, not that of other human beings. And of course the chapter comes to an end with terms that have to do with our relation to God, faith and hope, and it is with these that Paul compares love: “Faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” So the reader is invited to ask, Why is love greater than faith or hope? St. Paul and other biblical authors use the term “love” in different senses. In this chapter he seems to begin with love of neighbor, but he ends with love of God. As in Romans 8: “We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him.” Of course one might say that he is putting in his own words what had been received from Christ: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And your neighbor as yourself.” There is a double commandment here: love God, and love your neighbor as yourself. In fact, St. Augustine observed that there are three commandments. The third is “love yourself,” to which love of neighbor is likened.1 Jesus’s words seem to speak of love in three different senses, yet only one word is used. In Greek, however, there are several terms for love. One is the word we transliterate into English as agape. It signifies charity, care for others, love of neighbor, and it is the term for love used most often in the Bible. A second term is eros, which signifies passionate, sexual love. From it we get the adjective erotic. But this sense of love is seldom used in the Bible. A third term is philia, or friendship, but it is often translated as “love.” In one passage in the Gospel of John the use of two different terms for love allow a distinction in Greek unavailable to us in English. In

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John 21, after the Resurrection, when Jesus meets his disciples by the Sea of Tiberias, he says to Peter, “Do you love me?,” using agape. Peter answers, “I love you,” but uses the word for friendship. So his response is, “Yes, I am your friend.” Not much of an answer. Then Jesus again asks, “Do you love me?,” using agape, and again Peter says, “Yes, I am your friend.” Finally, the third time, Jesus asks, “Are you my friend?” Peter, being dull-witted, is grieved because this final time Jesus asked, “Are you my friend?,” and he says, “You know everything Lord; you know that I am your friend.” Though the distinction between agape and philia, between love and friendship, is important, much more interesting is the distinction between love as charity and love as eros, between helping love and erotic love. The first Christian thinker to explore the use of these terms in the Bible was Origen, who lived in Alexandria at the beginning of the third century. He was a sophisticated thinker thoroughly rooted in the ancient philosophical tradition, but his major intellectual work was commenting on the Bible. For Origen as for all early Christian and medieval thinkers, theology was first and foremost an exercise in interpreting the Bible, what the medievals called sacra pagina, or sacred page. Origen wrote commentaries on many of the books of the Bible, including the Gospel of John, Paul’s letter to the Romans, Genesis, and the Psalms. As a learned student of the Bible he gave a great deal of thought to how the Bible speaks about love, and to explain and interpret the biblical understanding of love he wrote the first commentary on the Song of Songs, the beautiful poem on love in the Old Testament. The Song of Songs is a collection of poems dealing with love and courtship. The language is sensual and charged with erotic imagery. On the surface it has no spiritual or religious aspects; it speaks vividly about the feelings two young lovers have for each other, their delight in each other’s body, and their desires. The book seems strangely out of place in the Bible. Yet it is precisely the Song’s erotic language that most interests Origen. He realized that the language of agape was not adequate when speaking about our relation to God. Something more was needed if we are to love God with all our heart, soul, and might; we need evocative and erotic language, words that speak of attraction, desire, union. In the introduction to his commentary on the Song of Songs Origen explains that the biblical writers almost always use one word when

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speaking of love, agape. Even when an author is speaking about sexual love, indeed of sexual intercourse, the word used is agape in its verbal form. So for example in Genesis we read that Isaac “took Rebecca and she became his wife and he loved her”—not as a neighbor but as a wife! Or Jacob and Rachel: “Rachel had beautiful eyes and was beautiful and Jacob loved Rachel.” According to Origen, in these passages the biblical writers used the term “love” (agape) to mean “have a passion for.”2 In the scriptures there are only a few passages where eros is used, and then usually in its verbal form. For example, in Proverbs it is said, “Love her [wisdom] passionately [i.e., love her with eros]; embrace her and she will exalt you” (Prov. 4:6). And in the Wisdom of Solomon it is written, “I have become a passionate lover of her [Wisdom’s] beauty” (Wisdom 8:2). In these passages the scripture uses eros because it is speaking about love of Wisdom, that is of Christ who is “our wisdom” (1 Cor. 1:30). Origen took this to mean that the language of passion or desire is fitting not only for sexual love but also for spiritual love. Therefore, says Origen, when one comes across passages in the scriptures that speak about love for God we should take agape to mean eros, or passionate love. So when Jesus says, “you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and all your soul and all your might,” he means that we should love God passionately. As the soul begins to glimpse the beauty of the Word of God, Christ, it falls “deeply in love with his loveliness and receives from him a certain dart and wound of love.”3 Origen is alluding here to Isaiah 49, “he made me [Christ] a polished arrow, in his quiver he hid me away,” a passage the church fathers loved.4 The technique Origen used to interpret the Song of Songs is called allegory. Allegory is a Greek word that means “another sense,” and it signifies a method of interpretation that was developed centuries ago to give a fuller or deeper meaning to events, things, persons, and words than their plain sense. Take for example the parable of the sower. When Jesus says that the seeds that fall among weeds will be choked, those that fall on the path will be ground down, and the ones that fall in good soil will sprout and yield much, he is not giving a lesson on farming or gardening. The seeds and the soil are an allegory, referring to the different ways the Word of God is received by those who hear it. Classic examples of allegory in English are the fascinating poem of Edmund Spenser, the Faerie Queen, and the once popular spiritual writing, Pilgrim’s Progress, by John Bunyan.

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St. Paul uses the term in a well-known passage in Galatians in which he says that Sarah and Hagar, the two wives of Abraham, are an allegory; Sarah signifies the heavenly Jerusalem and Hagar the earthly (Gal. 4:21– 31). In Ephesians Paul says that the coming together of Adam and Eve is an allegory of the union of Christ and the church. “‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’ (Gen. 2:24). This mystery is a profound one, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church” (Eph. 5:31–32). And in 1 Corinthians he takes the passage of the Israelites through the Red Sea (Exod. 14:21–31) as a “type,” that is, something that points to something else, of baptism, and the rock from which they drank in the desert (Exod. 20:1–13) is a type signifying Christ (1 Cor. 10:1–11). We do not know whether the Song of Songs was written as an allegory, that is, whether a spiritual meaning is built into the text or was discerned by later interpreters. Though the topic is debated endlessly, in truth the question cannot be answered. We do know, however, that from ancient times Christians interpreted its passionate love as the love of the individual believer—or the church—for Christ. Origen’s aim was to domesticate the language of erotic love for Christian use, and in doing so he laid the foundation for the elaboration and flowering of the great tradition of spiritual writing in Christianity.5 For example, in a passage from St. Bernard, one of the most profound spiritual writers in the church’s history, commenting on the first verse of the Song, “Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth,” he writes, “Those to whom it is given to utter these words sincerely are comparatively few, but any one who has received this mystical kiss from the mouth of Christ at least once, seeks again that intimate experience, and eagerly looks for its frequent renewal.”6 The Song of Songs gave Christian spiritual writers, and hence the Christian people, an entire book of the Bible filled with erotic language, imagery, and scenes to express our deepest feelings about Christ. For that which unites us most intimately with Christ is not faith, or hope, but love. And nothing is more characteristic of Christian tradition than the language of the heart. At the beginning of the Confessions Augustine writes that it is the “heart that is restless until it rests in God.” He said that the “flame on the altar of the heart” is the “burning fire of love”; “We

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direct our course toward God with love”; and “By God’s gift we are set on fire and carried upwards; we grow red hot [a striking word, still used to refer to sexual desire] and ascend. We climb the ‘ascents of our hearts,’” citing the psalmist. After reading Augustine, one can understand why Origen wanted to fill the word agape with the overtones of eros.7 Although the church fathers based their thinking on the scriptures, they did not read them in isolation. They were well-educated men informed by the best philosophical thinking of their day, not biblicists or fundamentalists or fideists; that is, they did not rely solely on what they knew through revelation. They took seriously what non-Christian philosophers had thought about the emotions, or to use a fancier term, the affections, in the moral life. In his commentary on the Song of Songs Origen seems to be engaged in an exercise in biblical lexicography, but the issues he addressed were philosophical and theological, not simply philological. His interpretation of biblical language addressed an ancient philosophical debate about the affections in the moral life. According to the Stoics the life of virtue required detachment from the passions, those unruly emotions that drive human behavior against reason and often against our best intentions toward unwanted and unwelcome ends. The Stoic sage strove to live free of the disordered impulses that deflect one from pursuing what is good and noble. Consequently the passions, that is, the emotions, had to be rooted out, extirpated. Tranquillity of soul was the ideal. Some Christian thinkers were attracted by the Stoic view and thought that Jesus was the model of a life free of passion. It is a hard case to make: Jesus weeps; he has compassion on the sick and infirm; he drives out the money changers in what seems an act of outrage and anger. For that reason other Christian thinkers took a different view. How can love be a matter of indifference? The Stoic way of thinking rests uneasily alongside the biblical injunction to love God with all one’s heart and is hard to reconcile with passages in the Bible that urge the believer to thirst for God as the deer for flowing streams (Ps. 42). And the scriptures are filled with references to emotions such as joy, gratitude, sorrow, compassion, and zeal. Psalm 4 even says, “Be angry and sin not.” Following Origen’s lead Christian thinkers defended the passions and interpreted the biblical language of love with the help of the Greek philosophical tradition. In antiquity

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the passions were understood to derive from two fundamental human impulses, desire and fear. As there were four cardinal virtues, wisdom or prudence, justice, courage, and temperance, so there were four cardinal passions, desire, joy, fear, and grief. Desire is the yearning to possess something we do not have, and fear is aversion to what we do not want. In the fourth century, Gregory of Nyssa took up the topic of the passions and love. Like Origen he wrote a commentary on the Song of Songs, but his most considered views on the passions occur in a work titled On the Soul and the Resurrection. There he addresses the question whether “desire” is a necessary emotion in a mature Christian life. He knew, of course, that in some places in the Bible “desire” has negative overtones; for example, “Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (Gal. 5:24). Yet Gregory realized that desire and love were closely related. He said flatly, “We are led to God by desire, drawn to him as if pulled by a rope.”8 The church fathers knew that it was not only truth or goodness that attracts us to God but also beauty. Often in the scriptures the language used for God has to do with seeing: splendor, glory, face, beauty, that is, with what delights the eye. Recall the words of the Psalmist: “One thing have I asked of the Lord . . . that I will behold the beauty of the Lord” (Ps. 27:4). When the soul has glimpsed the beauty of God (the highest beauty, what the medievals called summa pulchritudo) it yearns—desires—to see more. Gregory’s writings are filled with a cornucopia of images to depict the longing for God: a lover asking for yet another kiss or a person tasting a sweetness that can be satisfied only by another taste. Even Moses who had spoken with God “face to face” was not satisfied: “He sought God as if he had never seen him. In the same way, all those in whom the desire of God is deeply imbedded, never cease yearning for more. Every delight in God becomes kindling for a still more ardent desire.”9 With all our other loves, such pedestrian things as love of chocolate or of ice cream, when we have that which we love the desire comes to an end. Even in erotic love the intense experience of sexual love dissipates when it is fulfilled. Indeed, often our enjoyment falls short of expectation, and in the very moment of satisfaction we begin to desire something else. With the love of God, however, each fulfillment only intensifies desire. It is, says Gregory, like watching a spring bubble forth from the earth. No

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matter how long we stand there, the spring brings forth new water. Gregory writes, “Every desire for the Beautiful which draws us on . . . is intensified by the soul’s very progress towards it. And this is what it means to see God; never to have this desire satisfied.”10 Dante understood what Gregory was talking about when he spoke of loving “that good beyond which there is nothing to long for.”11 Though desire, eros, draws us to God, Gregory realized that desire can be acquisitive and self-centered, driven more by our needs and pleasures than the object we seek. Hence Gregory says that as one comes into the presence of God desire gives way to love, and what was formerly sought in desire is now possessed in love. In other words he is deepening Origen’s original insight. Love is more than eros; Gregory calls it an “interior disposition” by which the soul becomes attached to the beautiful, to God. That is why Paul said “love never comes to an end.”12 Faith, as the Book of Hebrews has it, is the “conviction of that which is not seen” (Heb. 11:1). When one can see, faith is no longer necessary. In the same way, we hope for that which is not present. In the words of St. Paul, “Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees?” (Rom. 8:24). But the love of God can never cease, for it is through love that we “cleave” to God, to use a beautiful old word in the King James translation of the Psalms (Ps. 73:28). For “if love is taken from us how will we remain united to God?,” asks Gregory.13 Desire is a restless activity, a yearning for something one craves but does not possess. Love, however, has within it the possibility of repose, satisfaction, and joy that comes from delight in the presence of the beloved. Desire feeds on absence; love lives off presence. The knowledge of God is not a sudden glimpse of a strange, unfamiliar reality but a deep, abiding joy that continually changes the lover. “Through the movement and activity of love,” writes Gregory, “the soul clings to [the good] and mingles with it, fashioning itself to that which is being continually grasped and discovered anew.”14 In other words, as we draw closer to God in love we are gradually formed in the image of God. Without affections or feelings there can be no vibrant Christian life. Christian faith is not primarily about knowing things; it is about feeling things. You may recall that in the Confessions Augustine said that as a young man he had read a book of the Roman statesman and philosopher

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Cicero called Hortensius that dealt with wisdom or philosophy. In recalling the book, Augustine said that it “had changed my feelings.” The book did not give him a new perspective on wisdom, nor did it change his opinions; it moved him to love wisdom itself. Suddenly everything else seemed vain and empty, for Wisdom lit a fire in his heart.15 Augustine chided the Stoics for condemning compassion as an emotion of the weak. He even thinks that fear and anger are necessary in a mature Christian life. The question is not whether one is angry or sad but why and to what end. Fear and desire, pain and gladness, the four cardinal passions, have an honorable place in Christian discourse. To support his argument he brings forth biblical examples, for example joy, in doing good works, for it is written, “God loves a cheerful giver.” St. Paul rejoices with those who rejoice, is jealous for the faithful at Corinth, feels pain in his heart and grief. It is not possible to live a grown-up Christian life without emotions that spring from love of the good and from holy charity. One day fear and grief will be gone, but joy and gladness will remain. “Only someone utterly cut off from truth would say that love and gladness will have no place” in the life to come.16 Early Christian thinking on love of God comes to sublime expression in the writings of Maximus the Confessor, who lived in the seventh century. He is the last of the great thinkers of the early church, and in some ways the most demanding for modern readers. He was a courageous theologian who suffered grievously for his faithful witness in the last great controversy over the person of Christ—whether Christ had a human and a divine will. His tongue was cut out of his mouth so he could not speak and his right hand severed so he could not write. In addition to writing technical theological works, he was a profound spiritual writer who wrote with the authority only experience can give. Like earlier thinkers he knew that without passion, without feelings and emotions, human beings would be unable “to hold fast to virtue and knowledge of God.” “Desire,” he writes, “brings about an insatiable spiritual movement that drives us toward divine things,” that is, to God. Knowledge without passion does not bind one to God. And to drive home his point he alludes to 1 Corinthians 13: love “gives reality to faith” and “makes hope present.” He understood that knowledge of God is participatory. It is not knowledge from a distance; rather, it is a knowledge

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that changes the knower. For only those who have been cleansed, purified, and transformed can know and love God. That is why Jesus said, “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.”17 Maximus loved paradoxical phrases such as “temperate madness,” “sober inebriation,” “moving rest.” “Blessed passion of love,” the title of this chapter, is one of those phrases. In using the phrase he was searching for words to say what the psalmist meant when he wrote, “seek the face of the Lord always.” For the soul that loves God is moved by an eros (and he boldly uses that word rather than agape) that is without end and never ceases. In other words when the Bible uses the term agape with respect to God it has the meaning of eros. “Knowledge of divine things without passion does not persuade the mind to disdain material things completely, but is like a mere thought of a thing known by the senses. . . . For this reason there is a need of the blessed passion of holy love that binds the mind to spiritual realities [i.e., God].”18 In reading the church fathers it is well to remember that some of the most profound thinkers in the church’s history gave as much thought, if not more, to the spiritual life as they did to the great questions of theology. Yet this aspect of Christian thought and practice is not nearly as well known as the famous debates over the Trinity and Christology. It is, however, no less important. For Christian faith is an affair not only of learning to think rightly about God but also of learning to feel rightly, to love God with all our heart, and mind and soul. Lacking concepts in the mind and words on the tongue we cannot speak about what we know, but if we do not love the God to whom these words lead us we do not understand. Love is itself a form of knowledge. Without love reason can only carry us so far; it remains tethered to the earth. As Augustine wrote in the Confessions, addressing God, my desire was “not to be more certain about you, but to be more stable in you.”19

Notes 1. Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, ed. and trans. R. P. H. Green (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), 1.25.58. 2. Origen, The Song of Songs: Commentary and Homilies, trans. R. P. Lawson (Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1957), 29 ff.

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3. Ibid. 4. For commentary on this verse from the church fathers, see Isaiah: Interpreted by Early Christian and Medieval Commentators, ed. and trans. Robert Louis Wilken (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007), 370–72. 5. For the interpretation of the Song of Songs in Christian tradition, see Richard A. Norris Jr., The Song of Songs: Interpreted by Early Christian and Medieval Commentators (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003). 6. Sermon 3, in St. Bernard of Clairvaux, On the Song of Songs I, trans. Kilian Walsh, The Works of Bernard of Clairvaux (Spencer, MA: Cistercian Publications, 1971), 16. 7. Augustine, Confessions 1.1; 13.9–10, trans. Henry Chadwick (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 3, 178; City of God 10.2, trans. Henry Bettenson (London: Penguin Books, 1972), 375–76. 8. Gregory of Nyssa, The Soul and the Resurrection, trans. Catharine P. Roth (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1993), 77 ff. 9. Gregory of Nyssa, Commentary on the Song of Songs, Homily 1, trans. Casimir McCambley (Brookline, MA: Hellenic College Press, 1987), 51. 10. From Gregorii Nysseni De Vita Moysis in Gregorii Nysseni Opera, ed. by Werner Jaeger and Herman Langerbeck (Leiden: Brill, 1964), 116; trans. in From Glory to Glory: Texts from Gregory of Nyssa’s Mystical Writings, ed. and trans. Jean Danielou, S.J., and Herbert Musurillo, S.J. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1961), 147–48. 11. Dante Alighieri, Purgatorio 31, lines 23–24 in Purgatorio: A Verse Translation, trans. Jean Hollander and Robert Hollander (New York: Anchor Books, 2004), 693. 12. Gregory, Soul and Resurrection, 77–81. 13. Ibid., 59. 14. Ibid., 78–81. 15. Augustine, Confessions 3.4.7. 16. Augustine, City of God 14.9. 17. Quaestiones ad Thalassium I, Maximi Confessoris Quaestiones ad Thalassium, ed. Carl Laga and Carlos Steel, Corpus Christianorum Series Graeca 7, 46–49; Epistle 2, in Patrologia Graeca 91.396b–c. 18. Four Hundred Chapters on Love 4.66–67; Maximus Confessor, Selected Writings, trans. George C. Berthold (New York: Paulist Press, 1985), 70. 19. Augustine, Confessions 8.1.1.

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REDEEMING THE AFFECTIONS Deconstructing Augustine’s Critique of Theater

JAMES K. A. SMITH

Deconstructing Augustine / “Renew”-ing Augustine

Given the preoccupations of American film and theater, one is almost surprised that some version of Augustine’s Confessions has not made its entrance on Broadway or at least appeared on Hollywood’s silver screen (perhaps it is doomed to a television miniseries). The story has all the elements of an American classic: a coming-of-age narrative fraught with sex, fame, power, and even political intrigue, though the ending, of course, would have to be rewritten. On the other hand, this oversight is one for which, we expect, Augustine would be thankful (the tearful bishop of Hippo Regius would have a hard go of it in Hollywood, our mecca of images). After all, there would be a certain irony—and danger, Augustine would argue1—if anyone should adapt the Confessions for a script or screenplay. The irony—perhaps inviting to someone like Bergman— would lie in the staging of a narrative that includes a trenchant critique of literature and drama.2 The danger would lie precisely in its effectiveness in arousing the (wrong)3 passions in its spectators. But is not this irony and danger something that accompanies the Confessions themselves, a deeply literary and affective work intended, 41

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Augustine remarks, to “excite the mind and affections of men” toward God4 and to “stir up the heart when people read and hear” them?5 Is this not the kind of passionate arousal and pleasure that is condemned by Augustine when it takes place in the theater? And if the Confessions themselves are “staged” in order to have an affective telos, and this task is affirmed by Augustine, should we not perhaps reconsider Augustine’s critique of drama and the possibility of a redeemed theater, on whose stage the Confessions play themselves out? Could we not perhaps re-vision an Augustinian account of theater that affirms drama as an incarnational medium, thereby also redeeming the affections? The goal of this chapter is to first consider Augustine’s critique of drama in the Confessions and later in the City of God with special attention to its Platonic filiation. I then subject this critique itself to criticism in light of other significant elements of Augustine’s thought, particularly his affirmations concerning the goodness of creation and the centrality of the Incarnation. This involves a certain “deconstruction” of Augustine in its most positive sense of reading elements of his thought against other currents at work in his corpus.6 And this is not a simply contemporary Parisian gesture, but a chastened medieval hermeneutic that attempts to discern the vera intentio; as Robert O’Connell has earlier suggested, it is a matter of recapturing the “original spirit, appeal, and life, even when violating the Augustinian letter.”7 In this context, I am most concerned to discern the more Platonic elements of his critique of theater and demonstrate how these must be undermined by Augustine’s more fundamental assertions regarding the Incarnation and the priority of love. Such a reading of Augustine against himself—a deconstruction of Augustine— might also be a way of “renew”-ing Augustine, forefronting a kind of implicit charismatic intuition at the heart of his affective epistemology.8 This deconstruction of Augustine should, at the same time, deconstruct some of our inherited caricatures of Augustine as a sort of medieval rationalist or dry scholastic and instead help us see Augustine as an ally in renewal.

The “End” of Theater: Augustine’s Critique of Drama

Augustine’s critique of drama is penned from experience, confessing that he was “captivated by theatrical shows [rapiebant me spectacula theat-

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rica]” (Conf. 3.2.2). The desire for the spectacle was fueled by a deeper, idolatrous curiositas that sought sensible things as ends to be enjoyed in themselves rather than used as a means of knowing the Creator (Conf. 10.35.55).9 The problem, however, does not reside primarily in plays’ immoral content10 but rather in the effect of drama on the soul’s development. In other words, it is not the substance of the performance but rather the telos, or intention, that is problematic for Augustine. What is expected from a theatrical performance? What effects are the actors intending to produce? What ends do the spectators hope to achieve? Insofar as Augustine’s critique is more concerned with intention than with substance or content, I think it is helpful to perhaps understand this as a proto- or quasi-phenomenological critique that evaluates the phenomena (in this case, theater) on the basis of the intentions that constitute it. Of concern to Augustine is less what is played out on the stage than why it is staged.11 Further, by indicating this “intentional” focus of the critique, we will also establish a foundation for a later reevaluation of theater with fundamentally different intentions. As Gene Fendt has also suggested, we can see a twofold critique of theater operative in the Confessions: the first, largely Platonic, I describe as an “ontological” critique; the second, an “ethical” critique.12 After expounding each, considering also his discussions of theater in the City of God, I go on to argue (1) that the Platonic ontological critique is undermined by Augustine’s incarnational theology and (2) that the second (ethical) critique is a matter of intention as described above and therefore invites re-visioning, considering the possibility of alternative “ends” of theater constituted by a fundamentally different intention. As we will see, the problem isn’t with the affections per se but rather the direction or aim of our affective formation.13 Theater, Images, and Representation: An Ontological Critique

The proper context for understanding this first element of Augustine’s critique of theater is his more persistent critique of rhetoric in the Confessions—since these are, after all, the confessions of a former rhetor who, as a matter of Christian obedience, retired from his post as “a salesman of words in the markets of rhetoric,” resulting in his being “liberated from the profession of rhetor” (Conf. 9.2.2; 9.4.7).14 Thus it is not

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surprising that immediately upon the heels of his critique of drama in book 3, he returns to a related critique of rhetoric (Conf. 3.6.10–3.7.12), which is instructive for understanding an underlying presupposition regarding theater. However, before turning to the Confessions, we should also recall the Platonic precedent for this mode of critique. If Augustine’s ethical critique finds its precursor in Plato’s Republic, I would suggest that Augustine’s ontological critique is presaged in the Phaedrus—a dialogue deeply concerned with the question of rhetoric and its strategies of both simulation and dissimulation, two strategies it shares with theater.15 Trying to lure Phaedrus back from his infatuation with Lysias and rhetoric, Socrates undertakes a rigorous critique of the “art” of rhetoric and its commodification of “eloquence” at the expense of wisdom. In the context of his account of the fall of the soul from “the place beyond heaven” into a body and the sensible world, Socrates affirms that the philosopher—“an attendant of Zeus” (252c)—is granted access to knowledge insofar as he is able to reflect on “a being that really is what it is, the subject of all true knowledge, visible only to intelligence” (247d). Thus the soul “that is concerned to take in what is appropriate to it” finds its delight and pleasure, not in the sensuous feast of words and images offered up by the rhetor or actor, but by “seeing what is real and watching what is true” (247d). The rhetor, who is trying to lure Phaedrus, is both a manufacturer and a consumer of images with a fetish for mere simulation rather than the real.16 Thus those arts that celebrate the sensible— rhetoric, the visual arts, theater—only contribute to the soul’s forgetting of its origin and its absorption in the sensible world. Philosophy, in contrast, is a catalyst for recollection of the reality that the soul saw “when it was travelling with the god” (249c) and the activating of a primal desire to escape the sensible order.17 This same ontological critique of theater is found in the Republic, where drama is criticized as merely mimetic. While first broached in book 3, the analyses of books 6 and 7 (in particular, the divided line and the allegory of the cave) set up a new ontological framework for the exclusion of poetry from the city: as merely imitative, poetry traffics in that which is less than real, content to be absorbed with shadows. Rather than pursue the thing-in-itself, the poet or artist is a producer of simulations (Rep. 598b). The work of artists is characterized by tertiarity: “they do not recognize that these works are third from what is” (598e–599a). Drama

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is condemned, then, as mere simulation—an image of an image characterized by a “fallen secondarity”18 that is both corrupted and corrupting, luring the soul into the depths of nothingness and further and further from Being. This Platonic ontological critique is the horizon for what O’Connell describes as Augustine’s “ascensional” aesthetic theory, which can be seen in his Confessions.19 Describing the dissolution of his identity via his absorption in “the world of the senses” (Conf. 3.1.1), Augustine hints at not only a moral critique but a metaphysical one: theater is but another lure away from Being toward nothingness. In this respect, theater (Conf. 3.2.2–3.3.5) is not much different from rhetoric (Conf. 3.3.6–3.7.12): both pursue that which is not; both traffic in images; and both are concerned with appearances rather than truth. Eventually revealed to Augustine was “another reality, that which truly is” (Conf. 3.7.12), which then functioned as the criterion for a critique of theater as mere image and thus removed from Being itself. This ontology is most clearly seen in his critique of the Manichees, who had fed him mere fictions that could not nourish as the thing itself. Food pictured in dreams is extremely like food received in the waking state; yet sleepers receive no nourishment, they are simply sleeping. But those fantasies had not the least resemblance to you as you have now told me, because they were physical images, fictional bodily shapes. But more certain objects of knowledge are actually existing bodies which we see with our physical sight, whether they are celestial or earthy. . . . How far removed you are from those fantasies of mine, fantasies of physical entities which have no existence! We have more reliable knowledge in our images of bodies which really exist, and the bodies are more certain than the images. But you are no body. Nor are you soul. . . . You are the life of souls, the life of lives. (Conf. 3.6.10) The Platonic scale of being is clearly evident: images of physical things are thrice removed from reality. Thus the one who is “sleeping” is the one who is akin to the prisoner in Plato’s cave—unaware that what she considers real is in fact an image of an image. Augustine’s conversion, then, was a matter of being awakened to see this distinction. Now dissatisfied

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with simulation and representation, Augustine abandons theater and rhetoric in pursuit of presence and authenticity.20 Misery, Suffering, and the Morality of Theater: An Ethical Critique

This ontological critique of theater is coupled with an ethical critique of theater—also a Platonic heritage—whose focus is the effects of theater on the soul.21 In particular, Augustine’s question, in the Confessions at least, is this: Why is it that we enjoy being saddened by what is portrayed on a stage? Why do we speak of a film that disturbs us and moves us to tears as a “good” movie? Or as he puts it, “Why is it that a person should wish to experience suffering by watching grievous and tragic events which he himself would not wish to endure” (Conf. 3.2.2)? There is a certain pleasure in the pain of being a spectator that perplexes Augustine and solicits criticism. The problem, he argues, is a matter of passion: “the more anyone is moved [movetur] by these scenes, the less free he is from similar passions [affectibus]” (Conf. 3.2.2). He then introduces distinctions in how and why one suffers: (a) when I suffer calamities myself, it is called misery; (b) when I am moved to suffer with and for others in the mode of sympathy or empathy,22 it is called mercy. But the experiences of pain born in me by the theater are neither of these: “what quality of mercy is it in fictitious and theatrical inventions? A member of the audience is not excited to offer help, but invited only to grieve” (Conf. 3.2.2). This could be described as an “inauthentic” pain: a pain that is not my own. And more than that, it is a pain and suffering in which I find pleasure; in other words, it is a pain that I enjoy. Why would this be problematic for Augustine? Recalling his fundamental distinction between “use” (uti) and “enjoyment” (frui), which undergirds the ordo amoris in which only God is to be enjoyed and everything else used for that end, we can see why the experiences of suffering at the theater are unethical for Augustine: they are instances of pain that are enjoyed as ends in themselves.23 Or, to put it otherwise, this is use-less suffering: to enjoy suffering for its own sake is to make an end of a means, to idolize suffering.24 The experiences of suffering induced by drama are enjoyed, so “tears and agonies are objects of love” (Conf. 3.2.3). Augustine is careful to note that some suffering could properly be the object of love or desire (3.2.3), namely, in mercy; but such sympathetic suffering has a

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fundamentally different telos in compassion and ministry to that one who suffers (i.e., suffering in mercy is used ), whereas the suffering of the theater spectator is desired and enjoyed for its own sake. Thus it is the passionate character of theater itself that is criticized by Augustine. In the City of God, the critique is also ethical rather than ontological. Here Augustine is concerned with the role that theater plays as a component of pagan “civil theology” and so its idolatry. Thus theatergoers are not only spectators, but worshippers (civ. 2.9). As such, the problem is not only imitation of immoralities (though it is that, too),25 but the participation in pagan religion that is a necessary component of theater. Calling into question the Roman distinction between the “civil theology” of the temple and the “fabulous theology” of the stage (civ. 6.9), Augustine concludes that “since they are both alike in their indecency, their absurdity, their unworthiness, their falsity, heaven forbid that any man of genuine religion should hope for life eternal from either of them” (civ. 6.9). This concern with idolatry is only more explicit in City of God since, as noted above, even the Confessions analysis of something being enjoyed that ought to be used is, ultimately, a mode of idolatry. Thus both the Confessions and City of God are concerned with the idolatry of theater and the immoral intentions of the passions aroused by it. * * * Augustine offers, then, a twofold critique of theater: first, an ontological critique grounded in a broadly Platonic metaphysics that devalues the sensible as an image and simulation of that which is real, and thus condemns theater and the arts for their ontological tertiarity—thrice removed from Being. This ontological critique is, in a sense, iconoclastic. Second, he offers an ethical critique of drama as idolatrous because it incites the passions, induces use-less suffering as an end in itself, and participates in a system of false religion. The arousal of passion for its own sake constitutes a fundamental usurpation of the role that desire for God ought to play in the formation of the self. In other words, theater has a detrimental effect on the cultivation of the soul’s journey home to God, both by luring it with sensible images that tend toward nothingness and by stimulating sensuous passions that delight in immoral pleasures instead of God. But should this be the last word of an Augustinian account of theater? Could we not think theater otherwise—even on an Augustinian register?

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Is there not a sense in which the drama of salvation itself is staged in the Confessions in order to achieve an affective telos? And if so, might we not envision and affirm an Augustinian theater—a Christian stage—on which this drama is produced and plays itself out? I have two sets of questions in this regard that correspond to the ontological and ethical critique above. •

•

Is the metaphysics that undergirds this ontological critique consistent with a Christian understanding of the goodness of creation, which is so central to Augustine’s thought? Is not a Platonic metaphysics fundamentally at odds with a Christian incarnational ontology? And if so, might we not re-vision Augustine’s account of images and materiality and thus provide foundations for an alternative account of theater—and art in general—as an incarnational medium? As part of a good creation, is there not space for the affirmation of passions and emotional embodiment as structural elements of the human person that can be employed for different ends? Do not the Confessions, and even Christian preaching, themselves capitalize on moving the heart and passion of readers and listeners? Thus could we not conceive an alternative affective telos for Christian theater? Could we not envision an experience of suffering that does move me to compassion? And could we not conceive of theater as part of a Christian public theology that leads its spectators/worshippers to worship the triune God? Doesn’t Augustine give us performative hints as to how we might redeem the affections?

In what follows, I attempt to sketch the contours of a Christian and, I believe, Augustinian aesthetic grounded in a creational or incarnational ontology that would affirm a positive role for theater (and film) in the cultivation of the soul.26

Redeeming the Affections: “Renew”-ing Augustine’s Aesthetics

A Christian Account of aisthesis

A Christian account of theater, drawing on Augustinian wells, would be part of a broader Christian aesthetic grounded in three key dogmatic

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themes: the goodness of creation, the enfleshing of God in the Incarnate (and Crucified) One, and the eternal affirmation of embodiment in the doctrine of the resurrection. These central dogmatic affirmations entail, in turn, a fundamental affirmation of the passions and the affections that is deeply Augustinian in spirit (in the Spirit!). Before unpacking that, I should note, however, that my goal is a broader aesthetic than we usually find developed from the Augustinian heritage—as seen in the early work of O’Connell and more recent suggestions from Harrison. Most aesthetic proposals in the Augustinian tradition tend to collapse an Augustinian aesthetic with a discourse on the Beautiful.27 This, I would argue, is the aesthetic correlate (and completion) of a theologia gloriae, to which we might oppose an aesthetic grounded in a theologia crucis. It is not only the beautiful that moves us and affects us—not even only the beautiful, I would argue, that moves us toward God. Indeed, are we not ultimately moved by the One who was “uncomely,” who “had no beauty or majesty that we should be attracted to him, nor appearance that we should desire him” (Is. 53:2), and whose suffering visage affects us like no other sublimity? It will not only be the “beautiful” and that which “delights” (delectatio) that is affirmed in a Christian aesthetic more broadly conceived, but all that affectively moves us to ultimately find our delight and meaning in God—which might include the painful and sorrowful, insofar as it is “used” to ultimately enjoy God.28 Thus I want to resist the reduction and conflation of aesthetics with a discourse on the beautiful in order to develop an aesthetics rooted in a Christian account of aisthesis in general that understands the mode of affectivity as a means of “knowing” that is as fundamental—and perhaps more primordial—than the ratiocinative or intellectual. Rather than a Platonic subordination of affective and imaginative aisthesis to intellectual noesis (Rep. 509d–511e), a Christian epistemology in the Augustinian and Pascalian tradition affirms the priority of “reasons of the heart of which reason knows nothing.”29 I want to argue that this epistemological and anthropological claim not only challenges rationalism but also traditional aesthetics informed by rationalism; or, conversely, that a Christian aesthetic is part of a larger Christian epistemology and ontology, which, epistemologically, challenges the hegemony of cognitive knowing that dominates the Western tradition and thus ontologically questions the devaluation of “images.” What interests me about art from a

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Christian perspective is the way in which it is an embodied, incarnate means by which truth30 is communicated. As such, I am opting for an understanding and definition of art that owes more to Tolstoy than Collingwood; that is, I am interested in art as an affective medium for communication per se rather than simply a medium of the Beautiful.31 Given a Christian anthropology that affirms the integrity of the embodied self (in contrast to a Platonic privileging of the soul), a Christian epistemology must resist the Western temptation to reduce “knowing” to only one of its modes—the intellectual or “ratiocinative”—and rather appreciate the multiple modes of knowing (affective, tactile, sensible, etc.).32 Or to put it in terms of classic discussions of the faculties: rather than privilege the intellect, a Christian epistemology accords equal status, if not primacy, to the senses and imagination.33 So rather than an aesthetic that is subservient to a rationalist epistemology, we find a Christian account of aisthesis in general (as a component of an anthropology)34 that grounds both an epistemology and an aesthetic. The result is the revaluing of images and aesthetic media as perhaps the most fundamental and effective means for the communication of truth. Thus theater, an arena of images and a feast for the senses,35 can play a positive role in Christian formation.36 Or perhaps more centrally: we can understand how and why Christian worship is properly “dramatic.” Creation, Incarnation, and Resurrection: Grounding an Augustinian Aesthetic

As noted earlier, a Christian account of aisthesis and an aesthetic developed from it is grounded in three key dogmatic themes. Now, this Christian aesthetic in general, and re-visioning of theater in particular, claims an Augustinian heritage insofar as the motifs of the goodness of creation, centrality of the Incarnation, and affirmation of resurrection are central elements of Augustine’s thought that constitute a distinctive contribution to the tradition, even if they are also elements that undermine his Neoplatonism, and here in particular his critique of theater. Let me unpack each of these three themes in order to indicate their Augustinian birthright and then indicate how they inform a Christian aesthetic.

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First is the goodness of creation (Gen. 1:31), which constitutes a primordial affirmation of embodiment and finitude not as lack but as gift; in other words, the soul does not “fall” into embodiment from which it then seeks escape. To be embodied and finite is not to be construed as “lacking” in any sense.37 While there are tensions in Augustine’s account of this—in the commentaries on Genesis, for instance, he tends to consider this original goodness of creation to refer to a “spiritual” or “intelligible” creation38—his most un-Platonic moment, I would argue, is located in his affirmation of the goodness of materiality based on a logic of creation rather than emanation (Conf. 4.15.24; 7.5.7; 13.2.2–13.4.5).39 Second, this originary affirmation of materiality and embodiment is reaffirmed (and perfected) in the Incarnation as a movement of condescension wherein the transcendent inhabits the immanent without loss. This final qualification—“without loss”—is that which distinguishes a Christian incarnational ontology from a Platonic “participatory” ontology. While the Platonic doctrine of methexis (participation) grants some role for the material in recollection (e.g., Phaedrus’s beautiful sensible face as a catalyst for the recollection of Beauty itself ), this is only due to the fact that the soul has, regrettably, fallen into a body and therefore materiality is necessary as a kind of remedial propadeutic.40 Thus Augustine remarks that precisely what was missing from “the books of the Platonists” was the radical notion that “the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us” (Conf. 7.9.13). The “putting on” of flesh was not a temporary cloak for an earthly pilgrimage but rather the assumption of materiality for eternity (Phil. 2:5–11)—a notion that runs counter to the Platonic ideal of immateriality and thus undermines the Platonic ontology that grounds the critique of theater. Third, this consistent valuation of materiality and embodiment is affirmed as an eternal state of affairs in the eschatological hope of resurrection. Unlike a Platonic framework, embodiment is not a temporary, postlapsarian state of affairs but rather integral to human identity, demanding the resurrection of the body in the eschaton.41 Augustine affirms just this point, against the Platonists, in De civitate Dei 22.11–20, arguing that the body is essential to the identity of the self and thus requires resurrection.

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But what does all of this mean for a Christian aesthetic? What are the implications of these three dogmatic themes for a Christian understanding of theater? Creation, Incarnation, and resurrection are three fundamental moments of the Christian affirmation and sanctification of the material that counter the persistent docetic tendencies of Christian thought, which too quickly finds its ontology in Plato. Of particular interest here is the way in which this docetic tendency is evidenced, for example, in the “anti-theatrical prejudice”42 (seen above in Augustine) that is critical of theater precisely because of its materiality and embodiment— that is, because it is sensible and stirs the passions. But if to be embodied (and thus to be both sensible and sensuous) is constitutive of being a creature and creation is fundamentally good (though also corrupted by the fall), then being embodied and passionate must be structural aspects of being human and affirmed in their goodness. As such, the critique of theater is undermined and the possibility for the affirmation of drama is opened. However, this would not mean a blanket sanction of all drama. Here I think it is helpful to distinguish between the “structure” of embodiment and the passions and the “direction” they might take.43 In other words, it is part of the essential structure of the human person as created to be embodied, to “know” via images, and to be passionate; but that structure can take a “direction” (or intentio) that denies the Creator and thus constitutes a “twisting” or perversion of that structure. To invoke an Augustinian theme that grounds this distinction, the structure is being used in ways not intended by the Creator. As a result, rather than functioning as a means to enjoying God, the structure is enjoyed as an end in itself and constituted as a substitute for God—that is, an idol. For instance, that the embodied self knows via images means that images can have an iconic function; but if that structure is distorted, the images become idols. Or that the human person is passionate is a structural aspect of a good creation that finds its completion in a passion for God, but if those passionate desires are distorted and directed to false ends, the passions have become idolatrous.44 What tended to happen in Augustine’s critique of theater is a collapsing of structure and direction; that is, in criticizing the direction that pagan theater took, Augustine failed to discern the possibility of redeeming the structure and seeing the powerful possibility of Christian theater as an aspect of a Christian “public theology.”

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We are now in a place to see how we can have an affirmative Christian and Augustinian account of theater without giving up the possibility for criticism. In other words, we can constitute theater otherwise, envisioning “alternate ends” and different intentions. Theater, as an affective medium of images that moves and stirs the passions, can function in such a way as to move the soul toward God to find its ultimate enjoyment. Given the threefold affirmation of creation, Incarnation, and resurrection that emphasizes the “goodness” of embodiment, both the ontological and the ethical critique of theater must be called into question. Or in other words, the ontological and ethical critique cannot be structural but only directional. Redeeming Images: Deconstructing Platonic Ontology with a Theology of the Icon

The ontological critique in both Plato and Augustine was grounded in the privileging of the fundamental disjunction between the intelligible and the sensible, and the privileging of the former over the latter. Thus theater and the arts trafficked only in images that were mere copies of “reality,” and since wisdom is concerned with the things themselves, drama was to be one of the first things banished from the city (and church?). But a Christian incarnational ontology rejects this devaluing of images45 in two respects. First, the sensible world is to function as a sacrament or image that points us to God, and thus “images” have a positive, iconic role to play as an essential aspect of their structure. This is consummated in the Incarnation: the enfleshing of the Son as the “image [eikon] of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15).46 We might say that in the icon we do not have a mere copy but rather the “real presence” of the divine; thus the iconic image is not a mere propadeutic to later be discarded but that which points to the transcendent and that in which the transcendent inheres.47 Second, given the embodied structure of the human person, images (and imagination) play an essential role in human knowing and thus contribute to knowledge rather than deceive us. Given this, theater can have an iconic function that points the audience beyond the production to God. Hence theater can be described as a kind of “animated iconography” that affectively communicates truth via sensible images and sounds.48

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Redeeming the Passions: Incarnation and Embodiment

If images can be icons and the imagination is a structural aspect of creaturehood, then the passions—as structural—can also be affirmed as fundamentally good, even if their direction can be distorted. And this even Augustine appreciates, for the Confessions themselves are written to “stir up” and “arouse” (excitant) the hearts and emotions of readers in order to move them toward God (Conf. 10.3.4). But this activation of passions is redeemed by its end or telos—the “good results” that come from the confession (10.3.4), namely, that people are moved toward God. In this sense, Augustine’s own life is a drama that engages the “audience” in a way that follows the ordo amoris: the staging of the story in the Confessions is not intended to be enjoyed as an end in itself but rather a means by which the reader’s heart is affectively moved to seek God (cf. Retractationes 2.32.1). But if the literary work of the Confessions can be redeemed by arousing passion to an alternative end (fruitio Dei), could we not see the same possibility for theater and cinema? Might we not envision a drama that stirs the heart and lifts our affections toward God, that forms and transforms our passion so that we desire that alone in which we ought to delight—the triune God? And could this redeemed theater be an integral aspect of a Christian “public theology,” particularly in a culture that is so centrally directed by the image? Thus rather than a reactionary critique of an image-saturated culture,49 might not our time be the “fulness of time” for staging the Incarnation? The Spirit of Love: The Pneumatology of Reordered Love

Ultimately what grounds an Augustinian aesthetic—and hence an Augustinian affirmation of the affections—is the centrality of love in Augustine’s theology. Both salvation and sanctification, for Augustine, are a matter of reordering our love as our most fundamental passion. Redemption is not redemption from the tyranny of the affections (per some Platonic anthropology) but rather the redirection of our affections. And for Augustine, the reordering and redirection of love is both pneumatological

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and sacramental. As he succinctly puts it in his homilies on 1 John, “There can be no love without the Spirit of God” (6.10). This coincidence of the Spirit and love in Augustine suggests that there could be no adequate account of Augustinian love that does not articulate a pneumatology of charity.50 Indeed, in De trinitate, the Spirit and charity are synonymous in ways that can almost sound scandalous to “orthodox” ears. Because “the Spirit is distinctively called by the term charity,” and given the trinitarian relations, Augustine surmises that we can make sense of John’s claim that “love is God” (1 John 4:7). Reading in this way, Augustine comments, “He [the Spirit] . . . is the one meant when we read, Love is God (1 John 4:8,16). So it is God the Holy Spirit proceeding from God who fires man to the love of God and neighbor when he has been given to him [emphasis mine], and he himself is love. Man has no capacity to love God except from God,” continuing on to cite Romans 5:5.51 Like the direction of love that distinguishes the two cities, this gift of the Spirit/love “is what distinguishes between the sons of the eternal kingdom and the sons of eternal perdition.”52 Just as the Spirit is not universally given, neither is love. That is why, “unless therefore the Holy Spirit is imparted to someone to make him a lover of God and neighbor, he cannot transfer from the left hand to the right.”53 So for Augustine, the indwelling of the Spirit is the condition of possibility even for loving the neighbor. A condition of possibility, of course, is no guarantee—which is why, if I had time, I would further have to consider the role of the Spirit in sanctification, and thus consider the role of the sacraments as means of grace that nourish and effect just the sort of “training” in affectivity that is required to inculcate virtue. In short, the Eucharist is the Spirit’s “school of charity” (Benedict XVI).54 We might also say that it is the drama of worship that is the theater of charity in which our affections are trained otherwise. Notes 1. On the “danger” inherent in the Confessions, see Lyell Asher, “The Dangerous Fruit of Augustine’s Confessions,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 66 (1998): 227–55, where he notes the struggles Augustine faces regarding

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writing for an audience, wondering “whether it was theology or theatrics they were interested in” (229). The danger is that the Confessions themselves would become a spectacle. For a discussion of similar themes, see Gene Fendt, “The (Moral) Problem of Reading Confessions: Augustine’s Double Argument against Drama,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 72 (1998), Supplement: Annual ACPA Proceedings, 171–84, where he argues that the Confessions are in danger of becoming just another Aeneid. To curtail this danger, Fendt expounds the only “moral” way to read the Confessions (175–81). While agreeing with Fendt on most points, my response to the “problem” with drama in Augustine takes a fundamentally different direction, calling into question elements of the critique rather than suggesting strategies for not falling prey to it. I return to these matters below. Elsewhere, Carol Harrison demonstrates that this same aesthetic danger attends even Christian preaching, as Augustine is acutely aware in De doctrina christiana IV. See Carol Harrison, “The Rhetoric of Scripture and Preaching: Classical Decadence or Christian Aesthetic?,” in Augustine and His Critics: Essays in Honour of Gerald Bonner, ed. Robert Dodaro and George Lawless (New York: Routledge, 2000), 215–30. 2. A critique that, by implication, and even amplified, would apply to film (which, in a straightforward Platonic critique, would be condemned for its tertiarity as image of an image). Thus throughout this chapter I generally consider Augustine’s critique of theater to apply mutatis mutandis to film. 3. That the Confessions are intended to affectively “move” the reader at all (see Retr. 2.6) indicates that what is at stake is not being passionate per se but rather what passions are stimulated and to what end. But this intended telos will be precisely the grounds for deconstructing Augustine’s critique of theater in the name of a more consistently Augustinian account. As I suggest below, it is not the structure of passions that is problematic or at issue (since the structure is created and therefore “good”) but rather the direction or intentio of the passions. Again, Harrison makes the same point with regard to preaching: what distinguishes Christian preaching (as a kind of rhetoric) from classical rhetoric is its aim or intentio. “It is in this sense, I think,” she concludes, “that we can speak of a Christian aesthetic, a new Christian literary culture; one in which rhetoric holds as central a place as it did in classical culture, but where it is transformed from a practice that primarily aims to please and persuade, to one which aims to inspire love of, and the practice of, the truth” (222; emphasis mine). 4. Retractationes 2.6 (32). 5. Confessions 10.3.4 (henceforth abbreviated in the text as Conf.). I follow the Latin edition of James J. O’Donnell in Confessions (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992) and the English translation of Henry Chadwick (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991).

Redeeming the Affections 57 6. I have adopted this “deconstructive” strategy elsewhere and described it in more detail in my The Fall of Interpretation: Philosophical Foundations for a Creational Hermeneutic (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000), 135–36; see also my article “Between Predication and Silence: Augustine on How (Not) to Speak of God,” Heythrop Journal 41 (2000): 66–86. 7. Robert J. O’Connell, S.J., Art and the Christian Intelligence in St. Augustine (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978), 7. O’Connell also describes this task, following Guitton, as one of getting at “what Augustine ‘was thinking, without knowing it, or better, what he wanted to think without being able to’” (8). As he elsewhere indicates, it is not only tensions within the text that are instructive, but contradictions between Augustine’s theory and practice. “Augustine’s poetic artistry,” O’Connell notes, “particularly as exhibited in his Confessions, turned out to be a stunning refutation of his theory of art.” See Robert O’Connell, S.J., Soundings in St. Augustine’s Imagination (Bronx, NY: Fordham University Press, 1994), 4. Harrison notes the same about his preaching (“The Rhetoric of Scripture,” 216–17). 8. For further discussion of this point, see James K. A. Smith, Thinking in Tongues: Pentecostal Contributions to Christian Philosophy, Pentecostal Manifestos (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010), chap. 3. 9. See Paul Griffiths, The Vice of Curiosity: An Essay on Intellectual Appetite (Winnipeg: Canadian Mennonite University Press, 2006). 10. This is the focus of his critique of Homer at Conf. 1.16.25–26. In De civitate dei, Augustine points to theater as a “Greek corruption” that infiltrated Rome. See The City of God, trans. H. Bettenson (London: Penguin, 1984) (henceforth abbreviated as civ.), 1.31, 2.9–13. His point here is that at least the Greeks were consistent in the license they granted to the stage; Augustine’s wish is that Rome would have been more consistent with regard to the limits imposed on theater. If the Romans were consistent in this regard, he argues, theatrical performances should never have been incorporated into divine worship (civ. 2.13). This is also why Augustine is not unattentive to the irony of pointing to Plato, the Greek, as exemplary for banishing poets from the perfect commonwealth (civ. 2.14). 11. This phenomenological framework is not intended to be an anachronistic imposition but rather a lens that can elucidate a historical text. On the profitable use of phenomenology as a paradigm in the history of philosophy, see Jean-Luc Marion, “Quelques règles in l’histoire de la philosophie,” Les Études Philosophiques 4 (1999): 507–8. In “Between Predication and Silence: Augustine on How (Not) To Speak of God,” 72–78, I have argued that in his account of the “right order of love” (ordo amoris), Augustine offers a phenomenology of sin rather than an ontology of sin—since sin is a matter of intentio rather than

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substantia. His critique of theater is consistent with this fundamental framework; however, it is just because theater’s “sins” are a matter of intention that we can later envision a theater with different intentions, and thus redeem drama within an Augustinian framework. 12. See Fendt, “The (Moral) Problem of Reading Confessions,” 171. If we were to map this distinction onto the City of God, we would find that in the latter work the focus is almost entirely on the ethical critique. I think this represents the later Augustine’s growing distance from Platonic orthodoxy, rooted precisely in his Christian convictions about the resurrection of the body. 13. On Augustine’s pedagogy of desire, see Eric Gregory, The Politics of Love: An Augustinian Ethic of Democratic Citizenship (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010). 14. On the importance of rhetoric in Augustine’s formation, see Brian Stock, Augustine the Reader: Meditation, Self-Knowledge, and the Ethics of Interpretation (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996). Carol Harrison, in “The Rhetoric of Scripture,” also provides a helpful analysis of the tensions Augustine experiences with respect to rhetoric and Christian preaching. 15. As Baudrillard notes, “To dissimulate is to pretend not to have what one has. To simulate is to feign to have what one doesn’t have”—though he goes on to problematize the latter. See Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, trans. Sheila Faria Glaser (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994), 3. 16. On the young Phaedrus as “capitalist,” see Catherine Pickstock, After Writing: On the Liturgical Consolation of Philosophy, Challenges in Contemporary Theology (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), 6–7. 17. In this context, Socrates considers the role that images can play in reminding the soul of the “original.” Images of beauty—especially the visage of a beautiful boy like Phaedrus—are privileged because Beauty is that which is most dazzling and able to at times shine through the “murkiness” (250b) of the senses to remind the soul of Beauty itself. In her After Writing, Pickstock wants to see in this suggestion a proto-sacramental notion of materiality in Socrates (11–23). Space here does not permit me to critique this proposal, but I would argue that Pickstock’s reading is too generous and fails to consider the origin of materiality in Socrates and therefore misses the fundamental devaluing of materiality in Socrates and Platonism in general. Further, because of this, she fails to see the fundamental difference between a Platonic participatory ontology and a Christian incarnational ontology. For further discussion, see chapter 5 of my “How to Avoid Not Speaking: On the Phenomenological Possibility of Theology” (PhD diss., Villanova University, 1999). 18. The term is adopted from Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press,

Redeeming the Affections 59 1976), 7. This is why I have suggested above that film would be condemned for its “tertiarity” as image of an image of an image. 19. Robert J. O’Connell, S.J., “Art, Wisdom, and Bliss,” in Saint Augustine the Bishop: A Book of Essays, Garland Medieval Casebooks 9, ed. Fannie Lemoine and Christopher Kleinhenz (New York: Garland Science, 1994), 128. In contrast to an “ascensional” aesthetic, I am developing a “condescensional” aesthetic, an incarnational aesthetic (on condescension, see my “Between Predication and Silence,” 76–78); but this must be a condescension without loss, deterioration, or reduction, since even Platonic, Neoplatonic, and Pythagorean accounts would grant some propadeutic value to the material (see O’Connell, “Art, Wisdom, and Bliss,” 126–27) but only to be left behind (contra Christian eschatology) and always as a deterioration of the spiritual. 20. “Authenticity” in a twofold sense: first, in the sense of “original” as opposed to copies; and second, in the existential sense of recovering his identity (i.e., authentic in the Heideggerian sense). On the latter notion of authenticity in Augustine, see my “Confessions of an Existentialist: Reading Augustine after Heidegger” New Blackfriars 82 (2001): 273–82 (Part I) and 335–47 (Part II). 21. There is another element of the ethical critique of theater, which I will not consider here, which focuses on the content of pagan theater that celebrates and glorifies immoral acts (see Conf. 1.16.25–26). 22. Cf. Rom. 12:15, where the Christian community is exhorted to “weep with those who weep.” 23. Fendt also notes this in his “The (Moral) Problem of Reading Confessions,” 173. 24. In “Between Predication and Silence,” 72–78, I have argued that idolatry is the central category for understanding Augustine’s phenomenology of sin. 25. “If only the worshippers had found them only good enough for a laugh, and not also worthy of imitation!” (civ. 2.9). 26. This is not intended to undermine, however, the possibility of critique; in other words, the Augustinian aesthetic I sketch below does not demand the affirmation of all theater or film. On the contrary, it provides more precise—and more consistently Augustinian—criteria for criticism. In this sense, the Augustinian aesthetic I am sketching is not far from Tolstoy (see note 31 below). 27. See O’Connell, Art and the Christian Intelligence in Saint Augustine, 143–72; Carol Harrison, Beauty and Revelation in the Thought of Saint Augustine (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), esp. 270–74; and Harrison, “The Rhetoric of Scripture and Preaching,” where she concludes that “the keystone of a ‘Christian aesthetic’” recognizes that “God has chosen to motivate the fallen will to the true and good through delight occasioned by His beautiful revelation of Himself ” (225). Despite Harrison’s critique of O’Connell, she retains with him the identification of the aesthetic with the Beautiful.

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28. See James K. A. Smith, “Questions about the Perception of ‘Christian Truth’: On the Affective Effects of Sin,” New Blackfriars 88 (September 2007): 585–93. I have in mind something like the experience of a play that powerfully portrays the painful and oppressive situation of the working poor, leaving me weeping and burdened with sorrow, but which then moves me to minister to my neighbor and there, sacramentally, find God (cf. Matt. 25:34–46). I take this to fulfill O’Connell’s requirement that any aesthetic that would claim the name of Augustine must remain “in some genuine sense faithful to his other-worldly stress” (Art and the Christian Intelligence, 144), though I would prefer to speak of “transcendence” rather than “other-worldliness.” In this respect, I think Pickstock is right to challenge the “immanentism” that is characteristic of modernity (see After Writing, 47–100). 29. Elsewhere, I have argued that the early Heidegger placed the same emphasis on affectivity precisely because of his debts to Augustine and Pascal. See my “Taking Husserl at his Word: Towards a ‘New’ Phenomenology with the Young Heidegger,” Symposium: Journal of the Canadian Society for Hermeneutics and Postmodern Thought 4 (2000): 103–7. One could also point to the role of sensibility and affectivity in Levinas. See Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1969), 187–93. 30. On the irreducibility of “artistic truth,” see Lambert Zuidervaart, Artistic Truth: Aesthetics, Discourse, and Imagininative Disclosure (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009). 31. For his classic statement, see Leo Tolstoy, What is Art?, trans. Aylmer Maude (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1930), where he also retains a religious criterion for the critique of art, as I have suggested above in league with Augustine’s uti/frui distinction. I would, however, supplement Tolstoy’s notion of “communication” by problematizing issues of authorial intent. For a discussion of related themes, see “Expression and Revelation,” the appendix to Nicholas Wolterstorff, Art in Action: Toward a Christian Aesthetic (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1980), 215–21. 32. See the seminal development of these themes by Herman Dooyeweerd, A New Critique of Theoretical Thought (Nutley, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1969), vol 2. 33. I have in mind a basically Johannine account that affirms the importance of the tactile and sensuous. See, for instance, the opening of 1 John, which emphasizes that God spoke in Christ a sensible and sensuous Word: “What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we beheld and our hands touched, concerning the Word of Life— . . . what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also” (1 John 1:1, 1:3). This is the

Redeeming the Affections 61 correlate of the Johannine emphasis on the Incarnation and enfleshing of God ( John 1:14). 34. The intimate connection between one’s anthropology and aesthetic is clearly seen in Augustine, as indicated by the research of both O’Connell and Harrison. 35. As Max Harris notes, the theater engages senses that film does not (e.g., smell and even touch); and by means of simultaneity (multiple scenes occurring on stage at once) theater can play with space and time in ways in which film cannot because of the hegemony of the camera’s perspective. See Max Harris, Theater and Incarnation (New York: St. Martin’s, 1990), 29–34, 65–66. 36. I am struck by the way in which contemporary currents in evangelical and charismatic churches, which employ drama as part of both worship and evangelism, unwittingly affirm just this point—while nevertheless retaining a largely dualist anthropology. 37. The burden of my argument in The Fall of Interpretation is to provide an account of finitude as creational and therefore fundamentally good—against a Platonic and Neoplatonic (and fundamentalist) ontology, which devalues the material as always already fallen. In particular, see the derivation of this from a deconstruction of Augustine’s diverse accounts of creation and materiality and their resulting tension (Fall of Interpretation, 133–48). In the book, I argue that given the goodness of creation, we ought to resist describing finitude as “limited” or “lacking” in any sense, since this would imply a standard that exceeds finitude. I have argued something similar, against Marion, in “Respect and Donation: A Critique of Marion’s Critique of Husserl,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 71 (1997): 523–38. This is why I prefer the Thomistic account of the distinction between Creator and creature (the creature being that being for whom its existence is a gift) rather than the Augustinian, which on a Platonic scale of Being and nothingness construes the creature as always “lacking” being in some sense. I think the Augustinian affirmation of the goodness of materiality needs to be—and can be—unhitched from this Platonic scale of Being. 38. For an exposition and critique, with special attention to the Genesis commentaries (including Conf. 11–13), see my “The Time of Language: The Fall to Interpretation in Early Augustine,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, Supplement: Proceedings of the ACPA 72 (1998): 185–99. 39. For earliest indications, see Soliloquies 1.1.2 and De vera religione 11.21. 40. This is why I believe that Pickstock overstates the case for methexis as sacramental in After Writing, 11–20. On a radically incarnational register, the material does not play a simply “remedial” role in a postlapsarian state of affairs but rather an integral and essential role for creatures as created. The eschaton

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will not be without sacraments. See James K. A. Smith, “Will the Real Plato Please Stand Up? Participation vs. Incarnation,” in Creation, Covenant, and Participation: Radical Orthodoxy and the Reformed Tradition, ed. James K. A. Smith and James H. Olthuis (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2005), 61–72. 41. For a Thomistic argument that deduces the necessity of resurrection from the integrity of body and soul, see Montague Brown, “Aquinas on the Resurrection of the Body,” Thomist 56 (1992): 165–207. 42. As described by Max Harris, following Jonas Barish, in Theater and Incarnation, 65–68. In earlier aspects of the tradition, the antitheatrical prejudice stems from a Platonic privileging of the intelligible over the sensible (as seen in Augustine); later in the tradition, particularly in the Protestant Reformation and Puritan writings, the critique of art stems from a privileging of the Word over the image—what we might describe as a kind of logocentrism. Even Dürer believed that his images needed to be supplemented by “the word” in order to protect their function and complete their intention. For discussion of these matters, see Jonas Barish, The Anti-Theatrical Prejudice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981); and Margaret Miles, Image as Insight: Visual Understanding in Western Christianity and Secular Culture (Boston: Beacon Press, 1985), 95–126. At stake in this later Protestant critique is an entire logic of language and supplementarity that invites critique (in the vein of Derrida’s Of Grammatology) but that I cannot undertake here due to space limitations. 43. Here I am following a distinction developed from Herman Dooyeweerd. For a clear presentation, see Albert Wolters, Creation Regained: Biblical Basics for a Reformational Worldview (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1985). 44. Recall my analysis above, where we saw that Augustine’s critique of theater in both the Confessions and City of God was at root a critique of idolatry. But precisely for that reason, we ought to be able to conceive of theater as iconic. 45. There is another critique of this Platonic ontology that we might describe, following Baudrillard, as “nihilist” and that denies that there is anything but images. In other words, there is no meaning. See Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 159–64. We have then three ontological options with respect to the image: (1) the Platonic devaluing of the image as only a copy; (2) the Christian incarnational understanding of images as icons that point to the transcendent and in which the transcendent inheres; and (3) the nihilist, or radically immanentist, ontology, which concludes that there are no images because there are no originals. We are left only with simulacra. 46. This is a central text in the Eastern tradition. For a discussion, see Gregory of Nazianus, The Theological Orations 4.20. 47. We should note that a certain Neoplatonic mysticism accords such a temporary, propadeutic role to images precisely because this Neoplatonic on-

Redeeming the Affections 63 tology is at root not incarnational in the sense I have described above. Unfortunately, this Neoplatonic model has infected much Western thought regarding icons. 48. Harris is critical of the notion (offered by Richard Axton) of theater as “animated iconography” (Theater and Incarnation, 75–81, drawing on Barth). But I think this is only because the paradigm of iconography he considers is Neoplatonic and ultimately pursuing an escape from time. Drawing on Barth’s discussion of Incarnation in particular, he concludes, “Far from inviting man, in other words, to escape time in order to be with God, God clothes himself in flesh and therefore in time in order to be with man. It is a question of Emmanuel and God with us in time, and not of mysticism, man with God outside time” (81). The mystical, Neoplatonic framework is not the paradigm of iconography that I am working with; in fact, it is the framework I am calling into question. But he seems to think that abandoning the Neoplatonic framework means abandoning a notion of the iconic; on the contrary, I think if we abandon the iconic, we will ultimately end with some kind of “immanentism” (Pickstock) by collapsing the transcendent or preventing reference beyond immanence. The iconic is a way of guarding against both Neoplatonism and immanentism. 49. Miles’s analysis in Image as Insight is suggestive for considering the primacy of the image in pretextual culture such that the late modern or postmodern primacy of the image might actually constitute a retrieval and revaluation of the sensible vis-à-vis the intelligible. 50. I suppose the strongest version of my claim would be an analogue to Eric Gregory’s claim that any political Augustinianism that abandons the uti/frui distinction “does not remain Augustinian” (Politics and the Order of Love, 323). I’m suggesting that, given the integral link—yea, identity—between love and the Spirit in Augustine, any political Augustinianism that ignores this connection “does not remain Augustinian.” 51. Augustine, The Trinity, vol. 1.5 of The Works of St. Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, trans. Edmund Hill (New York: New City Press, 1991), 15.31. 52. Ibid., 15.32. 53. Ibid. 54. “Eucharist should make us attentive to needs of the poor, Benedict XVI teaches,” Catholic News Agency, www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/ eucharist_should_make_us_attentive_to_needs_of_the_poor_benedict_xvi _teaches/.

C H A P T E R

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T H E B E AU T Y O F H O L I N E S S Deification of the Passions in the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom

BRADLEY NASSIF

Metropolitan Kallistos Ware tells a famous story in the Russian Primary Chronicle about how, in the tenth century, Prince Vladimir of Kiev sent representatives to the various countries of the world in search of the true religion for his people.1 After going to the Muslims in the Volga, the en­ voys observed that there was no joy among them, and so they moved on. Next they traveled to Germany and Rome, where the worship was more pleasing. But the services were said to have lacked beauty. Finally the mes­ sengers journeyed to Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire. As they attended the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom in the great Church of the Holy Wisdom they discovered what they had longed for. “We knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth,” they reported to Prince Vladimir, “for surely there is no such splendor or beauty anywhere on earth. We cannot describe it to you. All that we know is that God dwells there and that service surpasses the worship of all other places. For we cannot forget that beauty.” 65

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In this story, Ware finds three characteristics of the Orthodox faith that are manifested in this encounter with the church’s worship. First and foremost is the emphasis on spiritual beauty. After witnessing the liturgy, the Russian observers reported, “We cannot forget that beauty.” The wor­ ship service of the Byzantine church was both attractive and mysterious. It left a profound impression on the memory. Second, Orthodox worship brought together two worlds at once. “We knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth,” the envoys reported. In the church’s liturgy, the “age to come” makes its appearance in the “here and now.” The kingdom of God is not only a future reality; it is also a present reality that is known visibly in the life of the worshipping church. Third and finally, the liturgy integrated prayer with doctrine. “The rule of prayer is the rule of faith” (lex orandi lex est credendi). What one prays is what one believes. The very word orthodox signifies correct belief as well as correct worship. Prayer and theology are inseparable and interdependent; truth is revealed through worship. The purpose of this chapter is to explore how deification of the wor­ shipper is cultivated though the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom.2 It surveys the various means by which the liturgy both deifies and beauti­ fies the worshipper by transforming sinful “passions” into the state of “passionlessness”: the sacraments, scripture, prayers, hymns, rites, and symbols. As far as I am aware, nothing has yet been written on the rela­ tionship between the liturgy and deification in the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, or any other liturgy of the Eastern Church for that matter. Yet because Orthodox theology is supremely doxological and the church’s worship is filled with such profound spiritual beauty, it seems altogether fitting that we should see how the church’s worship shapes religious affections and achieves the beauty of holiness in the life of the worshipper.

The Centrality of the Gospel in the Byzantine Rites

The Divine Liturgy (a commonly used shorthand for Chrysostom’s lit­ urgy) is celebrated nearly every Sunday in all Eastern Orthodox churches. It is the most frequently used service in the entire liturgical cycle of the

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Byzantine tradition. It is a beautiful and profound synthesis of dogma and spirituality. Alexander Schmemann writes, “The Byzantine service . . . is a blend of the dogmatic achievements of the preceding period in liturgical form. It is almost entirely adorned with the colors of the Trinity and of Christology.”3 At the center of the liturgy lies the Eucharistic meal as an eschatological sign of the Gospel and the age to come: “for as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Cor. 11.26). “In Eastern Christendom,” explains John Meyen­ dorff, “the Eucharistic liturgy, more than anything else, is identified with the reality of the Church . . . and the mysterious presence among men of the eschatological kingdom.”4 Union with Jesus Christ, in his trinitarian relations, is the very heart of the Gospel. That is the central reality that permeates every liturgical action in the Divine Liturgy. It is the North Star that guides our under­ standing of the relationship between deification and worship. To make light of this, or simply to presume it as a given fact of divine revelation with no further thought given to its role in spiritual formation, is to over­ look what is of first importance in the church. The structure and content of the liturgy seek to make present the very person of Christ and his saving Gospel. “At the core of the Orthodox tradition,” writes Theodore Stylianopoulos, “whether we turn to the Eucharist or the lives of the great saints, the same truth has primacy, namely, Christ and the Gospel. . . . The challenge of rediscovering the centrality of the Gospel, as well as of energizing the evangelical ethos deeply enshrined in the Orthodox tradi­ tion [is our highest task].”5 What, then, is the theological content of the Gospel that lies at the center of the church’s worship? What are the Gospel realities that perme­ ate the Divine Liturgy (and all other liturgies) of the Eastern Church? At the outset, there is an apophatic dimension of the Gospel as a many­sided mystery that can be described but never fully defined. That is because of the mystery of the hypostatic union of the two natures of Christ that are united “without confusion, without change, without division, without separation” (Chalcedonian Definition). The apophatic character of the Gospel also bears witness to the absolute transcendence of the divine essence of the Holy Trinity, which humans can never experience either in this world or in the next. A sense of awe and transcendent mystery

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pervades the Divine Liturgy and shapes the spiritual senses. It creates an overwhelming feeling of otherworldliness. It quickly whittles one down to size even as it instills humility and smallness before a God who can never be fully known by humans. The emotions are divinized by mystical realities such as that of the Anaphora prayer: “It is right to sing to You, to bless You, to praise You, to give thanks to You and to worship You in every place of Your dominion. For You are God ineffable, inconceivable, in­ visible, incomprehensible, every existing and eternally the same—You and Your only­begotten Son and Holy Spirit.” The Cherubic Hymn that immediately follows the Anaphora Prayer reinforces the emotional con­ tent of divine transcendence: “Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord of Sabaoth! Heaven and earth are full of Your glory! Hosanna in the highest: Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.” Such are the sanctifying effects of the mystery of the Gospel. Cataphatically, however, a great many affirmative statements are made in the liturgy about the theological content of the Gospel. In a rich variety of scriptural readings, sacramental rites, rituals, symbolic ges­ tures, prayers, hymns, chants, icons, and incense the Gospel is proclaimed through the medium of all five senses. What, then, is the theological con­ tent of the church’s Gospel that is liturgically communicated to worship­ pers? The Gospel can be simply described as the work of the Holy Trinity, through the Incarnation of the Son, to restore humans to union with God, and communion with each other, for the good of the world and the glory of God. In Orthodox theology, the Gospel begins within the very being of God himself. At the center of creation is a God who exists in an eter­ nal communion of trinitarian love between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Each person of the Trinity lives within the other, loves the other, and yet each possesses his own characteristics: The Father is the “unorigi­ nated” leader who eternally “begets” the Son and “spirates or processes” the Spirit, as expressed in the Nicene Creed: “We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, . . . and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only­begotten, begotten of the Father before all ages, . . . and in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life who proceeds from the Father.” We hu­ mans were created out of those trinitarian relationships, and have been saved for participation in those relationships. Our original vocation was to grow eternally in deification after “the image and likeness of God” and

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to rule over the created order of God’s kingdom. However, the union that humans originally enjoyed with God became broken through sin. The consequences were catastrophic: the fall of Adam and Eve brought physical and spiritual death, enslavement to a fallen human nature, domi­ nation by the Satanic powers of darkness, and corruption of the very cosmos itself. Although the “image of God” remained intact, its fallen condition became deformed and broken in its relation to God, self, and others. Humans and the created order now stood in need of a compre­ hensive salvation that would bring healing and renewal. That was a task only God himself could accomplish. So the Son of God became the son of man in order to unite his di­ vinity with our humanity so that we might become deified by grace. The God­who­became­human sinlessly took upon himself our sinful nature in order to transform and heal it by his own vicarious humanity. Salva­ tion was not accomplished on the cross and resurrection alone; it was achieved comprehensively over the entire course of Christ’s life as he, the Second Adam, passed through the various stages of life and struggled with sin, resisted temptation, and issued in the kingdom of God; he died a victorious death on the cross, defeating sin, death, and the devil; de­ scended into the tomb announcing his victory to those in Hades; rose from the dead in an immortal body making effective his work on the cross; ascended into heaven, by which he finally completed the process of deifying his new humanity and interceding for the saints as he now rules at the right hand of the Father; he sent the Holy Spirit at Pentecost giv­ ing birth to the church through which the Gospel is now preached and celebrated sacramentally; and he will one day “come again with glory to judge the living and the dead” (Nicene Creed). That is the heart of the Gospel that saturates the entire liturgical tradition of the Eastern Church. We turn now to the various means by which that Gospel brings about the deification of the worshipper through the liturgy of St. John Chrysostom.

Liturgical Transformation of the Passions

The monastic traditions in Palestine, Syria, Egypt, and neighboring com­ munities have played a decisive role in the liturgical history of the early

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and Byzantine churches. The spiritual vision of their monastic leaders in­ cluded both systematic and unsystematic ways of speaking about prayer. The unsystematic, personal approach is found most notably in the Apophthegmata Patrum, or Sayings of the Desert Fathers, of Egypt in the fourth and fifth centuries. Here we find no definitions, schemes, or abstract the­ ories about prayer and contemplation. They are simply stories and sayings that speak about prayer in the language of direct experience rather than rational speculation. Other monastic sources, however, speak of prayer in a more structured, systematic way, without neglecting the existential ap­ proach. Writers such as Origen, Evagrius, Gregory of Nyssa, and Pseudo­ Dionysus the Aeropagite describe various “stages” of the spiritual life such as “purification, illumination and union” with God. Evagrius structures his vision of prayer along the lines of praktike, physike, and theoria—each functioning as a technical term that has its own distinctive tasks on a lad­ der of divine ascent.6 Yet neither systematic nor unsystematic approaches to prayer govern the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom (the focus of this chapter). The liturgy avoids both existential, spontaneous prayer and the explicitly structured triadic formulas “illumination, purification, and union” (praktike, physike, and theoria) or a distinction between the “active life” (praktike) and the “contemplative life” (theoria) that have been described by various Greek patristic authors. Technical patristic terms such as nous, kardia, pathos, apatheia, and others are interspersed unsystematically throughout the Divine Liturgy. Such terms were originally adopted from the vocabulary of Stoicism, Neoplatonism, and other philosophical trends in the ancient world but are now baptized and given new meanings to describe Christian experience. These and other technical terms are em­ ployed throughout the annual cycle of liturgical texts of the Eastern Church. But they do not appear as a prominent feature in the Divine Lit­ urgy of St. John Chrysostom, even though their theology is apparent. Such technical terms, triadic formulas, and all other schemes have no other theological reference point than the “good news” of the kingdom of God. Even the term “dispassion” (apatheia, freedom from passion) is understood not negatively, in the sense of becoming apathetic or the absence of all feeling, but positively, in the sense of replacing sinful desires by a deified and renewed humanity given to us through union with

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Christ. As John Chryssavgis observes, apatheia “is the submission of all passions to the source and end of all desire, namely ‘the kingdom of heaven and its righteousness.’”7 Consequently, my study of the passions below focuses on the larger task of discerning how the Divine Liturgy embraces a comprehensive vision of life that centers on the biblical revelation of the kingdom of God.

The Spirit, the Church, and Deification

Spiritual rituals define our identities. They tell us who we are, who God is, and how we are to relate to him and others. The Divine Liturgy does this very thing. It links personhood with sacramental worship. The liturgy is not an expression of the personal preferences of the worshippers. On the contrary, the liturgy reveals and nurtures a theological vision of hu­ manity that is holistic, integrating both body and soul. The liturgy shapes us, changes us, renews us, and opens us to experience God and the cre­ ated order. How we worship and who we are “at heart” are deeply inter­ connected. Our human personhood is linked to specific worship practices that create our religious affections. As noted earlier, it is impossible to discuss religious affections with­ out grounding them in the content of the Christian Gospel. The Gospel is preserved through a corporate knowledge of its contents and a commit­ ment to it by the whole church. Authentic Christian experience is to be always accessible in the Christian community. The unity of the church is expressed by a united commitment to that common experience. That is why the Gospel is the thread that runs throughout the entire Divine Liturgy. The liturgy makes present the Gospel of the kingdom of God through the life, death, resurrection, ascension, and second coming of our Lord. These Gospel truths work their way deep into our souls, and as a result we become doxological beings. Not only our minds, but our bod­ ies and souls are changed by the realities of the Gospel. Our religious affections become what they are through Gospel acts of worship.8 Deification comes through numerous worship practices that shape the religious affections of the participants. The most significant practices are in the Divine Liturgy itself. These life­shaping events include the

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sacraments of baptism, the Eucharist, the proclamation of the Word, the veneration of icons, and the singing of dogmatic hymns. These funda­ mental rites of the Divine Liturgy give a distinctive shape to the spiritu­ ality of Orthodox Christians as they deify (theosis) the believer into the “image and likeness of Jesus Christ.” Let us now briefly look at each of these in turn. Baptism and Eucharist: Life-Giving Sacraments of the Gospel

Baptism and the Eucharist are the sacraments, or “mysteries,” that con­ stitute the origin and goal of the Christian life. Baptism constitutes the beginning of new life, while the Eucharist sustains it. The Divine Liturgy incorporates the theology of these sacraments as foundational to deifica­ tion. The baptismal liturgy is a symbolic and ritual proclamation of the Gospel. It is the fundamental requirement for participating in the Di­ vine Liturgy. The liturgy presumes it. Without baptism, deification is not possible. A knowledge of the central prayers of this service shows what the believer brings to church on Sunday morning as she or he enters the liturgy. The baptismal prayers require the baptized to “renounce Satan and all his angels and all his works” in exchange for “uniting” the candidate to Christ by faith. The Nicene Creed is recited as a confession of faith, followed by the priest’s prayer: O Master, Lord our God, call Your servant [name] to Your holy il­ lumination and grant him/her the great grace of Your holy baptism. Put off from him/her the old man, and renew him/her unto life everlasting; and fill him/her with the power of Thy Holy Spirit, in the unity of Your Christ, that he/she may be no more a child of the body, but a child of Your kingdom.9 In this liturgical setting, the centrality of the Gospel is vividly con­ fessed. The church’s conversion theology is directly tied to an incarna­ tional/trinitarian understanding of salvation. The need for personal faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior is made abundantly clear through the questions addressed to the candidate, along with the person’s public con­

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fession of faith and theological embrace of the Nicene Creed. Salvation is given freely by the unmerited favor of God’s grace through the redemp­ tive work of Christ and his triumph over sin, death, and the devil. Reflect­ ing a strongly Pauline and Johannine theology, the liturgy confesses that through baptism we enter into the inner life of the Trinity (Matt. 28:19– 20) and thus are saved (1 Pet. 3:21), regenerated (John 3:5; Titus 3:5–6), united with Christ in his death and resurrection (Rom. 6:3–8; Gal. 3:27), adopted (Rom. 8:23), justified (Rom. 5:12–6:12), incorporated into his body, the church (1 Cor. 12:13), and made partakers of the divine nature (2 Pet. 1:4). The believer’s union with Christ through the Spirit is the crucial beginning of a lifelong process of deification (Rom. 8:28–29). This is positive theology. Baptism is seen not primarily as the removal of guilt, but as freedom from mortality and the power of the passions. The East never accepted Augustine’s doctrine of original sin, with its con­ sequence of guilt. That is because sin is always a personal choice, never an act of nature.10 St. John Chrysostom represents the theology of the Eastern Church when he explains the positive character of baptism: Blessed is God . . . who makes all things and renews them. . . . Have you seen how many are the benefits of baptism? Whereas many think that its only benefit is the remission of sins, we have enumer­ ated as many as ten honors conferred by it. This is why we baptize even small children, even though they have no sins, so that they may also receive righteousness, adoption, inheritance, the grace of being brothers and members of Christ, and that they might become the dwelling of the Holy Spirit.11 In the Eastern tradition, baptism is immediately followed by the sac­ rament of chrismation. The recipient of this sacrament is anointed with oil as a sign of the reception of the Holy Spirit. Then, immediately after, the newly baptized is given his first Eucharist as nourishment for his new life. The Orthodox Church is one of the few Christian communities that practice a threefold rite of initiation, even in the case of infants. These initiation rites become the occasion by which Christ and the indwelling Holy Spirit take residence within the heart of the believer. One can never “add” anything to that baptismal grace because no greater

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experience can be had in our subsequent growth than the full realization of the gift that has already been given in baptism. Kallistos Ware explains, “Now for the Christian there can obviously be no experience higher than the encounter face to face with the Person of Christ; and this encounter is made possible specifically because Christ is already within our hearts from baptism, although at first we may be unaware of His presence. Our highest experience, then, is simply the full realization of the initial grace of baptism.”12 How, then, does one fully realize this initial grace of baptism? Mark the Ascetic (fifth c.) is one of several Eastern authors who provides an answer.13 Mark teaches that grace is secretly hidden in the heart of the baptized but requires one to keep the commandments in order for that grace to be consciously experienced: “Grace has been mystically (mystikos) bestowed on those who have been baptized in Christ and becomes active in them to the extent that they keep the commandments. Grace never ceases to secretly help us but it is up to us, as far as it lies within our own power, to do good or not to do good.”14 Such grace bestows a conscious, experiential “assurance” (plerophoreitai) of Christ’s presence. Mark con­ tinues by speaking of the place that personal assurance has in the life of the believer: “Everyone who has been baptized in an orthodox manner has received secretly (mystikos) the fullness of grace. And thereafter he gains assurance (plerophoreitai) of this fact, according to his fulfillment of the commandments.”15 The church’s baptismal theology thus becomes the framework for the Christian’s lifelong journey through this world. As a “new creation in Christ” the believer is “dead to sin but alive to God.” That is the most fundamental spiritual passion that accompanies one’s earthly pilgrimage from the moment of conversion to the end of life. The process of purifi­ cation and illumination renews and reorders our personal affections. It initiates us into a life of dying and rising with Christ. It calls us to put off the brokenness of sin and to live in the resurrection power of the Holy Spirit. Baptism shapes a lifestyle of repentance and prompts the reorder­ ing of our sinful passions into the beauty of Christ­likeness. Yet all these graces come as a result of practicing the commandments. Through obe­ dience to Christ, believers may experience a conscious awareness of their baptismal grace.

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The baptized believer, therefore, who possesses a conscious awareness of the Holy Spirit, is the one who can most fully enter into the Divine Liturgy. She or he is the person most prepared to enter into the Eucharis­ tic celebration as the liturgy’s central act of deifying grace. In order to understand how this deification happens we need to describe the basic liturgical structure of the Divine Liturgy, then link it to the sanctification of the passions. I cannot explain each part of the liturgy here but will focus on its two main movements:16 The Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Faithful. This two­part structure of the service reveals its content. A skeletal outline of the two principal parts of the Divine Liturgy looks like this: Part 1: The Liturgy of the Word (also called the Liturgy of the Catechumens) • Opening invocation: “Blessed is the Kingdom of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit” • The Little Entrance: The priest holds high the Book of the Gospels as he walks out the side door and back into the altar. • The reading of the Epistle and the Gospel. The Homily. Part 2: The Liturgy of the Faithful • The Great Entrance: The priest carries the bread and wine from the altar down the middle aisle of the church and back into the altar. • The Kiss of Peace • The Nicene Creed • The Lord’s Prayer • The Communion prayer • Communion • Dismissal The liturgical texts and rites that accompany each part of the liturgy become the sources that shape one’s religious affections and prepares one for the Eucharist. Even the liturgical preaching of the Gospel prepares worshippers to partake of communion.17 The summit of the Eucharistic meal comes after everything in the liturgy has been said and remembered before the altar of God. Then the

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prayer through which the Eucharist is accomplished turns to the Father, asking him: Send down Your Holy Spirit upon us and upon these gifts here of­ fered. And make this bread the precious body of Your Christ; and that which is in this cup, the precious blood of Your Christ; chang­ ing them by Your Holy Spirit. Amen, Amen, Amen. That they may be for those who partake for the purification of soul, for the remis­ sion of sins, for the communion of the Holy Spirit, unto the fulfill­ ment of the kingdom of heaven, unto boldness toward You, and not unto judgment or unto condemnation.18 This text links the invocation of the Holy Spirit (known as the epiclesis, meaning “to call down”) with the change of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ.19 Schmemann writes: For, as we have repeatedly affirmed, it is precisely in it, by and through its having many parts, that the eucharist is accomplished. The liturgy, as a sacrament, begins with the preparation of the holy gifts and the assembly as the Church. After the gathering follows the entrance and the proclamation of the word of God, and after that the offering, the placing of the eucharistic gifts on the altar. After the kiss of peace and the confession of faith we begin the anaphora: the lifting up of the gifts in the prayer of thanksgiving and remembrance. The anaphora concludes with the epiklesis, i.e., the prayer that God will manifest the Holy Spirit, will show the bread and wine of our offer­ ing to be the body and blood of Christ and make us worthy to par­ take of it.20 Consequently, the liturgy is accomplished eschatologically through the work of the Holy Spirit. Each part of the liturgy is transformed by the Holy Spirit into that which it manifests. Schmemann continues: The purpose of the eucharist lies not in the change of the bread and wine, but in our partaking of Christ, who has become our food, our life, the manifestation of the Church as the body of Christ. This is

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why the holy gifts themselves never became in the Orthodox East an object of special reverence, contemplation and adoration, and likewise an object of special theological “problematics”: how, when, in what manner their change is accomplished. The eucharist . . . is a mystery that cannot be revealed and explained in the catego­ ries of this world—time, essence, causality, etc. It is revealed only to faith. . . . [T]he Church prays in the text of the epiklesis that the eu­ charist will be for those who partake ‘for the communion of the Holy Spirit’ . . . [manifesting] the eschatological essence of the sacrament, its orientation to the kingdom of God, which is to come but in the Church is already manifested and granted.21 How does all this relate to the cultivation of religious affections? The Eucharist is about being lifted up into the presence of God so that we may become “Eucharistic beings,” that is, thankful, self­sacrificing people. Through the bread and wine we are mystically united with Christ. Since Christ is really, objectively present to us in the sacrament we encounter the living, resurrected Christ. The Eucharist speaks of the manner in which God reaches out to heal and save the fallen race of Adam and to restore us to his grace. It offers us theosis, the divinization of the human body and soul by the grace of the incarnate Christ. We come to know him in a participatory way that transforms us into his broken body and blood. In this rite, our divided desires are united and focused on Christ, who becomes the single object of our affections. This Eucharistic redirection of our desires renews our feelings and orients us to Christian mission. In short, we are to become that which we eat: the broken body of Christ given for the life of the world. Scripture: The Sacramental Word

Closely connected with the Eucharistic celebration is the proclamation of the Word of God. Any attempt to understand the development of reli­ gious affections in the Divine Liturgy must give full weight to the cen­ trality of scripture. In the order of the Divine Liturgy, preaching precedes the partaking of communion. It prepares the worshipper by providing a

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standard by which to examine his or her own heart before taking the Eucharist. The following statistics indicate the extent to which scripture forms the emotional life of the believer: Kallistos Ware tells us that “the whole text of each service is shot through with biblical language,” while Paul Evdokimov observes that the Divine Liturgy contains 98 quotations from the Old Testament and 114 from the New Testament.22 Fr. Alexander Schmemann estimates that “more than half of all liturgical texts are bib­ lical.”23 In those texts, the Bible is used in three distinct ways: (a) direct readings or hymns taken from the Bible itself; (b) biblical words and phrases used throughout liturgical petitions; and (c) use of biblical images, symbols, or expressions (typologies) when making theological statements.24 The appropriation of biblical narratives in the Divine Liturgy enables us to participate in their stories. They cultivate particular affections. The Bible’s stories become our stories. The scripture readings and sermons are never simply about the past. Rather, they extend into the present by con­ necting us to the person of Jesus Christ. The biblical narrative reorders our religious affections according to their relationship to Christ—be it the theme of suffering, justice, failings, ignorance, hope, sacrifice, or other religious expressions. The liturgical cycle of annual Sunday readings in the Divine Liturgy helps Christians participate in Christ­centered experi­ ences that shape, order, sustain, and direct the religious affections that are put forth in the biblical readings. They place our lives within the larger narrative of salvation history from creation to consummation. Icons: The Visual Gospel

Images of Christ, Mary, and the saints occupy a central place in the Di­ vine Liturgy and personal piety of Orthodox Christians. Icons are paint­ ings in front of which the Orthodox people bow down, pray, and kiss.25 Through pictures of Christ and his saints, the believer receives the mys­ terious presence of him who is beyond all images and in whose image humankind, male and female, was created. The grace of God is made ac­ cessible to believers through the icons. The icon is a religious symbol that both depicts something and shares in its power through the agency of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit creates a sacramental bond of communica­ tion between the person depicted in the icon and those who venerate the

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image. The veneration of icons, therefore, evokes particular religious af­ fections by becoming a means of deification in the life of the believer. Icons bear witness to the Incarnation while also teaching the faith, inspir­ ing holiness and bearing witness to the coming eschatological transforma­ tion of the cosmos into “a new heaven and a new earth” (Rev. 21:1). Contact with truth through the icons constitutes for a person his most vivid educational experience. The holy forms supply consolation, cour­ age, hope, endurance, inspiration, and other elevating states of the soul. One of the conclusions of the Seventh Ecumenical Council (787 CE), which declared the making and veneration of icons a church dogma, states that the icon painters “present that which Scripture narrates, so that they become advocates of what is written.”26 Robin Cormack observes, “The role of the icon as a greatly effective medium in communicating religious ideas and spiritual emotions is now recognized in many studies.”27 Wide­ranging emotional manifestations, however, are rare in icons. Most painters limited themselves to two basic attitudes that are reflected in the faces: one expression for emotional dis­ turbance, such as sorrow, indicated by steeply angled eyebrows and similar facial gestures; the other, one of peace and tranquillity,28 and more fit­ tingly described as a natural or “passionless” demeanor. The artists convey a passionless disposition simply through a lack of animation. To us mod­ erns, the faces appear plain. But the spiritual significance of the natural look actually conveys a passionless state, that is, the overcoming of the passions through the deification of the indwelling Spirit in the body and soul of the saint. One of the most significant emotional responses generated by icons is to lead the beholder to action. The person is to imitate the virtues de­ picted by the icons. This imitation is a concrete expression of one’s sal­ vation. The transformed human person depicted in the icon is painted to inspire the same transformation in the ones who behold it. The saints possess the qualities of a deified humanity that has been brought about through the Incarnate Christ. The saints depicted in icons reveal the po­ tential of human life in union with God. The goal of icons is not simply to convey biographical information about the lives of the saints; rather, it is to make saints (divinize, theosis) of those who prayerfully behold them. The presence of images evokes Christian virtues in the hearts of those who contemplate them, from the courage of St. John the Baptist to the

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repentance and restoration of St. Peter. The meaning is achieved through various artistic details and stylistic conventions.29 Dogmatic Hymns

The relation between Orthodox dogmas and Byzantine hymnography is eloquently expressed by Egon Wellesz, the great historian of Byzantine music at Oxford University. Byzantine hymnography is the poetical expression of Orthodox the­ ology, translated, through music, to the sphere of religious emotion. It mirrors the evolution of the dogmatic ideas and doctrines of the Or­ thodox Church from the early days of the Eastern Empire to the full splendour of the service at the height of its development. Neither the poetry nor the music, therefore, can be judged independently of each other; verse and voice are intimately linked together. Nor, since they are part of the liturgy, can they be judged according to the aesthetical standards which are used to apply to works of art which are the expression of individual feeling.30 The hymns of the liturgy shape religious affections mainly by their lyrics, not by the melodies that accompany them. The melodies support the words, but they are not the main feature of Byzantine hymnography. There are a wide range of hymns that cultivate a variety of religious affec­ tions and contribute to their proper ordering. Some hymns are worship­ ful songs of praise and awe (e.g., the Cherubic Hymn sung before the Great Entrance), while others are explicitly dogmatic (i.e., theological truths that are recognized by the church as essential for salvation, espe­ cially the dogmas of the Trinity and Christology). For example, the mean­ ing of the Incarnation, understood in terms of the dogma of the Chalce­ donian Definition (451 CE), is reinforced every Sunday in the famous hymn titled, “The Only­Begotten.” Only begotten Son and Word of God who, being immortal, ac­ cepted for our salvation to take flesh from the holy mother of God and ever­virgin Mary, and without change became man. You were crucified, Christ our God, by death trampling on death, being One

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of the Holy Trinity, glorified with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Save us.31 The text is obviously meant to be a confession of faith as well as a prayer or piece of religious poetry. This weekly singing about the Incar­ nation attracts us, disturbs us, and changes us. It shapes our affections as they orient our emotions to the beauty of the Incarnation. Participation in Christ’s beauty shapes our spiritual desires and deepens our trust in God. This, and similar dogmas, as witnessed to in the Bible and Ecu­ menical Councils (325–787), powerfully reshape our religious affections by orienting us to Christ in his trinitarian relations. The hymns are a poetic treasure chest of patristic spirituality and theology that expresses church tradition. They transform our thoughts and human feelings into religious dispositions. This human quality of Byzantine hymnography is also shown in the Triodion, the liturgical book used during Great Lent. The Triodion as­ sumes a theological anthropology that affirms that humans can only be truly human when they are free from the negative “passions” of sin. The way to “passionlessness” (apatheia) is through repentance. Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit. Open to me the doors of repentance, O Life­giver; for my soul goeth early to the temple of Thy holiness, coming in the temple of my body, wholly polluted. But because Thou art compassionate, purify me by the compassion of Thy mercies. Both now and ever and unto the ages of ages, Amen.32 Yet all the appeals to repentance and change are seen in the context of the eschatological kingdom of God, which is blessed and joyful. The triumphant hymns sung on Paschal (Easter) night are a testimony to this Christian joy. The following is composed by St. John of Damascus (645/76–749), paraphrasing a Paschal sermon of St. Gregory of Nazi­ anzus (329–89). This is the day of resurrection! Let us shine joyfully, O peoples!

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The Pascha of the Lord, the Pascha! From death to life, and from earth to heaven, Christ has led us, and we sing the hymns of victory.33 Such hymns deify human emotions by shaping, orienting, and di­ recting our religious affections toward the victory of the resurrection and the kingdom of God that is fulfilled here and now, yet consummated only in the age to come. They reorder our religious affections theocentrically. The poetic relationship between the words and the music work their way deep into the inner structures of our being so that we are renewed and transformed. In short, Byzantine hymnography deifies the worshipper by moving him ever deeper into the mystery and glory of God. * * * I have described the centrality of the Gospel in the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom and how that Gospel cultivates spiritual passions through the deification of the worshipper. The liturgical means of deifi­ cation that I focused on include prayers, rites, symbols, the baptismal font, the Eucharistic meal, scripture readings, the pulpit, icons, and hymns. There are, of course, expressions of personal piety that I could not explore, such as the sign of the cross, prostrations, and the lighting of candles. Nevertheless, the ultimate goal toward which all liturgical action aims is the kingdom of God. That kingdom exists within the church in a state of eschatological tension in which “the age to come” has already ap­ peared in the present while anticipating its final consummation. Through the Incarnation, the re­creation of a new humanity has been achieved and the cosmos renewed. Union with Jesus Christ, therefore, constitutes the heart of the Gospel and the goal of liturgical deification. The original cre­ ation and ultimate vocation of human beings is to become like God through union with Christ. In the words of St. Athanasius, “God became human, so that humans might become god.” It is no wonder, then, that after the Russian envoys of the tenth cen­ tury witnessed the Divine Liturgy of the Church of the Holy Wisdom, they solemnly reported to Prince Vladimir, “We knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth, for surely there is no such splendor or beauty anywhere. We cannot describe it to you. All we know is that God dwells there and that service surpasses the worship of all other places. For we cannot forget that beauty.”

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Notes 1. Timothy (Kallistos) Ware, The Orthodox Church, new ed. (New York: Penguin, 2015), 257–59. 2. The theme of deification (theosis) is well known to all students of the Eastern Church, so little needs to be said here. It is epitomized by St. Athana­ sius, who wrote, “God became human so that humans might become god” (On the Incarnation of the Word, par. 54). For a brief and balanced presentation of deification, see Ware, The Orthodox Church, 225–31. 3. Alexander Schmemann, Historical Road of Eastern Orthodoxy (Scars­ dale, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1992), 227. 4. John Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal Themes, 2nd ed. (New York: Fordham University Press, 1979), 6. 5. Theodore G. Stylianopoulos, The Way of Christ: Gospel, Spiritual Life and Renewal in Orthodoxy (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2002), 49. It is reiterated by a Monk of the Eastern Church, Orthodox Spirituality: An Outline of the Orthodox Ascetical and Mystical Tradition, 2nd ed. (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1978); and the same is said by the nineteenth­ century Russian abbot, Ignatius Brichaninov, for monastics who tended to re­ place the Gospel with legalistic emphases on rote spiritual practices, in The Arena: An Offering to Contemporary Monasticism, trans. Lazarus Moore (Jordan­ ville, NY: Holy Trinity Monastery, 1997), 3–10. 6. Kallistos Ware, “Ways of Prayer and Contemplation,” in Christian Spirituality: Origins to the Twelfth Century, ed. Bernard McGinn and John Meyendorff (New York: Crossroad, 1985), 395–414. 7. John Chryssavgis, In the Heart of the Desert (Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom, 2008), 58. 8. The limits of this chapter prevent me from exploring the Greek Fa­ ther’s theological anthropology and issues related to spirituality. For an overview, see Andrew Louth, “‘Beauty will Save the World’: The Formation of Byzantine Spirituality,” Theology Today 61 (2004): 67–77. 9. Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocese, Service Book of the Holy Eastern Orthodox Church, 3rd ed. (1960), 146–65 (Old English changed here to contem­ porary English). 10. The key biblical text for this comes from Romans 5:12: “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, so death came to all people, because all sinned.” The Greek Fathers interpreted “death” (thanatos), not “Adam,” as the grammatical antecedent of the Greek phrase “be­ cause all sinned (eph ho pantes hemarton).” Augustine, however, relied on a faulty Latin translation of this phrase, which rendered the original Greek as in quo

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omnes peccaverunt, i.e., “in whom [Adam] all sinned.” Consequently, for the Greek Fathers, mortality is the cause of sin, not personal guilt that is passed down through Adam. Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology, 143–49. 11. John Chrysostom, Baptismal Catechesis, 3.5–6. 12. Kallistos Ware, “The Sacrament of Baptism and the Ascetic Life in the Teaching of Mark the Monk,” Studia Patristica 10 [= Texte und Untersuchungen 107] (1970): 445. 13. Others being (Pseudo­)Markarios of Egypt (fifth c.), who speaks of “full certitude of heart,” in George Maloney, trans., Pseudo-Macarius: The Fifty Spiritual Homilies and the Great Letter, Classics of Western Spirituality (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1992), 54; and Symeon the New Theologian (tenth c.), who calls on baptized Christians to experience a conscious “baptism in the Holy Spirit” that is grounded in their original water baptism, in C. J. Cantanzaro, trans., Symeon the New Theologian: The Discourses, Classics of Western Spirituality (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1980), 97 passim. 14. Mark the Ascetic (also known as Mark the Monk), “Concerning Those Who Imagine That They Are Justified by Works,” in vol. 1 of Counsels on the Spiritual Life: Mark the Monk, trans. Tim Vivian and Augustine Casiday (New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2009), Saying 56. 15. Ibid., Saying 92. 16. See Robert F. Taft, S.J., The Byzantine Rite: A Short History (College­ ville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1992); Robert F. Taft, S.J., “Christ in the Byzantine Divine Office,” in The Place of Christ in Liturgical Prayer: Trinity, Christology, and Liturgical Theology, ed. Brian D. Spinks (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2008); Hugh Wybrew, The Orthodox Liturgy (New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1990); Alexander Schmemann, Introduction to Liturgical Theology, 2nd ed. (London: Faith Press, 1976); Hans­Joachim Schulz, The Byzantine Liturgy (New York: Pueblo, 1986). 17. Alexander Schmemann, The Eucharist: Sacrament of the Kingdom (Crest­ wood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Press, 2003). 18. Service Book, 114. 19. For centuries, Eastern and Western Christianity debated the exact time of the change and its place in the liturgy. But as the late Fr. Alexander Schme­ mann observed, the East capitulated to this scholastic way of reasoning contrary to its own authentic tradition. “Consequently, it requires us more than ever to return to this tradition to restore its genuine perspective and essence.” Schme­ mann, The Eucharist, 216. See also Robert F. Taft, “The Epiclesis Question in Light of the Orthodox and Catholic Lex Orandi Traditions,” in New Perspectives on Historical Theology: Essays in Memory of John Meyendorff, ed. Bradley Nassif (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996), 210–37.

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20. Schmemann, The Eurharist, 216; original emphases. 21. Ibid., 226. The entire chapter (“The Sacrament of the Holy Spirit,” 213–27) is the most important part of Schmemann’s book, as noted in his later memoirs. 22. Quoted by Ware, The Orthodox Church, 195. 23. Alexander Schmemann, Liturgy and Life (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Press, 1993), 18. 24. See also Demetrios J. Constantelos, “The Holy Scriptures in Greek Orthodox Worship: A Comparative and Statistical Study,” Greek Orthodox Theological Review 12 (1966): 80. 25. The Seventh Ecumenical Council (787) makes a clear distinction be­ tween “worship” (latreia), which can only be given to God, and “veneration” (proskynesis), which is an act of honor and respect given to the saints through their icons. Christians are to honor icons but never worship them. 26. J. D. Mansi, Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio (Florence and Venice, 1759–98; repr. Paris: H. Welter, 1901 ff.), vol. 13, 20D. 27. Robin Cormack, Icons (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 88. 28. D. Winfield, “Middle and Later Byzantine Wall Painting Methods: A Comparative Study,” Dumbarton Oaks Paper, no. 22 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968), 128. 29. Constantine Cavarnos, Guide to Byzantine Iconography (vols. 1–2) (Brookline, MA: Holy Transfiguration Monastery Press, 1993); Anton C. Vrame, The Educating Icon (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1999); Leonid Ouspensky, The Meaning of Icons (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Press, 1982). 30. Egon Wellesz, A History of Byzantine Music and Hymnography, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961), 157; emphasis mine. 31. An accurate translation from the original Greek done in Great Britain for the Ecumenical Patriarchate (no publication information available). 32. Mother Maria and Archimadrite Kallistos Ware, trans., The Lenten Triodion (London: Faber and Faber, 1978), 76. 33. John of Damascus, “The Paschal Canon,” in The Paschal Liturgy (En­ glewood, NJ: Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocese of North America, 1957), 388.

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H O LY T E A R S A Neglected Aspect of Early Christian Spirituality in Contemporary Context

M I C H A E L J . M c C LY M O N D

On Learning from Monks

Over a century ago, the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche offered an unforgettable picture of the Christian ascetic or monk in his work Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1892). While Nietzsche opposed Christianity generally, it was the ascetic who supremely embodied Christianity’s pale negations and life-destroying impulses. What is more, Nietzsche regarded the monk as someone secretly drawn to the very things he supposedly renounced, rendering him a “sentimental dissembler,” “covetous of the earth,” and ashamed of his own desires.1 The monk’s failures engendered ressentiment against the successful. The apostle Paul, the Desert Christians, the Catholic saints, Martin Luther, and, later, Protestantism were all destroyers of the life-affirming, Dionysian, aristocratic values of health, strength, and vitality.2 Yet Nietzsche’s aversion to Christian asceticism was mingled with a healthy measure of respect and perhaps a trace of envy. For he saw that beneath the surface of the ascetic life lay an astonishing concentration of willpower and an impressive attainment of self-mastery. 87

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Many Christians of the past century have been Nietzsche’s unwitting disciples—at least with respect to their attitudes toward asceticism. To many of us, the ancient ascetics appear not merely mistaken, but pathetic or even incomprehensible. Contemporary authors have labeled holy tears as an outmoded or unfashionable topic.3 Francis Leduc writes that “such a theme appears to be obsolete.”4 Christoph Benke calls it a “previously forgotten chapter in the history of Christian faith.”5 Yet both the Eastern Christian and Western Christian traditions have had much to say on the theme of holy tears. The experience of and teaching on holy tears continues in an unbroken succession from the time of the Desert Christians in the fourth and fifth centuries up through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and to some extent in more recent times as well. What is more, both Eastern and Western thinkers have commonly linked holy tears to the presence and activity of the Holy Spirit. Spiritual weeping is one of the outward marks of the charismatic persona. Hans-Georg Beck spoke of this charismatic or “Messalian” dimension as having an “unbroken succession . . . in the history of the Byzantine church.”6 Similarly, Karl Holl argued more than a century ago that the charismatic personae and phenomena of the Desert Christians had a continuing existence throughout later centuries and up to the period of the nineteenth-century Russian holy men, or startsy.7 These Spirit-filled, Spirit-guided persons were reputed to have strong influence on human affairs. Through their personal presence, wise counsel, and heartfelt prayers, they facilitated the reconciliation of sinners with God and with one another. Some held that Spirit-filled persons—without any ordination to priestly ministry—had the power to pronounce the absolution of sins. The phraseology of early Christian writers—“gift of tears” (Latin, donum lacrymarum)—suggests that they regarded tears of a certain kind as a spiritual gift that came from God and found expression in the physical body. The phenomenon was thus roughly analogous to the twentiethcentury pentecostal-charismatic notion of the “gift” of speaking in tongues. Believers sought after God in prayer, and yet the gift of tears came only if, when, and as God allowed it. Among the Desert Christians and later spiritual writers we find accounts of charismatic gifts, including gifts of healing, supernatural knowledge, and encounters with angels and

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demons.8 Not everyone in their communities had paranormal experiences, and yet the phenomena happened often enough that we might label the communities charismatic. Ancient, medieval, and modern authors on holy tears spoke of a “fire” or “fiery prayer” that often came with or after the experience of spiritual weeping. Compunction for sin was anything but a dreary or gloomy experience, since so often believers found that their relationship with God was revitalized through tearful experiences. Consider the following passage from John Cassian that describes ancient monks literally shouting for joy at God’s presence. Through ineffable joy and quickening of spirit . . . [one] bursts forth in shouts owing to the greatness of unbearable joy; the delightfulness of heart and of exultation is loud enough to reach the neighbor’s cell. Sometimes, however, the mind is hidden in such great silence within the solitude of profound quiet that the dazzlement of sudden illumination entirely confines [i.e., blocks out] all sound of the voice; the awestruck spirit contains within itself all thoughts or lets them go and pours forth its desires to God with unutterable sighs. Sometimes, however, the mind prays with such abundance of compunction . . . that it cannot express anything except by the escape of tears.9 Here the range of spiritual experience encompasses holy silence, shouts of joy, and tears of compunction. Note that Cassian does not rank these different manifestations but regards all of them as coming from God in accordance with God’s will. The power and variety of these religious affections are striking. Furthermore it seems that Cassian was no mere chronicler or compiler of the experiences of others. He wrote as one who had entered into these experiences himself.10 In this chapter I offer a brief account of the phenomenon of holy tears, in both Eastern and Western Christian contexts, and show that it is neither a purely spontaneous overflow of powerful emotions nor some kind of mechanical process that could be (or should be) turned on or off at will. Instead, holy tears were a religious practice combining intentionality with spontaneity. Through the conscious direction of the mind toward

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certain topics, the discipline of prolonged reflection and meditation, and the careful avoidance of distractions, the faithful monk or spiritual Christian cultivated a frame of heart and mind in which holy tears would come forth. When such tears appeared, the one who wept experienced them as a divine gift and as a sign of God’s presence.11 I further argue that holy tears functioned as a school for the affections. On the one hand, the exterior act of spiritual weeping signified a preexisting, interior disposition of compunction, contrition, or holy sorrow (Latin, conpunctio; Greek, penthos). On the other hand, the exterior act of weeping helped to introduce and/or to strengthen a new set of interior dispositions.12 As the ancient sources show, Christian teachers were eager for their pupils to begin the process of spiritual weeping, since they discovered that the first experiences of holy tears made further such experiences more easily attainable.13 Long after the tears had dried, the benefits of spiritual weeping remained. Some doctrinally orthodox Christian authors went so far as to claim that the power of holy tears to cleanse from spiritual uncleanness and evil desire was as great—if not greater—than the sacrament of baptism itself. St. John the Damascene, in The Orthodox Faith, reckoned holy tears (“baptism . . . by repentance and tears”) to be “truly grievous,” and he classified it along with ordinary water baptism and the experience of martyrdom (“baptism by blood and martyrdom”) as among the basic forms of baptism.14 In the conclusion to this chapter, I touch on the possible pertinence of holy tears in the twenty-first-century context, where a training or education of the affections may be essential to recovering a robust and well-rounded experience of the Christian life.

Holy Tears among the Desert Christians and in Later Eastern Tradition

To understand the phenomenon of holy tears or spiritual weeping, we must set it in the larger context of desert spirituality.15 Amid the vast landscape that surrounded them, the Desert Christians took years—and even decades—to explore the equally vast inner spaces of spiritual experience. In the course of their inward journey, they mapped out the territory to be traversed by the pilgrim en route to God. By a process of trial and error stretching over centuries, they discovered the pitfalls that might waylay

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the pilgrim and the byways that may have looked promising but ultimately led one astray. They became aware of their own logismoi (i.e., evil reasonings) that came to mind again and again with surprising regularity. Just when they thought that they had completely overcome their fallen nature, they found the same impulses reasserting themselves. Men in their seventies and eighties found that they were still capable of falling into the sin of lust—or that of envy, pride, anger, or gluttony. Sometimes one sin or temptation would recede while another would begin to assert itself. The brother who overcame his inclination to gluttony would start to become puffed up about his self-control—and so begin to succumb to the perhaps more serious sin of pride. In this way the Desert Christians became aware of the complexity of human nature and the pervasiveness, power, and stealthiness of sin. Some Desert Christians spent ten or twenty years struggling with a single besetting sin such as gluttony or lust. It may be hard today for us to imagine such singleminded concentration of will and effort—and all aimed at attaining purity of heart. A persistent misunderstanding is the idea that ancient Eastern Christians were a happy lot who reveled in their joyful experiences of God, untroubled by any sort of guilt. On this view, it was the dubious influence of that notorious former party boy, St. Augustine, that introduced an introspective conscience to the Latin West and to later Catholics. Martin Luther—the monk with the self-lacerating conscience—continued the same negative trend and blighted the experience of Protestants for half a millennium. The proposed solution to the problem is to get back to the ancient Eastern mentality that supposedly lacked such an unhappy and unhealthy consciousness of sin. No one deeply acquainted with the literature of the Desert Christians will find this a plausible account. The Desert Christians were profoundly and acutely aware of their sin (i.e., the fallen nature) as well as their sins (i.e., the individual acts or expressions of the fallen nature). Sin consciousness was by no means the creation of St. Augustine.16 Because of their bent toward introspection and their preoccupation with sins of the heart, the Desert Christians might be thought of as the Puritans of the ancient East. They devoted great time and effort to examining themselves and their consciences in God’s presence. Remarkably enough, the Desert

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Christians had experiences that—in one respect at least—were like that of the young Martin Luther during his days in the monastery. The longer they examined themselves, the more troubled they became. They discovered depths of selfishness, envy, rage, pride, and lust that unnerved them. It was those who made the greatest effort at self-examination and undistracted prayer who seem to have had the greatest awareness of their own transgressions. At the same time, we misread the Desert Christians if we interpret them solely in terms of sin consciousness and if we do not see their deep joy and what we what we might call their grace consciousness. The Desert Christians cited and meditated on Jesus’s words, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted” (Matt. 5:4). Their tears were an outward expression of the attitude of compunction or sorrow for sins—known in Latin as conpunctio and in Greek as penthos. The teaching on tears originated in the Christian East. Origen might be regarded as the founder of the Christian doctrine of compunction, while the Desert Christians of the fourth through sixth centuries were its great elaborators. As Christoph Benke notes in Die Gabe der Tränen (2002), the experience of holy tears was not something gloomy for the early Christians but was instead a doorway to new spiritual vitality. The gift of tears brought integration to the life of faith. It ushered one out of selfcontradiction and into completion and wholeness. Among the Desert Christians, tears were one aspect of the ascetic striving after virtue and purification of the heart. Such tears had a past, present, and future dimension. Viewed in relation to the past time, tears were penitential and cathartic. Viewed in relation to the present time, they were gracious indications of fellowship with God and the presence of the Holy Spirit. Viewed in relation to the future, tears were anticipatory. In addition to the term penthos there is a second term, katanuxis, that was sometimes used as a synonym and yet may capture a different nuance of meaning.17 While penthos generally indicated an ongoing state of mourning, katanuxis referred to the initial, decisive interruption of one’s experience. Katanuxis was a troubling of the spirit—a “divine pricking” or “holy puncture” that ultimately brought about a change of perspective. It was not only the sense that “I have done wrong,” but also that “I am wrong.” Yet katanuxis pointed the spiritual mourner toward hope in God and

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God’s grace. The monastic sources suggest that there was a process over time, so that the tears of a novice might not have the same significance as the tears of one who has progressed much further. Beginners in the life of continual prayer wept out of consternation and fear, while those who were spiritually graced wept tears of joy and love. Tears were a way of love that began in remorse and yet ended in joy.18 St. John Climacus’s work, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, offered a classic account of spiritual weeping. For Climacus, tears were a sign of the Holy Spirit’s presence. The gift of repentance, he said, came from “an unannounced visit from the Lord.” Penthos was thus linked to divine presence. Repentance was a “restoration of baptism” and a “daughter of hope” that stood in opposition to despair. Climacus connected holy tears with the remembrance and recovery of one’s “first love”—or the “remembrance of the fire of one’s first zeal.”19 Such tears brought liberation from sin. Tears of repentance transformed an inordinate love for creatures into love for God, thus “driving out love with love.”20 Climacus adapted a Pauline saying about freedom through the Holy Spirit (2 Cor. 3:17) when he wrote, “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there the bond [of sin] is loosed.”21 At the same time, he regarded tears as ambiguous. He thought it risky to interpret tears as a “greater baptism,” since tears had differing meanings at different times. Finding the proper way to speak about tears was thus “dark and difficult.”22 Holy grieving, or penthos, lay to some extent within the realm of human power, according to Climacus. By directing one’s mind to consider God’s worthiness and one’s own unworthiness, one could begin to engender a spirit of compunction. Holy tears, though, were purely a gift from God. God created man for joy and not for sorrow, so God indeed took no special pleasure in weeping. Holy tears were “joy-bearing” as well as “blessed” and “gracious,” so they brought a “spiritual smile.” The experience of penthos pointed forward to the great heavenly feast that God has prepared. It anticipated the return to paradise.23 Spiritual tears—though they were physical entities—belonged in the realm of the spiritual as huper phusin (above nature or supernatural). In this sense they were outward signs of a re-formation taking place within the spirit. Climacus stressed that God is not constrained in giving or withholding the gift of tears.24 Tears were not necessary for salvation, though they were a grace to

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be sought from God. Tears also may have had reference to solidarity with those who were suffering and to compassion for them. The apostle Paul thus exhorted Christians to “weep with those who weep” (Rom. 12:15). The Desert Christians linked holy tears with holy fire. John Climacus spoke of “hot tears” and wrote that “in the fire of grief the tears poured out hot over their cheeks.”25 One is reminded of that famous spiritual weeper—the unnamed woman in the Gospel of Luke who knelt down and washed Jesus’s feet with her tears. Eastern sources made frequent reference to this sinful woman.26 Jesus’s words in that passage showed clearly the connection between forgiveness received and love demonstrated: “[The one] who is forgiven little, loves little” (Luke 7:47). The converse was also true: the one who knew herself to be forgiven much, loved much. Repentance ignited love. Though holy joy differed from holy grief, both were opposed to the deadened heart that could feel neither joy nor sorrow. Climacus said that he was “astonished” at the breadth of the emotions included in repentance, spanning sorrow and joy alike. As joy, it is “sweeter than honey.” Climacus seems to have coined the phrase charopoion penthos (joy-bearing grief ) to capture the paradox of grievous joy and joyful grief.27 One of the central ideas of the Desert Christians was that true spiritual life involved and required death. Death and life were not separable but intertwined. The remarkable phenomenon of “joy-bearing grief ” showed that death and life did not succeed but coincided. Mortification—the dying to sin—was vivification—the coming to life in Christ. Vivification was mortification. Jesus himself said that the one who loses his life will find it (Matt. 10:39, 16:25; Luke 9:24, 17:33). The Gospel message centered on the theme of Good Friday and Easter. This life-through-death theme continued all through Paul’s epistles. Christians have been baptized into Christ’s death and so have become united with him in newness of life (Rom. 6). Paul went so far as to say, “I have been crucified with Christ,” and to declare, “I no longer live but Christ lives in me” (Gal. 2:20). What counted as “death” in one sense was experienced as “life” in another. The Desert Christians highlighted this fundamental Gospel mystery of lifethrough-death. A different theology of tears appeared in Evagrius Ponticus, for whom prayers with tears were a step toward “pure prayer” or contemplation.

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Tears lent earnestness to the monk’s prayers to be cleansed from passions. Yet this uprooting of the passions was subordinated to the positive aim of attaining contemplation. Jeremy Driscoll writes that for Evagrius “tears are the beginning of prayer[,] . . . the beginning of what the monastic life aims for; namely, that conversation of the mind with God.” Evagrius wrote, “First of all pray to receive tears, so that by sorrowing you may be able to claim the wildness that there is in your soul and obtain forgiveness from the Lord by confessing your offenses to him.” He exhorted his readers to “use tears to support every petition, because your Lord is greatly pleased to receive prayer made with tears.”28 Evagrius warned of spiritual pride, which began to assail the monk after he had made genuine progress in the spiritual life and which could attach itself to holy tears: “Even if you shed rivers of tears in your prayer, that is no reason for feeling conceited, as if you were superior to the populace. It is because your prayer has received help that you are able to confess your sins readily and to placate the Lord by weeping. So do not turn the antidote to passions into another passion, otherwise you will only anger all the more him who gave you this grace.”29 For Evagrius, holy tears were crucial in combating listlessness (acedia, or sloth). The spirit of listlessness “drives away tears,” while tears likewise drove away listlessness.30 In a way that might seem counterintuitive, holy tears and penthos helped to maintain hope and defeat despair.31 St. Isaac the Syrian said that “the fruit of the inner life begins with tears,” in that “tears begin to flow when the birth of the spiritual child is near.”32 Unlike many other teachers, Isaac thought that progress in the spiritual life might eventually dry up the sources of tears. The tenthcentury figure Symeon the New Theologian devoted a chapter in his bestknown work to the theme of holy tears.33 Symeon was known for saying that monks should not come to the Eucharist without tears. He was the first of the Byzantine mystics freely to speak of his extraordinary mystical experiences, and he came into conflict with the antimystical court theologian Stephen of Nicomedia, who did not think much of Symeon’s tears or of his experiences of oneness with God. One of the deepest teachers on holy tears was the ancient Armenian author St. Gregory of Narek. His entire approach to the Christian life focused on repentance, understood in an intensely personal way, in which

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one sees oneself as an ungrateful sinner in God’s sight. Gregory’s written prayers continually emphasized the theme of individual guilt: “I have sinned against your great goodness, I, a weak man have sinned! . . . See, I have sinned! I have sinned against you—you who have created me out of nothing! Indeed, I have sinned! . . . I, the foremost of the sinners; I, the leader of the unrighteous; I, the foremost of the guilty; I, the model of the offenders.”34 For Gregory of Narek, the knowledge of one’s sin was a revelation of God as Redeemer.35

Holy Tears in Western Christian Spirituality, Sixth–Sixteenth Centuries

Pope Gregory the Great emerged in the sixth century as a major Western teacher of compunction, and yet his instruction was mostly a summary of Eastern ideas and themes.36 The Western monastic pioneer, St. Benedict of Nursia, made pointed reference to holy tears. In the oft-cited words from the Rule of St. Benedict, “We must know that God regards our purity of heart and tears of compunction, not our many words.” Benedict recommended making daily repentance before God: “Every day with tears and sighs confess your past sins to God in prayer.” Finally, in comparing the life of a monk to a continuous season of Lent, he writes, “This we can do in a fitting manner by refusing to indulge evil habits and by devoting ourselves to prayer with tears, to reading, to compunction of heart and self-denial.”37 The eleventh-century writer St. Peter Damian wrote a work called In Praise of Tears (De laude lacrymarum). In this work he acknowledged the seemingly paradoxical relationship between holy tears and fiery zeal for God, just as John Cassian did. “Fire” and “water” went hand in hand: haec aqua ex igne profluit, “such water flows forth from fire.”38 The fourteenth-century saint Catherine of Siena posited a progression of no less than nine steps in holy weeping. The first five steps were grouped under the heading “tears of water,” and these included the tears of the damned as well as tears centering on material prosperity, slavish fear, unpleasant experiences, and growing knowledge of God. The last four steps were “tears of fire,” and these included tears of spiritual fear, of sweetness, of love, and of blessedness. Catherine’s ninefold schema contradicted any

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notion that holy tears were a mere passing phase. Holy tears continued at all phases of the spiritual life, but their meaning underwent a decisive shift as one made progress in the soul’s journey toward union with God. Fiery tears never came to an end, since the soul’s longing after God was ultimate and endless.39 Holy tears entered the spirituality of the Jesuits through their founding figure, St. Ignatius of Loyola. Michael Plattig argues that there was hardly any saint who attached as much personal importance to holy tears. Tears were outward indicators of the heart’s experiences of desolation or consolation—a key theme in Loyola’s writings.40 In the early seventeenth century, the Jesuit cardinal and spiritual writer St. Robert Bellarmine authored an occasional text on the theme of holy tears, De gemitu columbae sive de bono lachymarum (On the Moaning of the Dove or On the Good of Tears). Yet neither tears nor the gift of tears were ever integrated into the Western, scholastic discussions of theology.41 For the Western thinkers as for the Eastern ones, spiritual discernment was needed properly to interpret tears whenever they appeared. Tears came from different sources and so had to be evaluated carefully. The Desert Christians proposed it as a general rule that whatever was excessive came from the demons. The same principle was later expressed in a Latin tag: quidquid inquietat est a diabolo, “whatever is turbulent is from Satan.”42 Descriptions of holy weeping emphasized the lack of clamor, outcry, or bodily convulsions or contortions. Instead, spiritual tears streamed forth from a calm, peaceful countenance.43 Modern Western authors echo the teachings of the ancients in linking holy tears with fiery zeal for God. This idea appeared explicitly in recent years in the writings of Sister Basilea Schlink, founder of the Evangelical Sisterhood of Mary, and the Anglican hermit Maggie Ross.44 Schlink wrote that “only penitent sinners, who are granted forgiveness, are set on fire with love for Jesus.”45 Ross commented on how God identified himself with believers in the experience of holy tears: “It is God who weeps and God who weeps with us.” As we weep “God’s tears,” then “God’s hidden, apophatic fire . . . is released on the earth when falling tears melt the stone of our hearts and ignite the oil of the Spirit, the oil of gladness, the fire lit upon the earth. Thus we cannot speak of the way of tears only, but rather the way of tears and fire.”46

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Sorrow? Gratitude? Longing? Empathy? Divergent Interpretations of Holy Tears

Scholars have debated the significance of compunction, or penthos, and there has been a developing trend in the secondary literature from an exclusive focus on sin to a broader perspective. The data suggest a complex perspective in which spiritual tears may express sorrow over one’s sins, sorrow over the sins of others, gratitude for grace received, nostalgic longing for a lost paradise, an eschatological pining for the coming kingdom, or solidarity and compassion for the suffering. A particular episode of spiritual weeping might include one or more of these aspects. What is more, it is often not easy to distinguish among the various kinds of tears. One contemporary biblical scholar cites the well-known instance of the sinful woman who washed Jesus’s feet with her tears (Luke 7) and indicates that her tears might not signify repentance with a view to forgiveness but rather gratitude for forgiveness already received.47 The foundational modern study of penthos—first published by the French Jesuit Irénée Hausherr in the 1940s—defined it as a retrospective or backward-looking experience. It meant grieving over the loss or diminishment of one’s own (or someone else’s) salvation or spiritual good. Hausherr was careful to note that the monks were ordinarily unafraid of being finally rejected by God or sent into hellfire. Instead they understood salvation as a holistic gift that might be increased or diminished. What grieved the monks was their sense that they had so poorly used the time available to them and squandered their spiritual opportunities. Barbara Müller pressed beyond Hausherr’s position by arguing that penthos should not be defined retrospectively—that is, in terms of a preoccupation with the past. Instead she insisted that penthos included within it a sense of eschatological hopefulness and anticipation. The tears of sinners are hopeful tears. Such tears look forward to the day when God will wipe away every tear from the eyes of his saints (Rev. 21:4).48 The vision of one’s own sins is by no means the unique or only goal of penthos. Instead penthos draws one into the experience of God’s consolations and into the contemplation of God himself.

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Benke wrote that it is “the contrast between what humanity really deserves from God and what it actually has received—based on a confidence in God’s bestowal—[that] opens up the source of tears.”49 This interpretation represented an inversion of the long-standing Protestant notion that the early Christian monks—remember Martin Luther!— prayed out of sense of uncertainty or fear about their standing with God. The truth may be very nearly the reverse of this; that is, they often prayed with tears because of an overflowing joy at just how much grace God had already bestowed on them and would bestow on them in the future. In his recent study of repentance in early Christianity, Alexis Torrance moves in the same direction as Müller and Benke. In addition to an “initial repentance” over past sins committed, the Desert Christians entered into what he refers to as “existential repentance.” Existential repentance is that aspect of the concept by which the whole of Christian life is identified with the path of repentance. This is predominantly done by associating repentance not simply with specific tasks, acts, or disciplines in the Christian life, but with the keeping and living out of the Gospel commandments generally. In this sense, repentance becomes humanity’s “single goal,” the existential mark of the true believer. While it would take us on a rabbit trail to consider the matter in depth, it is remarkable to see that Martin Luther’s famous “Ninety-Five Theses” began with a call for something like “existential repentance.” The entire life of the Christian, wrote Luther, was to be a life of repentance.50 In Torrance’s analysis there is a third element that he refers to as “vicarious” or “Christ-like repentance.” This radical enlargement of what is usually understood by the term repentance is further radicalized with the third aspect of the framework: Christ-like repentance. This idea does not imply that Christ needed to repent or atone for his own failings: early Christians all insisted that Christ had no failings. Rather, Christ was put forward as having in a sense repented, in his own life, suffering, and death, for the sins of the world. This specific role of Christ was used not

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simply to explain the mechanics of atonement, but was set forth as the goal towards which the repentance of each Christian strove. Thus, time and again, we find arguments in the literature that repentance is never complete for the Christian, even in the case of the “holy man” or saint, since as a Christian he or she is under a liability to follow the example of Christ, and so to take on, repent, and grieve for the sins of his or her neighbour, and the world at large.51 In Torrance’s account, the scope of repentance expands far beyond what we typically find in traditional Catholic and Protestant teaching. Not only is the Christian believer called to repentance as a continuing practice and experience, but those who have largely succeeded in breaking free of their own sinful acts and dispositions have the task of repenting vicariously. One finds an analogy to this ancient ideal of vicarious repentance in the contemporary notion of “identificational repentance” as presented by certain contemporary charismatic Christian authors.52

The Practice of Holy Tears and the Schooling of the Affections

When holy tears began to recede as a theme in Christian literature during the seventeenth century, sentimental weeping emerged as a new theme in the secular culture. The timing makes it seem that the one had replaced the other. Gary Ebersole speaks of a “sentimental culture” and “lachrymose literature” in Europe and North America from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century.53 What is more, tears in the modern era became secular signs. No longer were they indicators of Christian spiritual or moral sensitivity—seeing, for example, the depth of one’s own sins, the sadness and brokenness of the world, or the coming glory of God. Instead they were marks of aesthetic, cultural, or amorous refinement on the part of the one who wept. For early Romantics, a well-cultivated sensibility revealed itself in heightened sensitivity. A refined person could be filled with sorrow or even suicidal impulses on account of amorous love, as in Johann Goethe’s early work, The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774). One might weep at the sight of a flower, as in a 1807 poem of William Wordsworth: “To me the meanest flower that blows can give / Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.”54

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The sentimental culture of tears overlapped with the highbrow culture of aestheticism. A deeply refined person might weep not only over flowers but also over beautiful paintings.55 Some modern aesthetes have pursued the experience of beauty with a kind of religious fervor and perhaps as a substitute for religion. Those who oppose the whole notion of holy tears might reflect on whether it is possible to get rid of tears. And if tears are here to stay, then does it not mean that the holy tears of martyrs, saints, monks, and mystics will be replaced by the secular tears of poets, painters, novelists, filmmakers, and their followers? If saints cease from weeping, then poets and painters will soon fill their place. It is also worth mentioning the obnoxious weeping of history’s great evildoers. Adolf Hitler was well known for frequent bouts of tears and self-pity, based on what he viewed as the sufferings he endured for the ungrateful Germans whom he led.56 Tears can thus be sincere—in the sense that they are appear spontaneously and genuinely reflect a particular person’s point of view of himself and of the world—while they are also mistaken—in the sense that they do not correspond to reality as generally understood. Usually we associate sincerity with truth, but in this case sincerity goes hand in hand with falsehood. Paul Griffiths in his study of the Confessions concluded that Augustine understood tears as “communicative of a particular judgment about the way things are.” Tears, in other words, are like language. They make assertions and rest on particular judgments of truth or falsity.57 Griffiths comments, “Weeping is an appropriate, perhaps the most appropriate, response to an accurate, fully Christian discernment of what things are like for us.” For us “not to weep would be to sow that we misconstrue” both “what we are and what the world is.” So “in restraining our tears we distance ourselves from the world.”58 Griffiths has captured an early Christian perspective. Gregory of Nyssa wrote that “it is not possible to live without tears if one considers things as they really are.”59 Likewise Mark the Ascetic held that tears were a sign that one possesses “spiritual sight”—the accurate discernment of reality that Griffiths describes.60 Even the very early text, The Shepherd of Hermas, stated that “repentance is a great understanding,” thus highlighting intellect as much as affect in its conception of repentance.61 Because tears involve judgments of truth and falsity, this means that tears are not self-attesting or self-authenticating. As the Desert Christians

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recognized, someone may think that he or she is weeping spiritual tears while in fact immersed in self-pity, sensual craving, or vindictiveness. Tears qua tears are opaque, not transparent. The Christian task lies in learning to weep Christianly and attaining a self-conscious grasp of the causes of one’s tears. People can be schooled in weeping. The goal is not simply to weep often and easily (as among certain Romantics) or to weep discriminately on encountering distinguished works of art (as among the aesthetes). The goal for the Christian lies not in weeping per se but in attaining a new apprehension of who God is and who one is in God’s sight. In our twenty-first-century context, the schooling of affections seems necessary and urgent. Our popular culture is marked by a strange absence of feeling where one might expect it and by exaggerated manifestations of feeling where one might not expect it. The affectlessness of many people today might have at least something to do with the nature of the mass media. A typical hour of commercial television exposes the human eye to about a thousand different images. Filmmakers and advertisers intend for such images to provoke us. We see violent acts, sexual seduction, people in distress, spectacular explosions, and so on. Bombarded with images and information, people become emotionally cocooned and may forget how to feel.62 On the other hand, feelings that do arise may be displaced or misplaced. Commercial culture teaches us to “love” McDonald’s, ice cream, store-bought merchandise, and the beautiful people on the screen. So we experience both an affectless culture and a culture of trivialized affect. Benke wrote of the integrative function of holy tears in the experiences of early and medieval Christians.63 Over time they learned to feel, to think, and to act in accordance with their own deepest beliefs and convictions. Such integration would seem to be necessary in order to achieve experiential wholeness, balance, and harmony in a fragmenting media culture that shows no signs of soon becoming coherent or cohesive. The spiritual weepers of earlier times showed a passion for God’s kingdom that reflected their deep vitality. After all, it is only those who have fallen in love who know what it is to be lovesick. It is only the heart that grieves over sin that can also rejoice in God’s salvation and long for the coming day of redemption. A deadened heart knows neither sorrow nor joy. Indeed, it does not know itself.

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Christians who take their tradition seriously may be driven to this conclusion: We must ask for God to remove from us the stony hearts that can no longer feel sorrow and joy. We must learn to weep again—to weep for those still caught in cultures and societies that reject God, to weep for those victimized by war and oppression, to weep for those whom we have deceived or injured, and to weep for our own lost innocence, destroyed through our love of material things, our hatred of those different from us, our tainted media and pornography, our compromises with the world, and our spiritual boastfulness. Unless we weep and grieve, we will never experience the deep joy that God offers. As Jesus said, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted” (Matt. 5:4). If we simply cannot weep, it may be because our hearts have become deadened with a hardness that is at least partially due to our own choices.64 Let me conclude with two brief words of exhortation. The medieval mystic Hildegard of Bingen called for spiritual exertion with tears: “When evil rises up within you . . . immediately cry out, pray, confess, and weep, that God may hasten to help you and that evil may be taken from you and power to do good be granted to you.”65 The “Prayer for Tears” in the former Roman missal—De petitione lacrimarum—reads as follows: “God omnipotent yet most mild, who for your thirsty people caused a foundation of life-giving water to gush forth from the stone, may you cause tears of compunction to flow from the hardness of our hearts, that we may be able to weep for our sins and . . . obtain pardon because of your mercy.”66

Notes 1. Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), chap. 37, “The Immaculate Perception.” 2. Tim Murphy, Nietzsche, Metaphor, Religion (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001), 138. For further development of Nietzsche’s debate with the Christians ascetics, see E. M. Cioran, Tears and Saints (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995). Cioran—like Nietzsche—is obsessed with saints, and in awe of them, aware of their subversive potential for destabilizing others’ lives: “We would have been better off without saints. Then each of us would have minded our own business and we would have rejoiced in our imperfection. Their

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presence among us brings about useless inferiority complexes, envy, spite. The world of the saints is a heavenly poison” (14). Sometimes Cioran sounds like Nietzsche: “The cross broke apart and fell into the saints’ souls, and its nails bore into their hearts all their life. . . . The ultimate cruelty was that of Jesus: leaving an inheritance of bloodstains on the cross” (39). Yet Cioran also appreciates the saints’ intensity of experience: “The saints are not a-sexual but trans-sexual. They no longer need the revelations of sexuality. To be a saint means to be always outside yourself. What else would sexuality add to this? Sexual orgasm pales beside the saints’ ecstatic trance” (19). 3. There is an abundant secondary literature on holy tears and the related themes of repentance, compunction, and penthos in the Christian tradition. The following sources were consulted: Pierre Adnès, “Larmes,” in Dictionnaire de Spiritualité 9 (1976): cols. 287–303; Christoph Benke, Die Gabe der Tränen: Zur Tradition und Theologie eines vergessenen Kapitels der Glaubensgeschichte, Studien zur systematischen und spirituellen Theologie, 35 (Würzberg: Echter Verlag, 2002); Christoph Benke, “Licht und Tränen: Das donum lacrymarum und die Erfährung des Geistes in den Katechesen Symeons des Neuen Theologen (949–1022),” in Leben in Fülle: Skizzen zur christlichen Spirtualität, ed. T. Dienberg and M. Plattig, Festschrift für J. Weismayer (Muenster: Lit, 2001), 11–38; Mark J. Boda and Gordon T. Smith, eds., Repentance in Christian Theology, Michael Glazier Book (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2006); Jeremy Driscoll, “Penthos and Tears in Evagrius Ponticus,” Studia Monastica 36 (1994): 147–63; Lev Gillet, “The Gift of Tears (in the ancient tradition of the Christian East), Sobornost, n.s., 12 (1937): 5–10; L. Gnädinger, “Feuertränen: Caterina von Sienas Tränen-Lehre und Tränen-Erfahrung,” Geist und Leben 54 (1981): 85–98; Irénée Hausherr, Penthos: The Doctrine of Compunction in the Christian East, Cistercian Studies, 53 (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1982); P. Henrici, “Tränen als Trost: Zur geistlichen Lehre des Ignatius von Loyola,” Internationale Katholische Zeitschrift 20 (1991): 420–27; Hannah Hunt, Joy-Bearing Grief: Tears of Contrition in the Writings of the Early Syrians and Byzantine Fathers (Leiden: Brill, 2004); F. Leduc, “Penthos et larmes dans l’oeuvre de saint Jean Chrysostome,” Proche Orient Chretien 41 (1991): 220–57; D. A. Lichter, “Tears and Contemplation in Isaac of Ninevah,” Diakonia (Fordham University) 11 (1976): 239–58; M. Lot-Borodine, “Le mystère de ‘don des larmes’ dans l’Orient chrétien,” Vite Dei Santi Siciliani 48 (1936): 65–110; G. A. Maloney, “Penthos— a Forgotten Necessity,” Monastic Studies 7 (1969): 149–59; S. Mary, “St. Simeon the New Theologian and the Way of Tears,” Studia Patristica 10 (1970): 431–35; P. T. Mascia, “The Gift of Tears in Isaac of Ninevah: A Transition to Pure Prayer and the Virtue of Mercy,” Diakonia (Fordham University) 14 (1979): 255–65; Sandra J. McIntire, The Doctrine of Compunction in Medieval England, Studies in

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Medieval Literature, vol. 8 (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1991); Barbara Müller, Der Weg des Weinens; Die Tradition des “Penthos” in den Apophthegmata Patrum, Forschungen zur Kirchen- und Dogmengeschichte, 77 (Göttingen, Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 2000); Kimberley Christine Patton and John Stratton Hawley, eds., Holy Tears: Weeping in the Religious Imagination (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005); M. Plattig, “Von Sehnsucht, Herzenerknirschung und Reue: Die Tränen bein Hildegard von Bingen,” Edith Stein Jahrbuch 5 (1999): 87–103; M. Plattig, “Von Trost der Tränen: Ignatius von Loyola und die Gabe der Tränen,” Studies in Spirituality 2 (1992): 148–99; Maggie Ross, The Fountain and the Furnace: The Way of Tears and Fire (New York: Paulist Press, 1987); M. Basilea Schlink, Repentance: The Joy-Filled Life (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House, 1984); Tomas Spidlik, “Die Gabe der Tränen in der ostkirchlichen Tradition,” Internationale Katholische Zeitschrift 20 (1991): 405–19; Columba Stewart, “Experience of Prayer,” in Cassian the Monk (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 114–30; B. Steidle, “Die Tränen: Ein mystisches Problem in alten Mönchtum,” Benediktinische Monatsschrift 20 (1938): 181–87; Sister Sylvia Mary, “St. Symeon the New Theologian and the Way of Tears,” Studia Patristica 10 (1970): 431–35; Alexis Torrance, Repentance in Late Antiquity: Eastern Asceticism and the Framing of the Christian Life c. 400–650 CE (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); Kallistos Ware, “The Orthodox Experience of Repentance,” Sobornost 2 (1980): 18–28; Irma Zaleski, The Way of Repentance (Ottawa and New York: Novalis–St. Paul University and Continuum, 1999). 4. Leduc, “Penthos et larmes,” 220; all translations from French or German are my own. 5. Benke speaks of “ein weithin vergessenes Kapitel der Glaubensgeschichte” (Gabe, 5). 6. Benke, “Licht und Tränen,” 11 n. 1; citing Hans-Georg Beck, Das byzantische Jahrtausend (Munich: Beck, 1978), 278. 7. See Karl Holl, Enthusiasmus under Bussgewalt beim grieschischen Mönchtum: Eine Studie zu Symeon dem neuen Theologen (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1898). 8. See John Wortley, The Book of the Elders: Sayings of the Desert Fathers. The Systematic Collection, Cistercian Publications (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2012), especially the sections titled “Those Who Have Second Sight” (i.e., prophetic gifts), 310–50; and “Wonder-Working Elders,” 351–76. Further references to charismatic phenomena appear in Stanley M. Burgess, The Holy Spirit: Eastern Christian Traditions (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1989), passim; and Stanley M. Burgess, The Holy Spirit: Ancient Christian Traditions (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994), passim. 9. Stewart, Cassian the Monk, 126. 10. Ibid., 115–16.

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11. In his penetrating essay, Gary L. Ebersole describes “ritual weeping” as a deliberate activity: “Ritual weeping . . . would clearly qualify as an intentional action” (“The Function of Ritual Weeping Revisited: Affective Expression and Moral Discourse,” History of Religions 39 [2000]: 211–46, citing 211 n. 1). Funerary weeping in various cultures, including the paid mourner or weeper, stands out as a clear example. Another lies in the Shi’ite Muslim festival of Muharram that commemorates the massacre of Hussein and involves mass weeping. Ebersole notes that the meaning of tears depends on social context, and he urges us not to interpret tears in terms of their alleged associated emotions: “We must resist the temptation to judge all tears in terms of their immediate association with ‘real’ emotions.” For we often “assume that when a formal setting or social script requires a person to cry, the tears shed in such contexts are less than ‘real’ precisely because they are not a spontaneous emotional response” (213). He cites an interesting case among the Andaman Islanders in which weeping served as a greeting and was a mere formality like shaking hands or tipping one’s hat (A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, The Andaman Islanders, rev. ed. [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1933], 241, cited in Ebersole, “Ritual Weeping,” 213, 237–38). Perhaps the tears shed today at airport departures—and arrivals—continue the tradition of weeping-as-greeting. Ebersole says that “we need to take seriously the fact that people in many other cultures and times have not shared our assumptions about emotions [and] tears” (215). While Ebersole offers a healthy corrective to an unnuanced interpretation of tears as spontaneous, uncontrolled, and uncontrollable expressions of emotions, his severing of the nexus between tears and emotions seems unwarranted and shows the influence of Emile Durkheim, who asserted that the tears or “primitives” were unemotional. See Durkheim’s The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (New York: Free Press, [1912] 1965), 434– 61, where we read that “mourning is not the spontaneous expression of individual emotions . . . it is a duty imposed by the group” (442–43). On ritual weeping in a Christian context, see also William A. Christian, “Provoked Ritual Weeping in Early Modern Spain,” in Religious Organization and Religious Experience, ed. J. Davis (London: Academic Press, 1982), 97–114; and further references in Ebersole, “Ritual Weeping,” 212 n. 5. 12. Guigo the Carthusian commented that in infant baptism the external act signifies a foregoing, internal cleansing. With holy weeping, on the other hand, the internal cleansing precedes the external act, and so Guigo exclaimed, “O happy tears—by which our inner stains are washed—have extinguished the fires kindled by our sins” (Guigo, Epistle 8, in Sources chrétiennes, 163:98, quoted in Adnès, “Larmes,” 298). 13. The self-flagellants were monks who sought to inaugurate their spiritual compunction and holy tears by applying a whip or other object to themselves to

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cause pain. Such practices were infrequent and controversial, as Hausherr notes. While Evagrius gave some sanction to forced tears, John Cassian thought that tears shed under such circumstances were spiritual counterfeits. 14. John of Damascus, Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, ed. W. Sanday, trans. S. D. F. Salmond, A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, 2nd ser., vol. 9 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1979), 4.9. St. Symeon the New Theologian writes of “tears without sadness, which purify him, and confer on him a second baptism” (Symeon, Chapters, 1, quoted in Sister Sylvia Mary, “St. Symeon,” 435). John Climacus refers to tears not so much as a second baptism but rather as the recovery of one’s first baptism: “through tears we regain the purity of our first baptism” (John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent 7, PG 88, 804 AM, quoted in Kimberley Christine Patton, “‘Howl, Weep and Moan, and Bring It Back to God’: Holy Tears in Eastern Christianity,” in Patton and Hawley, Holy Tears, 264). Some Eastern teachers claimed that holy tears could restore someone’s lost virginity (Patton, “Howl,” 272 n. 25). 15. Primary sources for this study include especially John Cassian, John Cassian: The Conferences, trans. Boniface Ramsey (New York: Paulist Press, 1997); Colm Luibheid and Norman Russell, trans., John Climacus: The Ladder of Divine Ascent (New York: Paulist Press, 1982). 16. Metropolitan Kallistos Ware—an authoritative interpreter of Eastern Orthodox theology and spirituality—speaks of sin consciousness in Orthodoxy just as rigorously as do Western or Augustinian Christians: “We bring before Christ [in confession], not just specific sins, but also the fact of sinfulness within us—a profound corruption that cannot be fully expressed in words, that seems to elude our conscious brain and will. It is of this, above all else, that we ask to be cured” (“Orthodox Experience of Repentance,” 23). 17. Climacus—a nonsystematic thinker—did not sharply differentiate penthos from katanuxis (Benke, Gabe, 48). Eastern writers in fact used a wide range of terms in connection with holy tears. In Greek, there are the nouns dakrua (tears), syntribe (contrition), katanuxis (compunction), exomologesis or homologia (confession), lupe (sorrow or sadness), and athumia (depression or losing heart), as well as many verbs, klaein (to weep), threnein (to lament), stenazein (to groan), kopteshai (to strike the chest), algein (to afflict [onself ]), and penthein (to mourn). There are cognate terms in addition to these (cited from Leduc, “Penthos et Larmes,” 222). 18. Benke, Gabe, 13–14. 19. John Climacus, Scala Paradisi, Patrologia Graeca [PG] (Paris: Migne, 186), 88.805D and 88.773B–776A, quoted in Benke, Gabe, 45–46. 20. PG 88.777A, quoted in Benke, Gabe, 47. Climacus’s idea of a holy love replacing an unholy love anticipates the later theology of Jonathan Edwards.

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The nineteenth-century Scot, Thomas Chalmers, developed Edwards’s idea in a famous sermon on what he called “the expulsive power of a new affection.” “Mourning” for sins was one mark of a genuinely humble and broken spirit, according to Edwards’s account in his treatise, Religious Affections (Michael McClymond and Gerald R. McDermott, The Theology of Jonathan Edwards [New York: Oxford University Press, 2012], 60–76). 21. PG 88.780A, quoted in Benke, Gabe, 69. 22. PG 88.808B, quoted in Benke, Gabe, 38–39, 86. 23. PG 88.801C, 809A, 808D, quoted in Benke, Gabe, 87. 24. Lot-Borodine, “Larmes,” 65, quoted in Benke, Gabe, 88; PG 88.805D, quoted in Benke, Gabe, 89. 25. Cassian, in PG 88.765C, quoted in Benke, Gabe, 40. 26. See the extensive treatment of ancient Eastern discussions of the sinful woman in Hunt, Joy-Bearing Grief, 97–127. 27. PG 88.804B, quoted in Benke, Gabe, 49–50. The claim that Climacus coined the phrase “joy-bearing grief ” is based on Benke, Gabe, 50 n. 82, who cites John Chryssavgis, The Ascent to Heaven: The Theology of the Human Person According to St. John of the Ladder (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1989), 147–50. 28. Evagrius Ponticus, Prayer 5, PG 79, 1168D, and Prayer 6, PG 79, 1169A, quoted in Driscoll, “Penthos in Evagrius,” 149, 150, 152; English version from Simon Tugwell, trans., Evagrius Ponticus: Practikos and On Prayer (Oxford: Printed Privately by the Faculty of Theology, 1987). 29. Evagrius, Prayer 7, PG 79, 1169A, quoted in Driscoll, “Penthos in Evagrius,” 151. 30. Evagrius, Ad Monachos 56, quoted in Driscoll, “Penthos in Evagrius,” 154–55. 31. Driscoll, “Penthos in Evagrius,” 157. 32. Sister Sylvia Mary, “St. Symeon,” 431. 33. See Symeon’s “On Tears of Penitence,” in Symeon the New Theologian: The Discourses, Classics of Western Spirituality, trans. C. J. de Cantanzaro, ed. George Maloney (New York: Paulist Press, 1980), 70–89. 34. This translation of Gregory of Narek’s book of prayers is based on the French version in Sources Chretiennes 78, secs. 27, 65 (pp. 164, 343), quoted in Spidlik, “Die Gabe der Tränen,” 416–17. See also the new English translation in Grigor Narekatsi and Thomas J. Samuelian, The Armenian Prayer Book of St. Gregory of Narek, 2nd ed. (Yerevan: Vem Press, 2005). 35. Spidlk, “Die Gabe der Tränen,” 438. Gregory of Narek reminds one of Western, Augustinian thinkers—perhaps John Calvin, who began his Institutes of the Christian Religion (1559) with reference to a dialectical or “two-fold knowl-

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edge of God (duplex cognitio Dei),” whereby we come to know God’s righteousness through the awareness of our own sin, and vice versa. 36. A full account of Gregory the Great’s teaching on compunction appears in Benke, Gabe, 91–188. 37. Rule of Benedict, 20:3, 4:57, 49:2, quoted in Driscoll, “Penthos in Evagrius.” 38. Peter Damiani, De laude lachrymarum, in PL 145, 13, 309d, quoted in Adnès, “Larmes,” 298. 39. Gnädinger, “Feuertränen,” 90 n. 8, 93. 40. Plattig, “Von Trost,” 148. On Ignatius Loyola on this theme, see Henrici, “Tränen als Trost,” 420–27; Plattig, “Von Trost der Tränen,” 148–99; and Benke, Gabe, 287–88. 41. Benke, Gabe, 8. On Bellarmine’s teaching, see Benke, Gabe, 285–99. 42. Spidlik, “Die Gabe der Tränen,” 411. 43. “These tears are supernatural, and are not connected with human passions, but are a grace bestowed by God. They flow without strain or effort, without violent sobbing or contraction of the muscles. It is gratuitous gift, dependent on the good pleasure of God” (Sister Sylvia Mary, “St. Symeon,” 432). 44. An account of “fiery prayer” appears in Columba Stewart, Cassian the Monk, 114–30. The most important primary text linking tears with “fiery prayer” is Cassian, Conferences, 9.26–27. 45. Schlink, Repentance, 20. For a full account of Schlink’s notion of “intercessory repentance,” see George Faithful, Mothering the Fatherland: A Protestant Sisterhood Repents for the Holocaust (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014). 46. Ross, The Fountain and the Furnace, 204. A fuller account than can be given here of holy tears in medieval and modern Western Christianity appears in Adnès, “Larmes,” cols. 295–302. 47. After completing his analysis of the biblical text, Matti Myllykoski writes, “The actions of the woman must be seen as a sign of love and gratitude, not repentance” (“Tears of Repentance or Tears of Gratitude? P.Oxy. 4009, the Gospel of Peter and the Western Text of Luke 7:45–49,” New Testament Studies 55 [2009]: 380–89, citing 386). 48. Müller’s view on the eschatological significance of holy tears finds support in Adnès’s essay, which mentions tears that were shed “because of the delay of [God’s] glory”—pro dilatione gloriae (Adnès, “Larmes,” 297). 49. Here is Benke’s comment: “Der Kontrast zwischen dem, was der Mensch eigentlich verdient hätte und dem, was er tätsachlich von Gott empfängt—nämlich die Zuversicht der Vergebung—öffnet die Quelle der Tränen” (Gabe, 88).

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50. In the first two of his “Ninety-Five Theses,” Martin Luther wrote, “1. When our Lord and master Jesus Christ said, ‘Repent’ (Matt 4:17), he willed the entire life of the faithful to be one of repentance. 2. This word is misunderstood if it is taken to refer to the sacrament of penance that is received from time to time” (quoted in Andrew Purves, “A Confessing Faith: Assent and Penitence in the Reformation Traditions of Luther, Calvin, and Bucer,” in Boda and Smith, Repentance in Christian Theology, 254). Luther’s initiative in 1517 to rethink repentance/penance was soon diverted into a debate over indulgences and other topics. Later Protestant theologians conceptualized an ordo salutis (order of salvation) associating repentance and faith with the self ’s initial movement toward God. Torrance’s “initial repentance” never dropped out of Protestant theology and practice, yet little place remained for either “existential repentance” or for “vicarious repentance.” Neither the later Catholic penitential system nor the Protestant ordo salutis was comparable to ancient Christian penthos/conpunctio as a lifelong practice and experience. 51. Torrance, Repentance, 29–30. 52. John Dawson expounded his idea of intercessory or “identificational” repentance in Taking Our Cities for God (Lake Mary, FL: Creation, 1989), Healing America’s Wounds (Ventura, CA: Regal Books, 1994), and the website for the International Reconciliation Coalition, www.reconcile.org. 53. Ebersole, “Ritual Weeping,” 229 n. 47. On tears and weeping in the modern secular culture, see Sheila Page Bayne, Tears and Weeping: An Aspect of Emotional Climate Reflected in Seventeenth-Century French Literature (Tübingen and Paris: G. Narr and Jean-Michel Place, 1981); Fred Kaplan, Sacred Tears: Sentimentality in Victorian Literature (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987); Anne Vinent-Buffault, The History of Tears: Sensibility and Sentimentality in France (London: Macmillan, 1991); M. E. Lange, Telling Tears in the English Renaissance (Leiden: Brill, 1996); and Tom Lutz, Crying: The Natural and Cultural History of Tears (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999). 54. William Wordsworth, “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood,” lines 207–8. 55. See James Elkins, Pictures and Tears: A History of People Who Have Cried in Front of Paintings (New York: Routledge, 2001). 56. The “crocodile tears” of the notoriously wicked Adolf Hitler represent an interesting though rather extreme case: “At others, when he [Hitler] finds himself in difficult situations, the great dictator . . . breaks down and weeps like a child appealing for sympathy.” An observer wrote that “he complained of the ingratitude of the German people in the sobbing tones of a down-at-the-heel music-hall performer!” When criticized, he reacted with “wounded vanity,” exclaiming, “If the Germany people don’t want me!” By general report, Hitler was

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frequently depressed and threatened to commit suicide if he did not get his way. Cited from “The Nizkor Project: Hitler as His Associates Know Him,” www .nizkor.org/hweb/people/h/hitler-adolf/oss-papers/text/profile-index.html (accessed April 12, 2016). 57. Adnès writes, “Étant un langage, les larmes ont leur vérité et aussi leurs mensonges” (“Larmes,” 288). 58. Paul J. Griffiths, “Tears and Weeping: An Augustinian View,” Faith and Philosophy 28 (2011): 19–28, citing 19, 25. 59. Gregory of Nyssa, De beatitudine, PG 44:1228C, quoted in Hausherr, Penthos, 167. 60. Mark the Monk, On the Spiritual Law 12, ed. G. M. de Durand, Sources chrétiennes 445 (Paris: Cerf, 1999), 76, quoted in Kallistos Ware, “‘An Obscure Matter’: The Mystery of Tears in Orthodox Spirituality,” in Patton and Hawley, Holy Tears, 244. 61. Ware, “Orthodox Experience of Repentance,” 18. 62. Plattig writes, “Wir haben systematisch verlernt zu fühlen” (“Von Trost,” 194). 63. Benke notes the integrative function of tears: “Die Tränengabe verweist auf die Integrationsaufgabe des Glaubens” (Gabe, 6). 64. Sister Sylvia Mary, “St. Symeon,” 432. 65. Hildegard von Bingen, Scivias—Wisse die Wege Eine Schau von Gott und Mensch in Schöpfung und Zeit, trans. W. Storch (Freiburg, 1992) 80 f., quoted in Plattig, “Von Sehnsucht,” 101. 66. Leduc, “Penthos et Larmes,” 220.

C H A P T E R

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T H E T R A N S F O R M AT I V E RO L E O F E M OT I O N I N T H E M I D D L E AG E S Deliverance from Lukewarm Affections

ELIZABETH A. DREYER

The story of the affections in Christianity is rich, complex, and am­ biguous. The conviction that emotion is primarily an obstacle to the spiritual life has had many lives, housed in a variety of historical and cultural dwellings. Some Christians are conscious of this negative as­ sessment, countering with intentional engagement in spiritual practices, ethics, and mission that take the affections into account. Others remain unaware of how emotion has been marginalized and suppressed. Still others have interiorized a fear of emotion and defend its exclusion from doctrine and spiritual practice. Perhaps it is most accurate to describe Christian attitudes toward the affections (and related issues such as the body and sexuality) as ambiguous and filled with tension. It is puzzling that Christian tradition often failed to see all aspects of the created world as holy, blessed by creation and in­ carnation. How can any created reality be suspect, much less condemned? One explanation lies in a confused, narrow, and erroneous association of sin with feelings, bodies, and sexuality. 113

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On the other hand, we know that in its early centuries Christianity was influenced by dualist philosophies that pitted matter against spirit. Neoplatonism, Gnosticism, and Manichaeism viewed the emotions as dangerous energy that needed to be harnessed. Plato’s reasonable chari­ oteer whipping uncontrolled emotions into submission has had a long run in Western culture.1 These pessimistic views of the body and the af­ fections contributed to a gradual withdrawal from the radical conse­ quences of creation and incarnation: everything is holy. But Christianity’s neglect and harsh judgment of the affections is not the whole story. This volume documents many examples in which the af­ fections are prominent. Among them is the rich medieval mystical tra­ dition. The goal of this chapter is to approach medieval mystical texts through historical, spiritual, and theological lenses, conscious of how con­ temporary skepticism and discomfort regarding religious emotions can hinder our ability to appreciate the beauty of intense, intimate, spiritual encounters with God. In sublime, poetic descriptions of the heights of affective engagement with God and the world, medieval mystical texts give us a glimpse of a fuller, more passionate spiritual life.2 To what biblical sources did mystics turn to articulate their all­encompassing encounter with divine love? How did they embrace or reject emotion’s role in the spiritual journey? How did they see the relationship of the affections to reason and understand­ ing? What is understood by “mystical marriage”? In the end, we ask what aspects of this tradition we might bring forward and what should be left in the past. These spiritual/mystical texts are also deeply theological, even though the form of this theology is not of the ordered, academic, scholastic variety. The affective language, imagery, poetry, and metaphors invite us to reflect on how our ideas about the nature of God, redemption, the world, and the human person would change if we took emotion into con­ sideration. I begin with a brief description of the current scholarly conversation about the affections. This is followed by an exploration of some key themes related to the affections in Christian medieval mystical literature. Then, from an enormous range of texts, I examine two specific “mo­ ments” of affective piety in the European thirteenth century: the erotic spirituality of the beguine, Hadewijch of Brabant (ca. 1230–70), and the

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affective meditations on the Passion of Christ by Bonaventure of Bagno­ regio (1217–74), professor at the University of Paris and later General of the Franciscan Order.3

Contemporary Context

Fresh critical appropriations of the affective tradition are shaped by our present context, with its widely diverse understandings of emotion. Some people are relieved that we now express and discuss emotion openly with­ out embarrassment. Feeling has finally become an acknowledged and ac­ cepted dimension of human existence and study. Yet ideas of emotion as a private, often embarrassing, and dangerous part of life perdure. The image of Plato’s chariot and horses lives on. Others lament the commodi­ fication of the emotions, body, and sexuality. It is hard not to develop a jaded view of emotion, and even more difficult to nurture a sense of its beauty and dignity. In so many ways, our passions are no longer our own. Media manipulates our feelings, and our need to be entertained can deaden our affections.4 Another factor is the influence of psychology. We now view emotion overwhelmingly through a psychological lens, with great benefit to self­ understanding. On the other hand, Freud’s understanding of emotion and religion is couched in notably negative terms. He identified guilt as a link between religious ritual and neurotic obsession and saw fear as the catalyst for humanity’s engagement in religion, which he described as an illusion.5 The medieval mystical tradition allows us to examine the role of the affections in the Christian life prior to the development of psychol­ ogy. These texts can broaden the ways in which we name, understand, and engage in the life of feeling. Building on these intellectual insights, scholars have made the study of emotion a distinct, interdisciplinary field.6 History,7 neuroscience, an­ thropology, sociology, and philosophy explore the affections and their relationship to desire, the brain, the senses, and the body.8 Scholars employ a wide range of terms—feelings, eros, emotions, passions, senti­ ments, desire—with a bewildering array of meanings.9 Conversations be­ tween scholars of Christianity and other disciplines promise to enrich the field.

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Every era experiences, names, and values the affections in complex ways in response to particular historical conditions and movements.10 Barbara Rosenwein envisions a new narrative that “will recognize various emotional styles, emotional communities, emotional outlets, and emo­ tional restraints in every period, and it will consider how and why these have changed over time.”11 We reengage the tradition to become more aware of its depth and beauty and to discover “visions of possibility, for the expansion of consciousness, for the channels of hope.”12

The Culture of the Affections in the Middle Ages

The spiritual climate of the Middle Ages strikes us as emotionally intense in its emphasis on personal piety, devotion to relics, fierce asceticism, Eu­ charistic practice, pilgrimage, Crusades, and engagement with the super­ natural. The music and art of the period express affective power. In spite of prohibitions related to the emotions, mystics do not suppress or blunt their feelings. On the contrary, the reader is astonished by the range and intensity of terms: longing, passion, release, joy, delight, contentment, agony, loneliness, tenderness, deprivation, pain, arousal, despair, ecstasy, compassion. In the fourth mansions of the Interior Castle, the sixteenth­ century Spanish Carmelite, Teresa of Avila, notes, “The soul experiences deep feelings when it sees itself close to God.”13 And the fourteenth­ century English anchoress Julian of Norwich embraces human sensuality as a “city in which our Lord Jesus . . . is enclosed.”14 The affective language of the mystics takes shape according to indi­ vidual personality, and the social and cultural context in which each lives. The scientist and mystic Hildegard of Bingen occasionally refers to the spiritual senses and the “kiss” of the Song of Songs, but her passion is most visible in her prophetic pronouncements against ecclesial corruption and heresy. For Bernard of Clairvaux, the “kiss” of the Song of Songs be­ comes a pivotal metaphor for the spiritual life in a reformed Cistercian monastery. Housed in the tightly argued format of scholastic theology, Thomas Aquinas structures his Summa theologiae around the dynamic of desire and emotion. God’s desire flows out toward creation and human desire fuels its return.15 Catherine of Siena’s prayers exude emotional en­ ergy: “Christ love! Christ Love!”

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Recent scholarship on medieval Christianity examines the affections under various rubrics, such as desire, eros, friendship, the body, the sen­ sual beauty of nature, reason, ethics, spiritual marriage, the heart, asceti­ cism, and gender.16 Some scholars focus on a particular emotion, as in Rosenwein’s collected essays on anger.17 Historians generally trace the ori­ gins of medieval affective piety to Anselm of Canterbury and John of Fécamp, although, as I discuss below, there is evidence that women en­ gaged in affective piety even earlier. The tradition of affective devotion was carried forward by a wide range of figures, including Bernard of Clairvaux, Aelred of Rievaulx, Richard of St. Victor, Francis of Assisi, Mechthild of Magdeburg, Marguerite Porete, Hadewijch of Brabant, and Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, as well as by a text attributed to Bonaven­ ture, Meditations of the Life of Christ.18 In this section, I comment briefly on Bernard and the Meditations, offer a note on the role of women, and then provide a more detailed analysis of key texts by Hadewijch and Bonaventure. The name Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) has become synony­ mous with medieval affective spirituality. His Sermons on the Song of Songs have been the subject of prayer and meditation as well as scholarly analysis since the twelfth century. Bernard believed that the heights of the spiri­ tual life were theoretically open to everyone, but his immediate audience was a male monastic community. He warned that only the most mature were to meditate on the erotic text of the Song, since beginners might be prone to wrongly derive a carnal rather than a spiritual meaning. Bernard describes the centrality of God’s love (caritas) that elicits a human response (amor), fueled by the erotic drive of desire (desiderium).19 For Bernard, such love is characterized by a high level of freedom and detachment—loving God for God’s sake alone. In addition to being erotic, this love was wise, integrated with knowledge, powerful, mutual, and, in the end, fulfilled through ecstatic union. Bernard’s emphasis on human experience, and his challenge to trust how God was working in the individual person and in the community, speaks to our time. His commentary on the Song of Songs invites reflection, especially if we ex­ perience discomfort at the thought of the spiritual life as an erotic journey into the arms of a loving God. Bernard invites us to extend his thinking, to explore connections between the spiritual and the physical world that he would not likely have made as a twelfth­century Cistercian monk.

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Bernard’s contemporary, Hildegard of Bingen, noted for her vision­ ary, medical, and theological work, employs sensual and nature imagery, especially in her liturgical work, Symphonia. In a sequence for St. Rupert, patron of her monastery, Hildegard describes the saint’s virtues by appeal­ ing to all the senses. Jerusalem! Royal city, Walls of gold and purple banners, .......................... Blessed be your childhood that glimmers at dawn, praised be your vigor that burns in the sun. O Rupert! Pearl of the morning, diamond at noon, ever sparkling! Your body’s a chalice, its wine never drained in the ancient cave dance. In your soul the Spirit’s symphonies ring, you sing with the angels, join their carols, Christ your radiance pure your song. . . . you sighed after God, feared and embraced him whose bounty lured yours like rare perfume.20 Thirteenth­ and fourteenth­century authors enhanced this tradition of the spiritual senses to arouse the imagination and the affections in con­ templative prayer.

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The life of Christ became a major subject of this popular form of af­ fective meditation. Richard Southern notes four hallmarks: personal ex­ perience; appeal to individual conscience; Christ’s humanity; emotion.21 A famous example is the fourteenth­century Tuscan Meditations on the Life of Christ, attributed to pseudo­Bonaventure—a text that survives in over two hundred manuscripts.22 The Meditations invite the meditator to imagine herself in the concrete setting of each scene of Christ’s life. She is instructed to place herself in the scene, imagining the weather, the people, the conversations, and the smells, and to notice her responses. Often extra­biblical details are included in order to make Christ as vivid, real, and tangible as possible, arousing the emotion proper to each setting. She is to rejoice in the birth of Christ, sorrow at his harsh surroundings, and feel the compassion of Christ toward the poor. She is to feel Mary’s rejection at the feast of Cana, weep and bear the weight of the cross, and rejoice at the resurrection. From a narrative, biblical base, affective meditation gives rise to per­ formance and participation. Genuine emotions give rise to decisions to follow Christ and to live a life of virtue in service to others. The one pray­ ing draws close to the human (and the divine) Christ in an intimate bond of friendship and love. In contrast to accounts of the spiritual life that counsel moving beyond the human Christ to a pure, abstract experience of the Godhead, affective prayer refuses to abandon the human Christ at any stage. This form of affective prayer, seen as inferior to imageless prayer, was thought, erroneously, to be limited to the laity. In fact, it was practiced at all levels of monastic, clerical, and lay life. Women’s association with affective piety is complex. While scholars reject facile stereotypes, they acknowledge a certain cultural perception that women were more “emotional” than men. On the one hand, women were admired for their ability to “think with their hearts,” to be compas­ sionate and kind, to forgive because of love. The Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene were quintessential models. In rare cases, the medieval asso­ ciation of women with carnality was thought to give them greater ability to identify with the incarnate Christ. Ironically, in spite of the long association between women and emo­ tion, many of the positive contributions of women to affective piety have been neglected. Male monastics are not the sole originators of affective

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devotion. Scholars note that “affective participation in Christ’s suffering was practiced by women with exceptional fervor and frequency” before, during, and after the Franciscan movement.23 Sarah McNamer argues that The Meditations on the Life of Christ may have been a composite en­ deavor whose sources include Franciscan material but also an Italian work written by a Tuscan nun for other nuns. She suggests, therefore, that af­ fective meditation might well have originally been a woman’s genre.24 In addition, the demand for affective pious literature by wealthy, literate women served as a powerful catalyst for its creation. Educated aristocratic women were among the first to use prayer books centered on imaginative, emotional engagement with Christ.25 But more often, the link with emotion had punitive, long­term re­ percussions in the daily lives of women. Not only has it reflected nega­ tively on women; it has also suppressed the expression of emotion among men because of the fear of appearing “unmanly.” Ultimately, it impairs our appreciation of emotion itself. Because of this history, we need to lift up the historical assessment of women and emotion as a long overdue correction. Thus a hermeneutics of suspicion is in order in our research on emo­ tion. How do we retrieve the Christian affective tradition in creative, critical ways without cooperating unconsciously in the oppressive aspects of this heritage? The rich legacy of women and men praying with their bodies and feelings as well as with their minds deserves an open, unbiased hearing. We turn now to two “moments” in the history of medieval affec­ tive devotion, beginning with Hadewijch of Brabant.

Sacred Eros and Mystical Marriage: Hadewijch of Brabant

Hadewijch of Brabant provides a paradigmatic example of mystical erotic expression in her description of her love affair with God/Love.26 We know little about her life, but her texts suggest that she was an educated mem­ ber of the upper class. She likely belonged to a lay movement in northern Europe whose members were known as beguines.27 Beguines lived an in­ tentional religious life that included a daily prayer regimen and commu­ nity engagement.28 They often earned their own living, teaching, nursing,

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or weaving. They lived in their own homes, often adjacent to each other and near a church, or in apartments in structures called beguinages. The largest of these could accommodate up to two thousand women. They elected a leader, or magistra, from among their ranks and took vows for a year, after which they were free to leave (often to marry or join an en­ closed convent). Hadewijch’s work reveals a familiarity with scripture, courtly love poetry, the fathers of the church, rhetoric, numerology, as­ tronomy, music, and verse. Written approximately between 1220 and 1240, her corpus includes four genres: poems in stanzas, poems in cou­ plets, visions, and letters. Hadewijch is associated with bridal mysticism—minnemystiek (minne is the Flemish word for “love”) and brautmystik. Erotic love is at the heart of her broad description of the mystical path: the all­encompassing power of love; lament at love’s distance; longing for love; the choice to surrender to love; love as the final fulfillment of the spiritual life; love as a dimen­ sion of God; love that brings pain and suffering; love that is judged to be ultimately genuine in the practice of virtue. The love poetry of the troubadours and trouvères, and the medieval popularity of the Song of Songs, provided the context for interest in eros. The highly sexual, often negative, associations attached to the term “erotic” in our culture make it difficult to appreciate erotic language when used to express deep spiritual connection with God. On the other hand, our fascination with the erotic translates into a plethora of schol­ arly books that examine medieval affection from the perspective of eros. This scholarship not only helps us understand the richness and variety of the ways eros functioned in medieval mystical texts but also invites re­ flection on the erotic aspects of contemporary spiritual life. It is one piece of the challenge to take account of erotic love in Christian theology and spirituality.29 The topic of eros (and its sister concepts agape and philia) received new impetus (and, I would add, an intensification of oppositional think­ ing) with the publication of Anders Nygren’s Eros and Agape.30 Nygren viewed selfless, agapic love, based on the pure love of God and exempli­ fied perfectly in Jesus Christ, as the only legitimate Christian love. He defined erotic love as an inferior love, an expression of instrumental and self­serving desire.

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In 1960, C. S. Lewis wrote The Four Loves, an enormously popular treatment of love, distinguishing four types: affection, friendship, erotic love, and love of God. While Lewis redeems the negative valence given to eros by Nygren, he continues to view eros in narrow, instrumental terms, distinct from and preparatory to the love of charity.31 The articulation of a more holistic understanding of love remains a work in progress. The goal is to redeem eros as a positive dimension of an all­encompassing human love that genuinely mirrors divine love in all its fullness. Thanks to the Song of Songs, Jews and Christians have called upon the human experience of eros to speak about the intense heights of en­ counter with God. Universal themes of love are inherited, enhanced, and passed on in the Song: the loss of love; seeking love; finding love; being faint with love; the beauty of the body; being wounded by love; kissing and embracing; love reflected in nature; inebriation with love. Select verses from the Song of Songs are woven into the fabric of Western litera­ ture: “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtle­dove is heard in our land” (2:10–12); “My beloved is mine and I am his; he pastures his flock among the lilies” (2:16); “I will seek him whom my soul loves. I sought him, but found him not” (3:2); “Set me as a seal upon your heart / as a seal upon your arm / for love is strong as death/passion fierce as the grave / Its flashes are flames of fire / a raging flame” (8:6). Sacred eros is a mutual reaching out by lover and beloved. Many mystics were drawn to the intensity of feeling expressed in the Song of Songs, but it is important to note that they do not see the affec­ tions as isolated from the broader dynamic of the whole person, includ­ ing the body, the senses, and the intellect. Nor are their emotions private. Mystics’ lives are enmeshed in various types of religious communities and in the wider bodies of church and society. Feelings do not function as a comforting, sentimental “blanket.” They lead to the challenging, difficult work involved in loving the neighbor. It is the kind of love in action, de­ scribed by Dorothy Day (citing The Brothers Karamazov) as “a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams.”32 The authenticity of af­ fection is judged ultimately by one thing: love of neighbor. Concrete charitable acts, in good times and bad, are the consequence of genuine faithfulness to a love affair with God.

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Hadewijch also embraces and transforms the sensibilities of the courtly love tradition in which the marriage metaphor recedes in favor of an erotic paean of praise and struggle with the human/divine lover. Hadewijch dramatically emphasizes, as her courtly partner, the human Christ. One of her greatest contributions to the affective tradition of prayer is her refusal to diminish the earthly aspects of Christ. She expe­ riences the fleshly, human Jesus—often in the context of the Eucharist. She consumes the body of Christ and becomes one with him in a pro­ found, intense union. He [Beloved] came in the form . . . of a Man . . . looking like a Human Being and a Man, wonderful and beautiful, and with glori­ ous face, he came to me as humbly as anyone who wholly belongs to another. . . . [H]e came himself to me, took me entirely in his arms, and pressed me to him; and all my members felt his in full felicity, in accordance with the desire of my heart and my humanity. (Vision 7, 281) In other passages, Hadewijch speaks of Love, a female figure with di­ vine overtones. Here she assumes the male persona of the courtly knight. Such gender fluidity raises provocative questions for both women and men who wrote about their experiences with a divine lover. While Hadewijch is renowned for her erotic spirituality, her texts that caution against the dangers of false emotion and express praise for reason are less well known. We see her even­handedness in the following passage. Be satisfied with nothing less than Love. Give reason its time, and always observe where you heed it too little and where enough. And do not let yourself be stopped by any pleasure through which your reason may be the loser. What I mean by “your reason” is that you must keep your insight ever vigilant in the use of discernment. Never must any difficulty hinder you from serving people, be they insig­ nificant or important, sick or healthy. (Letter 24, 103) She distinguishes between holy and selfish love. And there is too much childishness in love, When one wants many particular things,

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And prefers to be in delight. This is a failure in loftiness of life. Not for feeling’s sake must we learn to serve, But only to love with love in Love. (Poems in Couplets, 10, 335) The clear outcome of this love affair is mission and service to the neighbor. The passage that best describes Hadewijch’s understanding of love and reason is found in Letter 18. She describes love and reason as the two “eyes” of charity. The power of sight that is created as natural to the soul is charity. This power of sight has two eyes, love and reason. Reason cannot see God except in what he is not; love rests not except in what he is. Reason has its secure paths, by which it proceeds. Love experiences failure, but failure advances it more than reason. Reason advances toward what God is, by means of what God is not. Love sets aside what God is not and rejoices that it fails in what God is. Reason has more satisfaction than love, but love has more sweetness of bliss than reason. These two, however, are of great mutual help one to the other. For reason instructs love, and love enlightens reason. When reason abandons itself to love’s wish, and love consents to be forced and held within the bounds of reason, they can accomplish a very great work. This no one can learn except by experience. For wisdom does not interfere here or try to penetrate this wonderful and fath­ omless longing, which is hidden from all things; that is only for the fruition of love. (Letter 18, 86–87) Hadewijch is not only aware of the pitfalls of emotion—common to virtually all medieval authors—but she speaks with equal conviction of the dangers of reason. The loving soul wants Love wholly, without delay; It wishes at all hours to delight in sweetness, In opulence according to its desire. Reason commands it to wait until it is prepared; But liberty wishes to lead it instantly

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Where it will become one with the Beloved. Storms of this kind Impart a calm resignation. (Poems in Stanzas, 167; see also Letter 4, 53–55) When the soul is in the throes of passionate encounter, reason can short­ circuit the erotic connection. But in the end, Hadewijch admits that both passion and reason have indispensable roles in the spiritual life. Hadewijch’s attention to reason as well as emotion is also visible in her theological treatment of the Holy Spirit. The deeply erotic Christo­ logical emphasis of Hadewijch’s texts and her more terse theological pre­ sentation of the Spirit need to be situated in the larger context of her trinitarian theology. The intense unity of her love affair with Love partici­ pates in the unity within the Trinity. The erotic fruition of which she speaks is mutual—between the soul and the Trinity itself. In the delight of emotional attraction, souls forget the great debt “that Love demands of Love.” “I mean the demand that the Father demands in eternal fruition from the Unity of the Son and the Holy Spirit,” she continues, “and the debt that the Son and the Holy Spirit demand from the Father in the fruition of the Holy Trinity” (Letter 30, 116–17). It is in this trinitarian context that we get a glimpse into Hadewijch’s understanding of the role of the Holy Spirit in relation to the affections. The Holy Spirit appears infrequently in her texts. Most often her lan­ guage about the Spirit reflects traditional theological positions. But on occasion, she employs affective imagery related to Spirit. One of her fa­ vorite metaphors for God is the Dionysian divine “outpouring”; the Fa­ ther pours out gifts, works, and justice; the Son pours out revelations of burning affection in doctrine and tokens of love; the Spirit pours out ra­ diance, light, goodwill, and the “jubilation of sublime, sweet surrender on account of the fruition of Love” (Letter 22, 100). Hadewijch’s Spirit vocabulary also includes fire, glory, taste, and subtlety (Letter 28, 110–11). Theologically, Hadewijch associates the Spirit with love and will, fol­ lowing the traditional Augustinian trinitarian analogy of memory, under­ standing, and will. In a vision on the feast of Pentecost, she received the Holy Spirit in a way that allowed her to understand “all the will of Love in all, and all the modes of this will” (Vision 2, 271). She associates Spirit

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with goodness and with the bond of love between the first two persons (Letter 30, 117). The “proper Person” of the Holy Spirit is generous and zealous (Letter 17, 82), revealing the eternal divine fruition as a “radiant, overflowing flood,” echoing Romans 5.5 (Letter 22, 96). In a vision on Easter Sunday, after embracing her in her interior senses, God brings her before the “Countenance of the Holy Spirit, who possesses the Father and Son in one Essence.” Once again, she receives understanding through the “total Being of that Countenance,” which says to her: “See and receive my Spirit!” (Vision 3, 272). For all its complexity, Hadewijch’s spirituality is clearly an affective spirituality of extreme emotion. “Alas, Love! You have long driven me to extremity; / But in this very extremity to which you have driven me, / I will keep vigil, Love, in service of your love” (Poems in Stanzas, 254). The presence of Minne/ Love is encompassing, giving all and demanding all in the spiritual encounter. Abyss reaches out to abyss. Minne exclaims, “I am the one who has embraced you. This is I! I am the all! I give the all” (Letter 30, 119). Love is power; it holds together the tension of opposites; it leads to the madness of love; it demands action and surrender, causes pain and joy. Eros also demands perseverance and fidelity: “No matter how Love has disappointed me / I must yet follow her / For she has utterly engulfed / My soul, from the depths of my heart. / I will follow her totally” (Poems in Stanzas, 215). Such singleness of purpose in the midst of confusion, depression, hopelessness, anger, and resentment elicits our admiration. She imagines herself as a knight in armor. God’s love pummels her; the arrows bouncing off her shield are so numerous that there is no room for even one more gash (Poems in Stanzas, 3, 135).33 But “the knight who is humble will not be concerned about his gashes if he looks at the wounds of his holy Lord” (Letter 4, 53). Hadewijch seems neither timid nor self­conscious about the affective wildness of her love affair with God. It is agonizing and glorious beyond what she can imagine. The intensity of her emotional exertion, the stress and pain of her choice to become a lover of God, strains our credulity in its strangeness and power. Yet an “all­or­nothing” life draws us in. What is it like to be so focused, so utterly committed to a value that one is will­ ing to sacrifice all for it? And in the end, her final word on mystical union

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is to follow Christ in the passionate cultivation of virtue and service to the neighbor. He who wishes to become Love performs excellent works, For nothing can make him give way; .............................. Whether he serves the sick or the well, The blind, the crippled or the wounded— He will accept this as his debt to Love. To serve the stranger, to give to the poor, To comfort the sorrowful as best he can, To live in the faith service of God’s friends. (Poems in Stanzas, 148) The tone of Hadewijch’s graphic account of her stormy abandonment to Love in service to the neighbor could not contrast more dramatically with that of Bonaventure’s The Soul’s Journey into God. But these authors find common ground in their commitment to the necessity of intense, affec­ tive engagement with the crucified Christ.

The Affections and the Cross: Bonaventure of Bagnoregio

A second “moment” in the history of medieval affective meditation fo­ cuses on the cross.34 From the eleventh century to the Reformation im­ ages that graphically depicted the suffering, bleeding body of Christ were prominent.35 The realism of these images invited identification with, and compassion for, Christ. Models of compassion include the Virgin Mary and Mary Magadalene, who stood with him at the cross. Bonaventure was among the earliest to write about Mary’s mental anguish at Christ’s suf­ fering (The Tree of Life, II.28–32).36 A name that is synonymous with affective piety and devotion to the humanity of Christ is Bonaventure of Bagnoregio (1217–74).37 Known, after Francis of Assisi, as the second founder of the Franciscan Order, Bonaventure was first a professor at the University of Paris and later Mas­ ter General of the Order. Because of this experience, his theological and

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spiritual texts integrate head and heart in exemplary ways.38 He grounds his vision of the spiritual journey in the scriptures, philosophy, and the deeply felt affection of love of God in Christ.39 A true Franciscan, Bona­ venture gives pride of place to the events of Christ’s life, especially the cross.40 Key sources for Bonaventure’s affective spirituality are The Mystical Vine, The Tree of Life, The Life of Francis, The Triple Way, On the Perfection of Life for Sisters, and his masterpiece, The Soul’s Journey into God. For Bonaventure, the most exalted affection is charity, which arises out of the fruits of the Spirit. When ordered, the affections empower the person to love everything that has being. Part of the journey that orients the affections toward God involves the heights of affective engagement. In the Prologue to The Tree of Life, Bonaventure speaks of the “intimate and lively experience” of the feeling of being nailed to the cross with Christ. Contemplation of the “labors, the suffering, and the love of Jesus crucified” should be done “with vivid representation, penetrating intelli­ gence, and loving will” (The Tree of Life, Prologue.1). It is understandable that meditation on the cross would produce feel­ ings of sadness, anguish, and despair.41 But Bonaventure also sees it as an opportunity for a deeper knowledge of Christ’s love. In The Mystical Vine, he offers this advice to the meditator: Look upon the face of your anointed . . . and let your tearful eyes behold his torments; lift up your grieving hearts to see the manifold afflictions he found while he was seeking you. Open your eyes wide upon the face of your anointed; listen with eager ears to any word he may speak while in such pain. And whatever you hear, store as a most precious treasure in the secret vault of your heart. (VI.3) Since Christ’s suffering was above all a sign of God’s unparalleled love for the world, this moment also becomes an experience of intense, erotic love of the Beloved. The point of meditating on the cross is to arouse feelings of compassion, born of an identification with Christ’s agony on the cross. It is also the moment in which all human affections are transformed and made new. Bonaventure even resorts to a guilt­inducing tactic to persuade his readers to engage in affective meditation on the cross. Note the range of

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emotions: “O human heart, / you are harder than any hardness of rocks / if at the recollection of such great expiation / you are not struck with ter­ ror, / nor moved with compassion / or shattered with compunction / nor softened with devoted love” (The Mystical Vine, II.29). In a sermon on St. Francis, Bonaventure asks if listeners desire to imprint Christ crucified on their hearts: “How is it that we, wretched as we are, have such cold hearts that we are not prepared to endure anything for our Lord’s sake? Our hearts neither burn nor glow with love. . . . Do you long to be trans­ formed into him to the point where your heart is aflame with love?”42 In a markedly different key in The Mystical Vine, Bonaventure asso­ ciates Christ’s wounds on the cross with the wound of love from the Song of Songs (4:9). For one who ardently loves is wounded by love. How could Christ better show us this ardor than by permitting not only his body but his very heart to be pierced with a lance? . . . Who indeed, would let his heart be wounded for the sake of one beloved if he had not first received from her the wound of love? . . . Who could fail to return the love of such a Lover? (III.5–6) Later in the text, Bonaventure intensifies the erotic tone of true encoun­ ter with the cross. For he was not lifted up on the cross to show himself less accessible to those who seek him, but in very truth to make himself more ac­ cessible to all. And as you approach this paradise with trusting heart, feel the love of the crucified expressed by the open arms, feel the embrace of him who offers himself to you and calls you and who, wondrously combining misery with mercy, exclaims; “Turn, turn, O Sulamite, turn, turn, that we may look at you [Song of Songs 7:1].” (XXIV.1) This passage reveals a key aspect of Bonaventure’s God as one who gra­ ciously and humbly descends to creation. Christ’s open arms on the cross communicate the intense desire on God’s part to embrace every­ one and everything. Writing about the spiritual life to a group of sisters,

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Bonaventure names the ecstatic goal of this spiritual journey: “your heart will be delighted at the sight of your Beloved. . . . You will rush into His embrace, will kiss Him with such intimate fervor that you will be com­ pletely carried away, wholly enraptured in heaven, fully transformed to Christ” (On the Perfection of Life for Sisters, V.5). I want to focus the remainder of this discussion on Bonaventure’s The Soul’s Journey into God. Bonaventure echoes Augustine and the Victorines in his description of the stages of the spiritual journey. The road begins in creation that reveals God’s beauty and generosity (chaps. 1 and 2); it then proceeds within to human interiority, where we discover the image of God in human hearts (chaps. 3 and 4); the third segment moves up­ ward to the contemplation of God’s being and goodness (chaps. 5 and 6). Bonaventure describes the final goal as a mystical death on the cross (chap. 7), and it is this moment that interests me. In this final chapter, Bonaventure imagines the soul in a swoon of love—the soul lying on Christ’s breast on the cross as Christ gives up his spirit. The Spirit does not have the lead role in this passage, but Bonaven­ ture’s language clearly alludes to Spirit symbols: gift, fire, anointing, in­ tense feeling.43 In his Life of Francis, Bonaventure described Francis as “a glowing coal . . . totally absorbed in the flame of divine love” (9.1). Fran­ cis is a mirror, reflecting divine love as an unquenchable fire that con­ sumed his soul. As with Hadewijch, for Bonaventure the Trinity has been a part of the entire journey: the Father creates; the Son is the way, the door, the lad­ der; the Spirit inflames the very marrow of our bones with fire. Through prayer, the fire of the Holy Spirit enkindles desire, the force that makes it possible to undertake the journey and follow it to its mystical conclu­ sion. In the crucified Christ, the entire Trinity, Father, Son, and Spirit, is manifested as the self­diffusive love of God. Bonaventure writes in The Soliloquium: “On the cross the whole Trinity cries out to you” (I.38). At the moment of spiritual union, the soul passes beyond thought and reason. Understanding is left behind; the Spirit’s prayer groans within (Rom. 8.26). Bonaventure writes, ask for “grace, not instruction[,] . . . the Spouse not the teacher, God not man, darkness not clarity, not light but the fire that totally inflames and carries us into God by ecstatic anointing and burning affections” (Soul’s Journey VII.6).

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In this passing over, if it is to be perfect, all intellectual activities must be left behind and the height of our affection must be totally transferred and transformed into God. This, however, is mystical and most secret, which no one knows except him who receives it [Apoc. 2.17], no one receives except him who desires it, and no one desires it except him who is inflamed in his very marrow by the fire of the Holy Spirit Whom Christ sent into the world [Luke 12.49]. And therefore the Apostle says that This mystical wisdom is revealed by the Holy Spirit [1 Cor. 2.10–11]. (Soul’s Journey, VII.4, 5) This soaring, lyrical language points to Bonaventure’s Christology. Christ, the exemplar of the Father, becomes the bridge that makes mutual knowl­ edge of God and creation possible. The cross is a gesture of love by which God invites each person into the inner recesses of trinitarian life (perichoresis), marked not only by knowledge and understanding, but by the pas­ sion of an all­consuming love affair. The phrase, “it is enough for us,” shocks the reader in its understatement. The invitation of this journey to be one with God baffles the imagination. Incarnation. Deification. Can it be so? But the text contains layers of meaning. “It is enough” can also mean that nothing else comes even close to our becoming who we are meant to be in God’s eyes. This fire is God and his furnace is in Jerusalem [Isa. 31.98] and Christ enkindles it in the heat of his burning passion, which only he truly perceives who says: “My soul chooses hanging and my bones death” [Job 7:15]

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............................................... Let us, then, die and enter into the darkness; let us impose silence upon our cares, our desires and our imaginings. With Christ crucified let us pass out of this world to the Father [John 13:1] so that when the Father is shown to us, we may say with Philip: “It is enough for us” [John 14:8; 7:6]. (Soul’s Journey, VII.6) Bonaventure’s description of the Trinity at the cross is a paradigmatic example of medieval texts that give a central role to the heart. Scholars call attention to his imagery, his inclusion of the senses, the urgent nature of his plea to seek union with God, his attraction to terms like “unction” and “fervor,” and his ability to communicate the mystery of the spiritual path. Rarely is there direct reference to “emotion.” Yet Bonaventure’s language and imagery exude deep feeling in his portrait of a divine community of love present to each other and the world in the midst of suffering at the cross. Taking time to meditate on, and absorb, the message of this text moves us beyond knowledge and analysis to a “felt sense” of the realities underlying the text. The language of emotion draws us in, helps us feel the feelings and participate in the sacred drama. It can transform our af­ fections and purify our desires so that we turn to the world and each other with compassion, with hearts and minds ablaze with creativity and love. * * * In its “fleshy imaginings,” the medieval mystical tradition is a key resource for a critical, creative appropriation of the affections in the Christian life.44 In spite of a dualistic, Neoplatonic inheritance, these authors invite us to a holistic, passionate relationship with God and the world. They offer a model human response in their willingness to risk intimate en­ counter. It is but one facet of the tradition, but it offers a spiritual path that lures us to engagement and provokes our curiosity. A contemplative reading of the Song of Songs is one place to begin. Contemporary readers are right to be suspicious of spiritualities that seek inordinate suffering, but even more troubling are spiritualities that

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seek only comfort and safety.45 The mystics force us to ask to what ex­ tent we domesticate this loving but wild and dangerous God. Surely a re­ ligion with a crucified body at its heart embraces risk and intense pain, joy and love. These texts alert us to strains of mediocrity and lukewarmness that creep into the spirituality of much conventional, cultural Christianity (Rev. 3.16). In the Interior Castle, Teresa of Avila laments the inertia and timidity of those who settle for the comfortable rooms of the third man­ sions, unwilling to enter the higher reaches of the spiritual life to which the Bridegroom beckons. In every age, church leaders and scholars have the responsibility to imagine spiritual paths that nurture intense emotion and invite the faithful to creative practices and contemplative methods that lead to service with the poor. The mystics are also teachers of awe and wonder. In spite of illness, suspicion, and internal and external challenge, they retain their ability to be surprised, indeed, to be amazed, at the love that God has for them and for all of creation. They seem hardly able to believe the depths of both the pain and the joy of following Christ. They are what I call “one­ trackers”; that is, they give themselves wholeheartedly to the enterprise of life­giving love. Terms like “singleness of purpose” and “purity of heart” are traditional ways to express this attitude of intense commitment and engagement. Medieval mystics also teach us to keep intellect and affect linked. This wisdom has been alive and well in Eastern traditions for centuries, and is now confirmed by science as well. Still, it is easy to allow one di­ mension to flourish at the expense of the other. In American culture, we tend toward extremes—privileging the mind at the expense of feeling, or indulging feeling in hedonism and anti­intellectualism. Hadewijch of Brabant offers one way to keep them together in mutual enrichment and correction. Reading these texts, we find ourselves jolted awake. It is impossible to enter into this world and remain indifferent. We either reject this way or allow ourselves to be drawn in. Either response invites reflection on how the affections function in our spiritual lives. Medieval mystical texts are gold mines of linguistic and metaphorical creativity.46 We are brought up short by the sometimes startling language and imagery. Julian finds

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God in the lowliest of bodily functions.47 The creative use of paradox is a hallmark of much of this material. Hadewijch’s last of seven names for Love is hell (Poems in Couplets, 16). The very oddness of some of their thoughts and behaviors provokes us. Contemporary culture bombards us with sexual language and imagery that seems devoid of the holy. Medieval affective traditions can awaken us to the sacrality of all reality, including feelings, bodies, and sexuality. As we read these texts, many of us find that our own feelings begin slowly to come to life. The mystics challenge the dull, flat, lukewarm di­ mensions of existence, not by berating or condemning us, but simply by being their own spontaneous, real, committed selves. The life of their feelings is contagious. One cannot feast on a steady diet of their words and images and remain indifferent to the joy and pathos of existence. Gradually, our own ability to laugh, to weep, to dance and sing, to im­ portune, and to celebrate is rejuvenated. Hearts of stone turn to hearts of flesh and deadness is transformed into life. Notes 1. Plato, Phaedrus 246a–254e. 2. This chapter focuses on textual material, but texts are but one aspect of the relevant data. Studies of the expression of emotion in art, music, liturgy, and everyday life are important and necessary complements to textual studies. See Émile Mâle, Religious Art in France, the Twelfth Century: A Study of the Origins of Medieval Iconography (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978); Émile Mâle, Religious Art in France, the Thirteenth Century: A Study of Medieval Iconography and Its Sources (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984); Karl Frederick Morrison, History as a Visual Art in the Twelfth-Century Renaissance (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990); David Morgan, The Embodied Eye: Religious and Visual Culture and the Social Life of Feeling (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012); David Morgan, The Sacred Gaze: Religious Visual Culture in Theory and Practice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005); Don Saliers, “Sound Spirituality: On the Formative Expressive Power of Music for Christian Spirituality,” Christian Spirituality Bulletin 8, no. 1 (Spring–Summer 2000): 1–5. For a discography of the Song of Songs, see www.sas.upenn .edu/~jtreat/song/. 3. A few authors link the themes of the cross and erotic love. The thirteenth­ century text The Wooing of Our Lord, written for anchoresses living in the bor­

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derlands between England and Wales, has two parts: one addresses the theme of mystical marriage; the other is a meditation on the Passion of Christ. Scholars have been confounded by the seeming lack of unity in this work, but Sarah Mc­ Namer explains ways in which themes of erotic love and the cross may not have seemed as disparate to medieval Christians as they do to us. Sarah McNamer, Affective Meditation and the Invention of Medieval Compassion (Philadelphia: Uni­ versity of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), 25–27. A second example is found in the work of the fourteenth­century Dominican tertiary Catherine of Siena, who layers the symbol of the cross with images of the bed of the Song of Songs and the Eucharistic table. She writes, “Let sighs be our food, and tears our drink at the table of the cross.” Catherine of Siena, The Letters of St. Catherine of Siena, vol. 2, ed. Suzanne Noffke, Medieval & Renaissance Texts and Studies 203 (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2001), 533, 538, 549, 655–56, 696. See also Elizabeth A. Dreyer, Holy Power, Holy Presence: Rediscovering Medieval Metaphors for the Holy Spirit (New York: Paulist Press, 2005), 203–11. 4. In a review of D. T. Max’s biography of the novelist David Foster Wal­ lace, Michiko Kakutani uses the term “secondhand desire” to describe the love gone awry that Wallace decries. In his novel Infinite Jest, Wallace cautions that we do not choose carefully enough what to love (Boston: Little, Brown, 1996). Michiko Kakutani, “Searching through the Ashes of an Exploded Life,” New York Times, August 23, 2012, C1–2, review of D. T. Max, Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story (New York: Viking Adult, 2012). See also Arlie Russell Hochschild, The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983). 5. See Robert Fuller, “Spirituality in the Flesh: The Role of Discreet Emo­ tions in Religious Life,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 75, no. 1 (March 2007): 25–51. 6. For an overview of recent scholarship on the emotions, see Barbara H. Rosenwein, Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006), 1–26; Robert C. Solomon, “Getting Angry: The James­ ian Theory of Emotion in Anthropology,” in Culture Theory: Essays in Mind, Self, and Emotion, ed. R. Shweder and R. LeVine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 238–54. 7. In her article on emotions, Barbara H. Rosenwein traces the history of the thin coverage of emotions by historians, in spite of calls to the contrary that go back at least to 1941, when Lucien Febvre wrote “La sensibilité et l’histoire: Comment reconstituer la vie affective d’aurefois?,” in Annales d’histoire social 3 (January–June 1941): 5–20. Barbara H. Rosenwein, “Worrying about Emotions in History,” American Historical Review 107, no. 3 ( June 1, 2002): 821–845.

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8. Contemporary studies on the emotions are vast. I offer a brief selection of titles: Daniel M. Gross, The Secret History of Emotion: From Aristotle’s Rhetoric to Modern Brain Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006); John Cor­ rigan, ed., Religion and Emotion: Approaches and Interpretations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); John Corrigan, Eric Crump, and John Kloos, Emotions and Religion: A Critical Assessment and Annotated Bibliography (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000); Agneta H. Fischer, ed., Gender and Emotion: Social Psychological Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Anto­ nio Damasio, The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1999); Thomas H. Bestul, Texts of the Passion: Latin Devotional Literature and Medieval Society (Philadelphia: Univer­ sity of Pennsylvania Press, 1996); Anne Derbes, Picturing the Passion in Late Medieval Italy: Narrative Painting, Franciscan Ideologies, and the Levant (Cam­ bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Paul Ekman and Richard J. David­ son, eds., The Nature of Emotion: Fundamental Questions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994); Lila Abu­Lughod and Catherine Lutz, eds., Language and the Politics of Emotion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Ewert Cousins, “The Humanity of Christ and the Passion of Christ,” in Christian Spirituality: High Middle Ages and Reformation, ed. Jill Raitt, Bernard McGinn, and John Meyendorff (New York: Crossroad, 1987), 375–91; Ronald De Sousa, The Rationality of Emotion (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987); and J. A. W. Bennett, Poetry of the Passion: Studies in Twelve Centuries of English Verse (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982). 9. The term “emotion” comes from the Latin, movēre (move, stir, shake, disturb, eject, trouble, torment). It was first used to describe feeling in the nine­ teenth century. Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., s.v. “emotion.” For the pur­ poses of this chapter, I will use the terms affections, heart, passions, feelings, and emotions interchangeably. 10. For a concise summary of some of these developments, see Fuller, “Spirituality in the Flesh,” 25–51. 11. Rosenwein, “Worrying about Emotions in History,” 845. 12. Sara Matiland, Women Fly When Men Aren’t Watching (New York: Ran­ dom House, 1993), 85. 13. Teresa of Avila, Interior Castle IV.3.12 (New York: Paulist Press, 1979), 78. 14. Julian of Norwich, Showings (New York: Paulist Press, 1978), 289. 15. See Nicholas E. Lombardo, The Logic of Desire: Aquinas on Emotion (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2011). 16. The acknowledged pioneer in the study of emotion, women, and the body in the Middle Ages is Caroline Walker Bynum: The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity: 200–1336 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995);

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Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion (New York: Zone Books, 1991); Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987); Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berke­ ley: University of California Press, 1982). See also Bernard McGinn, “Love, Knowledge and the Unio Mystica in the Western Christian Tradition,” in Mystical Union and Monotheistic Faith: An Ecumenical Dialogue, ed. Bernard McGinn and Moshe Edel (New York: Macmillan, 1989), 59–86; “The Language of Love in Christian and Jewish Mysticism,” in Mysticism and Language, ed. Steven T. Katz (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 202–35. See also Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity, Lectures on the History of Religion, n.s., no. 13 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988); Jean Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture, trans. Catharine Misrahi, 2nd ed. (New York: Fordham University Press, 1974); Philip Sheldrake, Befriending Our Desires (London: Dar­ ton, Longman & Todd, 1994); Dyan Elliott, Spiritual Marriage: Sexual Abstinence in Medieval Wedlock (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993); Dyan Elliott, The Bride of Christ Goes to Hell: Metaphor and Embodiment in the Lives of Pious Women, 200–1500 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012); McNamer, Affective Meditation and the Invention of Medieval Compassion. 17. Barbara H. Rosenwein, ed., Anger’s Past: The Social Uses of an Emotion in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998). 18. Mary Stallings­Taney, ed., Meditationes vitae Christi, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Medievalis (Turnhout: Brepols, 1997), 153. For a visual of this text, see www.metmuseum.org/toah/works­of­art/33.17. McNamer notes the widespread attribution of affective spirituality to the Franciscans, in Affective Meditation and the Invention of Medieval Compassion, 237 nn. 6 and 7; 239 n. 17; see also 15, 17, 58–85. McNamer cites Rachel Fulton, who argues that “wide­ spread apocalyptic disappointment” after 1033, when Christ was to return in judgment, precipitated a new emotional attitude toward the Passion. Rachel Ful­ ton, From Judgment to Passion: Devotion to Christ and the Virgin Mary, 800–1200 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 59. 19. Bernard McGinn, The Growth of Mysticism, vol. 2: The Presence of God: A History of Christian Mysticism (New York: Crossroad, 1994), 193. 20. Hildegard of Bingen, “Sequence for Saint Rupert,” in Symphonia, trans. Barbara Newman, 2nd ed. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998), 193–94. See also Elizabeth A. Dreyer, Passionate Spirituality: Hildegard of Bingen and Hadewijch of Brabant (New York: Paulist Press, 2005), 73–101. 21. Richard Southern, The Making of the Middle Ages (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1953), 228.

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22. Michelle Karnes, Imagination, Meditation, and Cognition in the Middle Ages (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 9. The English transla­ tion is Meditations on the Life of Christ, trans. Isa Ragusa and Rosalie B. Green (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1961). For an account of the growth of this genre, see Ewert Cousins, “The Humanity and the Passion of Christ,” in Christian Spirituality: High Middle Ages and Reformation, ed. Jill Raitt (New York: Crossroad, 1987), 375–91. Other notable texts in this genre include James of Milan’s Stimulus amoris and Ludolph of Saxony’s Vita Christi. 23. McNamer, Affective Meditation and the Invention of Medieval Compassion, 55. Examples are too numerous to cite, but women such as Marie d’Oignies, Margery Kempe, and Teresa of Avila come to mind—swooning and weeping at the thought of Christ’s suffering or during experiences of mystical union. As a young girl, Julian of Norwich prayed that she might be able to share in Christ’s suffering. Stories of mystical betrothal and marriage are prominent from Kather­ ine of Alexandria to Catherine of Siena. 24. Ibid., 18. 25. Bernard McGinn describes the thirteenth century as “the great age of women’s theology.” The Growth of Mysticism, 193. Recent anthologies and stud­ ies of texts authored by women include Elizabeth A. Clark, trans., Women in the Early Church (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1990); Elizabeth Alvida Petroff, Medieval Women’s Visionary Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986); Peter Dronke, Women Writers of the Middle Ages: A Critical Study of Texts from Perpetua (d. 203) to Marguerite Porete (d. 1310) (Cambridge: Cam­ bridge University Press, 1984); Katharina M. Wilson, ed., Medieval Women Writers (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1984). 26. All citations in the text are from Hadewijch: The Complete Works, trans. Mother Columba Hart (New York: Paulist Press, 1980). Bernard McGinn places Hadewijch in a group of thirteenth­century women that also includes Angela of Foligno, Mechthild of Magdeburg, and Marguerite Porete. Bernard McGinn, The Flowering of Mysticism, vol. 3: The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism (New York: Crossroad, 1998), 199–222. See also Dreyer, Passionate Spirituality, 103–38. 27. The beguine movement began in the late twelfth century and flourished from about 1220 to 1318 in Flanders, southern Germany, and northern France. 28. See Saskia Murk­Jansen, Brides in the Desert: The Spirituality of the Beguines, Traditions of Christian Spirituality Series (Marykoll, NY: Orbis Press, 1998); John Giles Milhaven, Hadewijch and Her Sisters: Other Ways of Loving and Knowing (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993); Bernard McGinn, ed., Meister Eckhart and the Beguine Mystics: Hadewijch of Brabant, Mechthild of Magdeburg, and Marguerite Porete (New York: Continuum, 1994).

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29. Examples of this literature are Margaret D. Kamitsuka, ed., The Embrace of Eros: Bodies, Desires, and Sexuality in Christianity (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2010); Virginia Burrus and Catherine Keller, eds., Toward a Theology of Eros: Transfiguring Passion at the Limits of Discipline (New York: Fordham University Press, 2006)—Part 5 examines the Song of Songs. 30. Anders Nygren, Agape and Eros (London: SPCK, 1957). A sampling of more recent titles on eros is Rosemary Haughton, The Passionate God (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1981); Susan Griffin, The Eros of Everyday Life: Essays on Ecology, Gender and Society (New York: Doubleday, 1995); Wendy Farley, The Wounding and Healing of Desire: Weaving Heaven and Earth (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox, 2005); Wendy Farley, Eros for the Other: Retaining Truth in a Pluralistic World (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996); Pamela Young Dickey, Re-Creating Church: Communities of Eros (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2000); Linda Holler, Erotic Morality: The Role of Touch in Moral Agency (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002); Virginia Burrus, The Sex Lives of the Saints: An Erotics of Ancient Hagiography (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004); Dreyer, Passionate Spirituality; Virginia Burrus and Catherine Keller, eds., Toward a Theology of Eros: Transfiguring Passion at the Limits of Discipline (New York: Fordham University Press, 2006). 31. C. S. Lewis, Four Loves (Fort Washington, PA: Harvest Books, 1960). 32. Dorothy Day, The Long Loneliness: The Autobiography of the Legendary Catholic Social Activist (New York: HarperOne, [1952] 1996), 285. 33. A similar image of the cross can be found in a poetic laud by Jacopone da Todi (ca. 1230–1306): “I find [the cross] full of arrows / That speed from the side, / Piercing my armor and my heart. / The archer aims them straight at me.” The Lauds, no. 75.17–20, trans. Serge and Elizabeth Hughes (New York: Paulist Press, 1982), 225–26. 34. McNamer notes five stylistic qualities of affective meditation on the cross: step­by­step realistic narrative; use of present tense; identification of sub­ jects as bride, mother, handmaid, feminized man; reticence toward Christ’s di­ vinity; frequent exhortations to the meditator to “behold, grieve, weep and suffer.” Affective Meditation and the Invention of Medieval Compassion, 85. The invitation to enter each scene with one’s imagination and to arouse grief at Christ’s betrayal, compassion for his pain, and tears at Mary’s sorrow is also cen­ tral to The Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola (1491–1556). 35. Biblical sources include Ps. 22:18; Isa. 1:6; Isa. 53:4; Ps. 45:2–3; Isa. 63:1–2; Gal. 2:20; and the passion narratives in the four gospels. 36. References to various works by Bonaventure are noted in the text. Bib­ liographical information is as follows: The Soul’s Journey into God, The Tree of Life,

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The Life of Francis in Bonaventure, trans. Ewert Cousins, Classics of Western Spirituality (New York: Paulist Press, 1978); The Mystical Vine, trans. José De Vinck, The Works of Bonaventure: Cardinal, Seraphic Doctor and Saint 1 (Pat­ erson, NJ: St. Anthony Guild Press, 1960); On the Perfection of the Life Addressed to the Sisters and Soliloquium, in Works of St. Bonaventure, 10: Writings on the Spiritual Life, introduction and notes by F. Edward Coughlin, Bonaventure Texts in Translation, gen. ed. Robert J. Karris (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Insti­ tute Publications, 2006). 37. See Elizabeth A. Dreyer, “‘Affectus’ in St. Bonaventure’s Description of the Journey of the Soul to God” (PhD diss., Marquette University, 1983). 38. Michelle Karnes focuses on the important place of cognition in Bona­ venture’s affective treatises throughout Imagination, Meditation, and Cognition in the Middle Ages. 39. At the end of his life, Bonaventure becomes wary of the intellectual trends at the University of Paris, which he thought overemphasized empiricism, especially in the interpretations of Aristotle by Averroes and Avicenna. As a result, he may intend to emphasize the importance of the affections as a corrective. But his focus on the affections never impugns the intellect, which is also a significant hallmark of all his work. 40. See Elizabeth A. Dreyer, “A Condescending God: Bonaventure’s The­ ology of the Cross” and “Mysticism Tangible through Metaphor: Bonaventure’s Spirituality of the Cross,” in The Cross in Christian Tradition: From Paul to Bonaventure, ed. Elizabeth A. Dreyer (New York: Paulist Press, 2000), 192–235; Ilia Delio, Crucified Love: Bonaventure’s Mysticism of the Crucified Christ (Quincy, IL: Franciscan Press, 1998). 41. For comment on Bonaventure’s references to tears, see Dreyer, The Cross in Christian Tradition, 220–23. 42. Bonaventure, “Sermon on St. Francis,” preached at Paris on October 4, 1262, in The Disciple and the Master: St. Bonaventure’s Sermons on St. Francis of Assisi, trans. Eric Doyle (Chicago, IL: Franciscan Herald Press, 1983), 81–96, citation at 92. 43. Bonaventure speaks of the Spirit as a force for unity, virtue, and prayer within the church and also as the power that fuels the spiritual life enabling union with God. He wrote an entire work on the Spirit, Collations on the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit, a series of sermons delivered to the friars in 1268. Bonaventure places the gifts of wisdom, fortitude, piety, and fear of the Lord in the affective domain. He interprets the Spirit’s presence at Pentecost as the source of virtues and gifts flowing from the Godhead (Rom. 5.5). Collations on the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit, trans. Zachary Hayes, Bonaventure Texts in Translation, 14 (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute Publications, 2008). See also Dreyer, Holy Power, Holy Presence, 151–78.

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44. The term “fleshy imaginings” is taken from Laurel C. Schneider, “Pro­ miscuous Incarnation,” in Kamitsuka, The Embrace of Eros, 232. 45. Leonardo Boff notes the important distinction between masochism and compassion. The former stops with the pain; the latter involves identifying with the pain of the other, feeling together with the other, and suffering in com­ munion. Saint Francis (New York: Crossroad, 1985), 27–28. 46. See Marigwen Schumacher, “Mysticism in Metaphor,” in S. Bonaventura, 1274–1974 (Grottaferrata [Rome]: Collegio San Bonaventura, 1973), vol. 2, 361–86. 47. Julian of Norwich, Showings, Classics of Western Spirituality (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1978), 186.

C H A P T E R

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AQU I N A S O N S A N C T I F Y I N G THE AFFECTIONS Participating in the Life of the Spirit

C R A I G A . B OY D

An organizing theme that shapes much of Aquinas’s work, especially the famous Summa theologiae, is the principle that “grace does not destroy nature but perfects it.”1 This makes its first appearance in the first question of the Summa and reappears at key points throughout. In the Treatise on Charity, he introduces it again as a way of developing the relationship between those loves all humans possess as creatures of God and the love that is bestowed on them as a result of divine grace. The idea here is that grace and nature are not diametrically opposed principles locked in mortal combat for ontological supremacy but that there is a complementarity; there must be a “nature” for grace to operate in and through. On this view, nature retains a certain kind of continuity with its original state as it is a reflection of the goodness of God. Although human nature has been damaged by the fall it still possesses its original integrity. Nature is not something to be “destroyed” but “completed” or “perfected,” and it is the grace of God that accomplishes this process. Moreover, this can be seen in the “perfection” of the human affect by that grace which is charity. In 143

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the following pages, I develop Aquinas’s account of the human affect and then demonstrate how, for him, the affections (especially love) become perfected through the work of grace and charity, which he sees as “participation” in the life of the Holy Spirit.

Aquinas on Desire and Appetite

From the start we need to note that the language Aquinas uses to consider what we call “emotions” or “affectivity” is problematic for us.2 There is no one Latin equivalent for our English word emotion. Rather, there are numerous terms that describe affectivity, appetite, passion, passivity, desire, motion, and intentional tendencies. Following the work of Nicholas Lombardo, I make a basic distinction between “affections” and “passions.” Lombardo rightly claims that “all passions are affections but not all affections are passions.”3 The reason for this is that the will is an “intellectual appetite” (or “affect”), but it is not a sensitive appetite as are the passions. That is, “affect” (affectiones or affectus) is a more general term used for a variety of tendencies (including rational desires or what Aquinas calls “intellectual affections”) while “passion of the soul” (passiones animae) are primarily concerned with the “sensitive” (or animal) desires of the soul (i.e., the irascible and concupiscible appetites).4 Aquinas says, “Passion is a movement of the sense appetite caused by imagining good or evil” (IaIIae.22.3). And it is with these sense appetites that I begin my discussion. Humans possess what Aquinas calls “passion.” As the word indicates, a passion is a way in which we are “moved” to action by finding ourselves in (i.e., being aware and attending to) a particular context or state. Peter King writes: In general, then, we can say that the passions of the soul are objectual intentional states of the sensitive appetite. The sense of this claim can be unpacked by considering a structural parallel between the cognitive and appetitive potencies of the sensitive part of the soul, at the core of which is an analogy between experiencing a passion and having a perception: the passions are a kind of “appetitive perception.”5

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There is a basic division here between the appetitus concupiscibilis (what is usually translated as the “concupiscible” appetite) and the appetitus irascibilis (what is usually translated as the “irascible” appetite). A key passage at IaIIae.23.1 delineates the nature of these two appetites. The object of the concupiscible power is the sensible good or evil, simply apprehended as such, which causes pleasure or pain. But, since the soul must, of necessity, experience difficulty or struggle at times, in acquiring some such good, or in avoiding some such evil, in so far as such good or evil is more than our animal nature can easily acquire or avoid; therefore this very good or evil, inasmuch as it is of an arduous or difficult nature, is the object of the irascible faculty. Therefore whatever passions regard good or evil absolutely, belong to the concupiscible power; for instance, joy, sorrow, love, hatred, and such like: whereas those passions which regard good or bad as arduous, through being difficult to obtain or avoid, belong to the irascible power; such are daring, fear, hope and the like.6 The human soul has sensory appetites that move us in two basic ways to those particular objects of sensation that we perceive as “good.” In one way, we perceive sensible things as good “simply”: such things are food, drink, and sex since we perceive them as prima facie pleasurable. Like other animals we share the desire to eat, drink, procreate, and nurture the young. These desires are the function of what Aquinas calls the “concupiscible” appetite. These desires are for goods as sensory objects in that they satisfy a kind of animal desire that partly comprises our nature. Occasionally, Aquinas speaks of the concupiscible appetite as the desire for “the easy goods.” It is not that it is easy for us to achieve these goods but that the desire itself comes to us easily. Frequently, however, we are moved to the sensible good in ways that are “arduous” or difficult, and this movement is known as the “irascible” appetite, which directs us to the good in terms of what we might think of as our fight or flight impulses. This is sometimes known as the appetite for the difficult good since there is some kind of obstacle that we must overcome in our pursuit of that good. And so anger and fear are passions we possess that move us to protect ourselves, our loved ones, or some other sensible object we perceive as being good.

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In order to consider how these two appetites operate we could offer the following example. On my daily walk through the neighborhood, the smell of fresh strawberries comes to me wafting on the spring breeze. I have been walking for over an hour and am ravenously hungry. The smell of the strawberries “moves” me to act in a way that I desire to pick and eat them. This movement is the concupiscible appetite at work. However, as I make the effort to climb the fence to the property where the strawberries grow, I hear barking. Not just any barking, but the barking of a large dog. I hesitate. The irascible appetite engages and prompts me to reassess my desire for the strawberries in light of this singular obstacle. We see in this example that it is possible for the concupiscible and irascible appetites to work simultaneously. This is because Aquinas claims there are six concupiscible passions that move us to action and five irascible passions. The concupiscible passions are love (amor)–hate (odium), desire (desiderium)–aversion (fuga), and joy (gaudium)–sorrow (tristitia); the irascible passions are hope (spes)–despair (desperatio), daring (audacia)– fear (timor), and anger (ira) (IaIIae.23.4). In this case we see that the desire for the strawberries—a concupiscible appetite—comes into direct conflict with fear—an irascible appetite. But since we are not merely animals but also possess other desires we do not simply succumb to the dominant emotion, but evaluate the relative strength of each in light of other considerations. In addition to the sensory appetites for the good, we also possess a “rational appetite” for the good qua good and not merely the good in reference to the satisfaction of one of the animal appetites or inclinations. I not only desire things such as food, comfort, sex, and drink; I also desire “the good” as such. That is, I realize that no sensory good can satisfy me since I am more than merely a being who senses and desires.7 No amount of strawberries can ever satisfy my desire for “the good itself.” My “animal appetites” require “animal goods” for their satisfaction. But no “animal good” can satisfy my rational desire for the good as such. For Aquinas, the will (voluntas)—as a rational appetite—has as its natural object the good qua good and not any particular good. Although nonrational animals pursue particular sensible goods based upon elicited appetites, humans desire the good as presented to the will by the intellect. These two powers of the soul function together to consider and choose

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among competing goods. It is only by reflecting on the good—or goods, as the case may be—as presented to me that I can make a responsible judgment. Reason and will function in such a way as to guide the agent, at least ideally, to her appropriate ends as given by the nature God has created for her. Among those goods are the goods of the concupiscible, the irascible, and the rational soul. To further clarify the distinction between the sensitive and rational powers of the human soul we could ask an interesting and revealing question: for what desires am I morally responsible? Aquinas says that we can consider the passiones animae in two ways: intrinsically or subject to the judgment of reason and the will. If we consider passion simply as “movements of the soul” there is no sense in which we can be held responsible for them. However, passion can be considered either good or evil if it is subject to the judgment of reason and the will. Consider the following example. A doctor is frightened by the sudden appearance of a spider on the doorway to the operating room where a child lies in urgent need of medical attention. This fear that she shares with other animals is neither morally good nor evil; it is merely the natural response to a perceived threat. However, if after assessing the situation and realizing that the spider is not poisonous and poses no real threat to her, she still refuses to enter the room even though the child will die as a result, she would be culpable of letting her irrational fear control her behavior. With any of our desires we can be held accountable for what we fear, hate, love, desire, hope for, or take joy in. But this idea of choosing how to feel assumes an important role for the rational soul as well as the critical idea that we are responsible for our choices. As we shall see, choice is an important element of one manifestation of love—the most important of our sensitive and rational desires.

Love and Charity

Of the eleven passions that Aquinas identifies as spurring us to action, the most important of them is “love,” since it not only moves our animal powers to action but also prompts us as rational creatures to desire the good as such. Indeed, he says that “the first motion of the will, indeed of

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any power of appetite is love” (Ia.20). Yet if the will is also an “appetite” (i.e., the rational appetite) how is it that love is a function of both the concupiscible and rational powers of the soul? He says that love can be an affect in both the sensitive and rational powers. In his discussion on whether there is love in God he makes this clear. The acts of the sensitive appetite, inasmuch as they have annexed to them some bodily change, are said to be passions; whereas acts of the will are not. Love, therefore, and joy and delight are passions; in so far as they denote acts of the intellective appetite, they are not passions. (Ia.20.ad1) That is, in human creatures we can be moved by passions because we have sensory organs and sensitive desires. In this respect, God is “passionless.” However, we also have a rational appetite for the good. God also has “will” but no sensory organs. We have both will and sensory organs and therefore we are moved by the will and by the passions. Human love—as it is shaped by an understanding and desire for the good qua good—transcends and integrates the other loves and passions inasmuch as the human agent can adjudicate among these various goods. For Aquinas, the term dilectio implies that there is a prior choice (electio) in our various loves (IaIIae.26.3). Like the animal loves desire is elicited by an appropriate object, but unlike the animal loves the choice a human makes regarding the relative value of the good in question compared to the good itself should always play an important role. The generic term for “love” Aquinas gives the name amor. His claim that “all charity and desire are love but not the converse” points to the fact that “love” has a variety of meanings and that each use of the term requires special attention. There can be many forms of amor, and it is worth noting how he employs them. As we have seen, dilectio is that love that includes the idea of choice. Affectio carries with it the idea of “being moved” to love, much as the Latin passio does. Amicitia is the special form of love we know as friendship. And caritas is a specific form of amicitia in that it is the love—and friendship—God offers us. An important feature of all the manifestations of love is the tendency toward union (or “communion”) with the object of its desire. Michael Sherwin says that all the loves require a kind of union between lover and beloved. He observes,

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“Love both presupposes union and likeness between lover and beloved, and causes deeper union. It causes mutual indwelling between lover and beloved, and even an ecstasy that draws the lover out of himself and toward the beloved.”8 Sherwin lists five characteristics of love: 1. Entails mutual benevolence 2. Benevolence that is mutually recognized 3. Mutual love entails mutual beneficence 4. Friendship has the nature of a habitus 5. Based on a certain communicatio in bono.9 Obviously love must be mutual for it to be love, otherwise it is mere admiration—an affirmative “gazing” upon the other. But it also requires benevolence—that is, literally, “willing the good” for the other—and once again there is a kind of mutuality that pervades the relationship. Benevolence is not the same as beneficence. I must not only will the good for the other, but I must also act on the basis of my will for the good. My willing and doing the good for my neighbor should not consist of a singular event but should form the pattern of my moral life. It is a habitus that enables me to practice love with relative ease. Finally, love requires a communicatio in bono, that is, a shared participation in the good, an exchange through the good, or to borrow a phrase from Jules Toner, it is the notion of “radical communion.”10 For Aquinas, this participation is an ontological reality that enables friends, blood relatives, spouses, and others to participate together in one another’s good. The various loves can be distinguished according to their objects, which determine the kinds and manners of love. With regard to our love for our blood relatives (amicitia consanguineorum), Aquinas believes that this is a love based upon our nature that tends to place a greater obligation upon us because the bond with our kindred is based upon natural origin, which is something more enduring than other kinds of friendships. He says, “Friendship among blood relatives is more stable as it is based upon nature and prevails in matters concerning nature. Thus, there is a greater obligation to provide them with the necessities of life” (IIaIIae.26.8.ad1). Since our parents brought us into the world, we owe them an obligation of reverence similar to that which we owe God. Our relationship to our own offspring is a bit different: since we brought our children into

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the world we undertake a voluntary obligation to provide for them. The natural love we have for both parents and children is based upon our nature as social beings, and this can be seen in the animal kingdom as well. Another kind of love that has its origin in our sensitive powers is the desire for sexual union. Clearly all mammals have a desire for sexual reproduction. The human creature has this appetite as well, but this kind of love for the other is also dilectio, a love that assumes a prior choice. Nonrational animals do not possess choice and therefore cannot experience this sort of love. Aquinas sees this sort of love between a man and a woman as a kind of intimate union such that the intimacy is greater than our love for our parents but not based upon kinship. The desire for union with the other is of ultimate concern here.11 The imagery of sexual union and the partners’ mutual participation in the life of the other demonstrates not only the intimacy but also the unification of the lover and the beloved. Although the following passage is not about married life but about divine love, it speaks to the ecstatic nature of love that calls us to union with the other. Because love transforms the lover into the beloved, it draws the lover into the interior of the beloved and vice versa, with the result that nothing remains in the beloved that is not united to the lover: just as the form enters deeply into the one informed by it and vice versa, so too the lover in a certain way penetrates the beloved.12 Yet this unification and intimacy also yields new life. It is fitting that the act of sexual love results in a new life that is the incarnation of that love. Yet the original lovers are not jealous of the new life but welcome it and nurture it. There is always room for one more person to participate in the life of love. Although the natural loves are prompted by our desire for intimacy, nurture, companionship, and community, it is critical, first, to note that they require grace in order to achieve their proper telos. That is, we come to know more fully what love is when we consider it from the perspective of faith. Second, his tendency to speak of these loves in terms of dilectio and amicitia signifies that human love always includes two important components: choice and friendship. In all genuine human love—as distinguished from purely animal sensory appetites—although we may be

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prompted by our appetites to pursue an object of love, we always retain the ability to choose. Further, this choice is a choice to “befriend” another. For Aquinas charity is a kind of “friendship with God.” But friendship is a kind of communion or participation in the life of the other. Charity itself is a special kind of participation in God since the created order is such that all creatures “live and move and have their being” in God. The key word Aquinas uses for this kind of friendship we have with God is communicatio. Eberhard Schockenhoff says that this term “means a sharing and commonality that consists in the fact that the Triune God gives everyone His own beatitude and calls people to participate in His divine love.”13 But there is more than one way to “participate in God.” An important point Aquinas makes regarding the love of God is that we have a twofold love for God: one based on our natural desire for God (as found articulated in the precepts of the natural law) and another love for God based upon the charity that God lavishes upon us. He says: We can say that there are two kinds of goods that we are able to receive from God: the good of nature and the good of grace. But the good of nature which God has given to us, serves as the foundation for the natural love by which humans, when they are in the integral state of nature, love God above all things including themselves. (IIaIIae.26.4) Our natural teleology (i.e., our desire for perfect happiness) directs us to the good of grace even though we cannot achieve the good of grace without divine assistance. One of the primary precepts of the natural law indicates humans have a natural desire to pursue the truth about God (IaIIae.94.2). The desire to pursue the truth about God may lead one to the point of coming to know and love God through divine grace—the second and more perfect kind of love we can have for God. Aquinas’s trinitarian theology plays an important but often neglected role at just this point. Just as the “Word” refers to “the Son,” so too does “Love” refer to “the Holy Spirit” (Ia.37.1–2). There is an interesting “progression” in the way of “participation” in Aquinas’s metaphysics of morals. The ideas of participation (participatio) and communication (communicatio) permeate Aquinas’s moral thought.14 In his Treatise on Law he famously says that the natural law is “the rational creature’s participation

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in the eternal law” (IaIIae.91.1). The “eternal law,” however, is identified with the second Person of the Trinity (Ia.34.3; IaIIae.93.1.ad2). So all people know the basic precepts of the natural law because they “participate” in the divine Logos who created both them and the moral order. All people, regardless of their religion or faith, “participate” in God inasmuch as they know the natural law. Drawing from the same source as the logos Christology in John 1, Aquinas sees the pre-incarnate Christ as the one who “enlightens all humanity.” But knowing the natural law is not the same thing as doing the good. It is better to love the good than to know the truth. This participation in the eternal law may be a necessary condition for virtues—since it supplies the basic content of morality—but it is not a sufficient condition. More is needed. In a way that parallels the rational creature’s participation in the eternal law, Aquinas says that charity is the human being’s participation in divine charity. But this participation is not merely the intellectual apprehension of truth about what we are responsible for knowing; it is a participation in the richness of God’s love. As we have seen, charity functions as another term for the “Holy Spirit.” But what does Aquinas mean by saying that we are called to “participate in charity”? As we have said, charity is the friendship we have with God which is founded upon our participation in eternal happiness. But this participation is not according to the natural goods but according to the gifts of grace; because according to St. Paul, “The grace of God is eternal life.”15 Thus, charity exceeds our natural capacities. But that which exceeds our natural capacities cannot be something natural, nor can it be acquired by our natural powers because natural effects cannot transcend their causes. Thus, charity is not able to be in us naturally and we are not able to acquire it by means of our natural powers but only through the infusion of the Holy Spirit, who is the love of the Father and the Son; His participation in us is created charity itself. (IIaIIae.24.2) We cannot attain to the divine love that is charity on our own, but we require grace in order to elevate us to the point where God can dwell in us and we can dwell in God. The way in which this takes place is through

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the person and power of the Holy Spirit. So what does it mean to be “elevated” to participate in God? The love of God—as infused in us by divine charity—is such that it transforms and orients our lives toward God in a new way: a way that perfects but does not destroy our natural affections or loves. Stephen Pope says, “Thomas’s interpretation of charity followed from the fundamental theological axiom that grace perfects, and does not destroy, nature. One important implication of this principle is, in Thomas’s theological perspective, that charity retains natural love, though the latter is given a new animating principle,”16 since it calls us to go beyond our merely natural preferences, likes, and loves. Christ commands his followers to “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Luke 6:32). How does Thomas see divine love transforming the natural hatred we have for our enemies? The basic orientation of friendship is critical here. We love our enemies because we love those whom our friend—God—loves. He explains: Friendship extends to another person in two ways. In one way with respect to the person himself, in this respect friendship never extends to anyone but one’s friends. In another way it extends to someone with respect to another person, as when a person has friendship with someone and for his sake he loves all those who belong to him, whether children or servants or anyone connected with him in any way. And so much do we love a friend for his sake that it is even possible to love those who hurt or hate us. And in this way the friendship of charity extends even to our enemies whom we love out of charity for the sake of God, to whom the friendship of charity is principally directed. (IIaIIae.23.1.ad2) The human person, endowed with grace, is able to act in ways that complete the natural desires for the good. That is, we can love a neighbor, a spouse, a child, a parent, or even an enemy because grace transforms our nature in such a radical way because we love God. Charity transforms the natural loves we have for kith and kin into the self-giving charity that participates in the divine love. But it also transforms our natural hatred for our enemies into a divine love based upon the love God has for all created beings (IIaIIae.23.1.ad2).

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The Holy Spirit and the Affections

There can be no transformation of passion and affection apart from the work of the Holy Spirit. But how does this happen? Aquinas says that the human creature participates in the divine goodness that is charity. And it is this divine love that sanctifies our created nature. The divine essence itself is charity even as it is also wisdom and also goodness. Just as we are said to be good with the goodness which is God, and also wise with the wisdom which is God because the goodness by which we are good, and the wisdom by which we are wise is a participation in the divine wisdom. So it is also with charity by which we formally love our neighbor is a participation in divine charity. (IIaIIae.23.2.ad1) But how, exactly, do we “participate” in God? He begins by saying that charity “springs from the Holy Spirit,” but this does not mean that we are passively moved by God in such a way that we are treated as mere instruments. For this would imply that we could in no way be responsible for our love, and, as we have seen, an important aspect of any human love is choice, which implies responsibility. As a result, the Holy Spirit provides us with the opportunity to love but does not function as an efficient cause of our love. But neither can the Holy Spirit function as the material cause of any human activity for then God would literally dwell in us as a substance. Here Aquinas responds to Peter Lombard who held that “the charity in us, by which we love God and our neighbor, is nothing other than the Holy Spirit.”17 Lombard held that charity was a created thing in the human soul but that the Holy Spirit moved the soul to acts of virtue not in a mediated way but to acts of charity immediately. But this could not be the case, as then any act of charity would be simply an instance of “moral occasionalism.”18 That is, each and every act of charity would simply be an act of God manipulating the human soul. This would vitiate human freedom and thus any kind of responsibility on the part of the human creature. No act of charity could ever be a truly human act.

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But further, charity—since it is a virtue—must spring from the human soul readily and with pleasure as from a disposition to act from love. But if the Holy Spirit moved the soul immediately it would mean that the human soul had no disposition to act in this way. What we see then is that the Holy Spirit must have some role in moving the human creature to God but that this movement cannot be an immediate and direct movement but must facilitate the action of the will. As a result, the causal power of the Holy Spirit comes not in the manner of efficient or material causality but in the manner of a formal cause. Aquinas says: We must possess a created disposition of charity which can be the formal principle of an action of love. This does not prevent the Holy Spirit, who is uncreated charity, from dwelling in someone who possesses created charity, moving the soul to a loving action in the way that God moves each thing to those of its actions to which its own form makes it tend. That is how he organizes everything in a way that gives delight, since he provides everything with the forms and powers that make it tend towards the things to which he himself moves it, so that it inclines towards them of its own accord, rather than under compulsion.19 The created disposition that is charity affects the human soul to love God as God ought to be loved—and this is a result of grace. The human agent cannot love God properly apart from grace. The formal principle of charity—like all forms—directs creatures to their proper ends. And so charity works in the manner of both a formal and a final cause.20 Charity, therefore, is a kind of “habit” by which we participate (i.e., formally) in God. This habit is a created disposition given to us by God’s grace. It does not coerce us into acting out of love but enables us to love God and our neighbor with relative ease and to take delight in this love.

The Gifts of the Holy Spirit

As we have seen, the theological virtues perfect and shape the moral virtues by orienting the human creature toward God by enabling her to love

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as she ought to love and to think as she ought to think. But there is still another way in which the Holy Spirit guides and directs the affections. The “gifts of the Holy Spirit” are the final, and possibly, most direct way in which God “perfects” us.21 Aquinas says: The gifts are a sort of habitus that perfects the human so that he promptly follows the instinct of the Holy Spirit, just as the moral virtues perfect the appetitive powers in their obedience to reason. . . . Just as there are virtues in every human power that has the capacity of being a principle of human acts (that is, reason and the appetitive power), so also are there gifts. (IaIIae.68.4) The gifts of the Holy Spirit build upon the nature of the infused virtues— and so we see a continuation of the principle that grace does not destroy nature but perfects it. The Holy Spirit never coerces us but works with us by means of “instinct” (instinctus). We could imagine a boat floating downstream. The current takes the boat with it by a kind of natural propulsion, yet when someone is in the boat rowing we see the propulsion of the boat and the human effort cooperating in a new way that propels the boat more quickly and efficiently. In a similar way the Holy Spirit, through divine grace, functions like the current of the stream. We could retain the power to act against the current, but we would not want to. In this way, the Holy Spirit elevates and empowers our freedom and reason. Although the gifts of the Holy Spirit are an infused habitus, they are not to be reduced to the function of the infused virtues. The gifts are understanding, counsel, wisdom, knowledge, piety, fortitude, and fear (IaIIae.68.4). These gifts are a more direct and elevated response to the promptings of the Holy Spirit and while not contrary to reason are still above reason—even reason’s ability to grasp that charity transcends nature. We respond more quickly to the urgings of the Spirit; we respond with “fervent desire” and “more abundant affection” than the infused virtues alone provide (IaIIae.69.3). So we see four basic ways in which God directs us to the good. First, in the natural law reason prompts us to seek the good and avoid evil. Second, the cardinal virtues are ways in which we pursue the imperfect hap-

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piness of this life. Third, the theological virtues perfect and reshape us into persons who love and worship God. And fourth, the gifts of the Spirit enable us to respond directly to the promptings of the Spirit. * * * To sum up Aquinas’s views on the Holy Spirit and the affections, we can say that the natural loves and the passiones animae are grounded in the goodness of the created order and direct us to those objects that are truly good for us—procreation, nurturing the young, developing healthy friendships based on goods that transcend but are consistent with our created nature. Yet we are created for more than simply “Aristotelian goods”: we are created for communion with God and with one another. Grace transforms and reorients the human affections in ways that “perfect” our created nature so that we can participate in the life of the Trinity and in the lives of our fellow creatures.

Notes My thanks to Dale Coulter, Mark Jordan, and Andrew Pinsent for their helpful comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this chapter, which have saved me from a number of grievous errors. Any remaining errors and shortcomings are entirely my responsibility. 1. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, Leonine ed., vol. 4 (Rome: Leonine Commission, 1888), Ia.1.8. All translations of Aquinas are my own unless otherwise indicated. Throughout the chapter this source is cited parenthetically in the text according to part, question, and article. This idea of grace as perfecting nature occurs frequently throughout the Summa. 2. Lombardo says, “The central difficulty in reconstructing Aquinas’s account of emotion is that Aquinas never wrote about emotion.” Nicholas Lombardo, The Logic of Desire: Aquinas on Emotion (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2011), 15; also see Shawn D. Floyd, “Aquinas on Emotion: A Response to Some Recent Interpretations,” History of Philosophy Quarterly 15, no. 2 (1998): 161; Diana Fritz Cates, Aquinas on the Emotions: A Religious-Ethical Inquiry (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2009). The problem here is that the narratives that shape our language seem to dichotomize the soul: emotion or reason, mind or heart, intellect or affect. In what follows, I have chosen to follow Lombardo and use the term “affection” and emotion as translations for passio, but as it will become apparent, the idea here is

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that there are not two different entities but different aspects of the same person. Our affect can “be moved,” and it is in this sense that I hope the term will be less confusing. 3. Lombardo, The Logic of Desire, 76. 4. Miner says, “Thomas consistently reserves passiones for acts of the sensitive appetite. He uses affectiones (and, less frequently, affectus) for acts that may or may not belong to the sensitive appetite.” Robert Miner, Thomas Aquinas on the Passions: A Study of Summa Theologiae 1a2ae 22–48 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 35. 5. Peter King, “Aquinas on the Passions,” in Aquinas: A Contemporary Philosophical Perspective, ed. Brian Davies (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 356. 6. Simo Knuuttila argues that Aquinas’s list of the eleven passions of the sensitive soul is borrowed from John of la Rochelle. See Simo Knuuttila, Emotions in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 243. 7. Ralph McInerny explains this clearly when he says, “If I want a glass of Guiness, it is because, as the advertisements say, I regard it as good for me. It slakes my thirst. It relaxes me. It looses my tongue for Hibernian repartee. Only a miserable sot would equate the object of this particular choice with goodness itself. Of course, there are miserable sots, those whose god is their belly, as St. Paul says. A glass of beer can in certain circumstances really count as what is fulfilling of me, but it does not exhaust the formality under which choices are made. When I decide to leave the bar and go home, I do that too under the formality of goodness. If there were some one end of action that exhausted the formality of goodness, that itself completely satisfied and perfected my desire, there would be an identification of the thing sought and the reason for seeking it, and I would be absolved of all need to desire anything else.” See Ralph McInerny, Ethica Thomistica: The Moral Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1997), 26–27. 8. Michael S. Sherwin, O.P., By Knowledge and by Love: Charity and Knowledge in the Moral Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2005), 80. 9. Ibid., 249. 10. Jules Toner, The Experience of Love (Washington, DC: Corpus Books, 1968), 189. 11. Josef Pieper, Faith, Hope, Love (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), 247: “If every form of love really and essentially seeks oneness and has union for its fruit, then it must be said that such union, such merging of subjects who are nevertheless different from one another and remain so, finds its most complete

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realization in what is called erotic love. Consequently, love between the sexes becomes a paradigmatic form of love in general.” 12. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Sentences, III27.I.I.ad 4. 13. Eberhard Schockenhoff, “The Theological Virtue of Charity,” trans. Grant Kaplan and Frederick G. Lawrence, in The Ethics of Aquinas, ed. Stephen Pope (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2002), 247. 14. John Rziha, Perfecting Human Actions: St. Thomas Aquinas on Human Participation in the Eternal Law (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2009); Craig A. Boyd, “Participation Metaphysics in Aquinas’ Theory of Natural Law,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 79, no. 3 (2005): 431–45. 15. Rom. 6:23. 16. Stephen J. Pope, The Evolution of Altruism and the Ordering of Love (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1994), 58. 17. Thomas Aquinas, Disputed Questions on the Virtues, trans. E. M. Atkins, ed. E. M. Atkins and Thomas Williams (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 109. The parallel passage in the Summa is found at IIaIIae.23.2. 18. For an account of Aquinas’s general views on primary and secondary causation, see Craig A. Boyd and Aaron D. Cobb, “The Causality Distinction, Kenosis, and a Middle Way: Aquinas and Polkinghorne on Divine Action,” Theology and Science 7, no. 4 (November 2009): 391–406. 19. Aquinas, Disputed Questions on the Virtues, 111; my emphasis. Also: “Charity works formally. Now the efficacy of a form depends on the power of the agent, who instills the form, wherefore it is evident that charity is not vanity. But because it produces an infinite effect, since, by justifying the soul, it unites it to God, this proves the infinity of the Divine power, Who is the author of charity” (IIaIIae.23.2.ad3). 20. IIaIIae.23.8.ad1. “Thus, in moral matters that which gives an act its end also gives it its form. Now it is clear that from what we have said that charity orders the acts of all the other virtues to the final end. Accordingly it gives form to all these acts and to this extent it is said to be the form of the virtues.” 21. This point is often overlooked by commentators on Aquinas’s ethics. Notable exceptions are Lombardo, The Logic of Desire; Sherwin, By Knowledge and by Loves; and Servais Pinckaers, O.P., “Morality and the Movement of the Holy Spirit: Aquinas’s Doctrine of Instinctus,” in The Pinckaers Reader: Renewing Thomistic Moral Theology, ed. John Berkman and Craig Steven Titus (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2005), 385–95.

C H A P T E R

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L E T T I N G G O O F D E TAC H M E N T Eckhart’s Gelassenheit and the Immanence of the Spirit

S H A RO N L . P U T T

I have always felt sorry for Martha. All she wanted was a little help in the kitchen in order to show good Middle Eastern hospitality to an important guest. To make matters worse, she can’t even hide her shame by fading into the obscurity of lost memories buried under the weight of historical detritus; that is to say, Dr. Luke felt it necessary to write the episode down for everyone in the future to read! Consequently, as luck would have it, her infamous attitude toward Mary, and Mary’s choice to reach for transcendence rather than grasp the immanence of the work at hand, forever graces the pages of the best-selling book of all time. She asked Jesus one legitimate question and forevermore gets slammed with a bum rap. And if that weren’t enough, the church has used Martha’s story to propagate and legitimize the dichotomy between transcendence—reaching for God—and immanence—grasping for the world. But does this dichotomy stand up under scrutiny? Does transcendence draw us closer to God than immanence? Is a Martha existence doomed to wallow in shallow pursuits while the Marys of the world rise to the heights of God in the depths of heavenly bliss, detached from the vicissitudes of everyday life? 161

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In the interest of redeeming Martha, and with a little help from Meister Eckhart, I answer no to the above questions and insist that the dichotomy is a false one. The transcendent God is never closer than in the realm of immanence: indeed, Martha, not Mary, lived and moved and had her being in the place where transcendence and immanence harmonize; and, through the Spirit of God, we can live in that place too. I suggest that we put ourselves in Martha’s place by following the directions of Meister Eckhart and by imitating his movements discover if we can master Martha’s method of transcending detachment and descending into immanence with the world.

The Meister’s Movements of Love

The God(head)

For Eckhart, living life by the power of God’s Spirit—which he identifies as the Spirit of love—requires three main movements that find fulfillment in the soul’s unity with the Godhead. In order to acquire that unity, however, the soul must first let go of “God,” separate itself from “God” in order to break through into the empty nothingness that he calls the ground of the Godhead.1 In fact, Eckhart takes the necessity of the soul’s separation from “God” so seriously that he prays that God rid him of “God.”2 This statement doesn’t make much sense to contemporary readers, unless they understand Eckhart’s distinction between “God” and the Godhead. By the word God, Eckhart refers to the God that is named and known by the human mind, the “God” who interacts with the world, who works relationally with creation and its creatures. In other words, “God” is the name we use to signify God’s relationship to the world, as Trinity, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.3 By conceiving of “God” as the creator, as the Father, or as the provider, or by assigning to “God” any other name, attribute, or characteristic, we make a distinction between “God” and the soul that precludes the soul’s unity with the ground of God—that is, with the Godhead itself. Alternatively, Eckhart prescribes that the soul desiring union with God must rid itself of “God,” the God of perception

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and imagination, the God of creation and creatures, in order for it to become one with the Godhead; God as God is in Godself, the God that cannot be named or known, the God who is absolute, timeless, pure, one, and simple. The God of the trackless void, the desert wasteland of nothingness where there is no ontological distinction between creator and creature, where there is nothing but the ground of God, a stripped-down God that is not yet cause or creator, beyond being, beyond time, what the Daoist might call the uncarved block, the nothingness of nonexistence, the primal seat of all origins.4 In fact, Eckhart’s mystical thought centers on the notion of the ground ( grunt/grund ) of God, a term important for understanding the distinction between the God of our conceptions and the Godhead. We might consider the ground of God a “master metaphor” or an “explosive metaphor” in the Meister’s thought. Since the ground of the Godhead and the ground of the human soul are one and the same, the metaphor of the ground breaks through all forms of speech and generates explosive new ways for the soul to encounter the Godhead.5 The soul, which Eckhart often refers to as the “spark” (Vünkelîn) yearns for unity with God, not with the “God” of our imagination, but the ground, the simple, pure, nakedness of God.6 In addition, only God can come fully into the soul, and the union between human and divine can take place only in the ground of God. Because the ground of God constitutes the most hidden depths of the divine essence and the ground of the soul constitutes the innermost depths of the human being, God’s ground fuses with the soul’s ground and they become one and the same ground.7 Eckhart beautifully describes this place where the human soul unites with the divine, saying in one of his sermons: I declare in all truth, by the eternal and everlasting truth, that this light [the soul] is not content with the simple changeless divine being which neither gives nor takes [“God”]: rather it seeks to know whence this being comes, it wants to get into its simple ground, into the silent desert into which no distinction ever peeped, of Father, Son, or Holy Ghost. In the inmost part, where none is at home, there that light finds satisfaction, and there it is more one in itself: for this ground is an impartible stillness, motionless in itself, and by

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this immobility all things are moved, and all those receive life that live of themselves, being endowed with reason.8 It is clear from this sermon that Eckhart also believes that all creation receives its life from the ground of God. It serves as the creative force out of which all things not only come into being but also from where all things receive their being.9 Only the human soul, however, possesses the spark or the light that is identical to the ground of God and, therefore, able to unite with the ground as one. Flowing Out

According to Eckhart, God works in a set of three circular moves to create the world of creatures and to unite them with the divine in a relationship of love. He calls these motions “the three kinds of love.”10 In the first love of Eckhart’s metaphysics of flow, the Godhead, who is pure, essential truth, abides in eternal pregnancy. Then, through divine trinitarian love, the pregnant God gives birth to the world by spilling over into creation, overflowing into all creatures equally with divine being and the light of God’s grace.11 God’s being fills and loves all creatures equally. In the words of the theologian Charlotte Radler, “God” boils and billows and sends the divine love “flowing forth from the One through the Trinity into creation.”12 The flowing out from the Godhead is consummated first in the Trinity—God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—and second in the creation, separating what was once one in the ground of God into distinct realities. Once the Godhead flows outward in trinitarian form, God flows outward even more and creates the world of creatures, plants, rocks, mountains, and so on—all objects distinct from God. At that point, creatures can look from a distance to the source of their creation and think, this is “God”—the “God” we imagine, the “God” we think we know and understand, the “God” that we call Trinity, and the “God” we experience as love.13 This love of God, which is another name for the Holy Spirit, is the unifying force that generates, transforms, and sustains the union of God and humanity.14

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Flowing out, therefore, is the first of three motions that Eckhart attributes to God. The divine love that overflows the world in creation is the same love that gives birth to the incarnate Son in the world, who, together with the Father, sends forth the Holy Spirit—the true manifestation of divine love. Sin and the cares of this life, however, make yet another distinct separation between God and God’s creatures. Human conceptions of God, however accurate, cloud our vision and distract our souls from the true essence of the Godhead. We seek God with our hearts and minds and think that we serve God and remain faithful to the divine will through our good deeds, but all our thoughts, prayers, and actions amount to nothing. They do not bring us closer to union with God. In fact, according to Eckhart, all our actions serve only to draw us further away from that much desired union. Breaking Through

Our dependence upon our own immanence keeps us from transcending back into God—the topic of Eckhart’s second love in the process of union with the ground of God. In the motion of the second love, Eckhart believes that the soul has two births: one birth into the world and one birth out of the world. The birth out (or break through) is spiritual—out of the world and into God.15 The soul’s attraction, distraction, and attachment to the world keep it from enjoying the fullness of God’s love through perfect unity with the Godhead. Consequently, the soul must detach from its engagement with the world, let go of its love of life, friends, family, job, and even love of God. It thinks nothing, knows nothing, wills nothing, and is nothing.16 Consequently, to be one with God, the soul must let go of everything imagined so that absolutely nothing remains. As John Caputo puts it, “The only way back to this inner ground is the way of detachment and letting be, the way which lets knowledge go for a silent unknowing, which lets willing go for a motionless rest.”17 Eckhart insists that “letting go” of everything enables a “letting be” of God in us.18 We’ve heard the saying, “Let go and let God.” Meister Eckhart would say, “Let go and let God be God in you.”19

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The soul must become nothing so as to break through into the nothingness of the ground of God in which nothing exists but God. In this movement of the break through into the Godhead, no distinction exists between God and the soul; the soul becomes God by becoming one with God.20 Eckhart articulates the break through and union in terms of numbers. Before unity with God, a distinction exists between God and the person—that adds up to two. Union with the Godhead in nothingness, however, adds up to nothing. According to Eckhart: This (human) spirit knows neither number nor numberlessness: there is no numberless number in the malady of time. No one has any other root in eternity, where there is ‘nobody’ without number. This spirit must transcend number and break through multiplicity, and God will break through him: and just as He breaks through into me, so I break through in turn into Him. God leads this spirit into the desert and into the unity of Himself, where He is simply One and welling up in Himself. This spirit is in unity and freedom.21 By breaking through to the Godhead, the soul actually returns to the nothingness, to the primal seat of its origin before there was a cause or a creator, where the soul first lived in the being of God.22 Eckhart says that “when I am able to establish myself in Nothing and Nothing in myself, uprooting and casting out what is in me, then I can pass into the naked being of God, be ousted that I may be transplanted into God and become one with Him: one substance, one being, one nature, and the Son of God.”23 Eckhart equates this personal letting go of everything with being poor in spirit. The soul’s poverty of spirit reduces us to nothing.24 When we become nothing, the very essence of God fills us. God’s knowing, God’s substance, God’s nature, and God’s essence become ours, and then we truly are the sons of God—that is, so much like God’s Son that we are God’s Son.25 Unfortunately, the idea that we actually become the Son of God when our souls unite with God put Eckhart in the crosshairs of the papal authorities. Had the powers that be taken the time to understand his thought, they would have realized that Eckhart was echoing the early Eastern church fathers and their notion of theosis. He articulated the similar concept with the language of a birth of the Son in the soul.

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The Birth of Son in the Soul

Breaking through into God results in the third kind of love: God giving birth to the Son in the soul, filling us with the being of the Son in perfect union. The birth takes place in the soul only as the soul rests in the ground of God with perfect stillness, in the silence of nothingness, where no images, no thoughts, no activity or understanding interrupts the perfect, quiet union with the Godhead. In this silent union, the soul has no power of itself; it lies passive and receptive to nothing other than the divine essence. Eckhart states, “Here nothing but rest and celebration for this birth, this act, that God the Father may speak His word there, for this part is by nature receptive to nothing save only the divine essence. . . . Here God enters the soul with His all. . . . God enters here the ground of the soul.”26 In other words, the soul’s return to God so unites it with the Godhead that the soul and God share one ground, one essence, one nature. Consequently, at this point the soul and God are one in perfect unity in the ground of God. No distinction exists between God and soul. Because the Son has already flowed out from God and takes part in this unity of the soul, “God the Father gives birth to the Son in the ground and essence of the soul, and thus unites Himself with her.”27 In other words, the soul assimilates into the unity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Eckhart expresses this union by saying that “we, by the love of the Holy Ghost, being unified into His Son, shall know the Father with the Son and love ourselves in Him and Him in ourselves with mutual love.”28 The Son that God birthed eternally is the same Son that God births in our soul. The soul draws its being as a son from the very being of the Son. Consequently, there is no division between the Son and the soul—they are truly one.29 We are sons of God through the same being that makes Jesus the Son of God. We shall be like him for we shall see him as he is (1 John 3:2). In the ground of God, the Son’s very nature is born in us. Eckhart expresses the puzzling notion of our possession of the Son’s nature by saying, “God could not make me the son of God if I had not the nature of God’s Son, any more than God could make me wise if I had no wisdom.”30 Thus we share one nature with God’s Son. The shared nature is

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a natural outcome of unity because for Eckhart, “in the heavenly realm all is in all, and all is one.”31 Because the Godhead brought forth the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the soul’s sharing of God’s ground and essence also means it shares the nature of the Son. In fact, the Son himself prays for this very event, asking, “As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us. . . . The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one” ( John 17:11; 21–23). For Eckhart, however, we do not become one in the sense that we are one of the persons in the Trinity. Although there is only one Son, one nature of the Person of the Word, we must share oneness with the One; but we share that oneness through adoption into God. Eckhart explains that there are not many Sons but just one, and we are the same Son as the one begotten of God. He says, “It [the Son] is the same and is he himself, who is Christ, born as Son in a natural way, and we, who are sons of God analogically—by being joined to him as heir, we are coheirs.”32 The Eckhartian scholar Bernard McGinn states this conundrum in simple terms: “Insofar as there is only one real Son of God, if we are sons (as scripture expressly says), we are indeed identically the same Son insofar as we are sons, univocally speaking. From the perspective of our existence as created beings, however, we are sons by adoption and participation, analogically speaking.”33 Eckhart also distinguishes between the Son by nature and the Son by grace. Christ is the Son by nature, the Eternal Word who flows forth from the Godhead and is birthed anew in the soul. We are the Son by grace as the birth of the Son in our soul transforms us into Christlikeness.34 How this happens exactly, Eckhart does not know. None of us know because it has not yet been revealed to us. What Eckhart does know is that the union of the soul with the Son unites us with the Father so that the love of the union wells up in the Holy Spirit.35 The soul has now completed the full cycle in the circle of love. First, it has come into the world through the flowing out of God in creation, where it exists distinctly separate from God. Second, the soul experiences a break through back into the Godhead through detachment, letting go, and letting be.36 Third, the soul undergoes the perfect union with the love of God through the birth of the Son in the soul and through which the Holy Spirit brings forth the fruitfulness of love. Eckhart seems to close

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the imagery of the circle of love at the fruitfulness wrought in the soul by the love of God through the Holy Spirit. He ends the circular movements at the birth of the Son in the soul. I contend, however, that we can take Eckhart and the soul’s journey one step further and keep the circle open or even re-form it into a spiral by imagining a fourth love, one that sees the Spirit-filled soul pouring forth into the world, living a life of action, revealing the Son of God by loving God and neighbor. Through the Spirit, the soul actively bears the Son back into the world, making what was once a wasteland a fruitful oasis in action.

The Pouring Forth

When I began reading Meister Eckhart for this chapter, I intended to critique him for ending the creature’s journey into God at the birth of the Son in the soul rather than continuing to a fourth motion of love that sends the soul back into the world to live and love in the power of the Spirit. After a more careful reading of Eckhart, however, I realized that, interestingly enough, with his interpretation of the Mary and Martha story, he actually points us in that direction, albeit implicitly. So I have adjusted my thesis somewhat while maintaining the content of my title. I argue that a latent movement of what I call “the pouring forth,” lies buried in Eckhart’s work. Furthermore, I believe that in pouring forth back into the world, the creature must let go of detachment in order to affirm a reattachment to the via activa by loving others in the power of the Holy Spirit. The active life manifests itself as the love of God and neighbor, a life that only the Holy Spirit, as the expression of divine love, makes possible. For Eckhart, the Holy Spirit is the love God. He preaches that “the greatest masters say that [the] love with which we love is the Holy Ghost. . . . That is eternally true: in all the motion with which we are moved to love, we are moved by nothing but the Holy Ghost.”37 The Holy Spirit, therefore, plays a major role in the cooperation between the creature and the trinitarian relationships as enacted in the active life of a soul united with God.38 Eckhart spins the active and affective force of love into the unifying ingredient that engenders, nurtures, and sustains

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the transformative relationship between the creature and God.39 Love draws us in; love gives us birth in the Son; and love fills us so we can actively love God and others in the world. In fact, Eckhart believes that the love poured into us, the love that fills us up to overflowing and burns within us, is the love of God in the Holy Spirit.40 He says that the Holy Spirit becomes burned into us, and we become totally melted into the Spirit; therefore, we become wholly love. The Spirit sets our soul on fire so that we melt into God’s Spirit and the Spirit into us. Thus there is no longer a distinction between the two.41 Consequently, when we act in love toward others, it is the Holy Spirit acting, not us. Acting in love constitutes what I call the pouring forth into the world—the fourth love hidden in Eckhart’s thought.42 Eckhart expresses this thought as an extension of God’s first love with which God loves all creatures. He says, “God loves all creatures equally and fills them with His being. And thus too, we should pour forth ourselves in love over all creatures.”43 Developed into a more explicit fourth love, however, we act as bearers of the Son in the world through the Holy Spirit and pour forth into the everyday world to love God and all people equally.44 Eckhart clearly describes the love we pour forth into the world through God’s Spirit. If we love a person or ourselves more than we love another, we are not loving with the love of the Spirit. Eckhart concludes that all authentic love is the love of God, and since there is only one God and one love, all love must be loving everything and everyone equally, with the same love. We might object to this on the grounds that by loving the other, we are truly only loving God, thus making no room for alterity or the true love of someone totally other. But Eckhart would not reduce the love of neighbor to the love of God. In fact, because we are to love others equally, that love includes the totally other, even the outcast, the marginalized, the ones that are difficult to love. With the one love of God in the power of the Holy Spirit, we can love the other freely and authentically in the same way we love those who are more like us. Our loving others equally through the Spirit, then, embraces difference in the bond of love.45 For Eckhart, the love of neighbor is trinitarian and has its foundation in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit manifested in the world through us. Not only does the love of neighbor flow out of us from the Holy Spirit, but this love also reveals to others our love for God and God’s love for

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creation. Appropriately, Jesus provides the model for the equality of love so that we can truly say, “It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives within me” (Gal. 2:20).46 In this way, we are the Son and the Son is we. Eckhart calls this the incarnation continua, or a continuing incarnation. God continually incarnates the Son in believers through the birth of the Son in the soul. Those souls then go out into the world as the manifestation of God’s love.47 Living out the love of God in this way requires the soul to remain in God while at the same time remaining active in the world. Here is where Eckhart makes a latent connection between speculative mysticism, a life detached from the world, and an affective and active mysticism that remains attached to the world in an appropriate way while still maintaining the soul’s unity with the ground of God. The first three of Eckhart’s movements of love seem to exhort us to leave this world behind and live a life totally detached from emotion, desire, and ego. We leave immanence behind in favor of rising to the transcendent realm of the ground of God so that the Son of God is birthed in our souls. The fourth movement of love to which Eckhart tantalizingly alludes, what I call the pouring forth into the world, finds us with our feet back on solid ground. It’s as if God draws souls into the Godhead, fills and fulfills them with God’s essence, and, then, through the Spirit, breathes them back out into the world to a life of love in action.48 Although Eckhart clearly believes that we remain in a state of detachment, it is not an unimpassioned or passive detachment from the world but one that denies the self. As we live in God and God in us, we live for others—attached to God for the service of others in the love of the Spirit—yet completely detached from selfish desires.49 Eckhart unequivocally states that we work only as creatures detached from ourselves and attached to God: God works in us and not we ourselves. He says that “a man should be so free of all things and works [detachment], both inward and outward, that he may be a proper abode for God where God can work.” And if a person “is free of all creatures, of God and of self,” then God finds a place in him to work.50 Consequently, I interpret Eckhart to say that we live a life of detached attachment, of transcendent immanence, a life in which Eckhart exhorts us to love others with God’s love, a love that drives us to suffer with those who suffer, to rejoice with

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those who rejoice, and to labor with those who labor.51 The soul that bears the Son of God, that loves as God loves through the Holy Spirit, transcends self-will, desire, and ego and lives a life of immanence and solidarity with others. We transcend detachment and descend back into the world as active participants in the lives of others, all the while remaining firmly attached in the life of God. In other words, we live in the eternal reality by loving others in the temporal reality.52 We don’t love because there is a reason or a motivation to love; we love because we overflow with the love of God, and the love of God is without why.53 As God is without why, so, too, love is without why, because God is love. But for Eckhart, God’s love loves actively, not passively. It loves in and with the other, not from a distance, from the heights of transcendence untouched by earthly events, human emotion, and unsightly suffering. Rather than advocating for a monastic life of passive prayer, uncontaminated by the cares of the world, too heavenly minded to be of any earthly good, Eckhart motivates his hearers to a life of activity, of earthly immanence that draws its strength from the transcendent ground of God. For Eckhart, true contemplation, that is, authentic groundedness in God, is manifested in outward works, through the appropriate engagement with the world. Although he says that the soul united with God possesses “a waxing love for the eternal and a waning interest in temporal things,” Eckhart, at the same time, exhorts his readers to an active life of service to God and others in the Spirit of love.54 But how do we harmonize such seemingly contradictory ways of life? Meister Eckhart tells us that we must be both active and empty at the same time—the emptiness that results from unity with the ground of God and the action that accompanies life in Christ through the Holy Spirit. In fact, the active life of good works done from what Eckhart calls a person’s essence (from unity with the Godhead where we most authentically act as the Son) reveals true perfection in God.55 Eckhart explains that all our service to others flows from the “well-exercised ground,” where God and the soul unite as one. We work above time into eternity while simultaneously living in time. In other words, we serve others in the temporal realm while our essence remains in union with the eternal Godhead.56 He refers to the active life as “living truth joyously present in good works . . . with an eternal will consonant with the loving commands of the Holy Spirit.”57

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According to Eckhart, acts of love and mercy reveal our closest likeness to God. He says that it’s better to leave the state of rapture with God and go help someone in need.58 He insists that “temporal work is as noble as any communing with God, for it joins us to Him as closely as the highest that can happen to us except the vision of God in His naked nature.”59 He contends that many people hope to reach a point where they are free from the hindrance of works, but the soul grounded in God and sent forth by the Holy Spirit is never free from works. Eckhart points us to the example of the disciples, saying that “after [they] received the Holy Ghost, they began to do good works.”60 Sacrificing the self for others in service, therefore, is the greatest kind of love—greater by far than the inner life of silence and prayer. At the same time, Eckhart stresses the importance both of the inner life of contemplation grounded in the Godhead (transcendence) and of love made manifest in good works (immanence). One follows upon the other; the former makes the latter possible. A message much needed in a time when the contemplative life seemed to take precedence over the active life in religious orders. We find Eckhart’s most direct reference to the fourth love in his treatment of the Mary and Martha story where he privileges transcendence over immanence, the via activa over the via contemplativa. He chooses the story of Mary and Martha in order to advocate for an active rather than a passive life, a life lived through the power of the Holy Spirit overflowing and pouring forth in loving service to others. He reverses the usual interpretation of Mary as the one who has reached a deeper level of piety by sitting at the feet of Jesus, while Martha chooses to slave away at worldly pursuits in the kitchen. Instead, for Eckhart, Mary symbolizes the merely contemplative life, the life of visions, rapturous experiences with God, of silence without action, while Martha represents the perfection of a life of action born from contemplation. The medieval scholar Giles Constable interprets Eckhart as saying that “contemplation was a preparation for action, and Mary was in the process of becoming what Martha already was.” Martha, not Mary, transcends to the ground of God. Her soul reaches that union with God that then pours forth through the Spirit into the world as love in action.61 The fact that Jesus speaks Martha’s name twice indicates that she possesses union with God and that she is able to be active and inwardly

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united with God at the same time. Eckhart says that “the first mention of Martha showed her perfection in temporal works. When he [Jesus] said ‘Martha’ again, that showed that she lacked nothing pertaining to eternal bliss.”62 Martha, unlike Mary, has mastered detachment, letting go of selfwill, desires, and ego, and transcended to God only to return to a life of immanence, activity, and life in the Holy Spirit, both loving God and loving others.63 Martha is so well grounded in God’s essence, so united with the Spirit in her love of God and others, that activity comes naturally, as an overflow of love spreading out to others. Her groundedness in God enables Martha “to do outward works perfectly as love ordains.”64 In other words, Martha’s unity with the Godhead via total detachment makes it possible for her to live an active life appropriately attached to the love of God and others. Eckhart explains that Martha engages the active life properly because she relates to the needs of others “with care” rather than “in care.” The cares of the world do not distract her because she is steeped in the delightful presence of God. She is with the world in action while at the same time resting in God.65 Eckhart explains that Martha is careful, meaning, “‘you are among things, but they are not in you’, for those who are careful are unhindered in their activity. They are unhindered who organize all their works guided by the eternal light.”66 All of Martha’s works serve to manifest her total union with God in eternity. He preaches that “Martha stood maturely and well grounded in virtue, with untroubled mind, not hindered by things, and so she wished her sister to be equally established, for she saw that she [Mary] was not grounded in her being. Her [Martha] desire came from a mature ground, wishing her [Mary] all that pertains to eternal bliss.”67 Life in God and works of love in the world are one just as God is one with the soul. Martha wants this same experience of oneness with transcendence and immanence, of contemplation and action, with God through the Holy Spirit of love for her sister Mary, and we might say that she wants it for us.68 We have much to glean from the three kinds of love that Eckhart explicitly maintains and from the fourth love that we find latent in his thought. We might ask, therefore, what the practical implications of Eckhart’s thought are in contemporary terms. Simply stated, as we live and move and have our being in God through Jesus Christ we live in constant

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awareness of God’s presence.69 How do we accomplish this most high awareness? In his Talks of Instruction, Eckhart explains: Turn all your study to letting God grow great in you, so that all your sincerity and striving is directed toward Him in all that you do or leave undone. In truth, the more you have of this, the better all your works, of whatever kind, will be. Hold fast to God. . . . If a man holds fast to God, God and all virtues cleave to him. . . . And so, if a man cleaves fast to God, all that is divine cleaves to him.70 We might think of it as “praying without ceasing,” so that we remain always in God’s presence. Or we could say that “it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me,” so that we can truly say, “to live is Christ.”71 As we answer the call to be penetrated with God’s presence, God becomes our “all in all.”72 The Spirit of God breathes out into the world through us and reveals God’s love to all creation.73 God, then, is in all and with all as the Holy Spirit acts through us in unity with the Godhead. Eckhart often refers to the beauty of God’s actions in creating and drawing creatures back into the ground of God as breathing, the very act that sustains life as well as the imagery surrounding the life of the Holy Spirit. Consequently, I couch Eckhart’s thought in the pneumatic terms of expiration, inspiration, transpiration, and aspiration. First, expiration: the Godhead exhaled, a deep flowing out of divine breath that resulted in the expiration of creation. Second, inspiration: God inhaled us back into Godself with a loving inspiration that draws us back to God, what I call the inspiration of returning to God. Third, transpiration: the expiration and inspiration begat a transpiration that transpired in the birth of the Son in the soul, uniting us into the mutuality of trinitarian love. And fourth, aspiration: in the power of the Holy Spirit—the very love of God that started the soul’s journey in the first place—we aspire to return to the world, detached from its distractions, yet attached to the labor of love that calls to us. This is the aspiration of immanence, an immanence that lives and moves and has its being in the transcendence of the living and loving God. The expiration of creation, the inspiration of the soul’s return to God, the transpiration of the birth of the Son in the soul, and

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the aspiration for immanence, together consummate into a living, breathing, active, and dynamically mutual relationship with God and with others through the Spirit of love. Notes 1. John D. Caputo, “Fundamental Themes in Meister Eckhart’s Mysticism,” The Thomist 42 (April 1978): 210–11. 2. Sermon 87, in Maurice O’C. Walshe, trans., The Complete Mystical Works of Meister Eckhart (New York: Crossroad, 2009), 422, 424. All sermon numbers are cited from Walshe unless otherwise indicated. 3. Sermon 87; Caputo, “Fundamental Themes,” 211–12. 4. Caputo, “Fundamental Themes,” 213–14; John D. Caputo, The Mystical Element in Heidegger’s Thought (New York: Fordham University Press, 1986), 105–6. See Sermon 8, in which Eckhart writes, “But only insofar as He is one and indivisible, without mode or properties, (can He do this): in that sense He is neither Father, Son, nor Holy Ghost, and yet is a Something which is neither this nor that” (Walshe, Complete Mystical Works, 81). See also Sermons 53, 57, and 68. 5. Bernard McGinn, The Mystical Thought of Meister Eckhart: The Man from Whom God Hid Nothing (New York: Crossroad, 2011), 37–38. 6. For more on Eckhart’s treatment of the spark, see Sermons 53 and 66. The spark is the part of God in us. Eckhart says, “This spark is so akin to God that it is a single and impartible one, and it contains in itself the images of all creatures, imageless images and images above images.” 7. Sermon 65; Caputo, Mystical Element, 100; McGinn, The Mystical Thought, 41. 8. Sermon 60; original emphasis. 9. Sermon 40; Caputo, Mystical Element, 104. 10. Sermon 88. See also Charlotte Radler, “‘In Love I am more God’: The Centrality of Love in Meister Eckhart’s Mysticism,” Journal of Religion 90, no. 2 (April 2010): 190–92. 11. Sermons 88 and 72. See also Radler, “‘In Love I am more God,’” 190– 91; and Caputo, Mystical Element, 114–15. 12. Radler, “In Love I am more God,” 179, 190–91. 13. Sermons 23, 32, and 72; Caputo, “Fundamental Themes,” 215. “God” only exists because we exist. If we didn’t exist, “God” would not exist. We cannot know the Godhead or the ground of God unless we break through to God.

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14. Sermon 88; Radler, “In Love I am more God,” 171. Eckhart explicitly says that love is the Holy Spirit in Sermon 7. 15. Sermon 7. 16. Meister Eckhart, Talks of Instruction, sec. 6; Sermon 21; Meister Eckhart, The Nobleman, in Walshe, Complete Mystical Works, 561–62; see Caputo, “Fundamental Themes,” 209. 17. Caputo, “Fundamental Themes,” 207; see also Sermons 6 and 87; Meister Eckhart, The Book of Divine Comfort, in Walshe, Complete Mystical Works, 439–544. 18. Sermon 7; Caputo, “Fundamental Themes,” 201. 19. Sermons 7 and 65; Caputo, “Fundamental Themes,” 201. 20. Sermons 6 and 7; Caputo, “Fundamental Themes,” 213. 21. Sermon 16. 22. Sermon 32; Caputo, “Fundamental Themes,” 214–15. 23. Sermons 7 and 40. 24. Eckhart, The Book of Divine Comfort, 439–544; Sermon 87. 25. Sermon 24a. 26. Sermon 1; original emphasis. 27. Ibid. 28. Sermon 88. 29. Caputo, “Fundamental Themes,” 222. Caputo claims that Eckhart is not saying that the soul is the Son but that he is stressing “the radical dependence of the soul upon the Son and its radical unity with the Son if it is to be called a Son” (222). 30. Sermons 7 and 1. 31. Sermons 7 and 47; Caputo, “Fundamental Themes,” 216. 32. Sermon 40; also quoted from McGinn, The Mystical Thought, 117. Eckhart culled this quote from one of his German sermons in order to make a defense of his beliefs. 33. McGinn, The Mystical Thought, 118. 34. Eckhart, The Book of Divine Comfort, 439–544; Sermon 87. See also Caputo, Mystical Element, 115–16. 35. Sermons 2, 18, and 53; Caputo, “Fundamental Themes,” 223–24. 36. For a nice treatment of the concept of letting go and letting be, see Caputo, Mystical Element, 118–27. 37. Sermon 12. 38. Caputo, “Fundamental Themes,” 223. 39. Radler, “‘In Love I am more God,’” 171. 40. Sermon 43. 41. Sermons 59 and 23; Radler, “‘In Love I am more God,’” 183.

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42. Sermon 7. 43. Sermon 88. 44. Ibid. 45. Sermons 18, 40, 56, and 57. See also McGinn, The Mystical Thought, 126–27. 46. Sermons 6 and 88. 47. McGinn, The Mystical Thought, 115. 48. See Ray C. Petry, “Social Responsibility and the Late Medieval Mystics,” Church History 21, no. 1 (March 1952): 13. 49. Sermons 6 and 47. 50. Sermon 87. 51. Sermons 40 and 57. 52. Sermons 40 and 59. Eckhart very clearly states that, as detached souls, our work in the world comes directly from God, not from ourselves. So not only do we receive our being from God—God’s actual being or essence—the power that makes us active in the world is God’s power, God’s being, God’s acting, not ours. 53. Sermon 17. 54. Sermon 55. See also McGinn, The Mystical Thought, 157. 55. Sermon 9. 56. Sermon 9; McGinn, The Mystical Thought, 161. 57. Sermon 9. 58. Talks of Instruction, sec. 10. Richard Woods, Meister Eckhart: Master of Mystics (New York: Continuum, 2011), Kindle ed., 1339; Sermon 39. 59. Sermon 9. 60. Ibid. 61. Giles Constable, Three Studies in Medieval Religious and Social Thought (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 116, 12. In the first third of his book Constable provides an in-depth exploration of the medieval understandings of the Mary and Martha story that give insight into the plethora of hermeneutical analyses of this one passage of scripture. For more on Eckhart’s treatment of the differences between Mary and Martha, see Caputo, “Fundamental Themes,” 203–5; Blake R. Heffner, “Meister Eckhart and a Millennium with Mary and Martha,” Lutheran Quarterly 5 (Summer 1991): 178–80. 62. Sermon 9. 63. Sermon 9; Caputo, “Fundamental Themes,” 204–5. 64. Sermon 9. 65. Sermon 9; McGinn, The Mystical Thought, 160. 66. Sermon 9. 67. Ibid.

Letting Go of Detachment 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73.

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Woods, Meister Eckhart: Master of Mystics, 1332. Sermon 67; Acts 17:28. Talks, sec. 5, in Walshe, Complete Mystical Works, 489–90. Phil. 5:17; Gal. 2:20; Phil. 1:21. Talks, sec. 6. See Petry, “Social Responsibility and the Late Medieval Mystics,” 13.

C H A P T E R

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T H E B O N D AG E O F T H E A F F E C T I O N S Willing, Feeling, and Desiring in Luther’s Theology, 1513–1525

SIMEON ZAHL

In this chapter I demonstrate that a particular approach to affections and the related categories of desire and the heart is one of the major drivers in Luther’s theology during the crucial period between the Disputation Against Scholastic Theology in 1517 and the publication in 1525 of Luther’s most important treatise on the connection between human nature and salvation, The Bondage of the Will. Indeed, to a significant degree the bondage of the will is itself understood, in Luther, as a bondage of the affections. The account that follows is not intended to be an exhaustive overview of affectivity in Luther’s theology as a whole. The goal, rather, is to throw into a relief an underrecognized theme of major importance in Luther during a crucial period, which stands in some contrast to parallel views he developed in his arguments against “enthusiasm” starting in the mid-1520s. In tending to understand Luther’s later, anti-enthusiastic statements about subjective experience, including affective experience, as normative for his thought as a whole, later Luther scholarship has ignored 181

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a key dimension in his earlier thought, underplayed the continuing theological importance of affectivity throughout his career, and failed to recognize an important dimension of Luther’s legacy for later Protestant theology. The observation about the central role of affectivity in Luther’s theology up to and including The Bondage of the Will takes on particular significance against the backdrop of later developments in Protestant theology, from the divisions between Pietists and more traditional confessional Protestants in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries through to contemporary renewal movements, which tend to be deeply affectively oriented. From an early twenty-first-century vantage point, the period to 1525 appears to have bequeathed us two, seemingly incompatible Luthers: (1) Luther the original archcritic of “enthusiasm” and thus the spring and source for centuries of confessional Protestant anxiety about subjectivistic, emotionalistic, and charismatic Christianities; and (2) Luther the “affective Augustinian” theologian par excellence, whose most important ideas flowed not least out of a conviction that the heart and its affections, rather than the ratio, are the most powerful and theologically significant part of the human person.1 In coming to understand better the central and long-standing role played by affect and desire in Luther’s theological anthropology, Luther’s potential value as a conversation partner for other affection- and “experience”-oriented theological traditions becomes clear. At the same time, this recognition may also lend depth to Luther’s criticisms of such theologies. And finally, it serves to problematize in important ways recent narratives of modernity that view Luther as participating straightforwardly in some “nominalist” or “univocal” prioritization of concepts over embodiment, of divine decrees over experienced human realities and participations. From the start of his academic career to its end, Martin Luther engaged deeply with the question of the role of affections in theology and in Christian life. In what are very nearly the opening two paragraphs of his public academic career as we have received it, the preface to the glosses on the Psalms from the summer of 1513,2 Luther is already preoccupied with affections and their relationship both to biblical interpretation and to the encounter of the individual with God.3 And as late as 1538, we find Luther praising the power of music precisely because of its power over

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“these masters of the human heart, namely, the affections and impulses or spirits, those instigators of all things, either virtues or vices” (illos . . . dominos cordis humani, scilicet affectus et impetus seu spiritus, impulsores omnium vel virtutum vel vitiorum), and which “govern men or more often overwhelm them.”4 For those with only a basic acquaintance with Luther’s theology and his place in the history of the church, it can come as something of a surprise to learn how central affections and “the heart” are in his thought— not just in occasional rhetoric but deep in the structure of his theology. This is for several reasons. The first—mainly the result of the expediencies of pedagogy—is that the standard line on Luther’s theology of justification is to understand it first and foremost in terms of a debate over whether or not good works are necessary for salvation. This is of course true, but when stated superficially it fails to show how Luther’s soteriology has first and foremost to do with a particular theological anthropology and set of theories about human motivation, which in turn is one of the chief reasons Luther is concerned with the problems surrounding what it might mean for a work to be “good” in God’s sight in the first place. Second, Luther’s affective interests are surprisingly underrepresented in the secondary literature on Luther.5 The best work on the category of experience in Luther tends to focus on the question of “experience” of the Word and the relationship between scripture and experience rather than on affections in theological anthropology. In part, this is a result of allowing the mature rather than the early Luther’s categories to dictate the discussion, as Luther’s theology of the Word is still very much in development in the 1520s when his theology of the affections has already reached its mature form.6 Third, language about affections, important and ubiquitous though it is, is only one of several sets of categories that Luther uses for talking about fundamental issues in anthropology and soteriology. Affections are deeply interwoven for Luther not only with the great theological question about “the will” but also with the nature and effects of faith, with the distinction between the “inner” and the “outer” person, and with a series of biblical metaphors that are relevant to affectively oriented anthropology without being reducible to it (especially imagery about human beings as plants and trees, and as bearing fruit, e.g., in Ps. 1:3, Matt. 7:16–20 and

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12:33–35, and Gal. 5:22–23, as well as the multiple, overlapping meanings of “the heart” in the Bible). Affections, and related discussions of “desire” and “the heart,” are very important in Luther, but they are not the only conceptual tools he has at his disposal for talking about human motivation and behavior before God, and to some degree they have been eclipsed in the reception history of Luther’s theology by other, related conceptualities. This is true above all of the conceptuality of “the bondage of the will,” which reaches its high point in the response to Erasmus of that title in 1525. The fourth, and perhaps ultimately most important, reason that the centrality of the affections to Luther has not been adequately recognized by scholars has to do with a slow undermining of the early appeal to affections, and to subjective experience more generally, in Luther’s theology that is a consequence of the development and maturing of his theology of the Word, which included an increasingly rigid understanding of the Spirit’s work through the Word alone. As Ulrich Asendorf has noted, this took place suprisingly late, mainly in the 1520s over the course of his engagement with Andreas von Karlstadt and other early radical reformers, whom Luther dubbed Schwärmer, “enthusiasts.”7 The story here is complex and has yet to be fully told in relation to affections, but the thrust is that the more important the verbum externum (external Word) of biblical preaching and sacraments becomes for Luther, the less significant and trustworthy inner emotional experience becomes in Christian life and faith.8 This Lutheran movement away from affective categories in theology, especially in soteriology, can be observed even more clearly in the parallel case of Luther’s close Wittenberg colleague and friend Philipp Melanchthon, over the course of the many editions of his influential theological summary, the Loci communes, between 1521 and 1559.9 The argument in what follows is that Luther’s concept of the bondage of the will must be understood, during the crucial period from 1517 to 1525, in large part as a bondage of the affections. In order to demonstrate this, I must first trace Luther’s developing views of the affections and the will in the major works of the earlier period, the Dictata super Psalterium (1513–15) and the Lectures on Romans (1515–16). I then look at the remarkably consistent way the affections and the bondage of the will are construed in a variety of major texts in the subsequent period,

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from the Disputation Against Scholastic Theology in September 1517 to the locus classicus for “affective Augustinianism” in Luther, the 1522 “Preface to Romans.” I will then examine more briefly the role played by this conceptual scheme in the debate between Luther and Erasmus in 1524–25, where for a variety of reasons Luther begins to be less focused on affective categories in construing the bondage of the will. Before this, however, a few words on the terminological complexities involved here are needed.

Affections, Hearts, and Desires: The Problem of Terminology

The immediate difficulty that arises in examining affections in Luther— usually affectus in his writings, rarely affectio—is that the theological thematic is not exhausted by the specific technical term. If one limits one’s interest to Luther’s specific use of the term affectus, then one fails by a large margin to grasp the full picture of the role of affections and feelings in Luther’s theology. Certainly Luther does use the term affectus quite regularly in his Latin writings in the period to 1525, particularly in his two sets of lectures on the Psalms, the Dictata super Psalterium (1513–15) and the Operationes in Psalmos (1519–21). But when he wants to identify the general theological thematic of human capacities of feeling and motiva­ tion that are in some sense to be understood in contrast to the deliberative or rational faculties in a person, Luther is equally happy to use several other strategies. These include employing biblical language of “the heart” (cor); referring to particular affections, such as anger, fear, or joy, rather than to affections in general; and, most complexly, drawing on various distinct Latin terms that can be translated as “desire,” each with its own history in philosophy, theology, and in the Vulgate Bible—particularly desiderium, cupiditas, concupiscentia, appetitus, libido, and voluntas. The last of these, voluntas, is an especially important case. Of the various Latin terms having to do with desire and desiring, voluntas alone is usually translated in English as “will,” but it too can have connotations of desire and delight, and in at least one crucial case a word that in the Vulgate is translated as voluntas becomes Lust (desire) in Luther’s German translation.10 Both Luther and his more terminologically precise colleague Philipp Melanchthon—who wrote extensively and in a similar key on

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these exact subjects in the early 1520s—are well aware of this. That willing and desiring are closely related for Luther is easily demonstrated, for example in his use in the earliest Psalms lectures of Psalm 111:10 (desid­ erium impiorum peribit) to make sense of Psalm 1:1 and 4 (sed in lege Do­ mini voluntas eius . . . non sic impii). For Luther a verse about desiderium (desire) can naturally and without further comment be brought in to make sense of a verse about voluntas (will).11 This sort of terminological shifting and elision is very common in Luther on this subject.12 Importantly, although one must be careful not to flatten the distinct meanings and inflections of the various desire-related terms, to a significant degree Luther himself “flattens” them, and is often willing to merge them into one another. For example, voluntas morphs very naturally into affectus over the course of the later exposition of Psalm 1 in the Opera­ tiones in Psalmos, a parallelism confirmed by the fact that the ultimate proper expression of both voluntas and affectus in the text is “love.”13 This sort of flattening or synthesizing of terms is affirmed quite bluntly by Melanchthon in 1521, in a piece of writing itself likely influenced by Luther’s 1519–20 Psalms lectures, when he reduces all feeling and desiring capacities in human beings to a single affective “power” (Vis, e qua affec­ tus oriuntur), understood in contrast to the “cognitive power” (Vis cog­ noscendi).14 As he puts it, the affective power is “sometimes called ‘will’ [voluntatem], sometimes ‘affection’ [affectum], and sometimes ‘appetite’ [appetitum],” but ultimately they all refer to the same thing.15 Another important case here is the term “heart” (cor, or Herz), which is very common in Luther.16 In many places, the term is used as shorthand for all things affective, understand in contrast to the more rational and deliberative faculties.17 It is also the source of particular affections, above all love.18 And it is in every way the most important part of the human person so far as faith, sanctification, and God’s judgment are concerned. Ultimately, and most significantly, it is very closely identified with the will. As Luther puts it in the Dictata, interpreting the use of the term in Psalm 119:10 (118:10): “Now ‘the heart’ is the appetitive power itself, namely the will” (Cor autem est ipsa potentia appetitiva, voluntas scilicet).19 Nearly a decade later, Melanchthon makes the same point even more explicitly, in a text of which Luther thoroughly approved: “For Scripture generally calls our will [voluntatem] the heart [cor].”20

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At the same time, one can also find a number of places in Luther’s writings in this period where the term “heart” is used in ways that seem to be quite shorn of connotations of emotion or affection. In these cases, the term simply signifies the inner person, something like the “true self,” rather than the locus of a person’s desiring and feeling. This is the likely meaning, for example, in Luther’s sermon of October 19, 1522, when he explains that “that person is a Christian who has received Christ and believes in God with his whole heart.”21 This diversity of usage in Luther parallels, and is likely influenced by, the Bible’s diversity of use of “heart” language, where “heart” can variously refer to the location of inner monologue (e.g., Gen. 8:21; Luke 5:22), the place where feelings occur or are felt (Deut. 28:67; John 16:6), the fundamental or most central part of the self before God (1 Sam. 7:3; Luke 12:34), and the source of good and evil desires and behaviors (Mark 7:21–23; Rom. 5:5). Ultimately, the meanings of the various terms having to do with desiring, willing, the heart, and the affections are something of a shifting target in Luther. There is no single durable and precise concept of desire in Luther, any more than there was across thinkers in the various classical and medieval traditions in which he was steeped; even just affectus itself has a range of meanings (albeit a relatively small one) in Luther’s usage over the years and from text to text. The sheer complexity here should not, however, dissuade us from understanding all these terms in different ways as part of an ongoing thematic in Luther’s thought by which human behavior and motivation, before others and before God, is primarily subject to forces, often affective, deeply “felt,” and evident in the experienced inner life of human beings, that stand in contrast to rational deliberation and to the teachings of right behavior that come through the Law. In this sense, the crucial Lutheran and Protestant category “the bondage of the will” is usefully glossed as a “bondage of the affections” in order to emphasize the primacy in Luther of human desiring and feeling capacities over and against rational and deliberative capacities. In my account I aim simultaneously to demonstrate the complexities here—both terminological and conceptual—and to argue for a general picture of human motivation in Luther, informing the category of the bondage of the will known to history, that is utterly concerned with feeling and desiring. In terms of scope, there is not space to give an adequate

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account of these issues in Luther as a whole; it is hoped instead that an overview of key texts from the periods when he is most concerned with affectivity in theological anthropology will serve to illuminate both the complexities and the appropriateness of “the bondage of the affections” as a characterization of a major feature of Luther’s anthropology and soteriology.

The Turn to the Heart, 1513–1516

The combined term “intellect and affections” (intellectus et affectus) appears approximately forty times in Luther’s first lecture series on the Psalms, the 1513–15 Dictata.22 It describes the two key components in human psychology for Luther in this early period, and it is through these two lenses that the Psalms, in his view, must always be interpreted. It is difficult to state with great certainty the precise source for the term in Luther; affectus and related terms are so common in classical and medieval philosophy and theology that there is unlikely to be just one single source for a theologian as steeped in medieval theological traditions as he was. A few broad points can usefully be made, however. First, Luther’s particular use of the terms intellectus and affectus together derives in part from a long medieval tradition of interpreting Augustine, who in De trinitate developed the famous typology intellectus, voluntas/affectus, and memoria.23 Second, affectus used in a sense not dissimilar to Luther’s appears in Anselm’s De concordia, a text that we know Luther had studied at this point.24 More generally, according to Günther Metzger, it is clear that Luther’s concept of affectus draws more on the Augustinian line of thinking on the subject than the main alternative tradition, the Thomist and Aristotelian one.25 Along those lines, Bernard of Clairvaux is another significant influence, with regular references to him throughout Luther’s corpus.26 Finally, Steven Ozment points out some clear parallels to Gerson on the importance of the “intellect and affections” scheme, and this is another possibly important influence.27 Yet further complexities appear later, with the arrival at Wittenberg in 1518 of Philipp Melanchthon, who with his humanist training brought additional classical resources to bear in his writings on these issues, with evident impact on Luther.28

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For our purposes, what is most significant about the Dictata is that here we see early instances of Luther’s conviction that right motivation and willingness is far more important before God than right action. Commenting on Psalm 1:2—“But his will [voluntas] is in the law of the Lord”—Luther speaks already of the powerlessness of “the law” to “loose [or] bind the will inwardly.”29 What he means by this is that external standards or incentives are not capable of changing the will in itself. This is a major problem for Luther because the will and the affections are particularly important before God: in his view, Christ wants to be served not as a result of violence or compulsion but “willingly [voluntate] and with the mind [animo] and the affections [affectu].”30 Soon after this, Luther provides a definition of voluntas: “Will” here is not taken as in the schools, but it denotes a cheerful and spontaneous readiness . . . and willing good pleasure. This is not in contradistinction to the intellect or the act of will [contra intellec­ tum vel actum voluntatis], but altogether in the sense of the will over all abilities [omnium virium], so that all abilities, all members are willingly and cheerfully in the law of the Lord [volenter sint in lege domini et libenter].31 Although the term affectus does not appear in this quotation, it is clear that what Luther wants to emphasize about voluntas here is its affective inflection, insofar as it properly requires “cheerfulness” and “good pleasure.” What is needed before God is not just the power and compulsion to act but also the free, spontaneous, and affectively felt desire to do so. Later in the Dictata we find an early version of an idea that will prove very important for Luther, namely, the view that the difference between the godly and the ungodly is to be understood primarily in terms of the difference between their respective affections rather than their respective actions or behavior. Commenting on Psalm 94 (95), Luther lists four “affections of the flesh” (affectus carnis): fear, hope, joy, and sadness. The ungodly hope and take joy in “earthly things,” and fear and are sad about divine things; for the godly, by contrast, the objects of these affections are reversed: the godly hope in God and take joy in him, and their fear and sadness is always about earthly things.32 “Godliness” here consists not in

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removing affections but in transforming them and giving them the appropriate object. This idea, as it develops, appears over and over in Luther through the years, and insofar as it can be said that Luther has a teaching on sanctification, it is largely this.33 A final point of interest in the Dictata is the definition of cor that Luther provides in his commentary on Psalm 118 (119):10, “With my whole heart have I sought thee.” In one of the most important statements in early Luther on this subject, he states, “‘The heart’ . . . is the very appetitive power [ipsa potentia appetitiva], namely the will [voluntas], in which love is, as knowledge is in the mind, in the former affection [affec­ tus], in the latter understanding.”34 Of note here once again is the close connection in Luther’s thinking between will, heart, affection, and desire (in this case, appetitus), and the clear statement shortly after that “the heart” is essentially the biblical term for what philosophers and theologians call the affections, just as “the mind” (mens) is the biblical term for intellect.35 Turning to the other major source for Luther’s thought prior to 1517, the Lectures on Romans (1515–16), we find two important further developments. The first is the increasing emphasis on the sinfulness of the human will left to its own devices. The growing conviction of the importance of having the right motivations for good actions turns into an increasing despair about the impossibility of meeting that standard. This idea is already present in the Dictata, as we have seen, but is stated with much more force in the Lectures on Romans. Here is Luther on Romans 3:10, “None is righteous”: “We so rarely analyze ourselves deeply enough to recognize this weakness in our will [voluntatis], or rather, this disease. . . . [T]hose who are truly righteous . . . see that they have an evil will [voluntatem malam] and thus are sinful before God, but also they see that they can never understand fully how deep is the evil of their will and how far it extends.”36 Even “good works” are usually sinful because they are done out of wrong affections, “out of fear of punishment or love for money, glory, or some other material consideration, not willingly and joy­ fully.”37 Luther concludes the section with a mention of the heart, as well as another reference to Psalm 1:2, a crucial verse for him on the will: “None is righteous, because no man of himself is willing to obey the law of God but all are opposed (at least in the heart [saltem corde]) to the will of God, since he alone is righteous ‘whose will [voluntas] is in the law of the Lord’ (Ps. 1:2).”38

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Related to this is the second new development in the Romans lectures: the role of suffering in leading human beings to the place where affections and the will can actually be transformed by the Spirit of God. Of critical importance for Christians is “the suffering of conscience and spirit, wherein all of one’s self-righteousness and wisdom in which people trust are devoured and done away.” Understood this way, we are free to “glory in our sufferings . . . that we might learn that of ourselves and of our own power [it] is impossible [to love God], but that [this love] is a gift of the love which is given by the Holy Spirit.” And love for God, received through this purifying process of suffering, is first and foremost an affection: it is “the purest affection [purissima affectio] toward God and [it] alone makes us right at heart.”39 In this we see early stages of Luther’s theology of the cross.40

The Bondage of the Affections, 1517–1522

By the time of the Disputation Against Scholastic Theology (1517), Luther has begun to speak about the will’s lack of freedom in the specific sorts of terms that will later be employed with such effect in The Bondage of the Will. The point is clear in theses 4–7. 4. It is therefore true that man, being a bad tree [cf. Matt. 7, 12], can only will [velle] and do evil. 5. It is false to state that man’s desire [appetitus] is free to choose between either of two opposites. Indeed, the inclination is not free, but captive [captivus est]. 6. It is false to say that the will [voluntas] can by nature conform to correct precept. 7. As a matter of fact, without the grace of God the will produces an act that is perverse and evil.41 Framed in terms of the decision-making capabilities of the will and the problem of internal “captivity,” what we have here is a more or less fullfledged articulation of the bondage of the will—described also in terms of the unfreedom of human “appetites” or desires. That the bondage of the will is equally a bondage of the affections becomes even more clear later in the disputation. First, the captivity in

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question is not least the inability to produce or control the most important affection of all, love for God (thesis 16).42 Second, theses 65, 67, and 68 describe the bondage of the will in terms of two affections in particular, anger and lust: 65. Outside the grace of God it is indeed impossible not to become angry [irasci ] or lust [concupisci ]. . . . 67. It is by the grace of God that one does not lust or become enraged. 68. Therefore it is impossible to fulfil the law in any way without the grace of God.43 Overall, the captivity of the will, on the one hand, and the inability of the human person to have control over affections like anger, lust, and love, on the other, are all of a piece in this crucial disputation. They are slightly different ways of describing what is ultimately the same human predicament before God. A year later, in the 1518 “Explanation” attached to the Heidelberg Disputation, these ideas are explored further. Here, the insuperability of sinful affections is used as an empirical or experiential argument against Luther’s favorite theological target in medieval scholastic theology, the view that what is required of sinners to be saved is to “do what is in you” (facere quod in se est). Why therefore do we grant that lustful desire [concupiscentiam] is invincible? Do what is in you [Fac quod in te est] and do not lust [non concupisce]. But you cannot do that. Therefore you also do not by nature fulfil the law. . . . Likewise, do what is in you and do not become angry with him who offends you. Do what is in you and do not fear danger. . . . Do what is in you and do not fear death. I ask, what man does not shudder, does not despair, in the face of death?44 Lust, anger, fear: all three are “invincible,” and yet all must be vanquished for a person to be righteous. The overwhelming power of affections like lust, anger, and fear over the will and the inveterate sinfulness of the affections apart from major disruptive intervention from God together

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make up a formal theological description for the human condition as Luther sees it. Human beings are in bondage to their affections. More positively, Christian transformation, too, insofar as it takes place, is best described in terms of the kindling by the Holy Spirit of equally “invincible” godly affections and desires. In Luther’s second major series of lectures on the Psalms, the Operationes in Psalmos, from a section that likely originates in 1519, again he uses Psalm 1:2—“His will [or delight] [voluntas] is in the law of the Lord”45—as a place to talk about the importance of affections and desire in true righteousness. “All human nature does not have this desire [voluntatem], but it must come necessarily from heaven. . . . Moreover, this desire [voluntas] is the pure desire of the heart,” which can be defeated “neither by prosperity nor by adversity.” The understanding of human nature in terms of a bondage of the affections that we see repeatedly in the theological writings in this period has concrete practical consequences for Luther as well. The central argument of the Invocavit sermons, preached in March 1522 in Wittenberg upon his return from the Wartburg to slow the rapid and chaotic process of reform that had gone on in the city during his absence, is grounded first and foremost in Luther’s affective anthropology. Speaking in the second of these sermons about whether and when to abolish the traditional version of the Mass in favor of a reformed version, Luther’s argument is worth quoting at some length. [Abolishing the Mass] should be left to God, and his Word should be allowed to work alone, without our work or interference. Why? Because it is not in my power or hand to fashion the hearts of men as the potter molds the clay and fashion them at my pleasure. I can get not farther than their ears; their hearts I cannot reach. . . . That is God’s work alone, who causes faith to live in the heart. . . . For where the heart is not good, I care nothing at all for the work. . . . [T]he Word should sink into the heart and do its work. . . . So when you have won the heart, you have won the man. . . . And if the hearts and minds of all are agreed and united, abolish [the Mass].46 Here we see several of the themes that have appeared so far in my discussion: first is the assertion that the central and theologically decisive part

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of the human person is “the heart”; second, on key issues of faith and motivation, even a preacher of God’s Word is powerless until God himself intervenes. If the heart is bad, then a good work means nothing, and mere knowledge of the right thing to do, communicated by a preacher, is useless, too; only God can transform hearts through the gift of faith. The consequence is that reform must not proceed any faster than the people of Wittenberg are ready for, because doing the right thing (in this case abolishing the Mass) is no better than doing the wrong thing (keeping the Mass) if the heart and its affections are not in it. Luther’s “heart theology” reaches its most complete and influential form in the “Preface to Romans,” a widely read and influential piece initially published in 1522 in the first printing of Luther’s translation of the New Testament. As usual by now, human powers of will are described as bound and incapable of producing righteousness.47 In a famous passage, Luther goes on to explain the relationship between the law, the Spirit, and good works in this way: No one can satisfy [the law] unless all that you do is done from the bottom of your heart. But such a heart [eyn solchs herz] is given only by God’s Spirit, who fashions a man after the law, so that he acquires a desire for the law in his heart [lust zum gesetz gewynnet von hertzen], doing nothing henceforth out of fear and compulsion but out of a free heart [ freyem herzen]. . . . To fulfil the law, however, is to do its works with pleasure and love [mit lust und lieb], to live a godly and good life of one’s own accord, without the compusion of the law. This pleasure and love for the law is put into the heart by the Holy Spirit, as St Paul says in chapter 5[:5].48 Again we have the centrality of the heart, and again the clear sense that the heart in this case is not just a general term for the inner or basic self but is thoroughly affectively inflected: a truly “free [ freyem] heart” does things out of “pleasure [lust] and love.” The change wrought by faith in the heart, which can only be God’s work, not the work of human powers, is above all an affective one, deeply caught up with feeling and desiring. It is the will that is transformed, but what this looks like is not an abstract freedom, not a theoretical power of choosing, but the kindling of strong new desires and the experience of pleasure at serving God.

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Luther, Erasmus, and Human Nature, 1524–1525

In Luther’s debate with Erasmus over the freedom of the will, the thematic of the bondage of the will as a bondage to sinful affections and desires surfaces many times, but it is noticeably less central to the argument here than in the earlier pieces. This is in part because Erasmus bases his disagreement with Luther largely on one very particular, and rather short, text, Article 36 of the Assertio omnium articulorum of 1520. Although other parts of Luther’s Assertio are full of the same sort of desire-Spiritlaw-heart language we have been seeing,49 this language is relatively sparse in Article 36, which is Luther’s specific defense of the bondage of the will. At the key moment, where Luther talks about that which experience shows is not under our control, he somewhat uncharacteristically uses a series of nonaffective (and vaguer) terms: “our life” (vitam ipsam), “any thought” (cogitationem) of ours, and “our motions and works” (motus nos­ tris et opera).50 As a result, responding to this piece by Luther, at one of the main points in the Diatribe where he refers to Lutheran theology of the affections, Erasmus’s target actually appears to be Melanchthon’s 1521 Loci communes, not anything in Luther.51 The other reason Luther’s affective theology is less central than one might expect in The Bondage of the Will is that Erasmus’s mode of argumentation focuses much more on the general logic of free will (more on this in a moment) than on analyzing empirical human experience of the will, which is Luther’s particular interest. Again and again, Luther argues on empirical grounds that Erasmus’s position is naive and that if he were willing honestly to analyze his own experience he would quickly discover how little power human beings actually have over their own agency and desires: “Ask experience how impervious to dissuasion are those whose affections [affecti ] are set on anything!”52 That said, arguments based on the bondage of the affections do surface at different points in The Bondage of the Will. In one section, Luther glosses the bondage of the will specifically as the inability to have control over whether we “love or hate” (amare et odisse)—in other words, as lack of control over our deepest affections.53 Elsewhere, we find the will’s bondage referred to specifically in terms of inescapably self-oriented desire: “Now, Satan and man, being fallen and abandoned by God, cannot

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will good (that is, things that please God, or that God wills), but are ever turned in the direction of their own desires [Sed sunt in sua desideria con­ versi perpetuo], so that they cannot but seek their own.”54 Further descriptions of the same general anthropological predicament appear elsewhere in the text with reference to some of Luther’s favorite verses on the corruption of the heart and the will (Gen. 6:5, 8:21; Rom. 7; and Gal. 5:16– 25), but again affection and desire language do not feature as centrally as might be expected; Luther refers instead in these cases to a more general “proneness and proclivity to evil” (pronitas aut proclivitas ad malum) in human beings in one place and to the Pauline category of the “flesh” in another.55 Finally, an understanding of will in terms of desire and affection is clearly evident in Luther’s famous argument that affirming that evil is a necessity for sinful human beings (because they cannot do otherwise) is not the same as affirming that they are compelled to sin (that they do not want to but are forced to do it anyway). “Compulsion” would imply overriding the will to force evil, “as though [we] . . . were dragged into it,” when in fact human beings do evil “spontaneously and voluntarily,” in line with their most powerful desires.56 With respect to the earlier approach to issues about the will—which primarily emphasized the insuperability of affection, desire, and the heart, and the close connection between voluntas and the most powerful desires of the heart—the picture we get in The Bondage of the Will is of a broadening of the discussion to address a number of further philosophical and biblical critiques of Luther’s position. Much of the discussion between Luther and Erasmus turns on new questions like the problem of necessity,57 the nature of human moral responsibility,58 the problem of how a good God could predestine some people to damnation,59 and the problem of the existence of divine commands to human beings in the Bible if the will is not free.60 It is these issues, focused on how to understand divine omnipotence in relation to human agency, that have gone on to dominate discussion of Luther’s concept of the bondage of the will in the Christian tradition.61 They are all legitimate issues, of course, and play an important role in The Bondage of the Will, but, as I have shown, they are not the driving force for Luther himself in these discussions. Rather, from 1513 on and especially from 1517, Luther’s concept of the bondage of the will is derived first and foremost from empirical and biblical observations about the insuperability of human affections.

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Luther as Protestant Theologian of the Affections: Some Implications

If the affections and related categories are clearly a deeply important feature of Luther’s anthropology and soteriology from the beginning in the 1513 Dictata through to the influential synthesis the “Preface to Romans,” and make regular appearances later on, why have theologians not always recognized Luther for what he certainly is, one of the great theologians of the affections in the Christian tradition? How can it be that this theologian is also the architect of the strongest and longest-standing critique of affective and charismatic pneumatologies, such that people from Karlstadt to Irvingites to John Wesley to contemporary Pentecostals have continually labored under Luther’s great damning label for such theologies, “enthusiasm” (Schwärmerei )? A complete answer to this question lies beyond the scope of this brief chapter, which has merely sought to demonstrate and underscore the immense importance and centrality of affections and affective categories in Luther’s anthropology from 1513 to 1525. A partial answer would have to do with Luther’s historical encounters with particular “enthusiasts,” who in his experience tended to be deeply naive about human nature and about the possibility of self-deception in human experience of God, and whom he also saw, often correctly, as crypto-Pelagians.62 As I have argued elsewhere, despite the common historical correlation between them, there is no necessary theological connection between a vigorous charismatic and experience-oriented view of the Spirit and a naive or semi-Pelagian anthropology of the Christian.63 One might argue, then, that in observing the early radical reformers Luther made a kind of false inference of causal necessity between their affirmation of subjective pneumatological experience (including emotional experience) and their relative optimism about human powers over sin with the help of the Spirit. Another answer, as I mentioned at the start of this chapter, has to do with the increasing connection for Luther during the 1520s of the work of the Holy Spirit and the verbum externum of biblical preaching and the sacraments. As the Spirit’s effective work becomes more and more closely connected with the Bible and the sacraments in Luther’s thought, empirical experiences of the will become less important.64 Affective experience of the Spirit becomes merely one subcategory under the

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more important category (for Luther) of the efficacy of the external Word whether one feels it or not. The historical and theological implications of recognizing Luther as a theologian of the affections are surprisingly broad. For one, it shows us that the great divides and unresolved tensions in later Protestantism between affectively oriented Pietism and “cold” Protestant confessionalism begin already in Luther himself, as he slowly shifts emphasis from affective anthropology to a pneumatology rigorously connected to the Word. There are basic theological difficulties in reconciling the distrust of human nature implied in justification by faith with pastoral, affective, and experiential sources of that very doctrine in Protestant life and thought, and one way of understanding later Protestant developments is in terms of a series of attempts to square this circle.65 A second implication, toward which I can only gesture here, has to do with influential genealogies of modernity and secularism in recent theology. John Milbank, Catherine Pickstock, and others have articulated the view that Duns Scotus’s turn to “univocal” metaphysics paved the way for the focus on imputation over participation in Protestant soteriology and for a kind of Protestant rationalism of revelation, both of which are in turn stages on a path to secular nihilism.66 The “affective” Luther seen here, who sees imputation-based soteriology as resulting in some real sense in embodied affections and desires, and who constantly sought to ground revelation and doctrine in the reality of felt personal experience, simply does not fit as easily into this narrative as one might expect, even as other aspects of the charge may well hit the mark.67 And third, there is one particularly intriguing question that Luther’s affective anthropology in the period to 1525 raises for later Protestants. In a quirk of history, John Wesley experienced his famous conversion in Aldersgate Street while listening to Martin Luther’s “Preface to Romans.”68 There is, then, an extraordinary connection between the high point of Luther’s affective anthropology in the “Preface to Romans” and the renewal traditions that can trace their history in important ways to that moment in Wesley’s life. So naturally and so forcefully does Luther make his argument about the domination of the will by desire and affection that we must ask, why is it that so many later Pietists and charismatics have consistently observed—and presumably personally experienced—no

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contradiction between their affirmation of the enormous importance of emotional experience in religion and their relatively high view of the role of the will in salvation and in sanctification?69 It was Martin Luther who first theorized a deeply felt “heart religion” in Protestantism, not Wesley or his successors,70 but that “heart religion” was utterly bound up with the bondage of the human will for both salvation or sanctification. Why is it that Wesley, like so many after him, was able to affirm so profoundly Luther’s idea of the centrality of the heart and its desires but at the same time draw such radically different conclusions about the freedom of the will? Notes 1. “Affective Augustinianism” is a term for a trajectory in the history of theology that combines a low view of human nature with a construal of sin and righteousness in primarily affective terms. It stretches from certain texts in middle period Augustine through to Luther and Melanchthon, with a final important example in the mature theology of Thomas Cranmer. See my “The Drama of Agency: Affective Augustinianism and Galatians,” in Galatians and Theology, ed. Mark Elliott, Scott Hafemann, and N. T. Wright (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2014), 335–52; as well as Ashley Null, Thomas Cranmer’s Doctrine of Repentance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 157–212. 2. These are handwritten on the back of the title page of the Wolfenbüttel Psalter. Prior to this we do have some notes from his lectures on Lombard’s Sen­ tences and a few sermons. 3. “The Spirit enlightens the mind [mentem], the affections [affectus] illuminate the intellect, [and] vice versa. Therefore both are required.” Martin Luther, D. Martin Luthers Werke, Kritische Gesamtausgabe (Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1883–), 55.1:2 (henceforth WA followed by volume number); the English can be found in Martin Luther, Luther’s Works (St Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1955– ), 10:3 (henceforth LW followed by volume number). Where possible, English translations in what follows are taken from Luther’s Works, though I often alter the translation where it obscures or overdetermines certain technical terms in the Latin (affectus first and foremost). 4. WA 50:371a; LW 54:321–24. 5. The most important contributions include Karl Heinz zür Mühlen, “Die Affektenlehre im Spätmittelalter und in der Reformationszeit,” in Refor­ matorisches Profil (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1995), 101–22; Bernd Wannenwetsch, “Caritas Fide Formata: ‘Herz und Affekte’ als Schlüssel

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zu ‘Glaube und Liebe,’” Kerygma und Dogma 45 (2000): 205–224; Günther Metzger, Gelebter Glaube: Die Formierung reformatorischen Denkens in Luthers er­ ster Psalmenvorlesung, dargestsellt am Begriff des Affekts (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1964); Günter Bader, Psalterium affectum palaestra: Prolegomena zu einer Theologie des Psalters (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1996); and sections from Birgit Stolt, Martin Luthers Rhetorik des Herzens (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000). For further discussion of Stolt, see note 16. The best book on Luther’s anthropology remains Wilfried Joest’s Ontologie der Person bei Luther (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1967); see esp. 196–232 on affections and the will. 6. A valuable contribution along these lines is Albrecht Beutel’s “Erfahrene Bible: Verständnis und Gebrauch des verbum dei scriptum bei Luther,” in Beutel, Protestantische Konkretionen: Studien zur Kirchengeschichte (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998), 66–103; see also Sebastian Degkwitz, Wort Gottes und Erfahrung: Luthers Erfahrungsbegriff und seine Rezeption im 20. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1998). 7. Ulrich Asendorf, Heiliger Geist und Rechtfertigung (Göttingen: V&R Unipress, 1988), 29. 8. For more on this, see Martin Brecht, Martin Luther: Shaping and Defin­ ing the Reformation, 1521–32, trans. James L. Schaaf (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1990), 167–69, 321, 324; Hans-Michael Müller, Erfahrung und Glaube bei Luther (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs’sche Buchhandlung, 1929), 122–30; Oswald Bayer, Martin Luther’s Theology: A Contemporary Interpretation, trans. Thomas H. Trapp (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008), 246–53; and Simeon Zahl, Pneu­ matology and Theology of the Cross in the Preaching of Christoph Friedrich Blum­ hardt: The Holy Spirit between Wittenberg and Azusa Street (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 2010), 170–83. 9. Theology of the affections in Melanchthon is as significant and influential as it is in Luther. The decisive anthropological category around which much of the theology of the first edition of the Loci communes (1521) revolves is what he calls “the power from which the affections come” (see n. 14). For more on this, see Wannenwetsch, “Caritas”; and zür Mühlen, “Affektenlehre.” Luther’s interest in the affections, especially in the 1519–25 period, is deeply and complexly interwoven with Melanchthon’s. 10. See note 44. 11. WA 3:23; LW 10:23. 12. As Rist notes, Augustine himself often makes a similar conflation of willing with desire and love. See John M. Rist, Augustine: Ancient Thought Bap­ tized (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 176–77, 188. For classical and theological background of the term voluntas, see especially Charles H. Kahn, “Discovering the Will: From Aristotle to Augustine,” in The Question of “Eclecti­

The Bondage of the Affections 201 cism”: Studies in Later Greek Philoosphy, ed. John M. Dillon and A. A. Long (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 234–59; see also Dale Coulter’s chapter in this volume. A further element worthy of exploration elsewhere is the quality of “movement” present in the various desire-related terms. 13. WA 5:33, 46; LW 14:295, 310. 14. Philipp Melanchthon, Melanchthons Werke II.1, ed. Hans Engelland (Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann Verlag, 1952), 9; Wilhelm Pauck, ed., Melanchthon and Bucer, Library of Christian Classics (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress, 1969), 23. 15. “Hanc vim alias voluntatem, alias affectum, alias appetitum nominant” (Melanchthon, Melanchthons Werke II.1, 9). 16. In Martin Luthers Rhetorik des Herzens, Birgit Stolt argues at some length, in parallel with the argument being made here, for the importance of affectivity in Luther’s theology, with a focus on his “rhetoric of the heart.” The burden of her account is to criticize understandings of “the heart” in Luther as a seat of pure emotion, divorced from intellect and understanding. Such a division, she argues, has more to do with the Enlightenment than with Luther, who “subscribed . . . to the anthropology of the Bible,” in which “thinking and feeling live together in the heart and mutually condition one another” (50–51). Despite my sympathies with this account, it is unfortunately flawed in key respects. The problem arises from the fact that Stolt treats Luther’s views of affectivity and “the heart” ahistorically, for example, placing evidence from the very early Dictata super Psalterium (1513–15) directly alongside late pieces like the 1537 “Hauspredigt von den Artickeln des Glaubens” (see 53) and the 1532 lectures on Psalm 51 (56), as if his theology of affections underwent no modifications in the intervening years. As will be shown later in this chapter, the phrase “intellectus et affectus,” so important for Stolt’s account, in fact disappears rapidly after the Dictata, and seems to be the product of a very early period in which Luther was still strongly under the influence of Scholastic theology. Although Stolt is right to say that, broadly speaking, Luther’s concept of the heart continues to include dimensions of both willing and feeling throughout his career (51), and is in this sense “holistic,” the same cannot be said of “intellect” (52). Her observation that faith for Luther has both cognitive and affective content (55)—an accurate point, so far as it goes—does not by any means exhaust Luther’s engagement with rational intellection and “thinking,” and the chief conceptual weakness in her account is this conflation of cognitive factors of any kind with the formal category “intellect.” Indeed, as we shall see, one of the most important features of Luther’s affective theology from 1517 to 1525 is his use of the “rhetoric of the heart,” including language of desire and affection, precisely as a foil for human capacities of reasoning and intellection (see, e.g., theses 5 and 6 of the Disputation Against Scholastic Theology [WA 1:224; LW 31:9], as well as the explicit Luther-approved

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summary of human nature, noted above, in Melanchthon’s 1521 Loci communes in terms of a contrast between affective and rational human powers). In this respect it is not at all correct to state that in Luther’s theology as a whole “affectus is just as important as intellectus” (60). 17. A good example is in the second Invocavit sermon of 1522: WA 10.3:13c–20c; LW 51:75–78. 18. See e.g., WA 5:35 (LW 14:297) and WA 18:504 (LW 14:171). 19. WA 4:308; LW 11:418. See also the “Explanation” of the Heidelberg Disputation, where he explains that “the heart” in Psalm 81:12 is “in every way his will outside of grace” (At cor suum est etiam quaecunque voluntas hominis extra gratiam). WA 1:372; LW 31:66. 20. “Quod nos voluntatem scriptura fere cor nuncupat.” From a 1522 revision of this part of the 1521 Loci communes text, which can be found in G. L. Plitt and D. Th. Kolde, eds., Die Loci Communes Philipp Melanchthons in Ihrer Urgestalt, 3rd ed. (Leipzig: A. Deichert’sche Verlag, 1900), 77. For a further example in Luther, see the elision of “heart” and “will” in WA 1:366; LW 31:59. 21. WA 10.3:349; LW 14:113. 22. Metzger, Gelebter Glaube, 71. 23. Augustine, De trinitate, Book 10, chapter 4. Although much of Luther’s in-depth study of Augustine took place later, Luther was familiar at this stage with Augustine’s tripartite typology in De trinitate, and there are five references to it in the Dictata (see Metzger, Gelebter Glaube, 23 n. 42). 24. Metzger, Gelebter Glaube, 28. 25. For an extended discussion of the background to Luther’s understanding of affectus here, see Metzger, Gelebter Glaube, 15–53. 26. See Franz Posset, Pater Bernhardus: Martin Luther and Bernard of Clair­ vaux (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 2000). 27. Steven E. Ozment, Homo Spiritualis (Leiden: Brill, 1969), 112. 28. See especially Michael B. Aune, “To Move the Heart”: Rhetoric and Ritual in the Theology of Philip Melanchthon (San Francisco: Christian Universities Press, 1995), chaps. 1–3; and Wilhelm Maurer, Der junge Melanchthon zwischen Humanismus und Reformation. Band 2: Der Theologe (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1969), 9–67. Cicero is usually held to be an important influence, along with Augustine and, to a lesser degree, Erasmus. 29. WA 3:17; LW 10:13. 30. WA 3:17; LW 10:14. 31. WA 3:30; LW 10:32. 32. WA 4:102; LW 11:253–54. 33. Another excellent example can be found in the later Lectures on Romans. Speaking of those who have been conformed to God’s will, Luther says that “that which to others is the greatest horror is to them the highest joy. . . . For wherever

The Bondage of the Affections 203 there is this will [voluntas], there will be neither sorrow nor dread but rather the fulfillment of what one has longed for and wanted [optatum desiderati et voliti] and the quiet acquisition of one’s desire [quietae acquisitio cupiti ].” WA 56:365; LW 25:354–55. Emphasis added. 34. WA 4:308; LW 11:418. 35. “Cor autem est ipsa potentia appetitiva, voluntas scilicet, in qua est amor, sicut in mente cognitio: ibi affectus, hic intellectus.” WA 4:308; LW 11:418. 36. WA 56:235; LW 25:220–21. 37. WA 56:235; LW 25:220. Emphasis added. 38. WA 56:237; LW 25:222–23. 39. “‘Charitas Dei,’ quae est purissima affectio in Deum, Quae sola facit rectos corde.” WA 56:306; LW 25:293. 40. See also the slightly later discussion of the experience of suffering in the Operationes, WA 5:497. Also to be noted in the Lectures on Romans is the explosion of references to Augustine’s anti-Pelagian writings; in the Dictata, references are almost exclusively to the Confessions and the Ennarationes in Psalmos. 41. WA 1:224; LW 31:9. 42. WA 1:224; LW 31:10. 43. WA 1:227; LW 31:14. The subtext here for Luther is most likely the discussion of lust and anger in the Sermon on the Mount. 44. WA 1:374; LW 31:69. 45. That Luther might translate voluntas here in terms of delight or desire, as in modern translations, rather than will, is indicated (though not proven) by his German translation of the same Psalm from 1523, where the noun Lust is used rather than Wille (“Sondern hatt seyne lust am gesetz des herrn”; WA DB [“Deutsche Bibel”] 1:453). 46. WA 10.3:15c; LW 51:76. 47. WA DB 7:10, 12; LW 35:371. 48. WA DB 7:4, 6; LW 35:367–68. Justus Jonas’s 1523 Latin translation of this preface retains and expands the affective language here. 49. See e.g., Art. 2, WA 7:103–110, esp. 103–4, 108, 110. 50. WA 7:145; the best English translation of Luther’s Article 36 is in Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 76 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), 301–10 (306) (henceforth CWE ). Erasmus takes up this terminology of “motions”—which goes back to classical philosophy and which plays a role in Augustine—to describe how “the motions of the mind [animi motus] to evil can be overcome” (CWE 76:33–34). Luther then replies that that the term is problematically vague and that Erasmus’s assertion is wrong in any case because only the Spirit can affect such things. See WA 18:676; Martin Luther, The Bondage

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of the Will, trans. J. I. Packer and O. R. Johnston (Grand Rapids, MI: Fleming Revell, 1957), 157 (henceforth BW ). 51. “And so, if anyone maintains that the highest powers of human nature are nothing but flesh, that is, evil inclinations, I will gladly agree—if he can demonstrate his assertion with proofs from Holy Scripture!” (CWE 76:61). Cf. Luther’s response, which identifies Melanchthon as Erasmus’s target, in WA 18:740. 52. WA 18:634; BW 103. See also WA 18:644 (BW 114)—“men are different when occupied with words and disputations from what they are when occupied with what they actually feel and do [affectibus et operibus]”—and WA 18:618 (BW 83). 53. WA 18:664; BW 140. 54. WA 18:709–10; BW 204–5. 55. See WA 18:736 (BW 242–43); WA 18:783 (BW 313). 56. WA 18:634; BW 102–3. 57. WA 18:614–38; BW 79–104. 58. E.g., WA 18:696–99; BW 185–89. 59. E.g., WA 18:729–31; BW 232–35. 60. E.g., WA 18:673–74; BW 151–53. 61. On Luther’s later ambivalence about determinism and necessity language, see Robert Kolb, Bound Choice, Election, and Wittenberg Theological Method: From Martin Luther to the Formula of Concord (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005), 26–28, 52–55. 62. See LW 40:90. 63. Zahl, Pneumatology, 104–7. 64. See note 8 above. 65. Jonathan Edwards’s eighteenth-century discussions of religious affections are a case in point, as are the many debates about “enthusiasm” in British Protestantism in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. 66. See especially John Milbank, “Knowledge: The Theological Critique of Philosophy in Hamann and Jacobi,” in Radical Orthodoxy: A New Theology, ed. John Milbank, Catherine Pickstock, and Graham Ward (London: Routledge 1999), 23–24; John Milbank, “Alternative Protestantism: Radical Orthodoxy and the Reformed Tradition,” in Radical Orthodoxy and the Reformed Tradition, ed. James K. A. Smith and James H. Olthuis (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2005), 27–33; and, on the implications of univocity in general, Catherine Pickstock, “Duns Scotus: His Historical and Contemporary Significance,” Mod­ ern Theology 21, no. 4 (2005): 554–56. Milbank is somewhat sensitive to Luther not being simply a “nominalist” but views Luther as ultimately failing to escape its gravitational pull.

The Bondage of the Affections 205 67. For an expanded version of this argument with detailed engagement with Milbank and Pickstock, see Simeon Zahl, “On the Affective Salience of Doctrines,” Modern Theology 31, no. 3 (2015): 434–43. 68. Elizabeth Jay, ed., The Journal of John Wesley: A Selection (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 34–35. 69. See, e.g., Steven J. Land, Pentecostal Spirituality (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993), 29–30. 70. On affectivity and Wesleyanism, see the excellent recent study by Phyllis Mack, Heart Religion in the British Enlightenment: Gender and Emotion in Early Methodism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

C H A P T E R

9

“ M OV E M E N T S O F T H E H E A RT ” Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) on Affections

KLAAS BOM

Blaise Pascal is famous for his antirationalist stance.1 His epistemological alternative, lesser known, however, is part of a perspective on human being that entails a positive perception of affections. In this chapter I defend the thesis that, according to Pascal, the affections, touched by union with God through the Holy Spirit, play a central role in unifying human life from the heart. First, I provide some preliminary thoughts that will help navigate Pascal and my argument and then present the evidence that sustains my thesis. Finally, I present my conclusions and briefly explore some consequences for the perspective on Pascal’s understanding of God and humanity.

Before the Affections: Some Preliminary Notes

Since I use less well-known texts of Pascal, let me provide a brief overview of his work.2 Pascal’s public writing began officially at the age of seventeen with the publication of L’Essai sur les coniques and ceased in the early 207

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1660s. He wrote a panoply of texts that can be ordered in thematic groups. The fame he received during his life was for his mathematical and physical publications and his anonymous authoring of the Lettres Provinciales (1656–57). The Lettres Provinciales were part of a cluster of writings directly related to theological debates on grace, like Écrits sur la grâce (1655–56). In addition, Pascal left a collection of spiritual works some of which were partially published in the Pensées, such as the Mystère de Jésus and Mémorial (1654), but not all of them, for example, the Prière pour demander a Dieu le bon usage des maladies (1659).3 He also wrote more general academic works like De l’Esprit géométrique (1655). Finally, Pascal’s correspondence contained writings of great theoretical interest. His letters to Pere Noël and Le Pailleur on the vacuum (1647–48) and the letters he wrote as a spiritual director to Charlotte de Roannez (1656–57) are prime examples. The vast majority of his writings were not published during his lifetime. As Pascal’s most complex work, the Pensées plays a dominant role in the reception of his thought. Often, however, not enough attention is given to the complexity of this work. In fact the Pensées is a posthumous compilation from later editors. It consists of fragments destined for various works, not all of which were intended for the apology of the Christian faith Pascal had in mind. In addition, the text fragments that are related to this apology cover a variety of topics and were only partially placed in a clear order by Pascal. This creates the difficult task of systematically understanding the implications of these fragments. There is a great need to explore his other works in order to come to a more complete understanding of his thought and a more justified interpretation of the Pensées.4 To conclude these notes, just a few remarks on the union with God. Union with God is a theological theme that gives rise to affective language. This is also the case for Pascal’s work in which union plays a crucial role. Both in his spiritual works and correspondence and in the notes for the apology, union with God is construed as the goal of human life. Because of its importance for his thought, I restrict the study of Pascal’s use of affective language to the affections related to union with God. By “union with God,” Pascal always means a union of love and therefore of wills, as opposed to a union of substances.5 This union is in the

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first place an action of God, according to Pascal, and depends completely on grace, without excluding human involvement.6 Union with God in Pascal justifies an orientation on the mystical tradition of the West and encouraged me to make use of the contributions of scholars who studied medieval mysticism in particular. This orientation on the Middle Ages matches a broader insight that the perspectives from medieval philosophy and theology offer fruitful insights for the understanding of seventeenthcentury thought in general. The critical role of medieval thinkers in any analysis of Pascal and his context has been recently confirmed by the impressive study of Simon Icard on the influence of St. Bernard of Clairvaux on Pascal and other authors of the seventeenth century related to Port-Royal.7

Pascal on Affections

“Affection(s)” is a term seldom used by Pascal. Even though the affections play a crucial role in his perspective on human being, he prefers other expressions like mouvements du coeur (movements of the heart) and more specific terms like joy, pain, desire, passion. Sentiment, one of Pascal’s favorite terms, occupies a special place in Pascal’s vocabulary. Because of its particular and broad conceptual content, I italicize this term in this chapter and do not translate it. In the context of the research on affections in medieval mysticism, Piroska Nagy and Damien Boquet identify four basic components of affective language: corporal implications, cognitive disposition, moral evaluation, and orientation toward action.8 The authors deny that these components are all necessary elements of what they call emotions, and therefore I take the freedom to use three of these components to analyze Pascal’s perspective on affections.

Affections and Knowledge

Bernard McGinn’s analysis of medieval and Renaissance mystical thought provides an interesting opening for research on the relation between

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affection and knowledge in Pascal’s work. McGinn argues that the varied positions of the different mystical authors from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries are related to their perspectives on the relation between love and knowledge in the striving for God.9 He formulates four propositions that help to distinguish the positions of the different authors. The last two propositions are of particular interest for understanding the variety of positions he mentions: 3. The love by which we grasp or attain God can be correctly called a form of “knowing” (intelligentia, notitia, intellectus), though not a form of reason (ratio). 4. This form of knowing subsumes the lower aspects of the reasoning process into a higher and transformed state.10 McGinn’s propositions concern love experienced in union with God. From Pascal’s perspective, this is not a human affection since the union with God is a divine gift (although this does not exclude human involvement) and therefore called “la charité.” Pascal clearly states that human being is able to receive this love because of an innate capacity to do so.11 In the context of his apology, however, Pascal underlines the infinite distance between the values and logic of the (natural) spirit and (supernatural) charité: “The infinite distance between body and mind symbolizes the infinitely more infinite distance between mind and charity, because charity is supernatural. . . . The greatness of wisdom, which is nothing if it does not come from God, is not visible to carnal or intellectual people. They are three orders differing in kind.”12 Human logic (of body or reason) cannot reach the order of charity.13 Pascal argues that seen from the perspective of charité, however, the position of the others (in the words of fragment 308, the “carnal and intellectual people”) is understood as true but limited knowledge.14 Therefore, both McGinn’s third and fourth proposition are affirmed by Pascal, which suggests that there is a continuity that can be perceived from the perspective of charity. Although the experience of the divine charité includes knowledge, this does not explain how Pascal interprets the relation between human affections, which are apparently involved in the union, and knowledge. I

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identify three basic terms that are directly related to union with God and are helpful to understand the relation between epistemological and affective language in Pascal: sentiment, certainty, and infallible. To trace the specific use of these terms, I start with the famous text Mémorial.15 Affective language plays an important role in this text, and Pascal uses strong emotional expressions. At the beginning, just after the description of the date and the word Fire, Pascal wrote, “Certainty, certainty, sentiment, joy, peace.”16 The words sentiment and certainty attract attention because Pascal primarily employs them in an epistemological context. This is the case, for example, in De l’Esprit géométrique where he explains that geometrical method is crucial for obtaining certainty. According to Pascal, this method teaches to use clear definitions that explain the references of the words, except for what he calls “mots primitives.” Pascal argues that the relation between these primary words and the significance is so evident that definitions would obfuscate rather than clarify: “The lack of a definition is rather a perfection than a fault, because it is not produced by the murkiness but, on the contrary, by the extreme evidence that is such that it does not need the conviction of demonstrations, because of the certainty in these words.”17 I underscore the fact that Pascal talks here about the “extreme evidence” of the relation between the term and the object that provokes certainty, not about the essence of the things.18 Another epistemological term that appears in relation to union with God is “infallible.” The epistemological use can be found in the De l’Esprit géométrique but Pascal also applies this term in his description of conversion. The Écrits sur la grâce and the eighteenth Lettre Provinciale contain nearly identical text on the working of grace in the heart. The medicinal grace . . . is nothing else than a softness and a delight in the law of God, poured out in the heart by the Holy Spirit[,] . . . and so the free will, charmed by the sweetnesses and the pleasures with which the Holy Spirit inspires it, chooses infallibly the law of God for this only reason that he finds there more satisfaction and that he feels [sent] his beatitude and happiness.19 As with the term “certainty,” “infallible” is an epistemological word that is here employed in combination with the verb sentir and with typical

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Augustinian concepts like delight as part of Pascal’s description of the internal work of the Holy Spirit. The three epistemological terms form part of the affective language concerning union with God. By “certainty,” Pascal affirms the perspicuity, the evidence, and the persuasiveness of the religious experience of union with God. The term “infallible” designates the effectiveness of the action of God by grace as well as the determination of the human will to accept something as true. In both concepts, epistemological and affective meanings are brought together. Along with sentiment, these terms belong to a semantic field where, according to Pascal’s use, epistemology and affectivity overlap. This overlap is due to the close connection of willing and knowing, as Pascal explained in L’ Art de persuader.20 The function of certainty and sentiment becomes even more pronounced in the notes for the project of an apology.21 This project has a substantial epistemological component, while the question “who is human being and how she can know herself ” is at its heart. Pascal presents an alternative to the skeptical position of the Pyrrhonist, who believes that a human being cannot claim certainty for its knowledge, as well as to the opposite stance of the dogmatist, who claims that a human being can prove the certainty of its knowledge by reason.22 Pascal’s alternative is based on the knowledge of the heart, an immediate knowledge of first principles. These principles include mathematical principles but also knowledge of certain personal acts and knowledge of God.23 This is explained in the dense key fragment 110, where he calls the activity with which the heart can receive this knowledge sentiment. We know the truth not only through our reason but also through our heart. . . . The heart feels [sent] that there are three spatial dimensions and that there is an infinite number series of numbers and reason goes on to demonstrate that there are no two square numbers of which one is double the other. Principles are felt [se sentent], propositions proved and both with certainty, though by different means. According to Pascal, there is certain human knowledge, but not all certain knowledge can be proven by reason because it is the immediate

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knowledge of the heart.24 The knowledge of the heart is also crucial for Pascal’s position on the certain knowledge about human being, because he argues that this knowledge can only be derived from the knowledge of God through Jesus Christ. Therefore, it is exactly this knowledge of God acquired by sentiment, that makes it specifically Christian, as Pascal explains in fragment 449. The Christian’s God does not consist merely of a God who is the author of the mathematical truths and the order of the elements. That is the portions of the heathens and the Epicureans. He does not consist merely of a God who extends his providence of life and property of men so as to grant a happy span of years to those who worship him. That is the portions of the Jews. But the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, the God of the Christians is a God of love and consolation: he is the God who fills the soul and the heart of those whom he possesses: he is a God who makes them sentir [inwardly aware] of their wretchedness and his infinite mercy: who unites himself with them in the depth of their souls: who fills it with humility, joy, confidence and love: who makes them incapable of having another end but him. As in Mémorial, a close connection between union with God, affections (joy, consolations, confidence, love), and sentir is made.25 The apologetic setting underlines the typical Christian characteristic of this cluster of terms. Pascal pretends to come up with an exclusive Christian approach, because it is made possible by the God incarnate.26 What does Pascal’s approach in the notes for the apology contribute to the understanding of sentir, including sentiment, and certainty? The broad employment of sentir shows that its meaning includes sensory awareness, affective participation, and immediate knowing.27 Because it encompasses the affective and the sensory, this immediate knowledge need not be confused with innate knowledge; it is basically axiomatic and experiential knowledge, and Pascal often relates it directly to bodily experiences.28 The use of “certainty” confirms that this term is closely related to the sentiment of the heart. In this context, certainty functions apologetically in opposition to a Pyrrhonian stance. The specific apologetic

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use of certainty, as in the famous fragment on the wager, makes clear that trust and faith are basic attitudes in the process of knowing.29 This underlines the conclusion that certainty marks the connection between knowing and willing. The epistemological terms in Pascal’s language about union with God not only imply the confirmation of the third proposition of McGinn but also explain something important about Pascal’s perspective on affections. According to De l’Esprit géométrique “certain” and “infallible” describe the relationship between the term and its referent, and it appears that these words play a similar role when it comes to their use in relation to union with God. Certainty and infallibility could be called “epistemological affections” that are produced by this union and qualify the knowledge that it brings about. Sentiment and the extended use of the verb sentir seem to play a somewhat different role insofar as they do not qualify but characterize the kind of relation. Union with God must be seen, therefore, as a sentimental relation in the broadest sense of the word. This relation is affectively and epistemologically (and bodily) qualified.

Affections and Morality

According to Susan James, the major tendency in seventeenth-century ethics can be characterized by a “conflict between passion and virtue. An opposition which derives some of its plausibility from the classical identification of virtue with reason to which many seventeenth century writers adhered.”30 However, James warns against a simplified perspective. Especially among Augustinians this strong belief in reason’s strength is absent. She situates Pascal in the camp of Augustinians, explaining his idea that moral principles are received in the heart by faith as an alternative to mainstream thought.31 The opposition between Descartes and Pascal reconstructed by Vincent Carraud makes Pascal’s position even more pronounced. According to Carraud, “Pascal thinks of the good use[,] . . . not the conversion of neutral in good. . . . The domination [maıtrise] of the passions is a Cartesian project.”32 Pascal’s approach “is not about the death of the passions, not even to weaken these, but to flatter the passions. The righteous one flatters [flatte] the passions, he nourishes and uses these.”33

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Carraud argues that Pascal’s ethical aim is neither moderation of the passions nor the search for virtue but “the coexistence of two opposite virtues.”34 On this interpretation, virtue is conceived as unattainable and without substrate or subject. The two “moral infinities” can be compared to two weights of a balance, while the moral agent is searching for an equilibrium.35 In what follows I inquire whether Pascal’s notion of union with God and the moral expressions and affections comprising it confirm this interpretation. In the sixth letter to Charlotte de Roannez, Pascal explains, “These two things are necessary for sanctification, pains and pleasures.” Hence there is a direct relation between those two extremes: “The joy of Christians is mixed with the sadness of having followed other pleasures and the fear of losing this joy by the attraction of other pleasures.” This affective tension is the source of the moral attitude of sanctification: “And so we must work incessantly to conserve for us this joy, that moderates our fear and to conserve the fear that conserves our joy.”36 Pascal’s starting point here is the heart: “not the austerities of the body nor the agitations of the spirit, but the good movements of the heart.” Charlotte de Roannez receives recommendations on how to relate different affections. The adequate management of affections is based on a certain ranking of them. The small difference between the advice about handling fear and the advice on joy (“to conserve the joy, that moderates our fear and to conserve the fear that conserves our joy”) implies a priority to joy, justified by the perspective of the bienheureux, the saints in heaven.37 The Prière pour demander à Dieu le bon usage des maladies originates from the same spiritual background. The term “use/usage” that Pascal employs refers to the Augustinian distinction between uti and frui, which illuminates his advice on how to manage the affections.38 Uti describes a way of relating to persons and things that has enjoyment with God (frui) as its final aim. Carraud does not relate usage to this particular Augustinian understanding.39 The Prière explains that the attachments of human life have to be understood from and subordinated to the love for God in order to contribute to the (Augustinian) ideal of sainthood.40 The heart is seen as the place of these attachments, where the relationship with God and the world is established.41 The basic belief of Prière closely aligns with that of the sixth letter to Charlotte de Roannez: Christian life is

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characterized by the mixture of suffering and consolation that together contribute to the union with God. In comparison to the letter, however, Prière pays more attention to the positive role of human suffering, which is presented as a special union with the suffering Christ who pleases God. Pascal’s approach of pairing affections appears to find its origin in what he calls the double state of human being, the created and the fallen, as is clarified from the notes to the apology. These two states lead to two opposed philosophical perspectives on human being, a “high” perspective and a “low” one, that seem to be mutually exclusive. In the section on knowledge, I have already explained Pascal’s reconstruction of the debate between the skeptical Pyrrhonists and the dogmatists. The Pyrrhonist defends the misery and the dogmatist insists on the greatness of human knowledge.42 Fragment 398 makes a very important comment here. The philosophers did not prescribe sentiments proportionate to the two states. They inspired impulses [mouvements] of pure greatness, and this is not the state of man. They inspire impulses of pure abasement, and this is not the state of man. There must be sentiments of abasements, prompted not by nature but by penitence, not as a lasting state but as a stage towards greatness. There must be impulses of greatness, prompted not by merit but by grace, and after the stage of abasement has been passed.43 Based on the doctrine of the two states, Pascal refuses an essentialist (“nature”) and absolute (“pure”) approach to the question of human being.44 These false approaches create false affections: those who attempt to grasp human nature are overwhelmed by impulses of greatness or abasement. What is needed, according to Pascal, is both affections at the same time, although not produced by misguided interpretations of human nature but by grace and penitence. Philosophical thought, referring to the Pyrrhonist’s and dogmatist’s stances, as the source of the affections has to be replaced by God’s grace and penitence.45 In fragment 208 Pascal advances this line of thought, explaining the relation between affections and ethical action. First, he explains that the impulses of greatness and abasement lead to two vices, pride and idleness. To cure these vices, Pascal argues, another pair of affections is needed.

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Although he is not explicit about it, the suggestion is that this is done by God through grace. The Christian religion alone has been able to cure these twin vices. . . . Thus, making them whom it justifies tremble and consoling those whom it condemns, it so nicely tempers fear with hope through this dual capacity, common to all men, for grace and sin, that it abases infinitely more than mere reason, but without despair, and infinitely more exaltation than natural pride but without puffing us up.46 The effect of the Christian religion is presented as spiritual therapy in which false impulses and the vices produced by the wrong understanding of human nature are healed.47 This cure, however, does not mean that the duplicity of the affections can be overcome in this life. The double state is part of the human condition on earth. Pascal further relates his position on the twin states of human being to a dual capacity: “through this dual capacity, common to all men, for grace and sin.” It is exactly this double capability that makes moral choice possible. It is grace that makes the difference, because it frees humans from the need to sin. The double affections therefore represent the possibility of moral action. This does not lead to a neutral position between good and evil, as Pascal argues in the Écrits sur la grâce, but into the prevalence of grace.48 In fragment 208 this is reflected by the dominance of the affections of joy and greatness. To avoid misunderstanding, this does not mean that sinning has to be related exclusively to the affection of fear or abasement. Sin is the result of acting upon just one affection. Pascal’s logic on this takes a next step when he writes on praiseworthy attitudes. The nineteenth of the Lettres Provinciales, which marks the end of the operation of these public letters, gives a nice example of this. One of Pascal’s strategies in the Lettres Provinciales is to reveal the moral dimension of what is said to be a theological controversy about grace. The hilarious descriptions of the casuistry of the Jesuits in the first letters play a role in this attempt. The last three letters were formally directed to P. Annat, confessor of the king and an influential person in those days. In the (incomplete and final) nineteenth letter, Pascal gives a description of

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the state in which he found the leaders of the movement around PortRoyal after the king’s decision and its alarming consequences for them. I have seen them, my father. . . . I found them with piety, composed and unshaken; with distrust of their own and respect for the ecclesiastical authority; with love for peace and tenderness and zeal for truth, with a desire to know and to defend her: with fear for their own infirmity, and regret being exposed to this trial; yet withal, with hope that God will deign to instruct them by his illuminations, and sustain them by his power; and that the grace of J-C, that they sustain and for whose cause they are brought into suffering, will be at once their guide and their support!49 There is no doubt that this presentation confirms Pascal’s position in the debate on grace, where he maintains that God is always the first cause of every good work.50 But this fragment also reveals some important ethical ideals that are closely related to this theological stance. Pascal again uses contrasting affections and attitudes, related to the two states. These men have an unshaken piety but at the same time a distrust and suspicion of themselves that results in a fear of their own infirmity. The other affections explicitly mentioned, love for peace and tenderness and zeal for truth, are presented as virtues. So virtue as such is not completely out of reach, as Carraud suggested. It is striking, however, that human agency left to itself cannot be the base of the virtuous attitude: hence the relation to the self is distrusting. This doesn’t mean that all the agent’s actions, like love and zeal, are criticized or even disqualified, but the agent needs a firmer ground. Only the grace of Jesus Christ can be this source of power. Pascal’s ethical discourse related to union with God is punctuated with affective language. He understands affections as linking beliefs and moral actions. Christian faith presents a double perspective on human being, of creation and fall, that results in two affective movements. The affective balance, when these two affective movements counter one another, presents the characteristic pairing of affections. This implies a double assessment of the (moral) situation, representing the possibility of choice. The two affections stand in a relation similar to the Augustinian uti and frui. Although human agency cannot achieve virtue on its own,

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virtues as such are not impossible because of the restoring and inspiring affections realized by grace. These virtues can be described in affective language, like the love of truth.

Affections and the Body

In this third section the inquiry cannot be limited to the use of Pascal’s affective language related to the body. I will try to answer the question of whether this language presupposes a real bodily engagement. The long Christian tradition of authors who use the language of the inner senses, narrowly related to the issue of affection, show that what is perceived “inside” does not necessarily relate to the bodily senses.51 First, I briefly identify Pascal’s positive evaluation of sensory perception in physical research as well as in theological questions. Second, I take a closer look at the role of the body and its relation to affections in his spiritual works and his notes for the apology. There is no doubt that the body is an important theme in Pascal’s work, particularly in his conception of knowledge. Specifically, the central term sentiment and the extensive use of the verb sentir are related to the body. Pascal’s perspective on the senses and the value of perception has a stable foundation in his physical work. In his correspondence with P. Noël concerning the content of his Expériences nouvelles touchant le vide, Pascal argues that the senses play a crucial role in acquiring empirical knowledge.52 He does not, however, limit the importance of sensory knowledge to the realm of the physical but also claims its crucial role for theology. In the eighteenth Lettre Provincial, he argues that the church must avoid discrediting the senses. Because of Fides ex auditu and the importance of the sensible accidentals of the Eucharist, Pascal is convinced that the role of the senses in faith has to be acknowledged, and therefore scripture and the testimony of the senses have to be reconciled.53 This positive approach to the senses does not ensure a clear bodily engagement in Pascal’s understanding of union with God. In the text of the opuscule Sur la Conversion du Pêcheur, Pascal refers abundantly to the senses.54 The sensory language used, however, is metaphorical and refers to what happens inside, without an indication of the continuity with the external senses.

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There are, however, at least two important themes from Pascal’s life and spiritual work in relation to union with God that cannot be internalized completely: the sacraments and bodily suffering. Concerning the first, there are only a few texts apart from the quoted Lettres Provinciales. The letters to Charlotte de Roannez are very instructive on this point. The sacramental perspective on the world that Pascal develops in the fourth letter gives birth to an interesting view of the senses. Here Pascal argues that all revelations are at the same time veils that hide God. Nature, the scriptures, Incarnation, and the Eucharist reveal and conceal God. He writes, “Let’s pray God that he will let us recognize and serve him in everything. And offer him infinite grace that although he is hidden in everything for the others, he is revealed in everything and in so many ways for us.”55 How this recognition occurs is not explained, but in the case of the Eucharist, for example, Pascal confirms that “recognizing him in the pieces of bread, that is the privilege of the Catholics.”56 Referring to Christ’s real presence, Pascal implies that the meaning of “sacramental” is neither the same as “metaphorical” nor the same as “analogical.”57 Without real presence, there is no communion. Therefore, sight but also taste and touch are crucial, which is not to say that these senses “observe” this real presence in the most literary meaning but that the bodily senses are included to receive Christ. In a somewhat different way, the perception of God in nature presupposes the involvement of the bodily eyes because it is all about seeing the Invisible in the visible.58 Besides this sacramental perspective on the world, Pascal elaborates another aspect of the broader symbolism of Roman Catholicism. In the Wager argument, Pascal clarifies that these symbols constitute instruments to prepare someone for Christian faith: “You want to be cured from unbelief and ask for remedy: learn from those who were once bound like you and who now wager all they have. . . . They behaved just if they did believe, taking holy water, having masses said and so on. That will make you believe quite naturally and will make you more docile.”59 The word Pascal uses for “will make docile,” abêtira, is a strong expression that means “to blunt” and contains the word bête, animal. It is a strategy to lower human (intellectual) pretentions by installing new habits and thus giving priority to the body. Together, these customs constitute habituation that is called by Pascal the “automaton.” The automaton can influ-

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ence human thought and create another attitude and thus an alternative credibility. Pascal connects the automaton with sentiment, and the suggestion is that the automaton also produces sentiments, referring to the immediate knowledge that is directly related to the affective.60 Bodily suffering and illness offer a specific insight into Pascal’s thought on the relation between union with God and the human body. It represents an important and biographical issue in Pascal’s work. Not only his letters to his family but also his spiritual works testify to his bodily suffering and the process of its right understanding. That is one of the reasons Pascal focuses on the suffering Christ. Le mystère de Jésus, a meditation on Christ in Gethsemane, is a fine expression of this awareness: “I must add my wounds to his and join myself to him and he will save me in saving himself.”61 And further on even more explicitly: “It seems to me that Jesus only allowed his wounds to be touched after his resurrection. Noli me tangere. We must only share [unir] in his sufferings.”62 Here, touch is the immediate contact and union with Christ that is possible through human suffering. This is not just a metaphorical understanding of touching the wounds of Christ. Hence the understanding of this touch is directly related to his own, physical suffering. As in the Eucharist, there is a kind of transformation: in the union his suffering is transformed in Christ’s wounds. Pascal expresses this more explicitly in Prière.63 Grant then, Lord, that such as I am I may conform myself to thy will; and that being sick as I am, I may glorify thee in my sufferings. . . . It was by the tokens of thy sufferings that thou wert recognized by thy disciples; and it is by sufferings also that thou wilt recognize thy disciples. . . . Grant that mine may become thine. Unite me to thee; fill me with thyself and with thy Holy Spirit. Enter into my heart and soul, to bear in them my sufferings, and to continue to endure in me what remains to thee to suffer of thy passion, that thou mayest complete in thy members even the perfect consummation of thy body, so that being full of thee, it may no longer be that I live and suffer, but that it may be thou that livest and sufferest in me, O my Saviour!64 The union is not only being filled with the Holy Spirit, which would justify a metaphorical understanding, but in the first place being filled “with

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thyself [that is Christ],” which underlines the importance of corporal involvement. The spiritual union is made possible by a bodily engagement. Pascal implies that the bodily experience of suffering is a capacity to receive God and to be united with God in Christ. This is in accordance with Pascal’s perspective on human greatness, which is not about inherent or innate qualities or abilities but the capacity to receive grace. Apart from the bodily involvement of the senses, Pascal refers also to bodily expressions of affections provoked by union with God, although not very often. The “tears of joy” of Mémorial are probably the most well known. Affections are indications of arriving at a specific interpretation of (bodily) experiences. Pascal concludes, for example, that suffering without consolation is a non-Christian experience.65 That is why the consolation received in union with God is such a desired affection for a Christian. The consoling presence of God makes the experience of bodily suffering a revelation of the complete joy in God that awaits the wayfarer. Because the Christian God is sensible au coeur the affections of the heart reveal God’s presence and guide Christian life. This hermeneutical function of the affections is narrowly related to the body, because the affections accompany sensory awareness and together lead to an interpretation of the world. As became clear in the beginning of this section, the “mixed feelings,” or double affections, make a specific Christian interpretation possible. Therefore, bodily pain needs consolation; in Mémorial joy-untiltears is directly followed by the confession of sin. The double affections are the signs of the hidden presence of God. 66

Conclusion: The Affections and Pascal’s Perspective on God and Human Being

The conclusions of the sections above provide the argument for the coherence of Pascal’s thought on affections related to union with God and what flows from that union. First, Pascal’s understanding of God is fundamental. The famous expression of Mémorial, “God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of philosophers and scholars,” is a reference to what Pascal perceives as the specific Christian understanding of God. In

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the context of his apologetics, this is even more explicit: God is sensible au coeur.67 Pascal’s perspective is trinitarian, and it is about the God who wants to unite in love (charité ) with humanity. The Incarnation plays a central role: Jesus Christ makes the union between God and humanity not only a revealed reality by his two natures but also a real possibility for humanity through the redemption he offers. Pascal’s understanding of this union of God and humanity is partly transmitted through his ideas on grace, especially the redemptive and efficacious grace of Jesus Christ. Union with God is in the first place a personal union with Christ in which his body facilitates the bodily engagement of human being. The realization of union with God through grace, however, initially occurs by the Holy Spirit. Although the whole Trinity is involved and the perspective is Christ centered, the decisive awareness of God is realized by the Spirit, provoking directly sweetness, joy, certainty, and consolation but also indirectly pain, grief, and repentance in the human heart. These affections are human reactions to the Spirit’s action. Second, union with God is realized in the human heart. The affections appear to exercise a very important function of the heart, linking the different capacities and functions of human life. This chapter shows that with the overlap in his epistemological and affective vocabulary, Pascal establishes a connection between knowing and willing. The affections in Pascal’s thought on morality appear to have a similar function, linking a certain understanding or worldview to moral acts. Third and finally, I have argued that Pascal used affections to link bodily awareness and sensorial knowledge with the interpretation of the world. In all three areas of inquiry, the affections serve to connect two different functions of human being. Although Pascal makes use of the traditional faculties approach, he does not think of these faculties as separate parts of human being.68 It is exactly the function of affections to connect these functions. The heart is therefore the “place” where these connections are made. Focusing on the heart allows Pascal to think of humans in holistic terms.69 Although the term “heart” creates the possibility of wholeness of human being, it does not affirm the reality of human integration. Pascal’s perspective on the human heart flows out of his understanding of union with God. There is no unification of human being, if this union

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is missing.70 Only union with God produces the right affections that will lead to the real integration of human being. In other words, without God’s uniting presence, humans lack coherence.71 Affections are traditionally seen as belonging to will, and this is still the case for Pascal. As a function of the human heart, however, the affections occupy a mediating position between the three main areas of human life.72 The central function of the affections is therefore an expression of the central role of will in Pascal’s understanding of humanity. This reflects his understanding of “the Christian’s God.” When the affective touch is mentioned as a distinctive characteristic of the God of love, the affections, as immediate effects of this touch, become the conduits of the unifying power of grace.

Notes I wish to express my gratitude to the editors of this volume for their suggestions on improving this text and to Andrew Hudson for his help. 1. For more on Pascal’s antirationalism, see my article “Heart and Reason: Using Pascal to Clarify Smith’s Ambiguity,” Pneuma: Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 34, no. 3 (2012): 345–64. 2. I refer in this chapter to two editions of Pascal’s Oeuvres complètes: the edition of Lafuma (see n. 3), abbreviated OC.Laf, followed by page number; and the edition of Jean Mesnard, published in various volumes (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1990– ), abbreviated OC.M, followed by the number of the volume in Roman numerals and the page number. 3. I use the Pensées edition of Luis Lafuma, Blaise Pascal, Oeuvres complètes (Paris: Seuil, 1963), which presents the fragments in a particular order. The revised English version of the Pensées translated by A. J. Krailsheimer (London: Penguin Books, 1995) follows the same order, so the numbers of the fragments correspond. For more about the history of the text of the Pensées, see the introduction to the edition of Pascal’s Pensées by Roger Ariew (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2004). I refer to individual fragments with the abbreviation fr. Le mystère de Jésus is a personal meditation on Jesus in Gethsemane, fr. 919. The text called Mémorial, also included in the Pensées, fr. 913, was found as a piece of parchment sewn into Pascal’s clothing after his death, and it seems that he carried it with him at all times. 4. My position implies a search for the cohesion of and continuity in the whole of Pascal’s work (see fr. 257) and is at odds with the interpretation of

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Vincent Carraud and others, which attempts to identify a substantial change in Pascal’s thought during the last years of his life. For more about this perspective, see Vincent Carraud, “Remarks on the Second Pascalian Anthropology: Thought as Alienation,” Journal of Religion 85, no. 4 (2005): 539–54. 5. For this distinction, see Bernard McGinn, “Love, Knowledge and Mystical Union in Western Christianity: Twelfth to Sixteenth Centuries,” Church History 56 (1987): 7–24, at 14. Union of wills is explicitly mentioned by Pascal, for example, in the letter of October 17, 1651, OC.M II, 852–53; and in the Prière pour demander a Dieu le bon usage des maladies, OC.Laf., 362–65. For a translation into English, see Blaise Pascal, Minor Works, trans. O. W. Wright, vol. 48, part 2, The Harvard Classics, ed. Charles W. Eliot (New York: P. F. Collier and Son, 1910), under “Prayer, to Ask of God the Proper use of Sickness,” www.bartleby.com/48/3/2.html (last accessed April 2013), used here with minor changes. 6. See, e.g., Écrits sur la grâce [Discours sur la possibilité des commandements], OC.M III, 717–65; and my analysis of his stance in De ruimte van het hart: Kennen en willen in de antropologie van Blaise Pascal (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1999), chap. 4, esp. 125–29. 7. Simon Icard, Port-Royal et saint Bernard de Clairvaux (1608–1709): Saint-Cyran, Jansénius, Arnauld, Pascal, Nicole, Angélique de Saint-Jean (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2010). 8. Damien Boquet and Piroska Nagy, “Une histoire des émotions incarnée,” Mediévales 61 (2011): 5–24, at 13. 9. See McGinn, “Love, Knowledge and Mystical Union.” In the thirteenth century there is a related scholastic debate about the relation between philosophy and theology. See, e.g., Antonie Vos, The Philosophy of John Duns Scotus (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006), 511–39. 10. McGinn, “Love, Knowledge and Mystical Union,” 12; original emphasis. On p. 14, McGinn mentions a new understanding of the mystical union during the thirteenth century. The union in the work of St. Bernard, for example, should be characterized as a union of wills (unitas sprititus, 9). However, this new conception is called by McGinn “substantial union” and is similar to the “fusion found in the thought of Plotinus and Proclus.” 11. See Letter to Périer, OC.M II, 857. 12. Fr. 308. 13. See, e.g., Susan James’s interpretation of this fragment: “Reason, the Passions and the Good Life,” in The Cambridge History of Seventeenth Century Philosophy, ed. Daniel Garber and Michael Ayers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 2:1358–91. 14. Pascal developed a kind of perspectivism in the so-called “Raison des Effets,” fr. 80–104, esp. fr. 90.

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15. Pascal doesn’t mention the union with God in Mémorial but makes clear references to it with expressions like “Let me not be cut off from him forever!” 16. See fr. 913. And further on in this text, he concentrates on joy: “Joy, joy joy, tears of joy.” 17. OC.M, III, 401; my translation. 18. See OC.M III, 397: “Ce nest pas que tous les hommes aient la même idée de l’essence des choses que je dis qu’ il est impossible et inutile de definer.” Richard Robinson, in Definition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), 3, defends the interpretation that Pascal’s primary words are innate ideas and argues that his position could be qualified as nominalistic. I argued against both claims in De ruimte van het hart, 21–27. 19. This is the translation of the text found in Écrits sur la grâce; see OC.M III, 795 [13]. 20. In L’Art de persuader Pascal offers a method to persuade someone of the truth of a proposition; see OC.M III, 413–28. In the first part of the text Pascal explains that the two entrances of the human soul, knowledge and willing, are narrowly related. However, this treatise only provides some rules for intellectual persuasion. 21. Infallibility, however, is rarely used in the apologetic discourse by Pascal and always in a traditional, epistemological setting. 22. See, e.g., fr. 131. For the background of this opposition, see Entretien avec Monsieur de Sacy sur Epictète et Montaigne, OC.M III, 76–157. 23. On personal acts, such as being sure that you are not dreaming (see fr. 110 below), and the medieval, Scotistic background of Pascal’s position here, see “Heart and Reason,” 353. 24. See “Heart and Reason”; and more fully, De ruimte van het hart, 11–105. 25. See also other fragments of the Pensées, e.g., 149, 208, and 424. 26. Fr. 449 is Christocentric; the Holy Spirit is not mentioned here. Boquet and Nagy, in “Une histoire des émotions incarnés,” underline the importance of the theology of Incarnation: “La construction culturelle qui relie l’émotion et le corps est déterminée d’une manière particulière dans la civilisation de l’Occident chrétien médiéval, bâtie autour de la religion de l’incarnation de Dieu” (19). 27. Sometimes sentiment can mean “opinion,” “meaning,” or “interpretation”; see, e.g., fr. 260, 265, 274, and 733. 28. See, e.g., fr. 110. 29. See especially the application of certitude and certain(e) in fr. 418, also known as the Wager. 30. James, “Reason, the Passions and the Good Life,” 1359. See for the Stoic influence, especially in France, Jill Kraye, “Conceptions of Moral Phi-

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losophy,” in Garber and Ayers, The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy, 2:1279–1316, esp. 1286–90. Pascal interacts also with Stoics; see Entretien avec M. de Sacy and, as examples, fr.140 and 279. 31. James, “Reason, the Passions and the Good Life,” 1385–91. 32. Vincent Carraud, Pascal: Des connaissances naturelles a l’étude de l’homme (Paris: Vrin, 2007), 205–35, quote on 228–29. Carraud argues that according to Descartes, by self-dominion human being appears to be like God. Pascal, following Jansenius, perceives this dominion as impossible (232). 33. Carraud, Pascal: Des connaissances naturelles, 230. 34. Ibid., 222. 35. Ibid., 222–24. 36. See the sixth letter to Mlle de Roannez, OC.M III, 1040–42. 37. Affections in pairs have an interesting parallel in the medieval distinction in concupiscible acts by Hugh of St. Victor (as understood by Jean de la Rochelle) between the “placentia” (joy, delight) and “displacentia” (pain, etc.). See Simo Knuuttila, “Medieval Theories of the Passions of the Soul,” in Emotions and Choice fom Boethius to Descartes, ed. Henrik Lagerlund and Mikko Yrjönsuuri (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2002), 49–83, at 68. 38. See St. Augustine, De doctrina christiana, I.4.n.4. For more about the influence of St. Augustine on this point, see Philippe Sellier, Pascal et St. Augustin (Paris: Armand Collin, 1970), 152–63. 39. Carraud argues that Pascal’s perception of human being developed from a clear Augustinian understanding into an “existentialist” one. The relation between Pascal’s “use” and the Augustinian uti does not fit in Carraud’s theory on the “second anthropology.” See Carraud, Pascal: Des connaissances naturelles, 235–67; and “Remarks on the Second Pascalian Anthropology.” 40. “Je reconnais, mon Dieu, que mon coeur . . . est plein . . . des attachements du monde. . . . Seigneur, prenez mes affections que le monde avait volées; volez vous-mêmes ce trésor, ou plutôt, reprenez-le.” OC.M Laf., 263, sec. IV. 41. OC.Laf., 363–64, secs. V, VI, VII. 42. See fr. 131 and fr. 127. 43. See also fr. 430. 44. See also fr. 397: “Since [man’s] true nature has been lost, anything can become his nature.” 45. Icard relates the importance of the penitent lifestyle in Port-Royal to the heritage of St. Bernard, Port-Royal et saint Bernard, 255–62. 46. Fr. 208. 47. Pascal uses the concept “grâce medicinal” in Écrits sur la grâce, e.g., OC.M III, 795. 48. See Pascal’s stance in the debate with the “molinistes” about the “indifference,” e.g., OC.M III, 705–6.

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49. See Lettres Provinciales, OC.Laf., 468–69. For the English text, see www.munseys.com/diskone/pletters.htm (last accessed April 2013), used here with minor adaptations. 50. See Écrits sur la grâce, OC.M III, 677–83. 51. Paul Gavrilyuk and Sarah Coakley, eds., The Spiritual Senses: Perceiving God in Western Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). Concerning the relation between bodily and inner senses, see the introduction by the editors, 1–19. They mention on p. 6 the difference between analogical (“described in terms akin to the operation of physical sensation”) and metaphorical (“when no close similarity with the functioning of a physical sensorium is intended”). With the introduction of the term “sacramental” in this section, I underline the involvement of the bodily senses. 52. This correspondence can be found in OC.M II, 513–40 and 559–76, and includes also an important letter to Mr. Pailleur. 53. See Lettres Provinciales, no. 18, OC.Laf., 461–68. 54. OC.Laf., 290–91. 55. OC.M III, 1037. 56. “Mais de le reconnaître sous les espèces de pain, c’est le propre des seuls catholiques.” OC.M III, 1036. 57. See note 51 above. 58. See also Pascal’s use of “la figure” in the notes for the apology, e.g., fr. 265: “Figure includes absence and presence, pleasant and unpleasant.” The double perspective is also applied to the practices of spirituality: “We must combine outside and inside to obtain anything of God” (fr. 944). 59. Fr. 418. 60. Fr. 821. 61. Fr. 919. 62. Fr. 943. 63. For some Christological implications of this perspective, see my chapter “‘U koos het meest met lijden overladen lichaam’: Blaise Pascal over het motief voor de menswording,” in Wat God bewoog mens te worden: Gedachten over de incarnatie, ed. Nico den Bok and Guus Labooy (Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum, 2003), 135–53. 64. OC.Laf., 365. 65. See Prière, OC.Laf. 364; see also Lettres a Roannez, OC.M III, 1042. 66. In this sacramental approach, Pascal comes close to medieval theologians like Bonaventure. 67. Fr. 424 and fr. 449. 68. See also the involvement of knowing and willing in Pascal’s theory of knowledge as explained in my “Heart and Reason.”

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69. The unity of human being was an important theme in the seventeenth century; see, e.g., Descartes’s efforts to unify matter and thought in the pineal gland. For more about the relation between medieval and modern thought on this point, see Peter King, “Why Isn’t the Mind-Body Problem Medieval?,” in Forming the Mind: Essays on the Internal Senses and the Mind/Body Problem from Avicenna to the Medical Enlightenment, ed. Henrik Lagerlund (Dordrecht: Springer, 2007), 187–206. 70. See Pascal’s use of the uncircumcised or hardened heart, for example, in important fragments like fr. 423, 449, 453, 496. 71. See fr. 149. 72. For more about the heart in Pascal, especially in relation to Augustine’s thought, see Sellier, Pascal et Saint Augustin, 107–39.

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“ BU T TO K N OW I T A S WE SHOU’D DO” Enthusiasm, Historicizing of the Charismata, and Cessationism in Enlightenment England

PAU L C . H . L I M

If we look into the History of former Ages, we shall find, that the chief Obstructers of the Blessed Truth have been some of the Learned, and are so still. —Ann Docwra, The Second Part of An Apostate-Conscience (1699)

Writing in 1711, Anthony Ashley Cooper, third Earl of Shaftesbury, aptly encapsulated the geist of the polemical exchanges between various warring factions over true belief and true church, which often inexorably became a debate as to who possessed the true Spirit. The available lexical choice in Augustan England to describe the Spirit’s presence and taking possession of the individual believer to work divine purposes within her was either “inspiration” or “enthusiasm.” So writes Shaftesbury: “For Inspiration is a real feeling of the Divine Presence, and Enthusiasm a false one. 231

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But the Passion they raise is much alike.”1 Therefore, Shaftesbury freely acknowledged the epistemological, ethical, and ecclesial quandary confronting those who sought to adjudicate between true religious phenomena of divine presence and mere pretenses thereof. Appropriating— at least rhetorically—a self-critical epistemic stance (“we must antecedently judg our own Spirit”), Shaftesbury was perhaps throwing a jab at his Episcopal contemporaries or predecessors who were so quick to castigate into the category “enthusiasm” those who did not take the Eucharist from the reestablished Church of England, or those who scoffed at Prayer Book religion. His conclusion was as pithy as it was pungent: “But to know it as we shou’d do, and discern it in its several kinds, both in ourselves, and others; this is the great Work, and by this means alone we can hope to avoid Delusion.”2 “But to know it as we shou’d do” is the epigrammatic guide for this chapter. The Reformation unleashed a powerful vector of pneumatological polemics over who has the Holy Spirit, in addition to the doctrine of justification by faith alone, often regarded as the linchpin of the Protestant Reformation. Yet a crucial corollary was the epistemological quandary of knowing whether your doctrine of justification—whether by faith alone or faith working in love—was right, ergo the pneumatological question. That is, if all salient and salvific knowledge about Christ the Redeemer was predicated on the Spirit’s guidance of the believers into truth, then the soteriological knowledge about how one was justified was inexorably connected with having the Spirit on one’s side. The secondary question from this was, How would you know it, and more crucially, demonstrate it to others that you—and you alone—had the Spirit? This controversy was intensified among the Protestants, primarily because of their insistence on sola scriptura, and precisely because often the claims of the enthusiasts went beyond the interpretive boundaries established by scripture.3 Such was the modality of Luther’s critique of and invective against the “Zwickau prophets,” whom he called “Schwärmer” because they had gone past the point of no return from scripture in their prophetic self-fashioning.4 For Luther and other magisterial Reformers, the term Schwärmer had the connotation of locusts or bees swarming, with inevitably pernicious and baleful effects. Thomas Müntzer, the Anabaptist leader who incited the rebellion at Münster, and others were collec-

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tively known as “enthusiasts” and were often included in the litany of ignominious zealots whose puffing about the Spirit’s possession served as warning signs for the Protestants in seventeenth-century England. This chapter looks at both the critique of enthusiasm from the vantage point of the establishmentarian defenders of the Restoration Church of England, particularly George Hickes, and the Quaker perspectives— both female and male—laid out in response to Hickes’s diatribe. While this dialectic was not simply a matter of power and gender differential, or a mere Troeltschean “church versus sect” typology, it was certainly noticed and appropriated by the polemicists on both sides, thereby serving as a helpful heuristic in our efforts to understand why they fought so viciously over the Spirit of God, whose pictorial representation was that of a dove, signaling peace! We shall see how Hickes’s metacritique of “enthusiasm” developed into a defense of cessationism, which provides an intriguing snapshot of a period in the history of Christianity when the dynamism of the Spirit and affectivity wrought thereby was castigated as demonic, reconfigured, and historicized, thus presaging the advent of Enlightenment modernity in not insignificant ways.5 Further, this chapter provides a crucial link between early modern English intellectual-cum-religious history and historical theology. The former field seldom regards enthusiasm or its historical trajectory as a topos of substantial consideration, whereas the latter does not regard seventeenth-century England as a period in which anything of grand doctrinal significance emerged, in clear contradistinction to, say, the sixteenth century, when the Reformation—both Catholic and Protestant—unleashed a powerful force, simultaneously centrifugal and centripetal.6

The Quaker “Co-optation” of the Holy Spirit and Its Discontents

If there was the Protestant position on the gifts of the Holy Spirit— indeed, there was no such official position—it was multivalent, inherently unstable, and wildly dependent on the individual hermeneutic and experience. English Protestants were no exception; their view on excessive outpouring of the Spirit, and adjudicating between these bewilderingly diverse experiences, often depended on who their polemical interlocutors

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were. Yet, in general, a discernible and solidifying pattern emerged among some moderate Protestants, whether “Anglican or Puritan,” by the midseventeenth century. If the “enthusiastic frenzies” of the Familists, the spiritist excesses of the Ranters, the pneumatological one-upsmanship of the Quakers were the Scylla to be avoided lest an ecclesial shipwreck occur, the Catholic insistence on the perpetuity of miracles and lifting a few notable medieval and early modern figures to official sainthood was the Charybdis.7 Certain religious radicals—such as Abiezer Coppe and the fifth monarchist John Rogers—during the English Civil War and the Interregnum proclaimed that “at certain moments God would enter into direct communication with them,” thereby conferring on them “privileged knowledge by immediate personal revelation.”8 Thus the distance between requiring personal testimonies from the believer’s life—though conforming to the pattern of piety laid out in Scripture—before church membership as evidence of the work of God’s Spirit and the conviction that that selfsame Spirit could speak immediately apart from and even without scripture was not as great as some had imagined. Put differently, as G. F. Nuttall has argued persuasively, the distance between John Owen and the Quakers—their mutual recriminations notwithstanding—was much closer than either of them was from, say, George Hickes or William Sherlock, two redoubtable defenders of the Anglican establishment in the Restoration period.9 Thus for John Rogers, “Experience, we say, proves principles.”10 For Rogers, and other radical Protestants of the mid-seventeenth century, the dynamism of the Spirit was the proof of the religious pudding, and since most Prayer Book religion, indeed much of Protestant religion that did not comport with the emphasis on the immediacy of the Spirit—both access and outpouring—was deemed to be theologically suspect if not bankrupt. Even though Rogers emphasized the priority of “Twin-testimonies,” of the Word and the Spirit, he was quick to aver that the “Single-testimonies,” especially the “Spirit bearing” witness to our soul, was neither “an enthusiastical fancy” nor an “illusion.” This was a “real truth which every Saint” ought to have a “taste of, being inspirations,” which the “Spirit assures . . . by a pleasant irradiation or brightnesse, beaming upon the soule.” This mystical work of the Spirit was, according to

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Rogers, “assurance reall and genuine” without which one’s membership in the City of God was never a certain affair.11 The Quakers were perhaps single-handedly the most vilified, viciously attacked, and derided radical religious group throughout the middle and latter decades of the seventeenth century. The identity of the Quakers is simply impossible to be constructed apart from the shadowy creation of their polemical interlocutors. They were certainly the most redoubtable agents provocateurs, dishing out invectives as well as receiving them; thus in a spate of seventy years between 1650 and 1720, over five hundred treatises, broadsheets, and pamphlets were written against the Quakers.12 Sifting through a plethora of vitriolic caricatures of the Quakers and comparing them to their self-presentations, one notices the juxtaposition of two irreconcilably opposite portraitures. Unavoidably the very same religious phenomenon was interpreted either as enlightenment of the Spirit, leading to the inner light of Christ by the Quakers, or as enthusiasm of spirits other than the Holy Spirit, derailing the delusional Quakers, certainly away from Christ, leaving them inexorably captive to the devil, as judged by their more moderate Puritan polemicists or their Anglican pugilistic others. Replacing the final normative religious authority of scripture with that of the inner light of the Holy Spirit was seen by both Episcopalians and the moderate Puritans as a cheap bastardization of “Real Christianity,” although they, too, agreed on the Spirit being the sine qua non in the Christian life. English Protestants were unequivocal in their common commitment to the role played by the Holy Spirit in making effectual the multifarious peregrinations of the pilgrims’ progress toward the saints’ everlasting rest. The Westminster Confession of Faith (1647) clearly articulated the complementary nature of Word and the Spirit while giving the slight advantage to the Holy Spirit, for it was God the Spirit who authorized the apostles and prophets to be the spokespersons for God. The Supreme Judge, by which all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men, and private spirits, are to be examined, and in whose sentence we are to rest can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scriptures.13

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In other words, it was the Holy Spirit in the scriptures as the “Supreme Judge” who can speak with invincible authority over against conciliar decisions, patristic and medieval writers, private whims and individual musings about God. And yet by anchoring the ultimate authority to the Holy Spirit, the next move in Puritan divinity—as clearly manifested by the Quakers—was to insist that the Spirit within was the same Holy Spirit who authenticated the utterances of the ancient writers, prophetic, apostolic, or otherwise. Mark Knights’s explanation here is apposite: “Once the Bible was no longer the ultimate arbiter of faith, and reliance was placed on the inner light of Christ and conscience, without the guide of a religious community or of a national Church, truth would simply become whatever (possibly misguided) individuals imagined it to be. This would risk placing individual ‘fancy’ and delusion over the word of God.”14 For many Episcopalians and moderate Puritans this was the perfect highway to atheism, something these delusional enthusiasts were apparently blithely unaware of. George Fox and his “Friends,” as they were affectionately called among the coreligionists, started from the cultural and political hinterlands of Cumberland, Lancashire, and Yorkshire in the early 1650s. By 1654, the so-called Quaker invasion led them to London and the southern counties, then to New England, the mid-Atlantic colonies, the Caribbean, even to Malta and Turkey. They did not care whether the ones to whom they would proclaim the advent of the Lord in their hearts were Muslims, Catholic, or Puritans. By 1660, there were some sixty thousand members, and they were most open to the “spiritual authority of women.”15 What threatened both the Puritans, who had power during the Interregnum, and the Restoration Episcopalians about these Quakers was that they claimed to have similar healing powers and miraculous gifts as had Christ and his apostles.16 Furthermore, it was the simultaneous privileging of the Holy Spirit as their unique possession and the demonizing of the existing clergy in Interregnum England as mere “HirelingTeachers” who were bent on duping people with “Superstitious Ceremonies” and “Traditions and Doctrines of Men,” divining for money, as George Fox recounted in his Journal entry about a confrontation between him and a Yorkshire clergyman in 1651.17 Fox was convinced that priestly mediation—whether from a High Church Anglican or a moderate—was

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inimical to true faith. So he recounted his own spiritual epiphany and awakening: These things I did not see by the help of man, nor by the letter, though they were written in the letter, but I saw them in the light of the Lord Jesus Christ, and by his immediate Spirit and power, as did the holy men of God, by whom the Holy Scriptures were written.18 With the expression “immediate Spirit and power,” Fox was linking his epiphanous experience with that of the authors of scripture: an act of extreme spiritual arrogance and impudence in the eyes of the Puritans and Anglicans. As the Quaker movement progressed, their apologetic became more sophisticated in some ways, yet the core of their metacritique of established religion was that it was staid, utterly devoid of the power and prompting of the Holy Spirit. So argued George Whitehead, a highly regarded, thus controversial, Quaker theologian. His recurring theme was that enthusiasm, as Quakerism was known then, was infinitely better than atheism in that at least this enthusiastic preacher did believe in the existence and immediacy of God.19 Far more pungently, in four syllogisms, Whitehead showed that the rabid Restoration critics of the Quakers were much closer to “atheism” than the Quakers themselves. So Whitehead wrote, “Because of this Anti-Enthusiast, his opposing the Immediateness of Divine Light, Teaching, and Illumination of God’s Omnipresence, and his immediate Life in the Soul . . . I therefore conclude him, and all who are of his Opinion, to be therein guilty of Atheism.”20 A leading female Quaker writer, Ann Docwra, also lampooned the bookish learning of the Restoration Church of England clergy as well as some Dissenting ministers for their fear of being free in the Spirit: “But some do say, That these Gifts are ceased now, that are spoken of in that Chapter, and the work of the Ministry is from Books of Learned Men, and not from Enthusiasts, as they call those that Preach extempory [sic] from the Inspiration of the Holy Spirit of God, as all ought to do.”21 Then she offered a further lacerating rebuke of the “legerdemain” of the writers such as Henry More and Meric Cassaubon whose efforts in definitional gerrymandering rendered the term “enthusiasm” as wholly negative, when

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in fact all biblical uses of “enthusiasm” was always positive, adducing Job 32:8 and 2 Timothy 3:16 as scriptural proof.22 All inspiration in scripture was of divine origin, averred Docwra, thus to argue that “there is Fantastical Enthusiasm or Inspiration: That which is Fantastical, is not Real, and they find no such Inspiration mentioned in the Holy Scriptures: I wish that Men would not make themselves wise above what is written.” In this polemical swipe, Docwra accuses her interlocutors as having neither the Spirit nor the requisite scriptural learning!23 As Susan Staves has argued convincingly, the dialectical tension between and the vitriolic fulmination of the Restoration Anglican clergy vis-à-vis radical women writers actually proved how the former group perceived the threat of the “weaker sort” to be a genuine presence both in the public sphere and in the private hearts of the readers and the laity.24 Nuttall asks poignantly why “during the decade 1650–60, the Quakers and the Puritans counted each other their bitterest opponents.”25 Inter alia, three issues separated the Quakers from their Puritan counterparts, such as Richard Baxter and John Owen. The first was whether the Spirit could ever bear witness to the Word beyond scripture. Baxter, Owen, et al. resolutely refused that possibility; the Quakers were in support of that view. The second issue was whether having the same Spirit within the individual heart meant that each person could speak, heal, prophesy, and cast out demons in the same way that the early church did, with the same Holy Spirit. Put differently, it was a question about the repeatability or normativity of the “New Testament dispensation of the Spirit.”26 Third, it had to with the effect of the liberating Spirit on gender and educational distinctions. The Quakers were enthusiastic supporters of women in ministry, whereas neither Owen nor Baxter could be moved to sanction it. Margaret Fell’s Womens Speaking Justified, proved and allowed by the Scriptures (1666) offered an ingenious exegesis of Genesis 3:15 in which God prophesied the enmity between the Serpent and the Woman and their respective “seeds.”27 Thus the best spokespeople for this cosmic battle against Satan was none other than women. Fell proffered an oblique critique—or silencing—of the Pauline text that clearly forbade women’s speaking, which had been the locus classicus of Western Christianity’s rationale for barring female priestly leadership. Furthermore, Fell’s hermeneutical priority was the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, re-

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corded in Acts 2:16–18, which clearly spoke of the daughters and women slaves receiving the gift of prophecy; all Pauline injunctions, which were specific to local issues of liturgical confusion, were secondary.28 Not so with Baxter and Owen. In fact, they both saw women’s prophesying and sermon interruptions as a sign of the collapse of ecclesiastical and social order, thus in desperate need of being brought to a screeching halt. In fact, while vice chancellor at Oxford University during the Interregnum, Owen had two young female Quaker preachers who had ostensibly interrupted a service placed in a cage overnight, whipped, and driven away from the city as vagrants.29 Therefore, for Allison Coudert, “Puritans rejected their own enthusiastic past, which had so much in common with the Quakers.”30 As we shall see in greater detail below, George Hickes cited the Pauline injunction given to the Corinthian church strongly disallowing women to be speaking in the church. Since the Quaker meetinghouses were teeming with women issuing ecstatic utterances, this was a clear sign that they were “Impostors, or Enthusiasts, and blasphemers of the Holy Ghost.”31 Pace such Spirit-less, austere, and patriarchal aridity, Rebecca Travers and other Quaker women were convinced of the immediacy and superiority of the Spirit who could not be contained by “ink and paper, or words,” which the “worst of men” or even the “Devil may read or talk of.” In contradistinction, their putative enthusiasm was predicated on the “spirit, life, and power.”32 Adrian Johns, in his influential Nature of the Book, argued that the “debate over enthusiasm was a debate over the political and personal ramifications of reading.” Yet when we look at the narratival arc of many of the Quakers and other enthusiasts of the period, one can see that it was in fact instead of reading, the undeniable “advent of Christ” in the heart through the Spirit, that triggered the controversy over enthusiasm in the first place, and only secondarily was this a polemical exchange over habits of reading.33 The ability to read was a prerequisite for university degrees, which were corresponding prerequisites for many Puritan ministers. Hickes made a tendentious comment—although unfortunately entirely typical among his Restoration Church of England clergy— excoriating the Quakers for the monopoly on “spiritual worship” in that the Holy Spirit came down on them, and only on them, to move them “to preach and pray by inspiration without any regard to condition, or

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Sex.”34 For Hickes—similar to Baxter and Owen—educational (and perhaps socioeconomic?) and gender background mattered as qualifications for ministry. To this many Quakers had a ready-made biblical answer. Anna Trapnel and George Whitehead, Quakers and Radicals, averred that when the Jewish Sanhedrin threatened Peter and John, forbidding them from preaching, the members of this ruling council were astonished to see that they had been unschooled fishermen and yet had been with Jesus (Acts 4:13). Ironically, about half a century earlier, the Master of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, William Dell, had vociferously cried down the indispensable nature of a university degree for ministerial qualification. So he wrote in his Christ’s Spirit, a Christian’s Strength: if the Holy Spirit “must come into us: all mortal and unstable creatures,” and “whatever else is in us, must go forth. Human reason, and human wisdom and righteousness and power, and knowledge cannot receive the Holy Spirit: but we must be emptied of these, if ever we would receive him.”35 The unction and approval of the Holy Spirit was far more significant than the letters, be they MA or DD, that came after their names. Then in his polemical skirmish with Sydrach Simpson, Dell thundered that “it is only the Inspiration of God, that enables a man to know the things of God, and not a man’s study or Humane Learning.”36 Consequently, for many Quakers, both during the Interregnum and after the Restoration, any ecclesial body that sought to suppress the freedom in and through the Holy Spirit was seen as diabolical and unChristian. Fox thundered that most if not all parish ministers “never heard God’s Voice, nor Christ’s Voice.” Thus it was incumbent on Fox to exhort the people to extricate themselves from all these external trappings of “Religion,” which distract and ultimately damn them; instead, he sedulously directed them to “the Spirit and Grace of God in themselves, and to the Light of Jesus in their own Hearts.”37 For the Quakers, living ancient lives, namely, the primitivist dimension in their theology and praxis, led them directly to espouse a direct link between the pentecostal experience of the first-century church and their own contemporary experiences in the mid-seventeenth century. However, while their Puritan and Anglican interlocutors shared the Quakers’ primitivist impulse, it did not always lead them to establish that the more extraordinary gifts of the Spirit were still

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fully operational. One such staunch defender of cessationism was George Hickes, to whose times and writings we turn presently.

George Hickes’s Anglican Apologetic in Context

While the Restoration, of both monarchy and episcopacy, solved one set of political problems, it opened up a panoply of new issues, many of which had remained unresolved from the Civil War and the Interregnum period (1640–59). One such quagmire focused on how radical religious groups and the corresponding individualistic claimants to—putatively divinely ordained—authority could be dealt with. Charles II and the bishops of the Restoration Church toggled back and forth between religious crackdown policies, often known by the misnomer, Clarendon Code—a draconian series of statutes designed to extirpate dissent—and the more lenient and accommodationist approaches of comprehension, indulgence, and the ultimate resignation to the reality of “Church vs. chapel,” “Establishmentarian Episcopalians vs. Disenfranchised Dissenters.”38 Although attacks on and the corresponding defense of the Restoration Church took on multifarious formats and venues, many Episcopal apologists saw the church as a Noah’s ark seeking to avoid a shipwreck between the Scylla of enthusiastic radical Dissent and the Charybdis of a Jesuitical, surreptitious take-down of Anglican politics and religion. George Hickes (1642–1715) rose to the challenge, parrying the blows of both types of enthusiasts—Quakers and Catholics—while lunging forward to dismantle their causes. Hickes, fastidious and intolerant in religio-political principles, was an extraordinary philologist, antiquarian, and patrologist whose greatest scholarly contributions were Institutiones Grammaticae Anglo-Saxonicae (1689) and Linguarum Veterum Septentrionalium Thesaurus Grammatico-criticus et Archaeologicus (1703– 5).39 Although deservedly enshrined as a stellar consolidator of disparate European critical textual scholarship, Hickes the theologian of the nonjuring Church of England or Hickes the synthesizer of the emerging Protestant doctrine of cessationism—belief that the gifts of healing, miracles, tongues, and prophecy were necessary only as signs of attestation of the authenticity of the apostolic ministry in the first century—is

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not as well known.40 However, as the canon of scripture was completed and the church’s authority firmly established, so reasoned Hickes—following Calvin, John Owen, and other Restoration churchmen—that the Spirit’s nonquotidian manifestation of gifts was no longer necessary. This stance, adhered to by Hickes with great vigilance, was to contravene the historical perspectives espoused by the church—both Eastern Orthodox and Western Catholic—all the way through the Reformation period. Although it will soon be seen by the deists and freethinkers as vestigial elements of the era far more gullible and pliable to ploys of priestcraft and sensation-seeking laity, belief in the continuation of miracles, healing, tongues, and prophecy comprised the foundation of Christian piety in the dawn of the so-called Renaissance and Reformation period. As Philip M. Soergel has recently demonstrated with painstaking details, even within Lutheran Germany, belief in miracles persisted, often used as an anti-Catholic polemical tool as a way of authenticating the true ecclesial identity of the Lutherans. Both Martin Luther and John Knox were seen as prophetic figures, and—more significantly—their prophecies were taken as emblematic of divine pleasure and investiture of these two figures as heralds of God, again, vis-à-vis the truculent heresies of the Catholic Church and the pope.41 Completely convinced that enthusiasm—especially the belief in the continuing nature of direct revelation from God—would present formidable threats to Anglican hegemony, Christian Orthodoxy, and the already vitiated fabric of social order, Hickes preached a sermon at the University of Oxford on July 11, 1680. It was deemed to be entirely apropos as an antidote to the gangrene of festering radical Protestantism; thus it was published, at the request of Thomas Halton, then vice chancellor of Oxford, in less than six months as The Spirit of Enthusiasm Exorcised (1680). Redolent of the typical early modern Anglican sensibilities, Hickes saw the dual threats of Roman Catholicism and radical Puritanism as cut from the same heretical cloth; both were to be assiduously avoided, and the Anglican via media, in its stead, was strenuously defended. Hickes identified the doctrine of immediate revelation as the telos of Quakers’ radically individualized hermeneutic. To buttress his point, Hickes cited Robert Barclay’s Theses Theologicae (1675), which was an influential text, mapping out the maturing contours of Quaker systematic

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divinity.42 It was a short text, but the “Second Proposition” was “Concerning Immediate Revelation.” Since it followed the “True Foundation of Knowledge,” one can see the heightened sense of significance accorded this doctrine by Barclay and other Quakers in Restoration Britain. Barclay et al. were convinced of living “ancient lives,” in the primitive days of Christianity, in which due to the fresh in-breaking of the Spirit, scripture and reason were insufficient modes of checking the validity and veracity of such revelations. Even though Barclay was emphatic in pointing out that these “Divine Inward Revelations” never contradicted the outward testimony of scripture or sound reason, he was equally resolute in maintaining this. Yet from hence it will not follow, that these Divine Revelations are to be subjected to the Examination, either of the outward Testimony of the Scriptures, or of the Natural Reason of Man, as to a more noble or certain Rule or Touchstone: For this Divine Revelation, and Inward Illumination, is that which is evident and clear of it self, forcing by its own evidence and clearness, the Well-disposed Understanding to assent, irresistably moving the same thereunto, even as the common Principles of Natural Truths move and incline the Mind to a Natural assent. . . . And yet it will not follow, according to them, that the Scripture, or sound Reason, should be subjected to the Examination of the Divine Revelations in the Heart.43 If this putatively inviolable and sacrosanct heart of the individual Quaker believer was the authorized site of divine revelation, then Hickes opined it made “every private Christian a Pope” since it “utterly overthrows the Authority of Scripture, and makes them an useless rule of Faith.”44 If the fear lurking behind Hickes’s comment about everyman or everywoman becoming a pope was hermeneutical anarchy, his fear of letting everyone “preach and pray by Inspiration, without any regard to Condition or Sex,” was anticlerical pandemonium.45 As Clement Hawes has argued convincingly, behind Hickes’s fear of enthusiasm was “class clashing” and “gender bending” hegemonic “rhetoric of seventeenth-century radical Puritan conflict.”46 In other words, Hickes saw the mantra of “Spiritual ministery” and “spiritual worship,” which was the core of “that blasphemous doctrine

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of the Quakers,” as synonymous with disintegration of the Church of God in the name of emphasizing the freedom in and of the Spirit.47 Similarly, according to a poignantly sardonic text, The Character of a Quaker (1671), Quakers were guilty of obdurately “refusing the Polestar of Gods Word and the Churches Compass.” Inexorably, then, they will “steer by the wandring motion of a treacherous Ignis fatuus within, subject to be blown any way, and often extinguisht by the Hurricanes of Passion.” Furthermore, they reduced scripture to a “mystical Romance,” and here the anonymous author reaches for the jugular: an explicit juxtaposition of Catholics and Quakers while saving the harsher blow for the latter: “the Papist acknowledges but one Pope in the World, the Quaker sets up a Pope in every Individual Breast, to whom all Scripture and Reason must truckle.”48 In a similar fashion, a high Anglican liturgist of considerable repute, Thomas Comber (1645–99), found the Quaker attack on Prayer Book religion as a diabolical affront to the beauty of holiness that God had accommodated to reveal through the liturgy of the Church of England. For Comber, the core of the Quaker problem was simply their “Pretence to Immediate Revelation and Inspiration.” Since these were matters of utmost significance in the life of faith, it “ought not to be claimed without the Greatest Certainty” because the glory of God, the “state and welfare of Humane Societies; The Souls of all,” were all inextricably linked.49 Similar to the previous efforts in heresiography, Comber hearkened to the authority of patristic writers such as Irenaeus of Lyons and Tertullian who wrote against the Valentinians and then lumped the Quakers with the “Anabaptists, Familists[,] . . . the Seekers, Antinomians, Ranters, Dellists, and those other swarms of Locusts in this Kingdom.”50 Comber latched on to the alleged Quaker doctrine of “Perpetual Immediate Inspiration,” which, he was convinced, would end up rendering scripture irrelevant and unnecessary.51 The other aspect was the restorationist impulse popular among the Quaker leaders, namely, that the pure, primitive Christianity had been lost, and they alone were the ones called upon God to restore true Christianity in the latter days.52 Citing Thomas Ellwood, who had argued for a continuationist model of the extraordinary revelation of God through the Holy Spirit, Comber argued that while he owned the apostolic reality of such miraculous divine communications, the Quakers’ insistence of such contempo-

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rary happenings were hardly necessary.53 For both Hickes and Comber, the Quakers believed in the finality of Christ’s revelation through his life, death, and resurrection and the corresponding fixity of Scriptural revelation. Thus, full of cynicism, Comber queries, “Is Inspiration grown so common, that every one must have it? Or is God so Prodigal of Miracles to exceed his regular Dispensations? . . . There are no need of Teachers or Scriptures, if all receive immediate Instructions.”54 That was precisely the crux of the debate. Hickes’s perspective was strikingly similar to the one adhered to by Comber most assiduously. Hickes’s attempt to blunt the sharp fang of Quaker enthusiasm and to destabilize the foundation of Catholic insistence on the normalcy of miracles led him to the pathway of historicizing the Pentecost. Initially the motivation behind Hickes’s text-critical patristic scholarship might not appear to have much harmonic convergence with the critical scholarship of John Toland and other deists. However, as recent scholarship has shown, when looked at vis-à-vis the intellectual currents of late-seventeenth-century Britain, the efforts of Toland and others might equally be seen as an attempt to rediscover and replicate primitive Christianity, shorn of priestcraft, draconian Erastianism, and millennium-long accumulation of unbiblical Christian praxis, which was a tragic result of the “Platonic and Priestly captivity of Primitive Christianity.”55 This effort to historicize the Pentecost led him to espouse the doctrine of cessationism. Indeed, the bulk of Hickes’s sermon was designed to show precisely that: how the charismatic gifts of the Spirit had given way to the Word of God, instructed by the learned clergy. Hickes’s homiletic intent was to show why the various extraordinary spiritual gifts were “given by God to the Primitive Church, and not to the Churches of latter times.”56 According to Hickes, “Impostors on one hand, and Enthusiasts on the other” have proliferated strange divinities so foreign to the sound “use and Authority of the Scriptures,” “the Tradition of the Universal Church,” that true Christianity, which was composed of “Sober and Rational Doctrines,” was in grave danger of giving way to the “most wild, uncertain, and unintelligible institution that ever was in the world.” His hyperbolic arc notwithstanding, a few things stand out that are apposite for our consideration. Consequently, true knowledge regarding the gifts of the Spirit

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was a “most Soveraign Antidote” against the “poison of Enthusiasm,” which was coterminous with “Spiritual drunkenness, or Lunacy of this Schismatical age.”57 Hickes followed Thomas Aquinas’s distinction between “common and special ” gifts, the former being “gratiae gratum facientes” such as the work of the Spirit in the hearts of the Christian: “Faith, Hope, Charity, Purity, Humility.” The latter sort were called “gratiae gratis datae” and included “gift of tongues, power of working miracles, signs and wonders, the spirit of Prophecy.” For Hickes the former set of gifts were indispensable, thus were constitutive elements of what the church needs in all times, as the further formation and sanctification of the “gracious habits of mind.” The latter were “not necessary for the Church” ordinarily but only for cases of special exigency. This was a crucial rhetorical and theological hinge for Hickes; since what was more commonly and pressingly needed was the “common gifts,” they were, in fact, superior and thus to be desired more ardently. Hickes followed John Chrysostom (especially his Homilies on 1 Corinthians) and Augustine (especially his Enarrationes in Psalmos) and clearly articulated that both sets of gifts were truly “Supernatural.” The first set was called Carites and the second Charismata.58 Citing Augustine specifically from Psalm 130:1, Hickes argued that all the spectacular gifts that were being vaunted as proof positive for the advent of the Spirit in these enthusiastic Quakers—and in other cases, the French prophets who will soon cause equal if not greater confusion in late seventeenth-century English society—never made the recipient of these gifts a “better Christian than he was before.”59 In fact, Hickes averred that these gifts could empower and use a number of deeply flawed, and even ultimately damned, individuals pro tem for the glory of God. Balaam was given the spirit of prophecy; Judas Iscariot, the archetypal cursed apostle, had the “Power of working Signs and Wonders” and cast out devils; many figures in the end of the Sermon on the Mount, about whom Jesus said, “I never knew you, depart from me, ye workers of iniquity,” were also endowed with powers to prophesy and do “many wonderful works.” Hickes’s concluding words were as chilling as they were calculated. Therefore they did not sanctifie the nature of the person, on whom they were bestow’d, nor render them in the last more acceptable

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unto God. . . . I say they were . . . not always given to sanctified persons. . . . Miraculous gifts are so far from transforming the sinful nature of man, that if they do not find us, they cannot make us good, nor, like a single act of Faith and Repentance, give us a Title to the Kingdom of God. Then as for their extent, the latter are not useful for all Churches.60 Let us see then how Hickes actually historicizes and frames his cessationist perspective around the gift of prophecy, which was, by the way, his approach for all other gifts as well. First of all, he makes a grandiosely counterintuitive argument that prophecy was not to be understood— pace the conventional lexical range—as the “gift of Prediction, or knowing remote, and future events.” Instead, Hickes’s exegesis of 1 Corinthians 11:4 led him to argue that prophesying was to be interpreted as the gift of “Preaching or expounding the Scriptures by Inspiration.” Ironically, this interpretation of 1 Corinthians 11:4 was precisely the hermeneutical strategy adopted by the Elizabethan Puritans to push for their “Prophesyings,” which was a lengthy service of sermons, a cultural phenomenon also known as “sermon gadding.” Archbishop Edmund Grindal, in or around 1576, had encouraged “Prophesyings” as a way to foster greater godly sociability and enhance spiritual zeal in parish churches. Almost a hundred years later, we find Hickes defending such an interpretation of 1 Corinthians 11 to defend, if not the praxis of prophesyings, certainly not among the Puritans, then at least the exegesis of that Puritan cultural habit.61 Citing from the Targum of Jonathan (known then as “Chaldean Paraphrase”) in which the word “Nebia the Hebrew word for a Prophet” was rendered as “Siphra,” which signified “Teacher, and Interpreter,” Hickes argued that prophecy had been folded into the ordinary preaching ministry. To claim otherwise was invincible proof of a spiritual mountebank. In addition to preaching or exposition of scripture, the word Prophesy was historicized as for “Praising of God by inspired Hymns and Psalms.”62 What is intriguing is that these cultic practices were equally as prevalent as the predictive foretellings of the prophets of the church in Antioch (Acts 13:2); Peter’s predicting of the very imminent death of Annanias and Sapphira (Acts 5:3); Agabus’s foretelling of the impending famine

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and St. Paul’s incarceration (Acts 11:28, 21:10); the writing of St. John’s Revelation; and other predictive prophecies that were fulfilled in Eusebius’s Historia Ecclesiastica (Bk. V, chap. 7; Bk. III, chap. 37).63 The third rubric of understanding “Prophesy” was “Praying . . . in publick Assemblies by Inspired Prayers,” which was quite analogous to the Quaker insistence that the Holy Spirit would “seize upon the Souls of men in publick, and affect them in such an extraordinary way” so that even without a set liturgy they could pray with such efficacy and fervency that “persons not Inspired” simply could not accomplish.64 Here, again, the key hermeneutical and theological Rubicon was whether such praxis, which was happening with regularity, could be expected to be occurring now. For some of the Puritans, including the Quakers, their understanding of “latter day glory” and the desire for the restoration of the primitive church lent credence to their conviction that outpouring and manifestation of the Spirit would result in prayer of inspiration. The issue of counterfeit miracles and deceitful distribution of such gifts was another polemical criterion that Hickes used to destabilize the strength of the “continuationists” such as the Quakers and the Catholics. Just as Satan raised up “Jannes and Jambres” to oppose Moses in miraculous one-upsmanship, so in the “Primitive times of Christianity” Satan had several “Conjurers, and Magicians” who performed signs and wonders, spoke “diverse Languages,” foretold “Plagues and Storms,” exercised clairvoyance, made “fire come down from Heaven; vomit flames,” and levitate, “fly in the air,” and cast out “Devils by a compact with Beelzebub their Sovereign Prince.”65 This was a clever polemical strategy. By emphasizing that there was a plethora of counterfeit and Satanic practice even during the apostolic period, Hickes was creating a genealogy of enthusiastic excesses, which would reach all the way down to his Quaker contemporaries. In the fourth and expanded edition of The Spirit of Enthusiasm Exorcised (1709), Hickes allowed two other treatises to be published with his 1680 sermon: first, The History of Montanism, and second, The New Pretenders to Prophecy Examined. The first treatise established a watertight etiological and heresiological account of how all of this came about in subsequent ecclesiastical history. And in the second, it was simply an explicit linkage between the Quakers as the “faithful” descendants of the Montanists and other putatively Spirit-filled charlatans.

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Just as there were large numbers of Satanic mountebanks, the author of The History of Montanism argued, they were grand predecessors of the Presbyterians in that the Montanists were theocratically oriented and the Quakers were seventeenth-century reincarnations of the Montanists in that their worship also utterly lacked orderliness.66 The author, entirely analogous to his heresiographical contemporaries, was operating out of an egregiously presentist agenda: the past was useful only insofar as it informed the present or the way in which today’s quandaries find their narcissistic reflection in the past. Thus the Presbyterian defiance of Episcopal orders and setting up of a separatist congregation was done by none other than a Montanist. The Montanists’ liturgical pandemonium in the name of the Spirit coming down on individuals, seizing them with bodily agitations and shaking, were never to be restrained; even a bishop in presence could not “interdict” lest he be seen as “quenching the Spirit.”67 Historicism and presentism became the perfectly prepared grist for Hickes’s cessationist mill. He was committed to the idea and thus saw the past only through the lens of what would benefit his agenda (thus presentism); he was also convinced that the emerging text-critical historical scholarship demanded that these religious phenomena, although written in the scriptures, were to be treated as nonrepeatable, discrete units of historical narrative, thus not as a transportable paradigms of world occurrence (thus historicism). Then the obvious outcome was Hickes’s defense of cessationism. For him, all miracles and nonquotidian demonstrations of divine presence, purpose, and power were signs. They had a sacramental function: pointing beyond the sign itself to something greater, namely, the climax of heilsgeschichte in the coming of Christ to defeat the power of the Serpent and his seed. Once (1) the Gospel was preached throughout the Roman Empire, (2) the New Testament scriptures were completed, (3) the Temple worship among the Jews was abolished, (4) the idolatrous cultic praxis of the Gentiles was destroyed, and (5) the implacable enmity between Jews and Gentiles was overcome, then the gifts were rendered irrelevant and unnecessary.68 Consequently, since the preaching in foreign languages—which is how Hickes interpreted the phenomenon of speaking in tongues—was completed and the Gospel had reached the “ends of the earth,” this gift of tongues ceased. Moreover, this gift of tongues was consistently interpreted

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not as ecstatic utterances of gibberish but always as a discernible language. By identifying the primitive church as in its “infant” stage, Hickes legitimated a substantially different hermeneutic of seeing its history. Rather than see it as the apogee of Spirit’s work to which all early modern Christians ought to return (thus primitivism/restorationism), it was a stage from immaturity to maturity. Hickes thus affirms: From whence it is evident, that as the Gospel increased, and the Church grew up, God, like a wise nurse, weakened her by degrees from these miraculous gifts, till at last having arrived at the full stature in Christ, he left her, as Parents leave their children, when they are grown to be men, to subsist without extraordinary helps and supplies.69 As a historically “verifiable” fact, Hickes insisted that as early as the late first or early second century, “Clemens, Polycarp, and Papias,” as well as Justin Martyr, all “pretended to no other way of revelation, or coming to the knowledge of the Christian Religion, than by the word of God.”70 Here is an intriguing mode of historical argumentation employed by Hickes. From the foregoing, he is arguing that even the early church knew no other normative authority than scripture. Combining that “fact” with other ceasing of the narratives of the miraculous circulating in churches, led Hickes and numerous others to conclude that now that the church has reached the point of maturity, it no longer needs these “visual aids” for journeys of faith. Yet perhaps the most striking revision of the way the Spirit worked in the hearts and minds of the Christian emerges as Hickes offers some concluding counsel to the auditors of his sermon (in the first instance) and to the readers of the published version. Hickes argued that miracles “began to grow scarce about the latter end of the Second Century . . . and yet they too ceased about the beginning of the Fifth Century when Idolatry was almost quite extinguished, and when the Church built her Faith not on present but past Miracles, and her Hieroms, Augustins, and Chrysostoms like us were not inspired, but studied Divines.”71 By pitting “studied” against “inspired” divines and clearly privileging the former, Hickes looked down the well of ecclesiastical history and saw a pale, narcissistic reflection of himself and his theology in the Fathers of the

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Church, thereby sealing the doctrine of cessationism and stopping the leakage in Noah’s ark caused by the Quaker enthusiasts. It is interesting here that Hickes does not see the complementarity of both “studied” and “inspired.” Conclusion

The explosive growth of radical religion in seventeenth-century England and the rise of critical Enlightenment religion in the early eighteenth century are not unrelated. In other words, the Quakers and the deists might have had more in common than what meets the eyes of twentyfirst-century beholders. Although establishing an exact etiological linkage might be out of the question, it seems that radicalizing religion brought about a conservative backlash, so much so that Hickes and others ended up adopting a hard-line cessationist view in order to rediscover some semblance of ecclesial Shalom, which could never be achieved so long as the Quakers could continue to offer the type of metacritique of the Church of England, as many were wont to do. Nevertheless, the work of the Spirit—whether perceived by the radical Dissenters, or most vehemently repudiated by the majoritarian Anglicans, or yet sincerely yet surreptitiously affirmed by a certain methodical branch within the rank-andfile Anglican clergy, following the lead of John Wesley and his brother Charles—continued unabated. Shaftesbury and Hume alike did their best to reframe the language of the spirit, whether in an affective “sense” or as some energy that is fundamentally nonsubstantial, thus inconsequential and untrue, at least judged through the empiricist lens. Reframed or gerrymandered, all subsequent debates on the work of the Holy Spirit did have to wrestle with the long shadow of Hickes and his coreligionists whose context-specific polemical skirmishes influenced generations of the followers of the Spirit, the giver of tongues and prophecies, whether in the first century or in the latter days. Notes 1. Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury, “A Letter Concerning Enthusiasm, to My Lord *****,” in Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, 3 vols. (1711), 1:53. All emphases are original unless indicated otherwise.

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2. Ibid., 1:54. 3. On the connection between sola scriptura and enthusiasm, and other generally related matters, see Michael Heyd, “Be Sober and Reasonable”: The Critique of Enthusiasm in the Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 22. On the religio-political issues surrounding “enthusiasm,” in general, see Phyllis Mack, Visionary Women: Ecstatic Prophecy in Seventeenth-Century England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992); Sarah Apetrei, Women, Feminism and Religion in Early Enlightenment England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 231, 265, 266–68, 276; Mark Knights, The Devil in Disguise: Deception, Delusion, and Fanaticism in the Early English Enlightenment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 82–88, 143–92, 174–76, 186–90, 209–13; Umphrey Lee, The Historical Backgrounds of Early Methodist Enthusiasm (New York: Columbia University Press, 1931); Hillel Schwartz, Knaves, Fools, Madmen, and that Subtle Effluvium: A Study of the Opposition to the French Prophets in England, 1706–1710 (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1978); Isabel Rivers, Reason, Grace, and Sentiment: A Study of the Language of Religion and Ethics in England, 1660–1780, vol. 2: Shaftesbury to Hume (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 143, 148–49, 249, 314, 316–18, 319, 326, 327. Msgr. R. A. Knox’s older account still stands as a port of call for anyone interested in the topic; see his Enthusiasm: A Chapter in the History of Religion: With Special Attention to the XVII and XVIII Centuries (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1950). See also Catherine Wilson, “Enthusiasm and Its Critics: Historical and Modern Perspectives,” History of European Ideas 17 (1993): 461–78; John Morillo, “John Dennis: Enthusiastic Passions, Cultural Memory and Literary Theory,” Eighteenth Century Studies 34 (2000): 21–41; Lawrence E. Klein, “Sociability, Solitude, and Enthusiasm,” in Enthusiasm and Enlightenment in Europe, 1650–1850, ed. Lawrence E. Klein and Anthony J. LaVopa (San Marino, CA: Huntington Library Press, 1998), 153–77. For a superb example of an interdisciplinary approach—history and musicology—pertaining to this theme, see Amanda Eubanks Winkler, “Enthusiasm and Its Discontents: Religion, Prophecy, and Madness in the Music for Sophonisba and The Island Princess,” Journal of Musicology 23 (2006): 307–30. 4. Martin Brecht, Martin Luther: Shaping and Defending the Reformation 1521–1532, trans. James I. Schaaf (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1990), 137– 95; Günther Mühlpfordt, “Luther und die ‘Linken’: Eine Untersuchung seiner Schwärmerterminologie,” in Martin Luther: Leben, Werk, Wirkung, ed. Günther Vogler (Berlin: Academie-Verlag, 1982), 325–45. 5. On the connection between these two oft-underexplored strands, see J. G. A. Pocock, “Enthusiasm: The Antiself of Enlightenment,” Huntington Li-

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brary Quarterly 60 (1997): 7–28; Jane Shaw, Miracles in Enlightenment England (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006). 6. Jon M. Ruthven’s unsurpassed work, both with sufficient historical sensitivity and theological acuity, which deals with this question of cessationism and the charismata, provides a powerful alterative paradigm for both historians of early modern Europe and theologians who still believe that the early modern period might have some heuristic for contemporary theologizing. See his On the Cessation of the Charismata: The Protestant Polemic on Post-Biblical Miracles (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993), 12–28. 7. For the sense of the world spinning out of control during the English Civil War and its religiously radical excesses, see Christopher Hill, World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas during the English Revolution (New York: Viking, 1972); David Como, Blown by the Spirit: Puritanism and the Emergence of an Antinomian Underground in Pre–Civil War England (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004); Ariel Hessayon, “Gold Tried in the Fire”: The Prophet TheaurauJohn Tany and the English Revolution (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007). 8. Adrian Johns, The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 409; see also Nigel Smith, Perfection Proclaimed: Language and Literature in English Radical Religion, 1640– 1660 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989). 9. G. F. Nuttall, The Holy Spirit in Puritan Faith and Experience (Oxford: Blackwell, 1946). 10. John Rogers, Ohel or Beth-shemesh: A Tabernacle for the Sun, or, Irenicum Evangelicum: An Idea of Church-discipline in the Theorick and Practick parts (1653), 355. 11. Ibid., 373. 12. Joseph Smith, Bibliotheca Anti-Quakeriana (London, 1873); see www .qhpress/org./cgi-bin/antiq.html for an extensive listing of anti-Quaker publications. See Mark Knights, The Devil in Disguise: Deception, Delusion, and Fanaticism in Early English Enlightenment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 77. 13. The Humble Advice of the Assembly of Divines, Now by Authority of Parliament sitting at Westminster, concerning a Confession of Faith (1646), 6. 14. Knights, Devil in Disguise, 79. 15. Phyllis Mack, Visionary Women: Ecstatic Prophecy in Seventeenth-Century England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 1. 16. Allison Coudert, “Henry More, Kabbalah, and Quakers,” in Philosophy, Science, and Religion in England, 1640–1700, ed. Richard Kroll, Richard Ashcraft, and Perez Zagorin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 46–47. 17. George Fox, A Journal, or Historical Account of the Life, Travels, Sufferings, Christian Experiences and Labour of . . . George Fox, 2 vols. (1709), 1:123.

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18. Ibid., 1:61. 19. George Whitehead, Enthusiasm above Atheism, or, Divine Inspiration and Immediate Illumination (by God Himself ) asserted and the children of light vindicated (1674). 20. Ibid., 17. 21. Ann Docwra, The Second Part of An Apostate-Conscience Exposed (1700), 39. 22. Henry More, Enthusiasmus Triumphatus, or, a Discourse of the Nature, Cause, Kinds, and Cure, of Enthusiasme (1656); Meric Casaubon, A Treatise concerning Enthusiasme, As it is an Effect of Nature: but is mistaken by many for either Divine Inspiration, or Diabolical Possession (1655). For both More and Casaubon, see Heyd, “Be Sober and Reasonable,” 72–108. 23. Docwra, Second Part, 40. 24. Susan Staves, “Church of England Clergy and Women Writers,” in Reconsidering the Bluestockings, ed. Nicole Pohl and Betty A. Schellenberg (San Marino, CA: Huntington Library Press, 2003), 81–103. 25. G. F. Nuttall, The Holy Spirit in Puritan Faith and Experience (Oxford: Blackwell, 1946), 151. 26. Ibid., 156. 27. Margaret Fell, Womens Speaking Justified, proved and allowed by the Scriptures (London, 1666), 5. 28. Ibid., 8. On Fell, see Mack, Visionary Women, 40, 129, 139–40, 153, 155–56, 183, 216, 302–3; Apetrei, Women, Feminism and Religion, 17, 35, 152, 174, 237, 265. 29. See William Orme, “Memoirs of Dr. Owen,” in The Works of John Owen, D.D., ed. Thomas Russell, vol. 1 (1826), 146–47. 30. Coudert, “Henry More,” 57. 31. Hickes, Enthusiasm Exorcised, 40–41. 32. Rebecca Travers, For Those that Meet to Worship at the Steeplehouse, Called John Evangelist in London (1659), 8. 33. Adrian Johns, Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 408–28. 34. George Hickes, The Spirit of Enthusiasm Exorcised. In a Sermon Preached before the University of Oxford, on Act-Sunday, July 11. 1680 (1680), 40; emphasis added (cited hereafter as Hickes, Enthusiasm Exorcised ). 35. William Dell, Christ’s Spirit, A Christian’s Strength (1651), 33, 36–37. 36. Dell, A Plain and Necessary Confutation of Divers Gross and Antichristian Errors (1654), 37. 37. Fox, Journal, 1:123.

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38. See Nicholas Tyacke, “The ‘Rise of Puritanism’ and the Legalizing of Dissent, 1571–1719,” in From Persecution to Toleration: The Glorious Revolution and Religion in England, ed. Ole Peter Grell, J. I. Israel, and Nicholas Tyacke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 17–49; John Spurr, “From Puritanism to Dissent, 1660–1700,” in The Culture of English Puritanism, 1560–1700, ed. Jacqueline Eales and Christopher Durston (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998), 234–65. 39. For a helpful historical background to Hickes’s work as a linguist and grammarian, see Introduction to A Chorus of Grammars: The Correspondence of George Hickes and His Collaborators on the Thesaurus Linguarum Septentrionalium, ed. Richard L. Harris (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1992), 3–126. 40. Jon Mark Ruthven’s On the Cessation of the Charismata: The Protestant Polemic on Post-Biblical Miracles (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993), although its scope is more focused on B. B. Warfield’s cessationist perspectives, is still quite useful in providing a lucid historical narrative of this doctrine from Calvin until Warfield. 41. See Philip M. Soergel, Miracles and the Protestant Imagination: The Evangelical Wonder Book in Reformation Germany (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). 42. Robert Barclay, Theses Theologicae: or The theological propositions, which are defended by Robert Barclay, in his apology for the true Christian divinity as the same is held forth and preached, by the people called Quakers (1675). Barclay enjoyed a meteoric rise as a theologian of the first order, his Quaker commitments notwithstanding, as a result of Theses and Theologicae and his 1676 publication, Theologiae Vere Christianae Apologia, which was translated by Barclay himself as An Apology for the true Christian Divinity, as the same is held forth and preached by the people called, in scorn, Quakers (1676). 43. Barclay, Theses Theologicae, 2–3. On this point of the extent of real divergence of the Quakers from the earlier Reformers, I can do no better than to cite Dale Coulter, one of the editors of the present volume, in his electronic comment to my earlier draft: “for Barclay, at least, 1) scripture was insufficient because it could not address all situations ( = contextual nature of scripture + Spirit’s guidance over casuistry); 2) Barclay is following a line straight out of the early Reformed combination of pneumatology and encounter. One can see it in Zwingli’s notion of encounter in his sermon ‘On the Clarity and Certain of the Word’ that he preached to nuns and also Calvin’s notion of the Spirit’s authentication of scripture, which he got from Bucer. The theological pieces were all present in the Reformed tradition, they were simply not put together this way by those who were concerned for political and ecclesiastical order because they had

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the city councils. As dissenters, Quakers did not have any state church to protect or defend” (e-mail comments to the author, December 13, 2013). What I find particularly helpful, indeed particularly astute, is Coulter’s identification of the Quakers’ disavowal of the magistrate’s role as a vindicating evidence of the Spirit’s work tout court. 44. Hickes, Enthusiasm Exorcised, 38. 45. Ibid., 40. 46. Clement Hawes, Mania and Literary Style: The Rhetoric of Enthusiasm from the Ranters to Christopher Smart (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 28. 47. Hickes, Enthusiasm Exorcised, 40. 48. The Character of a Quaker in His True and Proper Colours, or, The Clownish Hypocrite Anatomized (1671), 5. 49. Thomas Comber, “The Epistle to the Reader,” in Christianity No Enthusiasm (1678), sigs. A2v–A3r. 50. Comber, Christianity No Enthusiasm, sigs. A6r–A8r. 51. Ibid., sigs. a6r–v. 52. Ibid., sigs. a8r–v. 53. Ibid., 63. He cites from Thomas Ellwood’s Truth Prevailing and Detecting Error (1676), 227, 228, 229. 54. Comber, Christianity No Enthusiasm, 65. 55. For this putative Platonic captivity of primitive Christianity, see Paul Lim, Mystery Unveiled: The Crisis of the Trinity in Early Modern England (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 271–319. 56. Hickes, Enthusiasm Exorcised, 2. 57. Ibid., 2. 58. Ibid., 5. 59. Ibid., 6. 60. Ibid., 6–7. 61. On Puritan prophesyings during and after the Elizabethan period and the polemical exchanges surrounding this religious praxis, particularly the question of the formation of the public sphere, see Peter Lake and Michael Questier, “Puritans, Papists, and the ‘Public Sphere’ in Early Modern England: The Edmund Campion Affair in Context,” Journal of Modern History 72 (2000): 587–627, esp. 615, 619; Patrick Collinson, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), 168–79, 182–83, 191–96; Patrick Collinson, Archbishop Grindal, 1519–1583: The Struggle for a Reformed Church (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979). 62. Hickes, Enthusiasm Exorcised, 14. 63. Ibid., 11.

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64. Ibid., 15. 65. Ibid., 17–18. 66. George Hickes, The History of Montanism, published in Hickes, Enthusiasm Exorcised (1709 ed.), 137–38. 67. Ibid., 142. 68. Hickes, Enthusiasm Exorcised, 21–22. 69. Ibid., 27; emphasis added. 70. Ibid. 71. Ibid., 29; emphasis added.

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O RT H O K A R D I A John Wesley’s Grammar of the Holy Spirit

G R E G O RY S . C L A P P E R

Anyone who reads the works of John Wesley will immediately be struck by how often he refers to the “heart” or the “affections” or the “tempers.” For Wesley, this language is not dispensable, rhetorical ornamentation, nor is it a reflection of an unsophisticated thinker who is pandering to the masses. Wesley cannot make rational and theological sense of Christianity without using the vocabulary of the heart. It is so central to Wesley’s vision of Christianity that I have coined the term “orthokardia” to describe his emphasis on the heart. This “orthokardia,” however, is not to be seen as a substitute for orthodoxy (right belief ) or orthopraxis (right action) but rather as standing beside the other two “ortho-” terms, together forming the fullest definition of what it means to be a Christian.1 In what follows,2 I first present an overview of John Wesley’s theological vision, showing how it is irreducibly tied to his vision of a renewed heart and the expressions of such a heart—the religious “affections.” Next, I show why it is hard to understand and appreciate Wesley’s vision of “heart religion” today because of the distorting and destructive intellectual developments in the past two hundred years, which had theorists 259

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trying to shoehorn all affections talk into the concept of emotion. Next, I show how contemporary thinkers are working to reverse these distorting intellectual trends by giving us a better model for understanding affectivity. Finally, I focus on two particular heart-related doctrines that Wesley saw as key—assurance and perfection—and show how the current reconceptualizing of “emotion” can help us appreciate anew not only Wesley’s view of those two doctrines but also his entire theological vision, demonstrating thereby the intellectual integrity of his “orthokardia.”

Overview of Wesley’s Heart Religion

It needs to be emphasized at the outset that while Wesley emphasized the heart, he saw the Gospel as something indisputably “objective,” something that comes from outside of us as “good news.” We do not intuit the word of salvation through Christ by introspection or speculation; it comes to us as a proclamation. However, if our life is not marked by very specific and complex patterns of heart response to that Gospel, we have not really heard or understood the good news. Those patterns of response are what Wesley termed the religious “affections” or “tempers” of the heart. John Wesley summarized his essential doctrines in slightly different ways at different times in his career, but there is enough consistency in these various summaries to detect a clear pattern. Three leading interpreters of Wesley’s theology, Richard P. Heitzenrater,3 Albert C. Outler,4 and Thomas A. Langford,5 have each taken Wesley’s statement of his “main doctrines” in Principles of a Methodist Farther Explained as a representative summary.6 In that piece, Wesley names the three essential doctrines that describe the doctrinal kernel of Christianity: “Our main doctrines, which include all the rest, are three—that of repentance, of faith, and of holiness. The first of these we account, as it were, the porch of religion; the next, the door; the third, religion itself.”7 There are several remarkable things about this statement, and I have commented on this doctrinal summary extensively in my little book As If the Heart Mattered: A Wesleyan Spirituality (which makes the case for taking a specifically theological, rather than a purely psychological, ground-

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ing for spirituality).8 The part of this passage that I want to focus on here, however, is Wesley’s descriptions of “repentance,” “faith,” and “holiness” as doctrines. To say that these three terms are, in and of themselves, doctrines is, I think, more than a kind of lazy shorthand on Wesley’s part. This “doctrinal” summary speaks directly to what Wesley held to be most crucial in the whole Christian enterprise—namely, lived Christianity, describable in terms of the affections or tempers of the heart. Wesley’s “main doctrines”—the indispensable components of essential Christianity— were best understood as they were enacted in human lives. Typically, when the tradition speaks of these experiences with regard to “doctrine,” we find discussions about “the doctrine of sin,” or “the doctrine of justification by grace through faith,” or “the doctrine of sanctification,” and occasionally Wesley himself would use this kind of language.9 These latter, traditional, formulations of “doctrine” have one thing in common, though: they are abstract, secondary reflections on the primary lived realities that Wesley referred to by the terms “repentance,” “faith” and “holiness.” And it was those primary lived realities that most concerned Wesley. Wesley denied that the kind of “faith” seen in consenting to a creed is by itself enough to make one a Christian, and this can be seen as the flip side of his emphasis on the affections. This can be found in, for example, sermon 4, “Scriptural Christianity”: “‘Christianity’; not as it implies a set of opinions, a system of doctrines, but as it refers to men’s hearts and lives” (#4, 161); sermon 7, “The Way to the Kingdom”: “He may assent to all the three creeds . . . and yet ’tis possible he may have no religion at all” (#7, 220); sermon 62, “The End of Christ’s Coming”: “and least of all dream that orthodoxy, right opinion, (vulgarly called faith) is religion. Of all religious dreams, this is the vainest; which takes hay and stubble for gold tried in the fire! . . . Take no less for his religion, than the ‘faith that worketh by love;’ all inward and outward holiness” (#62, 483); and, finally, sermon 130, “On Living without God”: I believe the merciful God regards the lives and tempers of men more-than their ideas. I believe he respects the goodness of the heart, rather than the clearness of the head; and that if the heart of a man be filled (by the grace of God, and the power of his Spirit) with the

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humble, gentle, patient love of God and man, God will not cast him into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels, because his ideas are not clear, or because his conceptions are confused. ‘Without holiness,’ I own, ‘no man shall see the Lord;’ but I dare not add, ‘or clear ideas.’ (#130, 175) Perhaps most illustrative of Wesley’s assertion that a changed heart is most central to Christianity is his “Plain Account of Genuine Christianity.” Wesley begins his account not by asking the typically personindependent question, What is Christianity?, but instead by asking the very person-dependent—and affection-dependent—question, Who is a Christian? His answer tells us that a Christian is marked by humility, that the “ruling temper of his heart” is absolute submission to God and the tenderest gratitude, that the Christian is above all marked by love, which is productive of all right affections, and he has no fear of dispraise, for since God loves him, human dispraise is not to be feared.10 He begins this account of “genuine Christianity,” then, by first writing about what the personal enfleshment of Christianity looks like, and he expresses this in terms of the affections or tempers of the heart. Only after this is done does he turn to discussing what Christianity itself is. But even at that point, it is crucial to note the very person- and affectiondependent way in which he describes “Christianity.” He asks, “What is real, genuine Christianity—whether we speak of it as a principle in the soul or as a scheme or system of doctrine?” Seemingly reinforcing his opening reflections on the “true Christian,” Wesley here says that Christianity is capable of being seen as a “principle in the soul.” But what about Christianity as a “scheme or system of doctrine”? Well, this scheme’s primary accomplishment is to “describe the character above recited”—that is, theology’s first job is to describe what Christianity looks like when it is enfleshed by describing the affections it engenders.11 What comes next for theology? It should “promise this character shall be mine (provided I will not rest till I attain),” and then it should tell us “how I may attain it.” He concludes this passage by saying: May every real Christian say, ‘I now am assured that these things are so; I experienced them in my own breast. What Christianity (considered as a doctrine) promised, is accomplished in my soul.’ And

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Christianity, considered as an inward principle, is the completion of all those promises. It is holiness and happiness, the image of God impressed on a created spirit, a fountain of peace and love springing up into everlasting life.12

“Affections” Then, “Emotions” Now—What’s the Difference?

As has been clearly established, then, Wesley’s theology would not be Wesley’s theology without the language of the heart and its “affections.” But can what Wesley meant by “affections” be directly translated into our contemporary vocabulary of “emotions”? A recent work in intellectual history decidedly says “No!” Thomas Dixon’s book From Passions to Emotions: The Creation of a Secular Psychological Category shows that the biggest problem in comprehending what people like Wesley were saying about the heart is understanding how our modern concept of “emotion” has blinded us to what Wesley saw as essential to “affections.”13 Dixon, who is senior lecturer in history and director of the Centre for the History of the Emotions at Queen Mary, University of London, shows that the “emotions” came into being as a distinct psychological category in the nineteenth century, replacing such terms as appetites, passions, sentiments, and affections. On Dixon’s analysis, it is clear that the typical modern psychological understanding of “emotion” can distort what we might think Wesley meant by the “affections.” Starting his historical survey with a study of passions and affections in Augustine and Aquinas, Dixon shows that Aquinas’s “affect” was equivalent to Augustine’s “affections” and that both were voluntary movements of the will, active and ascribable both to the angels and to God, as well as humans.14 Both thinkers criticized the Stoics’ rejection of most emotion because of their failure to distinguish between the virtuous “affections” and vicious “passions.”15 For Augustine and Aquinas, the proper object of the affection makes all the difference. Dixon quotes Augustine’s City of God: If these emotions [motus] and affections [affectus] which spring from a love of what is good and from holy charity are to be called vices,

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then all I can say is that real vices should be called virtues. However, the fact is that when such affections [affectiones] are directed to their proper objects, they follow right reasons, and no one should dare to describe them as diseases [morbos] or vicious passions [passiones].16 The voluntary nature of the affections was underscored by Aquinas in his Summa: “Man does not move immediately because of aggressiveness or desire, he waits for the command of the higher appetite, the will. . . . So a lower appetite is not enough for a human motion unless the higher appetite agrees.”17 Dixon notes the importance of this statement: “[The will] was implicated in any action, even if it was the result of a passion. . . . Hence while it might suffer passions it was responsible for making the decision to follow or to frustrate those passions.”18 Affections, then, are actions of the rational soul, while passions are actions of the irrational soul.19 In short, these foundationally influential Western theologians made a critical distinction between sinful movements of the soul (which would target the wrong objects and grow passions) and the virtuous and potentially godly movements, which were enlightened acts of the higher will—affections. Thus they made some psychological, moral and theological distinctions that were made neither in the classical discourse of the passions [pathē] nor in the subsequent discourse of the ‘emotions.’ This was the result of the Christian desire to say both—against the Stoics—that some human feeling or affection is proper and necessary to this life, but also that God, the angels and perfected humans are free from the turmoil and perturbations of sin and the passions. This was the heart of Christian affective psychology.20 According to Dixon, the famous Scot David Hume laid the conceptual groundwork for the change in understanding that took place, starting in the eighteenth century, when he wrote of “passions (rather than persons) ‘choosing means’ to achieve desired ends.” “In fact,” he continued, “will, along with reason, was reduced by Hume to one felt impulse among many others. . . . So the two pillars of a classically conceived Christian soul—will and reason—vanished in Humean psychology, to be

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replaced by a multitude of passions, sentiments, affections, desires or emotions, each the product of the learned associations of certain impressions with other impressions of pleasure or pain in past experience.”21 Dixon claims that it is this secular and “scientific” sense of “emotions” as independent impulses or forces that has been the typical meaning for that English term ever since. The difference in terminology between “emotion” talk and “affections and passions” talk, then, was more than a mere verbal difference, more than an updating of quaint language. The realities that these words seek to identify are quite different from one another. As Dixon puts it, the verbal difference led to “a difference in doctrine.”22 “Emotions” from the nineteenth century on came to be associated with positivist and reductionist theories, where they are seen as involuntary—“mini-agents in their own right, rather than movements or actions of a will or self[,] . . . non-cognitive states . . . to be contrasted with intellectual judgments and thoughts[,] . . . aggregates reducible to physical feelings: they were ‘worked up’ from bodily sensations.”23 At its most extreme, this view sees all “emotions” as epiphenomena, pseudorealities that have no significance in themselves. This means that if we are to understand what Wesley meant by “heart religion” we must bracket what our modern world has invited us to believe about “emotions” and try to see the movements of the heart as Wesley did, through the conceptualities that gave rise to the terminology of “affections.” Fortunately, we have powerful allies in this task, namely, many contemporary thinkers who have recognized the conceptual bankruptcy of the Humean, Brownian, physicalist view of emotion and have labored in helpful ways to reenvision what “emotions” truly are. Of most interest for our concerns in this study is the fact that their re-visioning of the “emotions” leads to a view of affectivity that is, in fact, very consistent with what Wesley meant by the “affections.”24

Contemporary Theoretical Inquiry into the Nature of Emotion

The number of philosophical studies of emotion published in the past few years has mushroomed to such an extent that even a listing of bibliographical resources could fill an entire volume.25 My purpose here is not

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to try to compile such an exhaustive list but to give a sense of a few of the important common themes and arguments that mark this recent body of reflection. I accomplish this by looking at a book by Martha Nussbaum as illustrative, and generally representative, of this growing body of conceptual research. Her work clearly shows the need to consciously avoid, and indeed re-vision, the etiolated view of “emotion” that the nineteenth century has bequeathed to us. Martha Nussbaum is Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago with a joint appointment in the philosophy department, the law school, the divinity school, and the college. In 2001 her thick and detailed study of emotion, Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions, was published.26 Her multidisciplinary faculty position is reflected in her book, which draws widely on philosophical and psychological reflection, as well as literary works and aesthetic theory. For Nussbaum, the emotions are “essential elements of intelligence.”27 They are the medium through which we discern what it is we truly value. Showing the reason present in emotions allows us to understand, as her subtitle indicates, the “intelligence of emotions.” As she puts it, emotions are “intelligent responses to the perception of value.”28 As Nussbaum sees them, emotions are “appraisals or value judgments which ascribe to things and persons outside the person’s own control great importance for that person’s own flourishing.”29 Her view thus contains three salient ideas: the idea of a cognitive appraisal or evaluation; the idea of one’s own flourishing or one’s important goals and projects; and the idea of the salience of external objects as elements in one’s own scheme of goals. Emotions typically combine these ideas with information about events in the world; they are our ways of registering how things are with respect to the external (i.e., uncontrolled) items that we view as salient for our well-being.30 I want to focus on Nussbaum’s view that emotions are cognitive evaluations. It will perhaps best illustrate what she means by this if we clearly understand what she sees as the “adversary” to her cognitive-evaluative view. This is the position that sees emotions as non-reasoning movements, or unthinking energies that simply push the person around, without being hooked up to the ways in which

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she perceives or thinks about the world. Like gusts of wind or the currents of the sea, they move, and move the person, but obtusely, without visions of an object or beliefs about it. In this sense they are ‘pushes’ rather than ‘pulls.’ Sometimes this view is connected with the idea that emotions derive from an ‘animal’ part of our nature, rather than from a specifically human part—usually by thinkers who do not have a high regard for animal intelligence.31 Nussbaum maintains that although this view of emotion is grossly inadequate, it has been very influential, especially in some scientific circles. With the benefit of Dixon’s historical analysis, which appeared in print after Nussbaum’s work, we can see how this “adversary” view came to be. As a way of making clear her own view of emotion, Nussbaum writes about her grief over her mother’s death. At the same time she shows that the “adversary” theory is bankrupt. She sees at least four ways that the emotions stirred up by her mother’s death are unlike the “thoughtless natural energies” of the adversary view. First, they are about something: they have an object. My fear, my hope, my ultimate grief, all are about my mother and directed at her and her life. A wind may hit against something, a current in the blood may pound against something: but they are not in the same way about the things they strike in their way. My fear’s very identity as fear depends on its having some such object: take that away and it becomes a mere trembling or heart-leaping. The identity of the wind as wind does not in the same way depend on any particular object against which it may pound.32 This leads to her second point, that the object is an intentional object, by which she means that this object figures in the emotion as it is seen or interpreted by the person whose emotion it is. Emotions are not about their objects merely in the sense of being pointed at them and let go, the way an arrow is released toward its target. Their aboutness is more internal, and embodies a way of seeing. My fear perceived my mother both as tremendously important

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and as threatened; my grief saw her as valuable and as irrevocably cut off from me.33 Her third reason for why emotions are more than unthinking bodily experiences is that emotions embody beliefs about the object—often very complex beliefs. Nussbaum quotes Aristotle (who, of course, is the same source that informed Aquinas and his cognitive understanding of affectivity) to show that in order to have fear, one must believe that bad events are impending and that I am not entirely in control of warding them off. In order to have anger, I must have an even more complex set of beliefs: “that some damage has occurred to me or to something or someone close to me; that the damage is not trivial but significant; that it was done by someone; probably, that it was done willingly.”34 She goes on to point out that these beliefs are essential to the identity of the emotion: “The feeling of agitation all by itself will not reveal to me whether what I am feeling is fear or grief or pity. Only an inspection of the thoughts discriminates.”35 Her fourth and final point showing the inadequacy of the reductionistic “adversary” view concerns a particular aspect of the intentional perceptions and the beliefs characteristic of an emotion. They are concerned with value, they see their object as invested with value or importance . . . [and this value is] of a particular sort. It appears to make reference to the person’s own flourishing. The object of the emotion is seen as important for some role it plays in the person’s own life. . . . Another way of putting this point . . . is that emotions appear to be eudaimonistic, that is, concerned with the person’s flourishing. . . . [E]motions look to the world from the subject’s own viewpoint, mapping events onto the subject’s own sense of personal importance or value.36 It is this framework for understanding emotions that allows Nussbaum to call hers a cognitive view. By “cognitive,” Nussbaum means “nothing more than ‘concerned with receiving and processing information.’ I do not mean to imply the presence of elaborate calculation, of computation, or even of reflexive self-awareness.”37 If these aspects of affectivity are accepted at face value, and I think Nussbaum presents a compelling case, then the reductionistic, noncogni-

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tive, Humean and Brownian view of her “adversary” theory must be rejected and the cognitivity of emotions must be acknowledged. We are now ready to take this contemporary analysis of affectivity and see if we can apply it to make sense of Wesley’s vision of Christianity as being about the “renewal of the heart.” Building on the analysis of Wesley’s heart religion that opened this chapter, I want to look now at two of Wesley’s most famous theological assertions—about Christian assurance and Christian perfection. In examining how Wesley described these concepts, we can see how his views reflect, in deep and powerful ways, the chastened and informed contemporary view of affectivity—a view that stands with intellectual integrity and in continuity with the theological traditions reflected in the thought of Augustine and Aquinas.38

Wesley’s Doctrines of Assurance and Perfection Seen in the Light of Recent Emotion Theory

Assurance

The role of the heart and its affections in providing the Christian assurance of one’s status before God is seen especially in three of Wesley’s sermons: “The Witness of the Spirit I,” “The Witness of the Spirit II,” and “The Witness of Our Own Spirit.” The first two of these sermons (both on Rom. 8:16) were written more than twenty years apart, yet both have the same goal in mind, namely, to show the enthusiasts how they “have mistaken the voice of their own imagination for this ‘witness of the Spirit’ of God, and thence idly presumed they were the children of God while they were doing the works of the devil!” (#10, 269). The most important point Wesley makes in these sermons is that there is a direct witness of the Spirit, but it never appears without its fruits, which are, of course, the religious affections of peace, joy, love, and so on (see Gal. 5:22–23, which Wesley quotes or alludes to on pp. 279, 283, 286, 297). One determines if one has this assuring witness, therefore, not by waiting for some Damascus road experience (though Wesley would never deny that such do in fact occur) but by determining if one loves God:

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He that now loves God—that delights and rejoices in him with an humble joy, an holy delight, and an obedient love—is a child of God; But I thus love, delight, and rejoice in God; Therefore I am a child of God; then a Christian can in no wise doubt of his being a child of God. (#10, 276) In the later sermon he makes the same point: “When our spirit is conscious of this—of love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness—it easily infers from these premises that we are the children of God” (#11, 289). In countering an objection to this, he also shows that “experience” has a limited role to play in determining the core of the Gospel. It is objected, first, ‘Experience is not sufficient to prove a doctrine which is not founded on Scripture.’ This is undoubtedly true, and it is an important truth. But it does not affect the present question, for it has been shown that this doctrine is founded on Scripture. Therefore experience is properly alleged to confirm it. (#11, 293) As always, the Bible is the final authority. “Experience” can not by itself “prove” something relating to the faith that is unscriptural. In summarizing this theme, Wesley draws two inferences. The first is, “Let none ever presume to rest in any supposed testimony of the Spirit which is separate from the fruit of it” (#11, 297). The second is, “Let none rest in any supposed fruit of the Spirit without the witness” (298). As he had said earlier, “to secure us from all delusion, God gives us two witnesses that we are his children. And this they testify conjointly. Therefore, ‘what God hath joined together, let not man put asunder’” (#11, 295). The third sermon in this series, number 12, “The Witness of Our Own Spirit,” takes 2 Corinthians 1:12 as its text: “This is our rejoicing, the testimony of our conscience, that in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God, we have had our conversation in the world.” The sermon, then, is “to show what is the nature and ground of a Christian’s joy. We know, in general, it is that happy peace, that calm satisfaction of spirit, which arises from such a testimony of his conscience as is here described by the Apostle” (#12, 300).

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The witness of our own spirit, then, is not an experience available to anyone (e.g., like Schleiermacher’s “feeling of absolute dependence”), but only to Christians who have been formed in the Christian “rule” of the Gospel, found in scripture (#12, 302–3). If we are thusly formed, “if therefore this eye of thy soul be single, all thy actions and conversation shall be ‘full of light’, of the light of heaven, of love and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost” (306–7). This testimony or assurance, then, is not some necessary religious a priori to be mystically intuited; it is the contingent result of our taking God and what God has done for us as the object of our affections. We are then simple of heart when the eye of our mind is singly fixed on God; when in all things we aim at God alone, as our God, our portion, our strength, our happiness, our exceeding great reward, our all in time and eternity. This is simplicity: when a steady view, a single intention of promoting his glory, of doing and suffering his blessed will, runs through our whole soul, fills all our heart, and is the constant spring of all our thoughts, desires, and purposes. (307) Assurance, then, is not a passing sensation but an object-guided affection, one that grows by focusing on God. This assurance is also the “spring”—or disposition—for the believer to engage in a life of humble love.39 Perfection

The doctrine of Christian perfection was one that “God peculiarly entrusted to the Methodists,” according to Wesley’s Journal entry of February 6, 1789. It was also a doctrine that caused much confusion and misunderstanding about the affections since it was “perfect love” that Wesley was preaching. If perfection were required, many wondered, would the Christian then have to be feeling only one thing, namely, love, at all times? First of all, we need to examine Wesley’s understanding of perfection, the best summary of which is found in sermon 76, “On Perfection.”

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This is the sum of perfection: It is all comprised in that one word, Love. The first branch of it is the love of God: And as he that loves God loves his brother also, it is inseparably connected with the second: ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself ’: Thou shalt love every man as thy own soul, as Christ loved us. ‘On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets’: these contain the whole of Christian perfection. (#76, 74) Later in this same sermon he says that another way to talk about this whole reality of perfection is in terms of acquiring the mind of Christ, which includes “the whole disposition of his mind, all his affections, all his tempers, both toward God and man. Now, it is certain that as there was no evil affection in him, so no good affection was wanting” (74). Yet it was clear, to Wesley above all, that Christians did in fact sin. Indeed, sermon 13, “On Sin in Believers,” was concerned solely with “inward sin: any sinful temper, passion, or affection[,] . . . any disposition contrary to the mind which was in Christ” (#13, 320). It is this kind of sin that can remain even though Christ reigns (#13, 323); or, as he says later in this sermon, Christians have crucified the flesh with its affections and lusts (Gal. 5:24), yet this flesh remains “and often struggles to break free from the cross” (#13, 329). What we have, then, is an affection-defined telos for the Christian life—perfect love—which is in no way contradicted or vitiated by affectional sin even in the justified believer: “A man may be in God’s favour though he feel sin; but not if he yields to it” (#13, 332; Wesley’s emphasis). We still need, as the title of sermon 14 states, “Repentance of Believers,” because while we are born again at the moment of justification, we are not entirely changed, nor wholly transformed. “Far from it” (#14, 351). Acknowledging the reality of sin, however, should not keep us from having an “uneasiness for the want of [entire sanctification]”; we need to “hunger and thirst after it” (#14, 351). Having perfect love as our goal, then, does not mean that we must always have some constancy of inner feeling, which any psychologist (or any sentient being, for that matter) would say is impossible. Wesley never maintains that total control over the inner realm is somehow the norm for Christianity. In fact, inner feelings are not the issue at stake here.

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Feelings can come and go, but it is the more enduring aspects of the affectional makeup that speak to the question of whether or not someone is a Christian. A man may have pride in him, may think of himself in some particulars above what he ought to think (and so be proud in that particular) and yet not be a proud man in his general character. . . . Resentment of an affront is sin. It is anomia, disconformity to the law of love. This has existed in me a thousand times. Yet it did not, and does not, reign. . . . Here, therefore, as in ten thousand instances, there is sin without either guilt or power. (#13, 330–31; Wesley’s emphasis)40 Perfection in the Christian life, then, is not defined by what feelings may arise from time to time. Christian perfection is best seen in terms of what “reigns” in your life—that is, the consistently defining objects of your heart’s attention and the form of life that they motivate you to pursue.

Wesley’s Orthokardia as a Gospel-Infused Spirituality

We can see in this analysis of assurance and perfection the key features of Nussbaum’s re-visioned view of emotions as the intelligent responses to the perception of value. The religious affections of Wesley’s orthokardia are not exhaustively described as feelings (as the nineteenth-century legacy theory of “emotion”—Nussbaum’s “adversary” theory—would have us believe). Nor are the religious affections irrational mini-agents functioning on their own. They are, instead, generated by the person focusing on specific objects of attention, namely, the God revealed by Jesus as proclaimed in the Gospel.41 Likewise, the religious affections do not just irrationally or unpredictably surface, but are tied to our will and can be responsibly sought after, developed, and deliberately expressed. Their intentional growth can be accomplished through a program of conscious spiritual formation that orients the believer toward God and the things of God, grown especially

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by what Wesley termed “works of piety” (e.g., prayer, Bible study, worship, and the sacraments). And since the religious affections serve as dispositions to behave, their presence can be seen as they shape an entire way of living, guided by a Christian logic or grammar. The well-formed Christian heart disposes people to Gospel-specified kinds of concrete action in the world, what Wesley called “works of mercy” (e.g., feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and imprisoned). If we can free our minds from what our intellectual culture has told us about the heart and its emotions, we can once again claim Wesley’s vision of Christianity, consisting of not only right belief (orthodoxy) and right action (orthopraxis), but the right heart of orthokardia. Stanley Grenz has asserted that evangelicalism is best understood in terms of spirituality and only secondarily as a set of doctrinal distinctives.42 Especially if “evangelicals” see themselves as in the tradition of Wesley, such an evaluation would be a positive reflection of their fidelity to this tradition. Those who emphasize spirituality—the shape and form of one’s heart and life—know what the “doctrinal distinctives” are for, and they put them where they belong: in an orthokardia enfleshed in the lived Christian life.43 Notes 1. I used this threefold pattern in my 1985 PhD dissertation, subsequently revised and published as my first book, John Wesley on Religious Affections: His Views on Experience and Emotion and Their Role in the Christian Life and Theology (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1989). Ted (Theodore) Runyon, who served on my dissertation committee, used the threefold pattern, with slightly different terms, in several places; see especially Theodore Runyon, The New Creation (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1998). 2. Much of what follows has been taken from my book The Renewal of the Heart Is the Mission of the Church: Wesley’s Heart Religion in the Twenty-First Century (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2010), esp. chaps. 1, 3, and 4. 3. See Richard P. Heitzenrater’s Wesley and the People Called Methodists (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995), where he discusses the different summaries: on p. 156 he quotes the “Principle of a Methodist” passage reproduced above; on p. 204 he mentions Wesley’s slightly different summary in a letter on “original sin, justification by faith and holiness consequent thereon” (see Frank

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Baker, ed., The Bicentennial Edition of Wesley’s Works [Oxford: Oxford University Press; Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1975–], 4:146; hereafter Works); on 214– 15, quoting from Wesley’s Journal and Diary (Works, 21:485), the three are referred to as “original sin and justification by faith, producing inward and outward holiness.” On p. 242, quoting Wesley’s sermon at the funeral of George Whitefield (Works, 2:343), Heitzenrater lists the grand doctrines as “the new birth and justification by faith.” 4. See his collected works, The Albert Outler Library, 3 vols., ed. Bob W. Parrott (Anderson, IN: Bristol, 1995), 1:258 ff.; 2:240 ff.; 3:422–47. 5. Thomas A. Langford, Methodist Theology (London: Epworth Press, 1998), 7. 6. Randy Maddox, in his “‘Vital Orthodoxy’: A Wesleyan Dynamic for 21st-Century Christianity,” Methodist History 42, no. 1 (October 2003): 3–19, asserts a related but slightly different summary of Wesley’s essential doctrines. See also his more recent summative look at Wesley’s legacy, “‘Celebrating the Whole Wesley’: A Legacy for Contemporary Wesleyans,” Methodist History, 43, no. 2 (January 2005): 74–89. For my critique of Maddox’s summaries, where I make the case for preferring what Heitzenrater, Outler, and Langford take as most central for Wesley, see my Renewal of the Heart, 5 n. 5. 7. Works, 9:227. 8. Gregory S. Clapper, As If the Heart Mattered: A Wesleyan Spirituality (Nashville, TN: Upper Room Books, 1997). 9. Such as when he referred to “original sin” instead of repentance in one of his summaries of the grand doctrines of the Methodists. See note 2, above. 10. “A Plain Account of Genuine Christianity,” first published in 1753, now found in John Wesley, ed. Albert C. Outler (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964), 183 ff. 11. Ibid., 188. 12. Ibid., 191. 13. Thomas Dixon, From Passions to Emotions: The Creation of a Secular Psychological Category (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). 14. Ibid., 46. 15. Related to these distinctions, see Margaret R. Graver’s understanding of Stoic views in her Stoicism and Emotion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007). Graver makes the case that for the Stoics some emotions were always irrational, such as anger and fear, but that joy and love were not. 16. Augustine, City of God, 14.9, quoted in Dixon, From Passions to Emotions, 47. 17. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, Ia.81.3, quoted in Dixon, From Passions to Emotions, 53.

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18. Dixon, From Passions to Emotions, 53. 19. Ibid., 58. 20. Ibid., 61. 21. Ibid., 106. 22. Ibid., 250. 23. Ibid., 251. 24. I should note here at the end of this section on the conceptual change that has taken place in the past two hundred years that Randy Maddox has given his version of the change specifically in Methodist theology from the time of Wesley through the nineteenth century. See his “A Change of Affections: The Development, Dynamics, and Dethronement of John Wesley’s Heart Religion,” in “Heart Religion” in the Methodist Tradition and Related Movements, ed. Richard Steele and Don Saliers (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2001). Maddox focuses on the influence of Thomas Reid and his “decisionistic rational control” model of moral psychology as one of the prime reasons Methodists strayed from Wesley’s vision of heart religion (23–25). Interestingly, Dixon shows great familiarity with Reid’s work, but he sees Reid as one of the defenders of the “cognitive affection” view that Dixon saw Wesley as holding: “The cognitive view was used here by Reid in defence of Christianity and in opposition to Hume’s anti-Christian reductionism.” Dixon, From Passions to Emotions, 96. Maddox is probably right that the shift from Wesley’s views to Reid’s is a real one, but Dixon’s larger point is also true: if everyone still believed as Reid, our views of “emotion” would be a lot closer to Wesley’s “affections” than to reductionistic views, either those of Hume or their contemporary counterparts. 25. See, e.g., the bibliographies in Martha Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 715–34; and Robert Solomon, ed., Thinking about Feeling (Oxford: Oxford University Press: 2004), 279–92. See also the lists of references in Jerome Neu, A Tear Is an Intellectual Thing: The Meanings of Emotion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 315–30; and Paul E. Griffiths, What Emotions Really Are (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 259–76. Worthy of special note is the work of Robert Roberts of Baylor University, which reinforces many of the specific insights of Nussbaum. See his Emotions: An Essay in Aid of Moral Psychology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). 26. Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought. 27. Ibid., 3. 28. Ibid., 1. 29. Ibid., 4. 30. Ibid., 4; original emphasis. 31. Ibid., 24–25.

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32. Ibid., 27; original emphasis. 33. Ibid.; original emphasis. 34. Ibid., 29. 35. Ibid. 36. Ibid., 30–33; original emphasis. 37. Ibid., 23. 38. A final note on terminology. Two recent interpreters of Wesley have asserted that there is an important difference in the way that Wesley uses the terms “affections” and “tempers.” Ken Collins in his article “John Wesley’s Topography of the Heart: Dispositions, Tempers and Affections,” Methodist History 36, no. 3 (April 1998): 162–75, says that while “disposition” and “temper” are used interchangeably by Wesley throughout his writings, it is “a mistake to identify tempers and affections” (165–67). Similarly, Randy Maddox (whom Collins quotes on this subject) sees the “affections” and the “tempers” as separable. See Maddox, Responsible Grace: John Wesley’s Practical Theology (Nashville, TN: Kingswood Books, 1994), 69–70; and his article “Shaping the Virtuous Heart: The Abiding Mission of the Wesleys,” Circuit Rider 29, no. 4: 27–28. I have done a close textual analysis of Wesley’s works to show that, in fact, Wesley often uses “affection” and “temper” interchangeably (see my “John Wesley’s Language of the Heart,” Wesleyan Theological Journal 44, no. 2 [Fall 2009]: 94–102). 39. Given space limitations I cannot expand on how Nussbaum and her contemporaries like Robert Roberts narrate the dispositional nature of emotions, but this is also a clear element of the recent resurgence of emotion theory—as it is a clear part of Wesley’s psychology. On Wesley’s views, see my Renewal of the Heart, esp. chap. 5. For Nussbaum’s position, see her Upheavals of Thought, 135, 336–39; and for Roberts’s views, see his Emotions, 63. Both contemporary thinkers are careful to avoid simply identifying emotions with desires to behave in specific ways, but both also acknowledge that emotions do very often serve as motivations to behave. 40. For other discussions of how negative affections can exist in the justified believer, see sermons 41, “Wandering Thoughts”; and 46, “Heaviness through Manifold Temptations.” Also see Outler’s notes in Wesley’s Works, vol. 1, about how Wesley repudiated “sinless perfection,” 328 n. 1; 333 n. 102; 346 n. 81. 41. For a striking lay discussion of the grammar of the heart and the objectrelatedness of the Christian faith, see C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1955), 212–14. In the end, Lewis realized that it was not the experience of joy—that most exquisite feeling of longing—that he was ultimately after, no matter how captivating and engrossing that longing was. What he really wanted was the object that the longing was pointing to: God.

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42. Stanley Grenz, Revisioning Evangelical Theology (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993), 58. 43. On this point I think it is helpful to note what two influential biblical scholars, who happen to be in the Wesleyan tradition, have said about the authority of the Bible. Joel Green, in “Contribute or Capitulate? Wesleyans, Pentecostals, and Reading the Bible in a Post-Colonial Mode,” Wesleyan Theological Journal 39, no. 1 (Spring 2004): 81–82, says, “The authority of scripture is best discerned in the lives (and not only the assertions) of those communities oriented around Scripture.” Similarly, Richard Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989), xiii, referring to a passage in Paul’s writings, says that Paul is there working out “the claim that the true meaning of Scripture is made manifest in the transformed lives of the community of faith.”

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J O N AT H A N E DWA R D S O N T H E AFFECTIONS AND THE SPIRIT

G E R A L D R . M c D E R M OT T

When we speak of God’s happiness, the account that we are wont to give of it is that God is infinitely happy in the enjoyment of himself, in perfectly beholding and infinitely loving, and rejoicing in, his own essence and perfections. And accordingly it must be supposed that God perpetually and eternally has a most perfect idea of himself, as it were an exact image and representation of himself ever before him and in actual view. And from hence arises a most pure and perfect energy in the Godhead, which is the divine love, complacence and joy.1 For Jonathan Edwards (1703–58), all thinking about the affections must start with the inner-trinitarian life of God. Religious affections in the Christian are of the Spirit only to the extent that they participate in God’s own affections for himself. God is perfectly happy, says Edwards, because he enjoys himself. The Father loves and rejoices in the perfect image of himself who is the Son. The Son loves and enjoys the Father. The mutual 279

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love and joy between the Father and Son, based on their perfectly knowing each other, are so real that they constitute a third divine person, the Holy Spirit.2 Each of the three divine Persons enjoys affections by participation in the life of the other divine Persons: “The Father understands because the Son, who is the divine understanding, is in him. The Father loves because the Holy Ghost is in him. So the Son loves because the Holy Spirit is in him and proceeds from him. So the Holy Ghost, or the divine essence subsisting in divine love, understands because the Son, the divine idea, is in him.”3 And so on. Hence all of God’s affections are by coinherence—participation by one divine Person in the others. It is the same for human believers. Their true religious affections exist by participation in the divine Persons. So for Edwards, who conceived of godly affections as an inseparable unity of knowing (by the mind) and choosing (with the will) and feeling (in the emotions), all of these ways of experiencing the affections are by virtue of participating in the inner life of the Trinity. For example, saints “enjoy God as partaking with Christ of his enjoy[ment] of God, for they are united to him and are Glorified and made happy in the enjoyment of God as his members. . . . They being in Christ shall partake with him in his sight of God as being as it were parts with him. . . . As he has immense joy in the love of the Father so have they every one of them in their measure the same joy in the love of the Father.”4 Therefore the Christian knows truth only by participating in the Son’s knowing the Father; she chooses to obey Christ’s commandments only by participating in the Son’s loving obedience to the Father; and she knows the joy and love of the Lord only by participating in the Spirit’s “perfect energy . . . which is the divine love, complacence and joy” that passes in the person of the Spirit between the Father and the Son.5

Importance and Nature of the Affections

Near the beginning of Religious Affections Edwards portrays the affections as “springs of motion” for all forms of human activity. Such is man’s nature, that he is very inactive, any otherwise than he is influenced by some affection, either love or hatred, desire, hope, fear or some other. These affections we see to be the springs that set

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men agoing, in all the affairs of life, and engage them in all their pursuits. . . . [T]ake away all love and hatred, all hope and fear, all anger, zeal and affectionate desire, and the world would be, in a great measure, motionless and dead, there would be no such thing as activity amongst mankind, or any earnest pursuit whatsoever. ’Tis affection that engages the covetous man[,] . . . ’tis the affections also that actuate the voluptuous man[,] . . . so in religious matters, the spring of their actions are very much religious affections: he that has doctrinal knowledge and speculation only, without affection, never is a engaged in the business of religion.6 Several things are worth noting here. Human society is a bustling affair, brimming with aspiration and endeavor. As on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, everyone is going somewhere. Yet just below the surface are the affections that motivate these movements. According to Edwards, affections are both good and bad, nonreligious and religious. Religious affections do not function differently from nonreligious affections but have different objects. So while everyday affections such as the desires for wealth and sensual pleasure have money and sensory gratification as their objects, religious affections seek God and spiritual things. Edwards argues that genuine religion is always a matter of the affections. Mere “doctrinal knowledge and speculation” are not deep and strong enough to constitute affections and therefore genuine religion. They are “mere actings of the will and inclination of the soul.” Only if they are “vigorous and lively” in their exercise do they rise to the level of “religious affections.” There are “many actings of the will and inclination, that are not so commonly called affections” since they are merely weak preferences—such as preferring blueberry to strawberry jam. Such preferences raise “us little above a state of indifference.” But religious affections involve “a fervent, vigorous engagement of the heart in religion” that display themselves in love for God with all the heart and soul. He compared “the business of religion,” which is moved by affections, to “running, wrestling or agonizing for a great prize or crown, and fighting with strong enemies that seek our lives, and warring as those that by violence take a city or kingdom.” Thus Edwards defined affections as “the more vigorous and sensible exercises of the inclination and will of the soul.”7

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By “soul,” Edwards meant the confluence of two faculties—the “understanding” that perceives and judges and the “inclination or will” that moves the human self toward or away from things in liking and disliking, loving and hating, approving and rejecting. This brief definition of the affections rooted in the faculties of the soul is often misunderstood in two related ways: commentators either ignore the intellectual component or reduce the affections to “emotions,” thus missing Edwards’s insistence on the unity of the human person. Let us treat these problems one by one. Affections and the Intellect

First, note the intellectual component. For Edwards, the affections move the soul, which means they move the mind as well as the will. In the affections of true religion, the mind is “enlightened, rightly and spiritually, to understand or apprehend divine things.” True religion will always have “knowledge of the loveliness of divine things.”8 Holy affections, he noted, “are not heat without light,”9 for they arise from affections that are a unity of mind and inclination in the soul. If the soul is warmed toward God, it will be drawn to certain understandings of God. All inclination already involves perception of the mind because of the unity of the soul and self. Edwards rejected all dichotomies that set the mind against the heart— even while such dichotomies were common during the Great Awakening debates. Opponents of the Awakening such as Charles Chauncy argued that revival preachers had merely stirred up “passions,” and that true religion brought the self under the control of reason rather than emotion. Radical revivalists such as James Davenport reveled in intense emotions and derogated the intellect.10 But Edwards’s position refused the dichotomies of either side, insisting on a soul whose affections shape not only feelings and choices but also the mind. By his lights, an idea is not only intellectual, but also has affective content. Say the word fire, and while for some it suggests a delightful fireside encounter with a loved one, for others it painfully recalls the loss of a home. Conversely, all affections or inclinations are united to intellectual conceptions: “The heart cannot be set upon an object of which there is no idea in the understanding.”11 This union of the intellect with the heart was missed by most in the revival debates. Many pro-revivalists assumed that religion was all about feelings

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and had nothing to do with the mind. “Old Lights” claimed to be in favor of reason and against emotion and revival, while “New Lights” often criticized reason while championing emotion and revival. Few grasped the subtlety of Edwards’s position. Affections, Emotions, and Passions

Both sides then, and many scholars since, have wrongly assumed that Edwards’s affections were the same thing as “emotions.” But emotions for Edwards were only one dimension of human experience shaped by affections, along with thinking and choosing. Edwards argued that true religious affections sometimes choose against emotional feeling, such as when Jesus chose not to yield to his feelings of fear in the Garden of Gethsemane. When “passions” overwhelm one’s better judgment, such as in a fit of rage, emotions are in fact opposed to true religious affections. Furthermore, Edwards always linked affections to an object, while emotions may or may not have an object. In current English usage, the statement “I am emotional” need not imply an object of emotion. But the assertion “I am affectionate” raises the question, Toward what or whom?

Unity of the Person

At the center of all Edwards’s thinking about affections and religious experience was his conviction of the unity of the human person. He rejected the threefold distinction of mind, will, and emotions that was common in nineteenth- and twentieth-century discussions of human psychology and in outline went back to Plato. Edwards declared that the will and affections “are not two faculties” but different expressions of the inclination that already has intellectual judgment contained within it.12 As we just saw, he recognized that there are times when one expression seems to conflict with the other, as when the mind must choose against the feelings. Critics then and since have proposed the will as a mediator between the two (mind and emotions). Edwards replied to his contemporaries that such a mediating will is a self-determining power that is logically incoherent and self-contradictory, as he argued in Freedom of the Will.13 The will,

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he noted, cannot determine itself. A person has a will, but one’s will itself does not have a will. Ultimately all faculties cohere with one another within the unity of the human self. It must be conceded, however, that although Edwards listed the understanding as the first in the faculties of the soul, he said little concerning its nature or function. This could be because he thought its status less problematic than that of the other faculties. It is also apparent that his preoccupation with the mind, will, and affections—indeed, his authorship of volumes like Freedom of the Will, Religious Affections, and Original Sin—situates him in an Augustinianvoluntarist tradition that characterized the human self more in terms of its desires and choices than its thoughts and concepts. Even the twofold distinction of understanding and inclination tends to break down in the course of Edwards’s discussion in Religious Affections. What one calls mind or understanding is the human self in one mode of operation, while inclination is another mode. Because both understanding and inclination are expressions of the total human self, the distinction between them is more analytical than actual. They are not parts of the soul or self, as is commonly imagined. The inclination’s affections include an intellectual dimension, while the mind’s thoughts include an affective dimension. In this way the two faculties are interlocking in their operations. It is therefore a basic mistake to interpret Edwards in terms of any dichotomy of intellect versus affect, or head versus heart—although some interpreters have wanted to claim him for one side or the other.

Unity of the Affections

If the human self was basically unitary for Edwards, so were the affections in one sense. That is, the godly affections were all rooted in the basic affection of love. To be sure, Edwards singled out for discussion in Religious Affections a variety of affections, including fear, hope, love, hatred, desire, joy, sorrow, compassion, and zeal. But the affection that overshadows the rest is love, also called charity. In Charity and Its Fruits love is “the sum of all virtue,” and is opposed to envy, pride, selfishness, and censoriousness. But love is not only the root of the virtues for Edwards; it is also, in some sense, the root of all godly affections and actions. One recalls Augustine’s statement in City of God that each person’s love is the “gravity” that deter-

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mines whether a person rises or falls. For Edwards, the opposite of love is not hatred but indifference. A “hard heart,” he wrote, is an “unaffected heart.”14 He interpreted affections in all their diversity as so many modifications of love arising from the diverse circumstances in which love is expressed. From love arises hatred of those things which are contrary to what we love, or which oppose and thwart us in those things that we delight in: and from the various exercises of love and hatred, according to the circumstances of the objects of those affections, as present or absent, certain or uncertain, probable or improbable, arise all those other affections of desire, hope, fear, joy, grief, gratitude, anger, etc.15 Edwards spoke of a “counterfeit love,” which produces “other false affections”—an idea reminiscent of Augustine’s distinction between charity and concupiscence, two “loves” with different destinations, one driving some toward the City of Man and the other propelling others toward the City of God.16

The Affections and the Spirit

We have already seen that for Edwards true religious affections are the life of God in the Christian by way of participation in God’s trinitarian life. It was the Spirit who originally drew the saint to God by opening her eyes to God’s beauty in Jesus Christ. Then it was the Spirit who joined the believer to the Son, becoming the bond between the believer and Christ just as the Spirit is the bond between the Father and the Son and between the Son’s human and divine natures.17 So the believer’s participation in God’s inner-trinitarian life, which participation constitutes her true affections, is by union with the Son’s relationship to the Father by the Spirit. The affections are at once the life of God within, which is the Holy Spirit within, and the result of being lifted up, as it were, by the Spirit to be immersed in the trinitarian relations. Therefore Edwards believed that true affections are not just from the Spirit but of the Spirit. Natural men, he wrote, can have many experiences that come from the Spirit, such as conviction of sin and “common

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illuminations and common affections.” In such experiences, their natural faculties are assisted by the Spirit. But the saints actually possess the Spirit, and his activity within the saints is what Edwards meant by special or saving grace that manifests true affections. Hence “the very principle of spiritual life in their souls is no other than the Spirit of Christ himself.” Since the Spirit is love, “true saving grace [manifest in the affections] is no other than that very love of God; that is, God in one of the persons of the Trinity, uniting himself to the soul of a creature as a vital principle, dwelling there and exerting himself by the faculties of the soul of man, in his own proper nature, after the manner of a principle of nature.” In a word, the affections are the Spirit. The continued presence of the Spirit as grace-ful affections becomes a “disposition to holy acts.” This disposition is what is recognized by others as virtue, because it is a settled “quality” of the saint.18 In the thirteenth century theologians distinguished between uncreated grace (by sovereign acts of God) and created grace (enduring dispositions manifested in affections). Aquinas rejected Lombard’s limitation of grace to acts of the Holy Spirit and spoke instead of “grace as having a fixed and stable nature.” The Council of Trent developed a thirteenthcentury trend culminating in Aquinas in a notion of “inherent grace,” which seemed to the Reformers to undermine God’s sovereignty.19 Edwards’s position mediated between these two poles. He said grace is the presence of the Holy Spirit in action (Lombard) but also as a new disposition seen in holy affections (Aquinas). In all grace there is “a constant concurrence of divine power,” but that exercise of power is “in harmony and proportion” to his preestablished laws. The Spirit confers grace as a settled disposition with habitual affections, but he is never “domesticated” in a way that would reduce the saint’s immediate dependence on God.20

Affection and Physical Infusion

At the turn of the seventeenth century the de auxiliis (lit., “concerning the helps” afforded by grace) controversy raged within Roman Catholic circles and spilled over into debates within the Reformed churches. The dispute was over the mode of God’s work in conversion specifically and

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grace more generally. Arminians said that regenerating grace is simply the illumination of the intellect for the purpose of persuading it to make the right decision. Hence holy affections are primarily human productions inspired by divinely assisted ideas. Peter van Mastricht, the Dutch scholastic whom Edwards prized, said regenerating grace is far more—a physical infusion in the will. By “physical,” he meant not material change but the kind that transforms one’s inner nature, since physis is the Greek word for “nature.” Anri Morimoto says this is why Edwards preferred the term “infusion” to “illumination” when he wrote about grace. It communicated more precisely the fact that God “determine[s] the effect” and is the “efficient” author of true virtue and goodness. In other words, God does not merely give new ideas to the mind, but changes the person from the inside out, giving divine life directly to the soul.21 Hence the affections are not merely human responses to God’s love or beauty, but participation in God’s own life. Edwards used a long train of biblical passages to argue for a “physical” account of grace: “Without me ye can do nothing” (John 15:5); “No man can come to me except the Father draw him” (John 6:44); “The Lord opened the heart of Lydia” (Acts 16:14); “I will give you one heart, and I will put a new spirit in you” (Ezek. 11:19); and many others. As was his custom, he also appealed to logic: If God’s “succeeding assistance” is always tied to “man’s endeavors,” then “man’s success” is in his own power, and this violates the teaching of scripture. How can God promise “that great revival of religion in the latter days” if he does not have the power or will to determine effects? What would we say about “some third person between God and” us, who “was left entirely to their free will to be the sole determining cause whether we should have the benefit” of virtue and piety? Let us say that “this third person should happen to determine in our favor.” Would it then be right to give God thanks and all the glory for the gift? “On the contrary.” This third person, whose “sovereign will decides the matter,” was “the truest author and bestower of the benefit.” Edwards hoped his readers would realize that just like this third person, God is “all in the cause” of every act of true virtue and piety.22 For Edwards, then, the affections are not the concatenation of our acts in response to God, nor are they part ours and part God’s. Instead, “God does all and we do all.” God is the “author and fountain” of our

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acts, but those acts are still ours. We are the only “proper actors.” It is not that God does some and we do the rest, but the reality of human action must be viewed from different perspectives in order to capture the whole. “We are in different respects wholly passive and wholly active.” On the one hand, “God circumcises the heart,” but on the other hand, “we are commanded to circumcise [our hearts].” Therefore it is not a contradiction to say that holy affections are both God’s acts and ours. They are participation in God’s knowing and loving and rejoicing, and for that reason they are our participation. But it is God’s life in which we participate.23

Scrutinizing the Affections

Edwards did not merely delineate the affections and explain how they function in the human person participating in the life of the Trinity. As John E. Smith put it, he proceeded to subject Protestantism’s sacred domain—the inner life—to public tests. Edwards believed piety needed to be evaluated by a kind of rational scrutiny. This was for the purpose of discriminating true religion from hypocrisy and self-deception. He recognized that this is a difficult task, even for a pastor obligated to make decisions regarding other persons’ spiritual condition. Only God, said Edwards, can fathom a human soul.24 Thus he writes that “it was never God’s design to give us any rules by which we may certainly know, who of our fellow professors are his, and to make a full and clear separation between sheep and goats: but that on the contrary, it was God’s design to reserve this to himself, as his prerogative.” A recently published text, “Directions for Judging of Persons’ Experiences,” shows Edwards searching for principles to evaluate members of his flock: “See to it: That the operation be much upon the will or heart, not on the imagination. . . . That the trouble of mind be reasonable. . . . That they have not only pretended convictions of sin; but a proper mourning for sin.”25 During his later years, Edwards became skeptical about definitive judgments on one’s own or others’ spiritual condition. Hypocrites mimicked saints, and saints resembled hypocrites. The heart was deceptive, both to others and to itself. In Religious Affections the overriding sign of genuine religion is “holy practice,” which lies in the realm of action rather than perception or sensibility. The only set of affections that produces the habit of holy practice

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is the cluster collectively titled the “new sense of the heart.” This is the “disposition” or habit that the Spirit “infuses” to enable saints to see God’s infinite beauty and glory. It is a “sweet idea,” the “joy of joys,” a sweet and ravishing “view of the moral excellency of divine things.” This sight alone makes all the other divine attributes glorious and lovely. It is a taste that is diverse from all other sensations, as different as the taste of honey is from the mere intellectual idea of it. It is an “intuitive knowledge” of the supreme beauty and sweetness of the holiness and moral perfection of divine things. This beauty of holiness, Edwards proclaimed, is the most important thing in the world, the divinity of divinity, without which God would be an infinite evil, and apart from which it would be better if we had not been born and there had been no being at all. These were the extravagant claims made by Edwards for what has been called the most original idea in all of his theology.26 It might be helpful here to note the scholarly debate over the relationship of this “sense” to everyday perceptions. One the one side are those like Paul Helm who highlight the discontinuity between the new sense and all other human experiences.27 Since Edwards compares the new sense to Locke’s “new simple idea”—an idea, like heat or wetness, that cannot be understood without a corresponding experience—these scholars maintain that the new sense has no connection to ordinary sense perception and implies a kind of sixth sense.28 On the other side are those such as Perry Miller who note that Edwards denied that the new sense set aside the functioning of the natural senses. They interpret the “new sense” not as a sixth sense or vision of another world but as a deeper vision of the present world.29 My position is that Edwards’s new sense involved an interplay of natural and gracious experience. Pace Miller, the experience of conversion is foundational to Edwards’s religious epistemology.30 Believers are able to perceive a holy beauty in God that is invisible to nonbelievers, and in this sense believers and nonbelievers live in two different universes. Subsequent to regeneration, the believer comes to appreciate even the beauties of the natural world in new ways. While Emerson and Schleiermacher held that a deeper vision was accessible to all human beings, Edwards made this vision dependent on a prior operation of divine grace. Pace Helm, however, the mental breakthrough of grace, or “divine and supernatural light,” operates in and through the natural sense faculties, and so grace does not destroy or bypass nature but perfects it. The

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“new sense” is not an epistemological quirk, detached from the rest of human life. Those who undergo regeneration find that this one experience unlocks the meaning of all human experience, and sheds light on all of life. It involves the whole person in the affective dimension: it is an “inward tasting or feeling, of sweetness or pleasure, bitterness or pains.”31 Thus Edwards’s “new sense” is a creative synthesis of Puritan and Enlightenment ideas, melding the discontinuities of grace with the continuities of human nature. Moreover the “new sense” became a basis for Edwards to judge between gracious and natural experiences in the midst of the eighteenth-century religious awakenings. The argument of Religious Affections suggests that individuals can examine themselves to see if they delight in this divine beauty for its own sake. It may be a hard test, but for Edwards it was this vision, issuing in an affectional disposition given to Christian practice (by which he meant things such as humility, forgiveness, mercy, fear of God, balance among the virtues, and hunger for more of God), that yields decisive evidence of grace. Religious Affections also outlines a set of phenomena that are unreliable as signs of grace. Some persons, for example, become convinced of God’s favor because verses of scripture or other words related to Jesus Christ suddenly come to mind. Another unreliable or “no certain” sign is the presence of “very great” or “raised high” affections. Edwards points to the Israelites at the Red Sea who sang God’s praises but then “tested the Lord” by forgetting his work for them and crying out to go back to Egypt.32 Other uncertain signs are great effects on the body, fluency in talking about religious things, spiritual phenomena arising without effort, the appearance of love, many different kinds of affections, a certain order in the affections, spending much time in religious duties, mouths full of praises, assurance of salvation, and good impressions among the godly about the spiritual state of a person. All of these are common among hypocrites, who also exhibit excessive confidence in themselves, a prideful and superior spirit, censorious or judgmental attitudes toward others, and a tendency toward self-satisfaction.33 * * * I will conclude with two observations. First, one of Edwards’s foundational ideas was not to judge spiritual phenomena by a priori assumptions but to look more deeply at underlying dynamics and more broadly at ex-

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tensive connections for clues to religious validity. He warned that spiritual phenomena could not be taken at face value, that hypocrites deceive the righteous, and that the devil counterfeits true religion. His project of spiritual discernment was among the most penetrating and subtle in Christian history. Second, Edwards probed the affections and religious experience with an intensity unique to the eighteenth century and perhaps the centuries since. The enlightened thinkers of his century thought it beneath their dignity to philosophize concerning religious experience, especially the affections. Even less did they consider it their life’s work to categorize and analyze subjective states of religious sensibility. One of Edwards’s gifts to modern intellectual history was the way he made it possible, for both religious and secular investigators, to view religious affections as phenomena worth study. Notes 1. Jonathan Edwards, “Discourse on the Trinity,” in Writings on the Trinity, Grace, and Faith, vol. 21 of The Works of Jonathan Edwards, ed. Sang Hyun Lee (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 113. All references to this and other volumes in the Yale edition of the Works of Edwards will use the abbreviation WJE followed by volume and page(s). 2. WJE 21:113–34. 3. WJE 21:133. 4. Edwards, sermon on Rom. 2:10, quoted in Paul Ramsey, “Heaven Is a Progressive State,” WJE 8:725; original emphases. 5. WJE 21:113. This is what Edwards means in End for Which God Created the World, where he writes of “God communicating and diffusing himself . . . making [human creatures] to partake of him” and the ways God “communicates himself to the understanding of the creature . . . and to the will of the creature . . . and in giving the creature happiness. . . . These are the sum of that emanation of divine fullness called in Scripture, the ‘glory of God.’” WJE 8:461–62, 529. Kyle C. Strobel writes of the affections as participation in God’s trinitarian life in Jonathan Edwards’s Theology: A Reinterpretation (London: Bloomsbury/T & T Clark, 2013), esp. 209–33. 6. WJE 2:101; emphasis added. 7. WJE 2:101, 97, 99–100, 96. 8. WJE 2:266, 271; emphasis added.

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9. WJE 2:266. 10. WJE 4:60. See also WJE 4:51–52, 60–65, 79–83. 11. WJE 2:266, 271 (emphasis added); 22:88. 12. WJE 2:97. 13. Michael McClymond and Gerald McDermott, The Theology of Jonathan Edwards (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 339–46. 14. WJE 2:102–8; 8:129, 218–92; Augustine, City of God 11.23; WJE 2:117. 15. WJE 2:108. 16. WJE 2:150. 17. McClymond and McDermott, Theology of Jonathan Edwards, chaps. 13, 17, 23. 18. WJE 21:179, 192, 195, 194. 19. Thanks to Dale Coulter for his insights here. 20. Sang Lee, Introduction, WJE 21:46–47; 21:300; 13:235; Anri Morimoto, Jonathan Edwards and the Catholic Vision of Salvation (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995), 44. 21. Morimoto, Jonathan Edwards, 18–20; WJE 21:228, 236. 22. WJE 21:210, 242, 237–38. 23. WJE 21:251. 24. WJE 2:43; McClymond and McDermott, Theology of Jonathan Edwards, 465–81. 25. WJE 2:43, 193; 21:522–24. 26. WJE 2:242, 253, 257, 260, 206, 259, 272–73, 298; John E. Smith, “Editor’s Introduction,” in WJE 2:30. 27. Paul Helm, “John Locke and Jonathan Edwards: A Reconsideration,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 7 (1969): 51–61. 28. WJE 2:205. 29. Perry Miller, “Jonathan Edwards and the Sense of the Heart,” Harvard Theological Review 41 (1948): 123–45. 30. McClymond and McDermott, Theology of Jonathan Edwards, 373–88. 31. WJE 18:459. 32. WJE 2:127–30. 33. WJE 2:142–45, 220, 127–90.

C O N C LU S I O N The Affective Spirit and Historiographical Revitalization in the Christian Theological Tradition

A M O S YO N G

This conclusion to the volume reflects on the foregoing chapters by exploring how renewal studies contributes historiographical perspectives on the history of Christian thought that can also revitalize historical theology and theological reflection in the Christian tradition. After briefly revisiting the emerging field of renewal studies, I explore three applications of what might be called a renewalist historiographical method. The question we are asking is, what, if anything, changes when renewal is deployed as a historiographical lens for Christian history and thought?

Renewal Studies: A Methodological Definition

The nature of renewal studies as an academic discipline cannot be understood apart from the emergence of the field of pentecostal studies. The latter is evidenced most concretely in the Society for Pentecostal Studies (established in 1972) and its scholarly journal, PNEUMA: Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies. In the past forty-plus years, numerous other 293

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scholarly societies and journals devoted to the study of pentecostal and charismatic renewal movements have appeared.1 It is in this milieu that renewal studies has emerged. However, the scope of renewal studies has never been limited to twentieth-centuryderived pentecostal and charismatic movements. Instead, at least at Regent University and its Center for Renewal Studies, at the scholarly vanguard of this conversation over the past decade, the study of renewal is both interdisciplinary and methodologically focused.2 As indicated in the preface, renewal as a methodological orientation need not only explore renewal movements; it can turn its gaze to other topics, albeit as informed by critical reflection derived from charismatic movements and their practices. More precisely, then, the renewing work of the Holy Spirit becomes an analytical lens through which we reconsider the broad scope of theological studies. This applies to each of the subfields in this arena, so that, for instance, biblical studies is approached via a renewal hermeneutical lens and theology proper adopts a renewal methodology.3 It is within this framework that the specific question about a renewal historiography arises. Renewal historians were originally those whose research, work, and scholarship focused on documenting the many untold stories of renewal movements, especially those within the pentecostal and charismatic orbit. But as the critical and postcritical phase of renewal scholarship has developed, the second generation has increasingly asked if the broader Christian tradition ought to be revisited using a historiographical lens informed by renewal perspectives.4 The parameters for what now counts as renewal historical scholarship can be broadened considerably. Three overall trajectories for such research and writing can be delineated: the history of Christianity, the history of Christian thought, and Christian historical theology.

Renewal and the History of Christianity

The history of Christianity itself ought to be reconsidered from a renewal historiographical perspective. What difference this makes can be appreciated when we trace the major shifts in Christian historiography.5 It is a truism to say that for much of Christian history, its story was written by the “victors” or “winners.” These represented the perspectives not only of

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the literate (a minority of the population for much of history) but also of those in power, inevitably the ecclesial hierarchy, or at least those closer to the center than the periphery of the church’s institutionalized authority structures.6 With the Enlightenment, of course, critical histories gradually emerged. While such “objective” accounts were meant to displace the “biased” viewpoints of ecclesiarchs, we now realize that scholars are no less immune to perspectival subjectivity than are church leaders. It was now only a matter of which presuppositions controlled the research and writing process. Renewal movements have not fared well at the hands of either group. For much of the history of Christianity, charismatic renewalists were ignored or marginalized (at best), disparaged (often), or hereticized (at worst). In part this was related to certain unconventional behaviors, practices, and teachings; in other cases, perhaps such movements were subversive (intentionally or not) of the church hierarchy or challenged its authority. Often, then, renewalists were dismissed as schismatics, separatists, sectarians, enthusiasts (schwarmerei, as with a few groups associated with the Radical Reformation), and, perhaps most damnably, heretics!7 Modern critical historians did not treat renewalists much better. This was perhaps less because they felt threatened by these movements and more because of their popular religiosity, their uncouth emotionalism, or their fantastic claims. The latter, especially regarding healings, miracles, and an interventionist God (or divine Spirit), rankled “enlightened” sensibilities (as Paul Lim’s chapter in this volume illuminates). Renewalists thus were either caricatured or explained away: their experiential claims were explicated in other terms (deploying scientistic and reductionist interpretations, for instance). The point is that in either case, the “history” of renewal movements has by and large been distorted. The postmodern turn in the academy has begun to equal the playing field. Not only are institutionally centrist perspectives being complemented, even corrected, by those on the margins, but modern objectivism is giving way to late modern perspectivalism. In this milieu, renewal historiographical approaches have also emerged.8 This has enabled a more diverse mode of researching and retelling renewal histories. But more important for our purposes, the development of a distinctively renewal historiographical lens has led to new questions about the history of Christianity. In brief, what happens when we revisit the

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standard (ecclesial or modernist) accounts of renewal movements and reframe then in a renewal perspective? What happens when renewal movements are not automatically assumed to be heretical, scandalous, or superstitious, to deploy the conventional interpretations? How might these accounts be better understood if they were not perceived as being from such marginal sites or, if marginality is retained, if such were not presumed in negative terms? The pentecostal historian Cecil M. Robeck Jr., for instance, has reopened the question about Montanism.9 While he judiciously refrains from applying his pentecostal perspective willy-nilly to the original sources, his account illuminates aspects of this second- and third-century charismatic movement in ways not registered by prior treatments. The point is that suspension of the historical biases against Montanism allows a fresh assessment, one informed by perspectives sympathetic to, if not uncritical of, the charismatic dynamics, sensibilities, and concerns of this early renewal movement. Hence a renewalist approach does not presume to marginalize enthusiastic movements but instead looks at the story of Christianity from these renewalist margins. The outcome is certainly a better comprehension of renewal movements (like Montanism); beyond this, the landscape of the broader Christian narrative itself shifts, since what is redefined are precisely centers/margins, orthodoxy/heterodoxy, and the like. In short, renewal historiography not only lifts up renewal movements, but reconfigures Christian history as a discipline itself. The possibilities inherent in this renewalist historiography are implicit in the chapters by Elizabeth Dreyer, Michael McClymond, and Bradley Nassif. I return below to the trajectories opened up in this area.

Renewal and the History of Christian Thought

The history of Christian thought as a field of inquiry ought also to be reconsidered from a renewalist vantage point. Generally speaking, these areas of research have featured various genres. Those written from a history of ideas or intellectual historical perspective tend to foreground the development of basic theological notions over time, for instance, while histories of doctrine, even of dogma, are more reliant on official ecclesi-

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astical documents, as another example. Alternatively, the focus could be biographical theologies that locate the ideas of leading thinkers in their broader context, tracing out historical sources and the legacies left behind. Last but not least (there are certainly too many forms to give an exhaustive enumeration here), scholars might research and write comparative histories of the Christian intellectual tradition, whether of the more synchronic sort (of two more or less contemporaneous movements) or of the more diachronic sort (e.g., comparing the anti-trinitarianism of early modern England to the unitarianism of the twentieth-century Universalist Association). The appearance renewalism has made in historical studies of these sorts are rather predictable. Surely they have been inserted in histories of heresies, for instance, sometimes deservedly so, but they have usually been depicted in more rather than less pejorative terms. Ronald Knox’s Enthusiasm which appeared in 1950, was a watershed book in that it treated what previously had been vilified as a viable history to be told.10 On the one hand, some readers no doubt received the text as providing a wideranging discussion of these strange and quirky if not troublesome and dangerous groups. On the other hand, Knox’s discussion was suggestive in outlining that there is an intellectual dimension to enthusiasm! The difficulty, of course, was that this had to be teased out a bit differently than simply reading the writings of putative “enthusiasts.” The enthusiastic imagination, if I may coin the term, needed to be “caught” as much as it was “taught,” especially since such groups lived out rather than wrote down their theological ideas. I suggest that the history of Christian thought can go beyond Knox if it adopts a more explicitly renewalist historiographical stance. The oeuvre of Stanley Burgess exemplifies the possibilities of such an approach.11 Burgess’s lifework has been devoted to retelling the history of Christian thought from a pneumatological perspective. His basic idea is bold: take the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, the perennially shy, hidden, and even neglected member of the Trinity,12 and forefront that as a template or fundamental motif for historical theology. There have been many historical Christologies (histories of the doctrine of Christ), so why not some historical pneumatologies (histories of the doctrine of the Spirit)? But beyond this, Burgess’s work highlights why historical pneumatologies have been neglected: peoples of the Spirit, to use his phrase, do not write

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out their ideas of the Spirit as much as live them out liturgically, in song, recitation, or other less than discursive means. In short, approaches sensitive to these nontextual dimensions of historical research are needed to fully plumb the history of renewal movements. Some of the chapters in this book participate in such a pneumatological-historical project of retrieval. Paul Lim’s chapter on Puritanism and enthusiasm is the most obvious, although the chapters on Jonathan Edwards (by Gerald McDermott) and John Wesley (by Gregory Clapper) can be read comparatively and historically also as providing windows onto the development of pneumatological ideas in the eighteenth century. In a more general way, of course, each of the chapters in this volume provides some perspective on historical Christian pneumatology, albeit viewed through the lens of affectivity. This leads to my third basic suggestion for a renewalist historiography and its implications.

The Renewal of Christian Historical Theology

I suggest that renewalist historiographical approaches are limited neither to histories of renewal movements nor to histories of pneumatology; rather, this combination opens up to new horizons for the Christian theological task. My claim is that the renewing work of the Spirit involves not just ideas or the intellect but also transformed, sanctified, and empowered lives. The theological task thus needs to attend not only to texts and doctrines but also to bodies and behaviors. In this case, a renewal historiography has to find other points of entry into the theological discussion, one less handicapped by the discursivity of the Christian tradition’s textual legacy. It is precisely for this reason that we have chosen affectivity as the prevailing theme for this book. This is not to deny that there is an intellectual aspect to the work of the Spirit; it is to affirm that if the “heart” is the locus of the Spirit’s work, then any pneumatology—historical or systematic—that does not probe the inner recesses of human souls leaves its promise unfulfilled. Affectivity as a historiographical lens is heretofore not entirely absent in Christian historical inquiry, but its approach has by and large been limited to women’s history and the literature spawned by Jonathan Edwards’s influential Treatise on Religious Affections.13 But if we

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take the logic of renewal seriously,14 then accentuating the affective dimension shines a light on previously neglected theological and especially pneumatological categories, features, and themes that should illuminate the broad range not only of Christian history writing but also of historical theology and even the history of Christian thought. This volume is thus motivated by the intuition that a pneumatological and renewalist lens applied to the Christian tradition has the potential to elucidate aspects of historical theology that have been either marginalized or neglected. Thus, on the one hand, it can be read as a historical theology of the affections as one of the central tributaries where the work of the Spirit can be tracked; on the other hand, the individual chapters provide snapshots of specific locales in the affective dimension of the Spirit’s work in Christian history and thought. The preceding discussions of the church fathers’ reading of the Song of Songs, of the role of holy tears in the Christian tradition, of the culture of affectivity in the medieval period, or of the reception, or lack thereof, of enthusiasm in Enlightenment England spotlight crucial elements of the work of the Spirit against the broader landscape of Christian history and thought that deserves further exploration and explication.15 Beyond this, the various chapters in this volume lift up central themes in major Christian figures, thinkers, and theologians that may not have been framed quite in this way before. We have invited readers to revisit Augustine, Chrysostom, Aquinas, Luther, Wesley, and Edwards, for instance, from this affectively charged perspective, and we believe that the outcome is a new appreciation for their contributions as a whole. Even to reread Eckhart and Pascal in these pages resituates their well-known contributions on the affections. Now we are able to at least understand, if not appreciate, the Meister’s concerns better—against the backdrop of the broader Christian tradition’s engagement with affectivity—even as we are also able to make new connections between the Pascalian “reasons of the heart,” albeit now amid and alongside those of the Eckhartian project, for instance. But there is probably much more at stake. The wager of a renewalist historiography, for us, is its capacity to illuminate forgotten or unnoticed aspects of the Christian tradition. Focusing on the person and work of the Spirit, then, urges a pneumatological reconsideration of the historical theological enterprise. This means not just a discussion of the Holy Spirit,

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as important as that is. It also means asking about how to inquire into the work of the Spirit, which requires identification of other less obviously textually transmitted or mediated sites of exploration. Our project’s focus on affectivity is only one such site or point of entry for such a renewalist historiography. If our intuitions are correct, then, the result is not just the renewal of pneumatology, historically or otherwise, but the renewal of historical theology as a field of inquiry and potentially the revitalization of the theological enterprise, broadly considered. What we mean is that a renewed understanding of the Christian tradition, facilitated by a pneumatological perspective, also prospectively renews Christian theology in general. Part of the reason for what some might consider an overly optimistic assessment is that we are not just talking about a broader cognitive grasp of the work of the Holy Spirit. Rather, as the chapters in this book remind us, any adequate understanding of the Spirit cannot be reduced to the intellectual register. A renewalist and pneumatological focus confronts us with the broad scope and complexity of our embodied, interpersonal, imaginative, and aesthetic modalities of being in the world.16 In all these ways, then, the chapters in this book summon important questions about our passions (Wilkin and Putt), our loves and desires (Smith, Zahl, and Bom), our emotions (Dreyer, Lim, and McClymond), our virtues and vices (Boyd), and our affections broadly understood (McDermott, Clapper, and Nassif )—but do so in a heretofore relatively untapped theological and historical manner. These are all core aspects of the human condition that the theological tradition needs to grapple with in a more sustained fashion. We have come full circle: what began as a renewalist approach to the history of the Christian tradition now prompts theological reevaluation of themes that perhaps have been treated disparately before (e.g., pneumatology, affectivity, and charismatic renewal). But now such discussions are brought together in an informative manner, thanks in part to the renewalist orientation of this project. Surely the answers lie ahead of us; in fact, the proper questions are barely identified in the foregoing pages. But such is the task of renewal theology, and surely this is one expression of the contributions a renewal historiography can make to these wider discussions.

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Notes Thanks to Dale Coulter for his editorial input. 1. An excellent overview of the history of pentecostal scholarship is Wolfgang Vondey and Martin William Mittelstadt, Introduction to The Theology of Amos Yong and the New Face of Pentecostal Scholarship: Passion for the Spirit, ed. Wolfgang Vondey and Martin William Mittelstadt, Global Pentecostal and Charismatic Studies 14 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 1–24, esp. 4–8; see also my brief article, “Pentecostalism and the Theological Academy,” Theology Today 64, no. 2 (2007): 244–50. 2. See, e.g., Wolfgang Vondey, “Introduction: The Presence of the Spirit as an Interdisciplinary Concern,” in The Holy Spirit and the Christian Life: Historical, Interdisciplinary, and Renewal Perspectives, ed. Wolfgang Vondey, CHARIS: Christianity and Renewal–Interdisciplinary Studies 1 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 1–20. 3. These are elaborated in Amos Yong, “Finding the Holy Spirit at the Christian University: Renewal and the Future of Higher Education in the Pentecostal-Charismatic Tradition,” in Spirit-Empowered Christianity in the 21st Century: Insights, Analyses, and Future Trends, ed. Vinson Synan (Lake Mary, FL: Charisma House, 2011), 455–76, 577–87; see also my “The Holy Spirit and the Christian University: The Renewal of Evangelical Higher Education,” in Christian Scholarship in the Twenty-First Century: Prospects and Perils, ed. Gregg A. Ten Elshoff, Thomas M. Crisp, and Steve L. Porter (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans 2014), 163–80. 4. I chart some of the basic developments in my “Pentecostal and Charismatic Theology,” in The Routledge Companion to Modern Christian Thought, ed. Chad Meister and James Beilby (New York: Routledge, 2013), 636–46, esp. 637–39. 5. The classic survey is C. T. McIntire, ed., God, History and Historians: An Anthology of Modern Christian Views of History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977). 6. One influential example in this regard is Williston Walker, A History of the Christian Church (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1918), since reprinted in many editions. 7. See how some of these groups are discussed, for instance, in David S. Lovejoy, Religious Enthusiasm in the New World: Heresy to Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985); and G. R. Evans, A Brief History of Heresy (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2002). 8. See, e.g., Augustus Cerillo Jr., “Interpretive Approaches to the History of American Pentecostal Origins,” PNEUMA: Journal of the Society for Pentecostal

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Studies 19, no. 1 (1997): 29–52; Irvin G. Chetty, “Towards a Postcolonial Pentecostal Historiography: Ramblings from the South,” Studia Historiae Ecclesiasticae 35, no. 2 (2009): 337–51; and Jörg Haustein, Writing Religious History: The Historiography of Ethiopian Pentecostalism, Studies in the History of Christianity in the Non-Western World 17 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2011); see also J. Steven O’Malley, ed., Interpretive Trends in Christian Revitalization for the Early Twenty-First Century (Wilmore, KY: Emeth Press, 2012). 9. Cecil M. Robeck Jr., Prophecy in Carthage: Perpetua, Tertullian, and Cyprian (Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press, 1992). Robeck’s scholarship has more recently been complemented by Christine Trevett, Montanism: Gender, Authority and the New Prophecy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 10. Ronald A. Knox, Enthusiasm: A Chapter in the History of Religion, with Special Reference to the XVII and XVIII Centuries (New York: Oxford University Press, 1950). 11. Beginning with his three volumes: The Holy Spirit and the Church: Antiquity, The Holy Spirit: Eastern Christian Traditions, and The Holy Spirit: Medieval Roman Catholic and Reformation Traditions (Sixth–Sixteenth Centuries) (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1984, 1989, and 1997, respectively). See also his more recent anthology, Christian Peoples of the Spirit: A Documentary History of Pentecostal Spirituality from the Early Church to the Present (New York: New York University Press, 2011). 12. As demonstrated by Frederick Dale Bruner and William Hordern, The Holy Spirit: Shy Member of the Trinity (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Publishing House, 1984). 13. E.g., Elizabeth Dreyer, Passionate Spirituality: Hildegard of Bingen and Hadewijch of Brabant (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2005); and C. Samuel Storms, Signs of the Spirit: An Interpretation of Jonathan Edwards’ Religious Affections (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2007). 14. As explicated particularly in the concluding chapter of William J. Abraham, The Logic of Renewal (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003), esp. 158–72. 15. The affections is introduced as a, if not the, central category for understanding pentecostal history and spirituality by Steven J. Land, Pentecostal Spirituality: A Passion for the Kingdom (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1992); see also my Spirit of Love: A Trinitarian Theology of Grace (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2012), chap. 5. 16. See Amos Yong and Jonathan A. Anderson, “Renewing Christian Theology: Systematics and Aesthetics from and for a Global Christianity,” Christian Century, May 28, 2014, 30–33.

C O N T R I BU TO R S

Klaas Bom is Senior Researcher at the Protestant Theological University, Amsterdam–Groningen, the Netherlands. Craig A. Boyd is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Core Curriculum, St. Louis University, St. Louis, Missouri. Gregory S. Clapper is Professor of Religion and Philosophy, University of Indianapolis, Indianapolis, Indiana. Dale M. Coulter is Associate Professor of Historical Theology, Regent University School of Divinity, Virginia Beach, Virginia. Elizabeth A. Dreyer is Professor of Religious Studies, Fairfield University, Fairfield, Connecticut. Paul C. H. Lim is Professor of the History of Christianity, Vanderbilt Divinity School, and Professor of Religious Studies, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee. Michael J. McClymond is Professor of Modern Christianity, Saint Louis University, St. Louis, Missouri. Gerald R. McDermott is Anglican Chair of Divinity, History, and Doctrine at Beeson Divinity School, Distinguished Senior Fellow at Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion, Baylor University, and Research Associate, Jonathan Edwards Centre Africa, University of the Free State, South Africa. Bradley Nassif is Professor of Biblical and Theological Studies, North Park University, Chicago, Illinois. Sharon L. Putt is Professor of Theology and Religion, Messiah College, Grantham, Pennsylvania. James K. A. Smith is Professor of Philosophy and Gary and Henrietta Byker Chair in Applied Reformed Theology and Worldview, Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan. Robert Louis Wilken is William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of History of Christianity Emeritus, University of Virginia, Alexandria. Amos Yong is Professor of Theology and Mission, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California. Simeon Zahl is Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, England.

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INDEX

Abelard, Peter, 6 Aelred of Rievaulx, 117 aesthetics, 17, 45, 48–55, 59n27, 300 incarnational, 59n19 affections, 185–88 formation of, 43 meditation of, 139 theology of, 197–99 unity of, 284–85 affectus, 8, 13, 14, 144, 158n4, 183, 185–90, 199n3, 201n16, 203n35, 263 agape, 31, 32, 38 aisthesis, 48–50 allegory, 32 Anabaptism, 232, 244 anaphora, 76 anger, 37, 192 Anselm of Canterbury, 117 anthropology dualist, 61n36 theological, 183 Antinomianism, 244 apatheia, 16, 17, 70, 71, 81 appetites, 144–47 appetitus, 8, 10, 12, 13, 20, 26n28, 27n39, 145, 185, 190, 191 Aquinas, Thomas, 7, 27n42, 116, 246, 263–64, 268, 269, 286 Aristotle, 9, 140n39, 268 Asendorf, Ulrich, 184

Asher, Lyell, 55n1 assurance, 269–71 Athanasius, 82, 83n2 Augustine, 6, 7, 8, 12, 15, 16, 17, 21, 26n19, 26n32, 27n39, 30, 33, 34, 36, 37, 38, 73, 83n10, 91, 101, 107n16, 130, 188, 200n12, 202n23, 263–64, 269, 284, 285 conversion of, 45 Augustinians, 214, 215 affective, 182, 185, 199n1 authenticity, 59n20 Averroes, 140n39 Avicenna, 140n39 Axton, Richard, 63n48 Azusa Street, ix baptism, 72–77, 90, 93 Barclay, Robert, 242, 243, 255n42–43 Barth, Karl, 6, 63n48 Baudrillard, Jean, 58n15, 62n45 Baxter, Richard, 21, 238–40 beauty, 18, 35–36, 49, 50, 59n27, 289 Beck, Hans-Georg, 88 beguine movement, 138n27 Bellarmine, Robert, 97 Benedict XVI, 55, 63n54 Benedict of Nursia, 96 Benke, Christoph, 88, 92, 99, 102, 109n49

305

306 Bernard of Clairvaux, 14, 18, 20, 33, 116, 117, 188, 209, 225n10 body, 219–22 Boff, Leonardo, 141n45 Bonaventure, 18, 19, 20, 115, 117, 127–34, 140n39 bondage of the will, 20 Boquet, Damien, 209, 226n26 boulēsis, 9, 10, 12, 13 Brichaninov, Ignatius, 83n5 Bunyan, John, 32 Burgess, Stanley M., 297 Burgundio of Pisa, 12 Byers, Sarah, 12 Byzantine Rites, 66–69 Calvin, John, 108n35, 242, 255n43 Capellanus, Andreas, 15, 19 Cappadocian fathers, 12 Caputo, John, 165, 177n29 caritas, 117 Carraud, Vincent, 214, 215, 218, 224n4, 227n32 Cassian, John, 89, 96, 106n13 casuistry, 217 Catherine of Siena, 96, 116, 138n23 certainty, 212, 213 Chalcedon, Council of, 67, 80 Chalmers, Thomas, 107n20 charisms, 88, 140n43, 155–57, 233, 240, 246 cessation of, 21 miraculous, 236, 247, 250 charity, 16, 124, 147–53, 155, 159n19, 210 Charles II, 241 Christianity genuine, 262 history of, 294–96 scriptural, 261

Index Christian thought, history of, 296 Christology, 19, 23, 67, 80, 125, 131, 152 Christocentricity, 226n26 Christomonism, 6 sonship, 167–69 Chrysostom, John, 246 Chryssavgis, John, 17, 71 Church of England, 21, 232 Cicero, 10, 12, 14, 37 Cioran, E. M., 103n2 Clement of Alexandria, 11, 12 Climacus, John, 2, 18, 107n14, 107n17 Coakley, Sarah, 228n51 cognition, 5 Collingwood, R. G., 50 Collins, Ken, 277n38 Comber, Thomas, 244, 245 compunction, 89, 90, 92, 93, 96, 98, 103, 104n3, 106n13, 107n17, 129 concupiscence, 285 concupiscentia, 9, 13, 26n32, 185, 192 concurrence, 286 consolations, 213 Constable, Giles, 178n61 contemplation, 94, 98, 172 contrition, 90 conversion, 2, 3, 4, 15, 22, 45, 72, 74, 198, 211, 214, 219, 286, 289 Cooper, Anthony Ashley, third Earl of Shaftesbury, 231, 232, 251 Coppe, Abiezer, 234 Cormack, Robin, 79 Coudert, Allison, 239 Coulter, Dale, 255n43 councils, ecumenical, 81 Seventh Ecumenical Council, 79, 85n25

Index Cranmer, Thomas, 199n1 creation, 50–53 goodness of, 42, 48, 49, 61n37 cross, 69, 127–34, 134n3, 139n33 theology of the, 191 cupiditas, 9, 10, 12, 26n31, 185 Dante, 36 Davenport, James, 282 Day, Dorothy, 122 deification, 17, 18, 131 deism, 251 Dell, William, 240 de Roannez, Charlotte, 208, 215, 220 Derrida, Jacques, 62n42 Descartes, René, 214, 229n69 Desert Christians, 70, 87, 88, 90–96, 97, 99, 101–2 desire, 1, 3, 8, 9, 12, 13, 15, 16, 18, 19, 23, 35, 36, 37, 117, 185 Aquinas on, 144–47 selfish, 171 detachment, 34 determinism, 196 de Troyes, Chretien, 19 discernment, 97, 291 dispassion, 70 Dixon, Thomas, 4, 5, 263, 264, 265, 267, 276n24 Docwra, Ann, 237, 238 d’Oignies, Marie, 138n23 Driscoll, Jeremy, 95 Duns Scotus, John, 198 Durkheim, Emile, 106n11 Ebersole, Gary L., 100, 106n11 ecstasy, 3, 15, 18, 21, 23 Edwards, Jonathan, 8, 107n20, 204n65, 298

307 Ellwood, Thomas, 244 embodiment, 49, 300 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 289 emotion, 1, 3, 5, 8, 16, 19, 22, 23, 34, 35, 54, 80, 115, 132, 136n9, 144, 157n2, 263–69, 275n15, 283 empathy, 98–100 Enlightenment, 290 Scottish, 14 enthusiasm, 181, 182, 184, 197, 204n65, 297, 298 epiklesis, 76 epistemology, 49, 50, 209–14, 211 affective, 42 epithumia, 9, 13, 15, 16, 18 Erasmus, 14, 20, 184, 185, 195–96, 203n50, 204n51 eros, 32, 36, 38, 126 sacred, 120–27 erotic, 3, 15, 18, 19, 23, 30, 117, 129 eschatology, 51 Eucharist, 19, 55, 67, 72–77, 95, 219 Eusebius, 248 Evagrius Ponticus, 18, 70, 94, 95, 106n13 Evangelical Sisterhood of Mary, 97 experience, 5, 183, 270 religious, 106, 212, 283, 291 fall, the, 69 Familists, 234, 244 fear, 20, 35, 37, 189, 190, 192, 215 feeling, 3, 5, 37, 102, 272, 273 theory of, 4 Fell, Margaret, 238 Fendt, Gene, 55n1 filioque, 6 film, 56n2

308 flesh, 196 Fox, George, 236, 240 Franciscan Order, 127 Francis of Assisi, 117, 127, 129, 130 Freud, Sigmund, 115 Friends, 236. See also Quakerism friendship, 30, 31, 150, 151, 153, 157 Galen, 9 Gavrilyuk, Paul, 228n51 gender, 238 Gethsemane, 221, 283 Gnosticism, 114 God, 162–65 glory of, 291n5 love of, 117 union with, 165, 166, 167–69, 208, 209, 210, 211, 214, 221, 222, 223 Goethe, Johann, 100 Good Friday, 94 grace, 6, 23, 217, 218 uncreated, 19 Graver, Margaret R., 10, 275n15 Green, Joel, 278n43 Gregory of Narek, 95–96, 108n35 Gregory of Nazianus, 81 Gregory of Nyssa, 11, 16, 17, 35, 36, 70, 101 Gregory the Great, 26n33, 96 Grenz, Stanley, 274 grief, 20 Griffiths, Paul, 101 Grindal, Edmund, 247 Grosseteste, Robert, 12 Guigo the Carthusian, 106n12 Gunton, Colin, 6 habit, 289 habitus, 14, 149, 156

Index Hadewijch of Brabant, 2, 18, 19, 114, 117, 120–27, 130, 133, 134 Halton, Thomas, 242 Harris, Max, 61n35, 62n42, 63n48 Harrison, Carol, 56n3, 58n14, 59n27 Hausherr, Irenee, 98, 106n13 Hawes, Clement, 243 Hays, Richard, 278n43 healing, 236 heart, 14, 185–91 grammar of the, 277n41 hard, 285 religion of the, 199, 260–63, 269 theology of the, 194 Heidegger, Martin, 59n20, 60n29 heilsgeschichte, 249 Heitzenrater, Richard P., 260, 274n3 Helm, Paul, 289 hermeneutics, 222, 238, 248 individualized, 242 medieval, 42 of suspicion, 120 Hickes, George, 233, 234, 239, 240, 241–51 Hildegard of Bingen, 18, 103, 116, 118 historicism, 249 Hitler, Adolf, 101, 110n56 holiness, 261, 289 Holl, Karl, 88 Holy Spirit, ix, 69, 71–74, 78, 125, 140n43, 154–55, 164, 169, 170, 175, 223, 232, 294 fruits of, 128 witness of, 269–71 Homer, 57n10 hope, 189 hormē, 8, 10–13, 26n28 Hugh of St. Victor, 18, 227n37 human nature, 18, 195–96

Index Hume, David, 251, 264, 276n24 hymn, 80–82 icon, 17, 78–80, 85n25 theology of, 53 idleness, 216 idolatry, 59n24, 62n44 Ignatius of Loyola, 97 illumination, 21, 287 image, 43–46, 53 image of God, 68 imagination, 50, 53, 163, 300 immanence, 19, 171 immanentism, 63n48 impulsus, 8, 12 incarnation, 17, 18, 19, 23, 42, 48, 50–53, 54, 58n17, 63n48, 68, 131, 223 infallibility, 211, 214 initiation, 73 intellect, 140n39, 282–83 Interregnum, 234, 236, 239, 240, 241 interventionism, 295 introspective conscience, 91 invocation, 76 Irenaeus of Lyons, 244 Isaac the Syrian, 95 James, Susan, 214 James, William, 4 Jenson, Robert, 6 Jesuits, 97, 217 John Climacus, 93, 94 John of Damascus, 12, 13, 81, 90 John of Fécamp, 117 Johns, Adrian, 239 John the Baptist, 79 joy, 20, 189, 211, 213, 215, 217, 277n41 tears of, 222

309 Julian of Norwich, 116, 133, 138n23 justification, 183, 232 by faith, 274n3, 261 Justin Martyr, 250 Kakutani, Michiko, 135n4 Kärkkäinen, Veli-Matti, 6 Karnes, Michelle, 140n38 Katherine of Alexandria, 138n23 Kempe, Margery, 138n23 King, Peter, 144 Knight, Mark, 236 knowledge, 209–14 of God, 36–38 Knox, John, 242 Knox, Ronald, 297 Knuuttila, Simo, 4, 5, 158n6 Ladner, Gerhart, x Langford, Thomas A., 260 Leduc, Francis, 88 Lewis, C. S., 122, 277n41 lex orandi lex est credendi, 66 liberation, 15 libido, 9, 10, 12, 26n31, 185 liturgy, 23 divine, 17, 65 Locke, John, 289 logic, 210 Lombardo, Nicholas, 13, 144, 154, 157n2, 286 Lossky, Vladimir, 6 love, 9, 15, 147–53, 155, 213 bond of, 7 counterfeit, 285 eros, 12, 33, 121, 134n3 holy, 38, 107n20 mutual, 279 of neighbors, 30, 170 sexual, 30, 35

310

love (cont.)

spirit of, 54–55 spiritual, 32 lust, 192 Luther, Martin, 13, 87, 91, 92, 99, 110n50, 232, 242 Macrina, 11, 12, 16 Maddox, Randy, 276n24, 277n38 Manichaeism, 45, 114 Mark the Ascetic, 74, 101 marriage, mystical, 114, 120–27 Martha, 161, 162, 169, 173, 174 martyrdom, 90 Mary, Virgin, 78, 119, 127, 161 Mary Magdalene, 119, 127 Mass, 193 Max, D. T., 135n4 Maximus the Confessor, 12, 16, 37, 38 McGinn, Bernard, 138n25, 138n26, 168, 209, 210, 214, 225n10 McInerny, Ralph, 158n7 McNamer, Sarah, 120, 134n3, 139n34 Mechthild of Magdeburg, 117 Melanchthon, Philipp, 184, 185–88, 199n1, 200n9, 204n51 metaphysics, 47 methexis, 51, 61n40 Metzger, Günther, 188 Meyendorff, John, 67 Milbank, John, 198, 204n66 Miles, Margaret, 63n49 Miller, Perry, 289 Miner, Robert, 158n4 miracles, counterfeit, 248 misery, 46–48 Moltman, Jürgen, 6 Montanism, 248, 249, 296

Index morality, 46–48, 214 More, Henry, 237 mortification, 94 Moses, 35 Muharram, festival of, 106n11 Müller, Barbara, 98, 99, 109n48 Müntzer, Thomas, 232 music, 182 mysticism active, 171 bridal, 121 medieval, 209 Neoplatonic, 62n47, 63n48 speculative, 171 tradition of, 21 Nagy, Piroska, 209, 226n26 Nemesius of Emesa, 12, 13 Neoplatonism, 63n48, 70, 114, 132 Nicene Creed, 69, 72, 73 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 87, 88, 103n2 Nissiotis, Nikos, 6 Nussbaum, Martha, 5, 266, 267, 268, 273, 277n39 Nuttall, G. F., 234, 238 Nygren, Anders, 121, 122 objectivism, 295 O’Connell, Robert, 42, 45, 49, 56n7, 59n27, 60n28 ordo salutis, 110n50 orexis, 8–11, 13 Origen, 16, 31, 32, 34, 35, 70 original sin, 7, 73, 274n3, 275n9, 284 orthodoxy, 259, 274 orthokardia, 22 orthopathy, 5 orthopraxis, 259, 274 other-worldliness, 60n28 Outler, Albert C., 260

Index Owen, John, 21, 234, 238, 239, 240, 242 Ozment, Steven, 188 participation, 19, 22, 23, 47, 51, 62, 68, 81, 119, 120, 144, 149, 150, 151, 152, 154, 168, 182, 198, 213, 280, 285, 287, 288, 291n5 affective, 213 ontological, 51, 58n17 Pascal, Blaise, 49 Pascal’s Wager, 220 passio, 8, 11, 13, 28n44, 148, 157n2, 158n4, 264 passionlessness, 66, 148 passions, 10, 11, 13, 15, 17, 18, 19, 32, 34, 37, 47, 48, 54, 66, 144, 146, 157n2, 282, 283 transformation of, 69–70 pathē, 8, 10, 11, 13, 264 peace, 211 Pentecost, 69, 125, 140n43 Pentecostal studies, 293 penthos, 18, 92, 98 perception, 162 perfection, 271–73 perspectivalism, 295 perturbatio, 8, 10 Peter Damian, 96 Phaedrus, 44, 58n17 phenomenology, 57n11 philia, 31 physicalism, 265 Pickstock, Catherine, 58n17, 60n28, 61n40, 63n48, 198 Pieper, Josef, 158n11 Pietism, 182, 198 Plato, 9, 11, 42–44, 283 Platonism, 17, 53, 58n17, 61n37, 62n45

311 Plattig, Michael, 97 Plotinus, 225n10 Plutarch, 9 pneumatology, 7, 22, 23, 54–55 historical, 297 Pope, Stephen, 153 populism, 2 Porete, Marguerite, 117 postlapsarianism, 61n40 postmodernism, 63n49, 295 prayer, 94 Prayer Book, 234, 244 presence, 222, 224 presentism, 249 pride, 216 Proclus, 225n10 Protestantism, 182, 198 pseudo-Bonaventure, 119 pseudo-Dionysus the Aeropagite, 70 psychology, 4, 22, 115, 264 Puritanism, 91, 235, 236, 247, 290 Pyrrhonism, 212, 216 Quakerism, 21, 233–41 Radical Reformation, 184, 295 Radler, Charlotte, 164 Ranters, 234, 244 rationalism, 49, 50 reason, 10 reattachment, 169 Reid, Thomas, 276n24 renewal movements historiography of, 1 methodology of, 22, 294 studies of, ix, 2, 22, 293 repentance, 74, 93, 94, 99, 100, 261, 272 representation, 43–46 ressourcement, 1

312 Restoration Anglican clergy, 238, 237–39 Restoration Episcopalians, 236 resurrection, 49, 50–53, 58n12, 62n41, 69 revelation, 21, 243 rhetoric, 43, 44 Richard of St. Victor, 20, 117 Rist, John M., 200n12 Robeck, Cecil M., Jr., 296 Roberts, Robert, 277n39 Robinson, Richard, 226n18 Rogers, John, 234 Rosenwein, Barbara H., 5, 116, 117, 135n7 Ross, Maggie, 97 Runyon, Theodore, 274n1 Ruthven, J. M., 253n6, 255n40 sacrament, 55, 61n40, 66, 72–77, 220, 228n51 sadness, 189 saints, 87 salvation, 23, 54 sanctification, 3, 54, 55, 75, 272 Schleiermacher, Friedrich, 289 Schlink, Sister Basilea, 97 Schmemann, Alexander, 67, 76, 78, 84n19 Schockenhoff, Eberhard, 151 Schwärmer, 184, 197, 232, 295 Schwöbel, Christoph, 6 scripture, 77–78 Seekers, 244 self-flagellants, 106n13 Seneca, 26n32 sentiment, 212, 213, 214, 219, 221 Shepherd of Hermas, 101 Sherlock, William, 234 Sherwin, Michael, 149 Shi’ism, 106n11

Index simulacra, 62n45 sin, 12, 23, 26n32, 91, 217, 261, 272 original, 7, 73, 274n3, 275n9, 284 phenomenology of, 57n11, 59n24 Smith, John E., 288 Society for Pentecostal Studies, 293 Socrates, 44, 58n17 Soergel, Philip M., 242 sola scriptura, 232 Solivan, Samuel, 5 Solomon, Robert, 4, 5 Song of Songs, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 116, 117, 121, 122, 129, 132 Sorabji, Richard, 4 sorrow, 98–100 holy, 90 soteriology, 183 soul, 167–69, 282 sounds, 53 Southern, Richard, 119 sovereignty, 286 spirituality, 273–74 embodied, 19, 23 erotic, 123 Staves, Susan, 238 Stephen of Nicomedia, 95 Stoicism, 9, 10, 11, 34, 37, 275n15 Stolt, Birgit, 201n16 Stylianopoulos, Theodore, 67 suffering, 46–48, 191, 221, 222 symbolism, 220 Symeon the New Theologian, 84n13, 95, 107n14, 109n43 teleology, 23, 54, 56n3, 151 temptation, 91 Teresa of Avila, 116, 133, 138n23 Tertullian, 244 theater, critique of, 43–48 theologia crucis, 49 theologia gloriae, 49

Index theology folk, 2 historical, 298–300 medieval, 192 public, 52, 54 scholastic, 192 trinitarian, 151 therapy, 20 Thomism, 61n37, 62n41 thumos, 9, 13 Toland, John, 245 Tolstoy, Leo, 50, 59n26, 60n31 Toner, Jules, 149 tongues, speaking in, 242, 249 Torrance, Alexis, 99, 100, 110n50 transcendence, 173 Trapnel, Anna, 240 Travers, Rebecca, 239 Trent, Council of, 286 Trinity, 67, 68, 80, 130, 132, 164, 223, 288 Triodion, 81 Troeltsch, Ernst, 233 truth, 50 union christological, 67 sexual, 32, 150 substantial, 225n10 univocity, 198 use and enjoyment. See uti/frui uti/frui, 46, 63n50, 215, 218, 227n39

313 Valentinianism, 244 van Mastricht, Peter, 287 veneration, 85n25 via activa, 173 via contemplativa, 173 Victorines, 130 virtue, 14, 34, 35, 155, 290 vivification, 94 Vladimir of Kiev, Prince, 65, 82 voluntas, 9, 10, 12, 13, 27n39, 146, 185, 186, 188–91, 193, 196, 200n12, 202n19, 202n33, 203n35, 203n45 von Karlstadt, Andreas, 184, 197 Wallace, David Foster, 135n4 Ware, Kallistos, 65, 74, 78, 107n16 Wellesz, Egon, 80 Wesley, John, 2, 5, 8, 197, 198, 199, 251, 298 Westminster Confession of Faith, 235 Whitehead, George, 237, 240 William of St. Thierry, 14 Wordsworth, William, 100 works of mercy, 274 worship, 47, 48, 50, 71, 85n25 Zizioulas, John, 6 Zwingli, Ulrich, 255n43

Dale M. Coulter is associate professor of historical theology at Regent University.

Amos Yong is professor of theology and mission at Fuller Theological Seminary.