Will we grow in the Spirit?
David Phillips
based on a talk given (for
the full paper click here) to the
Prayer Book Society of Nova Scotia
and PEI in October 2004
and included in
a parish letter in this form
in June 2006
We will soon enter the longest season in the
Church year. It is described in modern lectionaries as the season
of Pentecost and in the traditional Anglican lectionary as Trinity
season. The liturgical colour for this season is green, signifying
to us growth in the Holy Spirit, spoken of in Scripture as our
sanctification or growth in holiness. This year, will we grow, or
stay where we are, or fall back?
In recent years our Church has struggled to
understand how that growth happens best. Both liberals and
traditionalists in our Church desire growth in the spiritual life
but they have disagreed on the way we are led to spiritual
maturity.
Liberals have argued, for example, that the Book
of Common Prayer stultifies spiritual growth by overemphasizing our
sinfulness and the penitential life. They have argued that the
traditional prayers used in worship do not emphasize enough the new
joyful resurrection life in the Spirit.
Traditionalists have responded that we cannot
have growth in the spiritual life unless there is honesty about
ourselves – a continuing humble acknowledgement of our sinfulness
and our utter dependence upon God’s mercy. The healthy spiritual
life, according to Traditionalists, is characterized by repentance,
faith and love at every stage of maturity and that this should be
reflected in the prayers we use in worship, in our liturgy.
Is there something to the critique of both
sides? Are Anglicans today being led to the heights of spiritual
maturity or are followers of either of these ways being held back
because of inadequate teaching about our growth?
Our Call to
Holiness
What is the fullness of that growth in holiness that Scripture calls
our sanctification?
Jesus calls us to divine perfection. He says,
you must be perfect, even as your heavenly Father is perfect
(Matt 5:48). But we see in Christ’s promise of the Spirit in John’s
Gospel the idea of growth towards that perfection. The disciples
could not bear all the truth about themselves and about God but the
Spirit would lead them, as they were able, into all truth (16:12f).
Jesus tells us that loving obedience to him brings us to the vision
of God. (John 14:21). St. Paul, speaking to baptized and converted
Christians, often makes distinctions between babes in Christ and the
mature, between those who are still carnally minded and those who
are spiritually minded, between the new creation being formed in
them and that which is dying away, between the old Adam and the new
man, between the outer man and the inner. Growth in holiness, our
sanctification, is a major teaching of the Epistles. (see for e.g.
Phil 2:12-12; 1 Thess 4:7; Heb 12:14).
What is it that makes us unholy after we have been cleansed in the
waters of baptism and have turned our hearts in faith to Jesus (in
theological terms, after we have been justified by faith)?
Christ identifies the source of our defilement as
acting upon the evil thoughts that continue to arise in our hearts
and he gives various lists of these sorts of thoughts (see for e.g.
Mark 7:21-23). The apostles Paul, Peter, James, and Jude all speak
of the danger of responding wrongly to these thoughts or feelings,
described by the word “passions” (RSV) or “lusts” (KJV). Passions,
such as anger or pride or covetousness, that arise in our hearts are
not sin unless we respond poorly to them by following them to
destructive ends. Our sanctification involves our being made able
to respond to our passions in a healthy way – putting some desires
to death or redirecting that desire towards what is good – God and
the love of our neighbour.
If this coming Trinity season in the Church year is about our
sanctification, then perhaps we should expect to see something about
that growth, maybe even in a logical way, from babes to the heights
of maturity in Christ, in the readings chosen to be read Sunday by
Sunday.
The traditional eucharistic lectionary (the choice of Sunday
readings for Holy Communion found in the Book of Common Prayer and
that we use in our Parishes) has its origins in the 5th century.
What follows is a suggestion about how that growth might have been
originally taught in the traditional lectionary.
The Stages in our
Sanctification (Sanctification’s length)
There were a number of influences both pagan and
Christian that led the early medieval Church to an understanding of
the spiritual life as characterized by three stages of growth in
holiness – purgation, illumination and union. At all times, in our
life as Christians, these three stages are present. Yet as we grow
in our new life in Christ, as we are sanctified, there is a logical
priority of one stage over another.
Our Lord cannot give spiritual gifts in abundance
immediately or they will be misused by us, redirected to a
destructive passion. The passions need to be reordered – purgation
first, then illumination. (James 4:1-3)
The more we follow the commandments and seek spiritual cleansing
through Christ, the more we are able to see the depths of Scripture
and its teaching. Our souls can be illuminated because we
are more able to see as our souls are purged. Our souls, like a
polished mirror, are able to reflect the Divine life.
As
our souls are being illuminated by God, we are more ready to become,
and in fact are becoming, united with Him – we think and will more
and more like God. There is a reorientation of our souls from the
worldly (carnal) towards the love of God and our neighbour
(spiritual). Our desire is stirred up by God and we are wiser about
where and how to look for God. We become more prayerful. We want
with all our hearts to see God – and we know the promise of Christ,
blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God (Matt.
5:8).
These three basic stages of spiritual maturity can be found in order
in the Trinity season readings in the traditional lectionary.
Purgation is a stage characterized by the purging of our
lives of sin, outwardly and then inwardly – it is a time especially
of suffering. We suffer the pains of repentance, the pains
inflicted by the wicked when we seek to reorder our lives to follow
Christ, the pains of self-control, the crucifying of the flesh, and
the painful birth of the virtuous life. We can think of the passion
of our Lord – though He was without sin he pointed us to the way of
redemptive suffering (e.g. Heb. 2:10). We can find biblical
passages that call us to this way of suffering in the 3rd
Sunday after Trinity to the 9th Sunday after Trinity.
Illumination is the stage characterized by
the infilling of our souls with grace, divine light. It is the
inflow of the Holy Spirit and how the Spirit is manifested in our
souls. It is a call to the resurrection life, to rise to new life
in the Spirit, and to seek the vision of God. These things can be
found as a focus in the Sunday readings from Trinity 10 to Trinity
16.
Union, the summit of the soul’s ascent, is
spoken about in the Church’s tradition in different ways (because
the Bible describes it in different ways) but includes: the
mystical marriage of the soul with God or of the Church with Christ;
a unity of soul with God and with our neighbour; the perfecting of
the image of God in the soul; the contemplation of God; the vision
of God. There are clear references to this end state of the soul in
the Sunday readings from Trinity 17 to Trinity 23.
But might there have been a rationale for the
selection of the particular readings within each of these three
suggested series of seven Sundays?
The Passions of
our Souls (Sanctification’s breadth)
There is a tradition that lies behind the
identification of the various passions of the soul. Its purpose was
to help in the diagnosis of a soul’s illness so that appropriate
counsel on how to overcome a vice, by grace, could be given. You’ve
heard of the seven deadly sins? They come from this whole pagan,
Jewish and then Christian tradition of summing up the passions of
the soul under certain categories. Just as our medical profession
categorizes diseases of the body under various main headings, such
as diabetes or cancer or heart disease, so did the early doctors of
the soul categorize the various passions that afflict the soul under
main headings. The idea is that every passion (which becomes a sin
only if consented to), falls into one of these categories.
And there are Scriptural grounds for wanting to
identify 7 or 8 passions. (see for example Deuteronomy 7:1; Luke
8:2; Matthew 12:43-45; Proverbs 26:24-26)
One early list of these 8 passions of the soul,
developed at the same time as the forming of the traditional
lectionary, was this: gluttony, fornication, covetousness, anger
(wrath), dejection (grief), accidie (sloth), vainglory and pride.
The Bible readings in the first part of the season of Trinity may
very well have been chosen to deal with these passions identified by
early Christian psychologists as follows:
Trinity 3 – Pride;
Trinity 4 – Vainglory;
Trinity 5 – Dejection (Grief);
Trinity 6 – Anger (Wrath);
Trinity 7 – Accidie (Sloth);
Trinity 8 – Covetousness;
Trinity 9 (Epistle) – Gluttony and Fornication.
These Bible readings identify these various
disorders and give practical advice on how Jesus calls on us to be
healed of them through our trusting in Him.
The later two series of seven Sundays (Trinity 10-16 and Trinity
17-23) may be dealing with these same passions and in the same order
as in the first series, but in the context of the changed
circumstances that the more spiritually mature Christian finds
himself or herself in. The readings in these latter stages appear
to be not only warning us about these passions but also encouraging
us with the promises of God and the blessings, the virtues, poured
out on our souls as we grow in Christ.
By knowing such a rationale for the choice of Bible readings, the
light of Scripture can be brought to shine in all its fullness on
every part of the disordered and sanctified soul and at each stage
of maturity in the Christian’s life. The Sunday lectionary readings
during Trinity season cover the length and breadth of
our sanctification.
Conclusion
The scribes and Pharisees of Jesus’ day were
concerned about holiness of life, about our sanctification, but
wondered why Jesus ate with outcasts and sinners. They thought
holiness of life was preserved by staying away from people with
spiritual sickness, not realizing that they themselves were
suffering from the spiritual sickness of pride and vainglory. Jesus
responded to them, They that are whole
need not a physician; but they that are sick. I came not to call
the righteous, but sinners to repentance.
(Luke 5:31-32)
This summer and fall in our churches we will be
cycling one more time through Trinity season and considering Sunday
by Sunday the Bible readings, giving attention to holiness of life,
to growth in the Spirit, to our sanctification. We will be
considering in our readings and preaching the purgation, the divine
illumination, and the union of our souls with God and how to respond
to the passions that can overwhelm our souls at each stage.
I hope that it will lead us all to the uncovering
of blind-spots, to receiving more fully the healing graces of the
Divine Physician, and to be encouraged to seek more fully the vision
of glory and the life of heaven.
May God help us all to grow in the Spirit this year and be made
meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light.
