Spirituality when Creation matters.

[Solly]

The Purple Headed Mountain, by Martin Thornton.

I have a small cabinet at home where I keep a stock of paperbacks to be read as and when I need some quick reading; from that selection I picked this book over the second week of the Christmas holidays. I wanted to read something 'spiritual' and the fact that several of the chapters in this book have the word Creation in them, piqued my interest enough to go on with it. And I am glad I did!
Thornton was an Anglican priest who specialised in spiritual direction, and I have read a couple of his books a few years back when I was also reading Kenneth Kirk and other Anglican moral theology writers like MacAdoo. Thornton is good, and I would happily give his books to others, whereas Kirk requires some grounding in theology and philosophy: his A Vision of God is excellent, if not always on target. I haven't found anything about Thornton on the net, so I do not know if/when he died.
The title of the book comes from a line in the hymn, All things bright and beautiful.

In the book he describes the Christian life as a mountain climb, and the requirement we have for a good guide, and good climbing equipment. Plus we must understand the mountain itslef, and here is where his biblical anthropology comes in: 'Spirituality' does not mean abstract 'religiousness' but the fullest and most perfect human development...'spiritual' is the right word to denote total, balanced human progress towards our final glory in heaven, because prayer, in its widest sense, is the key to such progress. 'Spirituality' then is simply the art of living, the art of being human, fully, deeply, and perfectly. p 15-16

MT raises the interesting point about Chistian ethics, that they are, should be 'teleological': Sin is not so much disobedience to an arbitrary - there's that word again! - set of negative rules but that which impedes the development of our potential glory. Sins are like unnecesary burdens which hinder our climb, temptation is the obstacle in our path which is to be overcome in order that we may go on. p 17

He bemoans the way the 'spiritual/nonSpiritual' divide has hamstrung our worship and action, leaving us 'religious' and ineffective: I would be inclined to argue that the practical influence of the Church upon the world is less effective than it might be because we are not theological enough: we have forgotten the doctrine of creation...
In the first place we cannot quite get rid of our innate English puritanism, which in its theological sense means the quest for 'pure spirituality' and a consequent suspicion of the human body, its needs and appetites, and all the creatures which meet them...we try to be angels instead of sanctified human beings...
If this puritianism is associated with the 'Protestant' element in our religion, the second error comes from the 'Catholic' side; it is what I must consider to be an unhealthy dabbling in 'mysticism'...[not only the deviation into a wrong aproach to the Christian life, but also] the constant danger of ascetical theology, dealing with the methods and techniques proper to the mountain's lower slopes, is to confuse the means with the end...
[The world-renouncing view of mystics often means that] God's creation is made to sound evil, or at least a hindrance, which is not quite what the mystics mean, and which is totally irrelevant to the huge majoprity of us who are not mystics and never will be.
[The net result is a] divorce between devotion and work, prayer and morals, the Church and the world. pp 19-21

He concludes: If this divorce is apparent today it does not mean that we are not achieving aims but that we are failing to face facts. We have to realise that a slum street is not an abstract social problem but a concrete thing, that sin is not merely defience of moral theory but a practical misuse of creation, that prayer and penitance are not holy feelings but an inspired attempt to understand the meaning of the created world around us. p 21

Chapter 2 deals with practical issues of spiritual discipline, which involves the saying of the Daily Office - something Thornton was a proponent of, even for the laity - and attendance at the Eucharist, something he calls, reflecting upon the writings of William of St Thierry, the disciplined participation in the continuous rhythm of the Church's life, the constant co-operation with grace in the Mystical Body. Being a Baptist and not an Anglican, this chapter did not strike home as much as others. I have tried reading the old BCP DO when I last read Thornton a few years back, but I found it too much a solitary practice, like priests celebrating mass with no one else there, rather than a communal thing. Mystical Body's are one thing, but the church should be joined together as often as it can for these things I think.

Chapter 3: Creation and Prayer
The link between prayer and the doctrine of creation is the key to practical Christian life in the world. It offers a relation which carries the influence of our faith out into the market-place, it provides us with the most subtle, and probably most effective, of all methods of Christian witness, and it forms another safeguard against that error which packs 'spirituality' into a masty little ecclesiastical box tied up with pietistical red-tape. p 32

He then goes on to review the doctrine of creation in its four stages, up to Bernard, then to Hugh St Victor, then to Francis, then to Thomas:
For those up to Bernard there was the constant batle against Greek and Oriental ideas, to maintain the esential goodnes of creation, to which sadly the church succumbed, esp in its ascetical theology. The idea of a spiritual realm arises, opposed to the material.

For the School of St Victor, particularly St Hugh, the universe is symbolic of the mind of God - the book of nature. but the danger and error of this view is that creation is not really real in itself, it is only symbolic of something else. MT sees this view foreshadowing English idealism of the 18th century.

Then came Francis: for him, creation was so real it was practically human; he called things his brothers and sisters. If the Victorines gave material things too little reality, Francis gave them rather too much value.

Then Thomas: Creation is real, very real, but real in itself, not in relation to anything else, symbolically or relationally (Hugh/Francis). Thomas conceived of the chain of being, and its unity, but above its reality, and that each thing should be its own reality, which means humans should be real humans, not pretend angels, or animals:
Our prayers have to be the best possible kind of human prayers, our lives must be good human lives. So it is not only useless but sinful to try to be 'spiritual' like the angels because we are not angels, we shall never be angels, and we were never supposed to be angels; we are supposed to be glorified women and men...And, of course, it is impossible to be ourselves, men and women, as God created us, except in, and with a proper relation to, the whole creation which is our necessary environment. p 37

Chapter 5 (Chapter 4 offers more spiritual guidance on prayer etc)
In this chapter he goes on to discuss the role of the list of the captial sins in our spiritual examination: We persist in thinking of a 'soul' isolated from its environment and in need of redemption, instead of seeing creation, including souls, in need of total redemption. We are taught what pride does to ourselves, but not what it does to the town in which we live.

For instance, pride: [This] is the source of all other sin. It denies, or tries unsuccesfully to deny, that we and the whole creation are dependant on God from moment to moment, that all things are as they are because that is what God intends them to be. p 54

Pride tries to contradict the fact of creation, and its offspring, presumption, ambition, and vanity, upset creation's order. Pride makes men want to be angels, presumption makes good honest Christians want to be mystics, ambition leads us to desire worldly position for its own sake and for which we are not intended, and vanity takes credit for what we are instead of giving it to the Creator.

He later mentions how our lack of notice towards Creation has resulted in incipient Apollinarianism with regard to Christ, with subsequent results for our understanding of bieng 'spiritual human beings.'

All in all, 90 pages well spent and very useful.

[spiritmech]

What do you mean when you say "Apollinarianism?"
Thanks,
SM

[Solly]

From the book:
Apollinarianism: the failure to face our Lord's complete humanity.

It falls on this side of the dividing line between orthodoxy and the heresy of docetism: more an error than heresy. It is the tendency to make so much of his divinity, that we forget he very real humanity. Some years ago, one bishop upset a lot of people by referring to the fact that Christ had sexual feelings. Apollinarianism goes hand in hand with a spirituality that seeks to make us disembodied angels, instead of here and now earthy humans. It feeds puritanism - I have found apollinarianism most rife amongst Reformed Christians - and thus legalism: no fun allowed here, no smiling in church, dour faced scotch presbyterians etc.

[spiritmech]

Ah. Cool. Thanks.

[Spiritus Naturae]

Sounds like an excellent read, brother. I'll have to see if I can't procure a copy for myself here stateside.

Jonathan