Singularity and the Sea
I have had the pleasure of learning historical theology under Dr. Jon Robertson. And one of his constant emphases is how modern and contemporary theology often misunderstands or mis-appreciates historical theology due to the unwarranted imposition of anachronistic categories. One of the best examples is the frequent misunderstanding (even anger) at the concept of Monasticism and becoming an Anchorite Monk, or part of a monastic order.
Just today, in fact, I got into a surprisingly heated discussion at church regarding the nature of becoming "Monastic." The common Protestant reaction was evident: God called us to be in the world but not of the world. Ergo, so runs the argument, the monastic has made a mistake by running from the world. This is not an unwarranted interpretation (I myself was a staunch advocate of just such an interpretation for many years). Yet it does not properly take into account what Charles Taylor has called "social imaginaries,"; namely to proclaim that this is an abandonment of the world is to--however tacitly--smuggle in a definition of "the world," and indeed broader conceptions of what it is to be a Christian. That is not to say this Protestant interpretation is necessarily wrong. What it does is to question its legitimacy as a universal hermeneutic which judges the intentions or understandings entailed in the Monks own devotion. In other words it is questioning whether or not it is being true to the intentions and actions of the monks themselves. To use the categories of sociology, it is to question the use of an etic perspective and call for the use of a more emic one.
In order to provide a small picture, I shall utilize the aforementioned Charles Taylor, the Classicist Peter Brown, and also the noted Medieval historian Jacques le Goff. The point of all this, I should reemphasize, is to point out that accusing the Monastics of "running away," from living in the world, against Jesus' command, is to foist (however unintentionally, or better: however well-intentioned) an anachronistic and illegitimate interpretive grid upon the movements.
What is the world? Taylor writes
Thus, far from running or forgetting the world
More than just the cultivation of chaos, the entrance into the "desert" (which did not necessarily mean its modern equivalent of sand and heat; but portrayed also forests, mountains, and echoing the Hebraic consciousness, the Sea) also meant the struggle with beasts, and the encounter with the demonic, above all Satan Himself. Le Goff notes "The history of the desert has always been compounded of both material and spiritual realities, of constant interplay between symbol and realities, of constant interplay between geography and symbolism, the imaginary and the economic, the social and the ideological..." (The Medieval Imagination p.52). Thus we see an additional level of symbolism in the imagery of many of the Saints taming and befriending wild beasts:
Thus, in fact, far from a picture of running from the world into a self-secured obscurity, the idea of an anchorite is someone who runs straight into the Devil's jaws for the sake of the world. One who, alone or in small community (a Cenobite as opposed to Anchorite), enters the turgid forces of chaos into the unrestrained convulsion and aridness of the forces which restrict creation. The entire orientation of this worldview, this feeling, this emotive orientation to the world, is one in which the Christ-figure of the Monk strays the boundaries of habitable society into the unenframed indefiniteness of the exterior, much like God entering the far-country as Barth says, in order to confront its anarchy in the name of Christ's body. They are the ones who confront the wild for the sake of the world.
Indeed to finish with a reference to Peter Brown's wonderful The Body and Society even the asceticism and especially the virginity of the monks and nuns was not an especially bizarre and unnatural (UnChristian) act; to those of the ancient regime, where the average Roman life expectancy was 25 (p.5-7) and marriage and chid rearing were considered aspects f necessity within the cultus of Roman Imperium, renunciation of such, and abstinence in regards to sex, entrance into the wilderness, etc... was seen as a movement whose expectation was not the natural power-legitimacy of the Roman Imperium, but upon the Spiritual victory won in Christ, whose benefits and message could expand without any regard to personal safety, to personal extensions through biology, through the "natural" channels set by the cultic enactments of political power. In the words of John Howard Yoder, their actions were done in the expectation that the actual course of things was not "cause and effect," but "cross and resurrection." Indeed (and in the utmost resonance with my own temperament) the Celtic and Nordic monks sought, not the harshness of deserts dry or forests unyielding, but the singularity of the endless sea, to fight Satan and find God.
Just today, in fact, I got into a surprisingly heated discussion at church regarding the nature of becoming "Monastic." The common Protestant reaction was evident: God called us to be in the world but not of the world. Ergo, so runs the argument, the monastic has made a mistake by running from the world. This is not an unwarranted interpretation (I myself was a staunch advocate of just such an interpretation for many years). Yet it does not properly take into account what Charles Taylor has called "social imaginaries,"; namely to proclaim that this is an abandonment of the world is to--however tacitly--smuggle in a definition of "the world," and indeed broader conceptions of what it is to be a Christian. That is not to say this Protestant interpretation is necessarily wrong. What it does is to question its legitimacy as a universal hermeneutic which judges the intentions or understandings entailed in the Monks own devotion. In other words it is questioning whether or not it is being true to the intentions and actions of the monks themselves. To use the categories of sociology, it is to question the use of an etic perspective and call for the use of a more emic one.
In order to provide a small picture, I shall utilize the aforementioned Charles Taylor, the Classicist Peter Brown, and also the noted Medieval historian Jacques le Goff. The point of all this, I should reemphasize, is to point out that accusing the Monastics of "running away," from living in the world, against Jesus' command, is to foist (however unintentionally, or better: however well-intentioned) an anachronistic and illegitimate interpretive grid upon the movements.
What is the world? Taylor writes
Now the cosmos idea derived from the ancients best fitted cultivated land. This fully met the norms of order which are built etymologically into the very term. Wilderness and desert places could be seen as in a sense unfinished, that is, not yet fully brought into conformity with the shaping Ideas. In ancient Babylon wild, uncultivated regions and the like are assimilated to chaos; tehy still participate in the undifferentiated, formless modality of pre-creation. This is why, when possession is taken of a territory--that is, when its exploitation begins--rites are performed that symbolically repeat the act of Creation; the uncultivated zone is first cosmicized then inhabited.
Thus, far from running or forgetting the world
we find something of this idea recurring the European Middle Ages, when religious orders moved into forests or wastes and turned them into cultivated land...and this work was sometimes represented as like creation, a human participation in God's work. --(A Secular Age p.335-336)This is echoed in a negative manner by le Goff who writes that the "the peril that awaited the western hermit in his wilderness was acedia or existential and metaphysical boredom." (The Medieval Imagination p.51). Which is to say that the void and chaos of the uncivilized region should impact the soul of the Anchorite in such a manner that they become resigned to it, that the fertile creativity of the Word of God which spoke into the void and brought forth something from nothing should not be analogized in the anchorite but lay stagnant. It is no coincidence that acedia should later by used as the term that typifies the sin of "sloth." It is not merely "laziness," but "vanity," which is to say, a sort of existential condition of groaning under anticipated labor, of procrastination, of anti-actualization of creativity. As Jean-Luc Marion would late say in his God Without Being "vanity" nullifies even an existing world because it wants nothing to do with it.
More than just the cultivation of chaos, the entrance into the "desert" (which did not necessarily mean its modern equivalent of sand and heat; but portrayed also forests, mountains, and echoing the Hebraic consciousness, the Sea) also meant the struggle with beasts, and the encounter with the demonic, above all Satan Himself. Le Goff notes "The history of the desert has always been compounded of both material and spiritual realities, of constant interplay between symbol and realities, of constant interplay between geography and symbolism, the imaginary and the economic, the social and the ideological..." (The Medieval Imagination p.52). Thus we see an additional level of symbolism in the imagery of many of the Saints taming and befriending wild beasts:
The reference...to sometime horrible deserts of wild beasts shows another aspect of wilderness in the older outlook. It was not just unfinished; it was also the abode of dangerous forces; of beasts, of course, but also of the bestiality that they incarnate; hence the place of devils and malign spirits. Wilderness reflected not just incompleteness, but the Fall, not just a further agenda in God's plan, but an opposition to it. IN this perspective the power of the anointed monk in the wilderness is shown not in his transforming it but in his taming the wild beasts. The lives of saints are full of such stories of anchorites befriending otherwise dangerous animals including St. Anthony, and St. Jerome, and of course St. Francis.Yet Taylor goes on to note
But the idea of deserts as the abode of demons is not simply a Christian one. The ancients placed Pan, satyres and centaurs in wild places. The folklore of many peoples sees them inhabited by evil spirits, trolls, and the like. But for Christians theres is a double meaning: the desert, that is, at a distance from cultivated soil and the society that reigns there, is the place where one can find God. The people of Israel were called out of Egypt so that they could worship God in the desert. Christ after his baptism spent 40 days in the desert. This latter event shows the double significance, because Christ was tempted by the devil on his retreat. Breaking out of the confines of the all-too-human order can be a condition of finding God; but the same act exposes one to all the destructive forces which that order binds. The struggle with demons in lonely places is repeated again and again in the lives of the saints. (A Secular Age p.336)
Thus, in fact, far from a picture of running from the world into a self-secured obscurity, the idea of an anchorite is someone who runs straight into the Devil's jaws for the sake of the world. One who, alone or in small community (a Cenobite as opposed to Anchorite), enters the turgid forces of chaos into the unrestrained convulsion and aridness of the forces which restrict creation. The entire orientation of this worldview, this feeling, this emotive orientation to the world, is one in which the Christ-figure of the Monk strays the boundaries of habitable society into the unenframed indefiniteness of the exterior, much like God entering the far-country as Barth says, in order to confront its anarchy in the name of Christ's body. They are the ones who confront the wild for the sake of the world.
Indeed to finish with a reference to Peter Brown's wonderful The Body and Society even the asceticism and especially the virginity of the monks and nuns was not an especially bizarre and unnatural (UnChristian) act; to those of the ancient regime, where the average Roman life expectancy was 25 (p.5-7) and marriage and chid rearing were considered aspects f necessity within the cultus of Roman Imperium, renunciation of such, and abstinence in regards to sex, entrance into the wilderness, etc... was seen as a movement whose expectation was not the natural power-legitimacy of the Roman Imperium, but upon the Spiritual victory won in Christ, whose benefits and message could expand without any regard to personal safety, to personal extensions through biology, through the "natural" channels set by the cultic enactments of political power. In the words of John Howard Yoder, their actions were done in the expectation that the actual course of things was not "cause and effect," but "cross and resurrection." Indeed (and in the utmost resonance with my own temperament) the Celtic and Nordic monks sought, not the harshness of deserts dry or forests unyielding, but the singularity of the endless sea, to fight Satan and find God.
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