Patrick’s Bequest: St. Patrick’s Day Reflections on the Impact of the Life of “Holy Patrick”

After the death of Patrick in the 460s total silence reigns about him in the Irish Christian tradition until the 630s, when he is mentioned by Cummian, abbot of Durrow. In a letter to Segene, abbot of Iona, Cummian describes Patrick as the “holy Patrick, our father.” But this shroud of silence should not be taken to mean that Patrick was forgotten. His works, the Confession and the Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus, were obviously cherished, copied and transmitted. Moreover, his missionary labours firmly planted the Christian faith in Irish soil, and left a deep imprint on the Celtic Church that would grow up from this soil. Patrick speaks of “thousands” converted through his ministry,[1] including sons and daughters of Irish kings.[2] They were converted, he tells us, from the worship of “idols and filthy things.”[3] It is noteworthy that he here speaks of the worship practices of Celtic paganism with “scorn and dislike.”[4] In order to increase the range of his influence he ordained “clergy everywhere.”[5] Patrick never lost sight of the fact, though, that it was God’s grace that lay behind each and every success of his mission. “For I am very much God’s debtor,” he joyfully confessed, “who gave me such great grace that many people were reborn in God through me.”[6] Yet, his missionary labours were not without strong opposition, presumably from pagan forces in Ireland. In one section of his Confession he says: “daily I expect murder, fraud, or captivity.”[7] He mentions two distinct occasions of captivity, one for two months and the other for a fortnight.[8] He also relates that he was in peril of death “twelve” times, though he gives no details of these lest he bore the reader![9] Patrick’s response to these dangers reveals the true mettle of the man.

I fear none of these things because of the promises of heaven. I have cast myself into the hands of God Almighty, who rules everywhere, as the prophet says: “Cast thy thought upon God, and he shall sustain thee.”[10]

There was not only external opposition, though. Many of Patrick’s Christian contemporaries in the Western Roman Empire appear to have given little thought to evangelizing their barbarian neighbours. As Máire B. de Paor notes: “there was seemingly no organised, concerted effort made to go out and convert pagans, beyond the confines of the Western Roman Empire” during the twilight years of Roman rule in the West.[11] Whatever the reasons for this lack of missionary effort, Patrick’s mission to Ireland stands in splendid isolation. As Thompson notes, what we find in the Confession is paragraph after paragraph on this issue, bespeaking Patrick’s uniqueness in his day.[12]Thus, when Patrick announced his intention in Britain to undertake a mission to the Irish there were those who strongly opposed him.

Many tried to prevent this my mission; they would even talk to each other behind my back and say: “Why does this fellow throw himself into danger among enemies who have no knowledge of God?”[13]

Patrick, though, was assured of the rightness of his missionary activity in Ireland. He knew himself called to evangelize Ireland.[14] He had a deep sense of gratitude to God for what God had done for him. “I cannot be silent,” he declared, “about the great benefits and the great grace which the lord has deigned to bestow upon me in the land of my captivity; for this we can give to God in return after having been chastened by him, to exalt and praise His wonders before every nation that is anywhere under the heaven.”[15]

The Celtic Church would inherit Patrick’s missionary zeal. His spiritual descendants, men like Columba (c.521-597), Columbanus (c.543-615), and Aidan (died 651), drank deeply from the well of Patrick’s missionary fervour, so that the Celtic Church became, in the words of James Carney, “a reservoir of spiritual vigour, which would… fructify the parched lands of western Europe.”[16] As Diarmuid Ó Laoghaire notes, it is surely no coincidence that what was prominent in Patrick’s life was reproduced in the lives of his heirs.[17] Patrick’s Celtic Christian heirs also inherited his rich Trinitarian spirituality, which, unlike his missionary passion, was central to Latin Christianity in late antiquity. Near the very beginning of the Confession Patrick sets out in summary form the essence of his faith in God.

There is no other God, nor ever was, nor will be, than God the Father unbegotten, without beginning, from whom is all beginning, the Lord of the universe, as we have been taught; and his son Jesus Christ, whom we declare to have always been with the Father, spiritually and ineffably begotten by the Father before the beginning of the world, before all beginning; and by him are made all things visible and invisible. He was made man, and, having defeated death, was received into heaven by the Father; “and he hath given him all power over all names in heaven, on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue shall, confess to him that Jesus Christ is Lord and God,”[18] in whom we believe, and whose advent we expect soon to be, “judge of the living and of the dead,”[19] who will render to every man according to his deeds; and “he has poured forth upon you abundantly the Holy Spirit,”[20] “the gift” and “pledge”[21] of immortality, who makes those who believe and obey “sons of God…and joint heirs with Christ”[22]; and him do we confess and adore, one God in the Trinity of the Holy Name.[23]

The Old Irish prayer, The Breastplate of Patrick, though most likely written in the century following Patrick’s death, is an excellent example of the way in which Patrick’s Trinitarian faith was transmitted. In its opening and closing refrain, it declares:

I rise today with a mighty power, calling on the Trinity,with a belief in the threeness,with a faith in the oneness, of the Creator of creation.[24]

The credal statement cited above is the only place in the Confession where we can be sure that Patrick is referring to another work besides his Latin Bible. The Latin of the first half of this creed has the “balance and cadences of what passed for polished style in late antiquity” and is clearly not of Patrick’s own composition. And although the second half of the creed is filled with biblical quotation or allusion, it too has regular cadences.[25] It is most likely that Patrick is reproducing here a rule of faith used in the British Church to instruct new believers about the essentials of the Christian faith.[26]

R. P. C. Hanson, though, has probed further into the source of Patrick’s creed and has cogently argued that it essentially stems from one found in the writings of Victorinus of Pettau (d.304), who died as a martyr in the Diocletianic persecution. Certain additions have been made to Victorinus’ creed in light of the Trinitarian controversies of the fourth century.[27] The mention above of Patrick’s bibliocentrism brings us to a final aspect of Patrick’s bequest to Celtic Ireland. His Christianity is “very much a religion of the book,” namely the Latin Bible.[28] Given the central place that the Bible held in his thinking, it is not surprising that the success of Patrick’s mission helped initiate an impetus among the Irish towards literacy. In fact, so profound was this impetus that by the seventh century the Irish had become major participants in one of the key aspects of the Christian romanitas of late antiquity: “bibliocentric literacy.”[29]

Such are some of the key aspects of the long-range legacy of the mission of Patrick, who had simply come to Ireland to pass on his faith in the “One God in the Trinity of the Holy Name” to the Irish. As he wrote in Confession 14, tying faith in the Trinity and his mission together:

In the light, therefore, of our faith in the Trinity I must make this choice, regardless of danger I must make known the gift of God and everlasting consolation, without fear and frankly I must spread everywhere the name of God so that after my decease I may leave a bequest to my brethren and sons whom I have baptised in the Lord—so many thousands of people.[30]

[1] Confession 14, 50; see also Confession 38; Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus 2.

[2] Confession 41-42.

[3] Confession 41.

[4] R.P.C. Hanson, The Life and Writings of the Historical Saint Patrick (New York: The Seabury Press, 1983), 111.

[5] Confession 38, 40, 50.

[6] Confession 38 [trans. Ludwig Bieler, The Works of St. Patrick, St. Secundinus: Hymn on St. Patrick (1953 ed.; repr. New York/Ramsey, New Jersey: Paulist Press, n.d., 32].

[7] Confession 55 (trans. Bieler, Works of St. Patrick, 38).

[8] Confession 21, 52.

[9] Confession 35.

[10] Confession 55 (trans. Bieler, Works of St. Patrick, 38).

[11] Máire B. de Paor, Patrick: The Pilgrim Apostle of Ireland (New York: HarperCollins, 1998), 23-24.

[12] E.A. Thompson, Who Was Saint Patrick? (Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 1985), 82-83.

[13] Confession 46 (trans. Bieler, Works of St. Patrick, 36).

[14] See Confession 23.

[15] Confession 3 (trans. Bieler, Works of St. Patrick, 21-22).

[16] “Sedulius Scottus” in Robert McNally, ed., Old Ireland (New York: Fordham University Press 1965), 230.

[17] “Old Ireland and Her Spirituality” in McNally, ed., Old Ireland, 33.

[18] Philippians 2:9-11.

[19] Acts 10:42.

[20] Titus 3:5.

[21] Cp. Acts 2:38; Ephesians 1:14.

[22] Romans 8:16-17.

[23] Confession 4 (trans. Bieler, Works of St. Patrick, 22).

[24] Trans. Philip Freeman, St. Patrick of Ireland. A Biography (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004), 161, 164.

[25] D. R. Bradley, “The Doctrinal Formula of Patrick”, The Journal of Theological Studies, N.S., 33 (1982), 124-133.

[26] Hanson, Historical Saint Patrick, 79, 81; Bradley, “Doctrinal Formula of Patrick”, 133.

[27] “Witness for St. Patrick to the Creed of 381”, Analecta Bollandiana, 101: 297-299.

[28] Joseph F. T. Kelly, “Christianity and the Latin Tradition in Early Mediaeval Ireland”, Bulletin of The John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 68, No.2 (Spring 1986), 411; Hanson, Historical Saint Patrick, 44-47.

[29] Kelly, “Christianity and the Latin Tradition”, 417.

[30]Confession 14 (trans. Bieler, Works of St. Patrick, 24).

Holiness in an Unholy World

The holiness of God is a fundamental conviction of the Bible. “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts,” the prophet Isaiah heard angelic beings proclaiming in a vision of God that he had (Isaiah 6). The holiness of God first of all means that God is completely different from his creation. He is the Creator, unique and in total control of all that he has made. Human beings—like every other creature in this universe, from galaxies to gnats, from mountains to moles—are limited in what we can do. Our knowledge is finite, never exhaustive. And our lives on this earth are relatively short in duration and often dogged by painful experiences—“nasty, brutish, and short,” is the way that one philosopher once described them. Not so God. He is immortal, can do all that his good pleasure decides, and has absolutely no limitations. To say God is holy is then to speak of his uniqueness and his otherness from his creation.

By extension, God’s holiness means that God is without any moral blemish. He, unlike humanity, has never erred, can never err, and will never err. Whether it has to do with matters of knowledge or moral issues, God is splendidly flawless. By contrast, human beings are not. We are flawed—far more flawed than most of us would like to admit. We tend to think of ourselves as “good” people. As Jesus Christ once said, though, there is none good but God alone. At the centre of what makes us who we are—what makes us tick, as it were—there is a “bentness,” a crookedness that makes us fail each other, hurt each other, and even hate each other. And only in the brilliant light of the moral perfection of God, do we see ourselves clearly for what we are: marred and broken creatures—yes, sinful creatures.

There is hope, though. And that is the gospel. We can find healing for our souls through the Lord Jesus Christ and his death on the cross for all the wrong that we have thought, said or done. Now, when we become followers of the Lord Jesus Christ (who, while fully sharing our humanity, never did, said, or thought anything wrong) and enter into a living relationship with the God who made the heavens and the earth and all that are in them, we discover that we have been given a passion to be morally pure like God. We hunger to be holy as he is holy. We desire to know what it is like to live in total harmony with ourselves and our fellow human beings. And we come to realize that holiness is a necessary pathway to true happiness. In fact, if anyone claims to know God, who is holy, and that person has no interest in living a life marked by holiness, there is something seriously wrong in their claim.

Trying to live in a holy way—to order everything we do or think or say from the point of view of God—and to do this from the core of our lives is not easy, for human societies are anything but holy. There is much that is beautiful in human culture and life, for which we thank God. But there is also much that is ugly and sinful. Not surprisingly, followers of Jesus Christ often find themselves at odds with their culture. Thus, there are constant temptations to give up living in a holy way. But God’s command to be holy as he is holy never ceases to resound in the hearts and minds of Christians. And the deep attractiveness of his total purity and utterly untainted character beckons us on along holiness’ pathway to heaven.

Beddome Hymn: “Under Dark Providence”

Here is a good hymn by Beddome (HT: Gray Brady: Hymn Dark Providence)—it well expresses my current feelings:

Under Dark Providence

Great God, how deep thy counsels are, To mortals quite unknown; In vain we search with curious eye, For darkness veils thy throne.

Yet would we wish for grace divine, To guide our mental powers; And midst perplexing scenes of life To know that thou art ours.

‘Let there be light,’ was once the word. Oh be it so again! What thou hast promised, Lord, we seek, Nor let us seek in vain.

Benjamin Beddome Blog

Wow! What a serendipity! I just found the blog entitled Benjamin Beddome, on one of my favourite Baptist forebears. Beddome (1717-1795) was in many ways a remarkable preacher and hymnwriter—one of the two most important Baptist hymnwriters of the “long” eighteenth century, the other being Anne Steele (1717-1778). The writer of the blog is Pastor Gray Brady—many thanks, dear brother for blogging on this forgotten Baptist hero.

By the way, there is a fascinating link between Beddome and Steele, since he once proposed marriage to her, and she refused him! There is a letter from Beddome in this regard in the Archives of the Angus Library, Regent’s Park College, the University of Oxford. An independent scholar, Mr. Stephen Pickles of Oxford, alerted me to this gem a few years ago.

Arthur M. Schlesinger

Dr. Mohler has a brief examination of the life and work of Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., one of the most influential historians of the past century, who died yesterday, February 28, 2007, in New York.

See Dr. Mohler’s post here: Al Mohler.

It was Schlesinger who once argued that “history is to the nation rather as memory is the individual.” A right-on comment if there ever was one! Mohler rightly comments, “we may argue with Schlesinger’s interpretations of that memory,” but “we do well to take his contribution seriously.”

Samuel Pearce: Instructive Views on War

Though Baptists have uniformly deplored war, they have nonetheless recognized that sometimes armed conflict is necessary. In the words of The Second London Confession of Faith, the so-called 1689 Confession of Faith, which functioned as the key Baptist doctrinal standard from Baptist origins in the mid-17th century down to the Victorian era: “New Testament teaching authorizes [kingdoms and states] to wage war when this is found to be just and necessary.” [The 1689 Confession 24.2 [A Faith to Confess : The Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689 (8th ed,; Leeds: Carey Publications Lrd., 1997), 54]. To be sure, there needs to be determined in every individual case when a war is or it not a just war. But if that can be done, then the Baptists of those eras and succeeding ones have not had problems engaging in war. During the English Civil War (1642-1651), for example, numerous Baptists supported the cause of the Puritan Parliament against the King, Charles I (1600-1649). The London Baptist pastor William Kiffin (1616-1701), one of the key signers of the Second London Confession, contributed horse and riders for the Parliamentary cause in 1642. And documents from the late 1650s speak of Kiffin as a “captain” and “lieutenant-colonel” in the London militia.

A Christian attitude to war

Other examples of Baptist involvement in what were ruled just wars could be cited. But an extremely instructive approach to the whole issue of war can be found in the life of Samuel Pearce (1766-1799), the Calvinistic Baptist minister of Cannon Street Baptist Church, Birmingham, from 1789 to 1799, an anointed preacher, and a zealous advocate of missions. Pearce was a key figure in the early years of the Baptist Missionary Society, which sent William Carey (1761-1834) to India in 1793. In fact, it was on a trip seeking to raise finances for this mission that Pearce contracted tuberculosis in the fall of 1798. By mid-December, 1798, he could not converse for more than a few minutes without losing his breath. Yet, as we shall see, Pearce’s passion for the salvation of the lost gripped him as strongly as the disease that was slowly killing him.

Writing to his close friend William Carey around this time, he told him of a plan to take the gospel to France that he had been mulling over in his mind. Now, at the time of this letter Great Britain and France were locked in a titanic war, what would be known as the Napoleonic War, that would last into the middle of the second decade of the next century and not be brought to a conclusion until 1815 at the Battle of Waterloo. This war was the final and climactic episode in a struggle between the French and the British for world hegemony and one that had dominated the history of these nations during the 18th century. Not surprisingly, there was very little love lost between the British and the French. Pearce, though, was gripped by a far different passion than the hatred for the enemy that gripped many in Britain and France—his was the priority of the kingdom of Christ. In one of the last sermons that he ever preached, on a day of public thanksgiving for Horatio Nelson’s victory of annihilation of the French Fleet at the Battle of the Nile (1798), Pearce pointedly said:

Should any one expect that I shall introduce the destruction of our foes, by the late victories gained off the coasts of Egypt and Ireland, as the object of pleasure and gratitude, he will be disappointed. The man who can take pleasure at the destruction of his fellow men, is a cannibal at heart;… but to the heart of him who calls himself a disciple of the merciful Jesus, let such pleasure be an everlasting stranger. Since in that sacred volume, which I revere as the fair gift of heaven to man, I am taught, that “of one blood God hath made all nations,” [Acts 17:26] it is impossible for me not to regard every man as my brother, and to consider, that national differences ought not to excite personal animosities. [Motives to Gratitude (Birmingham: James Belcher, 1798), 18-19].

Here Pearce clearly indicates that while war may be a necessity, Christians should never harbour animosity towards their foes of their nation. To do so and to take delight in their deaths and destruction is to show oneself a stranger to the gospel of the Lord Jesus, who died to save his enemies. Moreover, such an attitude runs against the grain of sympathy that Christianity is meant to awaken and perfect, a sympathy that is rooted in the fact that all of mankind are made by the one true God.

The priority of the Kingdom of Christ

A few months later—when Pearce was desperately ill—he wrote a letter to Carey telling him of his plans for a missionary journey to France. “I have been endeavouring for some years,” he told Carey, “to get five of our Ministers to agree that they will apply themselves to the French language, … then we [for he was obviously intending to be one of the five] might spend two months annually in that Country, and at least satisfy ourselves that Christianity was not lost in France for want of a fair experiment in its favour: and who can tell what God might do!” What a remarkable attitude! In the midst of a horrific war with the French, when so many in England were rejoicing in the deaths of their foes, Pearce is longing for their salvation.

While Baptists have historically recognized the right of nations to go to war and for Christians to take up arms in wars that are just, Pearce’s attitude models how Christians should think and act in times of such wars. God would use British evangelicals, notably Pearce’s Baptist contemporary Robert Haldane (1764-1842), to take the gospel to Francophones on the Continent when peace eventually came, but Pearce’s anointed preaching would play no part in that great work. Yet his ardent prayers on behalf of the French could not have been without some effect. As Pearce had once noted on another occasion, “praying breath” is never lost.

Shifting & Consolidating: A New Look & Website

I have shifted all of my blog entries from Blogger to Wordpress. I am deeply indebted to Darrin Brooker for help in this. Truth be told I was fed up with Blogger for a number of reasons, especially the inability of the system to provide good text graphics. I am also hoping to consolidate all of my old FONTES website stuff under this new website--www.historiaecclesiastica.com. This will make things much easier to locate and consult.

The Floodlight Ministry of the Holy Spirit

In all of the activities of the Holy Spirit in the lives of believers and in the life of the Church is there one thing above all other things he is seeking to do? Is there, in other words, a centre to his work and ministry in the lives of Christians? An answer to these questions can be readily found in John 16:13-14, verses which record important words that Jesus spoke to his disciples on the night of his betrayal.

"When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you."

In the surrounding context Jesus is assuring his disciples that they will not be left alone when he returns to the Father after the cross and resurrection. Jesus will still be present with them, but not now via his Incarnate presence but rather by means of his Holy Spirit. He is thus helping them understand something of the ministry of the Holy Spirit after what we call Pentecost.

Now, in the words “He will bring glory to me,” we have set forth for us what J. I. Packer has rightly called the “Holy Spirit’s distinctive new covenant role,” namely, “directing all attention away from himself to Christ and drawing folk into the faith, hope, love, obedience, adoration, and dedication, which constitute communion with Christ.” This ministry of the Spirit in relation to Christ is what Packer goes on to call “a floodlight ministry.” [Keep In Step With The Spirit (Old Tappan, New Jersey: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1984), 64, 65. A slightly revised edition has just been released by Zondervan (2005).]

Since 1985 I have had the privilege nearly every year of teaching at Séminaire Baptiste Évangélique du Québec, in Montreal, Canada (SEMBEQ), the French Fellowship Baptist seminary in the west end of Montreal, located on Gouin boulevard. The building that houses the seminary used to be a school and is located in a very prestigious area of the West Island of Montreal. I recall vividly one summer night after I had taught all day. I had decided to go for a walk in the neighbourhood. I noticed that a good number of the owners of the wealthy homes in the area had strategically placed floodlights around their homes so that passers-by like myself might ooh and aah about their achievements in stone and brick.

Now, if instead of focusing on the homes which were lit by the floodlights I had instead concentrated my attention on the floodlight themselves—“Oh, that’s an interesting-looking floodlight; I wonder where they bought it” or “what a lovely light that floodlight is giving; I wonder how powerful it is”—I would have missed the whole meaning and purpose of the floodlights. The owners of the homes had put the floodlights out in front so that I should look at their homes, not at the floodlights, the source of illumination.

So it is with the Spirit’s ministry. He has been sent by God the Father to focus our attention to Christ, to kindle in our hearts an unquenchable love for Christ and for his purposes, and to enable us to reflect faithfully his person and character. The Spirit has not come to primarily speak about himself. He has not been given to us so that we should focus primarily on him and his work. He has come to inhabit these mortal frames so that we should love Christ and adore him, and that we should seek to live each day in obedience to Jesus. The work and ministry of the Holy Spirit has this one indispensable genuine mark then: it is Christ-centred—it is designed to exalt him and glorify him in the minds and hearts of men and women, and boys and girls. As the great nineteenth-century Baptist preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892) once put it:

"If we do not make the Lord Jesus glorious; if we do not lift him high in the esteem of men, if we do not labour to make him King of kings, and Lord of lords; we shall not have the Holy Spirit with us. Vain will be rhetoric, music, architecture, energy, and social status: if our one design be not to magnify the Lord Jesus, we shall work alone and work in vain." [The Greatest Fight in the World (London: Passmore and Alabaster, 1891), 64].

Dr Bruce Metzger

I just heard of the death of Bruce Metzger, pre-eminent New Testament textual critic. A brief account here. I heard Dr Metzger at McMaster Divinity College back in the 1970s and was deeply impressed by both his learning and his Christian demeanour. Over the years I have used a number of his books with great profit, especially those dealing with New Testament textual criticism and his superb work on the New Testament canon.

Praise the Lord for the gift of such a scholar.

One Night with the King

My wife, daughter and I watched the new movie about the story of Esther, One Night with the King, last night. Overall it was excellent. The costumes and sets sumptuous as one might expect of the Perisan Empire at its height. The acting was very good as well, though I found the Persian King a little stiff. And justice was done to the overall biblical text which was faithfully reproduced in the script. Scenes of prayer were especially done well. Esther is, of course, a great story, easily adaptable to the media of film. Over the years it has helped me understand God's sovereignty in history. This is very interesting since the name of God is not explicitly mentioned in the book. But the whole story is redolent with God's providential workings on the stage of time and space.

It was interesting to see Omar Sharif and Peter O'Toole together in the same film, reminsicent of that great blockbuster Lawrence of Arabia. Sharif plays Memucan and O'Toole the prophet Samuel. The latter is involved since a link is made between Haman the Agagite and the Amalekite king Agag (1 Samuel 15), whom Samuel told Saul to destroy along with all of his people. This link is something of conjecture.

Another piece of filler had Haman linking the Jews with the democratic-loving Greeks. Bring a lover of Greece—and rooting for their victory over Persia in the Persian Wars when I read those accounts as a young boy—and, since my conversion to Christ, a lover of ancient Israel as well, I found quite this link interesting. I didn't feel this additional stuff about the Greeks, rooted in scholarly opinion that the feast that Ahasuerus throws at the beginning of Esther 1 was preparatory to his campaign to subdue the Greeks, detracted from the movie, which was superb and well worth one’s time.

And it was a love story to boot--very appropriate on the eve of St.Valentine's Day

20 Things You Should Read

I am always thrilled when someone recommends the riches of our Christian past. A new book from Tyndale House, entitled 20 Things You Should Read (2006) and co-authored by four writers—David Edwards, Margaret Feinberg, Janella Griggs and Matthew Paul Turner, each of whom takes turns introducing the various works—is a good way to dip into some of the riches of our heritage. The authors/compilers rightly emphasize that these works of the past reveal how our Christian forebears struggled with many of the questions we wrestle with and how their beautifully-framed answers still convey hope and inspiration (p.vi-vii). The Christian writers chosen are quite eclectic, ranging from Augustine to Madame Guyon, Julian of Norwich to Karl Barth. Some readers, myself included, would question the wisdom of such a wide range of authors, but I was glad to see the two key Reformers Luther and Calvin included as well as Bunyan, Charles Wesley (interesting that John is not included), Whitefield and Spurgeon. All of the writings are taken from documents available on the net, but it is great to have them in one compass like this.

The omission of John Owen and Jonathan Edwards—both masters of spirituality—is curious. But any such collection is bound to omit favourite authors of other Christians.

I also felt that at times the introductory comments were not helpful in doing justice to the historical context of the various authors. To say, for example, that Augustine “partied like a rock star before his conversion” and that up until that event, which took place when he was thirty-one, he had led “a promiscuous, unruly lifestyle” (p.1) simply is not true. After a year or so of such living when he first went to university in Carthage, Augustine actually settled down to a fairly prosaic life, seeking truth in the cult of Manichaenism and the Platonic philosophy.

But the intended audience of the book is obviously young men and women who have not been interested in the riches of Christian authors of the past. And in recommending these riches to such, the book succeeds admirably.

The Moral Responsibility of Theologians

Last fall in The Globe and Mail (Monday, October 23, 2006, p.A19), Michael Higgins made a very astute comment regarding the public role of intellectuals. Writing in a piece entitled “Lament for our public intellectuals,” he emphasized that the specialization of scholarship in our culture requires all the more for there to be public intellectuals who communicate their ideas to the world outside of academia. There is, he rightly pointed out, a “the concomitant moral responsibility of intellectuals to communicate lucidly with the larger community, eschewing in the process the sometimes parasensical jargon” of the Academy.

This is also true of the world of theological academia. One of the great negatives of the current ecclesial scene is the separation of church and academy that has afflicted us in North America in various ways and to various degrees since the late nineteenth century. If God has called a person to a life of theological scholarship, such a person has a responsibility before God to “communicate lucidly” with the church. And also to recognize that he is responsible to the church for his doctrine and thought.

Connecting Prayer and History

This past Sunday my pastor, Carl Muller, preached an excellent sermon on 2 Thessalonians 3:1, one of my favourite Pauline texts. He emphasized first that Paul was “passionate about seeing God glorified in the saving of many souls through the ministry of the Word.” This should be true of us as well. The text also sets forth, Pastor Muller asserted, a pattern for us—the pattern of being a person of prayer. I was struck by one point especially with regard to this second main point. We are to “pray,” he said, “with a sense of history.”

He drew this from the phrase “as happened among you” (ESV). The Thessalonians were being urged to remember how the Word of God had impacted their lives, and pray for the same results to happen in Corinth where the Apostle was labouring.

In other words, when we pray, we are to remember how the Lord has moved in the past and pray with a due sense of the greatness of his power and grace. A very helpful connect of history and prayer.

Puritanism: The Real Thing

Old stereotypes die hard. Often it’s far easier to hang on to misguided caricature than do the tough digging for the truth. The words “Puritan” and “puritanical” offer a good case in point. Our Canadian Oxford Dictionary, for example, after giving these terms a standard historical explanation, notes of the adjective “puritanical” that it means “one opposed to pleasure.” No surprise then that the Puritans are regularly pilloried by our pleasure-loving culture. Sure, some words that have distinct historical associations lose them after they enter into common currency. But not so with these words and their cognates.

Journalist and satirist H.L. Mencken best summed up our popular perspective on Puritanism when he defined it as “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy” and observed that “there is only one honest impulse at the bottom of Puritanism, and that is the impulse to punish the man with a superior capacity for happiness.” One only needs to think of some depictions of historical Puritans in the film industry to see how such definitions have been taken to be gospel.

Richard Harris’ portrayal of Oliver Cromwell, the Puritan ruler of much of the British archipelago during the 1650s, in the movie Cromwell is one that he is able to carry off with nary a smile. It makes for good dramatic contrast with Alec Guinness’ brilliant role as the ill-fated Charles I, but it is hardly an accurate depiction of the man who enjoyed a practical joke from time to time, loved music and allowed dancing at his court, and had as his chaplain the theologian John Owen, who used to wear his hair powdered and adorned himself with a fashionable velvet jacket and flashy Spanish leather boots.

Much more recently, the first chapter of Charles Beauclerk’s Nell Gwyn: Mistress to a King repeats this standard vilification of the Puritans. They were men who “strove relentlessly for the light, their instincts bound like squirming devils and shoved into some dark corner of the soul.” They denied the common people of England simple pleasures like wrestling and running, holidays and theatre, and made adultery a capital offence. Evidence of the dreariness of the Puritan regime is found in the horrific names they gave their kids: names like “Abstinence, Forsaken, Tribulation,…Kill-sin and Flyfornication”!

But the truth, when examined, is quite different. As Marxist historian Christopher Hill, an expert in 17th century British history, once observed, “very few of the so-called ‘Puritans’ were ‘Puritanical’.” Granted, instances of dreary kill-joys can be found in their ranks, but they are not to be taken as representative of the whole.

The Puritans were serious people, but knew when to laugh. Smiles and laughter, Richard Bernard maintained, were part of a good life. And Richard Sibbes, an influential Puritan during the reign of James I and Charles I, was confident that “joy is the habitation of the righteous.” Nor were they opposed to sports and recreation. Cromwell gave his daughter dancing lessons. Other Puritans were into hunting and fishing, bowling and swimming, and even skating. What they were against were cruel sports like bear baiting and using up what they considered a day of rest and spiritual reflection, Sunday, for such activities. Even theatrical entertainment, which the Puritans attacked because of frequent lasciviousness, was tolerated to some degree during the reign of Cromwell. Hardly “the great iron giant of Puritanism” as Beauclerk depicts the movement.

And as for sex, William Gouge, a prominent Puritan leader, could encourage married couples to engage in sexual intercourse with “delight, readily and cheerfully,” since it was essential to marriage. Another Puritan leader, Richard Baxter, could urge married couples to remember that there is nothing the human “heart is so inordinately set upon as delight.” Husband and wife should thus take pleasure in each other. Take joy in your wife, Baxter urged husbands and then quoted the Bible, “let her breasts satisfy thee at all times, and be thou ravished always with her love.”

Finally, what is often forgotten about the Puritans is the utterly key role that they played in advancing democratic freedom. In a collection of essays dealing with “counterfactual” history, John Adamson, a Cambridge University scholar who specializes in the political and cultural history of 17th century Britain, has an intriguing essay entitled “England without Cromwell: What if Charles I had avoided the Civil War?” He reasons that if Charles I had been able to avoid the Civil War, the evolution of England’s constitutional monarchy, in which power came to be shared between the crown and parliament, may well have been set back decades, even centuries. And England could have ended up being a mirror image of Louis XIV’s absolutist France across the Channel.

As it was, the debates among the army officers around Cromwell during the 1640s about the right to religious freedom and Cromwell’s own incredibly deep conviction that freedom of religion was a natural right were crucial steps on the road to the democratic freedoms we enjoy today. It is amazing to think that—according to the reporting of the New England Puritan, Roger Williams—Cromwell once maintained in a public discussion “that he had rather that Mahumetanism [i.e. Islam] were permittted amongst us, than that one of God’s children should be persecuted,” which is a very interesting comment in light of recent events.

Well, all of this puts Puritanism in a very different light and is a good reminder that common perceptions about our past can sometimes be very misleading.

Students of the French Reformation

One of the deep joys of my life has been involvement with other scholars seeking to grow in their understanding of God’s ways in the history of his Church. This past week I spent three and a half days with Stéphane Gagné, the assistant pastor of a French Baptist Church in St-Georges-de-Beauce, Quebec. He is working on a M.A. in Church History from SEMBEQ in Montreal (for Stéphane’s blog, see Yanick Éthier, Stéphane Gagné, & François Turcotte). We normally meet twice a year like this and spend time working through an historical period. This time we spent our days at St. Paul’s marvelous library in Ottawa, working through the French Reformation, the relationship of Calvin and Pierre Viret, the origins and course of the French Reformed cause in France, Huguenot history between the death of Théodore de Bézè and the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and some of the key figures of this era—Pierre du Moulin, Jean Claude, Moïse Amyraut, and Claude Brousson. Last night and this morning we studied the English Reformation—its causes and course—and the emergence of Puritanism.

Looking at the French Reformation and the English Reformation in such close proximity reminded me afresh of the links between the two. For instance, I cannot help but think that it is possible that Jean-Baptiste Morelli’s working out a Congregationalist perspective in Paris in the 1560s before the Massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Day had an influence on the position of Browne, Barrow and Greenwood in the 1580s and 1590s.

Or again, to be Reformed between 1660 and the 1680s was a harrowing experience. In both France and England the Reformed cause was a house under siege and it was on the defensive. From a pessimistic perspective, much seemed lost. But our ways are not God’s ways, nor are our time his times. His timing is always perfect.

Eminent Christians: 14. Christina Rossetti

Among the leading painters of the Victorian Pre-Raphaelite school of artists was Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882). And among his finest paintings is that entitled Ecce Ancilla Domini (1850; Tate Gallery, London) in which Rossetti depicts the Virgin Mary being addressed by the Angel Gabriel. If one looks closely at the woman depicting Mary, and one is familiar with what Rossetti’s sister looked like in her younger years, one would clearly see that the model for Mary is none other than Christina Rossetti, the finest poetess of the Victorian era. There appears to be a sadness to Christina’s face which says more about her life than it does necessarily about Mary’s. Her life—a sketch

Christina was born into a remarkably gifted family in London, December 5, 1830. Her parents, Gabriele and Frances Rossetti, were emigrés from Italy. Though the family was gifted artistically, they had little money and seem to have struggled financially, despite the fact that her father was a Professor of Italian at King’s College, London. It was from her mother that she imbibed her Evangelical faith.

As a teenager Christina was quite beautiful. In 1848 she became engaged to James Collinson, one of the minor Pre-Raphaelite painters, but Christina ended the engagement in 1850 when he re-joined the Roman Catholic Church. Collinson went on to enter a Jesuit college, though he would leave without being ordained. It was that same year that Christina sat for her brother’s painting Ecce Ancilla Domini.

When her father’s failing health and eyesight forced him to retire from teaching in 1853, Christina and her mother attempted to support the family by starting a day school, but had to give it up after a year or so. In the early 1860s she was passionately in love with a man by the name of Charles Cayley. Cayley had a remarkable facility for languages, being a master of Hebrew, Homeric and classical Greek, and Italian. He even oversaw a translation of the New Testament into Iroquois. In 1864 he proposed to Christina, but according to her brother William Michael, she refused to marry him because “she enquired as to his creed, and she found that he was not a Christian; either absolutely not a Christian, or else so far removed from fully defined religious orthodoxy that she could not regard him as sharing the essence of her own beliefs.” Thereafter she led a very retiring life, interrupted by recurring illnesses. Her final three years—she died on December 29, 1894—were spent suffering from breast cancer, which involved surgery at home in 1892 and much pain and suffering.

Expressing her faith in poetry

Her faith was deeply tested by these illnesses, and though there is sometimes a morbid, introspective streak in statements she made at this time and in her poetry, her Christian faith—to some degree influenced by Anglo-Catholicism, but having a decidedly Evangelical cast—shines through in her poetry. Ponder, for instance, this poem, written in 1893, near the end of her life. It is a poem that echoes the watch-cry of the Reformation—Christ alone.

None other Lamb, none other Name, None other Hope in heaven or earth or sea, None other Hiding-place from guilt and shame, None beside Thee.

My faith burns low, my hope burns low, Only my heart’s desire cries out in me By the deep thunder of its want and woe, Cries out to Thee.

Lord, Thou art Life tho I be dead, Love’s Fire Thou art however cold I be: Nor heaven have I, nor place to lay my head, Nor home, but Thee.

In the bleak mid-winter

Evangelicals are probably most acquainted with Rossetti through her Christmas carol, In the bleak mid-winter. It first appeared in Scribner’s Monthly, a New York magazine, in January 1872. It was written in the midst of Christina’s suffering from a condition known as Grave’s disease.

Christina sets the birth of Christ against the backdrop of the bleakness of a chilly English winter, and gives a series of vivid contrasts between his heavenly state and that to which he stooped when he became a human being.

In the bleak mid-winter Frosty wind made moan, Earth stood hard as iron, Water like a stone; Snow had fallen, snow on snow, Snow on snow, In the bleak mid-winter Long ago.

Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him Nor earth sustain; Heaven and earth shall flee away When He comes to reign: In the bleak mid-winter A stable-place sufficed The Lord God Almighty Jesus Christ.

Enough for Him whom cherubim Worship night and day, A breastful of milk And a mangerful of hay; Enough for Him whom angels Fall down before, The ox and ass and camel Which adore.

Angels and archangels May have gathered there, Cherubim and seraphim Throng’d the air, But only His mother In her maiden bliss Worshipped the Beloved With a kiss.

What can I give Him, Poor as I am? If I were a shepherd I would bring a lamb, If I were a wise man I would do my part, Yet what I can I give Him, Give my heart.

An exposition

What is the key-word in the first stanza? “Bleak.” Christina is not merely describing the weather, but speaking of an inner winter. And the word “bleak” prepares the reader for the intense images that follow: the wind that “made moan,” the earth as stiff and solid as iron, and the water so frozen it was like a stone. And the way she drops these intense images one on top of another is like what is described in the second half of this verse: layer upon layer of snow. The repetition of the first line reinforces the picture that Christina wishes to depict: the utter bleakness of the winter.

The second stanza comes “seemingly out of nowhere.” From a picture of bleak winter we are taken to the theme of the governance and upheaval of the universe. The first two lines come from 1 Kings 8:27, and Christina is seeking remind us of the greatness of God—the awesomeness of his person. Lines 3 and 4 are from Revelation 20:11: “Then I saw a great white throne and Him who sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away.” Here, from another angle, the awesomeness of our God is being stressed. Before him the universe will melt.

Commonly linked to Christmas in the Christmas tradition is the Second Coming. The link obviously is the fact that both involve the coming of Christ to this world. But how different they are: at his Second Advent, Christ will come as an awesome warrior-king who will re-create the entire universe. But at his first coming: a stable was sufficient to house him—this One whom the universe cannot contain (note the reference to Jesus as “Lord God Almighty,” drawn from texts like Revelation 1:8, 11, 17; 21:22). Finite earth and heaven are far too small a container for the Infinite God. Yet, when he comes as the Incarnate One, he enters this world in the cramped quarters of a stable.

In stanzas 3 and 4 there is again a vivid contrast. In heaven the angelic worship of Christ’s glorious being is never-ending and unceasing. But when he comes to dwell on this earth, Christina depicts him as content with the worship of animals—though we might well ask, did the animals worship?—and of his virgin mother. Were there angels to worship at the birthplace of Christ? We are not told so in the nativity stories in Matthew and Luke. But, in this regard, see Hebrews 1:6. Also note that Christina makes it clear that his mother worshipped him, a clearly Protestant note.

But central to Christina’s meditation on the meaning of Christmas is not simply its mysterious paradoxes, but this question: how should we properly respond to the coming of Jesus Christ, the Lord God Almighty, into our world? The shepherds and the Magi have gifts that match the parts they play in the Christmas story—but what of us, what can we give? Christina sees herself as having nothing to give, for she is “poor.” Her poverty is her whole self.

But she, and we, can give to him something unique and therefore doubly precious: our hearts, the centre and core of our beings. As she wrote in A Carol for Children:

I must be like those good Wise Men With heavenward heart and look: But shall I give no gifts to God? What precious gifts they took!

Lord, I will give my love to Thee, Than gold much costlier, Sweeter to Thee than frankincense, More prized than choicest myrrh…

The Young Pierre Trudeau & T.T. Shields

On a trip from the Maritimes, after attending the International Conference on Baptist Studies IV in the summer, I happened to pick up a Saturday Globe and Mail, and not surprisingly found myself gravitating to the editorial page and book reviews. A fascinating book review that appeared on one of the editorial pages was on the then-new book on Pierre Trudeau: Young Trudeau, Son of Quebec, Father of Canada by Max and Monique Nemni. Apparently it is a quite a revealing work, depicting a far different young Trudeau than the one many of us remember, namely the committed federalist and foe of narrow Quebec nationalism. Here is an ardent right-winger, deeply antagonistic to the Canadian war effort and a believer in “every French-Canadian nationalist myth about the evils of les anglais.” Jeffrey Simpson, who wrote the review, notes that Trudeau’s views “were utterly consistent with those of the Catholic Church in Quebec until the war’s later years.” [“Pierre Trudeau was no Talbot Papineau”, The Globe and Mail (July 15, 2006), A13]. Earlier that week, at the conference I had been at, I had listened to a paper that had mentioned the fiery anti-Catholicism of the Toronto Baptist pastor T.T. Shields. But, after reading the review of this book, it struck me that Shields’ anti-Catholicism was quite understandable in the time period given the large numbers who would have shared the views of the young Trudeau.

It was an excellent reminder that one of the ways to avoid anachronism in the study of an area of history is to read widely in the time period under study.

Vocation among the Puritans & Their Heirs

I was given a copy of Tabletalk yesterday. I had not read this publication for quite a while. I have really enjoyed it in the past. The particular issue that I was given, entitled Proud Mediocrity: Facing the Addiction of our Culture (September 2006), was no exception. It was very well done, especially the article by George Grant, entitled “A Passion for Truth.” I was intrigued, however, by a statement made by Chris Donato in his good piece, “In the Service of the King.” He linked the waning of “the Christian ideal of vocation”—rigorously implemented by the English Puritans—to the “religious and political repression of the seventeenth century” and the replacement of the “fatalistic hyper-Calvinism of certain Puritans” by the “mechanistic Deism of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment” (page 17). This is extremely intriguing! And of course, in the small space allotted for the article, only a potted version of this thesis could be given. But it would be fascinating to pursue it further.

Donato seems to assume or assert four things.

First, the attacks on the Puritans in the Restoration era by Charles II and James II undermined the Puritan concept of vocation. Why was this so?

Second, certain Puritans were hyper-Calvinistic. Which Puritans were hyper-Calvinists? Well, certain Baptist authors in the eighteenth century are often accused of being hyper-Calvinists—I am thinking of men like John Gill and John Brine and John Skepp (the term needs to be well defined to include Gill)—but historically these men are not Puritans. If we rule out these men, I am not sure who Donato has in mind.

Third, this hyper-Calvinism precedes the “mechanistic Deism of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment.” Actually, though the chronology is the other way around. Does this undermine the thesis though?

Fourth, Evangelicalism did not maintain the Puritan view of vocation. But is this so? I think one can see a Puritan view of vocation in John Wesley’s view of work and wealth, for instance (via his maternal grandfather, the Puritan Samuel Annesley). You see it when Evangelical authors address domestic issues—consider Samuel Stennett on domestic duties in his sermon series on this topic.

But these are only initial thoughts. I would love to see someone track through the idea of vocation in the 18th century, asking the question, did it change from the Puritan view? And when did it change and why?