Across the Tiber and Into the Cloister
Part Two of an Extended Criticism of Credo Magazine’s Edition on Lectio Divina
Previously we considered contradictory definitions, inaccurate claims, and mystical tenets in Credo magazine’s Lectio Divina issue. Here we consider the ecclesiastical pedigree of some of what it commends.
Open Romanism in the Book Review Section
In the first book review, “Encountering the Scriptures: Wedding Devotional and Historical Reading,” a Princeton Seminary graduate, J. D. Tyler, reviews Piercing the Clouds: Lectio Divina and Preparation for Ministry. This work is published by a Roman press and bears a series title that proclaims it is part of the “Catholic Theological Formation Series,” both of which combine with the book description to attest its purpose to “give special attention to the practice of lectio divina during preparation for ministry, especially the ministry of Catholic priests.” Tyler, member of a non-denominational church in Nashville, Tennessee, acknowledges this, but does not see any problem in considering it as an appropriate source:
The contributors argue not only that historical-grammatical and devotional readings of Scripture can happen together but that they should happen. Especially in the spiritual formation of budding Catholic priests. Drawing on the writings of the early church, medieval monks, and Pope Benedict XVI, they offer six essays building their case. With titles ranging from “Western Monastic Tradition of Lectio Divina” and “Seminary Formation to Exquisitio, Supplicatio, Praedicatio: Searching the Scriptures and the Mystery of Preaching,” there is plenty within these pages to be relevant for seminarians across ecclesial boundaries.[1]
Compare that review’s tenor to another by a Princetonian. Reviewing the work of a “High Anglican” with some appreciation in one of his useful Critical Reviews, B.B. Warfield nonetheless said the author’s “Romeward tendencies – which are numerous and decisive – are an offense to us,” taking umbrage to “his treatment of Scripture: especially in his discussion of the eschatological utterances of our Lord.” (The author in view, R.A. Knox, later converted to Rome and made a sufficient name to earn an Encyclopedia Britannica entry.) Similarly offended, we could wish that Credo would not so readily commend an openly Romanist work. One reaps what one sows, and if one sows Roman sympathies and ideas, one may expect to reap Roman convictions.
This does not prevent Tyler from praising the book, saying it “offers a compelling case for the necessity of incorporating lectio divina in the formation of clergy,” and that “what the church needs today are Catholic priests—and Protestant clergy—who are molded by exegetically-informed lectio.” Actually the Protestant churches neither have nor need clergy. “The Church of Christ confesses to the existence within it of no clergy,” for “the true clergy of the Church of Christ are . . . the whole body of His called and chosen people,” and “in nothing is the spirit of Rome more apparent than in that distinction which she has set up between the clergy and the laity” (James Bannerman, The Church of Christ, 268).
And given that exegesis means very different things to different people, even in the pages of this same edition – with Hans Boersma it being an act of ‘sacramental participation’ that is not primarily concerned with explaining and applying the meaning of the text; with Donald Whitney it involving “an accurate reading of the text”; and with John Richter it including cultural aptitude (“we also must exegete the culture and the congregation”) – we cannot simply approve Tyler’s statement that the church needs leaders with exegetically-informed lectio, especially those with an affinity with Rome. Ultimately determined as it is by tradition and ecclesiastical opinion, Rome’s exegesis has historically tended rather to obscure than to illumine the meaning of scripture, and it has certainly not prevented that communion from maintaining all manner of things that contradict scripture, like calling priests ‘father’ (comp. Matt. 23:9), forbidding them to marry (comp. 1 Tim. 4:1-5), maintaining the union of church and state (comp. Mk. 12:17), approving the use of force, even murder and torture, to punish dissent (comp. Jn. 16:2), and regarding souls as subject to purgatory before entering glory (comp. Lk. 23:43; Jn. 17:24; Phil. 1:21, 23). To abet this by lectio would avail nothing and would merely harden Roman seminarians in her errors – yet Tyler does not scruple to commend such people to the church! Our fathers did not suffer torments and death to escape the tyranny of priestcraft, only for us to forget their suffering and take our example from a communion that, for all its difference in rhetoric post-Vatican II, still formally retains the erroneous beliefs we have been urging her to reform for the last 500 years, and whose internal dissenters primarily dissent by embracing a ‘modern’ (i.e. infidel) position.
The Monastic Element
The first article of this edition is written by Greg Peters, who has a doctorate in monastic studies from Pontificio Ateneo di Sant’Anselmo, a Benedictine and pontifical university in Rome, and who is a research professor of monastic studies at Nashotah House, an Anglo-Romanist seminary. He also serves on the Anglican Church in North America’s Monastic Communities Task Force, and labors mightily to normalize monastic notions among Protestants with books like The Monkhood of All Believers: The Monastic Foundation of Christian Spirituality, The Story of Monasticism: Retrieving an Ancient Tradition for Contemporary Spirituality, and Reforming the Monastery: Protestant Theologies of the Religious Life. None of this has prevented the ostensibly evangelical Biola University’s Torrey Honors College from employing him as a professor. (One wonders how R.A. Torrey would feel about that, given he edited The Fundamentals, which contain some pointed anti-Rome polemics.)
In his article Peters draws upon monastic thinkers like Hugh of Saint Victor, Guigo II, Gregory the Great, and John of Damascus in describing lectio divina. Others at Credo acknowledge the monastic heritage of lectio, including Peters’ Nashotah House colleague, Hans Boersma, who recommends reading Guigo II’s The Ladder of Monks (which he calls “a little gem”) to better understand how to practice lectio. Boersma says of his own Pierced by Love that he “focus[ed] especially on twelfth-century monastic theologians,” because he conceived it as “an effort in retrieval” that is meant to show “how we should read the Bible.” Similar concepts appear in Piercing the Clouds, whose first chapter (“Western Monastic Tradition of Lectio Divina”) argues that “the rise of new scholasticism” led to a rift between devotional and historical readings of scripture, and that lectio is an important remedy for that rift, in which, as we noted above, the work receives reviewer J.D. Tyler’s commendation. It is noteworthy as well that Mount Melleray Abbey, where contributor Stefan Reynolds is a director, includes lectio divina on its about page, saying it is a daily practice that is “not just reading or study,” but an “encounter with God,” through practice of which “Christ gradually becomes our world: he becomes the air we breathe.” (As was mentioned in the previous article, this is thoroughly mystical.)
The embrace of Peters and Piercing the Clouds is especially curious because both posit that a distinction can be made between scholastic and monastic theology, with the former regarded as baleful and in need of the latter. Peters is said to have a forthcoming book (Monastic Theology as Theological Method: The Superiority of the Monastery to the University) which argues that monastic theology is superior to scholastic theology, and his ruminations on the topic, including strong criticism of scholasticism for its arid intellectualism in comparison to monasticism’s purported heartfelt devotion, can be seen here. Recently Credo has been laboring furiously to promote scholasticism, not least with full issues on Aquinas and so-called Reformed Scholasticism; and now it is has turned and promoted the monastic practice of lectio and given a platform to monasticism’s promoters. Readers may be forgiven for regarding this as so much ‘talking out of both sides of your mouth’ (in common parlance), or the “always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth” (2 Tim. 3:7) of scriptural admonition.
The Problem with Monasticism
The monastic life involves one in sin. Mount Melleray Abbey’s website says “the first monks . . . were inspired to leave home, family and possessions and go into the desert to give their undivided attention to God.” Thus do they testify against themselves that their way of life was founded in sin (comp. Matt. 23:31), and that they seek to emulate sinners. For God says “if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever” (1 Tim. 5:8), and yet they admit the first monks abandoned their families to live monastically and venerate them for doing so.
If it be rejoined that Christ demands an allegiance greater than that toward one’s family (Lk. 9:59-62; 14:26), we admit the principle, but we deny the application; for Christ nowhere told his followers to retreat into a cloister for contemplation, and the scriptural record shows them following him by living in public (Acts 17:17), working normal trades (Acts 18:4), and keeping company even with unbelievers (1 Cor. 5:10). In his high priestly prayer Christ prayed “I do not ask that you take them out of the world” (Jn. 17:15), and both there (“I have sent them into the world,” v. 18) and elsewhere (Matt. 28:19) following him means being sent into the world, not withdrawing to a monastery away from it.
Not only that, but monasticism makes a mockery of the command to love one’s neighbor: for a monastery chooses it members and largely avoids those that are outside. Granting that contemporary monasticism does not entail an absolute severance from society (monks can receive family, are sometimes assigned outside the monastery, etc.), it still involves a commitment to one’s monastery that greatly limits one’s freedom of association and movement, requires perfect obedience to the head of the monastery, prohibits marriage, most personal possessions, and normal employment, and prescribes a vow-bound and regimented form of life with little practical freedom. This stands in contradiction to Christ’s command for everyone to live as he did when called to faith (1 Cor. 7:17-24), and especially the commands to “not become bondservants of men” (v.23) and to “live as people who are free” (1 Pet. 2:16). It involves submitting to manmade rules that appear humble, but which “are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh” (Col. 2:23; comp. 16-22). For such reasons and others, most Protestants have historically regarded monasticism with abhorrence, and have spoken like Warfield, who in another review (“St. Augustine And His Age”) said of the former monk Joseph McCabe that he came “happily to see the error of his monastic ways, and very properly gave them up,” this being “his duty to himself,” and that “he has further discharged it to humanity by revealing some of the abuses of the monastic system.”
Why This Matters
The Westminster and London Baptist Confessions say that “popish monastical vows” are “superstitious and sinful snares, in which no Christian may entangle himself” (22.7; 23.5). Credo has run issues on “Old Princeton” (2012) and “Confessions” (2021). In the former it called Warfield “champion of the faith,” and in the latter it said, quoting John Murray, that “no creed of the Christian church is comparable to that of Westminster in respect of the skill with which the fruits of fifteen centuries of Christian thought have been preserved,” and published the “first paragraph of each article of the Westminster Confession for your edification.”
How disappointing it is, then, to see Credo acting contrary to its past recommendations by including proponents of monasticism, openly commending works meant to train Romanist priests, and promoting lectio divina, which is not a simple reading of scripture accompanied by prayer and reflection, but a monastic practice with mystical and Platonistic associations. To confess one thing and do another is called hypocrisy, and our Lord has hard words for scribes that commit it (Matt. 23:13-36), a somber fact upon which Credo’s editors ought to meditate prayerfully.
[1] Judging by the book’s chapters description, Tyler’s statement should read ‘“Western Monastic Tradition of Lectio Divina and Seminary Formation” to “Exquisitio, Supplicatio, Praedicatio: Searching the Scriptures and the Mystery of Preaching.”’