[Irenikon] Lay People and the Prayer of the Heart (thanks to Fr Ambrose Young)

To a layman who asked about Noetic Prayer (Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me), Elder Ephraim of Katounakia had this to say:

Set aside half an hour out of the twenty-four to say the Prayer. Whenever you are able; but the evening is best. Say it without using the prayer rope - in supplication, pleading, and with tears. 'Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.' Cultivate this, and you'll see what fruit it brings. From half an hour, it will become an hour. And guard this hour. Whether the phone is ringing, or you have this task you need to do now, or you're sleepy, or some blasphemy is confronting you. Nothing. Turn off the phone. Finish your tasks. Do this half hour and you'll see. You've planted a little tree, and tomorrow or the day after it will bear fruit. St. John Chrysostom and St. Basil both began like this and became luminaries for the whole world. St. Symeon the New Theologian had experiences of the Uncreated Light while still a layman. He was a layman. How many laymen appear as such exteriorly, but deep down are monastics!
Elder Ephraim of Katounakia:

From Obedience Is Life: Elder Ephraim of Katounakia, by Elder Joseph of Vatopaidi, p. 196

The Three Pillars of Christology: Scripture-Tradition-Experience | Christoph Cardinal Schönborn | From God Sent His Son: A Contemporary Christology | Ignatius Insight

http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features2010/cschonborn_threepillarsgshs_nov2010.asp 

Three pillars together support Christology: Scripture, tradition, and experience. The soundness of these three determines the soundness of Christology. Our first chapter is devoted to this trio and to their reliability.

I. The Three Pillars

The first pillar is Scripture. What we know (historically) about Jesus of Nazareth derives almost exclusively (apart from a few mentions in Pliny, Tacitus, or Jewish writings) from the New Testament, above all from the Gospels. These, in turn, are traditions about Jesus, about what he did and said. The entire canon of the New Testament is reviewed, assembled, and filtered tradition. Scripture and tradition are indivisible from the very beginning; Scripture is unthinkable without tradition; it is itself a "product" of tradition.

Because almost everything we know about Christ derives from the Holy Scripture, the question of the trustworthiness of the Gospels is thus of fundamental importance. For hundreds of years, no one questioned it. People were convinced that the Gospels reliably transmitted the experiences of the first witnesses of Jesus, of his disciples, his companions, those people who were eyewitnesses and who heard for themselves. Scripture is thus itself tradition, tradition for which there is written testimony, and it transmits concrete experiences of the people who were with Jesus.

And yet this tradition continues, as traditio apostolica, [1] as the handing on of the depositum fidei. It finds its particular expression in the great councils of the early Church, which unfolded and safeguarded the Christian confession of faith. The doctrinal tradition cannot of course be separated from the tradition of Christian living. Athanasius of Alexandria (d. 373) not only defended the divinity of Christ, he also wrote the life of Saint Anthony, in whom the whole power of the mystery of Christ shines forth.

The saints are "lived Christology". Not only Christology as taught, but Christology as celebrated is part of the tradition: the liturgy is a living wellspring of the tradition of the mystery of Christ. Not only is the story of Jesus read ever anew in the liturgy, it is also celebrated and, thus, present. Tradition is thus fidelity to this testimony about Jesus by the original witnesses (Scripture) at the same time as it is brought to life by the experience of discipleship, of Christian living. Tradition thus contains within it both Scripture and experience.

Finally, the living experience of the Lord as present and active is one of the foundations of Christology. Anthony heard the Gospel story of the wealthy young man one Sunday in Church, and he heard it as something that Jesus was saying to him right now: "Follow me!" (Jn 21:22). [2] In the encounter with Scripture, in hearing and entering Into what the New Testament witnesses are saying, its meaning, its beneficial value, its importance for salvation may be opened up. The experience of individuals, but also the shared experience of a whole people are part of the history of faith and, thus, part of Christology. Such experiences never take place in isolation but are always related to others—not just contemporary experiences, but also the experiences of generations before us. Liberation theology was an attempt to make the particular experience of the people productive for Christology. Christian experience can never be separated from Scripture and tradition.

Scripture, tradition, and experience are the pillars of Christology, by which we can be sure that even today we can talk about Christ, that we can truly preach him, the same person that the apostles knew, the man who was their teacher, whose words and actions they experienced directly and transmitted.

2. The Pillars Give Way

For hundreds of years this unity was seen and lived out without any problem. The current difficulties are all the more explosive. When one of these three pillars gives way, the whole of Christology—indeed, theology altogether—starts to totter. Today Christology must face the fact that in recent centuries—to be more precIse, sInce the Reformation—one pillar after another has given way. We will now briefly outline this process, which characterizes modern Christology. In doIng so, we will also be able to show, however, that in the struggle with the foundations of Christology, the living figure of the Lord also emerges with new clarity.

The first crack is the Reformation. It calls tradition into question and from there proceeds to the supposition that the original pure teaching, the "pure Gospel", has been adulterated, that "Rome", the papacy, the Catholic Church, has no longer preserved it in its pure form. It is therefore a matter of getting back to the original—this is the approach of Martin Luther (d. 1546)—bypassing tradition to go directly to the Bible. Scripture alone is valid; it is the only criterion—sola scriptura! Yet how shall we attain certainty about Scripture if the interpretations of it contradict each other? Hitherto tradition, understood as the transmission of living interpretation of Scripture, has been the hermeneutical means to this end. Luther puts an end to that. Yet who was to tell him what was consonant with Scriptures, "what", in his own words, "promotes Christ" ("Was Christum treibet")? As Gerhard Ebeling has shown, in Luther, sola experientia complements sola scriptura. Experience thus becomes the criterion of what promotes Christ. Scripture and experience enable Luther to attack the magistri and doctores, tradition and Scholastic theology. That is how the Reformation solves the hermeneutic problem, by reducing the three pillars of Christology to two. For Luther, "Scripture and experience" are "the two unanimous witnesses that may be trusted unconditionally". [3] His own experience is the sure starting point: "Sola . . . experientia facit theologum", [4] he says. It is established as equally certain that this experience of his agrees with Scripture, or is at least suitable for understanding Scripture in the correct sense. Scripture and experience safeguard the access to Christ. The third element, tradition, has become suspect.

The Enlightenment breaks the next pillar. The sola scriptura also becomes questionable. From Hermann Samuel Reimarus (d. 1768) onward, radical historical biblical criticism puts Scripture on the side of tradition, which falsifies and retouches. [5] Scripture, too, conceals, falsifies, and covers up the original, which it is now necessary to ascertain by historical criticism: the Bible is subjected to merciless criticism. Little of the certainty that Luther believed he found in Scripture now remains. With Friedrich Schleiermacher (d. 1834) and Rudolf Bultmann (d. 1976), theology withdraws to the final sure pillar, that of experience, and abandons Scripture to historical criticism. For Bultmann it is not historical certainty concerning Jesus that is important but the existential effect.

With psychology, especially with Sigmund Freud, but even as early as Ludwig Feuerbach (d. 1872), religious experience likewise becomes problematical. It is exposed as a projection of human needs and, thus, as illusion, which basically is concealing something else that can now be laid bare: man's secret desires, which can be discovered as the real content behind these projections. Behind the religious projections stand, in reality, other needs, sublimations, and projections.

What can Christology build upon, then? If tradition can no longer be trusted, because it is seen to be merely a retouching with the tints of dogma that obscures the original simple figure of Jesus; if Scripture itself comes under the suspicion of already being tradition, which distorts the original Jesus; if, finally, personal experience is subject to the suspicion of creating the figure of a savior and redeemer from the projection of the person's own desires—what foundation is still sound? Upon what can Christology still be built?

ENDNOTES:

[1] This concept is used by Vatican II in the Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum, no. 8.

[2] Athanasius of Alexandria, Vita Antonii (SC 400). The story of the conversion of Anthony was also a decisive milestone on the path leading Saint Augustine to faith. Augustine, Confessions 8, 6, 14-15 (CC Ser. Lat. 27:121-23).

[3] G. Ebeling, "Die Klage über das Erfahrungsdefizit in der Theologie als Frage nach ihrer Sache", in Wort und Glaube, vol. 3: Beiträge zur Fundamentaltheologie, Soteriologie und Ekklesiologie(Tübingen, 1975), p. 12.

[4] WATR I; 16, 13 (no. 46, of 1531). For further references, see Ebeling, "Die Klage über das Erfahrungsdeflzit", p. 10.

[5] A. Schweitzer, Die Geschichte der Leben-Jesu Forschung, 5th ed. (Tübingen, 1933); trans. by W. Montgomery as The Quest of the Historical Jesus (Mineola, N.Y.: Dover, 2005).


Related Ignatius Insight Articles and Excerpts:

• Jesus In the Gospel of Luke | Excerpt from Jesus, The Divine Physician: Encountering Christ in the Gospel of Luke | Christoph Cardinal Schönborn
• A Shepherd Like No Other | Excerpt from Behold, God's Son! Encountering Christ in the Gospel of Mark | Christoph Cardinal Schönborn
• Encountering Christ in the Gospel | Excerpt from My Jesus | Christoph Cardinal Schönborn
• The Church Is the Goal of All Things | Excerpt from Loving The Church | Christoph Cardinal Schönborn
• Excerpts from Chance or Purpose? | Christoph Cardinal Schönborn
• Reincarnation: The Answer of Faith | Excerpt from From Death to Life: The Christian Journey | Christoph Cardinal Schönborn
• The Truth of the Resurrection | Excerpts from Introduction to Christianity | Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
• Seeing Jesus in the Gospel of John | Excerpts from On The Way to Jesus Christ | Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
• The Challenge of Jesus of Nazareth | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J.
• The Divinity of Christ | Peter Kreeft
• Jesus Is Catholic | Hans Urs von Balthasar
• The Religion of Jesus | Blessed Columba Marmion | From Christ, The Ideal of the Priest

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Christoph Cardinal Schönborn, O.P., (born 1945) the Archbishop of Vienna, Austria, is a highly regarded author, teacher, and theologian.

He was a student of Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) and with him was co-editor of the monumental Catechism of the Catholic Church. He studied theology and philosophy in Bornheim-Walberberg, Vienna, and Paris. He was ordained a Dominican priest by Cardinal Franz König in December 1970 in Vienna, and later studied in Regensburg. From 1975 he was professor at Freiburg im Uechtland. In 1980, he became a member of the international theological commission of the Holy See, and in 1987 he became editorial secretary for the Catechism. He speaks six languages and has written numerous books.

Several of his books have been translated and published by Ignatius Press; see his Ignatius Insight author page for a complete listing.

Tolkien's Faith | An Interview with Paul E. Kerry, editor of The Ring and the Cross: Christianity and The Lord of the Rings | by Sean McGuire | Ignatius Insight | May 23, 2011
http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features2011/pkelly_tolkienintvw_may2011.asp 

Dr. Paul E. Kerry is an associate professor of history at Brigham Young University, research associate at Corpus Christi College and visiting fellow at the Woolf Institute, Cambridge. He specializes in German, Jewish and intellectual history. J.R.R. Tolkien is the latest of several scholarly subjects into which he has plunged. Past works include Thomas Carlyle Resartus: Reappraising Carlyle's Contribution to the Philosophy of History, Political Theory, and Cultural Criticism and Friedrich Schiller: Playwright, Poet, Philosopher, Historian.

He is the editor of the recently published collection, The Ring and the Cross: Christianity and The Lord of the Rings (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2010), which includes essays by Joseph Pearce, Bradley J. Birzer, John Holmes, and several other Tolkien experts. Dr. Kerry is also co-editor, with Sandra Miesel, of the book, Light Beyond All Shadow: Religious Experience in the Work of J. R. R. Tolkien (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, August 2011). He recently spoke with Sean McGuire (who blogs at The Room of Shattered Glass) about The Ring and the Cross, Tolkien's faith, and the great popularity of The Lord of the Rings.

McGuire: In your Introduction, you mention a lot of questions scholars have covered in the "Is-Tolkien-A-Christian" debate. How did you frame this debate and why? 

Kerry: Well, I would first point out that the question is not "Is Tolkien a Christian" – the overwhelming majority of scholars understand that Tolkien was a devout Catholic who believed in the truth, beauty, majesty, and salvific power of the Roman Catholic Church. The question is to what extend did Catholicism inform his fictional writings, particularly The Lord of the Rings, his masterpiece.

As a student at Oxford I was a member of the C.S. Lewis Society that drew many Christians of varying denominations together, as well as those who simply enjoyed his writings. The thought was a glimmer at the time, but I wondered about Tolkien's writings and their relation to Christianity. In the case of Lewis it is more obvious and thus less contested. Sometimes that leads to complacency and Lewis's fiction is relegated to Christian allegory, and we do not see his formidable mind and skills as a writer as clearly as we should.

My long-time colleague Dr Michael Ward, an Anglican clergyman, wrote Planet Narnia (Oxford, 2008) that has been justly praised as an interpretative breakthrough in Lewis scholarship on precisely this point. Michael, in fact, was president of the Oxford C.S. Lewis Society when I was a member and we remained in touch when I was a visiting fellow at the University of Cambridge when he was a chaplain at St. Peter's College. In fact, I helped him set up a speaking engagement at Princeton University and I recall when we conversed thinking that I would like The Ring and Cross and Light Beyond All Shadow to reflect the same judicious scholarship that he had employed in Planet Narnia.

I wanted to provide a forum where scholars interested in the subject could articulate their ideas and present them with civility. I think that the exchange in the book between Professors Hutton and Ag¿y illustrates precisely this.

McGuire: Is it the case that most Americans are too religiously illiterate to understand Tolkien?
Kerry: Certainly I have had colleagues at the University of Cambridge tell me that for subjects such as medieval Art History or Chaucer it is increasingly difficult to find students who understand Christian motifs or allusions or who can catch biblical references. On the other hand, this is why they and others find it refreshing to work with bright students who are Catholic, Mormon, Orthodox, Evangelical, Jewish, et cetera, who know the Bible and have been taught that proposition that faith and reason are not mutually exclusive.

Another angle on your question might lead to a different way to look at Tolkien and readers who are receptive to him. It may be precisely a religious sensibility that makes Tolkien so compelling for so many, including Americans. In speaking with my colleagues at Villanova University—a university engaged in Augustinian renewal—they note that many times Catholic students are unaware that Tolkien was in fact Catholic, but that once they realize this new, deeper ways of understanding his and other major Catholic contributors to what Goethe called "world culture" become apparent.

Yet, readers of other faiths or those who profess none have read and enjoyed Tolkien. But isn't that a part of what Catholicism is able to do, that it is be universal? Certainly the translations into which Tolkien has been translated attest that there is an enormous intercultural appeal.

McGuire: What do you admire the most about J.R.R. Tolkien's work? 

Kerry: Scholars want to communicate their ideas and Professor Tolkien found a way to build his scholarship in incredibly creative and imaginative ways into his fiction and found a way to communicate that about which he cared so much to so many. Some historians who are now taking a more literary approach to writing history are, I think, finding a way to do something similar.

I have also been struck by how Tolkien's writing exercises an interdisciplinary appeal on scholars, not only those in English departments, but (also) those in history and political science, philosophy and theology, and others are taking Tolkien's contributions more seriously.

McGuire: What's one question you would like to ask Tolkien if he was still alive today? 

Kerry: As a professor who teaches university students for a living, I would want to ask about his views on how to go about that today. What would he consider the aims of a university education to be, and how might one achieve those aims?

McGuire: Who is one of your favorite moment in The Lord of the Rings? And why? 

Kerry: In Book I, in the chapter "A Knife in the Dark", Frodo is seriously wounded by one of the Black Riders. After his time in the House of Elrond his grievous injury seems to be healed. Yet, much later, after (the) defeat of Sauron and when Frodo appears to be settled into some kind of domestic tranquility, he tells Sam, twice, that he is "wounded" and that this is the kind of wound that would never heal. Soon thereafter, of course, he leaves for the Grey Havens, stating a truth that Tolkien would have known all too well after experiencing the two World Wars.

Those who sacrifice to save us and preserve our lives and ways of life, whether they be soldiers, sailors, submariners, or airmen, or those our parents, teachers, religious leaders, and so forth, often cannot fully enjoy that which they (give) so much to preserve. It may come as a surprise to those readers, perhaps readers whose experience in life thus far has taught them that everything is recoverable, all can be made anew, that we can spring back in perfect health from any setback, that there are wounds from which we on our own cannot fully recover.

I think that here one has the chance to see Tolkien's European experience, as well as Catholic vision, shine through.

McGuire: What element of Tolkien's work do you think most misleads people into false assumptions? 

Kerry: Tolkien was a philologist and sometimes his use of a word is specific, rooted in the history of a word, and may differ from the popular usage of a word. For example, there is a brief discussion of "wizardy" in the chapter "On the Road to Isengard" in The Lord of the Rings that seems to play on this distinction.

Sometimes this might entail a difference in popular perception between a European and American readership. Recall that The Hobbit was published in 1937, the same year as the Walt Disney animated film,Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, was screened. Although both were aimed at children's audiences (recall not only the origins of The Hobbit, but that it was nominated for a Carnegie Medal), see the vastly different conception of dwarves.

McGuire: Any memorable moments while working on the Tolkien essays? 

Kerry: I certainly did have some learning moments. This was my first time to work on a scholarly project with professional writers. I learned much more about that world and the challenges that they face. Although scholars face publisher pressure, they are paid for their university teaching and this pays the bills and puts food on the table.

Writers live by every stroke of the keyboard and if their writing does not sell, they do not eat or they have second or third jobs. I appreciate very much the contributions from the professional writers in this volume because academic presses are not for-profit endeavors, and so this means that they essentially donated their time and effort to the volume and for that I am profoundly grateful.

I have not had the pleasure of meeting all of the contributors to The Ring and the Cross but when I have had the occasion it has been illuminating. For example, I recall taking Professor John Holmes, from the Franciscan University of Steubenville, on a tour of Cambridge Colleges and learning so much from him about Tolkien from a medieval perspective. We also reflected on how Tolkien might have felt as a Roman Catholic as he worked at Oxford, an institution like Cambridge where many of the ancient colleges and chapels would have been begun as Catholic foundations.

One of the most memorable experiences I had whilst working on this project was a discussion I had with Princeton University students at Mercer House and Wiggins House, Opus Dei-affiliated foundations. The students were lively, bright, engaged, and not shy to ask hard questions about the project.