I am currently in a doctoral program, studying semiotics—cultural symbols—which requires a great deal of reading. Probably the greatest benefit of an education is the wise guide (teacher) who can give a curated tour of the best there is in any given subject, and such is the case with this program. Dr. Leonard Sweet has opened the door to an entire world of scholars and theologians who look beneath the surface of things and reveal mysteries. Now I would like to open that world to you.
It took me a little while to get into this book, but once engaged, I became engrossed.
The Male Gaze
Jean Leclercq, a Benedictine monk, wrote his book from his western monastic perspective. I would like to point out that Benedict (480 – c. 547), father of monasticism in the west, wrote a monastic rule that was greatly influenced by Basil’s earlier monastic rule (who was the father of monasticism in the east). However, the prototype of Basil’s monastic rule was actually written by Basil’s sister, Macrina (c. 327–379). Macrina, who had received an excellent education, became the teacher and spiritual guide for both her younger brothers Basil (c. 330–379) and Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335–394).
I felt compelled to give that intro because I was initially struck with how male-centric this book is overall.
As I continued reading, I thought about how generations of Christians, to this day even, are reading about the salvation of man, that man cannot help but desire God, that God loves man and so forth. Just one word, and yet it carries great semiotic freight, really. And it’s everywhere, but especially it is everywhere in Christian writing, including calling Jesus the “Son of Man.”
Excursus on Son of Man
The traditional way to translate this phrase from the Greek “uion tou anthropou” is “Son of Man.” This is because “Man” connoted “humankind” for a few centuries in the English language. Interestingly, in Middle English, the female version of “man” was “wimman” or “wifman,” our modern-day “woman.” The male version of “man” was “werman.” This left the word “man” as truly neutral, referring to male and female alike as humans.
However, at some point the prefix “wer” fell away, so that “man” came to mean both male humans and humans in general.
But there are real implications that come of using the male version of “human” to stand in for all humans. Actually, “anthropos” in Greek is the neutral term denoting humankind (like “anthropology,” the study of people). If a male term is desired, the Greek uses “aner/andros.” So Jesus is actually the Son of Humanity, or even the Child of Humanity. Just reframing that one phrase opens a new world of thoughts.
Eating the Word
Early on in The Love of Learning and the Desire for God, Leclercq described some wonderful concepts of medieval thought:
- The idea that reading aloud is as good for one’s physical health as exercise.
- The very desire of God is also the possession of God, that temptation drives our desire for God, thus causing us to possess God even more.
- “Compunction hollows us and thereby increases our capacity for God” (p. 39).
It got me to thinking how asceticism sublimates earthly desire for heavenly desire, and that is just where the medieval contemplatives went in their own thoughts, drawn ever upward to heaven, and to the presence of God. That meeting place for the earthling is in the Cloud of Unknowing.
Leclercq admires Benedict’s more spiritual rule that leaves open to each generation the ability to “think through and rediscover” the deep truths associated with contemplation, meditation, and prayer, the pursuit of God. It made me think of Piet Grieg and how, in concert with the Holy Spirit’s work, he has unwittingly spearheaded a massive prayer movement in the west.
I had to stop at the absolutely magnificent phrase, “mastication of the divine word” (p. 90). My mind immediately flew to John 6 and Jesus’s discourse on the eating of his flesh. He said,
“Amen, amen, I say to you, if you all do not eat the flesh of the Son of Humanity, nor drink of him the blood, you all do not have life in yourselves.
“The one who crunches-and-gnaws on my flesh and drinks of me the bloodhas life eternal, and I also will raise that one up, the last day.
“For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.”
Jesus, to the religious authorities, John 6:53-55 NRSVUE (emphases added)
It is a bit of a cumbersome translation. I do that on purpose so we can remember that we are reading a translation of words written two thousand years ago in an ancient language no longer spoken.
But that phrase, that is what leapt to mind, that Jesus used a word meaning to crunch and gnaw, to break open the bones and suck out the marrow. That is how the Lord wants us to eat of him, not with dainty little bites as though we were at the queen’s tea party.
And that is how these ascetics of antiquity masticated on the divine word. It is downright delicious.
And it gets better.
Swept Up in the Spirit
These ancients wrote stream-of-conscience. I imagine they felt they were “swept up in the Spirit” as they wrote, all the scripture and commentary and even literature they had masticated on, digested, and memorized, mixing and matching in every more lovely and delightful ways.
“Yes,” I thought to myself, “we are now in the fat of the land, Leclercq, you have drawn me in, in spite of myself.” This is where allegory comes from, this is how it works well.
But there is one more piece. The culture has to support it.
They were onto something, reading the Hebrew Bible not as history but as something spiritual whose meaning is only fully unlocked by the Christian Testament. Though the stories were written as historical, they were certain these stories also have meaning embedded in them. I agree, I think. We do a good job when we allow the narrative to flow as written while assuming there is more than simply a historical account.
In keeping with allegory, these monastics’ justification for their reading of the ancient secular classics (their “school books,” as Leclercq explains) is found in God’s allowance of foreign war brides (p. 142)). They co-opted the material for the Lord’s use, basically, treating the secular texts as captive war brides to the Bible. When I read about this, my mind leapt to another rather cautionary passage about marrying foreign women, found in both Ezra and Nehemiah,
“In those days also I saw Jews who had married women of Ashdod, Ammon, and Moab, and half of their children spoke the language of Ashdod, and they could not speak the language of Judah but spoke the language of various peoples.”
Nehemiah 13:23–24 NRSVUE (italics added)
Not all those mixed marriages were unfit, just the ones where the children did not speak Hebrew, but rather the languages of their mothers. I have not studied the monastics’ writing, but I wonder if some of their literary “children” also spoke the languages of their mothers rather than the language of God. I know at least one ancient Greek “medical” opinion, that women were deformed men, inferior to men and therefore needed to be governed by men, absolutely did make it into church canon and is dogging women to this day in some circles.
And yet this is what we are doing, too, taking the things of our culture as we are “swept up in the Spirit” and recasting them semiotically to reveal the things of God. May I keep Leclercq’s book with me as a gentle caution.
Monastic versus Scholastic Theology
Leclercq presents two schools of thought, the monastic theology and the scholastic theology, then leans into what it means for the monk to study not only the Bible and the “Fathers,” but also ancient classics and the culture. Monastic theology sees the value of remembering the past, of recording history, and of preserving great works from times before not just because they are literarily worthy, or for the mere preservation of knowledge, but because all of this—music, art, literature, grammar—provides ways to draw closer to God. Even when writing letters to each other, they included some homily or passage or verse that was beautiful and also pointed to the things of God.
Whatever could be employed in the praise of God and of the saints was considered a worthy tool, including exaggeration, hyperbole, and even fabrication so long as God was glorified in it (pp. 198–200). Understanding the scriptures came through reading and meditating on them, and reading the Fathers, with God as the focus.
They stayed faithful to this foundation, and believed this was all that was necessary, that no new doctrine or theology need be written (p. 238). Stories of miracles, or any other feat, was attributed to God, not to the person who performed it (p. 203). They had a higher regard for inspiration, which comes through the living Holy Spirit, rather than technique, and because they had largely withdrawn from the world, their work took on a timelessness (p. 219).
Experiencing God
What sets monastic theology apart is its emphasis on the subjective experience of knowing God, being made one with God, drawing near to God, swept up into the ecstasy of God (p. 263). This mysticism is absent in scholastic theology, which leans more on the philosophers rather than the Fathers, and seeks the scientific approach that relies upon what (until very recently) has been held to be the objective—logic (pp. 245–246).
In the post postmodern world we know logic is not objective, that in fact no person can humanly be objective, even our language has created biases in the way we think and reason. Monks feared this scientific approach would profane the mystery of God (pp. 251, 279). I am inclined not to disagree.
I think this quote says it all, that the monk’s chief aim was to “seek God, not to discuss [God]” (p. 254, modifications added).
American Evangelicalism versus German Theologians
A similar centrifugal effect happened in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that still eddies today—the conflict between American evangelicalism, as it was originally, and the then new biblical scholarship coming from German theologians. For the Christian Restorationist, this analytical approach to the Bible that, a priori, discounted the supernatural in the name of science was a quest for knowledge that deadens, not enlivens. And consider the resurgence of the Charismatic movement in the US after centuries of the Reformers noncontinuationism. It is the same longing to know God, not just know about God.
In trying to submit God’s mysteries to reason, one could be tempted to forget their transcendency and yield to a kind of naturalism.
Jean Leclerq, The Love of Learning and The Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture, 258
Leclercq first wrote those words a good twenty years before the Jesus Seminar was founded by Robert Funk. I find that significant.
Monastic theology put the great emphasis on prayer, not human intellect, nor intelligence, nor logic, because this is the chief way to come to know God, to be in communion with God, which is all that matters (255–266). I thought page 271 really brought all that together in one place.
Knowledge of God
The fundamental characteristics of monastic theology determine the objective they deliberately chose to set for it. This knowledge of God, which is part of a life of prayer, is a religious knowledge, the two areas of predilection to which effort is devoted are those in which [a person’s] relation to God are most immediately apparent. They are, on the one hand, the history of salvation itself; on the other, the presence of God in [a person] and [a person’s] presence before God. The mystery of salvation—the mystery of union with God.
… After the allegorical or mystical meaning the one which provides the substance of the mystery, the objective realities of the oikonomia, comes the spiritual meaning properly speaking, the one which interiorizes the mystery in the soul of each of the faithful.
Jean Leclerq, The Love of Learning and The Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture, 271
For the monk, the allegorical had about it the feeling of entering into the mysteries of God with a sense of revelation (p. 271)
Reading that brought something to mind that the apostle Peter wrote.
Because-of God’s divine power having granted us all things pertaining-to life and godliness through the knowledge of the One having called us by His own glory and virtue, through which qualities [Jesus] has granted us the precious and greatest things-promised in order that through these you might become sharers of the divine nature, having escaped-from the corruption in the world by evil desire; and indeed for this very reason you having applied all diligence— in your faith supply virtue; and in your virtue, knowledge; and in your knowledge, self-control; and in your self-control, endurance; and in your endurance, godliness; and in your godliness, brotherly-love; and in your brotherly-love, love.
2 Peter 1:3–7 DLNT (modifications added)
That seems to encapsulate monastic theology.
The discussion surrounding the “two lips required for the kiss of the soul” being reason to understand salvation and the will to consent to salvation is a case in point for monastic theology. That is the important thing, the economy of God’s love, not the “acquisition of an explicit knowledge of God’s salvific plan” (pp. 275–276).
So how are we to respond to this book semiotically?
Speak the Signs
… all tried to use the resources of culture in the service of prayer and Divine praise.
Jean Leclerq, The Love of Learning and The Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture, 307 (adjacent thoughts on 317)
We spend time in communion with God, and we view our culture as our raw material to use in the service of prayer and Divine praise.
For the monk, everything, all things, if beautiful were worthy of sculpting into something praiseworthy for God, and as a means to draw ever deeper into God’s mysteries. But we may also take something from scholastic theology, because we seek not only to communicate to each other, we seek to communicate with the wide world, to open eyes to the glorious revelations of God all around us.
