Continuing. We've looked briefly at his, oh, let's see. We're missing a couple of people. I don't know. Chris and Tom. I wonder if he went to the room. I think we had one, Chris. Huh. I don't know. Good. I don't know. Cambridge. OK. Sit down. Wait. I think I should leave. The spirit should see me later. If you go there, sit through the whole thing. But I guess there's 38 more tapes. I don't know if there's anything. It's beautiful. OK. So, sit down, Tom. We've got the proof. And it stirs up all kinds of discussion and debate. I think one of the things is his methodology. That's interesting. And that's classically monastic. He says at the beginning, I do not seek to understand in order that I may believe, but I believe so that I may understand.

[01:01]

What is more, I believe that unless I do believe, I shall not understand. This is what people like Barth liked about Anselm. It's not just go out there and do your scientific tests and know then what the facts are and set your faith aside to something primitive or something. What he's saying is he begins within what's sometimes called the circle of faith. And from there, truth comes. And lots of people thought about this. This is the way it is. Whatever you're into, it presupposes an act of faith. Even the rigorous scientific method presupposes faith in consistency and correspondence between mind and outer reality, et cetera, which cannot be proven in any kind of ultimate sense to convince everyone because we have skeptics, et cetera. You might be into American consumerism. That's an act of faith. I can be fulfilled by getting a good income and getting these good products and that kind of thing.

[02:05]

You might be into nihilism. You might be into anything. You look at me. You might be into the darkest. But it's all an act of faith. And to recognize that then and say, well, what is my faith? Why do I believe this? But you start from there. You start from an act of faith. And so it's the priority of faith. And in our case, it's it that God is revealing through these sources. But this is kind of classic. So he writes in the form of a prayer at the beginning of the proselogue. You teach me to seek you. And as I seek you, show yourself to me. For I cannot seek you unless you show me how. I will never find you unless you show yourself to me. So it's presupposing the priority of God. And so the only way we're going to get in communion with God is not just coming up with fancy syllogisms in our head, but opening ourselves to God, praying for this grace, praying for illumination, et cetera.

[03:07]

I confess, Lord, with thanksgiving that you have made me in your image so that I can think of you and love you, et cetera. So it's basically an act of faith and an act of prayer, this exercise. And as such, I think it's a model for all of us. And so he begins with prayer for God to direct him in all this. And first, he tries to recollect himself as a monk at the beginning of a meditation. Come now, little man. Turn aside for a while from your daily employment. Escape for a moment from the tumult of your thoughts. Put aside your weighty cares. Let your burdensome distractions wait. Free yourself a while for God and rest a while in him. Enter the inner chamber of your soul, et cetera. Shut out everything except God. So this is a word that primarily should be taught in the context of spirituality, not simply of arid philosophy kind of thing.

[04:08]

But he does permit this space of rigorous thought. So he goes from faith seeking wisdom, that is, communion with God, deeper understanding of who God is. And he travels through knowledge, and he grants that its own space, its own importance, and its own particular logic, et cetera. Now, in this, I think he's a model of a devout modern. If we're pondering something, well, just now we're pondering what to do about our water system. We got lots of water, but do we want to bring in a chlorine system or ultraviolet? Now, there you can't just open the Bible and see what the Bible says or see what Saint so-and-so says. You've got to consult the experts. Well, you can, but that's not the best way to do it. It's acknowledging that area in its own legitimacy and autonomy and trying to find out what they say. But not that that's the ultimate thing that'll give us happiness or anything.

[05:11]

It's from a context of faith that it's worthwhile doing, et cetera. And it's all to lead to wisdom that whether the water we drink or whatever we're involved in will give glory to God. So what he's doing is not wisdom and therefore not faith. I'm never going to think again or I'm never going to interest myself in kind of human disciplines and efforts. Nor is it that knowledge is going to save me. All I have to do is think more clearly or read more books and I'm going to get up there. That would be Gnosticism. But it's from faith through knowledge into wisdom. And I think... This is just his own. He's not... Oh, yeah, I think he's... What he's doing, some say, is opening up to the modern. He's fully medieval. Yeah, anyone who's got a brain on the one hand and an act of faith on the other. Whether it's in carpentry, you know. Well, see, I fall back into this simple triangle

[06:11]

of women who cook, you know. Yeah, but she'll use her brain in her area. She might be the best cook of pasta around. Sure. She's not hysterically moving through these... That's right. But she's using areas of human skill with the best that she can. So we're not talking necessarily about everybody. No, no, absolutely not. There's not a lot of women who come out. No. Nor are you ever going to be. I think he might say, in a sense, everyone a theologian in a sense, you've got to think about your faith, etc. But everyone has a brain in everyone's camp. You know, Emanuel is fairly brilliant with repairing motors, kind of thing. Now, he can't, again, go to the Bible and see what the Bible says about transmission fluids or something. You've just got to learn and ask people, etc. And in that area, but it comes out of faith and flows into wisdom, hopefully. So that's what I'm saying. That's the model for everyone. Now, what you're going to do

[07:12]

in that middle area depends whether you're into chemistry or whether you're into you know, carpentry or art or whatever. Painting has its own legitimate autonomy of norms and criteria and methods and materials, etc. You know, Mercy, he's going to be doing some rigorous courses that don't substitute for faith and wisdom or hopefully a way for him to journey into wisdom, but respecting all of the relative autonomy of that field. How do we go? Okay. That's right. Absolutely. And even their own philosophy, if you mean by that, understanding how you know, it might be a very practical philosophy, you know. Someone I feel is extremely knowledgeable with plants, etc. And so he concludes this way.

[08:14]

He concludes with, again, a prayer. That which you counsel through your wonderful counsels, O Lord, is what I am asking for. That we receive that which you promise through your truth, that my joy may be filled. God of truth, I ask that I may receive so that my joy may be full. Then there's a lovely prayer where he, it's a full anthropology. He wants every part of his human being to be kind of caught up in God. Meanwhile, let my mind meditate on your truth. Let my tongue speak of it. Let my heart love it. Let my mouth preach it. Let my soul hunger for it. Let my flesh thirst for it. Let my whole being desire it until I enter into the joy of my Lord, who is God, one and triune, blessed forever. Amen. So, this is the context and I think here it's a real challenge for us. It's, it came to him this famous proof, which we're gonna go back to briefly,

[09:14]

but not spend a lot of time on, because I don't think it's, for some of us it's delightful, for some of us less, but it came in a moment kind of an inspiration for him in the moment of prayer. Suddenly one night during Matins, the grace of God shone in his heart. This is his friend and biographer. And the whole matter became clear to his mind and a great joy and jubilation filled his inmost being. So it came as an illumination. And this, again, he's very Augustinian, he's, for Augustine, we don't just have our own kind of, how would you say, generator and power system inside. We have light inside only insofar as it participates in the one light, the one truth, who is God. So, if we know anything of truth, two and two equals four or push these two buttons and it runs, that's a participation in the one larger truth that is wisdom. So, it's all kind of this participatory thing. Then later there'll be this presumption of just kind of human total separateness and self-sufficiency

[10:15]

kind of thing. Use my head to get in control of my world kind of thing. But he's not at all in that. So it's a combination of faith and rigorous head work and I think there he challenges us. Someone like Barth likes it because when he says I do not seek, well, he claims that God can't be reduced to an idea. That's the basic consequence. I may have an idea of God in my head. I can't say that's all there is. There's this famous romantic quote theologian called Feuerbach. He said all our God language is basically ultimately all just anthropology. If I say God is love all I'm saying is that there's a dimension of the human spirit that wants to love wants to receive love then I blow that to kind of an infinite degree. This is kind of Freud how God is a father projection kind of thing. If I say God is truth it's because in us there's a quest for truth and so I blow that into the skies

[11:16]

and say that's God. And so we're talking about God we're ultimately talking about the human person. Joseph Campbell he kind of it's not clear where he is but he gets very much into the human you know follow your own bliss and get into your own deepest myths and stories and he pretty usually avoids God language though sometimes he'll talk about the mystery beyond us but it's a big temptation for contemporaries to think well it's basically ultimately about the divine within kind of. Now Bartz says well what about transcendence what about the totally other God etc and what Anselm does is refuse to allow any discourse about God to just become a comfortable part of me kind of the bitter side of me because God can't just be something within me and be a perfect

[12:16]

unconditional infinite being kind of thing because I'm not perfect ultimate infinite being and God couldn't be that and be just an idea in me or you. So what Bart likes Bart is this rigorous Protestant theologian is who's not usually into proofs and all that but he feels that this is the ultimate way out of a kind of a what he would call a reductionism reducing God to man and so it is interesting in that regard God can't be reduced just to an idea. Do we have any thoughts comments about the thing that's proved at this point given this larger context and given the week's reflection on it? Are you all still in cell units? Kieran I thought you had different questions. Well again

[13:30]

Thomas' argument is you can't just go from an idea and whatever the idea is prove that there's some reality out there from the idea but again Anselm says that would be true of any idea in the world except this one idea which is the idea of God since God is what God this gets into rather esoteric stuff but you've got the essence and the existence and God's essence is his existence and his existence is as there's a final identity there that's good huh? So this is turning aside Well we're just saying let's come up with a working definition leaving aside whether he exists or not like we could come up with a working definition again of leprechauns or unicorns

[14:30]

No his one definition you know is that than which nothing greater can be conceived supreme being that's all I mean what you were just saying Oh essence existence we can leave that aside well that's set that aside scratch that right but right yeah yeah all I think he needs to grab you on is will you agree with a working definition of God of supreme being that is that than which nothing that's all like will you agree with leprechauns is what two tall green little men or or unicorns you know white horses with if you've got

[15:38]

a working definition what are we talking about before we ask whether it exists or not that's his thing so other aspects one of his then he gets into his devotional prayers which are fascinating because this is the emergence of devotion here and it's an early one and it's classical devotion that is it isn't very liturgical it isn't very trinitarian he's just praying to Saint John the Baptist and he's praying to Saint Paul and John the it goes on and on praising these particular saints and seeing how they can help him so it's a classic beginning of this emergence of Roman Catholic devotion in its very positive aspects and also its limits he's got some stuff on Jesus in here oh no well it's a prayer to Saint Paul but there's a section where he suddenly just turns to Jesus but he addresses him as mother Jesus my mother and this goes back

[16:39]

to the fathers if you remember this was already in Basil but it's seen in Jesus not just a macho male figure but a full dimension of the full kind of humanity that includes man and woman father and mother brother and sister etc kind of what Joseph Campbell would call the androgynous and you Jesus are you not also a mother are you not the mother who like a hen gathers her chicks under her wings so here he's using this classic New Testament image that Jesus uses in himself to say there's this maternal side to Jesus but this is very touching and it opens up real possibilities in relating to Jesus truly Lord you are a mother and he takes this image and explores it what the mother gives life and then takes care of life so Jesus on the cross those are the birthing pains bringing us to newness of life truly Lord

[17:40]

you are a mother for both they who are in labor and they who are brought forth are accepted by you you're the mother of mothers you have died more than they they that may labor to bear it is by your death that they have been born for if you had not been in labor you could not have born death and if you had not died you would not have brought forth for longing to bear children into life you tasted of death so we've got who is Jesus for us we've got all these models and images Jesus's physician Jesus's friend Jesus's spouse Jesus's teacher lamb shepherd all kinds of things one of these is Jesus's mother and it shows somehow sometimes how daring these fathers and medieval writers were if someone would write this today people would raise their eyebrows this sounds very weird and kinky but I think it's closer to the fuller mystery of Jesus and Jesus as you look at him is not just this macho figure who bashes

[18:41]

people but he uses that mother hymn image of himself and he says turn the other cheek and he says let the little children come unto me and he weeps over Jerusalem et cetera so there is this tender feminine side to him that I think is a model also for devotion then he's got a very high devotion of mother of Mary and it's as mother of Jesus and also mother of God that's the classic of the early church since Jesus is human and divine and Mary is the mother of Jesus there is a sense that Mary is the mother of God but not in God's divinity but God's humanity you immediately have to add but it's a very high Maryology God created all things and Mary gave birth to God God who made all things made himself of Mary so

[19:41]

God the father of all created things and Mary is the mother of all created things God is the father of all that is established and Mary is the mother of all that is reestablished so there's tremendous resources here in someone like him to recover the feminine in Catholic spirituality this is an issue some if you look at Hinduism Buddhism there's all these women goddesses redundancies but Catholicism can look fairly macho you've got God who's his father Yahweh who's always winning battles and then you've got his clear definitive revelation of himself it's his son not his daughter or his child but definitely his son and then you've got the church that can have only male priests etc and at the end you can have well something like discovering the feminine side of Jesus or discovering Mary as mother of all creation and in some mysterious way

[20:41]

as mother of God this allows in entering into the feminine Jung said that the most important event of this century do you know what he said was most important for him? The doctrine of the assumption of Mary because he says this carries the feminine right up into the Godhead whereas otherwise you just have this macho Godhead kind of thing but this this takes trinity and makes it that's right so it's not clear that it's fully orthodox but it's interesting this is very urgent stuff for us I was just looking at the latest issue of Tablet which is a very good Catholic magazine and it's a woman theologian reflecting on the recent document on the Vatican on the lay faithful urging that the acknowledgement in theory of the active and responsible presence of women in the church must be realized in practice

[21:41]

so we have to give women in the church a much more active place that if women without that women without discrimination should be participants in the process of coming to decisions in the church so this whole thing of how to render the church more fully human that is more fully androgynous and that also has to do with absolutely

[22:42]

because if you take apart you can't get into unity you're just dealing with a fragment absolutely so this is about each one of us you know as some people like you whenever we dream of a woman or something like that that might be a woman out there but it's also the feminine dimension within and how to reconcile how to bring together in a kind of a fecund inner there's that book by it's not William Johnson who wrote We Robert Johnson We he says much of romantic love is this projection outward of the feminine dimension within because I'm terrified in this very macho male culture to acknowledge that there's any feminine dimension within so I thrust it out on that poor flesh and blood gal over there and she becomes my beautiful

[23:43]

all perfect Beatrice and that works for a while and then she's doing the same with her male dimension on me so I'm the knight in shining armor and totally courageous and turn the world upside down and then finally she gets to know the real me and I get to know the real her and then there's this collapse of romanticism and just either boredom or breakup or something so he argues as a psychologist if interpersonal love is going to work you've got to first work on that feminine dimension within on the side of the man and the woman et cetera so and I think for contemplatives attempting celibacy your aloneness becomes less constricted and narrow if you're aware that there is the feminine within and we're called to full marriage and all the rest of it it's just that it's an internal and this we discover in the literature of the well I was thinking of the Tao and the Chinese but it's also in the Hindu

[24:44]

and the Buddhist et cetera it's the within that the forces are reconciled interiorly and then with the godhead another great value is friendship he has a lovely prayer for friends of course this is a tremendous value traditionally in monasticism I was talking to a man who's married et cetera and at a certain point this kind of again romantic fervor of marriage can cool down you know what you do well he was just discovering for the first time the possibility of intimate sharing et cetera at all kinds of different levels with his kids with friends women friends men friends et cetera so it kind of opens up the thing but certainly for celibates this is a key theme and of course he just did that article reviewing throughout from the earliest fathers into the later

[25:44]

medieval times this whole theme of friendship so in prayer for friends he says Lord you showed such love to your enemies you've also enjoyed the same love upon your friends that is Jesus isn't a good friendship he had friends John is called the disciple that Jesus loved and then he obviously had some particular bond with people like Mary Martha Lazarus he went over to death et cetera what can I make what return can I make to my God except to obey his commandments from my heart for this is your commandment that we love one another good man good God good Lord good friend this is how he addresses Christ pardon me good food that's good but this is

[26:44]

using another image of Jesus as good friend um and this is a very biblical theme you know right through the Old Testament New Testament there's always these friendships appearing and then Abraham early on is called God's friend and Moses is called God's friend and Christ says I no longer call you strangers but friends et cetera so this is a key thing you know Lord that I prize this love which you command I hold this love dear and long for this charity in the whole um Greek culture friendship is highest value that you can attain to in this life and much of this flows into the fathers and into the medieval I pray for your mercy upon all mortals yet there are many whom I hold more dear since your love has impressed them upon my heart with a closer and more intimate love so that I desired their love more eagerly I would pray more ardently for these so he's pretty bold he's not saying equal love for

[27:44]

everyone he's saying I love everyone I'm called to love my enemies but I love my friends more and this comes from God it's God who has impressed this deeper love for some than others it's a great mystery but its source is Christ so there's we'll see as we get to Ayerhead whole theology there of spiritual friendship but it gets away from a later kind of fearful thing of avoid all intimacy avoid anything like that so I pray you good and gracious God for those who love me for your sake and whom I love in you and I pray more earnestly for those whom you know love me and whom I do most truly love so love them you source of love by whose command and gift I love them so it's a lovely prayer for friends to Christ Jesus Christ my dear and gracious Lord love them

[28:45]

author and giver of love for your own sake if not for mine make them love you with all their hearts all their souls and all their mind so this is the grace he asks for his friends the grace to love Christ more so it's kind of lovely comments questions there's one last aspect of Anselm it's very rich and we'll think about it a bit over the next well next Thursday is Peter and Paul so we won't have class then that's a major feast but it's his famous why God became man here he does the same kind of thing he does with here that is he takes a particular issue can I prove that God exists or can I come up with a some kind of understanding of why God would become mortal why didn't God just pronounce saved or pardoned why didn't God come as an archangel or as a

[29:47]

butterfly or as a little doggy how do we know that Buddy isn't the suffering servant or something why did God come as a human being do you have any reflections on that you should see Rosa you should see Michael could you speak to that Michael I'm sorry God always speaks in a way that we can understand him in a cultural way he's a parent so there's one reason why when he becomes born he wouldn't have to be saved absolutely historically that's right but if the closest thing to us as humans is our humanity then the most intimate way God could draw near was as a human being and I think

[30:48]

this is something unique about any religion that has real incarnation that God the loving God can't just maintain an aloof distance but must draw near if there's some problems going on the parent can't just remain distant it gets right there in this most immediate kind of hands on help so incarnation God doesn't just pass down messages kind of telegram message from on high or work miracles for us or send an archangel that would just kind of crush us with awe but comes to us in this fragile form Kierkegaard had a lovely way of putting it he says imagine that a powerful rich prince falls in love with a poor peasant girl he doesn't go to her in the full glory of his court to courtiers and all and gold and things but he dresses as a peasant and goes to her and then she on the full equality can love him

[31:48]

well God does something the same in coming to us as suffering servant and ending up that way now these are different approaches different theologies we've sketched right here he has a rather different one parallel to this but out of the fact of our brokenness and sin why because of our sin a human incarnation was required and it gets back into some what might seem at first some pretty primitive thinking but if you listen to someone like Joseph Campbell and look at that huge book he has on sacrifice according to him we first become distinctly human as opposed to animals and it's an explicitly religious form of human culture remember those very primitive graves where you had the first disposition of arrowheads etc but what's happening at that point

[32:49]

and that was linked up also to appeasing the animal gods that we felt guilty about by killing to just eat that's right anyway the whole sacrifice thing is for also there is a guilt on our side and one way to satisfy for guilt is through sacrifice now is that just masochism is that just primitive is there some sense in which that's true if a husband has gotten drunk and kind of beat up his wife etc then he sobers up the next day if he just goes on from there and so nothing had happened that relationship can't really heal in some way he has to acknowledge what has happened and make amends perhaps more for his own humanity than for hers now if we have been unfaithful to god unfaithful to one another not lived the fullness

[33:49]

of god's covenant there is a shame in there and there is a guilt in there and for our own humanity we've got to make amends how can we this is where he starts from this is what any kind of sacrificial spirituality presupposes at some level or another and as joseph campbell will argue it's right at the center of the human experience this feeling of the need to offer a gift make amend make satisfaction and then he puts the whole christ thing right at the heart of that now it can seem very primitive and medieval but contemporary theologians argue there's something here to teach us about a fuller awareness of the darkness within and the need of infinite satisfaction so with that little introduction to it we'll come back to it in two weeks that's right

[34:53]

and we feel kind of an anguish by that and we want to maintain their friendship part of it is fear etc but we realize that it's not as it might ideally be kind of in a paradise situation where the lion lies down with the lamb etc you should see how brother david trying to avoid killing including that did i play did i did i play play did i did i

[35:23]

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