Heavenly Father, help us to penetrate more deeply the heritage of Christian spirituality, to make it evermore our own, so that we may pray evermore in your spirit, as we ask through Christ our Lord. Amen. So, our topic is the history of Christian spirituality. This is a course I'll be teaching at Berkeley and at Holy Family College. The topic of the course wasn't my idea. At Berkeley they have this graduate school in theology, and they said that lots of people come, and they come already with quite a focused interest. One person will want to do Merton, and another person will want to do Augustine, or whatever it be. And then they focus on this for two or three years, and they come out with quite a knowledge there, but they may not know much about the kind of, the full Christian heritage.

[01:05]

So what they wanted was some sort of course that would give this kind of overview. When Eward Cousins was here, he was here with a chap who had just taken his doctorate at Fordham in Jung. We were talking about Cation, and at a certain point this chap asked, who is Cation? So here's a guy who had taken his doctorate in theology on Jung, and Cousins said it was a brilliant doctorate, but he'd never even heard of Cation. So the purpose of this course is that people will have at least heard of Cation, and be able to say a few meaningful phrases. The danger of this course is incredible superficiality, and just kind of like the American tour of Europe, and today it's Luxembourg, and tomorrow it's Berlin, et cetera. So that's obviously the big weakness. The hope is to give an overview in terms of which then one may tend afterwards to focus,

[02:12]

but it'll be a focus being aware of the whole. We are Catholics, and the word means universal. We believe that God is present in this whole body, the whole body of the church, and this kind of geographically, God is working in spirit in Africa, in England, in Scotland, we hope in California, et cetera. And also temporally, the churches he extends. We are in communion with St. Thomas Aquinas, with Augustine, with Irenaeus, with Gregory of Nyssa, et cetera. This is the whole communio, and Eastern Fathers talk of the symphony of all sorts of instruments in an orchestra, and it's precisely through all the various elements that you get this rich harmony, but you need them all, and if you leave out the drums at this point, or if you leave out the violins there, it ain't the same.

[03:12]

So the Catholic would necessarily be that person who is interested really in the whole, because the spirit works in this great variety of ways in the whole, and it's in the whole that you get a fuller concept of the mystery, which cannot be exhausted by any one part. Heretic means someone who's picked a part, and that part might be true, but one of the English, recent English Catholics who said a heretic is someone who's latched on to one truth, and then sort of gotten crazy from solitude, because that one truth is true, but if he takes it cut off from the whole, now the Catholic is the one who doesn't want to latch on just to the truth, and this would be the case on the level of dogma. It would also be the case on the level of spirituality. You can get a kind of a spiritual heretic who's got a part that is profoundly true, but he

[04:15]

goes after that in such a fixed way that it becomes narrow and rigid and false. Merton has some things to say about that. So the hope of this kind of course, but it's not just a course, it would hopefully be a challenge to everyone to do this sort of thing, and it's kind of the basic task of a contemplative life, prayer, personal prayer, through that Alexio Divina, which would involve this whole Christian heritage. So if at any point there are problems, objections, questions, hopefully the key source of this course will be the primary sources, that is get the people, and I hope getting you to read primary sources. We'll start with scripture, then the early fathers, then the later fathers, etc. So I think there are all these things available in one form or another in the library, so

[05:21]

we'll set that up. Just today, and perhaps tomorrow, we'll be doing the introduction to this, because it might seem very simple. You just start and you go through, but there's all sorts of issues underlying of how this can be done, indeed whether it should be done, whether it's a contradiction in terms to talk about history of spirituality, etc. So today we're going to try to work through some of these underlying issues, because otherwise they might remain implicit all the way through. It's very important in any area of study and spirituality, etc., to always try to think the presuppositions, because a thing might seem simple, but it might involve all sorts of choices that you have to make to get into a certain way of doing that, and those choices condition later, in one way or the other, everything you do. I hope that'll become clearer. For instance, can there be such a thing as the history of spirituality, or indeed a history

[06:27]

of anything, but especially of spirituality? Here we have to get into philosophies and theologies, but there's a whole current of philosophy, and right back to the most ancient times and right up to the present, it claims that history is just bunk or illusion. You see, if we want to get at truth, we want to get at what is. Now, what is, is, and therefore is that which is precisely is-ness, which is eternal, therefore, which is unchanging. You want to get to the thing that lasts, that's truth, that's being, that's the goal, especially of a contemplative, especially of a mystic, not the things that pass, not the changing outer superficial, but to penetrate to that lasting eternal realm, you see.

[07:27]

Now, history would have to do with the superficial outer realm of changes. You have to go back way in the earliest of Greek philosophy, Parmenides, there's this giant who's important because he had a huge influence on Plato, who had a huge influence on many of the early fathers. So much of this is already inside of us without even perhaps recognizing it so much. It's inside lots of our prayers, for instance, lots of our collects, of Emanuele back in Italy, who was here, who's a liturgist, and he said lots of our prayers are, the liturgical prayers are colored, and some would say tainted, by this Platonic dualism of the changeless up here and the things that pass away down here, and the whole effort of the Christian is to move beyond the things that pass and change to the changeless. So you see, if you push this radically hard, the whole idea of a history of spirituality

[08:34]

is absurd, because spirituality is that level where there is no history, there's no one thing after another, there's just pure is-ness. Is this clear? Is anyone here a Parmenidean? A follower of Parmenides? No. Never heard of him. Never heard of him. Did you hear of Plato? Yeah. Yeah. Now Plato was very influenced by Parmenides. Parmenides has a rigorous logic, and Plato had to sweat like anything just to get out of it a bit. Some insist he didn't get out that much. But you see, Parmenides' logic is, he says, what we're interested in is what is. You see, also, when you're talking, you want to know the truth about something.

[09:43]

Tell me the way it is, and tell me the deepest level, not the kind of superficial things that change from day to day. What is the real character of beauty? Not this particular changing beauty or that particular, but beauty as such. What is the ultimate depth of art, or whatever it be? You see, and you don't want the superficial changing accidents, according to this kind of distinction. Or Parmenidean language, you don't want the illusion of change, but you want the is, the final level of being. Now being is, and non-being is not. Let's take this seriously. So being is, is means is, means lasting, unchanging. And between is and is not, there's an absolute abyss. And about is not, we can say nothing, because it is not. And there is no middle ground of becoming.

[10:45]

You see, that's what history presupposes, that between is not and is, there's this middle ground of becoming, of change, but not in just a negative sense of things that aren't lasting, but in the sense of development. Now the influence of Parmenides, this radical, there's only is, there's only the eternal, all the rest is illusion. It's like if you've drunk too much, if you've drunk too much, you can see all sorts of things, horses that are flying, and little gremlins, etc. They aren't really there, it's just illusion. So Parmenides is claiming that any change, any kind of change, you see my hand moving, it's all illusion of the outer senses. But if you just reason through it, just like the drunk guy who has still a bit of sobriety, and he says, now wait, I thought I saw a flying horse, but this isn't reasonable. So by the force of reason, he works through this illusion.

[11:48]

So Parmenides says, by the force of our reason, let's work through this illusion of change, and we'll see it's just an illusion. So we just set aside and just contemplate pure being. And, again, this had quite an influence on Plato, and according to his self, it also had an influence on Aristotle, who gets a little area of change into things, but only on the level of matter, as does Plato, and thus through Aristotle to St. Thomas. So you can go right on and on. Is there a real concept in the Greek philosophical world of change in the positive sense? As there is, interestingly, in the Bible, according to many exegetes, the Bible proposes this theme of salvation history. God works through salvation history, through our fathers, Abraham, Isaac, Joseph. If you open the Bible, it ain't like reading Evagrius, or it isn't like reading Parmenides,

[12:52]

a series of abstract meditations about being. It's history of what happened to Abraham, where he left from, with whom he went, where he went, what happened to him, then his sons, then his sons. God works through this history, you see. So it's an entirely different world view, according to some, and I think you can make a real case for this. So you've got the Greek of changeless wanting to contemplate being, and you've got the Semitic. And only in recent time have we come up with philosophers who have proposed other categories that have permitted us to feel at home, again, with a biblical view of salvation history. That history is real, it's really significant, it is in no way an illusion, and it's not even, perhaps, a merely subordinate level of material. See Plato said to Parmenides, wait, you're exaggerating. There really is change. It's not just like being drunk, but it's just at the level of matter. Physical hands change, and the hands of a clock move, and things, material things change.

[13:57]

But pure spirit is changelessness, says Plato. That's where Parmenides is right. If you ask what is pure beauty, pure beauty is that, it's always that, it always will be that, it's the pure form of beauty, the form of truth is that. And it's not going to change, so what you want to do is move beyond the changing material level to the eternal spiritual level. That's the Platonic answer to Parmenides, it tries to give a little more space to change, but it's very hierarchical, and change is on one very lower level, simply the material. And changeless is on the spiritual, and then of course Plato does have a tendency to see the human person as a kind of a dualism, and the pure spirit imprisoned in the body. So what is the whole task of the spiritual life? You come here to the hermitage, what are you after here?

[14:57]

Now a pure Platonic might say what you're after is freeing your pure spirit from the prison of this body, and there's various techniques for this, prayer techniques and meditation. Parmenides offered techniques, basically meditation on pure being, and thus you arise above illusion to pure changelessness. Plato offers techniques to rise above this changing world to the changeless world of the pure eternal forms. Now some of the Christian fathers said we can fit this in with Christian thought, because the Christian should be no longer on earth but in heaven, living no longer according to the body but according to spirit. They detected, they thought, a kind of a Platonic dualistic tension there, and so they said fine, and then you can work out a whole spirituality in these terms. So the whole function of the monk, of the contemplative, is to pass from the changing and temporal and that which passes away to the eternal and lasting and spiritual and

[16:02]

transcendent, et cetera. So here again, a whole concept of history would be at best operating at only a very superficial level, and at worst it would be just distraction from the pure contemplation. It would be illusion at worst. So this is simply to suggest that there are real issues behind even proposing a course like this. Any comments, questions? So in other words, you talk about being or being changes and so on, and yet still also

[17:09]

give value to historical realities. Some Thomists would argue this, others wouldn't. Mari Triton tried a recent synthesis where you do come up with a metaphysics of history. There are all sorts of issues here.

[18:15]

One would be the more theoretical, philosophical, where the metaphysical is on one level in history and another. I think Merton might be operating on still another level of kind of deepest spiritual experience. And the question is how to get these all together. Are they quite distinct? If you're going to distinguish them, fine. Now, how far do you push the distinction? Because what—well, first to go just to the philosophical level. Metaphysics wants to get to the deepest sort of structures of being of reality. Now, if you're saying that metaphysics is clearly distinguished from history, it's hard not to end up saying that history doesn't have to do with the ultimate levels of being. History then ends up the superficial level. Kind of you pick up the newspaper and the latest thing and so-and-so ran into so-and-so and, you know, the flux. Yeah?

[19:16]

What is history? Right. Or is history something else? You know, I've looked at a lot of these things. Some of them are longer than others. What is human history? What is my history? Right. That's my history. What is history? So that's our first category. But see, it's not at all a simple thing. It's very, very deep. But there was a first kind of confrontation between history and this more traditional metaphysics, and many metaphysicians of the more traditional felt rather threatened by it all. You have history. You also have things like evolution, for instance, which poses the same issues. See, Plato says a horse is a horse. You have the eternal form of horse. Someone asked, what is a horse? Well, whether Plato told so-and-so centuries ago or whether we say it now, a horse is always a horse. Not that particular horse, but the essence of hoarseness is always that.

[20:17]

And this particular horse might be brown, and that particular horse might be white, and this horse small, and this one's sick, and that one's strong. All these accidental differences, but the pure form of hoarseness, which is participative or something, and they're in some other way. That is unchanging. This is, to simplify terribly, this is the Platonic solution. There's this eternal form of hoarseness, which is unchanging. Let's say, madness, sort of. Then you've got the participation in horse A, the participation in horse B, C, and D, individuals. And this one is galloping in this direction, in that direction, et cetera. Now, Parmenides says this level is simply illusion. There is only this level, which is ultimately one pure being. Plato says, no, it's not just illusion. There is this horse and that horse and that horse. And this plurality and diversity and change and movement comes from the level of matter.

[21:22]

It's as if the pure form had been impressed in different matters. You have a seal, and you put it in this red wax here and that blue wax there. Now, it's the material of the wax there that, maybe if it's a very fine wax, it'll reflect every detail of the seal. And that wax will pick up only so many details, et cetera. So what you have is a lot of impressions of the pure, transcendent form. And that gives you your change. And because matter is always changing and decaying, et cetera, Plato is thus able to explain eternity and fixedness and change and the diversity, et cetera. So history would be at this level, the material level of change, et cetera. And it would have to do... Now, Aristotle comes up with a variety of this. I think it's a little more subtle and gives a little more space still to change. But still, you see, your ultimate levels of reality are the levels of, Aristotle would

[22:31]

say, form. If you want to know the essence of a thing, it's particularly the form that is the essence, the unchanging, what is that? That's a human being. What is that? That's a horse. What is that? That's a table. These forms, table, chair, human being, these are eternal, according almost to Aristotle. So hoarseness is always hoarseness. Then the evolutionist comes along and says, now, wait a minute. This hoarseness, millions of years ago, was a being that was sort of half horse and half some other pre-horse mammal form. What you have is a graduated, constant development. At a certain point, we arbitrarily say, this is horse, and we make a category out of it. But the reality is not this eternal form. The reality is this dynamic development, whether on the level of nature, call it evolution, or on the level of human development, call it history.

[23:33]

So there are contemporary forms of philosophy that say the reality is not in the internal, unchanging form. The reality is in history, is in the dynamic. And someone like Hegel will develop a whole philosophy and metaphysics of change, of dynamic process. Now, what about the eternal hoarseness? Now, they'll say that that has to do with human limits in thinking. This is also Bergson. We can't grasp change in our abstract categories. We take, like, little photographs of a reality that's essentially fluid and moving. It's like a football game. And there's a constant, or take a soccer game. Soccer game is constant movement. And then the sports reporter there, he takes a photograph here, and he notes what's happening at that moment. So he ends up with his fixed photographs, and he says, these represent the soccer game.

[24:34]

And in a sense, they do. But he shouldn't say they're the real soccer game. They're only a weak reflection of the soccer game that is essentially dynamic. Whereas, thus, you see, someone like Bergson turns everything upside down. The real is the movement, the dynamic, what he calls élan vital. And these fixed things, eternal tableness, or eternal hoarseness, or eternal beauty, these are just human constructs that are necessary for us to analyze. The doctor has to dissect the corpse, and so he puts the kidney there, and he puts the eyeball there. But the living organism is a continual dynamic. And what we really want to do, at least on this earth, to get into reality on this earth, the reality of God is a whole different issue, but to get into reality on this earth, we want to use our fixed categories, but realize that they're only weak instruments, and get

[25:39]

into the dynamic on all its different levels. And there will be all sorts of different levels to this dynamic, from this clearly superficial to really chronical in the paper, to decisive moments of forward leaping. This is just to suggest quite different philosophies of reality, a whole series of philosophies that are essentially fixed, I think, as regarding the ultimate levels of reality. Other philosophies that are essentially dynamic. Also, in ancient Greece, you had Parmenides, for which everything is fixed. Then you had Heraclitus, who said just the opposite. Panta rei, all things change, all things flow. He said, you can't step into the same river twice. It's an enigmatic phrase, in the sense that you go back there, and it's different water. Merton felt a lot of sympathy for Heraclitus, who has very mystical moments.

[26:44]

I've been wrestling with this since undergraduate years. I think, personally, that there's some truth in both, and I think that God, eventually, is beyond the fixity of a Parmenides, and also the change of Heraclitus. You just have to go into real mystery there. But at least these two schools give you kind of a leverage, one against the other, as it were, because Parmenides ends up in just absolute fixity. Heraclitus ends up in just absolute flux. Somehow, you've got to recognize the spaces of both of these, and the validity of both dimensions of reality, it seems to me, but without absolutizing either. Do you think an eternal history exists? You talked about terms such as terminal and eternal, the dichotomy between material and form. So then, it seems as though you're having some problem with the definition of the word history,

[27:47]

and it seems like you're struggling to develop some sort of concept of an eternal history. I don't know, so I'm just posing the question, Do you feel that an eternal history exists? Or do you see history as static? I'm just trying to... Well, history, in any case, would not be static. But I think the basic question, is history just in this world? And just on a... several questions. Is it just on a very superficial level in this world? And thus, maybe it shouldn't even interest us as contemplatives. Is it on a deep level in this world? That's the second question. Even the deepest level of the spirit. The third question, does it even extend into what we usually call eternity? That would be a third, more radical question. There's a whole thing of processed theology today, that's trying to talk of God himself, not as static, fixed being in a kind of Parmenides way,

[28:48]

but as dynamic activity. So, three questions. I think, I don't want to give a yes-no just now, but move on, we've got to get more into this first category of history, see what we may mean. I'd say at least, my thesis would be, in this life, history reaches down to the deepest levels. In what sense are we all historical? Take the life of the church, you see. There was a time when Jesus was not yet incarnate. There was a time when Pentecost had not yet occurred. In salvation history, according to the Gospels and Acts, it said, these are five decisive phases. There is a before and an after. And this matters radically. There is a before and after the Old Testament. Moses, that's very decisive. The Alliance, this is important. David, etc. In the life of the church, in our own time,

[29:50]

there was a before Vatican II, and it was rather different. And there's an after Vatican II, and things are now different. Things change in the life of the church. We used to have the model there again, this gets into it. The church is the fixed rock where things never change, and in this terrible world of uncertainty and movement, I'm going to claim to the church where there's eternal doctrine, which is always true, and eternal ways, and the eternal sacred language, etc. So many people are related to the church to the extent that the church is the unchanging bulwark against a world in change. But I think if you correct the Bible, and also the Fathers, you have the church in history, and you have things changing. The Catholic church before Vatican II is just not simply the same as after Vatican II. I'm involved in the dialogue with the Anglicans.

[30:50]

Something very decisive happened just yesterday, for instance, and I'm still trying to research it, but apparently the Vatican came out with some sort of decree that Anglican priests who are married, who want to become Roman Catholic, can become Roman Catholic, can become priests, yet still be married. Now, there was something of this up until now, in a very secret way. There were very few Lutheran ministers and Anglicans who were married and were permitted to be ordained as Catholic priests and to practice, but in a very hush-hush way. But this is all over the front page. Archbishop Quinn has announced this, etc. Then he added two other things. One thing is that they will be able to maintain certain riches of the Anglican heritage, and this is a new one. And the other is, all this is not meant minimally to prejudice the ecumenical dialogue with the Anglican communion as such, which is a dialogue considered between sister churches.

[31:56]

This is the word of Archbishop Quinn. So all this didn't exist two days ago. Archbishop Quinn said all this, and now we're in an entirely different ballgame. It might be that today the Vatican will issue all sorts of clarifications. It might be... All I know is that the Anglican-Roman Catholic dialogue isn't the same today as it was two days ago. It might have moved forward, it might have moved back. It's a much more complicated thing, and also the Roman Catholic position on the absolute discipline of celibacy for all priests has been significantly nuanced. Some say that what this is, it's a very roundabout way for a Catholic church to begin to modify its discipline on the celibacy of all diocesan priests. It can do it in a way that seems very conservative and cautious if it allows at least these converts to be priests, if they're already married, and this...

[32:58]

But obviously people will object. Well, if Anglicans can become priests and be married, why can't poor Catholics who... So, in any case, it's a very complicated thing, as all of history is. And you'll see probably, I imagine, one interpretation of what's happened in the National Catholic Report, and another in the Monitor, and another in the Register, and all of history is at the level not of eternal hoarseness, but on the level of things that can be discussed and debated. What is the real message of Thomas Merton? Some will say one thing, another one another. But this is just sort of... Also, you, if you think personally on your reality as historical, just take... There are superficial events today. You've brushed your teeth, etc. But think of the big ones. There was a moment when you weren't here, for instance. Then there was a moment when you decided to come here

[33:59]

with some kind of commitment to try this vocation. Now, that has mattered, presumably, for your spiritual life. It is not indifferent. Now, presumably, it reaches down to a certain depth. It's presumably not just at the superficial level. You're committing your whole life to God through monastic profession. Or take the moment of marriage, another vocation, to people who in that moment commit themselves for all the future to be faithful, etc. That moment is important. This Anglican thing, Archbishop Quinn declared this to be historical, which is... There we are back to our word again. By that, he means extremely important. By that very word, Parmenides would mean illusion. So we've got, in Archbishop Quinn, implicitly going quite a different theology of history. So, marriage, monastic profession.

[35:02]

Take another decisive moment, baptism. We presume that that matters, that moment when you are objectively engrafted in Christ. There's a before, and there's a preparation for this, and then there's an after, this sort of thing. Christians have tended to take history very seriously. We could go out the door and do something that would be very unfortunate, that would modify our whole future life. This person just came back, who's been studying theology at Berkeley, and he spent the whole summer in a prison doing chaplaincy work. These are people who were there because in an explosion of anger they killed someone, or this sort of thing, you see. There was that moment that has radically modified their life thereafter. This sort of thing. So, my thesis would be distinguish between kind of

[36:03]

more superficial, repetitive moments in history, like getting up, brushing your teeth, putting on the habit, this sort of thing. Here there's change, there's one thing after another, and it tends to be rather cyclical, but then decisive moments that involve all of our forces of freedom and deliberation and reason and the depths. Presumably it was the depths that were speaking when you came here, or when a person chooses another country. That's a first answer. My own thesis that I'd be prepared to defend is that history reaches down to the depths in some sort of very mysterious way of the individual person, of the community. Now we're discussing the foundation of stock difference. That's a decision that once made, you see, we are now definitively going to choose the property near Milton, or we are going to choose a property near,

[37:05]

wherever it be, Los Angeles. That will decide the shape, the form of that community from there out. Just as years ago, in 58, when Don Medati went here and said, this is the place, and we're going to have a hermitage. This has shaped things, you see. So you could write a history of New Camaloli. It wouldn't just be superficial. You could write a history of each one of you. You could write a history of the church. There's countless ones on the shelf in there. A history of Christianity. And maybe you can write a history of Christian spirituality. But in any case, we're trying to wrestle a bit with history now. Is this... Oh. And that depends what we mean by it.

[38:09]

That is, if history is just in this world, obviously, then it can't. If even God is involved... Here we get really at mystery. Maybe you can talk about history with a capital H somehow, who is God, who is eternally begetting the Son, you see, in the Spirit. Christian dogma speaks of this dynamic in the Godhead, not just this static, sort of monolithic... Say, for example, a child is asked whether his life is corrupt or somebody who can write him a word about what their life may have been. Just more graphical. End up in some kind of awful situation. Affliction. Is it me or their life?

[39:12]

You can look at it from a structural standpoint where we can see... Right? Right? But again, you say you look at it from a historical standpoint. I'd say which historical standpoint? There's just a... There's a kind of a... We'll see this. There's a kind of an outer history, a kind of a positivistic history of events that happen. Chronical. And then there's a deeper Christian history. And then there might be the deepest history, which is pure mystery, which is God's history in us. The Eastern Fathers, Gregory of Nyssa, for instance, to go back to this business, does history end with death? He speaks of an eternal, dynamic growth in God after death. We normally have a kind of a static image of heaven. You die, and right at that point of perfection,

[40:17]

you're there for all eternity, you see. Your glass is that big. You're not any bigger, and you don't have that much water anymore for all eternity. Well, Gregory of Nyssa and others have this eternally dynamic growing in God who's absolutely infinite. And so we are for all eternity. Well, this would be the... Call it history, call it dynamic, whatever. And is God himself, in some sense, dynamic? In some sense, act? In pure Thomism, he is pure act, but this act in the sense not of static sort of fixity, but dynamic life, vitality. Now, if you have kind of this transcendent understanding of dynamic, then you would say at the deepest level, the only way you could understand human tragedies, et cetera, would be through a historical... That is, it isn't all fixed in tragedy. That person is a psychotic.

[41:19]

You'll always be out of contact with them. That's it. But there's this deeper, mysterious process. There's no fixity in this. There's always dynamic grace that can change everything. So you can talk about change with a whole series of negative categories and connotations. Change means not stable, not lasting, not eternal. And that would be the tendency of someone who starts from kind of a Parmenides or a Platonic categories, where you can see change as salvation history, as growth. And you come up with a whole different view. So I think you've got to take an option here. As I say, I think either model, if you take it simply, isn't sufficient. It doesn't do justice to the mystery of interiority or God. But together, they sort of force each other beyond each other.

[42:23]

It seems to me they're most helpful that way, to talk about the human person, the human community, and the church, and God. Other questions, comments? We've been going 45 minutes. Should we take a break and then come back or keep going? Do you have a hundred years' time? Do you have authority? Do you have customs, jurisdiction, certain American policies? Is there a competent place for a hundred years' time? Let's see. We might go on a little more. I don't know what the take is. Okay. Yeah. So something about history. For instance, Teilhard says, everything is the sum of its past. Nothing is comprehensible except through its history. He's working through evolutionary categories. We can only understand the world today in terms of its geology or astronomy or zoology,

[43:25]

in terms of where it's come from. And so the individual person, so the church, we can only understand the church today if we understand it's been through Vatican II, it's been through Trent, it's been through a reform in the West, a schism in the East, through St. Francis, all the positives, all the negatives. That's to understand the depth, the profundity of this church of ours. So this is, what is history? It's hard to come up with a definition, but it would have to do with dynamic, not statisticity as a significant category. Things are dynamic, and not in a cyclical way, but moving forward sort of consecutively, and one thing adding to another, so that you just can't go back into a cyclical thing. Some people have a cyclical view of history. Well, this has happened before.

[44:27]

There's nothing new under the sun, etc. The biblical view is that there is something new under the sun, despite that particular phrase in the wisdom literature was influenced by the East, a kind of a pessimism about history, but the normal approach of the Old Testament and the New is optimism, that there is something new, and it's basically good that David, again, does represent a new step forward, Solomon for him, Christ is the breakthrough, etc. With Christ, though, we get into a paradoxical moment. Somehow, the fulfillment of history, you see. I remember Professor Nichols came here and talked about end time, here at the whole monastic interest in the eschatological dimension. Now, what does this do with our thing about process and dynamic in history? That is, it might be that we'd want to admit the significance of history up till Christ, but now Christ has come.

[45:28]

The new era has dawned, and this is it. We're in end time. I got into a little discussion with Professor Nichols on this point, you see. Normally, theologians will want to maintain the tension here. They'll say that with Christ, it is the breakthrough of the kingdom, but not in the sense of the definitive end of time and the definitive establishment of the kingdom. We still pray every day in the Ark of the Covenant, Thy kingdom come, and Holy Scriptures ends with this prayer, Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly. We're still in this eschatological tension, and I would think even the monk, even the contemplative, would want to witness to both sides of this tension, not just to the eschatological as arrived, because that can fall, because it hasn't just arrived and complete and definitive. We're also in this tension of weakness, of fragility, of still on the journey,

[46:29]

and maybe the hermit and the contemplative should feel this more than anyone, the theme of poverty and kinesis, et cetera. So it might be that not even the eschatological dimension will want to simply cancel out this history. Indeed, the book of Acts, Luke, writes the life of Jesus, the death, the resurrection, the ascension, and he goes into the book of Acts, which apparently in the first manuscript was the same book sort of continued. We divided it to and separated it by John, but apparently, as Luke conceived it, it's one dynamic of salvation history. What happens after Christ is obviously simply an extension of the Christ mystery, but it is an extension. In Paul it says, I'm making up what lacking in the sufferings of Christ, and Christ says that you will do greater things, but there is at least this expansion of the gospel to all nations, and perhaps to all depths.

[47:31]

So things go on, and Acts is like the Old Testament in the sense, and the New Testament, of this dynamic moving forward. Peter goes forward towards Samaria. These new questions arise, new issues that the church has never faced. What are we going to do with these Gentiles? What about circumcision or no? And then Paul comes in, you know, whole new issues, and salvation through observance of the law or through pure grace, this becomes an explicit issue, things that hadn't been explicit before, but only implicit. This is all history, you see, and this is radically important. So one last distinction that might be interesting about history. A theologian of the Reform, Richard Niebuhr, made it between outer history and inner history. Documents you have, and doing scientific studies of those documents, and we all are. We shouldn't have disdain for outer history.

[48:38]

It's that which can be verified. The census department has all sorts of information about us now, about each one, when you were born, the color of your eyes, maybe, all these things, the name of the father and the mother, a series of historical data about you. This is outer history. But, Niebuhr asks, to what extent, with all this information, have they penetrated into the deepest levels of your most profound values, your most profound hopes, your most profound fears, your most profound choices, options in your life? And so he says, let's not confuse the one with the other. Someone might think, because he's read all sorts of data about, he hasn't really gotten to the depths, you see. Now, these depths, maybe, for instance, the depths of me, maybe only I can experience these, and maybe only even partially, and maybe also with a deep, deep friend with whom I'm communicating this.

[49:38]

And here you get into inner history, depth history. It may be that Christians have an understanding of the history of the Church, or the history of spirituality, that no one else could ever have regarding Christianity, even if they take a course and read all the texts and learn all the dates. One of the biggest authorities on St. Romuald in Italy is an atheist, but he knows more than most of the Kamaldolese about when St. Romuald lived, where he went from place to place, what ideas influenced him, and such. You can do a whole trip through outer history in this kind of thing and come up with lots of information. There's no doubt about it. But it might be, let's hope, that there is a depth understanding of Romuald that comes from having shared from within Romuald's options. Now, here we get into this depth profundity. Now, the hope of the Christian is to bring these together

[50:40]

so we're not caught in some kind of schizophrenia, that is to sort of expand and concretize in my objective life my inner history. That's the whole thing of public profession, monastic profession, or public matrimony. Many people today say, why do I need to get married with her? We both love each other. We both intend to live with each other for the rest of our lives. Why do we need to go out there in public ceremonies, etc.? Well, it's a human urge that's essential to fulfill and to harmonize and to unify these two histories. So one publicly professes with one's habit and hopefully with one's way of life, etc., the deepest. The danger here is superficiality and also hypocrisy. One can put on the habit and be also very quiet and always very prayerful, etc., and inside, you know, outside you are white and gleaming,

[51:40]

but inside you are as tombs, etc., this sort of thing. So you can't have just the outer or just the inner. The Christian wants them both, and that might be part of the venture of spirituality is to get this act together, get the outer history together with the inner history. And this might have been, for instance, the greatness of Christ, Niebuhr has a great meditation on Christ as he who unites inner history and outer history. And most of us, it's a struggle all of our life to get these two together. But anyway, this might be a distinction that helps note the different depths of this thing. So we've talked about history. Then we have to talk about what do we mean by spirituality and what do we mean specifically by Christian spirituality, but we've tried to wrestle a little with this first category. So maybe we can think about this, take a break, and then come back with questions and problems

[52:42]

about history. I'll stop. It's not too big up at Berkeley. Not that I've heard particularly. Well, maybe over there. I'm certainly not with the Dominicans. You won't run into much processed theology. Well, there's various, you see your language there, betrays, they would say, a fixed prejudice that he is becoming, that becoming is being in a sense. But not as if there was something, some conclusion to it. There's never been a fixed conclusion to say becoming. Right. So our language is very defective because we have needed this kind of photographic approach. And so according to these people we have to make a real effort

[53:43]

to get into the dynamic and the ultimate dynamic, which is God himself. Now there are some of these processed theologians. They do weird things, some of them, not all of them. But some would argue for the limitedness of God. God does not know all things. He's not all powerful, etc. Precisely. Right. There's all sorts of varieties, just like you can talk about scholastic theology and you'll have everything from Duns Scotus to... Whitehead is their great philosopher of this, of process, and then there's this ultimate level of process. So what they've got is a pretty significant contemporary philosopher that gives them a whole theoretical underpinning. But it's one of, it's probably the most significant current of Protestant theology now. I would think that

[54:43]

all Catholic theology is trying to take certainly history very seriously. I think someone like Maloney, etc., are trying to get beyond mere, easy, static ideas of God, but not to fall into some kind of limited God. This is the trick. To have a God that's of infinite energy and act, but not a God who's kind of struggling along towards some future fulfillment. Change seems to require an idea of incompletion, which you've got to have in God is dynamic in some sense, but full completion at every moment. And that's not, as presumably our life in some sense in heaven would be, at every moment. I think for greater goodness it's not that the souls are suffering anguish because they're not... It's a great mystery.

[55:44]

But that's the ultimate mystery of God himself. I think one can at least argue that here on earth, for us, in our life, in the church, for our life in this community and in our interior life, I think one can argue that history is key and not just superficial. I've heard it said, I don't know all about it, but that it is a unique proposal of the Judeo-Christian heritage that up until then everything was cyclical at best and you have the nature cycles. Right. Right. Yeah. Right. And does their writing

[56:49]

sometimes suggest just kind of cycles, mythical cycles? I just don't know enough about it, but I know people have argued with great insistence that it's uniquely Judeo-Christian, this idea that things happen that are decisive and God works precisely through these things, not simply above them. God hears the moaning of Israel and Egypt and comes down and liberates Israel. This is decisive. And Israel's deepest religious experience is not going up into some kind of Neoplatonic, changeless forms, but remembering anonymousness and then moving on from there sort of thing towards the hope. Well, it's at least going to all nations baptizing people

[57:50]

and maybe interiorly also, you know, the whole spiritual. Yeah. If spirituality, whatever it means, but it might mean something like wholeness, maybe our own. I think some of the Fathers say God is, well, this is in Scripture, God is giving us more time to work out our salvations. We need this time to get our act together sort of. Yeah. Well, it's certain, yeah. I think you can, in any case, only do it in faith. Also within. Because sometimes we seem to be going backwards in our spiritual life, et cetera, and the Father's saying this can be a real growth in humility, et cetera. But at least, it seems to me one can detect some sort of geographical, at least, though it isn't simply linear because there's whole parts of the Middle East

[58:50]

that once were of flourishing Christian churches in the time of Paul, for instance, that ain't no more. But still whole new continents. Africa, for instance, or the New World. But it's a mystery. But I think that Fathers have very strongly this impression that there's this dispensatio, this economy of, we're in this interim period where we're working it out. And then in the moment of definitive fullness, Christ will come. I mean, you could get involved

[59:51]

in these kinds of private things. But on the second observation, you know, in the economy between Christianity or the Christian West and the non-Christian is off. An interesting example of what we feel is a dispensatio is that there seems to be more akin to a non-historical sensitivity. As a Christian, there's got to be the demand to learn from the West. You get into this Joseph problem and learn these things. It's a controversy. You need to acquire a sharp sensitivity toward the importance of historical presence of Jesus and his ministry and of course from really those contacts with the West and the Christian community and the Western thinking. So,

[60:53]

in terms of placing I think I go with Stan and Hamill and the notion of the first Christian. I think it's to refer to the other seriousness of our experience and appreciation of the other human person of our time with the other and both contributions of the US and the world. It seems to me definitely the whole I don't know someone like Mother Therese of Calcutta who approaches these untouchables and is profoundly concerned about each one of them as a unique creature of God etc. I think Hinduism at its worst simply says you know these are the untouchables it's always been that way and also something like the Muslim religion very interesting but you can get into a fatalistic concept that it's that way it's always been that way you know praise be Allah sort of thing. Our role is passive acceptance of but in the

[61:55]

historical personalist view God works through us working in history so we're often challenged to get out and help the untouchable and this sort of thing precisely as an expression of our spirit. Interestingly someone like Buber who's profoundly Semitic and Jewish the whole historical he sort of creates a contemporary language of this interpersonal I-thou dialogue I think a good case could be made that history is an interpersonal action sort of thing and I can't just have my own history as a human

[62:55]

person just put a little baby in the jungle and very difficultly will it arrive in any kind of human full psychological whatever the potential ever History I think definitely means that The thing about Jung, I think is interesting often his language suggests platonic the whole archetype thing you know you go this particular dream is interesting but what you really want to get is to the archetype there that reminds you of the archetype in that person who dreamt 100 years ago, and that person that's this sort of unchanging great mother archetype. It might be the Virgin Mary here. It might be Anna there. It can have all sorts of forms. But you want to get beyond the accidental changes to the essential eternal archetype.

[63:56]

So I think there's a lot of, yeah. Yeah. He does have journey, et cetera. Because it has more to be as simple as that. Yeah, I think Anipa has something interesting about this dialectic of the outer and the inner. The Christian doesn't want to just eliminate the outer. For instance, we were talking, coming up here, the institution of slavery, which was in existence the whole history of humanity right up to quite recently. It's still practiced in some parts of the world. But that radically shaped millions of people's real existence, you see.

[64:57]

And that's outer history, certainly. So-and-so is a slave. That means that person's property. And you'd be sold and bought and treated. Some culture's life and death power over that slave, just like a dog or whatever. And that's near outer history. And there's the mystery of the inner. That person might have arrived at a deep fullness of union with God. No one doubts that. But the Christian is always intentioned to express that inner freedom of children of God in the full society. And that's where you get into these contemporary things of the social commitment, et cetera. But I think you could work it out also in the inner contemplative dimension of expanding to your whole person and also to your whole community this inner grace that we're striving to build. And as creation, as its own history, evolution,

[66:02]

through the centuries towards it, as we believe, as we believe. It's the core of the nation, part of it, to have it. And also in which the soul is the same. You know that. Christ is life. Mm-hmm. Straight on, straight on. And one of the issues we'll see is when we pick up, I don't know, the writings of an Augustine or Gregory of Nyssa or whatever it would be, to what extent can we, presumably, we can get lots of things about outer history. To what extent can we get the inner history of these persons? And to what depth? That's the hope of a course like this, is we can get at least in some way and to some depth. And not just of this course. Whenever you pick up Augustine to do spiritual reading or Gregory of Nyssa or whoever it be, that person lived centuries and centuries ago.

[67:03]

There's some kind of implicit hope that you can get to the depths of that person through these writings and be nourished by his experience in your own spiritual growth. Is it really possible, et cetera? We have to ask ourselves. To what extent do we just remain on a superficial outer level? To what extent are we contemporaries with them at this deepest spiritual level? To what extent are they really cut off from us because they live in different ages with different values, et cetera? To what extent can we really understand Gregory of Palamas or an Augustine or a, these are all issues that have to be thought through and sort of wrestled with. And they're fascinating. Okay. I also just want to mention what, for example, what leads to and what constitutes historical understanding of, to me, what Gregory does.

[68:07]

I was, I was like, I don't know how to put this. I brought you some of these things to say. It's going to be a conversation. Well, now, in his terms of knowledge, it's due to various figures of history that are very much understanding what we're doing, what we're not doing. He said that Beethoven really had the deepest sense of anybody, of what was going on at his time in Europe. He expressed his understanding through his music. He said Dostoevsky had this understanding of what was really going on and what would be going on into the 20th century rather than the professional historians and even some of the historians who came after him. In other words, what constitutes historical understanding? What leads these people to come

[69:10]

to see this in the other conventions? That's what I want to do. And I agree with Gordon and not just his opinion. It's a good box, there's a lot of history around us, and we don't have a lot of papers to read. So what leads these people to read, to true historians of the world? It's interesting that they can read this to understand what is really true history. What makes Beethoven a true historian? What makes Dostoevsky a true historian? What makes Saint-Saëns a true historian? Is it that it gives us an idea of truth or true history? Right? I'm not sure I would tend to use the word not historian here, but maybe prophet, the person who reads his moment in the light of... Okay, that's... Prophets.

[70:13]

Yeah, maybe you could argue Beethoven had understood his period best in depth, but I wonder if you could argue that he understood, I don't know, a third century Greece in depth. No, no, no. Well, I think that's true, and that gets us back to a kind of a hope. I think his contemplatives that were not cut off from the depths of history simply because we haven't taken ten years of history courses at the University of Santa Barbara or something, that there is this depth level. It may be, again, that we understand Romuald better than this atheist who has lots of information about him and who's written this huge book that none of us, others, could write on Romuald, sort of thing. But there's this issue that I think the whole theme of depth history brings us back to. And again, I think we would want to read not just our own age prophetically, but try to, as Catholics in the best sense, to be in contact with the whole heritage.

[71:15]

So what this course is trying to be is kind of a challenge to a lifetime project of trying to get in-depth contact with the whole, which is impossible, but at least we need impossible tasks for life tasks. It's not just a question of reading history, but what is history? Why should I study history? And it seems to me that only by studying history can we find out the limitations of our own tradition and the most precious. Or find out where the relatives necessarily stand. Or in some way, only in that way, so that we can move forward. Because we have to, in time, certainly, and we've spoken about this before, we have to find a peace of position. Only in some way by studying history can we find a really peace of position for really the boundary lines of view

[72:18]

of our own history and our own tradition. Only by tracing the practice can we do that. I think that's very true. To get one of the functions, I would think, of the contemplative is to get beyond idols, to break idols, to get really into the desert. And much of this is to go beyond this. You can only go beyond it by doing it, sort of thing. That's right. Not to disdain it thereafter, to value it, but to recognize that it's no longer the, you know, capital T. Kongar wrote a beautiful essay on the distinction between tradition with a small T and tradition with a capital T. We often tend to confuse these two. Jesus was very strong. People absolutize the traditions of men, sort of thing. But to be aware that, I don't know, some people are so caught up with Benedictine spirituality

[73:20]

and it's the be-all and end-all, that it has various phases, various expressions, various limits, that there are other forms of monasticism, before, after, et cetera. There's Benedictine monks who are completely in disaccord about what is mitzvah and all this. I think this helps to value the specific relative expressions and also to not be bound by any one of them. It's the definitive. Oh, wow. There's that... There's not many history of spiritualities around, but there's that one-volume attempt of Gannon and Trowell called The City in the Desert. It's sort of fun. A huge central section is with Ignatius. I think it's been about 20 times more pages on Ignatius than on Augustine or Origen. They recognize it. It's just absurd. We write our own histories according to what this should teach us.

[74:24]

We tend to do that. We'll give Romuold 400 pages in our own 500-page history of Christian spirituality or something else. Sometimes it's just... Someone like Monsignor Lefebvre is interesting because he wants to go back to tradition and history. What he's talking about is a little narrow period that I don't see any way where you can justify absolutizing it. There's one particular mass form in Latin, and there were forms before and there were forms after. Why say that that is the absolute mass form? Once you get the fuller view, hopefully you can avoid these absolutizings. Right? Right. Now this is one whole side of the truth.

[75:29]

I think there's a more positive side. That as we work through history, not only to not repeat the errors, not only to not absolutize, but also to get in touch with all the riches that the Spirit has spoken in St. Francis of Assisi and in St. Dominic. So there's this whole, not just not absolutize, but value. People who do things, they think they're improvising something that's never been thought of. And maybe in the history of Christian spirituality, it's been tried lots of times, and it's very beautiful, but we can learn from the past. So I think there's the other side too, that the absolute is in history. It's in Christ, it's in St. Paul's words, etc. It's also that the saints, the person following his vocation, the absolute life, is part of the saints. It's in the saints that we can learn from. And really, when we have St. Francis, we can look at his ideas, and clean it up, his people, you know, and work it out. You know, many of them are preachers, some of them are believers,

[76:31]

some of them are just. And he's got this sense of mission, and one way or another, the person, I think, following the vocation, ends up in the womb, while for sure, it would be important to maintain kind of an impact, a balance, with other people, and so on, as opposed to else, with some sort of vocation, and commitment, in a sense, as a standpoint, as in, this is the thing, you need to see what you want to do. I'm just trying to clarify the position of the people, instead of the person, but I just sort of, don't have an idea, what all the positions are relative, because I don't have any kind of other group thinking, it wasn't like, you know, I don't want to be in your head, balance, but wasn't it like, you have to think, do I want to live long life, do I want to choose, you know, and so on, kind of that. Is there, the danger of a historicist approach is relativism. And St. Francis said this, but then Bonaventure was a saint too, and he said something

[77:33]

quite different, et cetera. So where am I? You know, at the end, so many kids, after years of university, they come up with a shrug, and then they need some, they need to have an ownership. So I think you've got to come up without something tyrannical, but something you are willing to commit, life and death. There's a whole different thing we've got to go on. Spirituality, or spiritualities, this is a big debate that's going on. Should we talk about one spirituality, or spiritualities? But part of the thing, I would, some kind of ultimate sense, it seems to me and others, that there is a ultimate, one spirituality, who is Christ, you know, his spirit. Now it's to that, definitively, that I'm willing to die or live or, that I'm willing to be martyred for. Am I willing to be martyred for St. Romuald's understanding of reclusion?

[78:35]

I may be edified by it and helped to grow. But, or Evagrius' concept of apatheia or something like that. So, hopefully, this kind of course would not leave us as a kind of relativistic, well, you know, they've done all sorts of things. But, it's kind of challenging to want to try to work out what am I going to do and what am I going to do? It's a life and death issue, my life. What history wants to do is say, this moment is decisively important. The cyclic and the whole reincarnational says, well, I'll mess up this life, I'll have a hundred million other lives. The historical says, this is very important. You can walk out that door and commit a mortal sin and, you know, that's it, if you stay there. So, the historical approach, in its best, doesn't end up relativistizing everything, but saying, not absolutize

[79:38]

the relative, but go the whole way with the choice that I must make. But, that ultimate choice that I make is not for this school of spirituality or that school, but it's for Christ. Right, right. Yeah, I think it has to be, I worked, I'm wondering if you should use the word absolute there. Excuse me, there's only one absolute, who is God, who is Christ. Take even marriage. Christ can call us to abandon marriage. Take even the hermitage. At a certain point, Ronald might be called to go and preach the missions to the... Right. You,

[80:42]

I wish I remembered this, because Niebuhr worked through this, rather, interestingly, trying to avoid relativism on the one side, and trying to avoid making a divinity out of, but taking, you know, it's something about which we're very tough and which we're willing to defend, etc. In its limits, recognizing its limits, and this is just for me, and it's just for my life, or just maybe, yeah, but I'm going to give everything to it, because I can't do everything, and I can't just shilly-shally over the whole field. Yeah.

[81:53]

once for all kind of decision. Right? Right? There we've gotten, I think, to the absolute ground of this. I'm not saying, therefore, that everyone should be a hermit or anything. I'm saying that my understanding, and the Church has confirmed this solemnly, is that I am bound for all my life to poverty, chastity, obedience, stability, conversy, and more. Now, what form this might take tomorrow, but I've got what Newman, there we are, Newman calls unconditional ascent to this. I think there's a tendency today of some people to say absolute facts, new testament version, and say that any

[82:58]

development in spirituality, segregation of spirituality, or devotions within the Church is something that arose in the Middle Ages. You know, it didn't, it's not the same as, you know, restoring purity and virtues and corruption and everything like that. Yeah, I think one of the interesting points, we're trying to look at the whole history to get more freedom, et cetera, but we're going to be looking as contemporary Western and post-Vatican too, and probably we'll have a series of prejudices and values, et cetera. I was thinking passing this Catholic bookstore in Berkeley, they have certain books out that are very jazzy books, and they don't have other books out. Now, in ten years they'll probably have other books that will then be jazzy, and now Merton is very big in Teresa, Calcutta, and St. Thomas More, Huaynera, St. Thomas More, but these things happen, you know. But I think that's very, there are certainly phases. We are in a phase that wants to stress

[83:59]

the centrality of the Word of God and perhaps relativizes too much. Certainly, certain monasteries tend to relativize too much. I think the richness in St. John and Ignatius or St. Francis de Sales or something like that. Right. Right. Yeah. Still, there are moments in the life of the Church that are moments of renewal, and where you get back in contact with greater depths of the Church than before. I think it could be argued, and it's probably going to be But with Vatican II, there have been some breakthroughs. If you argue about the centrality of Christ, the centrality of the Word of God, the centrality of the Eucharist, for instance, not eliminating the rest, but the centrality of these things, I think you can make a good case for it on any level of theology. And I think it's very important

[84:59]

that some things are more peripheral and some things, the Gospel of John is simply more important than Ignatian exercises. For instance, this history of Christian spirituality by Gannon and Traub, I'm sort of anticipating, but they say, where should you begin the history of Christian spirituality? This is one of the great liberties of the person who sets up a course or writes a book. You cut it as you want, and you leave certain people out, and you give more space to others, et cetera. So where do you begin the thing? Now, they argue that you should begin with the fathers of the desert. That's where you get a clearly reflective consideration of how can I grow in Christ? Before, no. They're so concerned with just announcing the good news that they're not reflecting, but how grow in sanctification. Now, this is an incredible choice. So, in this history of Christian spirituality, there's not one word about the Gospels, not one word about St. Paul, not one word

[85:59]

about the first fathers. Now, someone like Bouillet and someone like Benedetto and the whole Benedictine monastery It is incredible to found the whole enterprise of Christian spirituality on the fathers of the desert, you know, as the ultimate implications are incredible. Oh, you mean, sure, that's the other. The other is pure Protestantism that says the word of God only. And then they have to explain where the spirit has been for 2,000 years sort of thing. So, I think the Catholic or Orthodox or Anglican approach, and now more and more the Protestant, is to take very seriously, again, without absolutizing, but spiritually the unique gift of the spirit to us in Ignatius of Loyola or in Brother Lawrence

[87:00]

or Thomas Acampus or whatever it be, and to try to get in contact with the whole which is the whole thing. And we also are very conditioned by our time and probably can't get out of it totally, but we can become reflexively aware of it. It might be, though, that we are at least aware that we're conditioned in a way that many, many past generations weren't. In many medieval cathedrals you see the Christ mysteries there and the guards around Christ are in medieval armor and Nicodemus would be in medieval noble robes. Now, that wasn't just a kind of update, but they really thought that way. They largely lacked a historical sense, you see. Now, we know that Pilate didn't dress like Jimmy Carter and that the troops at the foot of the cross weren't dressed like marines

[88:00]

or Russian. Now, this is interesting because Oh, indeed. But when they do that in Chicago they're aware of what they're trying to do. This might be. Someone like Bede has a consciousness of history. I've heard the other thing argued, but in any case I think it can at least be said that on a superficial level we have more awareness of historical than they did

[89:01]

then. But once you've made the distinctions then you have to make the effort to get back to the contemporaneous and again, Christ does have to be confronted by a Jimmy Carter type in this sort of thing because if you leave it just back there then you've really done yourself damage if the essential contemplative effort is to be there in communion with Christ, et cetera. So, that's the second step. So, people are walking out on us. I think we're nearly... So, tomorrow we'll talk about spirituality. Think that one through. What do we mean when we say spirituality? Why pick that word? Does the word itself maybe limit us? Does it suggest a kind of dualism of spirit matter? Is it platonically tainted, as many have argued? Is it the best word to describe what we're after when we pray and asceticism and so on? But what do we mean when we're talking about spirituality?

[90:02]

And then, what do we mean by Christian spirituality? And then we'll be ready to sail.

[90:07]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ