Images of Pilgrimage Study Guide

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STUDY GUIDE TO ROBERT CROUSE’S IMAGES OF PILGRIMAGE

RHEA BRIGHT

BIBLICAL AND PAGAN IMAGES

Notes on Images of Pilgrimage Chapter 1

Images

Why do we have images? Why do we have art and poetry and fiction? What good do they serve? An image, after all, is not the thing itself, but some kind of semblance of the thing What have images to do with truth and reality?

We might consider a reflection in a mirror. The image of ourselves that we see in a mirror, is not, of course, really us. It is not flesh and blood; it has no substance; it is not real. And yet it reveals something real and true about us. Is my hair nicely combed? Have I buttoned my shirt properly? The mirror even shows us things about ourselves that we could not otherwise know –the colour of our eyes, for instance. We discover in and through this image of ourselves true things we would not otherwise know.

What about non-physical realities? How do we know about things we cannot see – love, justice, virtue, beauty? How can we know anything about God, whom we cannot see? How can we know about any invisible and spiritual reality except it be mediated to us in some kind of image – through words or pictures or ideas? Robert Crouse begins this work by directing us to the Holy Scriptures, which “represent . . . the whole of natural and spiritual life under the images of pilgrimage.” In the Bible – in God’s Word written – pilgrimage, Crouse says, is the prevailing image.

Images, then, can be mediators of spiritual and eternal truths. In the contemplation of good and true images, we see a truth and reality that science cannot discover. There are, of course, false and distorted images which lead us astray, and the Bible has plenty of warnings against them. But this book is focussed on tested and trustworthy images – the images of classical literature, of the Bible, and of theologians and poets. Moreover, as we make our way through these meditations, we shall see that images, and particularly images of pilgrimage, are, in fact, God-given.

Pilgrimage

When we think of pilgrimages, we might think of medieval pilgrims journeying to a holy site, like Jerusalem or Santiago de Compostela, in search of divine grace and spiritual healing. Or perhaps we might think of the Puritan Pilgrims traveling across the Atlantic to America in search of a place where they could both govern themselves and worship according to their principles. Or we might remember Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, in which the pilgrimage of the character “Christian” is an allegory of the journey from sin to salvation.

All of the above have something to do with the theme in these meditations, but none of these is adequate, as is quickly revealed in the opening pages. There is a three-fold aspect to spiritual pilgrimage. Pilgrimage is a going forth from home (or some other starting point) to a destination that is better or higher than the beginning, that can be a voluntary going out or a forced exile. Pilgrimage involves a road or way, that may follow a well-known path or be a wandering in unknown territory – the restless heart seeking a home, a place of belonging. It involves change through experience. Pilgrimage results in a final destination or end – a return home or an arrival at a new home. Pilgrimage includes these three – the going forth, the way, and the end. Crouse introduces images of pilgrimage in three ways at the beginning of Chapter 1, which will be developed throughout the meditations.

1. First, in relation to the entire created world – nature and human life and history. This is developed in Chapter 2.

2. Secondly, in relation to the act of the redemption of humanity by God the Holy Trinity. This is developed in Chapter 3.

3. Thirdly, in relation to the life of God in himself.

God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit

Crouse begins and ends with God. Human life and pilgrimage – both physical and spiritual –have no meaning apart from God. Understanding ourselves, our world, and our salvation depends upon knowing God, and God is Trinity, One and Three, Father , Son and Holy Ghost. The doctrine of the Trinity is not an obscure teaching, but absolutely crucial to the life of the Christian. These meditations, in which we are to think about the Christian life, also require us to contemplate God. God has revealed himself as Triune – as One and Three. Jesus himself gives us the names we use for the three Persons of the Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Of course these names, like all names, are themselves images. But they are divinely revealed images and we can be confident that they are names that reveal to us something essential about God that we would not otherwise know.

The early and undivided church bequeathed us the Nicene Creed to sum up the interrelation of the three persons of the Trinity and the relation of each to creation and redemption. Here is the text of the Nicene Creed, with one phrase known as the filioque (“and the son”) in brackets, because it was inserted by the western church and is not in use in the eastern church. Knowledge of this language is assumed by Crouse in these meditations.

Nicene Creed

I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible;

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God, begotten of his Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father; by whom all things were made; who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man; and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; he suffered and was buried; and the third day he rose again according to the Scriptures, and ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father; and he shall come again, with glory, to judge both the living and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end.

And I believe in the Holy Ghost the Lord, the Giver of Life, who proceedeth from the Father [and the Son]; who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified; who spoke by the Prophets. And I believe one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church; I acknowledge one Baptism for the remission of sins; and I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.

There is only one God, one being or substance or essence. There are not three gods. Nor does God “appear” in three ways. Yet there are three persons in the oneness of God. How are we to understand this? This question will continue to be explored, because it is at the heart of knowing what it means to be human, but at this point, let’s get hold of the language of the Nicene Creed and scripture.

The Father is the first person of the Trinity, “maker of heaven and earth”, the being who is the source of all things that have being.

The Son is the second person of the Trinity. Jesus Christ is the Son (the second person of the Trinity) who has become incarnate in time. Incarnate means that the Son becomes a real human being, with a real human body, born of a human mother like all other human beings, who learns and grows and thinks and feels like all other human beings. He has a human nature, and lives on earth as a full and compete human being, while also remaining God of God, with a divine nature. Jesus is God and man, and he is both God and man fully and completely. The Son is also called the Word, from the Greek word logos used at the beginning of Saint John’s Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word (logos), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1).

The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity, often called the Holy Ghost in the English, (deriving from the Anglo-Saxon word gast meaning spirit or breath). The Holy Spirit descends upon Christ’s church at Pentecost (Acts 2), after Jesus has ascended into heaven (Acts 1). The Holy Spirit is a “comforter”, a strengthener, and advocate.

The Pilgrimage of Creation

In the opening pages of Chapter 1, Crouse introduces us to ideas that will be developed throughout this work. “Pilgrimage to glory, pilgrimage to liberty – is the life of all creation, and

the meaning of all natural and human history” (p. 12)1 . Right here, already, we are presented with the idea of what we might call the “non-otherness” of images. Images of pilgrimages are images about a reality that is at the very foundation of God’s creation – not only of creation before the fall, but also of the fallen natural world and of human history. This will be considered in-depth in Chapter 2.

The Pilgrimage of Redemption

The pilgrimage of redemption is the Gospel revelation, the activity of Father, Son and Holy Ghost in the redemption of God’s creation.

There is the descent and return of the Son. The Son, the second person of the Trinity, becomes incarnate, which means he is born in human flesh, of the Virgin Mary his mother, and lives a human life on earth, and dies a human death. In the Incarnation, the Son goes forth from the Father into human life and human history. His life, death, and resurrection are the way of spiritual pilgrimage, doing the will of the Father, which his disciples are to follow. His ascension into heaven, witnessed by his disciples (Acts 1), is his return to the Father in glory. Jesus ascends in his resurrected body, which means that his human nature ascends with him, everlastingly united with the Son.

And there is the descent and return of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit goes forth from the Father, descending on the apostles at Pentecost. The Spirit orders and gives life to the church, the body of Christ, giving grace to God’s people through the ministration of the sacraments (this is the way). The whole life of charity – the love of God, creation and one another offered back to God – is the return of the Spirit to the Father.

The Pilgrimage of God in Himself

Note Crouse’s words on page 12: “in a difficult and profoundly important sense, pilgrimage is the very life of God Himself, the Holy Trinity”. Because this is “profoundly important”, it is essential not to let the difficulty make it an obstacle. God knows all truth: he knows himself because he is all that is and all that is true. In very simple terms, Crouse is opening up the language of the Nicene Creed: “the Only Begotten Son of God, begotten of his Father before all worlds”. God, eternal and unchanging being in his eternal and unchanging knowing of himself, eternally and unchangingly begets the Word. What God knows is not other than Himself; God is both the knower and the one known. This is an eternal activity in which there is no change in God, and yet it is still an activity, and an activity that implies a relationship. There is a going forth and a return within the Divine Being.

But there is more: what binds the Divine Knower to the Divine Known is Love – the love of each for the other, who is not actually other, but the same substance or being. This Divine Love, which proceeds from the Father to the Son, and from the Son to the Father, is the Holy Spirit. The pilgrimage of the divine being does not involve change – God is eternally unchanging – but it is

1 Page numbers in this Study Guide refer to the page numbers in the 2023 publica;on of Images of Pilgrimage by R. D. Crouse, published by Darton, Longman and Todd.

an activity, an eternal unchanging activity of knowing and loving. Therefore, within God himself the going forth, the way, and the end do NOT involve change. It is all the very being, wisdom and love of God himself. God is love. God is wisdom.

But then, in this one amazingly beautiful and concise paragraph, Crouse challenges us to contemplate something even more extraordinary. He reminds us of Genesis 1:26, which says that God creates mankind in His very image and likeness, and asks us to consider that the pilgrimage of humanity is an imitation (in time and with change) of God’s eternal pilgrimage of knowing and loving. Crouse then – so gently, yet logically – bids us to ponder the idea that the end and purpose of spiritual pilgrimage is to become drawn into that “supernal triune love” (p. 13) which is God Himself. The relationship between a human being and God, or between humanity and God, is not a superficial one. It speaks to the very essence of what it means to be human

None of this is thinkable without the doctrine of the Trinity. The rest of this book is the explication of what is laid out here in these first pages.

I looked over Jordan

This brings us back to images. We know something fundamentally true about humanity in knowing that we are created in God’s image. The image speaks of likeness, of mirroring. To use the language of the philosopher Plato, the image “participates” in the reality of that of which it is an image. That means that it “takes part in” the real thing, in some way. It is not so much unlike as like. We are not then to think of images as fiction or untruth, but as a reflection or likeness of the truth. Crouse argues, therefore, that the images of revelation do not need always to be translated to the rational language of theology, because there is “a depth and richness, or wholeness” (p. 13) to the images which rational or scientific language cannot achieve.

The first example of an image of pilgrimage that Crouse gives us is a few lines from the spiritual song “Swing low, sweet chariot”, which have the kind of richness and depth to which he refers. Barely touching on that richness, he gently suggests something about the true end of spiritual pilgrimage – the end, the destination, is our true home, where the restless heart finds rest, where the pilgrim really belongs. This final end is, of course, heaven, an end that we cannot reach on our own. We must wait on God, and we wait in faith and with a sure and certain hope. And yet – and this, too, is important to these mediations, and will continue to be unfolded – it is where we properly belong.

The Jordan River is a powerful image in the Bible. The Israelites must cross it to enter the promised land – which they can do only with divine help (see Joshua 3). The prophet Elisha crosses it in the other direction to be swept up by a chariot of fire and carried off by the angels into the presence of God (2 Kings 2). In the New Testament, the Jordan is where John the Baptist preaches the baptism of repentance (Matthew 3, Mark 1, Luke 3); and where he baptises Jesus, who then crosses the Jordan into the wilderness, to prepare for his ministry (Mark 1, Matthew 4, Luke 4).

Water is a significant image in other places in Scripture – some of the most well-known being Noah’s Ark (Genesis 6-9), the Red Sea (Exodus 15), the water from the rock at Meribah (Exodus 17), Jesus and the woman at the well (John 4). Water is a liminal medium – the means by which

or through which the faithful pass from the old earthly life to a new spiritual life. But in all these cases, divine intervention is necessary – in the song, waiting for the band of angels. Water also has a natural role – it quenches our bodily thirst and cleanses our bodies. As an image, the physical and natural qualities of water are transformed by divine grace to become the means of spiritual nourishment, cleansing from sin and rebirth.

“Home” is also an evocative image. Home, in its purely material form, is a place of rest from travel and toil. It is a place of safety and peace and the love of family. It is one’s own. In the heavenly home that the Christian pilgrim seeks, those same good things are transformed by grace into eternal rest, safety, peace, belonging and love. It is where all desires are fulfilled, and where each person finds a place prepared for him or her.

Penetrating the Images

Crouse concludes these introductory pages by delving deeper into the idea of pilgrimage. The images of pilgrimage are not simply man-made. We are entering the realm of revealed images, “the language of revelation”, which means the language of the Holy Scriptures. This same language of revelation is incorporated into the rites and liturgies of the Church, so it is also “the language of liturgy and prayer” (p. 15).

Our relationship to that language and to those images (which we find in the Bible and in the liturgies of the Church) is itself a pilgrimage. It is a journey. Exploring these images of pilgrimage is not merely an external examination of stories about people engaged in some kind of pilgrimage, like watching a movie. It is something that happens in ourselves, in our souls. It is an internal pilgrimage.

Contemplation (thinking) is itself a pilgrimage. In the act of contemplation, our minds go forth to enter into and penetrate, to use Crouse’s word, the language, the words, and the images that God has given us. The way is the activity of knowing and loving God’s Word, and the end is participating in the Divine pilgrimage.

What is needed in this activity is attention. We must attend to the words and the images. Attention means time, returning again and again to the same words, the same images. We must read them, hear them, learn what they mean, and relate them to what we already know. As we inwardly digest the words and images – of the Bible and of the liturgy – they not only inform our minds, but they also direct our hearts toward what is eternally good and true and beautiful.

The Ancient Pagans

Why then, having firmly grounded us in images of pilgrimage found in God’s Word, does Crouse now take us into the literature of ancient pagan Greece and Rome?

First, since Crouse has already put forth the idea that pilgrimage is a reality in the very nature of the created world, it will not be restricted to the Judeo-Christian-Muslim world, but will be something universal, belonging to humanity as a whole. In fact, pilgrimage is the most prevailing theme of literature throughout time and across cultures. For example, the oldest known epic poem

of western literature is the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh, a story of pilgrimage and homecoming; the Hindu epic Ramayana is also a story of exile and return.

The ancient Greek philosopher Plato taught that knowledge is really a “recollection” (a remembering) of universal forms that are eternal and unchanging. There are spiritual realities that, because they are real, can be known by anyone who seeks knowledge. The modern psychiatrist Carl Jung had a similar idea in what he called the “collective unconscious”. Whether one accepts their theories or not, the evidence is there. The same images emerge in the human imagination throughout the ages.

Crouse gives three reasons for beginning with the pagan Greek and Roman images of pilgrimage.

1. Both Greek and Roman cultures were highly developed and thus have the best expression of a pre-Christian art and literature

2. The world of the Greeks and Romans (the gentiles) is the world in which the Christian church was formed. Jesus lived in a Hellenized (Greek-influenced) Jewish culture under Roman rule. The Christian church spread throughout the Roman Empire. The Romans and the Greeks were the people converting to this radical new way. (This comes out especially in Chapter 4.)

3. Most important of all, “it is toward that spirituality that we ourselves are drawn, when we forget our spirituality” (p.18). This deserves some comment. Obviously, in the modern world, we do not worship the gods of the ancient Greeks and Romans. That is not what is meant. The issue is, how do we understand ourselves and the purpose and meaning of our existence without the triune God of the Bible and the Nicene Creed? We are left with the same conclusions at which the ancients arrived, so let us see what they are.

Homer, The Odyssey

The Greek poet Homer is remembered today for his two epic poems. One is the Iliad, which is set during the Trojan War, a war fought by the Greeks against the Trojans, because they had stolen away the beautiful Helen, Queen of Sparta. The other is the Odyssey, which tells of the adventures of the Greek warrior Odysseus, as he makes his way home – with great difficulty! –from the successfully concluded Trojan War. These two poems date to the eighth century B.C., around the time the prophets first began appearing in Israel.

The tales that Homer tells derive from an older tradition of oral story-telling, but in Homer’s retelling of them they became important to the culture of the ancient Greeks, teaching the people about the gods and how human beings ought to live As adventure tales, they have thrilled English readers for centuries Even in the twenty-first century, the stories continue to have an impact The Coen brothers’ movie “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” (2000) is a modern comic take on various aspects the Odyssey Brad Pitt starred as Achilles in the (not very good) 2004 movie “Troy”.

The word “odyssey”, meaning a long and arduous journey, has entered the English language through this poem. The poem, however, is really about homecomings, and what it takes to get home. The journey is the way home. In the story, Odysseus, a clever strategist, an adventurous

spirit, and a brave warrior, makes his way home from Troy after ten years of war. Through adventure and misadventure, including encounters with cannibals, lotus-eaters, cyclopes, sirens, and a variety of other monsters and enchantresses, it takes Odysseus ten more years before he finally arrives home, only to find it overrun with 200 riotous men wanting to marry his wife and rule his kingdom.

The story of the Odyssey begins in medias res, which means “in the middle of things” The poem beings, in fact, toward the end of Odysseus’s journey. We learn the backstory through Odysseus’s own retelling of his adventures. When the Odyssey opens, Odysseus is imprisoned on a beautiful island – a little paradise – with the nymph Calypso (a goddess), who loves Odysseus with such passionate desire that she promises him immortality if he stays with her. It seems like an idyllic situation – a beautiful place, a lovely goddess, and the possibility of immortality – yet Odysseus sits mournfully on the shore, his back to the glory, gazing longingly toward home, the scrubby, rocky island of Ithaca where his faithful wife of over twenty years and the son he has not seen since he was a babe are waiting for him. We encounter Odysseus in his full humanity –desiring nothing more than the freedom to go home.

Odysseus’s homecoming has been delayed because of his own actions and those of his men. As the god Zeus says at the beginning of the poem, “mortals . . . by their own recklessness win sorrow beyond what is given.” Odysseus’s most grievous act was blinding the one-eyed cyclops, Polyphemus, the son of the great god Poseidon. Odysseus had good reason to do so, saving his own life and those of his men trapped in the cyclops’ cave. But Odysseus gloats in his cleverness and, once at a safe distance, boastingly reveals his name to Polyphemus. And so he suffers the effects of Poseidon’s wrath. It is Odysseus’s curiosity and restlessness that get him into trouble, and it is his cleverness that gets him out. But it is his hubris – his gloating, his overweening pride – that gets him in trouble with the mighty Poseidon.

And yet it is through his mistakes and through his wandering and exile that Odysseus acquires the will, the right desire, to return to Ithaca and exercise the necessary restraint to regain possession of his home. Odysseus, formerly unable to resist boasting to the cyclops, is now willing to assume the disguise of a humble beggar, and to be mocked and derided in order to cleanse his home of the rabble-rousing suitors who are defiling it. The pilgrimage – the way (odos) and the striving (agon) – are not, in fact, diversions from his end, but the means to it. It is also to be noted that it is only with divine aid, especially that of the goddess Athena, that Odysseus can finally be freed from Poseidon’s retribution, get home, overcome the suitors and restore order in his little island kingdom. He cannot do it alone.

Hubris

The problem in the Homeric view of reality is that the human desire to be, not just good human beings, but excellent human beings (that is, heroes) results in what the Greeks call hubris, an overweening pride which is the ultimate sin that human beings can commit. The human desire, or aspiration, for goodness, causes human beings to overstep their natural limits and leads to their

destruction. Courage, determination, and perseverance are all good things, we know – but when taken too far, they become folly and recklessness.

We see this in Genesis 3 as well, when Adam and Eve disobey God’s one commandment because they are moved by the desire to “be as gods”. The very things that define us as human beings (and not plants or rocks for instance) are our ability to think and reason, and our freedom of will. They are the great human strengths, and in the Homeric view, also the tragic human flaw. Because we are not all-knowing, we make mistakes. Because we are not all-powerful, we fail to achieve what we set out to achieve. Our wisdom and our power are limited by that same human nature

Aristotle

The Greek philosopher Aristotle, who lived in the 4th century B.C., says something similar in his work entitled the Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle argues that all human action proceeds from a desire for happiness, and that true human happiness can be achieved only by being the best human being possible. This involves acquiring the moral and intellectual virtues (courage, self-control, justice, prudence, knowledge, understanding, wisdom and so on), and living that virtuous life in a community of friendship.

But the same problem is present. Perfect happiness requires that the perfect good be perfectly and lastingly attained. Only complete and absolute wisdom and goodness and love will truly satisfy us, and that is impossible because we are not only mortal, but also creatures of limited (not infinite) understanding and power. We can never know the fullness of goodness and truth because we are not gods. We are left with a desire, which arises in us because of our human nature, to be what the finitude of that same human nature denies us.

The purpose, or end, of the moral life (which, for Aristotle, is the proper human life) is happiness. Human life, properly lived, is a pilgrimage toward happiness. Happiness is found in the perfection of both the moral and intellectual virtues, in friendship and in contemplation of all truth. Aristotle recognizes this as a fundamental truth about the human condition, and yet the only happiness attainable for human beings is a limited happiness. These ideas are taken up by subsequent writers, and are woven into Crouse’s treatment of images of pilgrimage.

Virgil’s Aeneid

Virgil was a Latin poet who lived about seven centuries after the Greek Homer, dying in 19 B.C., at the beginning of the Roman Empire. The Aeneid is an epic poem that tells the story of the Trojan hero Aeneas, who flees Troy with some of his countrymen as the victorious Greek troops are burning the city. The whole epic is a pilgrimage, as Aeneas sets off in search of a new home. Aeneas does not return home, but makes a new home for the surviving Trojans with the Latin people in Italy, establishing the ancestral families of the great Roman Empire. This is Aeneas’ destiny, but he himself does not at first understand this. He has to learn it along the way.

Virgil’s Aeneas follows in the footsteps of Odysseus in many ways, and he has to negotiate his way through some of the same difficulties. In fact, when Aeneas gets to the land of the one-

eyed cyclopes, he takes on board one of Odysseus’s men who was accidently left behind. Like Odysseus, Aeneas has divine help, in his case from his mother, the goddess Venus. And like Odysseus, he has to overcome the resistance of one of the gods. But in Aeneas’s case, the divine animosity that comes from the goddess Juno is not caused by a personal affront or the moral failing of Aeneas, but by Juno’s intense dislike and distrust of the Trojan people as a whole. Aeneas emerges in this poem as a virtuous man committed to doing his duty. What he needs to learn is exactly what that duty is. The wandering – the way – which appears to be Aeneas’ failure to fulfill his task, is in fact the process by which he comes to understand what his task, his true end, is. Fate – an over-arching divine will – prevails over the particular wills of individuals.

Within this larger journey occurs the incident of which Crouse speaks – the descent into the underworld. The Greeks and the Romans had a rather vague conception of an afterlife, in which the shades of the dead inhabit what is called Hades. Virgil takes the existing mythology about life after death, and builds upon it based on existing philosophical ideas about the human soul. The journey that Aeneas, a living man, takes into the underworld can occur only with divine help. It is a task too difficult for a man alone.

In the underworld, Aeneas learns something that is essential to his task of founding the city destined to rule the world. The human soul is an eternal spark of the elemental fire which, when freed from the body (through death) and purified of all the corruptions of earthly life, is capable of bliss. But it is not eternal bliss. It is not heaven as we understand it. It is but a temporary happiness, which cannot be true happiness. After a period of time, the souls drink the waters of forgetfulness from the river Lethe and return to a new life in a new body. This return to earthly life is a return to the city, to the work of building the human community.

This leaves us with an odd situation, a contradiction even. On the one hand, the human soul can be free and happy only when separated from the body – i.e. after death. It is the body and the world that are the cause of suffering and unhappiness. But on the other hand, human life is enacted in the world and in the body. What defines the particular human being (the kind of person he or she is) is the life that she or he has lived on the earth, and the good they have done in the service of the greater human community. To be human means both to live a bodily existence in human community (the active life) and also to desire to be free from such cares in order to enjoy fully and completely the good, the true and the beautiful (the contemplative life).

The Impasse

Here is what Virgil (and the ancients in general) leave us with:

1. There is something divine-like in man – a spirit that does not die with the body.

2. The human spirit desires a divine-like existence, marked by “ joy and liberty” and “pure and perfect good” (p 23).

3. The best life of the human being is one which strives for virtue and excellence within the human community.

4. Because man is not divine, there can be, at best, only a semblance of the divine joy, liberty, and goodness, and only for a time, if at all.

5. In Virgil’s account, as with Aristotle, the problem – the impasse – is not caused by sin or moral failure (though that makes matters worse). It is the necessary effect of human finitude (natural human limitations). Mortality is a sign of human limitations, but as Virgil sees it, it is not the cause. Rather, it is the fact that humans are humans, not gods. The impasse, then, is this unbridgeable gulf between divine and human, which, in the pagan view, could be worded as an unbridgeable gulf between human aspiration and human achievement.

Crouse said that it is important to consider the ancient Greeks and Romans because “it is toward that spirituality that we ourselves are drawn, when we forget our spirituality” (p. 18). What we find in Christian spirituality is, in fact, the bridging of this gulf, the removal of the impasse. The Christian gospel is the good news of a mediator who unites human and divine and who gives us a way to return to our eternal origin in God.

When we (all those who are the inheritors of that truth) forget that spirituality, we are left with a spirituality that is based on the acceptance of our earthly limitations. We seek virtue, wisdom, justice and peace on earth. But that is the highest end we can aim for – and we fail even at that.

‘Man’

A final note before continuing: we need to pause and consider one particular aspect of Crouse’s language, if we are to enter into and appreciate his argument. In particular, there is the use of the word ‘man’ as it appears, for instance on page 21, in the statement, “There is that in man which is divine.” In our gender conscious culture, great attempts are made to avoid using gender specific words when a gender-neutral meaning is intended. One could argue that Crouse was a man of his time, and in 1986 such sensibilities were not common and we should forgive him this. But Crouse himself would strenuously object to such an interpretation.

For Crouse, the word ‘man’ in this context means quite specifically that which transcends biological sex or gender. It is not, used in this way, a gender-specific word. In Genesis 1, we are told that God creates ‘man’ in his image, and then we are told that God creates them male and female. The biological distinction is secondary to the ‘man-ness’ or, as we might prefer to say, to the human-ness. Whenever possible, this study guide will use words like ‘humanity’ or ‘human beings’ or ‘humankind’ to refer to ‘mankind’ in general. But sometimes those words are not adequate, so then the guide will use the language that Crouse uses. The word ‘humanity’ does not evoke the same thing in the imagination that ‘man’ does. ‘Humanity’ speaks to a collective, a group of human beings, whereas ‘man’ speaks to a singular idea – what Plato would call the ‘form’ of the human being.

BIBLICAL AND PAGAN IMAGES

Topics for Group Discussion on Images of Pilgrimage Chapter 1

1. To many people in our technological age, poetry and art seem frivolous and disconnected from reality. Here are some ways to help people accept the idea that images (including story, poetry, and art) teach truth

a. Take a few minutes to explore some common literary themes, such as love; friendship; heroism; fall and redemption; loyalty; betrayal; oppression; justice; suffering

b. Consider how an image can convey meaning in a way that more straightforward language cannot. A close examination of a piece of art can help with this. Look at something like Donatello’s Mary Magdalene or Michelangelo’s Pieta. What emotions or states of being are conveyed? Can we identify with those feelings or states of being?

2. What is implied by the term pilgrimage? Where does a pilgrimage begin? Where does it end? What happens in the middle? What happens during a journey? Does one return from any physical journey unchanged?

Pages 11 to 16 are introduction to the work as a whole, introducing the themes it will explore. The first paragraph of this introduction begins with the bold statement that pilgrimage is the allencompassing theme of spiritual life.

3. “Pilgrimage – pilgrimage to glory, pilgrimage to liberty – is the life of all creation and the meaning of all natural and human history.” Consider the implications of this.

a. God the Creator has created all things for a purpose, or end. Who knows the end? Who made things this way?

b. Consider the natural world. For example, take the life cycle of a plant. How might we think of the life of a plant as a pilgrimage?

c. What is the pilgrimage of the natural world as a whole? What is the glory and liberty of nature?

d. Consider human history. Is history going somewhere? What does it mean to say that it is? What is the glory and liberty of the human community?

4. The language of doctrine and theology is important to the text. Spend some time to make sure this the language and terminology is clear. Here are some of the primary doctrinal terms:

• TRINITY: One God in three Persons: Father, Son (Word), Holy Spirit (Ghost). God is the “maker of all things, visible and invisible”.

• INCARNATION: The Son “came down from heaven” and “was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary” – that means he took on human flesh and human nature and became a human being. Jesus Christ is the incarnate Son of God. He is fully God and fully man, Jesus in one person has two natures, a divine nature (“God of God”) and a human nature (he “was made man”).

• RESURRECTION: Jesus rose from the dead in a real and yet transformed body. The resurrection is a bodily event in that it concerns the material being of the Jesus who died, and yet it is spiritual in that it does not conform to the laws of normal material existence.

• ASCENSION: Jesus ascended into heaven in his resurrected body, with the fullness of his human nature. He now “sits on the right hand of the Father” in glory.

• ATONEMENT: Jesus “was crucified for us”. He died for us to save us from sin and death and to reconcile us to the Father. Those who believe in him will share in his resurrection, ascension, and glory.

2. The Son goes forth from the Father (the Incarnation) and returns to the Father (the Ascension). Why does the Son go forth – what is his purpose? How is his return described by Crouse? What are the implications for humanity of this descent (Incarnation) and return (Ascension)?

3. The Spirit goes forth from the Father (at Pentecost) and returns to the Father. Why does the Spirit go forth? What is behind this image of conflicting tongues? (see Genesis 11 and Acts 2) How is His return described? What are the implications for humanity of this descent and return?

4. Consider what Crouse says about pilgrimage in relation to the life of God himself.

a. What is the begetting of the Son in terms of knowing and loving?

b. What is the procession of the Spirit in terms of knowing and loving?

c. What does it mean to say that God is love?

2. How does Crouse relate the creation of mankind in the image of God to the concept of pilgrimage?

3. Explore the significance of water in the scriptures and in the Christian life and what it signifies. What is the significance of the fact that water is equally destructive and life-giving?

4. What is “home”? Why does Crouse present us with this image here at the beginning of this work? Who is the pilgrim waiting to be carried home?

5. On a very practical level, how do we go about “penetrating the images”? What kind of activity is involved? In other words, what is involved in reading the Bible contemplatively?

6. How does “penetrating the images” relate to liturgy and prayer?

a. What is the proper connection between “the language of revelation” (the Bible) and “the language of liturgy and prayer”?

b. In what particular ways do Christian liturgies (such as the Book of Common Prayer) manifest that connection? This can be considered in a very general way, but also particularly in relation to image of pilgrimages. Search out examples.

c. How ought we, both personally and as a worshipping community, approach prayer and worship? What is its end or purpose?

7. Make a list of universal human longings or desires. By universal, that means belonging even to people who have seemingly different values. Which of these can be achieved by human effort alone? Which of them can be perverted or distorted into something harmful to others? Which of them could lead to hubris?

8. Crouse says, “There is that in man which is divine, and man will be satisfied with nothing less.” What is “divine” within man? Why do you think Aristotle would draw such a conclusion?

9. Is it true that perfection – true goodness, lasting peace, perfect knowledge and understanding, enduring love – is a universal human desire? Can full and complete happiness be found anywhere else? How does modern secularism approach this idea?

10. Define and discuss the spiritual impasse What is it that man (necessarily) aspires to but cannot attain?

THE OLD TESTAMENT

Notes on Images of Pilgrimage Chapter 2

The brief consideration of the poetry of the ancients in the last chapter reveals a universal recognition of a humanity that both is and is not at home in the world. Throughout time and across the globe, human beings have found themselves searching for some kind of meaning or purpose for existence. The pagan world is left with a dualism between soul and body, between divine and human, between eternal and temporal. One is invisible and immortal. The other is visible and material and finite – it comes into being, grows and changes, and then dies. But for the pagans, the divide between eternal and temporal, between infinite and finite, between divine and human is absolute.

Why Genesis?

We now take up our spiritual quest from a Christian standpoint. In the second chapter of Images, Crouse turns to the creation narrative in Genesis, the first book of the Bible That is where the story begins. To make any sense of this idea of Christian spiritual pilgrimage (which is the whole of the Christian life), one must first consider what is revealed about God, humankind, and nature in the Genesis creation account. So important is this, Crouse says, that the study of the first few chapters of the book of Genesis was an essential part of the preparation of the Christian convert for baptism in the early church. In fact, commentaries on the six days of creation were so common that they constitute a whole genre of theological treatise called hexameral literature (from the Greek word hexameron meaning six days).

The handful of examples that Crouse mentions are these:

1. Saint Basil of Caesarea (Basil the Great), a bishop in Cappadocia in the 4th century.

2. Saint Ambrose, bishop of Milan in the late 4th century

3. Saint Augustine of Hippo, bishop of Hippo in the late 4th and early 5th centuries.

4. The Venerable Bede, an English monk in the late 7th and early 8th centuries, also known for his history of Christianity in Britain.

5. John Scotus Eriugena, an Irish monk and theologian in the 9th century, who became head of the palace school of the Holy Roman Empire in Aachen.

Genesis

The word ‘genesis’ means ‘beginning’, or ‘coming into being’ (think ‘generation’). The Bible begins with the words “In the beginning” (Genesis 1:1). This is the beginning of the physical world; it is the beginning of created spiritual reality; it is the beginning of time, and so the beginning of generation and corruption, of beings which come into being and cease to be, of birth and death

There is the world itself, created out of nothing by God ‘speaking’ it into being. And there is everything which is in the world, including both physical, material reality and also invisible, spiritual reality. In the beginning of this work, Crouse points us to the Holy Scriptures taken in their entirety, from the beginning in Genesis to the end in the Revelation of the heavenly Jerusalem, as representing “the whole of our experience, the whole of natural and spiritual life” (p. 11). Genesis is where the pilgrimage begins and it is where we begin to make sense of what pilgrimage means.

The Word of God: the Logos

By the word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the hosts of them by the breath of his mouth. He gathereth the waters of the sea together, as it were upon an heap; and layeth up the deep, as in a treasure-house. Let all the earth fear the Lord: stand in awe of him, all ye that dwell in the world. For he spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast (Ps 33:6-9)

The Septuagint is the old Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures, dating to before the birth of Jesus. In the Septuagint, ‘logos’ is the word used in Psalm 33, that is translated above as ‘word’. We see this also in the Prologue to Saint John’s Gospel. “In the beginning was the Word (logos).” In Christian theology, the second person of the Trinity is referred to as the Son or the Word or logos.

In a Greek-English lexicon or dictionary, there are two primary meanings for logos. First is “a saying, speaking, that which is spoken.” In other words, it does not mean ‘word’ in the sense of a single word, but rather in the sense of the outward expression of an idea – therefore, a complete thought, not an isolated word. (Like the ‘seven last words’ of Christ from the cross, for example, which are sayings, not single words.) The second meaning of logos is “the power of the mind which is manifested in speech; reason.” Both apply here.

The letter of the text of Genesis 1 says, for instance, “And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.” (Genesis 1:3) The image we are given, then, as readers, is of a voice speaking aloud a complete thought – a sentence. And the sentence is a command which is fulfilled by the mere speaking of the command. Knowing as we do that God does not have a body or the physical mechanism to speak as we speak, this is an image of something that makes sense to us as human beings. Speaking is the expression of a thought – the thought goes forth from the speaker’s mind to the hearer’s mind, while yet remaining as an unchanged thought within the mind of the speaker. Similarly, God ‘speaking’ is his thought going forth from him. As an artist uses her artistic skill to give outward, external form to something that previously existed only in her mind, so God, in an

act of thinking, wills whatsoever he wills into being. This, then, brings us to that second sense of the word logos as inner thought or ordering rational principle.

The Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle and their followers spoke of the physical world as being composed of matter and form. The matter is the physical stuff of a thing, and the form is the essence of the thing, what makes it the kind of thing it is. “The earth was without form and void.” (Genesis 1:2) Here is formlessness, nothingness. The Word – what God ‘speaks’ – gives that nothingness, that void, a form, and makes it some thing.

“By the word of the Lord were the heavens made.” The Church Fathers were in no doubt that the God of Genesis is Trinity God creates “by the word”. The Nicene Creed says that the Son is the one “by whom all things were made”. The Fathers took up the language passed on by the Greek philosophers referring to the divine thought or wisdom as the logos. Thus the logos is revealed to be the second person of the Trinity, the Word spoken by God into creation, and who becomes incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ.

The Breath of God

In both Genesis 1 and 2, we encounter the image of the spirit or breath of God. The Greek word is pneuma and the Latin word is spiritus. Both words are connected with verbs that mean to breathe or blow. The image here is of life-giving breath. The Spirit of God gives life. He hovers over the waters in Genesis 1:3 ready to give life to the as yet unformed matter. In Genesis 2: 7, God breathes into the dust of the ground, giving life to the Adam.

It is a brilliant image for spirit. Breath is invisible, like spirit, yet is the life of the body which breathes. “I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord, the Giver of Life.” (Nicene Creed) It is the Spirit of God that gives life to all that lives. It is also a brilliant image for the Adam – “of the earth earthy” (1 Corinthians 15:47) but also intimately connected to his Creator.

Spirit is necessary for action. The form of a thing would remain an idea in the mind without a will to action. Think of a craftsman. He stands before a pile of wood. The wood is matter that can be potentially many things. The craftsman imposes an idea – of a table or a chair or a birdhouse –upon that formless wood. But it is only when he makes a choice and takes his saw and acts that the wood – the potential table – becomes an actual table.

“Fortiter et suaviter”

Fortiter et suaviter is a reference to the first of the O Antiphons, a series of Magnificat antiphons sung in Advent at Evensong or Vespers in the final days before Christmas. In the English Book of Common Prayer, following the medieval practice in England, December 16 is dedicated to O Sapientia (‘Oh Wisdom’). In the rest of the western church, December 17 is the day that O Sapientia begins the final countdown to Christmas Here is the text of the antiphon in both Latin and English.

O Sapientia, quae ex ore Altissimi prodiisti, attingens a fine usque ad finem, fortiter suaviterque disponens omnia: veni ad docendum nos viam prudentiae.

O Wisdom! which camest out of the mouth of the Most High, reaching from one end to the other, mightily and sweetly ordering all things, come and teach us the way of understanding.

This antiphon derives from Wisdom 8:1. “adtingit enim a fine usque ad finem fortiter et disponit omnia suaviter.” (“She [Wisdom] reacheth therefore from end to end mightily, and ordereth all things sweetly.”) The Book of the Wisdom of Solomon is included in both the Greek Septuagint, which dates to before the time of Christ, and also the Latin Vulgate, which dates to the 4th century It is one of several books and writings called deuterocanonical or apocryphal Many of these writings date to the intertestamental period, the period between the time of the building of the Second Temple in Jerusalem (e.g. Ezra, Malachi, etc.) and the coming of Christ.

All of God’s creation is full of Him. His Wisdom orders it all. God’s Spirit gives life and sweetness to the created world It is because of God’s Word and Spirit that anything exists at all. It is because of God’s Word and Spirit that each thing is what it is. It is because of God’s Word and Spirit that His creation is good. In the Genesis 1 account, God looks at each moment of creation and sees that it is good. Then He looks at the finished creation and sees that it is very good. It is God’s Word and Spirit that make all things good.

On one hand, the created world is unlike God; it is made of matter, it is temporal (generated and corruptible), and it is finite in power.

But on the other hand – and this is important! – the being, goodness, and beauty of the natural created world is a reflection of the being, goodness and beauty of its Creator. The created world is so good that “the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.” (p. 29 from Job 38:7 ). God is intimately connected to his creation, and his goodness and wisdom and power can be known through it.

Imago dei: The Image of God

God is even more intimately connected to humankind. In Genesis 1, we are told that the creature ‘man’ is created in the image and likeness of God. (Genesis 1:27) Only after this do we hear that ‘man’, in common with the animals, is made according to the two biological sexes of male and female, so they may “be fruitful and multiply”. (Genesis 1: 28) It is the human nature (universal humanity) in the human being that is in God’s image, and that means that each particular human being is in the image and likeness of God.

In Genesis 2, we are told that ‘man’ is created out of dust of the ground into which God breathes a life-giving spirit. The Hebrew word ‘Adam’ is the same word used in Genesis 1:26 & 27. It has the sense of universal humankind, rather than a particular human being. But in the Genesis 2 version of the story, the image we are given is of one being who later becomes distinguished into two (man and woman). Once again, the Adam is a creature both bodily and spiritual, and hence with both a physical duty to procreate and a spiritual duty to govern the natural realm. In this second story, again the universal humanity (‘man’), is prior to the distinction into male and female – a distinction that comes into being only with the creation of ‘woman’

Since all of creation comes from God, created by Word and Spirit, all of creation is a reflection of God’s being, wisdom and power, and yet there is something distinctive about humankind. It is only humanity that God created “in his own image” (Genesis 1:27). To say that humankind is “created in the Father’s Word and Spirit” (p. 29) it to say that humanity is created with reason and free will. Having reason and free will, the ‘man’ in Genesis 2 is given the task of naming the animals. He is not naming the particulars (calling them Helen and George), but naming the universals (calling them elephant and mouse). He is to know and love and care for the animals, as he is to know and love and care for all of God’s creation. These are the activities of reason and will – to know and to love and to act.

The rest of creation knows and loves God in its own way, each thing by being what it is (e.g. plants by growing and producing seed to reproduce, etc.), and the whole of creation by being what it is, an interconnected and interdependent reality, whose very existence sings of God’s glory. For humankind, though, the role is not merely to be one part, but to be a microcosm of the whole –offering all back to God in knowledge and love.

Nature’s Priest

The role of a priest classically understood is quite specific. It is to be a mediator between God (or the gods) and the human community. In the Old Testament, the Levitical priests offered sacrifices to God on behalf of the people. The priests stood between the people and God as mediators (i.e. in the middle). Their activity is toward God – offering what is His back to Him.

The primary activity of the priest, then, is Godward. To call man “nature’s priest”, then, means that in being caretakers of the natural world, humankind is offering up all of creation, all that is in the image of Father, Word and Spirit, including humanity itself, back to God.

Genesis reveals that anything that is, derives its being, its nature, its goodness, its meaning from God. So far as it is good and so far as it is what it is meant to be, it reflects God’s goodness.

Creation as pilgrimage

Creation is the going forth of Word and Spirit from the Father. The way is the ongoing ordering and sustaining of creation by Word and Spirit. The return is the offering up of that goodness back to the Father

Paradise

The story of humanity begins in paradise – a paradise described in the story as a garden planted in Eden. “There is nothing there in actuality which is not the word and will of God; nothing there which is not simply good.” (p. 29) We know the story. The man and the woman – whom we come to call Adam and Eve – are tempted by the serpent to eat of the one tree that is forbidden them, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Yet Crouse reiterates what Genesis says: it is all good. There is no evil there. How are we to make sense of this?

The key to understanding Crouse’s point are the words “in actuality”. What is actual is a paradise, where all is peaceful and beautiful and good. What is actual are Adam and Eve created

in the image of God, to reflect back God’s glory and goodness in their care of the garden. What is actual is the freedom of will that God has given to this creature made in His likeness. But within the actual goodness of liberty bestowed upon mankind, lies the potential toward, and the power to choose, what is not good (which means choosing what is not God or not of God). These are the “the potencies of will” of which Crouse speak. (p. 30). Liberty is a creation of God and the gift of His goodness; and yet, liberty makes evil (choosing not-God instead of God) possible. The serpent is in the story as a sign and symbol of that possibility.

What is the not-God that Adam and Eve choose? It is the self as God. “Ye shall be as gods knowing good and evil.” (Genesis 3:5) It is through free choice that we lose our knowledge and experience of paradise.

But this is not the end. Crouse points to another image of the serpent – the gleaming bronze serpent in the wilderness which, when raised up, saved anyone who looked on it from the poisonous bite of the serpents sent to punish the unfaithful (Numbers 21) There is no evil if by evil we mean something that is totally other than God, something that is outside his power or wisdom or will. Everything is God’s and he holds it all within his providential will. The things that we consider evil – whether they be the destructive powers of nature or the harmful acts of the avaricious human will – cannot destroy the paradise that God has created. Paradise abides “in the word and will of God.” (p. 30).

Exile: The Wilderness

In the story, Adam and Eve are expelled from the garden because of their freely willed disobedience; they eat of the forbidden tree of the knowledge of good and evil out of their desire to “be as gods” (Genesis 3). But it is also significant that paradise does not disappear, though they no longer see it or experience it. The whole world has become a wilderness to the man and the woman, full of thorns and pain and suffering and death. But the paradise itself, the goodness and the holiness, the beauty and the truth, remain. It is an abiding reality which human will cannot destroy, but also which human eyes cannot see. The expulsion from the garden is the image of humanity turning away from what is – from that pure reality. But the reality itself does not change. We human beings, however, find ourselves wandering in a kind of unreality, a wilderness which does not feel like home. We have lost touch with our own spiritual reality, which we can regain only be turning back to what truly is, to what abides eternally and unchangingly

Augustine of Hippo (about whom we will discuss more later in the text) says that what characterizes this universal wilderness in which we find ourselves is self-love. Self-love looks for happiness in worldly and material goods and honours, acquired by human effort. It is selfdetermining (‘I am the master of my fate’) and self-seeking. At its best, it seeks earthly peace and justice and compassion for all. It strives for the (unrealized and unrealizable) ideal set by people like Aristotle, Virgil and Cicero. At its worst, this love of self, Augustine says, rises to the point of contempt of God, which includes contempt of that paradise which is goodness itself, and it becomes malicious and oppressive and destructive. This self-centered love leads to everything that

we call sin, and is characterized chiefly by the sin of pride, which puts the self first before all others. In any case, it brings us to the impasse spoken of in Chapter I.

Forma futuri: Signs of What Will Be

The whole of the Old Testament from Genesis 3 onward, is the ongoing revelation of the relation of the Creator to his fallen creation, and especially to human beings. In the Old Testament, we discover that God is not absent even in the wilderness He sends signs, not only of his presence, but of the future – of what is to be. These signs are forms of the future, referred to as forma futuri In fact, even as God lays out the consequences of the act of disobedience in Genesis 3 – pain, suffering, and death – he gives the man and the woman the gift of a promise: the seed of the woman shall bruise the head of the seed of the serpent (Genesis 3:15).

The definitive story of the Old Testament for Israel is the story of the Exodus. By God’s grace, with Moses and Aaron as his instruments, the Israelites are freed from slavery in Egypt, and spend the next forty years wandering in the desert wilderness before they finally gain the land God promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, led now by Joshua (whose name is the same as Jesus, meaning ‘one who saves’). For Israel, this time in the desert is the time in which they come to know who they are and what it means to be God’s people. Entering the promised land and gaining the promised land (an image of paradise) depends upon their humility and obedience to the law God has given them. The journey is essential to the end. The way of wandering is the preparation for what is to come – as it was for Odysseus and Aeneas.

The outward and present events of the Exodus are also signs of spiritual grace that is to come in Jesus Christ. God feeds the hungry Israelites with manna, the bread of heaven (Exodus 16:1-39; Numbers 11:1-9). This is a sign of Jesus Christ, the Bread of Life (John 6:35), who is the incarnate Word providing spiritual nourishment to God’s people. “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” (Matthew 4:4). It is a sign of the Holy Communion, in which we are fed with the grace of Christ and united to him, so “that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us.” (Prayer of Humble Access). “This is my body which is given for you: do this in remembrance of me.” (Luke 22:19; Prayer of Consecration).

In the desert, God gives the thirsty Israelites living water from inert rock (Exodus 17: 1-7; Numbers 20:1-13), another sign of Jesus Christ who is to come “Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.” (John 4:14)

Through Moses, God gives Israel the law, the ark of the covenant, and the tabernacle, which sets them apart from the other nations, defining how they are to live and how they are to worship God and to be a holy people. These external actions of behaviour and sacrificial offerings also serve as forma futuri: Jesus says, “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.” (Matthew 5:17).

God gives Israel the promised land of Canaan, a “land flowing with milk and honey” (see for example Deuteronomy 6:3). In the Book of Joshua, the people follow the ark across Jordan on dry land (Joshua 3). God opens the way for them. This promised land is a sign of what will be – the

kingdom of heaven opened to all believers by the Lord Jesus Christ (the ark), through the waters of baptism into his divine life.

Additionally, God gives Israel the prophets who speak of a restored paradise, the city of Zion, Jerusalem, the city of peace, ruled by the king of righteousness. They tell of the coming Day of the Lord, when all that is opposed to God’s will shall be destroyed.

But here we see the limitation of images; images are but reflections of the real thing. The law is necessary because, even in the promised land, Israel is in wilderness and not in true paradise. The prophetic promises are future events, not yet come to pass In the Old Testament, the true meaning, the full reality, of the images remains partly hidden – seen as in a mirror dimly. Jesus is not yet come.

Adam and Eve, and all of humanity with them, go forth into the wilderness to make their way, guided by signposts of law and prophets, seeking to return to paradise

Contrast with Paganism

The distinction that Crouse brings out between the ancient pagans (the Greeks and the Romans) on the one hand, and the ancient Judaism of the Old Testament on the other, has to do with the very nature of things, the relation of God to the natural world and to human history (remember the first paragraph of Chapter I of Images). All things come from God. They are created by his Word and Spirit, and have their very being in him. In paradise, all creation is what it is in God, and it is all good. For human beings, who are creatures with reason and will (they can think and love and make choices), paradise means that the very essence of their being is to know and love God, which is to know and love all that is.

Nothing exists independently of God. And it is all good. What we call ‘the fall’ (Genesis 3) is the rational will of human beings choosing to turn away from that reality. ‘Evil’ is turning away from the good. But that does not change the reality of the good. But because human beings turn away from the good, choosing to determine the good for themselves (which is a lie), the real good is hidden, or at best dimly discerned, by the eye of the darkened mind. Human experience of the world, then, involves pain and suffering and death, yet all the while dimly perceiving vestiges of goodness and beauty.

Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue further clarifies the distinction between the reality revealed in Genesis and the pagan view of life and the world The Fourth Eclogue speaks of a cycle of ages from the golden age of peace – a paradise described much like Eden – down to the iron age of war. Like the birth, death, and reincarnation of human beings that we saw in the Aeneid, the Fourth Eclogue assumes an ongoing cycle from one state to another and another and back again There is birth and death; there are good times and bad times; there is happiness and sorrow, success and failure; there is the rise and the fall of nations. Human history is a record of the pendulum swinging from one side to the other. For the ancient pagans, that is the reality – the opposition of divine and human, of life and death, of good and evil, of peace and war. It is an opposition that can never be overcome. It is just how it is. This, it seems, is reality.

Crouse has already said – somewhat mysteriously perhaps – that this is the spirituality to which we turn when we lose our uniquely Christian spirituality. If we perceive that the world and life have no inherent meaning, no inherent goodness or purpose, then they are what we make them. It all depends on us, on our striving for something better, on our efforts and our virtues. Religion, if one must have that, becomes likewise something formed by human desire within human limits. It may take the form of seeking social justice and the righting of the wrongs of history. It may take the form of seeking after intense emotional experience It may take the form of seeking a place of personal belonging, a self-affirming community. It may take the form of seeking the spiritual in the beauty and glory of nature What it cannot do is find a true and lasting union of divine and human, where everything is “very good” (Genesis 1:31)

THE OLD TESTAMENT

Topics for Group Discussion on Images of Pilgrimage Chapter 2

1. Take the time to read the first two or three chapters of Genesis so they are freshly in mind Then reread the first paragraph of Chapter I of Images of Pilgrimage

2. Explore the idea of ‘Word’

a. How is the Word of God present in the Genesis account of creation?

b. Where else do we find “word’ used in the Bible? How does this help understand who the Son of God is? (e.g. John 1; Hebrews 1; Psalm 119)

c. How does this inform what we mean when call the Bible itself the ‘Word of God’?

3. Explore the idea of Spirit

a. What is the activity of the Spirit of God in Genesis?

b. Elsewhere in the Bible?

4. If we remove the idea of Word and Spirit ordering and enlivening the natural world, what are we left with? Is there an alternative?

5. Explore the idea of the human being as in the image and likeness of God. How is man a reflection of God the Father, Word and Spirit? What does it mean to say that the human creature is “nature’s priest”? Discuss the particular activities that Crouse draws from the account in Genesis 2.

6. Discuss the fall and the exile from paradise. How does this happen in God’s “very good” creation? Who or what is to blame? What changes, and what does not change?

• A useful image in thinking about this is Chapter 13 of C.S. Lewis’s The Last Battle, in which the dwarves do not see the bright and beautiful paradise they are in the midst of, but instead experience only an unpleasant, dark and smelly stable. They are unaware even of Aslan, the Christ figure, in their midst. Lewis brilliantly gives the chapter the title “How the Dwarves Refuse to Be Taken In”.

7. How does this account of creation and paradise and exile help us to understand fundamental truths about human nature and human experience? In other words, what recognizable reality is revealed through these images?

• Some things to consider:

o Universal human longing for love, joy, peace, justice, immortality.

o The “something divine” in mankind of which Aristotle spoke.

o The sense we have that things are not they way they should be; where does this sense of ‘what should be’ come from?

8. Review the story of the Exodus. How is the story of the outward going forth from Egypt, wandering in the desert, and entering the promised land of Cannan an image of the universal human pilgrimage from slavery to sin to the paradise of eternal life in heaven? In other words, how does the Exodus mirror or reflect the life of the soul?

9. What do the signs (the forma futuri) of the Old Testament signify? What future events that come to pass in the New Testament do they point to? Some things to consider: manna, water, the brazen serpent, the law, the ark, the tabernacle, the pillars of cloud and fire.

10. The prophets are full of images of future hope for Israel. Here are a few to look at and discuss: Exodus 19:5-62; Samuel 7:12-16; Jeremiah 3:17, 30:18; 31: 31-34, 38; Ezekiel 36:33-36; 37: 21-28; 39:25-29; 40-48; Joel 3:17-20; Amos 9:11-15; Obadiah 1:17, 21; Micah 4:1–2; 7:11; Haggai 2:6–10; Zechariah 1:17; 2:1–5; 3:1–8; 6:9–15; 8:3–23.

11. The prophets have many references to the Day of the Lord. Here a few examples to consider: Isaiah 13; Jeremiah 46; Ezekiel 13&30; Zephaniah 1&2; Obadiah 1; Joel 2; Amos 5, Malachi 3&4.

12. Compare Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue to Isaiah 11. The full text of Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue can be found here: http://classics.mit.edu/Virgil/eclogue.4.iv.html.

THE NEW TESTAMENT

Notes on Images of Pilgrimage Chapter 3

Paradise and Wilderness in the Old Testament

Because there is nothing outside God’s will or providence, the wilderness, which is of human making, is also a place of divine grace. The two great stories of wilderness and exile in the Old Testament are the Exodus (Exodus through Deuteronomy) and the Babylonian exile (told in a less systematic way in 2 Kings 24-25, parts of Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, and Daniel). Like other pilgrimage stories, the people come to a new knowledge and a new will through their experience in the wilderness of exile – but only with divine aid. God gives them what they need, even when they do not know what they need. In the Exodus, Israel learns what it means to be God’s people and to follow him and his law. In Babylon, the Jews come to know how to be God’s people in a strange land, and to love and worship him without the temple sacrifices.

The books of the canonical Hebrew Scriptures are grouped into three categories. The first five book are the books of the Law or the Torah, which means the Teaching, (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy). Then there are the books of the Prophets, which include the ‘Former Prophets’ (Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings) and the ‘Latter Prophets’ (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the twelve Minor Prophets). The remaining books, known collectively as the ‘Writings’, include poetry (the Psalms), wisdom literature, and other stories, including the narrative accounts of the return from the Babylonian exile. None of these books is merely historical, though many have an historical element. They are all revelatory of some deeper truth.

There are also later writings that are not part of the Hebrew canon, which means they are not recognized by the Jewish authorities as the word of God. They are treated in different ways by the Christian churches, and sometimes called deuterocanonical or apocryphal. In addition, there are other even later writings which are not part of any canon of scripture, such as the Apocalypse of Baruch.

Apocalypse of Baruch

The Apocalypse of Baruch (also known as 2 Baruch or the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch) appears to have been written around the time Jerusalem fell to the Romans in A.D. 70, which was

also when the books of the New Testament were being written. There is an existing Syriac manuscript of Baruch which dates to the 6th-7th century and is assumed to be a translation from Greek, which was itself likely a translation from the Hebrew.

An apocalypse is a revelation of the ultimate end or purpose of God’s creation according to his will. The word literally means ‘pulling the lid off ’ . Baruch was the scribe of the prophet Jeremiah, but in the Apocalypse of Baruch, Baruch is himself a prophet. The book is set during the time of Jeremiah and the fall of Jerusalem to Nebuchadnezzar and the Chaldeans in 586 B C , but being written centuries later, it is a reflection on those events as signs of things to come.

In the Apocalypse of Baruch, Baruch has a series of visions and revelations. He sees the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, while angels save the sacred vessels by hiding them inside the earth. It is revealed to Baruch that Jerusalem will be rebuilt and then again destroyed, and finally rebuilt for all eternity. Baruch has a dream of a wood destroyed by a vine which is the Messiah. Baruch learns that the Messiah will destroy the godless, but the righteous will be restored and redeemed. The time between the Second Temple (of Ezra and Nehemiah) and the coming of the Messiah is a time covered by a cloud of darkness.

This is the time of which Crouse speaks, when “the shepherds of Israel have perished, and the lamps which gave light are extinguished” (2 Baruch 77:13). There are no true kings to lead the people in the paths of righteousness, and the prophets are silent. Yet it is in the midst of this darkness that the people remember God and his promise of a Messiah – an anointed king who will save them. There is something good coming out of the wilderness – the outer darkness brings inner enlightenment.

The text of the Apocalypse of Baruch can be found here: http://wesley.nnu.edu/sermonsessays-books/noncanonical-literature/noncanonical-literature-ot-pseudepigrapha/the-book-of-theapocalypse-of-baruch-the-son-of-neriah-or-2-baruch/

The Essenes

The Essenes were a Jewish sect who emerged during the time of the Hasmonean dynasty (2nd century B.C.) and who did not accept the legitimacy of the king-priests. Josephus, living during the 1st century A.D., lists the Essenes along with the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Zealots as one of the sects of Judaism in his time, saying that there were about 4000 Essenes in Judaea then The Roman historian Pliny places the Essenes primarily in a community along the Dead Sea, where the remnants of the Qumran settlement and the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in the 1950s

The Essenes were devout observers of the Mosaic law who lived ascetic, communal lives, with regular ritual cleansing as an important part of their religious observance. They protected the sacred texts, especially those of the prophets, and believed in the coming of a Messiah who would usher in a kingdom of righteousness. John the Baptist, who preaches the baptism of repentance in the new Testament is an Essene-like figure, with his asceticism, Messianic expectations, and time spent living in the wilderness.

The New Testament

The books of the New Testament also fall into three categories. First, there are the four Gospels (Matthew Mark, Luke and John), which tell the story of the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, followed by the Acts of the Apostles, which continues the narrative with Christ’s ascension into heaven, the coming of the Holy Ghost at Pentecost and the spread of the Church through the activity of the Spirit-led apostles Then there are the epistles, which are letters written by the apostles Paul, Peter, James, John and Jude to church communities and individuals, addressing matters of salvation doctrine, as well as what it means to be followers of Jesus, the body of Christ, the Church. Finally there is the Revelation of Saint John the Divine, an apocalyptic book about the end of time, the second coming of Christ in glory, and the heavenly Jerusalem Thus the Bible as a whole embraces all of time from the genesis of the world (going forth from God) to the renewal of the whole cosmos at the end of time (returning to God)

The message of the New Testament is quite extraordinary. The return to paradise is not a return to Eden or a Golden Age. There can be no return to innocence from the knowledge of good and evil. The return to paradise is, in fact, a return to the origin of all things, into God himself. Paradise is not a natural state, but a supernatural one. It is not earthly, but heavenly. Humankind is raised by divine grace to “be as gods”, not by hubris, nor by heroism, nor by striving, but through humility and obedience.

How can this thing be? Remember the second paragraph of Chapter I of Images of Pilgrimage: the Son of God goes forth into the world in the Incarnation, taking on human flesh and human nature in the person of Jesus Christ. God enters into his creation as a human being in a particular time and place in human history. Jesus Christ, God and man is in very person the way, the truth and the life. He draws all things back to God, returning in his resurrected humanity to the Father in his glorious Ascension. Following Jesus means following him through death to eternal life into the very Godhead. That is the message of the Gospel: the pilgrimage to glory.

It is such an extraordinary message that it seems impossible to believe. And yet belief in Jesus Christ as the God-man who is saviour of the world became the dominant religion of Europe within a few centuries, and it continues to gain converts even in our skeptical technological age. Christian apologists (such as C.S. Lewis, Peter Kreeft, and G.K. Chesterton) have argued a ‘trilemma’, which states that there are three possibilities: Jesus was a liar (and therefore not good); Jesus was a lunatic (and therefore not rational); or Jesus is in fact the Lord.

To be a Christian is to follow Christ, and believing this most extraordinary message. But that faith does not require a suspension of reason, and Crouse’s life was dedicated to explicating the truth in this extraordinary message, as far as human reason can delve into eternal reality

Conflated images

There are three things to consider here about redemption: what has been done, what is being done, and what is yet to be fulfilled. Thus at one and the same time, God’s kingdom is come, and yet we pray “Thy kingdom come”. As Christians in the world, we are at once redeemed and yet sinners – simul justus et peccator. The work is done (“It is finished,” Jesus says in John 19:30),

yet we on earth continue to be subject to temptation and travail, awaiting the final fulfillment at the end of time. So the images of pilgrimage and home, of wilderness and paradise, become conflated and brought together. What was seen dimly in the Old Testament as a future possibility becomes a present reality in the New Testament: paradise is here in the midst of the wilderness, and yet there is still wilderness.

Crouse gives us three examples of the conflation of images in the New Testament: Jesus’s temptations, the feeding miracles, and Pentecost (p. 41), and then he bids us think about the cross.

The Temptations of Christ

The temptations of Christ are recounted in Matthew 4 and Luke 4, and briefly in Mark 1. They are part of the sequence of events leading up to the beginning of Jesus’s ministry. First, we are told that Jesus is baptised in the Jordan by his cousin John. Baptism by John in the Jordan was an outward sign of the spiritual cleansing that comes from penitence. Penitence is the necessary first step in the turn back to God (and thus to paradise). It is the acknowledgment of our disobedience to the divine will – of our failing to will the good that is God. Secondly, in each of the gospel accounts, the Holy Spirit descends upon Jesus “like a dove” (Matthew 3:16, Mark 1:10, Luke 3:22) and a voice is heard saying “Thou art my beloved Son; in whom I am well pleased.” (Matt. 3:17, Mark 1:11, Luke 3:22). It is then that, “being full of the Holy Ghost”, Jesus is “led by the Spirit into the wilderness” (Luke 4:1).

This is how the work of redeeming love begins. Jesus, the God-man (he is both man and God, the incarnate Word), has no personal sin of which to repent, yet he offers himself to John’s baptism of repentance. He is then led by the Spirit into the wilderness, where he fasts for forty days. Here we see the humanity of Jesus entering fully into the wilderness of human need and temptation. We see this again at the end of his life, when he enters into the fullness of humiliation, desolation and death, even descending into hell (see the Apostles’ Creed). God knows the full reality of human experience, including human suffering and weakness and death.

There are two things that emerge from this story. One is the human experience. Jesus stands fast in obedience to the will of the Father despite his need and his hunger. On behalf of all humanity, he does what other human beings cannot do: he freely wills the divine will. The other thing we see is the divine presence Jesus obeys the word of God because he knows the word of God The words, the laws, the testimonies, the precepts have already been given. They are present to him and he knows them. Jesus answers the devil from the Holy Scriptures with the words Moses speaks in Deuteronomy 8:3, 6:16, and 6:13. In doing so, we see Moses and the law as forma futuri, and we also see Jesus as the fulfillment of the law and the prophets.

Thus for Jesus, paradise is present in the wilderness. Word and the Spirit are present in him, the angels minister to him, and wild beasts, according to Mark, are with him. This recalls the Garden of Eden before the fall, and Isaiah 11 which says, “The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.” (Isaiah 11:6). Jesus is the New Adam, who obeys rather than

disobeys, and who experiences paradise in the wilderness, rather than wilderness in paradise. Angels assist him, rather than obstruct him; nature befriends him instead of being a curse to him.

Paradise abides in the will of God. The starting point to entering paradise, or finding paradise, is the humility which submits to the divine will. That will can be known (at least in part) because it has been revealed to us. God wills that we know him; that is why he has given us his word written and his Word Incarnate. This is the beginning of the way.

Miracles of Feeding

Crouse’s second example of the conflation of the images of wilderness and paradise come from the two miracles of feeding in the gospels The feeding of 5000 people from five loaves and two fishes is recorded in all four gospels – Matthew 14:13-21; Mark 6:31-44; Luke 9:12-17; John 6:1-14. The feeding of 4000 with seven loaves and a few small fish is reported in Matthew 15:3239 and Mark 8:1-9. In both cases, a great crowd of people has gathered in the desert wilderness to hear Jesus teach and to be healed, and there is no food nearby except for the few loaves and fishes. Yet even after those loaves and fishes are passed around to the multitude of people, there is a great abundance remaining.

If the temptations of Christ point to his humanity and his example of humble obedience to the divine will (the antidote to human sin), then the miraculous feedings point to his divinity, and remind us that he is the Bread of Heaven; he is the Word of God by which we are to live. His response to Satan in the first temptation to turn stones into bread was, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” The feeding miracles are signs that Jesus is the very Word of God; he is spiritual nourishment for every human need. He is the food of paradise, which is good to eat and which is unlimited.

The full meaning of these miracles becomes clear at the Last Supper and the events that follow – the arrest, trial, crucifixion, death and resurrection of Jesus. The Son of God descended from the Father and became incarnate as Jesus of Nazareth in order to die for the sake of all mankind. “This is my body given for you.” (Luke 22:19). He is the Word and the Lord whose body is a sacrificial offering to save humanity from the state of alienation from God caused by disobedience (sin). He reconciles humanity and God fully and completely. By dying, Jesus overcomes death and rises to new life. His person is the union of divine and human, and those who are in him are in God. They are given eternal life They become as gods.

It is faith in the divine grace of complete self-giving love, and hope that we can be united with that love through our faith in that redeeming sacrifice, that directs the steps of the Christian pilgrim along the way.

Pentecost

Crouse’s third example of the conflation of the images of wilderness and paradise is Pentecost. The Jewish Pentecost celebrated the giving of the law to Moses, and it was on the day of the feast of Pentecost, fifty days after Jesus’s resurrection from the dead and ten days after his ascension, that the Holy Spirit descended upon the church, upon Jesus’s disciples. The disciples then, filled

with the Spirit, are led forth by the Spirit to preach the Word of salvation to the multitude who have gathered from many nations, speaking many different languages. The miracle here is that all who hear, hear the words as if in their own language. They understand the words. The confusion of tongues which was a result of human pride and sin is now overcome by the grace of the Spirit. It is the Spirit of love which brings about unity where there was division, understanding where there was confusion, order where there was chaos.

In the Gospel according to Saint John, the events of the Last Supper are recorded in chapters 13-17. Chapters 14-16 are a continuous speech by Jesus to the eleven disciples (Judas having left by this point) known as ‘the last discourse’ In this speech, Jesus is teaching his closest followers the meaning of the events that are about to occur. Jesus will leave, but he will return; he will die but he will rise again on the third day; he will leave again, ascending into heaven in his return to the Father; and he will return once more in glory at the end of time. The way to eternal life is through death. The way to joy is through sorrow. Not as a simple opposition – not now one thing and now another as the pendulum swings to and fro. Rather, sorrow is taken up and remade into joy. Death is taken up and remade into new life. Wilderness is taken up and remade into everlasting paradise.

But we exist now in an interim. We no longer have the incarnate Lord in our presence in the way that the apostles did. But we have his words, we have the sacraments he commanded, and we have the Spirit-filled church. This is the way of love, spoken by love, commanded by love, given in love.

The Cross

It is in the cross that the conflation of wilderness and paradise is seen most fully. “The hour is come, that the Son of man should be glorified.” (John 12: 23). “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.” (John 12:36). Crucifixion was a painful death and a public humiliation. Death itself is the ultimate desolation and wilderness. And yet this death on the cross is Jesus’s glorification. It is that death that draws people to believe in him. He endures the pain and humiliation and death out of love. That in itself is extraordinary. But then he rises again from the dead, not like the reincarnated souls that drink of Lethe and are reborn in Virgil’s Aeneid, but in a body that can ascend into heaven and “sit on the right hand of the Father” (Nicene Creed). Divine grace turns death into new life and the cross into the tree of glory.

Thus the cross is conflated with the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden – the fruit of which is eternal life. Here is one of the hymns to the cross written by Venantius Fortunatus (530-609), often sung during Holy Week The English text is from The English Hymnal, where it appears at two separate hymns, each with a doxology to the Holy Trinity added at the end, one translated by Percy Dearmer, and the other by John Mason Neale. Another hymn by Fortunatus is Vexilla regis, which can be found here: https://www.preces-latinae.org/thesaurus/Hymni/Vexilla.html

Sing, my tongue, the glorious battle, sing the ending of the fray, o’er the cross, the victor ’s trophy, sound the loud triumphant lay: tell how Christ, the world’s Redeemer, as a victim won the day.

God in pity saw man fallen, shamed and sunk in misery, when he fell on death by tasting fruit of the forbidden tree: then another tree was chosen which the world from death should free.

Thus the scheme of our salvation was of old in order laid, That the manifold deceiver’s art by art might be outweighed, And the lure the foe put forward into means of healing made.

Therefore when the appointed fullness of the holy time was come, he was sent who maketh all things forth from God’s eternal home: thus he came to earth, incarnate, offspring of a maiden’s womb.

Thirty years among us dwelling, now at length his hour fulfilled, born for this, he meets his Passion, for that this he freely willed, on the cross the Lamb is lifted, where his life-blood shall be spilled.

He endured the nails, the spitting, vinegar, and spear, and reed; From that holy body broken blood and water forth proceed: Earth, and stars, and sky, and ocean by that flood from stain are freed.

Faithful cross! Above all other, one and only noble tree! None in foliage, none in blossom,

none in fruit thy peer may be; Sweetest wood and sweetest iron! Sweetest weight is hung on thee!

Bend thy boughs, O Tree of Glory! Thy relaxing sinews bend; For awhile the ancient rigour that thy birth bestowed, suspend; And the King of heavenly beauty on thy bosom gently tend!

Thou alone wast counted worthy this world’s ransom to uphold; For a shipwreck’d race preparing harbour, like the Ark of old; with the sacred blood anointed from the smitten Lamb that roll’d.

To the Trinity be glory

Everlasting, as is meet; Equal to the Father, equal To the Son, and Paraclete; Trinal Unity, Whose praises All created things repeat. Amen

Eschatology

Eschatology comes from the Greek for ‘last’, and refers to the final end of humankind and the consummation, or fulfillment, of the entire created order. Eschatology (p. 44) looks toward the Second Coming of Christ in glory “to judge both the quick (living) and the dead”. The Last Judgment is then followed by “the resurrection of the dead” (Nicene Creed) or “the resurrection of the body” (Apostles’ Creed), and “the life of the world to come” (Nicene Creed) or “everlasting life” (Apostles’ Creed)

The life of the world to come is described in the Book of Revelation as “a new heaven and a new earth”, a “Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband ” (Revelation 21:1-2) Jesus speaks about the “end times” in Matthew 24 and Mark 13, and there are various Old Testament passages (such as Isaiah 24-27 and 56-55; Joel; Zechariah 9-14, and various passages in Ezekiel, as well as the end of the book of Daniel) which also speak to this.

“Futurist” eschatology awaits these further events, when all is made anew and all of creation returns to the Father. Saint Paul says, “For we know that the whole creation groans and travails in pain together until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the

Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.” (Romans 8:22-23).

Crouse’s argument here is that futurist eschatology only seems to be in contradiction to “realised” eschatology, which would say that Jesus has already accomplished his work and the rebirth of the world is the ongoing work of his disciples. Crouse calls this a “spiritual tension”. It is not either/or, but both are held together in a present tension that awaits a final consummation If we look back at Chapter II of Images and remember that paradise abides everlastingly and unchangeably in God, and now, in Chapter III, Crouse points us to Jesus Christ as the one who unites divine and human natures in himself, we can say there is a “realised” (i.e. made real) reconciliation and unity of humankind and God. But our lives in the world are not perfect love and harmony. We still experience the wilderness of alienation from God, from one another, and from the natural world, waiting, as Paul says, upon the final adoption, when we dwell with God as sons and daughters

The Interim

This interim is of critical importance to us because it is where we are; it is where we live, in our physical bodies and our broken spirits, in a wilderness of trials, temptations, and distractions. The good news is that that brokenness is not all there is. And that things are not what they seem. Paradise is both present here and now and is also a future fulfillment. Just as the cross of death becomes the tree of life, divine grace transforms us in the very living out of our lives.

Faith in Jesus Christ means faith in his redeeming love. Faith is a kind of knowing – if we believe it, we know it to be true. Faith is a participation in the eternal paradise abiding in God. Faith means believing in the word written and the Word Incarnate, in the logos that makes all knowledge possible.

Hope is the expectation of the fulfillment of the promises of Word and Spirit. If we know (by faith) “that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them that are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28), then we have a sure and certain hope in that good end. Trial and tribulation cease to be obstacles to the end, and become instead the means to the end.

Our response, then to what we believe in and what we hope for, is love. This is the gift of the Spirit. This is what unites. Yet in this interim, the “meanwhile”, love must be commanded. It does not come easily or naturally. “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another.” (John 13:34). This now becomes the question. How do we love God and one another?

Justification and Sanctification

The theological terms of justification and sanctification speak to this conflation of the images of wilderness and paradise. Justification is a word we get from Saint Paul and his epistles. Human beings are saved by grace because of the merits of Jesus Christ, and not because of our own merits. Only Jesus is righteous, and his righteousness is imputed to those who have faith in him. That means that God counts those who believe in Christ as just, not because they are righteous but

because Jesus is righteous. Salvation, therefore, is an undeserved gift – merited by Jesus on our behalf, and it is a finished work. There is nothing we can do to add to it.

However, there must also be a subjective response to that objective reality if it to be meaningful to us. Something must happen within us. This is what is meant by the term ‘sanctification’. The first thing to happen in us is that we believe. Faith is an act of assent to a revealed truth. Something in the human soul (the logos within us) responds to the Word given to it. This awakens a sure and certain hope in the good news. From faith in Christ and hope in his promises, arises the desire to follow him, to become like him The soul responds to divine love with love. Spirit speaks to spirit. The Christian pilgrimage to God is a pilgrimage of love; becoming like Christ is the movement of love in the soul toward the love that is its good and true end.

This pilgrimage is intensely personal but it is not solitary Love is, by nature, inclusive. It involves others, and so is necessarily communal. Yet Jesus has to command it (see John 13:34). This is the tension of which Crouse speaks. Our faith is imperfect. Our love is imperfect. Word and Spirit are present, but they are imperfectly known and imperfectly experienced by us. The pilgrimage of faith, hope and love is also a pilgrimage into faith, hope and love, led by the Spirit. It is the way of humility, repentance, faith and love.

THE NEW TESTAMENT

Topics for Group Discussion on Images of Pilgrimage Chapter 3

1. Discuss the various ways that Exodus foreshadows the gospel.

2. Read the three gospel accounts of the temptations of Christ, and discuss the temptations. Here are some ideas to fuel discussion.

a. Temptation is never temptation to something evil per se. Evil does not tempt us. Temptation is always to something we perceive as somehow good. What is the perceived “good” in each of the temptations? Why is that “good” rejected by Jesus? What is the higher or greater good that he knows?

b. How do the three temptations represent three kinds of temptations to which human beings are prone?

c. Compare the temptations of Christ and their outcome with the temptation of Adam and Eve and its outcome.

3. Consider the first three examples of conflation: the temptations, the feeding miracles, and the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost as a series. Why does Crouse choose these three examples of conflation? One might think about them as examples of objective actions: obedience, grace, love. One might also think about them in terms of the interior movement of the soul to God in penitence, faith, and love.

4. Why does Crouse choose to emphasize the conflation of the images of wilderness and paradise in this chapter? What are possible dangers with this language? Why is it essential that we recognize that, while conflated, wilderness and paradise remain distinct?

5. Read aloud (or better, sing) the words of the translation of Fortunatus’s hymn Pange, lingua What do the images of the hymn reveal about the cross and Jesus Christ?

6. But what is the significance of the cross for the life of the Christian?

7. Examine and discuss the imagery of the apse mosaic of San Clemente in Rome which Crouse describes. Here are a couple sources for images: https://www.wga.hu/html_m/zgothic/mosaics/1clement/index.html, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rom,_Basilika_San_Clemente,_Apsis_1.jpg# /media/File:Rom,_Basilika_San_Clemente,_Apsis_1.jpg

8. Discuss the relation of justification and sanctification, the objective and the subjective, the exterior and the interior in the life of the Christian soul.

SAINT AUGUSTINE

Notes on Images of Pilgrimage Chapter 4

Saint Augustine of Hippo

Aurelius Augustinus was born in North Africa (in what is now Algeria) in 354 A scholar and teacher of rhetoric, he began a philosophic search for truth as a young man, which eventually culminated in his embrace of the Christian faith and his baptism at the age of thirty-three by Ambrose, the Bishop of Milan Augustine was ordained to the priesthood and became the Bishop of Hippo, dying in Hippo in 430, as an invading tribe of Vandals were besieging the city Augustine lived during the late Roman Empire, when, after centuries of unease punctuated by moments of persecution, Christianity had become the official religion of the empire. But the glorious empire about which Virgil had written so idealistically and hopefully 400 years earlier, the eternal Rome that would rule the world in peace and justice, was passing away. Augustine, himself, was acutely aware of the limitations of the earthly city and of human endeavour. Yet Augustine, living at the end of an era, became the theologian who defined western Christian spirituality going forward.

In addition to his numerous works on theology, doctrine and the scriptures, Augustine wrote two particularly popular works, his Confessions and the City of God. How Augustine transformed western Christian spirituality is evident from the very premises of these two works. The Confessions, as the title suggests, is a kind of autobiography – and thus a personal pilgrimage –but as Crouse says, it is actually a reflection on the nature of the soul and of the relation of the soul to God. Similarly, the City of God, which sets out to defend Christians against pagan claims that Christianity is responsible for sack of Rome (in 410), is actually a reflection of the activity of divine Word and Spirit in the history (or pilgrimage) of the human race.

Crouse begins this chapter with a very Augustinian statement: “the whole of Christian history [is] an exegesis, in thought and action, of the word of God. Or, perhaps, we might even better call it an eisegesis – a ‘reading in’ of ourselves into the word and will of God . . .” (p. 48) The whole of history, from Genesis onward, is an ongoing revelation of God himself. Crouse recalls us to the significance of Genesis when he calls Christian history an eisegesis, “a reading in of ourselves into the word and will of God.” If God is the fundamental reality – He is what is – then he is also our fundamental reality. If we are in God’s image, then two things are true: in knowing God, we know

ourselves; and in knowing ourselves, we know God. Thus with Augustine we see this inward pilgrimage, going into the soul itself in order to move upward to God.

The Early Church

Crouse quotes from several of the Church Fathers, the men who formulated doctrine in the early centuries of the Christian Church. Irenaeus Bishop of Lyon, and the unknown author of the Epistle to Diognetus, and Theophilus Bishop of Antioch all lived in the 2nd century Clement and Origen were both theologians of the Alexandrian school in Egypt in the late 2nd and early 3rd centuries. Gregory Bishop of Nyssa lived after the Council of Nicaea in the 4th century, closer to the time of Augustine but in the Greek-speaking world of Cappadocia.

Crouse points us to images of wilderness and paradise in the teaching of the early church Many of the early Church Fathers saw the sufferings of life (the wilderness), which are consequences of the sin of Adam, as punishment for that sin, and the promised paradise (the New Jerusalem of the Book of Revelation) as a restoration of the original paradise – a return to original beatitude of Eden. The Church itself is an image of that original paradise, a community of brotherly love in the midst of the wilderness of the world. This seemed to leave two alternatives for the Christian life in the world. On the one hand, there was what we might a “this-worldly” view, expressed by people like the historian Eusebius, in which Christian life is lived in the context of a Christian empire, where Christian emperor acts as the regent of Christ on earth, a mediator between Christ and the world, creating a reformed Christian society. On the other hand, there was the “otherworldly” view, in which the recovery of paradise could occur only in the life of prayer and contemplation, removed entirely from worldly affairs.

For Augustine, who was witnessing the collapse of empire, the failure of earthly peace and justice, neither of these answers was adequate to the question of what it means to be a redeemed sinner on a spiritual pilgrimage through a temporal world to an eternal end.

In melius renovabimur

Crouse repeatedly uses Augustine’s phrase “in melius renovabimur”, and so the Latin demands our attention. The ending ‘ -bimur’ means ‘we will be’ The root of the verb, then, is ‘ renov‘ , which is the root of the English word ‘renovate’. It can be translated as ‘we will be made anew’ or ‘we will be renovated’. Not restored, not made back into what we were before, but renovated. And more importantly, renovated ‘in melius’ – ‘into something better ’. Melius is the comparative of bonus, ‘good’ The creation of humankind was good. Creation as a whole was very good. But the re-creation of the paradise prepared for humanity by Christ is even better than very good, even better than Eden. This is what Augustine illuminates for us: the end – i.e. paradise – is not the same as the beginning, but better.

Felix culpa

Hence at this point, Crouse introduces the felix culpa, the ‘happy fault’ referred to in the Easter Exultet. Here is the quotation from page 52 of Images of Pilgrimage:

O truly necessary sin of Adam, which by the death of Christ is done away!

O happy fault, which merited such and so great a Redeemer!

The Exultet is a hymn of praise sung after the lighting of the Paschal candle at the Easter Vigil It praises the new light of Christ’s resurrection (signified by the candle), which banishes all the darkness of sin, and shines upon a renewed and transformed humanity In the midst of the hymn we find the quoted words, which refer, not only to the “necessary sin of Adam”, but to the “happy fault”. This is a strange and difficult concept. How can sin, which is the fall of all creation away from its creator, be in any way a happy thing? How can sin, which is evil, possibly result in anything good?

The human creature was created rational and free, created to know and to love and to will what is good. The sin of Adam and Eve is the choice (the act of the free will) to love self (that they might “be as gods”) against the love of God. They exercised their freedom of will (the “potencies of will” with which they were created) against God and so against their own good, instead of in accord with God’s will which is absolutely good. The consequence for humankind is the loss of that good, the exile of wilderness.

In the Gospel, we see Jesus Christ (whom Paul calls the New Adam) exercise the same potencies of will differently. Even when sorely tempted, to the point of experiencing the desolation of the absence of God on the cross, he wills what God wills. In doing so – in dying on the cross and rising again from the dead – Christ does more than restore humanity. He returns to the Father as the resurrected incarnate Word – a union of divine nature and human nature. He thus transforms humanity. He raises created humanity out of abandonment and death to the divine life. He gives to humankind the possibility to be like him, to be as gods, but now through God’s act and will rather than in opposition to it; something received from God rather than something humanly accomplished We are made into something better. This is the happy (felix) end of sin (culpa), an end brought about by God’s love. The same Love that created humankind saves it from itself. The same Love that creates out of nothing brings good out of sin and evil.

However, we must not think that Adam’s sin is the cause of divine redemption. Augustine is quite clear that neither God’s mind nor his will are changed in any way by human action (See City of God XIV. 11) But from the human perspective, sin is what precipitates the exile into the wilderness. Wilderness, however, is not simply wilderness. It is where we encounter grace. It is only when we are hungry that we can be filled. It is only when we know we are needy that we see the proffered helping hand. It is because of the wilderness that we need redemption, and it is in the wilderness that we are redeemed and angels minister to us. It is through sin and its consequences, not despite them, that we know and love God’s goodness. The end (being made into something better) is both future and present.

Amor

In the City of God, Augustine distinguishes between the earthly city and the city of God on the basis of love, or amor in Latin. “Accordingly, two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly by the love of self, even to the contempt of God; the heavenly by the love of God, even to the contempt of self. The former, in a word, glories in itself, the latter in the Lord.” (City of God, XIV. 28). It is not one’s outward actions that determines one’s citizenship and one’s final end; it is the state of the heart – what we love, our amor

Love, or amor, is what moves us to seek any good. We seek something because we desire it, and we desire it because it seems to us to be good. This can be as simple a thing as putting on a sweater because we want to be warm, or buying a car because we desire the freedom of mobility that it will provide. We perceive (whether rightly or wrongly) that something will increase our well-being or happiness, and so we pursue the good end we desire.

In order to love something, then, there must first be a perception of the goodness of that thing. My reason or judgment tells me that this thing is good and therefore desirable, so I choose to pursue it. Thus, Crouse says, “amor is the activity of the rational will.” (p. 55). Both reason (in the judgement) and will (in the decision to act) are involved. Human beings are created to know and love what is good. That is at the very essence of our being. So Augustine says, “My love is my weight; whithersoever I am moved, I am moved there by love.” (Confessions XIII. ix.10; Images p. 54.)

When we think of love as an activity, we realize that love is not simply an emotion. Emotions are passive, which is why we call them passions, but love is active. Love might involve feelings, but the feeling is not the love; it is merely something that accompanies the love. This is reinforced when we say that love is an activity of the rational will. It involves judgment and choice. It is, in fact, the activity of spirit, which by its very nature “aspires to the infinite and absolute good” (p. 54) which created it and of which it is an image.

We can easily see then, how we make bad choices. Our judgment is imperfect, and our understanding limited, so our love is capable of erring. We choose what we think is good, but it might not be the best or highest good. For instance, we might choose personal safety over loyalty, and so betray a friend. We might choose a high paying job only to find ourselves in a position that compromises other things we value, like time with our families We might lie or cheat to get some honour or reward we want. By making such choices, we become trapped by them and their consequences.

In Augustine’s words “a rightly directed will is love in a good sense and perverted will is love in a bad sense.” (City of God, XIV. 7) Conversion, then, is an act of will, turning away from those things that deliver only a finite or limited goodness, and turning toward a good that is infinite and perfect. Spiritual pilgrimage is the ongoing redirecting of love

From what is exterior to what is interior

Augustine’s examination of history, his observation of the culture of his own time, and his personal experience all revealed to him that the amor which is of the essence of the human soul

fails to find its rest even in the greatest and most glorious accomplishments of human achievement, and so the restless soul searches for that missing something in all kinds of outward experiences that might provide that missing something – in pleasure, in adventure, in religious experience, in various occupations that might provide some meaning.

In Book VII of his Confessions, Augustine tells us that his own restless searching eventually brought him to the books of the Neo-Platonists, which bid him to turn his attention away from the external changeable things around him and turn inward (p. 56), contemplating the soul itself and the power of the soul to think about the ever-changing external world He discovers in his own soul the presence of an eternal unchanging reality which is able to make sense of the changing world. There is in the human soul, in the human mind, something that can makes sense of things.

As human beings, we are constantly learning. How do we do that? How do we go from not knowing to knowing? The ancient philosophers (Plato, Aristotle, the Neo-Platonists, for instance) would say that we begin with what we do know, and what we know first are those things we know through our senses. So for example, in the teaching of mathematics to children, teachers begin with concrete physical objects to teach the abstract concept of number. Through repeated handling or observation of physical objects, children learn that ‘three’ can be applied to three apples or three books or three people, and that the idea of ‘three’ does not change or go away when the objects change or go away. There is an abiding, universal and objective idea that exists in the mind (in this example, it is the idea of ‘threeness’), and that idea is not something external to the mind. My idea of threeness is not different from your idea of threeness, so it is an objective truth. It applies at all times and in all places, so it is a universal truth. It does not change – it can never become fourness and still be threeness – so it is an eternal truth. This idea is present in the child’s mind, but the child must discover it (or recollect it, as Plato would say) for himself or herself.

The very fact that we can know any truth at all means that the logos, which is what gives order and meaning and purpose and truth and goodness and being to all creation, is present in us and to us.

From what is interior to what is superior.

Augustine describes a neo-platonic ascent to God, which begins with this turning inward to find the logos within, and in contemplating the source and ground of that power of human reason to ascend to the “soul’s divine illuminating principle” (p. 56), the divine logos Through his contemplation, Augustine rises, in his mind, to a vision of God, which is both satisfying in the sense that he knows God to be that in which alone his amor can rest, and also profoundly unsatisfactory, because it is but a fleeting vision. God is stable, but the soul is not – the soul-in-abody is limited by the demands of that body. At this point, what emerges is an opposition between body and spirit, human and divine, mortal and eternal, finite and infinite It is the pagan impasse. Amor, the desire and aspiration for union with the beloved (God) is frustrated

This experience leaves Augustine with a memory, but also a realization. It belongs to the nature of the soul to desire “to see directly that eternal Truth, the ground of the being and intelligibility of all created things, and to know and love all things in that one Truth, and only there,

is the final goal of the soul’s ascent.” (p. 56). How can we desire God unless we know him, and how can we know him unless we have deep within us a memory of him, a memory of the paradise for which we yearn? On the one hand, there is this realization that we are made to know and love “that eternal Truth . . . and all things in that one Truth”, and on the other hand, there is the sheer impossibility of reaching that end by our power.

These apparent oppositions of divine and human, and eternal and finite, can only be overcome by someone with infinite power, one for whom the impossible is possible The impasse can be mediated only by one who is both divine and human, who can raise the mortal to immortality, the finite to eternity. When Augustine turns to the New Testament, he reads about just such a mediator. In the Prologue to Saint John’s Gospel (John 1), he reads what he found in the books of the NeoPlatonists: “In the beginning was the Word (Logos) . In him was life; and the life was the light of men”. But he also finds in the Gospel something which is entirely absent from the books of the Neo-Platonists: “and the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. . . . as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name . . . . And of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace.” In the Incarnation, the divine Word, or Logos, came down from heaven to become man so that humanity might rise with him into God. Here in the person of Jesus Christ is the mediator who is the way to paradise.

This mediation between God and humankind, between eternal divine being and finite human being comes from God. It is not the result of human striving, though it is the end or object of human aspiration. It is given, just as life is given. It is a gift of grace, from the Love which creates and sustains the cosmos, and which draws all things back to himself.

Back to Genesis

Augustine concludes his Confessions with a reflection on Genesis. He calls the eternal Word (the logos, who becomes incarnate in Jesus Christ) the “principium of creation” (p. 57). In the Latin Bible, Genesis and the Gospel of John both begin with the words ‘In principium’, which is translated as “In the Beginning”. The principium (the ‘beginning’, the principle of creation) is the divine Word. He is in the cosmos and the cosmos is in him. But more particularly, the divine Word is in humankind which is created in his image, and humankind is in him. The true and proper homeland (patria) of humanity is in him. The Word, then, is the Beginning; he is the Way, and he is the End All of creation finds its end in its beginning, and all created things love that end according to their own nature. For human beings, rational creatures, there is a conscious knowing of the principle (the principium) in the self-knowing of the soul. From the knowing proceeds love. We love God as the source and principle and end of our very being The end for humankind is not a return to Eden, but a return into God, as our proper abode, our true home, where we belong and can find our rest.

We hold within our souls a memory, however dim, of that end, but because we see as in mirror dimly, we need to be instructed and redirected – we need the word of God written, and the Word made flesh, whom we also receive through the written account of him. What exists outside us in

time and space directs us to look within us. Augustine, reflecting on the human soul, sees in human memory, understanding and will the image of the divine Trinity.

This deepens our understanding of Christian spirituality. There is both an “other-worldly” and a “this-worldly” aspect to it. The ultimate end is an other-worldly end, in which the human soul finds its rest in an eternal union of love with the divine Being, Wisdom and Love. There we are perfect; we know perfectly and we love perfectly. But that union is also a “this-worldly” reality

We know by faith that we are held in that eternal being, wisdom, and love. The heavenly city, the City of God, has an earthly reality that is distinct from the earthly city, and is defined by the love of God. But there is no Christian utopia in the world. The potencies of will in created humanity mean that there will always be those who direct their wills against God.

It is, therefore, not in the external and outward forms that we will find our paradise, but within our souls. The Church is there to instruct and to guide us through word and sacrament, but the movement of the soul Godward is an interior movement of amor – of willing our true end.

SAINT AUGUSTINE

Topics for Group Discussion on Images of Pilgrimage Chapter 4

1. Discuss what Augustine means by amor. What does it mean to say that amor is the rational activity of the soul? How is love rational? How is it an activity? Think about what is involved in making a choice: there is the rational perception of some good, desire for that good, deliberation about the means to achieve the good, and an act of will

2. An important point in Augustinian spirituality is that the paradise toward which we are in pilgrimage is an end which is better than the beginning (Eden). What is meant the phrase the phrase in melius renovabimur – we will be made into something better? How is Heaven better than Eden?

3. How does Augustine deepen our understanding of the images of wilderness and paradise? How are wilderness and pilgrimage connected to one another? Looking back to the last chapter on the New Testament, how does Augustine clarify for us how and in what sense there can be any conflation of the images?

4. How does Augustine elucidate what is divine in the human soul? How does this help us understand the imago dei (the image of God) in humankind?

5. What is meant by the felix culpa, the happy fault? Explore what this means. One might consider, for instance, why we call Good Friday ‘good’.

6. Augustine by no means rejects the images of scripture. On the contrary, he stays with them, and penetrates them to understand them. Discuss how theological explication (from people like Augustine and Robert Crouse) helps us avoid confusion and misunderstanding of the images.

DANTE

Notes on Images of Pilgrimage Chapter 5

Dante Alighieri

Like Augustine, Dante (1265-1321) lived at the end of an era, in his case the disintegration of medieval Christendom. There was strife between the Pope and temporal rulers, including the Holy Roman Emperor and the French King. There was corruption at all levels and a disturbing worldliness in the church, which had become preoccupied with wealth and power Dante was not only a critical observer of his own time, he was also prophetic in his outlook. Things only got worse after his death The 14th century saw the ‘Avignon Captivity’ of the Papacy, when a series of French Popes reigned from Avignon in France under the influence of the French king and which led to papal schism. Politically and socially, medieval Europe was in a state of transition as the old feudal structures were gradually giving way to new forms In Dante’s day, it was unclear how the various power struggles would be resolved

When Dante wrote the Divine Comedy, he did so as the result of a personal spiritual pilgrimage. There were two events in his life, that contributed to Date’s spiritual desolation. The first was the death of Beatrice, a young woman whom Dante had loved from a young age, albeit from afar. Beatrice was, to Dante, the ideal of beauty and virtue, and her very existence was an outward sign of divine grace and goodness. After she died, he stopped writing romantic love poetry, and moved into the world of Florentine politics. He also married and had a family. In the year 1300, he was elected prior, part of the governing body of Florence, and so Dante appeared to be embarking on a grand career. That was not how things turned out, however. As a consequence of the rivalling political factions in Florence, Dante was exiled in 1302, unjustly he would always argue. His property and all his possessions were confiscated and he was threatened with execution if he should ever set foot in the city again. He was left with nothing. His wife was protected by her family, but his sons were forced to share in his exile when they reached the age of fourteen. This had a devastating and profound impact on Dante, and yet we can see from his Comedy that, in the wilderness of desolation, Dante found grace.

The Allegorical Pilgrimage

In the 1948 introduction to her translation of the Inferno, Dorothy L. Sayers writes this of Dante.

He looked outwards upon the corruption of Church and Empire, and he looked inwards into the corruption of the human heart; and what he saw was the vision of Hell. And having seen it, he set himself down to write the great Comedy of Redemption and of the return of all things by the Way of Self-Knowledge and Purification, to the beatitude of the Presence of God.2

In the wanderings of Odysseus and Aeneas, we saw outward physical journeys through which each hero gained the wisdom to go home or to establish a new home. Similarly, in the wilderness of Sinai, the Israelites were given what they needed for life in the promised land, and the Babylonian exile prepared God’s people for their return to Jerusalem In each of these examples, the external experience of wandering or exile brought about an internal or spiritual change. In the Old Testament examples, Crouse described these wanderings and exiles as forma futuri prefiguring something yet to come – namely, the redemption of the world by the incarnate Son of God.

In the New Testament, with the coming of the Son into the world to live and die as a human being, Crouse pointed us to the conflation of the images of wilderness and paradise. Paradise is present within the wilderness. The divine is united with the human. Death is vanquished. Sins are forgiven. But at the same time, we also experience the wilderness of temptation and sin and suffering and death. Our experience of redemption and reconciliation lacks its final completion. We are not yet fully remade into something better.

With Augustine, we saw a wholly interior pilgrimage. In remembering and thinking about his life, Augustine’s pilgrimage is not a physical journey at all, but the journey of mind and will. It is the journey of the soul, moved by amor, to God. It is the journey of the creature, created by Word and Spirit in the image of Word and Spirit returning to its Author in knowledge (word) and love (spirit). So the journey of Augustine’s Confessions ends with the contemplation of the creative and redemptive Divine Word in Genesis – which goes forth from the Father and returns to the Father.

Pilgrimages were a common spiritual exercise in the Middle Ages. People would journey to holy sites for the sake of spiritual grace and healing (and less time in Purgatory after death).

In the Divine Comedy, Dante gathers all this up – the pagan and the Christian, the ancient and the medieval, the external and the internal, the personal and the corporate, the literary and the historical – into an allegorical poem of universal significance. It is a poem about the pilgrimage of every soul. “It is about the universal pilgrimage of humankind, pagan and Christian man, in this earthy life” (p. 65).

To think about the Divine Comedy as being about life after death is to miss the point. These are images, or allegories, of states of being. As a pilgrimage, the poem describes the movement from a state of being lost and alienated from the Good (the dark wood at the beginning of the

2 Dante The Divine Comedy: Hell. Trans. Dorothy L. Sayers. Penguin Books. 1949.

Inferno) to the state of reconciliation and return to the presence and paradise of God (the beatific vision of the Paradiso).

The Comedy of Redemption

Sayers calls the Divine Comedy “the great Comedy of Redemption and the return of all things ” We are accustomed to think of a comedy as something humorous, and generally comedies are lighthearted and funny But in the classical sense, comedy is, one might say, the opposite of tragedy. Comedy may use humor as a device, but that is not, classically speaking, what defines it as comedy. In comedy, the protagonist starts in a low state and rises to a higher one, while the opposite happens in a tragedy; the tragic hero falls. In Dante’s Comedy, the protagonist, who is Dante himself, starts in a very low place (hell) and ends in a very high one (the beatific vision in the very presence of God). But Dante, the poet, intends us, the reader, to see this spiritual journey as a universal pilgrimage. It is the pilgrimage of amor, the activity of the rational will (logos and spirit in the creature and in creation), returning to the Divine Being, Wisdom and Love.

Inferno

Crouse quotes from the Convivio, another work by Dante: “the deepest desire [amor] of each thing is to return to its principle. And because God is the principle of our soul, and has made us like himself . . . , the soul mightily desires to turn to him.” (p. 65; Conv. IV, 12). Here we see the theology of Genesis. God has made us in his image. He is our beginning (our “principle”) not simply in causing us to exist, but in causing us to be the kind of being we are. Because he is the source of our goodness, and of all goodness, he is the very good we desire, even when we are not aware of that.

What Dante describes in the opening lines of the Comedy is a universal human experience: the realization, which is sudden as realizations are, that things are not as they ought to be. Dante awakens to an awareness that the good is lost; he can even glimpse its light on the mountaintop, but he cannot get to it. It is the soul awakening to the knowledge of being cut off from the good which is its “principle” and its light. The fact that we do that – the fact that we have the sense of the wrongness of things – is a sign of the vestige of the memory of paradise (of rightness or goodness). It is the vestige of the image of the divine Trinity in the soul.

Bound to brevity by the nature of the meditations in Images of Pilgrimage, Crouse concisely lays out key points in the Divine Comedy. This guide will take the liberty of elaborating on those key points, based on Crouse’s own words in other contexts.

The psychology (that is, the understanding of the soul) that Dante relies on here is that of Aristotle (and his teacher, Plato) and Augustine. Aristotle begins his Nicomachean Ethics by arguing that all human action proceeds from a desire for happiness. Each little choice we make in the course of the day, from brushing our teeth to choosing university courses to how we deal with conflicts at work, is made for a reason, for some good that we think will come from it, whether or not we are fully aware of that. The ultimate good for which we choose all the other goods is happiness. Each choice we make establishes habits, and habits establish characters. If we get into

the habit of brushing our teeth after every meal (because it is good to have clean teeth), we establish that habit and do it without thinking, and we become the kind of person who has clean teeth. On the other hand, if we are careless and do not care about having clean teeth, we fail to brush our teeth and become the kind of person who does not care about clean teeth, and so we do not possess the good of having clean teeth.

In Chapter IV of Images of Pilgrimage, Crouse quotes Augustine saying, “My love is my weight.” (p. 54; from Confessions XIII. xi, 10). What we love the most determines which good things we pursue, and those choices determine the kind of person we become. In Dante’s Inferno, the images we see in the nine circles of hell are images, or pictures, of the characters of souls formed by a lifetime of its own choices. Each soul “inclines towards it own place” (again the language of Augustine), and lands where it belongs. Each soul is self-determining. This is what Sayers, in the quote above, calls “the Way of Self-Knowledge” The Inferno is knowing ourselves as we are in our own self-making, apart from our principium (principle), alienated from the ultimate good which is God.

In the poem, Dante, the pilgrim, descends through the circles of hell, led by the pagan poet Virgil, author of the Aeneid. First, they pass through Limbo, where Dante sees the souls of the virtuous pagans, who strove for moral and intellectual virtue in their lives, but, without any hope for union with God, they are now left in sad despair. From Limbo, Dante descends to those who have been self-indulgent in the pursuit of their appetites and careless of better and higher goods, down further to those whose selfish desires move them to resist and oppose the good of others, and finally to those who use their rational capacity maliciously to deceive and betray others. This is a descent into the abyss of self-destruction, each level worse than the one before. It is the successive destruction of everything that makes a human being human, the disintegrating of the life and integrity of the soul, as it dissolves into a kind of nothingness. It is unspeakably ugly.

What makes us human is our ability to know goodness and to love it and will it. When the soul loves what is inherently and progressively unlovable (violence, deceit, harm to others) love becomes impossible. Love, remember, is the activity of the rational soul. It is the essential human activity. Love is the soul’s willing of the good that is known. In the depth of hell, in the depth of the sinful soul, where there is no good known, there can be no love or will, and so there is no activity. Dante imagines this frozenness of the soul as an icy lake. Sin begins as the pursuit of what seems to be good (“to be as gods, knowing good and evil”), but because it is actually the choice to turn away from the true and absolute good (the divine will) it is the destruction of the human soul, the human person, and all human relationships

It is this frozen lake which Crouse points us to – “the image of the death of love” (p.69) This lake, in which Satan stands frozen, impotently beating his wings, is at the centre of the earth – the centre of gravity upon which all the weight of the earth bears down. Without love, there is no inner weight of amor, no movement of the soul, indeed no soul at all anymore. Humanity is dead. Without love, we are nothing.

Virgil

Dante’s guide through both the Inferno and the Purgatorio is the poet Virgil who wrote the Aeneid, the great epic of the Roman Empire. As a virtuous pagan, Virgil understands the nature of sin and vice. Moreover, as the poet of the empire – of the earthly city – Virgil knows what makes human society possible. The Inferno is not only the degradation of the soul, but also the destruction of human community When there is no longer any recognizable objective good, the trust and reciprocity of human community is impossible as each person seeks his own good to the exclusion of the good of others.

As the figure of human reason, Virgil represents what human reason is capable of understanding regardless of religion or creed. Virgil thus represents the knowledge of what is good for human beings as human beings in the world, the philosophy of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero and so on.

In the poem, Virgil appears to Dante in the first canto. Virgil comes to him as a kind of saviour, sent by Dante’s beloved Beatrice, who descended from her celestial throne to beseech Virgil’s aid to save Dante from himself. Beatrice is the figure of heavenly love, an image of divine grace. Virgil, who is the figure of human reason, is also, then, a vehicle of divine grace. Reason has a role to play in the recovery of love. But reason alone is not enough. Dante finds himself frozen in fear at the thought of descending into hell. It is only when he is told of Beatrice, and assured that the journey will bring him to Beatrice, that is sufficiently moved – by his love for Beatrice – to have the courage (literally, the heart) to undertake the journey. Amor is what moves the soul to action.

Purgatorio

Virgil continues to be Dante’s pilgrim guide through the Purgatorio. In the medieval church, Purgatory was understood as temporal punishment for souls after death. Purgatory was, therefore, different from the everlasting damnation of hell. Purgatory was a means for repentant sinners destined for heaven to pay for the sins they committed in their lifetime. The degree of suffering could be mitigated through confession of sins and acts of penance undertaken to make amends for those sins (such as going on pilgrimages).

Dante turns this concept into an allegory of the life of the soul, “the pilgrimage of humankind” which Sayers calls “the Way of Purification” The Purgatorio is “the story of the rebirth of love” (p. 69). Love is recovered and redirected in stages, progressively, as an ascent. Dante’s Purgatory is a mountain which the pilgrim climbs. The pilgrimage ascent up the mountain, moving ever closer to heaven, is an image of the soul becoming ever more like Christ.

The ascent begins with penitence. This is the first movement of amor toward its true good. Penitence is turning back to God (the conversio of which Augustine speaks). Penitence is turning to the supreme Good as the source of all good (the principium) and the end (or object) of all desire (or amor). It is this direction, or redirection, which differentiates the ascent in the Purgatorio from the descent in the Inferno. The conversio of love requires grace, which in turn arises from humility. There can be no turning of the heart toward God without faith (however slight) in God and his goodness, and there can be no faith without humility.

So the first sin to be purged is pride, the root of all the sins. Dante describes an ordered ascent through the seven deadly sins; the purging of each sin signifies the acquisition of the opposing virtue. A virtue is a power of the soul that gives the soul the freedom to be good and do what is good. Since amor is the moving principle of the soul, acquiring virtue means the reordering of amor to love the Supreme Good (God) absolutely and to love finite goods in due proportion.

The first three deadly sins – pride, envy and wrath – are the sins of perverted love, of love that is twisted to desire something harmful to others for the sake of some apparent good for oneself. These are the sins against charity, against love and friendship, so that is where the ascent begins Humility is the necessary starting point from which generosity and peacefulness spring.

The ascent continues through the remaining deadly sins. Spiritual sloth is the failure to love one’s spiritual good enough; it is a deficient love of the Supreme Good It is spiritual laziness, but it can manifest itself as physical busyness – being overly concerned with worldly affairs to the exclusion of the good of the soul.

The final three sins – avarice, gluttony and lust – are the sins of the excessive love of lesser goods, of material and bodily goods which are loved as though they are greater goods than they actually are.

Virtues, like vices, arise through habitual actions. We acquire good habits in the same way we acquire bad habits – by the actions we choose to make. Since our judgment is faulty and our wills are weak, we are inclined to make bad choices. So we require assistance and guidance to learn to direct our love rightly. Remember the premise here: love is not a feeling; it is the activity of the rational will. There are choices to be made and there is effort involved. So two things are needful: guidance in making good judgments and discipline of the will. For guidance there are authoritative commandments and laws, teaching and instruction, and there are examples of both the sins and the virtues from literature, history, and the Bible. For the disciplining of the will, there is the ongoing labour of doing the right thing until it becomes a habit. When the virtue becomes a habit, the will is empowered and free. The virtuous activity is no longer an effort, and the good is properly loved.

So, as Virgil explains to Dante in the poem, love is the cause of both virtue and vice. The ascent of purification, the pilgrimage of life, is the redirecting of the mind and heart to know and love the Supreme Good above all else, and to love created goods in due measure. But there is also divine grace. There are ministering angels. There is continual prayer – both as an activity of the penitents for themselves, but also as the activity of the whole community for the good of one another. Love of self is transformed into love of neighbour by the love of God. The whole mountain breaks into joyous song when one soul is released to ascend into heaven. All of this is made possible by charity. In fact, the whole endeavour of the Purgatorio depends upon the grace of the divine charity, something which is bewildering for our friend Virgil For Virgil, this is the ascent of human effort, and it ends at the top of the mountain, which signifies the return to original goodness. For Dante, the human ascent is accompanied and made possible by divine grace, and the mountaintop is not an end at all. This brings us to the key point that Crouse would have us focus on.

The Earthly Paradise

At the top of the mountain of purgation is the sunlit peak that Dante glimpsed from the dark wood. This is the Earthly Paradise, or the Garden of Eden. Crouse tells us that the Earthly Paradise can be likened to any utopian conception of peace on earth, where human beings dwell in perpetual harmony with one another and the natural world. It would seem to be the true end of pilgrimage –the return to the beginning in the Garden of Eden

In his lectures on the Divine Comedy, Crouse compared the Earthly Paradise, which is uninhabited (except by allegorical figures) with Limbo, the first circle of Hell in the Inferno, which is inhabited by the virtuous pagans The physical description of Limbo with its green fields is similar to both the Earthly Paradise at the top of Mount Purgatory and Elysium, the place of the blessed in the underworld of Virgil’s Aeneid So we see in Dante’s image the spiritual impasse of paganism and indeed of all who believe that the highest end for human beings is what human reason and human effort can achieve. Virgil, who has climbed the mountain of the acquisition of virtue alongside Dante, disappears at this point, to return to his spiritual home of Limbo. Virgil represents the (seemingly rational) belief that the divide between God and man, between the infinite and the finite, between eternal being and created being, is absolute. This leaves human amor forever frustrated. Limbo is a state of despair, where the desired union of love with God and with one another is impossible.

But in Dante’s poem, the Earthly Paradise is not the final end. Here Dante is given a vision, a pageant of the revelation of divine mediating grace. Beatrice comes to him, recognizably the woman he loves, but also a figure of Christ and of Christ’s redeeming love. Here Dante repents anew and is washed in the two rivers of Lethe and Eunoe. The acquisition of the virtues of Purgatory is not the fulness of sanctification. There is yet more, something even better – in melius renovabimur.

Lethe and Eunoe

Crouse’s insight into the meaning of the river Eunoe gives clarity where other commentators have found mystery. This river is Dante’s invention. All the other rivers encountered in the Divine Comedy have their origin in the pagan myths, including Lethe, the river of forgetfulness, which also appears in Dante’s Earthly Paradise. In Virgil’s Aeneid and in the ‘Myth of Er’ at the end of Plato’s Republic, souls drink from the river Lethe “so as to forget the bliss of paradise” (p. 71) and be reincarnated into new bodies and a new life in the world. Lethe, in those accounts, speaks to the hopelessness of the human condition, doomed to a cycle of birth, suffering and death. Dante, however, takes that pagan image and gives it a new significance. It is one part of the means by which we are made into something better (in melius renovabimur). Lethe is forgetfulness, but now it is the washing away, the oblivion, of the stain of sin, of the “old man” as Saint Paul calls it (Romans 6:6).

But that is not all there is. There is a second river and a second washing. Crouse argues convincingly that ‘Eunoe’ derives from the Greek eunoia, which means benevolence, or good will. This is a word Aristotle uses in the Ethics, upon which Dante draws so heavily. Eunoia, or

benevolence (or good will) is the necessary starting point of friendship, and friendship is the relationship of reciprocal love. The river Eunoe represents the benevolence of God toward humankind. It is the love of Christ, the new Adam, poured upon the human soul, making it anew, into something better. Divine grace accomplishes what human will and effort cannot. Divine love raises humankind from mortality to immortality, from finite knowledge to “know fully, even as [we are] fully known” (1 Corinthians 13). The divine benevolence lifts humanity into the fellowship of perfect charity in which all desires are fulfilled and satisfied.

We can see the theology of the sacrament of baptism in these two rivers. In baptism, we receive both forgiveness, the washing away of sins, and also regeneration or rebirth. We are made anew. We are made into something better.

Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection: Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. For he that is dead is freed from sin. Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him: Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him. For in that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God. Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans 6:3-11)

There are only two possibilities for humanity, represented here on the one hand by the Earthly Paradise, which is really Limbo, and on the other hand by Heaven, the Celestial Paradise. Either we are limited by our natural human condition, or we can believe and hope in what is revealed by the Word of God, that Divine Love raises humanity by grace to a union of eternal friendship with God. The theology of Genesis, which says that humankind is created in the image of the being, word and spirit of God, implies that it is human nature to desire to become even more like God. The desire of Adam and Eve to be as gods springs from their created nature.

Paradiso

Crouse is adamant with us here. This is not the point in the poem to throw away the allegory. If Inferno and Purgatorio are allegories of the life of the soul in the world, then so is Paradiso. Yet here the conflation of wilderness and paradise emerges more clearly. The Paradiso is about the transformation of human beings into friends of God. The Paradiso, Crouse insists, is “a representation of the heavenly life (the life of charity) on earth” (p. 72).

First then, as a representation of the heavenly life, the Paradiso presents us with a “futurist” eschatology. The transformation of human beings into friends of God is, in its fullness, an otherworldly transformation. In the final cantos of the Paradiso, Dante presents an image of the final

perfection of Heaven, in which the whole of creation encircles the Creator, responding in love to the “love which moves the sun and the other stars.” Yet even in that other-worldly unity, the Heavenly City is a city comprised of individual human beings who retain their distinctiveness. There is both unity and difference, as Heaven mirrors the Creator in whom there is both unity (oneness) and distinction (threeness).

But, Crouse says, Dante’s Paradiso is a representation of the heavenly city on earth The spiritual pilgrimage to God is about more than acquiring the natural virtues, which by themselves leave us in a spiritual impasse (the Earthly Paradise is really Limbo). The pilgrimage of the Paradiso is about being changed into something better. It is about human beings being transformed into friends of God, able to look upon God and to participate in his divine life. This transformation from mortal and finite to eternally blessed is made possible by the infusion, through divine grace, of the theological, or supernatural, virtues – the powers of faith, hope and charity.

In the poem, Dante ascends to the vision of God in the Empyrean of Heaven, through the nine heavenly spheres. Each sphere is governed by a heavenly body (the moon, various planets, the sun, the stars), and each heavenly body represents a particular manifestation of the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity. For instance, in the central three of the nine spheres, we meet the Doctors (teachers) of the Church in the Heaven of the Sun (faith), the Warriors in the Heaven of Mars (hope), the Just Rulers in the Heaven of Jupiter (charity).

Each sphere, and indeed each individual person, contributes something necessary to the wellbeing of the city as a whole. Difference is not something negative, but essential to the reciprocal balance of the whole. Crouse points us to two images that Dante uses. The first is musical harmony. One note cannot produce harmony; the fullness of musical sound depends upon a diversity of musical tones. The second image is the orologia, a clock that operates from the falling and rising of weights – the push and pull marking and ringing the hours. We could also add the Biblical image of the body of Christ made up of a diversity of members – different parts with different functions. (See Ephesians 4:11-16 and 1 Corinthians 12:12-27.) One can also think about the simple practicality of communal life. If we were all farmers, for instance, we would have plenty to eat, but no clothes. In the reciprocity of charity, differences do not destroy unity, but come together to make a unified whole.

In this section on the Paradiso, Crouse draws our attention to the Doctors, the teachers of sacred doctrine, in the heaven of the sun. These are all men of great faith and wisdom, who dedicated their lives to the truth, and yet they had different theological perspectives. There are the differences between the Dominicans and the Franciscans, who appear as separate and distinct circles of light, but there are also differences, even disagreements, within each circle. Yet in the Paradiso, Dante presents them as inclusive rather than exclusive, as complementary and reciprocal, rather than in opposition to one another

When we consider the wholeness of truth – the truth of all things – no one holds the whole truth, yet each holds to something that is critically true. This does not mean there is no truth, but that now we know in part, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13. In the charity and reciprocity of the Paradiso, which is an image of Christian charity in the world, each rejoices in what the others

contribute to the good of the whole. This is an important point in relation to the final chapter of Images, and in relation to Christian spiritual pilgrimage in general.

In the unity of friendship, of reciprocal love, differences remain. The life of charity, of friendship, is grounded in the principle of reciprocity. The diverse gifts, talents, abilities, and character qualities of each person contribute to the well-being of the whole city, the body of Christ.

Crouse also points us to the final image of the Paradiso, which draws us into a vision of the final end, “the beatitude of the Presence of God” as Dorothy Sayers calls it In the ascent out of hell, up Mount Purgatory, and through the heavenly spheres, Dante has been moving upward and outward, away from the centre of gravity in the frozen pit of hell toward the circumference, so to speak, of all things – the empyrean which embraces and contains all things. But as he comes into the immediate presence of God, Dante’s standpoint is reversed, and he now sees God as the point of light which is the very centre of the universe. The whole universe revolves around that centre, which Dante calls “the love that moves the sun and other stars” (Paradiso XXXIII, 145). The end for all created being is its beginning, its source and origin, the One who makes all things out of love and who, through love, draws all things back to himself.

Crouse quotes Paradiso XXXIII, 124-126 (on p. 75 of Images).

O thou eternal light, who dwellest in thyself alone, Alone self-knowing; joy and love proceed From thee, thy knower and thy known.

This quotation brings us back to the language that Crouse used in the beginning of Images about the Trinity The “outgoing of God the Father in his own self-knowing is the eternal begetting of his Word”. The love that proceeds from this knowing is “the eternal procession of God the Holy Spirit, whereby the knower and the known are bound in mutual love.” (p.12) Dante looks upon God and sees the Trinity, the eternal begetting of the Son and the procession of the Holy Spirit But that is not all. Gazing upon God, Dante sees even more – the image of humanity taken up and into that divine life. The final end for humankind is NOT the original beatitude of the Eden, but complete transformation into participation in the divine life, “changed from glory into glory”. (See hymn “Love divine all loves excelling” by Charles Wesley; and 2 Corinthians 13:18).

DANTE

Topics for Group Discussion on Images of Pilgrimage Chapter 5

1. Read carefully Crouse’s remarks on pages 61-63. Take some time to examine and discuss the images of the Basilica of Sainte-Marie-Madeleine in Vezelay Images can be found in numerous places on the internet such as here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%A9zelay_Abbey

a. What is the significance of the west tympanum and the commissioning of the apostles? It is important here to note that the rays descending upon them from the hands of Christ signify the Holy Spirit.

b. What is the significance of the figure of John the Baptist at the doorway into the church?

c. How does the architecture speak to the pilgrimage of the soul from darkness to light?

d. What is the significance of the light at the east end – the apse with the altar? How is this about spiritual pilgrimage?

e. Why are churches traditionally oriented on an east-west axis? How does that relate to the symbolism of light?

2. Read the opening lines of the Inferno. Longfellow’s translation is widely available online, such as here: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1001/1001-h/1001-h.htm. A very helpful website with the Italian text and an English translation and commentary can be found here: http://www.worldofdante.org/. Discuss the image of the dark wood as symbolic of a state of loss, alienation, desolation.

3. What makes the difference between hope and despair? One might consider here what happens in the story. Dante is frozen in fear until Virgil tells him that the journey will bring him to Beatrice. What awakens Dante’s hope? (See Inferno Canto 2)

4. Discuss Sayers characterization of hell as the “way of self-knowledge”.

5. How do we become virtuous? How do we acquire good habits? What can human effort achieve? What requires divine grace?

6. Discuss what it means that Dante portrays Virgil and other virtuous people as in Limbo and still alienated from God? Why is being good not good enough to reconcile us to God?

7. How is the Earthly Paradise different from the celestial paradise? What is lacking in the earthly paradise that is found in the heavenly paradise?

8. Discuss the theological virtues of faith, hope and charity. What do Christians have faith in? What do Christians hope for? How do faith and hope relate to charity?

9. What does it mean to be friends with God. Jesus says quite directly “I have called you friends” (John 15:15).

10. With the idea of reciprocity in mind, how do we live in love and charity with one another while on earth? How do we deal with differences, not only of skills and talents, but of opinion, especially when those opinions are on important matters? This becomes the critical question of the final chapter of Images

RECONCILIATION

Notes on Images of Pilgrimage Chapter 6

A Summary

These meditations have led us through a series of images of pilgrimage, of wilderness and paradise, beginning with the physical wanderings of Odysseus and Aeneas through which inner change comes about. We then considered the theology of Genesis, in which exile from paradise was put in the context of the pilgrimage of creation, the outgoing of the eternal Word and the lifegiving Spirit into the coming-to-be of the world. In this theology, paradise still exists as the goodness of God himself, and the wilderness of human exile is the place where something of that paradise is revealed. With the incarnation of the Son of God in Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, told in the New testament, there is a kind of conflation of wilderness and paradise that is, in Crouse’s language, both “realized” (present in the soul and in the church in the world) and “futurist” (yet to come at the end of time).

Christian spirituality is about how we live in the world as redeemed sinners, and as pilgrims on our way to a homeland which is both something that awaits us in the future and yet is also something that is present to us now. With Augustine, the pilgrimage of the soul from alienation to reconciliation with God and one another is an internal movement of the soul’s amor to its divine principium, its principle. As memory, understanding and will, the human soul is the created image of the creator, and finds its rest only there, in a union of contemplative love, the very union that Aristotle claimed was too high for man. But because the Word of God has become man in the Incarnation, and has taken human nature into the Godhead in the Ascension, this end is now revealed to be the true and proper end of humankind. Life in the world is a pilgrimage of love to its end.

Dante gathers all these together into his Comedy of Redemption – from the dark wood of desolation through “the way of self-knowledge and purification to the beatitude of the presence of God,” where he finds in the eternal self-knowing of God, in the divine love that moves the sun and the other stars, the true and final home of those created in God’s image. It is in the daily round, the common tasks of life that our love is formed and ordered and directed to its true end.

Divine grace surrounds us; the divine Spirit and Word direct us. The dark wood is not an end but the beginning of the pilgrimage.

A Sleep of Prisoners

Crouse begins this final chapter, the final meditation in this series, with a quote from the 1951 play “A Sleep of Prisoners” by Christopher Fry. In the play, four soldiers have been taken prisoners of war and are being kept imprisoned inside a church. In the wilderness of war, they experience the exile of imprisonment, a loss of power and freedom The church, instead of being a sanctuary and refuge from the horrors and cruelties of man against man is a prison to them The church’s music, stories and rituals have lost their power to provide meaning or comfort, and have become, instead, sources of irritation, at least to one of them Tempers flare; there is a physical assault on one man by another as night falls, and then they all fall into a restless sleep, in which each man dreams. In their dreams, they see themselves and one another as figures from well-known Biblical stories. They relive those stories, the human conflict, the testing and the suffering. There is truth in those half-remembered “figures of wisdom back in the old sorrow.” But the wisdom they reveal in the glimpses of paradise and hope remains as “fabulous wings unused, folded in the heart.” (‘Fabulous’ here means belonging to fables.) As the march of time goes on, we human beings continue to exercise our potencies of will in our self-determination and our folly, and consequently “suffer instead a stubborn aberration.” “Still we use the cures that never cure.”

The 700 years from Dante’s time to our own is replete with images of pilgrimage through wilderness to a desired paradise. One could argue that these images are in some way part of any story. If we consider something as formulaic as a romance novel, we can discern these images –falling in love (amor), having to overcome obstacles (wilderness, alienation and exile), and finally the heart finding its rest in the arms of the beloved (paradise). But as we move toward our own time, we find that our culture, and even at times the church, has forgotten this spirituality, and we are once more cast into a restlessness of spirit, seeking meaning and purpose, seeking a homeland. These images belong to the human condition, and when they are divorced from faith and hope and charity, we are thrown back into the spiritual impasse of frustrated aspiration.

A recently published book is entitled Chasing Paradise: A Hitchhiker's Search for Home in a World at War with Itself The title alone speaks to the restless spirit of our age This memoir is the tale of a physical odyssey through modern-day Canada and the United States. Like Odysseus, the author gains wisdom about himself and about his world through his travels Eventually, also like Odysseus, he discovers in himself a longing to return home to the place where he began, but now with a purpose – to help, in whatever small way, to save the planet through ecological action. This is a kind of “neo-pagan spirituality”, which seeks to find meaning in adventure and experiences, or in causes and good works, or in fostering meaningful relationships, or in all of the above. But the wilderness remains, and it remains as an evil to strive against or to suffer in. There is no real rest.

Christian Spirituality

What distinguishes Christian spirituality from the ancient pagan or the contemporary humanist perspective is that our final end – the eternal beatitude of the kingdom of God – is present; it is within us. We know our end (as clearly as we are able) and we will that end. Our human reason and our human amor are images of the divine Word and Spirit In the word and sacraments of the church, we receive the grace of the Holy Spirit and are fed by the Word of God. The Christian pilgrim looks upon the world differently because Christ is in us and we are in him.

Christian spirituality is lived in the assurance of our “justification, divinely wrought, and finished once for all”. Christ has done the saving work; there is nothing for us to do to earn salvation. But Christian life is still lived in the midst of the uncertainties of the world. There is unkindness, injustice, conflict, hatred, fear, anxiety, misunderstanding, ignorance, sickness, death, and so on. Those things do not change. Yet the Christian perspective changes how we look at those things. All the things that appear to us as negative and harmful need to be seen anew, transformed from the perspective of grace. Trials and temptations “are not just unfortunate accidents” (p.79). They form us and shape us; they ‘try’ our faith. Faith that is ‘tried’ (or tested) grows stronger (1 Peter 1:7).

This perspective changes our attitude to life, and to the things that happen to us and the confusions within our own souls. Everything becomes a part of our “sanctification”, part of the process of transforming us within, instructing us and redirecting our love to the divine Love, which is its true object and also its source. There is a reconciliation of wilderness and paradise within our souls and in the body of Christ in the world.

Christian spirituality maintains both sides – both the “realised” and the “futurist,” what is present and what is to come. It is neither solely of this world or solely of the life to come, but is both at once. It is a pilgrimage in which our end is friendship with God – an end which is completely realised only after death, and yet that end is already real and within us. “Paradise is to come, certainly: ‘Thy kingdom come’, we pray; but at the same time paradise is here, in the wilderness. Here we are fed with manna, the supersubstantial bread of heaven, for which we daily pray.” (p. 78-79)

There are two aspects to the cultivation of the Christian virtues of faith, hope and charity, which begins in the humility of conversion. There is the divine and objective aspect – the gifts of grace that have been given to us, that we have done nothing to merit. And there is the human and subjective aspect – our making use of those gifts Gifts do us no good unless they are gratefully received, unwrapped, appreciated, and made use of. Crouse names for us (on page 81) several of the gifts we possess, which we have been given by God and which we have inherited from the tradition of the Church, which will assist the Church in her pilgrimage through time, and each of us in our personal pilgrimages. These are gifts, but they do ask something from us if we are to be inwardly nourished by them.

1. We possess the Holy Scriptures, God’s word of reconciliation. In hearing and reading God’s word written, we learn of his self-giving love, reconciling us to himself. The

“patience and comfort of his Holy Word” strengthens our faith and give us the power to “embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life” (see the Collect for Advent 2 in the Book of Common Prayer). It is remembering God’s work that faith, hope, and love are nurtured.

2. We have the Sacraments. Through the Church’s sacraments, we are given a sensory and tangible experience of the presence of God In baptism, we receive the Holy Spirit and are reborn (made anew), given new life. The Spirit dwells within us. In the sacrament of Holy Communion, we receive all the grace of Christ’s sacrifice by faith with thanksgiving, and he dwells in us and we in him. We respond to God’s gift of Word and Spirit in the Spirit of the divine charity, with love and the joy of grateful hearts. The liturgies of the church are designed specifically to foster in us faith, hope and charity.

3. We have centuries of theological and spiritual wisdom. There have been wise and holy men and women through the centuries who have left for us their thoughts and words. These writers can edify us, instruct us and persuade us. Remembering this tradition, exploring it, understanding it, and carrying forward its truth, can sustain us in the midst of the passing fancies of the day.

4. We have our souls, our inner lives, our hearts and minds, which have been created to hear God’s Word of reconciliation, and to love all that is good and true, and to bear all things in patience.

5. We have a vision of the end, of the pure and perfect good, that we keep within us. Sometimes that vision is such a blurry memory that we have to make an effort to recall it, especially in the midst of tribulation and tragedy.

6. We have the life of prayer. Prayer is “a bond which holds wilderness and paradise in one embrace” (p. 81). Prayer is “God’s breath in man returning to his birth” (George Herbert, p. 82). Prayer is the spirit of love in our souls returning to its source in adoration. Prayer is the exercise of the love of neighbour in intercession. It is in prayer that we co-inhere, that we are spiritually united with God and with one another, by the one through whom we pray, Jesus Christ. In prayer we participate in the eternal City of God

Charity

“God is love; and he that abides in love abides in God.” (I John :16) Charity is the love of heaven in which amor finds its rest, but it is also the love in which we are to live now and always. Charity is the perfect bond that unites man with God. Charity is the reciprocal love that unites friends. It is both the end and the way to the end. Charity belongs both to our justification (“God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not

perish, but have everlasting life.” John 3:16), and to our sanctification (“If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.” 1 John 4: 12), and it is the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Charity, Crouse tells us, is the “form of all the virtues” (p. 82). It includes and gives shape to all the other virtues. In other words, in order to be truly charitable, to be truly loving, we would also be kind, humble, compassionate, cheerful, magnanimous, patient, hopeful, persevering, courageous, wise, faithful, just, modest, temperate, truthful, and so on. This is where Crouse makes an essential point – the point to which these meditations have been leading us: the gifts of the Spirit have been diversely distributed – “therefore, if we have charity at all, we have it in friendship and reciprocity.” (p. 83)

The Christian life of charity is lived in the midst of conflict and disagreement Think back to Crouse’s words about the heaven of the sun in Dante’s Paradiso, in which the diverse teachings of the doctors are seen in how each part contributes to the vision of the Truth as a whole. Charity does not mean tolerance of all things. Charity holds fast to the truth known and revealed to us. “Charity must include . . . that obedience of mind whereby we stand firmly in the truth, so far as we can see it.” Truth itself is not changeable; it is our grasp of the truth that changes as we move closer to the source and into a deeper understanding. Since our human grasp of truth is incomplete, charity “must also include that humility of mind by which we recognize that we know in part” (p. 82-83). We need humility of mind to recognize that we know only in part, and we need the humility of spirit that is “a readiness to think well of one another” (p. 83).

The western church was divided into separate denominations during the Reformation, and those denominations been further subdivided into increasingly fractious factions. The differences and disagreements have included matters of theology and doctrine, liturgy and worship, ecclesiastical order and authority, and the relation of the church to the many changing mores of secular culture. For the most part, the divisions have been caused by faithful Christians holding “that obedience of mind whereby we stand firmly in the truth so far as we can see it.” The problem, from the standpoint of unity, is what particular truth each is holding to. No one is holding to the whole truth, but to a part of the truth. Unity can only exist when we also have “that humility of mind by which we recognize that we know in part and through a clouded mirror which might benefit from some polishing” and when we are “prepared to think well of one another.”

Conflicts within the Christian community have not ceased since Robert Crouse gave these meditations. If anything, they have increased. We live in a time that is analogous to the changing times of Augustine and Dante, as we witness the collapse of an outwardly Christian culture and the rise of something new, in which a diversity of religious beliefs and non-belief are mingled in a cultural medley The danger for Christians is that we forget this Christian spirituality, and, like Dante at the beginning of the Divine Comedy, lose our way in the dark and savage wilderness. The way through our current impasse is by a deliberate and intentional recovery of an interior Christian spirituality, and a deliberate and intentional nurturing of the Christian community in a spirit of charity. This requires the recollection and recovery of the consensus fidelium – the whole and

complete consensus of the mind of the faithful, throughout the centuries, of which Augustine and Dante are important elements.

The Life of Penitential Adoration

“What is essentially required is the practical upbuilding, among us and within us, of the life of penitential adoration.” (p. 86). If Christian spirituality is to live and grow in a world which no longer defines itself as Christian, and is even, at times, hostile to Christianity, there must be, as with Augustine, a turning inward. Penitential adoration includes both a posture of humility with head bowed, which is the acknowledgement of the wilderness of sinfulness and need, and also a posture of adoration with heart upraised, which is the soul’s amor directed to the paradise of the goodness of God A life of penitential adoration distinguishes between wilderness and paradise, yearns for paradise, but also finds paradise in the wilderness.

How does the “practical upbuilding” of a life of penitential adoration occur? Here Crouse quotes the medieval Franciscan theologian Bonaventure (whom Dante sees on the heaven of the sun). Bonaventure points to three things: “First, we must pray; secondly, we must live holily; thirdly, we must strive toward the reflection of truth and, by our striving, mount step by step until we come to the high mountain where we shall see the God of gods in Sion.” (p. 84).

1. Prayer: Prayer is the movement of amor toward God. We begin where we are, within our own souls, to know ourselves and thus to ascend to the vision of our maker. The prayers and liturgies of the church from the early church through the Middle Ages and the Reformation give us words to pray. The liturgies of the English Book of Common Prayer were carefully and intentionally designed to build up among us and within us the life of penitential adoration, beginning always with humble penitence in order to cultivate the virtues of faith, hope and charity. The test of new liturgies is just that: Do they build up a life of penitential adoration? Do they nurture faith and hope and charity?

2. Holy living: Bonaventure uses the phrase “holy conversation”, referring presumably to 2 Peter 3:11. This does not mean simply holy speech. The Latin conversatio refers to a whole manner of life. We are to live well in the sense that we are to will and to do whatsoever is good, living in love and charity with our neighbour. We are to live and act with humility, generosity, gentleness, diligence, liberality, self-control, chasteness and so on.

3. Striving toward the reflection of truth: Bonaventure calls this “penetrating meditation” Crouse, in Chapter 1 of Images (p.15) spoke of penetrating the images. Everything that has being reflects the power and wisdom and goodness of God. This bears repeating: everything that has being is an image of God Penetrating meditation seeks to know the reality that is behind the image – to penetrate the image. The ascent of which Bonaventure speaks is the ascent of which Augustine speaks, from contemplating external things and

what they reveal about their creator, to contemplating the thinking soul itself as an image of the triune creator, and finally to contemplate God himself in his divine and eternal nature.

The life of penitential adoration is lived in community, but it is the life of each human being in relation to God. The final end, which is to know and love God even as he knows and loves us, is both beyond us and within us. Christian spirituality is living that life now, through prayer, holy living, and contemplation. All the external gifts of God – the natural world, God’s holy word, the sacraments of the church, the gifts of the Spirit, the fellowship of the body of Christ – are there to direct us to love God with all our hearts and minds and strength.

Epilogue

It has been almost forty years since Father Crouse gave these meditations to a group of Anglican priests on retreat in Nova Scotia. Much has changed and much has not changed since then. North American culture is even more divided, politically and socially. Our souls are still restless, and ever at war with our bodies. From the midst of hurt and anger and anxiety and distress, more and more voices call for justice and peace and reparation for past and ongoing wrongs. We not only medicate ourselves but also our children to help them and us deal with the anxiety we face each day.

For most people today, our churches are no longer seen as a source solace and strength, or a way through the wilderness. The story that the church has told for over two thousand years is unknown or meaningless to at least the last two generations. Indeed, the Christian Church, along with the western intellectual tradition, is perceived as part of the problem. To you who have chosen to read Robert Crouse’s meditations, I pose these questions. Do, or can, these images of paradise and wilderness speak to people in post-Christian society – to us who read this book and to those who haven’t? Does Crouse’s final chapter on reconciliation point us to a way forward? Is the practical upbuilding of the life of penitential adoration realistic or possible or enough?

If you found Father Crouse’s reflections helpful to you, please share his book with others, and keep the conversation going.

RECONCILIATION

Topics for Group Discussion on Images of Pilgrimage Chapter 6

1. How and where does contemporary culture and contemporary literature demonstrate a restlessness of spirit?

2. How does the tradition of western Christian spirituality as seen in Augustine and Dante differ from various contemporary approaches to spirituality, Christian or otherwise?

3. Consider each of these gifts given us by divine grace: the Holy Scriptures, the sacraments, the wisdom of the ages, our souls in the image of God, the vision of the end, the life of prayer What is the nature of each of these gifts – i.e. what does each one give us? How can we make better use of these gifts in our own lives?

4. “Charity must include, for instance, that obedience of mind whereby we stand firmly in the truth, so far as we can see it; but it must also include that humility of mind by which we know in part, and through a clouded mirror which might benefit from some polishing.” (p. 82-83) Discuss.

5. “And therefore, if we have charity at all, we have it in friendship and reciprocity.” (p. 83). Discuss.

6. “What is essentially required is the practical upbuilding, among us and within us, of the life of penitential adoration.” (p. 84) What is a life of “penitential adoration”?

7. Discuss 1 John 4 in the light of Images of Pilgrimage.

8. Discuss the quote from Bonaventure on page 84.

9. Why is the inherited teaching of the past essential to moving forward?

10. Why is this chapter entitled “Reconciliation”?

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Robert Crouse tended souls much the way he tended his garden. He tilled the soil and enriched it; he made paths and built walls, but the walls were low, and plants were free to scramble over them, to climb trees and to wander into the paths. Once he had provided the basic form and substance, his oversight was benign, allowing the plants to find their way with little more than the occasional gentle tug on a weed. I am forever grateful to have had him for a teacher, and as an example of the humble Christian charity that stands firmly in the truth and yet is ready to think well of others.

I would like to thank the Crouse Project Editors for asking me to write this study guide to accompany Images of Pilgrimage. It was a joy for me to recall Fr. Crouse’s calm, deep, warm voice; to see him again in my memory in the classroom, at the podium, and at the pulpit; and to contemplate anew his words, penetrating the images.

I am very grateful to my husband, Fr. Patrick Bright, for his helpful suggestions and his patient and diligent proof-reading of the text; and to all who gave me excellent guidance, including Fr. Gary Thorne, Dr. Stephen Blackwood, and Fr. Gavin Dunbar, but above all, I extend deep gratitude to Dr Neil Robertson whose comments and direction were invaluable.

I owe a debt of gratitude to Susan Dodd for all her work in preparing this text for publication, and for fighting valiantly (if unsuccessfully) against the forces of artificial intelligence at Amazon, which for all its “intelligence”, clearly lacks all common sense.

Soli Deo gloria.

Rhea Bright October 2024

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rhea Bright holds a B.A. from the University of King’s College, a B.Ed. from Acadia University, and a Master of Arts in Classics from Dalhousie University, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where the Rev’d Dr. Robert Crouse served as her thesis advisor. She taught Ancient and Medieval Humanities at the University of Central Oklahoma for several years, and then taught Latin, Logic, Bible, and Ancient Literature and History (all the old things!) to a wide range of ages (8 to 18) over the course of ten years at The Academy of Classical Christian Studies in Oklahoma City. Most recently she has offered courses in the Canterbury House of Studies within Schole Academy, an organization that offers online courses for home-schooling families. Rhea and her husband, Fr. Patrick Bright, an ordained Anglican priest, raised five sons, and are now enjoying retirement in rural Nova Scotia after many years in Oklahoma. They live in an old family home where they spent many happy summers, not far from Robert Crouse’s home in Crousetown.