Gary Neal Hansen's Blog, page 55
September 23, 2014
How to Organize Your Faith (Heidelberg Catechism Q24)
Shhh! A whole lot of Christians are quietly afraid that someday, someone will ask them about their faith. We need some outline points, like the pegs on a coat rack. No hooks and you just have a pile of stuff on the floor. Add a row of pegs and you can hang up a whole lot of stuff […]
September 18, 2014
Found on the Church Doorstep — Wishing for St. Francis of Assisi
As I was leaving church with my son I looked down. There was something shiny on the ground. A bullet casing. Someone had shot a bullet and this bit of brass landed here. On the doorstep of my church. Where we worship the Prince of Peace. Where we learn that those who make peace are blessed. I put […]
September 16, 2014
How Do You Know That? (Heidelberg Catechism Q. 19)
You and I were born in an age shaped by scientific thinking. We find it hard to accept that there might be ways of knowing other than through science — the proof of hypotheses through experimentation. It is a sort of cultural mythos, this devotion to science. It is a religion without a temple. We […]
September 9, 2014
What Is and Isn’t Reformed Theology? (Heidelberg Catechism Q. 23)
When I teach about Reformed theology, I often start by showing a pyramid of three layers. Like that one on the far end of the row of Queens Pyramids at Giza. Just picture the bottom layer a lot thicker. The big foundation layer is core Christian teachings — Things like our understanding of God — the […]
September 4, 2014
Finding a Life-Giving Approach to the Bible (part 7, conclusion): Process & Goal
Paris Art Deco, by Sandra Cohen-Rose, under cc license
And so we come to the end of the classic book on lectio divina by Guigo II (d. 1188), The Ladder of Monks. The idea of a ladder is key to understanding his approach to the Bible — despite all the food metaphors I’ve noted in these posts.
He might have done better still with a spiral staircase, but The Spiral Staircase of Monks is not nearly so catchy. And he didn’t ask me.
He is emphatic that each step is vital to the others. Three times he stands with one foot on a lower rung, and considers how it relates to the rung above:
reading without meditation is sterile, meditation without reading is liable to error
All that study he calls reading is just an intellectual exercise unless you do something like meditation to chew it up and make it part of you. But if you just chew on a passage out of context, without really grasping it intellectually, you could end up convinced of all kinds of odd things.
prayer without meditation is lukewarm, meditation without prayer is unfruitful
If you try to seek what you need from God without orienting your request to what God says life is about, your prayer is only half-baked. If you do meditate on Scripture, but stop short of asking God to lead you to the life Scripture promises, you’ve wasted your time.
prayer when it is fervent wins contemplation, but to obtain it without prayer would be rare, even miraculous.
The relation between the last two steps is a bit different. Prayer is intended to lead you into contemplation, to meet with God who gives what Scripture promises — but that only happens if prayer is really solid. On the other hand, God has set this life up so that the life he promises only comes when we are at the point where we can ask for it.
To take the process in reverse,
God wants to give you himself in Jesus via contemplation
But God grants it only if you ask in prayer
And you only are moved to ask when you digest what Scripture teaches in meditation
And you can only digest Scripture once you faithfully, studiously, read it.
Every step is necessary to move to the next level. Every step brings you closer to the goal — which is the presence of Jesus.
It is like a spiral staircase, though, in that you do not take one quick trip through the four steps.
You go through the steps. You get a taste of Christ’s presence — but you do not get to remain in that holy intimacy. Christ draws close and then seems to hide himself. Guigo suggests that this is because Jesus knows that, as the saying goes, “familiarity breeds contempt.”
He is still near, have no doubt. But we find we have to ascend the ladder again.
Again we read.
Again we meditate.
Again we pray.
Again we contemplate.
And time after time after time, we find ourselves in the presence of Jesus.
That is how Scripture can be life-giving to us. It was true in the 12th century when Guigo wrote The Ladder of Monks. It is all the more true today when it is so counter-cultural.
Dare to engage Scripture more passionately and prayerfully than academic approaches invite — because you read Scripture to enter God’s presence.
Dare to engage Scripture more intellectually and theologically than devotional approaches invite — because God chooses to meet you us through ancient texts that take work to understand.
Dare to go up the ladder. Step by step toward Jesus. Step, by step, by step.
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I would love to hear from you in the comments! Give Guigo’s “ladder” a try, and tell me what you find. Or tell me about your most life-giving approach to Scripture.
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September 3, 2014
Augustinian Soul Music!
August 30, 2014
Finding a Life-Giving Approach to the Bible (part 6): Contemplate Upon It
Roof Ladder (Porvoo, Finland) by Miguel Virkkunen Carvalho (cc license)
Contemplation is when the mind is in some sort lifted up to God and held above itself, so that it tastes the joys of everlasting sweetness.”
That is Guigo II (d. 1188) talking about the fourth and final step of lectio divina, the spiritual reading of Scripture. In his classic little book he compares the process to a ladder, and this is the top rung.
When I was a child my grandmother lived on the eleventh floor of an apartment tower. We would watch the ships coming and going in Commencement Bay, far below.
Sometimes, though, I would take the elevator to the seventeenth floor. I would climb a flight of stairs to a heavy steel door. Pushing it open I stepped out onto the roof. The bay and the city were below and, the sky spread out like a great dome above.
Awesome. Overused word these days, but still: awesome.
That grasps just a little of what Guigo is talking about. I’ve been blogging for a while on his little book , the classic text on lectio divina.
I compared , to laying a building’s foundation.
You could imagine , and , as the main floors of the house, useful places where you do most of your daily living.
Contemplation is like climbing up on the roof. You arrive at a place where you can reach out and touch the realities that Scripture has been presenting.
Stick with that building metaphor: You don’t have to go onto the roof to enjoy your house or find it useful. You can’t spend all your time up there. But if you do climb onto the roof on a clear night, you feel like you can reach out and touch the stars. And you can only do that if you complete the building. You need steps one, two, and three of to reach the roof.
Guigo’s point is this: contemplation lays hold of the things reading and meditation made you aware of, and that you asked for in prayer. Here it is in his favorite metaphor of food (with italics added for emphasis):
Reading, as it were, puts food whole in the mouth, meditation chews it and breaks it up, prayer extracts its flavor, contemplation is the sweetness itself which gladdens and refreshes.
So is this the place of quiet escape from the Carol King song ?
Right smack dab in the middle of town
I found a paradise that’s trouble-proof
Up on the roof
I dearly love the song, but no.
Contemplation is not escaping something. Contemplation is finding something–the presence of God.
More accurately, as Guigo tells it, contemplation is being found by God. Remember that in step three we prayed for what Scripture had laid out as the life God intends for us. Here is contemplation:
But the Lord…does not wait until the longing soul has said all its say, but breaks in upon the middle of its prayer, runs to meet it in all haste…and He restores the weary soul, He slakes its thirst, He feeds its hunger, He makes the soul forget all earthly things:
I fear that in our time some are drawn to contemplative prayer because it seems touchy-feely, rather than intellectually rigorous or costly in a discipleship-and-service sort of way. Contemplation, in the very meaning of the word, is about looking at something, attending to something with the gaze of our heart and soul. Sometimes it seems we are just gazing at ourselves.
Guigo’s kind of contemplation turns our gaze beyond ourselves to the reality of God. We only know what we are looking at, or looking for, because we have studied Scripture, chewed on Scripture, and prayed Scripture. This kind of contemplation frees us from gods of our own creation and turns us directly toward the God of the Bible.
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I’d love to hear from you in the comments. What has “contemplation” meant in your spiritual life?
Finding a Life-Giving Approach to Scripture (part 6): Contemplate Upon It
August 26, 2014
Why Reformed Theology? (via Heidelberg Catechism Q. 18)
August 22, 2014
Finding a Life-Giving Approach to the Bible (part 5): Pray It
Trauben – wine grapes, by Thomas Tots, Germany (cc license)
I am convinced that far too few who follow Jesus find fuel for the journey in their own regular engagement with the Bible. If you do, that’s great. If you don’t, Guigo II (d. 1188) is the man to check out.
Actually : The Ladder of Monks is the go-to guide to the real medieval practice of lectio divina or prayerful reading of Scripture, .
The great thing about Guigo’s approach, , is that it is totally engaged, mind heart and soul, without being dryly academic like some modern approaches.
His method has four parts. We’ve talked about “” and “.” Today I’m looking at the third step: “prayer.”
Reading, Meditating, Praying.
They are all connected.
As Guigo puts it
Reading seeks for the sweetness of a blessed life, meditation perceives it, prayer asks for it…
He has two metaphors going at once to better express how these activities relate to each other.
First is the ladder of the book’s title.
You can’t get to the higher steps without placing your feet on the lower ones. So this kind of prayer will be something that requires the text of Scripture, studious reading of that text, and then meditation on the text you read. It is not that you are done with Scripture, so you start to pray. You pray the biblical text.
Second is his food metaphor — usually juicy grapes:
Reading, as it were, puts food whole into the mouth, meditation chews it and breaks it up, prayer extracts its flavor…
You can’t taste food that isn’t in your mouth; you have to read. You can’t taste food that hasn’t been chewed up; you have to meditate. But the point is to get to all that flavor.
Notice, though, that praying Scripture is not a self-satisfied reveling in the good tastes:
“…prayer asks for what we long for…
All that meditative chewing has revealed things about our own inner state. We are a long way from what God offers and calls us to be. Reading and meditation fill us with a very particular longing for the reality Scripture reveals. We cannot get to that reality on our own — so we pray for God to help us reach it.
Throughout the book Guigo gives examples from his own lectio divina
His text is Matthew 5:8,
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”
His reading, or study, helped him understand what this meant.
His meditation, or rumination, made him see how far his own experience is from either side of it.
His heart is not pure. He has not seen God. And so he prays, reminding himself of the foreign woman who sought Jesus, that the even the dogs get to eat the crumbs that fall from the table. And so he prays
So give me, Lord, some pledge of what I hope to inherit, at least one drop of heavenly rain with which to refresh my thirst, for I am on fire with love.
He asks to truly know God — as he will only be able to do if God purifies his heart.
Read and meditate until you know you need what Scripture offers. Then pray for help.
That’s the key to praying Scripture for Guigo. You are ready to start when you feel the gap between your life and God’s promise. Then it is the obvious thing to do.
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I would love to hear from you in the comments!
How have you used Scripture in prayer in the past?
What do you think of Guigo’s approach?
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