Irish Theological Quarterly

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'Celtic Spirituality', Ecumenism, and the Contemporary Religious

Landscape
Thomas O'Loughlin
Irish Theological Quarterly 2002; 67; 153
DOI: 10.1177/002114000206700206

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 COMMENTARY
Thomas O’Loughlin

’Celtic
Spirituality’, Ecumenism, and the
Contemporary Religious Landscape*
Recent interest in what is called ’Celtic Christianity’ is a phenomenon that calls for critical
reflection, especially from those working in historical theology. Such reflection may reveal
much that is bogus, but it can also place in perspective contemporary Christian percep-
tions of the traditions which formed them. This, it is argued, has relevance to ecumenism
and to the way various Churches interact, since Christian memory is always creative of
the Christian future.

Preliminary Observations

ne of the inescapable features of the religious landscape in the British

Olsles today is interest in what is variously named, ’Celtic Christianity’,
’Celtic Spirituality’, and ’Celtic Religion’.’ It is notoriously hard to define: its
phenomena are so scattered that any attempt to analyse it as a ’movement’ or
organised body of ideas is destined to fails However, this difficulty only makes
it more interesting as a subject for theological observation, since, if it is
diverse in origins, content, and motivating desires, then it may tell us some-
thing about our religious mind-set at this time in the way that the study of an
organised network or movement would not. So I begin with a few parameters.
First, there is no homogeneity within the broad range of interests which
invoke labels such as ’Celtic Spirituality’ and ’Celtic Christianity’. Any obser-
vation made regarding these phenomena is based on a sampling of the evi-
dence and will not apply across the board. Second, the interest is so varied in
expression, and related to so many other areas of human interest, that one can
comment meaningfully on but small segments of the possibly relevant mater-
ial. So, for example, it is a phenomenon found throughout the English-speak-
ing world, but many of the desires that motivate interest in North America or
Australasia are different from those which generate interest in the British Isles,
to which I shall limit myself, and even within these islands there are a variety
of perspectives.’ Equally, the interest is related to a general rise in interest in
archaeology, medieval history, and religion on television, but I am only inter-
*This paper was delivered at the Greenhills Ecumenical Conference in Drogheda on 21
January 2002; I would like to express my gratitude to Dr Oliver Rafferty (Pontifical
University Maynooth) and the conference committee for the invitation to address them.
1. I have recently dealt with the more general topic in a paper"A Celtic Theology": Some
Awkward Questions and Observations’ which will appear shortly in the Celtic Studies
Association of North America Yearbook.
2. For a recent attempt to delimit the phenomenon, see D. E. Meek, The Quest for Celtic
Christianity (Edinburgh 2000); and see J. Carey, ’Recent Work on "Celtic Christianity"’,
Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies, 42 (2001), 83-87.
3. Meek (op. cit., passim) has identified a number of constituencies and made the inter-
esting observation that some of the most ardent devotees areamong those who would have
least contact with the people who actually have contact with Celtic culture.
153

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154

ested, here, in the interest shown in a formally religious and Church-related

context. From another viewpoint, it is related to a general rise in interest in
religion, or religious consciousness, that is often described as ’the New Age’ -
this interest where it interfaces with ’Celtic’ is much wider than Christianity
and sometimes explicitly pursued as an opposition to Christianity - but I am
only concerned here with it in connection to the Christian Churches.’
Within these limits, it is worth noting the spread of interest. At the pre-
sent time, interest can be found in every part of the British Isles and not just
in those places where a more general revival in things ’Celtic’ is taking place
or which would associate themselves for historical or linguistic reasons with
this adjective.5 There is as much interest in England as in Wales or Scotland
or Ireland and, for example, some of the favourite texts used in constructing
’Celtic Liturgies’ have been produced in England.’ Equally, it is not confined
to any one Christian tradition: interest in ’Celtic Christianity’ can be found
among Scottish Presbyterians, Irish Catholics, Welsh Methodists, and
English Anglicans - and each seems to be able to find within it exactly what
their tradition most values, while also discovering a perfectly shaped foil for
those things which they wish to criticise within their traditions.7 This uni-
versalism of appeal has been noted by those who are supporters’ and critics’
of the ’Celtic Christian’ syndrome. Moreover, this width of appeal has made
it both attractive and repulsive in equal measure. To some, it is a call from a
mystic past to a unity beyond denominationalism. There are others who see
this breaking of boundaries as its greatest threat: one can balance Catholics
who react to references to a ’Celtic Church’ as a mortal threat to their unity
with Rome’° with many others who would emphasise their Evangelical roots,
and see references to ’Celtic’ as possibly betraying a Reformation heritage.&dquo;

4. On this larger religious interest, see S. Sutcliffe and M. Bowman (eds.), Beyond New
Age: Exploring Alternative Spirituality (Edinburgh: 2000), especially these articles: M.
Bowman, ’More of the Same?: Christianity, Vernacular Religion and Alternative
Spirituality in Glastonbury’ (83-104); and W. G. Monteith, ’Iona and Healing: A
Discourse Analysis’ (105-117).
5. The designation Celtic is primarily linguistic, a fact that causes much confusion for
those who think of it in cultural or racial terms; see P. Sims-Williams, ’Celtomania and
Celtoscepticism’, Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies, 36 (1998), 1-35, for a thorough intro-
duction to the current debate. See also the introductory comments of O. Davies in Celtic
Christianity in Early Medieval Wales (Cardiff: 1996), 1-6.
6. Op. cit., pp. 262-4.
7. The rationale, by which each can find what it wants in materials that claim early
medieval descent, is examined in my ’St Patrick and an Irish Theology’, Doctrine and Life,
44 (1994), 153-9.
8. See I. Bradley, Celtic Christianity: Making Myths and Chasing Dreams (Edinburgh: 1999), 189-
235.
9. See Meek, op. cit., passim, but especially pp. 60-78.
10. This fear is partly explained by the fact that the term ’Celtic Church’ came into use in
the nineteenth century as an Anglican usage so as to ’reclaim’ a non-’Roman’ past using a
’branch theory’ of related independent churches, see T. O’Loughlin, Celtic Theology:
Humanity, World and God in Early Irish Writings (London and New York, 2000), 17-20.
11. See D. E. Meek, ’Modem Celtic Christianity: The Contemporary Revival and its
Roots’, Scottish Bulletin of Evangelical Theology, 10 (1992), 6-31; idem, ’Modem Celtic
Amsterdam Studies on Cultural
Christianity’ in T. Brown (ed.), Celticism: Studia Imagologica
-
Identity, 8 (1996), 143-57; idem, ’Surveying the Saints: Reflections on Recent Writings on
"Celtic Christianity"’, Scottish Bulletin of Ecumenical Theology, 15 (1997), 50-60; and cf. C.
S. Rodd, ’Talking Points from Books,’ The Expository Times, 112 (2000), 37-9.

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 155

And it should be noted that there is some truth in these criticisms, in that
many Catholics who are dissatisfied with what they see as reactionary ten-
dencies of the current papacy seek an alternative that does not involve for-
mally joining a Reformation Church, and a ’Celtic Church’ seems to suit;
while there are many in Reformation Churches who are convinced of the
need to evolve a more-than-words liturgy or a liturgical year that involves a
sequence of celebrating the mysteries, but who would not want these prac-
tices labelled either ’Romish’ or ’High Church’. In such situations, the
’Celtic’ past is suitably historic, while sufficiently distant, to provide a port-
manteau for their needs.
While I am not going to deal with the interface between ’Celtic spiritual-
ity’ and the ’New Age’ movement, one comment is necessary to set another
parameter. A glance at publishers’ lists will give an indication of the current
extent of interest in ’Celtic spirituality’, but this interest in a Celtic Christian
past could be seen as but a subset of interest in esoteric pasts that is part-and-
parcel of the contemporary general religious quest with its interests in Feng-
shui, astrology, New Age ideas, and various ’alternative’ paths. This is a topic
which needs specialist and serious attention from Christians, but for present
purposes it is enough to note that books on ’Celtic’ saints usually rub shoul-
ders in book shops with those on pagan gods, druidic rites, and Wiccan
wisdom. While many Christians fear contamination, many neo-pagans see
Christianity using ’Celtic Spirituality’ as an opposition to their offensive! This
has several consequences. First, interest in ’Celtic Christianity’ is just one of
the ways that those in pastoral leadership roles in the Churches can take the
religious pulse of our society. Second, because the interest in ’Celtic
Spirituality’ does involve a popular heady mix of either saints and druids, it
usually draws little but scorn from the academic community which studies the
early medieval period, so, on the whole, there is very little overlap between
the discipline of Celtic Studies and those who are involved in the current reli-
gious interest either as producers or consumers.12 However, while this lack of
historical coherence does not seem to bother many who seek out ’Celtic’ spir-
ituality, that does not mean that it is not a serious question for the Churches.l3
Indeed, it is the exploration of this question which forms the core of this paper.
However, a further preliminary note is necessary. Faced with the popular-
ity and eclecticism of the current interest in ’Celtic Christianity’, we tend to
adopt one of two well-known simple solutions, and so rule out all further
inquiry. The first solution is to say that here we confront what is probably the
characteristic phenomenon of our post-modem intellectual world: we can
construct cultures in a moment by a process of pick-and-mix, and just as eas-
ily discard them as no longer to our taste. So how we approach ’Celtic
Spirituality’ says much about our attitude to post-modernity, and vice versa.
However, while this is undoubtedly true, it also assumes that, because we can
use a category to label the phenomenon, here the very useful category of

12. The work of Meek and Carey, cited above, gives the tenor of how those involved with
Celtic studies react to these phenomena.
13. I have sketched out the need for serious study of this phenomenon from various view
points in ’Medieval Church History: Beyond apologetics, after development, the awkward
memories’, The Way, 38 (1998), 65-76; in Celtic Theology, op. cit., ch. 1; and in Journeys on
the Edges (London: 2000), ch. 1 (and cf. Carey, loc. cit.).

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156

’post- modernity’, that we have then grasped its implications. 1, for one, do
not find the category useful in this case as it relies on a nostalgic assumption
that at some point in the past, either in the pre-modem or modern periods,
popular spiritualities were far less eclectic in their sources or less promiscuous
in their associations. Yet, the history of spirituality is little more than the
story of how wide varieties of factors - social, political, economic, cultural,
stylistic, as well as the insights of those who reflected on the origins and tra-
dition of Christianity (in so far as that can be separated from those already
mentioned factors which have influenced it from the beginning14) - have
shaped particular expressions of faith in Jesus Christ. While it may be possi-
ble that some spirituality could develop which is less complex in its links to
the surrounding cultural situation than ’Celtic Spirituality’, when one com-
pares it with actual past spiritualities, then the current phenomenon is not
more and no less eclectic than the rest.
The other standard response also invokes this notion that there is some
’purely Christian’ spirituality which can exist apart from particular cultures as
some true essence after which we should strive. This dismisses ’Celtic spiritu-

ality’ because it has links with current popular culture and uses ’syncretism’
as a term of opprobrium. Here the notion is that there is a Christian body of
ideas which is ’contaminated’ by contact with everything outside it.&dquo; I
believe this is both theologically false - we are products and followers of the
religion of the incarnation, Jesus as an actor in history, not of a docetic car-
nal mouthpiece of some set of eternal truths - and historically impossible, as
one cannot isolate such a pristine moment.16 Acculturation is not equivalent

to assimilation: the presence within a Christian spirituality of elements

which may have had a prior independent existence within some other cul-
ture or religion cannot be used to condemn automatically that spirituality.
Such a procedure would involve being able to isolate the Christian ’thing’
from the historical continuity that constitutes Christianity from Jesus to the
present day: a procedure which is itself the result of an unhealthy assimilation
of the agenda of the Enlightenment to Christian systematic theology.17

Celtic Spirituality and the Churches

So, given the current interest&dquo; with its variety and lack of homogeneity,
can we sketch out what opportunities and problems this interest presents to

14. The evidence for the importance of such historical factors hardly needs to be stated,
but if we wish to see such factors at work we have merely to reflect on the amount of schol-
arship devoted to studies of Galilee in the time of Jesus (see S. Freyne, Galilee and the
Gospel: Collected Essays [Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament, 125,
Tübingen: 2000] for a convenient overview of the procedure).
15. On the desire to isolate a ’Christian’ truth from ’syncretism’ see J. Z. Smith, Drudgery
Divine: On the Comparison of Early Christianities and the Religions of Antiquity (London: 1990).
16. D. E. Meek in The Quest for Celtic Christianity sometimes comes to this position as
when he notes the influence on ’Celtic spirituality’ of Karl Rahner’s ’anonymous
Christians’ and Thomas Merton’s interest in Zen Buddhism in the same paragraph as the
writings of Rudolf Steiner (p. 94).
17. See J. Z. Smith, op. cit.; and my Journeys on the Edges, 19-24.
18. While interest in ’Celtic Christians’ is not new - it can be traced to the later eighteenth
century (see Bradley, op. cit., ch. 4 and Meek, The Quest, ch. 3) - contemporary interest is
different from the past in that it employs a different paradigm of relevance to earlier times.

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 157

the Churches in these islands, or more particularly the Churches in Ireland?

Or, put more bluntly, should they take the current Celtic religious interest

seriously as offering something of value to them and providing them with

positive opportunities, or should they view it as simply a ’fashion’ in a con-
tinuum of fashions in matters spiritual, where what one learns by way of their
theological pathology is what is most enduring?19 It should be already clear
that I have neither an ideological nor an a priori objection to taking the
interest seriously as a theologian. Nor would I want to see it ignored as ’sim-
ply a fashion’, for such a lofty dismissal may be open to an academic whose
personal style is the rejection of the fashionable, but is not available to the
pastor since people cannot express themselves apart from the continuum of
fashions. But, as with every expression of Christianity, there is need for the
discernment of ’spirits’ (see 1 Jn. 4:1 ) to see the weaknesses and dangers that
are as likely to be present as strengths within any particular spirituality that
answers particular Christians’ needs.
One of the curious features of ’Celtic spirituality’ is the extent to which its
strengths and weakness are directly linked to one another. One of its chief
strengths is that it makes claim to be - to what extent to which it lives up the
claim is another matter - an historically sensitive spirituality. It recognises
that Christianity is, in its very nature and most basic claims, an historical reli-
gion, and which therefore needs carefully to listen to its past endeavours if it
is to see the spectrum of its belief, since, if we want to see the work of the
Spirit in the Church, then we must look at what has happened in the con-
crete lives of the Churches and the Christians in whom the Spirit has
worked. Equally, there cannot be a genuine Christianity - as distinct from
some Christian-inspired intellectual movement, a ’christianism’ - which does
not partake in the various factors that have shaped the Christianity we have
inherited, for we inherit within a tradition. ’Celtic Christianity’ does claim
to be sensitive to this aspect of Christianity - and such a claim is not present
in every contemporary spirituality - and to look to the past both for an expla-
nation of the Christianity we have today and for inspiration on how to be a
Christian. A related point is that it has the effect of heightening awareness
not only of tradition as a vehicle, but that we live as Christians within a
dynamic of tradition: receiving, absorbing, transforming, communicating,
and constructing. So to have a Christian identity is to belong to a commu-
nity, each community has a past, and usually locates itself by placing its past
in relationship to others. To live as a Christian is to be in fellowship with one
local Church and this is a community that can stretch back centuries: this
link of community with a place and its past is something that Christians have
for the most part so taken for granted, that it is only in recent times, when
such links are frequently broken, that we have become conscious of theM.21
Indeed, one attraction of ’Celtic spirituality’ is that, for many people, there is
such a difficulty in owning a link to the place or community in which one
finds oneself that one cannot own any specific past - hence rather than
19. An example of such a study is R. Knox, Enthusiasm (Oxford: 1950).
20. We can see this link in any number of ways: the various Churches mentioned in Paul’s
letters; the use of patronymics and toponymics or the use of use of congregational titles to
identify people: Thomas of Aquino of the Order of Preachers; or, most commonly, that
an old churchyard one can find a family name, a locality (often now almost impossible
in
to
identify), and several generations of people buried there.

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158

having a past as a datum, one adopts a past that is suitable to one present

sense of identity. Much has been written on this theme of community - its
past and its place - by theological observers of Celtic spirituality.&dquo; Through
bringing these so-often latent aspects of Christianity to the fore, the current
interest has performed a valuable service for many Christians, and often has
lead them to a re-evaluation of the whole place of the past within
Christianity with a new awareness that they do not relate atemporally to the
gospel but within traditions.&dquo;
The correlative weakness of ’Celtic spirituality’ is that, in taking history
seriously, it should take historical enquiry seriously, and frequently fails to do
soY When it constructs a present from historical elements, it should do so
consciously, openly admitting that its edifice is a new one, and declare that
its relationship to the past is one of being inspired by the memory of the tra-
dition.24 Moreover, it should not imagine that it is ’recreating’ or ’returning
to’ the past which is not only a false hope, but invokes a dismissal of histori-
cal culture; such a desire is no more than a fundamentalism?&dquo; But, to ask the
obvious question, why should a spirituality give such attention to historical
accuracy? There are any number of reasons for such concern, but two are
paramount. First, if one is investigating the past as inspiration, then the basis
of that inspiration is that we are not looking at someone’s theological specu-
lation or mere ideas about how the Christian life could be led, but rather
drawing our knowledge from real Christians who, guided by the Spirit, suc-
cessfully led a Christian life, hence that form of life is already within our
experience as Church. This was the great insight of J. H. Newman, that one
should investigate real believers about the content of Christian belief, not
simply study notions as deductions within systematic frameworks.&dquo; So, for
instance, if anyone would make a claim that a particular method is a good
method for prayer on the basis that it was used by ’the Celtic saints’, then a
central part of its attraction to people is that it is ’tried and’ so can be
’trusted’. If, however we are dealing with a notion that is not tried and
trusted, we really have only the opinion of its modern propagator and a
21. See P. Sheldrake, Spirituality and History: Questions of Interpretations and Method (rev.
ed. London: 1995), especially 91-112; and idem, Living between Worlds: Place and Journey
in Celtic Spirituality (London 1995), passim.
22. See D. Llywelyn, Sacred Place, Chosen People: Land and National Identity in Welsh
Spirituality (Cardiff; 1999); and my ’Medieval Church History: Beyond apologetics, after
development, the awkward memories’, loc. cit..
23. This failure in terms of facts and method is a central theme the writings, cited above,
of Meek, Sims-Williams, Carey, and my own work. My criticism here is directed at those
writers who make a claim to historical information but then do not equip themselves with
the necessary skills and information. However, those writers who declare a ’Celtic vision’
merely through the use of a few words as labels for their own positions (e.g. the use of the
word anamchara as with J. O’Donohue’s Anam C[h]ara: Spiritual Wisdom from the Celtic
World, London: 1997) fall into the New Age category and are beyond the scope of this
paper.
24. On this question, see Sheldrake, Spirituality and History, op. cit., 65-90.
25. By a fundamentalism, I mean that attitude to Christian revelation which imagines the
delivery of a set of perfect, coherent, and true propositions (usually presented in pre-packed
form labelled either ’The Bible’ or ’Denzinger’) whose truth is beyond human change, dis-
covery, and culture.
26. Cf. G. R. Evans, ’Theology’s Historical Task: the Problem of the Disciplines,’ New
Blackfriars, 76 (1995), 19-30.

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 159

variant of the ’Chief Seattle’ hoax of the 1980s. Clearly, such deceptions -
and they occurs all to frequently in the ’Celtic Spirituality’ area - are morally
wrong in themselves by analogy with breaching the ’Trade Descriptions’
ACt’,27 but they also undermine a healthy instinct in the current phenome-
non that looking to the concrete past experience of Christians - both their
successes and their failures - can help us find out the sources of our problems
and often offer us alternative viewpoints. But forgeries merely bring
confusion.
A second reason for close attention to historically reliable evidence as a
basis for drawing inspiration from the past for a contemporary spirituality is
the nature of how we today understand theology. When Anselm, on the basis
of a long historical tradition,&dquo; declared that theology was fides quaerens intel-
lectum, he had in mind an understanding that could formulate a consistent
and coherent argument for what was being believed. 21 It was a logical notion
of understanding, and the threat to the edifice came from someone who could
demonstrate an error in inference, and the unbelieving ’Fool’ was the one
who, assuming the Christian had made a valid argument, then went on
accepting a string of contradictions.3° Today, the most characteristic form of
understanding in religious matter is historical: faith seeks historical under-
standing. It is this mind-set that constantly refuels the debate about the his-
torical Jesus - earlier generations of Christians were not naive, or unaware,
about the contradictions involved in assessing the Jesus of history, they lived
within a different epistemological paradigm and so thought these problems as
of secondary importance 31 - and, it is the presence of this mind-set that makes
each Quest for the historical Jesus a matter of importance that we cannot
ignore.32 Hence, in every area of Christian life and spirituality, we have to be
aware that, as the products of history, we shall be held accountable by
whether or not our statements today can be historically verified. We may
argue that such a procedure is positivist in its demands - which makes it inap-
propriate to deal with matters of imagination - or that it is rationalist - and,
therefore, reductive of religious experience - in tenor; but it is there, and it
27. This is the issue of hermeneutical integrity: one must interpret materials in an ethical
way. This ethical principle was set out by the father of historical theology, Jean Mabillon,
thus: ’A judge is a public functionary appointed to give everyone his due Such is also the ...

function of the historian, to whom, on behalf of the rest of the world, is committed the
examination of past actions. For since all cannot make this inquest for themselves, the rest
must accept his judgement; he is therefore guilty of deception unless he has a candour of
mind which prompts him to say frankly and openly what he knows to be true If he is ...

honest, therefore, he must present as certain things certain, as false things false, and as
doubtful, things doubtful; he must not seek to hide facts that tell for or against either part
to an issue. Piety and truth must never be considered as separable, for honest and genuine
piety will never come into conflict with truth (cited by M. D. Knowles, ’Jean Mabillon,’
Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 10 [1959], 168-9).
28. See T. O’Loughlin, ’The Text of Cyprian, Ad Quirinum III, Iviii: An Emendation,’
Manuscripta, 40 (1996), 49-53.
29. Anselm, Proslogion, prooemium (F. S. Schmitt ed., S. Anselmi opera omnia (Edinburgh
1946), I, p. 94).
30. See T. O’Loughlin, ’Who is Anselm’s fool?’, New Scholasticism, 63 (1989), 313-25.
31. See T. O’Loughlin, ’Christ and the Scriptures: the Chasm between Modem and Pre-
modem Exegesis’, The Month, 259 (1998), 475-85.
32. For a recent elaboration of this point, see E. L. Krasevac, ’Questing for the Historical
Jesus: Need We Continue?’, Doctrine and Life, 51 (2001), 590-604.

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160

permeates our culture and animates our processes of judgement. If someone

claims ’a Celtic past’ for their spirituality and that ’past’ (i.e. their construct
of a period of human cultural history) cannot be verified with historical
understanding, then it is seen not as a ’pious fraud’, but as fraud pure and sim-
ple which undermines the larger edifice of Christian understanding.
Historical religious perspectives
If the past - viewed either as experience or the origin of tradition - is the
locus in which we seek for religious understanding, that does not mean that
the past is either wholly recoverable or that the work of the historian is that
of the neutral gatherer of facts: every historical vision is a portrait that
invokes parts of the past and makes sense of them within a framework that is
the construct of the historian. We construct our past as much as we recover
evidence, and we should subject the construct to critical scrutiny (alongside
verifying the historical evidence presented within the construct) to see if it
is acceptable to our purposes.33 Then, within a spirituality we are faced with
another question: is that historical construct creative of new ways of under-
standing and living the Christian life? Let me take an example: one can begin
with a view that Christian faith is something always being corrupted ’by the
world,’ therefore the most Christian path is to reject the world, and flee it.
Adopting this overall vision of Christian history, one can not only find suffi-
cient cases down the centuries so that one can say there is plenty of evidence
to support the basic position,34 but one could even find plenty of examples of
those who had made a similar calculation, and so this attitude could be seen
as having many illustrious precedents.35 It will not be the discipline of history

nor historical theology that will tell against this Christian Weltanschauung
but whether or not it appears an appropriate way to respond to one’s whole
perception of Christianity. The basic option in spirituality is always a matter
of personal perception of the whole of Christian faith, and cannot be reduced
to an historical judgement. So, should we as Christians today, in our specific
situation in these islands, construct a history which, using past Christian
experience, could inspire us? And, what benefits might a history based on the
religious experience of these islands in the early medieval period bring to
Christians today? My answer to the first question is not that we should con-
struct such a history, but that we must do so as we live within an historical
religion, and even those who eschew drawing on their Christian past cannot
avoid having some image of that past.36 In answer to the second question, it
seems to me that there are definite possibilities in using the Christian expe-
rience of the early Christian period in these islands as inspirations today.
33. For instance a materialist reading of history as a simple play-for-power effectively

reduces religious evidence to propaganda and thus denatures the evidence; equally, a con-
struct that assumes that all significant religious knowledge is transmitted esoterically ren-
ders any process of refutation by evidence impossible and so destroys historical
investigation.
34. John Cassian, and can be found in Thomas Merton’s Elected Silence.
35. This became a theme in monastic hagiography in Athanasius’s Vita Antonii, and
remained in the tradition for more than a thousand years.
36. In most cases where the past is denied significance, there is an implicit history that,
between the time of Jesus or of the writing of the New Testament, and our own day, there
was nothing but sin and corruption and so the interval can be skipped.

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 161

The necessity for an historical construct is that as participants in an his-

torical religion, in a culture which assesses religions historically, a new future
needs a new past. How we view the story of our background will ’explain’
where we are today - how I explain my past is the description of my percep-
tion of where I am now - and will determine the range of possibilities we
have for action. If, for example, one sees oneself as the last custodian of a
dying edifice where each day brings more stories of closures, falling numbers,
and new threats, then the present is a very bleak place, and there is an ever
decreasing range of possibilities opening up. By contrast, if one sees oneself as
announcing a radical departure from past praxis as one’s task, then the same
information is additional confirmation of the need for a radical change in
direction! Historians, despite claims to ’objectivity’ in perspective, which is
borrowed from the objectivity of the events they narrate, do not live in the
past they study, but act within their own time, and usually with a keen inter-
est in the future. So what are the benefits of this particular new past? This is
my subject for the remainder of this paper.

Creating a shared past

In resolving the differences that exist between various Churches, we are
well aware that it is often the ‘non-theological factors’ that prove to be most
intractable. One of the most potent of those factors can be the different his-
torical perspectives each group has of the period between the later Middle
Ages and today. The same event that one group sees as a glorious moment to
be celebrated is held by another as a moment of disaster and shame. While
both groups may have been sharing the same space, theologically and physi-
cally, for several centuries, they do not have a shared history but parallel
explanations of their experience; and the fact that they have been defining
each other by their disagreements means that they must again dwell on those
points of disagreement or face the sensation of betraying their inheritance or
simply capitulating. But the early medieval experience of Christians in these
islands is pre-Reformation, pre-Scholastic, pre-Anglo-Norman, and indeed
pre-Norman, and so can be looked back to as a common past which it is
meaningful for people today to own, for they live in the same lands, see the
physical remains, and have a sense of continuity in faith with those peoples.
Every group can look back to a single time and find a Christian witness which
they admire, yet none can look back - as both Anglicans and Roman
Catholics have in the past tried to do - and adopt the scene as their peculiar
property since what they see there is very different in both style and theology
from that with which they are familiar. The early Christian period is suffi-
ciently close to us for it to be ’our’ past, yet sufficiently foreign that we can-
not simply adopt it as the day before the day before yesterday. If creating a
common ecclesial history can contribvte to ecumenism today in Ireland -
and I would argue that an ecumenical common memory already forms a
united community of a sort, then looking back to a time in Irish Christian
history when no one had heard of the issues that split the Western Church
asunder in the sixteenth century can form a backdrop which allows people to
look at their more recent differences less as road-blocks than as difficulties in
a relationship that ’need to be talked out.’

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162

A example is the Eucharist which as the meal that makes us par-

concrete
ticipant members of the Body of Christ - to use the theology of 1 Cor - is

paradoxically that which causes the greatest division both theoretically and
at actual Eucharistic celebrations.&dquo; When we look back to the situation at
the time of the creation of those great icons of Irish heritage, the Ardagh and
Derrynaflan Chalices and the Derrynaflan Paten, from (probably) the eighth
century,&dquo; we find a situation in which each modem group can find some of
the elements which they hold dear, and other elements which they, or at least
their ancestors, might abhor. So when many of the Eucharistic texts were
edited for the first time by Anglicans in the nineteenth century, their edi-
tions dwelt on every verbal difference from the Roman Canon in its 1570
form, and on the presence of texts - such as a preface&dquo; - that could not other-
wise be found. On the basis of these differences, they asserted that they had a
different rite and a distinct Western Church - the ’Celtic Church’ - and so
this was not a common history with the west, but a distinctive branch history
of which they were the true inheritors.4o Alas, their own scholarship was their
undoing, for they contributed to the growth in the study of the history of
liturgy, which finally produced such monuments of learning as the edition of
the Ordines Romani.41 The result was the awareness that, while the Roman
Rite had boasted of its uniformity for centuries, it actually lacked uniformity
in ritual even within the city of Rome until at least the ninth century.41 So texts,
such as the so-called43 Stowe Missal were not relics of a lost independent rite,
but the survivor of one more family of manuscripts - with the variations com-
mon to that family along with variations proper to it alone - from a time
when a wide variation in orders for the Eucharist was the norm. But there was
also in the later nineteenth 4’ and for much of the twentieth centuries45 a

37. This is examined in my Celtic Theology, 128-46, and especially 144-5.

38. The dating of all these items is a matter of debate, but most scholars date them to the
eighth century, see M. Ryan, ’Some aspects of sequence and style in the metalwork of
eighth- and ninth-century Ireland’ in M. Ryan (ed.), Ireland and Insular Art: A.D. 500-
1200 (Dublin: 1987), 66-74; idem, ’The Derrynaflan Hoard and Early Irish Art’, Speculum,
72 (1997), 995-1017; and idem, Early Irish Communion Vessels (Dublin: 2000).
39. For example, that in the so-called ’Stowe Missal’, see T. O’Loughlin, ’A Celtic
Preface’, The Furrow, 51 (2000), 34-8.
40. This was the strategy of F. E. Warren, The Liturgy and Ritual of the Celtic Church
(London: 1881; 2nd ed. Woodbridge: 1987).
41. See M. Andrieu ed., Les Ordines Romani du haut moyen-âge (Louvain: 1931, 1948,
1951, 1956, and 1961).
42. See T. Klauser, A Short History of the Western Liturgy: An Account and Some Reflections
(J. Halliburton tr., London: 1969), 54-59 who draws out the implications of this fact for our
understanding of the Western rites in detail. His key reflection is this: ’For surely, if the
Church was able to tolerate variations in the liturgy even within the one city of Rome and
moreover was not ashamed of this, then in the same way she will also be able to tolerate
the fact that in the future the liturgy will only be universally the same in respect of its fun-
damental principles, but will differ widely as to the manner in which it is put into practice.’
Klauser wrote these words in the 1960s, however, his prediction has not come through for
a study of recent Roman documents (e.g. Liturgiam authenticam, 28 March 2001) displays a
renewed insistence that close uniformity is intrinsically good.
43. It is not a missale but a libellus missae, but this distinction was not recognised when it
was first studied in the nineteenth century.
44. B. MacCarthy, ’On the Stowe Missal’, Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, 27
(1886), 135-268.
45. J. Ryan, ’The Mass in the Early Irish Church’, Studies, 50 (1961), 371-84.

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 163

Roman Catholic perspective on these texts which pointed out that the
Eucharistic Prayer was labelled that of ’Pope Gelasius’ and that there was men-
tion of the pope by name, and so that these were ’thoroughly Roman’ in tone,
theology, and affiliation. On the other hand, they had to play down those
parts of the early Irish legacy which no longer fitted. Here, the best example
is the use of a leavened loaf instead of unleavened pre-cut wafers. The shift in
practice began in the ninth century and occurred gradually in the Latin
church.46 However, once it was challenged by the East in the mid-eleventh
century, it became a matter on which the Latin Church nailed its colours to
the mast; and the Roman Church does so to this day as its antiqua traditio. 47 ...

The point I draw from this example is that the Christian experience of the
early Irish Church is familiar enough that we can commonly own it and relate
to it in our life and worship, but sufficiently prior to the developments that
caused our divisions that no single group can claim it exclusively. Moreover,
in openly recognising its otherness we must implicitly be prepared to revise
to secondary importance many of the issues over which the Reformation
battles were fought .4’ Historical theology has the duty to show both those
aspects of the past we find familiar as evidence of continuity, and those that
make us uncomfortable through their otherness, for it can gainsay the most
’assured positions’; but rather than see historical theology as a disturbing
nuisance, I would rather it be considered as a challenging friend.49
We can see this in an even more pointed way when we look beyond the
practice of the liturgy to earlier theologies of the Eucharist. Not least among
the stumbling blocks in many debates about the Eucharist is the fact that the
common premises of every side in the sixteenth century were based on a set
of categories borrowed and adapted from ancient Greek physics in the twelfth
century. However construed within the various theological schools, the basic
building blocks of the system were ’substances’ and ’changes’. However,
among the problems of this system is that, once one begins to think in this
way, one is faced the stark binaries of yes/no, true/false, and orthodoxy/heresy,
-

for the language was conceived originally for the analysis of physical objects
which admit, due to their materiality, such precise description. All sides used
the same language game and simply held that they had ended on the winning
square, and anyone who contradicted that position had lost. The more fun-
damental problem is that we have inherited a wide range of theologies of the
Eucharist from the first two centuries which cannot be simply dovetailed into
a system,50 and so we do better to see them as complementary two-dimen-

46. See R. Maxwell Woolley, The Bread of the Eucharist (London: 1913), 17-22 on the shift
in Western practice, and 23-29 on the canonisation of the new Western practice in oppo-
sition to the challenges from Constantinople.
47. This is required by the 1983 Code of Canon Law (n. 926) which reads: In eucharistica
celebratione secundum antiquam Ecclesiae latinae traditionem sacerdos adhibeat panem azymum
ubicumque litat [in every eucharistic celebration the priest is to use unleavened bread
following the ancient Latin church tradition — my translation].
48. We should note that the use of unleavened bread was indeed one of these and that
Anglican use of unleavened bread only became widespread in the nineteenth century (cf.
Woolley, op. cit., 42-3).
49. See T. O’Loughlin, ’Theologians and their use of historical evidence: some common
pitfalls’, The Month, 261 (2001), 30-35.
50. See É. Nodet and J. Taylor, The Origins of Christianity: An Exploration (Collegeville:
1998).

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164

sional snapshots of a multi-dimensional mystery. Consequently, when a sin-

gle systematic theology is used, particularly one that demands binary deci-
sion, then some other, ignored or excluded, aspect of the tradition re-appears,
apparently from nowhere, and prompts not a reconsideration but a row.
However, the understanding of the Eucharist used prior to the twelfth cen-
tury was one whose semiotics were related not to the natural sciences but the
complex semiotics needed for the interpretation of scripture where it was
acknowledged that there was an ’immense forest’’1 of meanings&dquo; and that no
one explanation could be considered exhaustive.53 Thus the Eucharist was
viewed within a rich sacramental theology that related it as a mystery which
broke the limitations of time and space. Indeed, we see it thus portrayed - in
the language with which modern scholarship has become familiar through
the work of Odo Casel’4 - in the Nauigatio Sancti Brendani.55 Meanwhile, it was
presented as the central divinely ordained signum - using Augustine’s lan-
guage56 - within the hermeneutic of a symbolic cosmos as developed by
Eucherius of Lyons,5’ further refined by Isidore,’8 and which we see expressed
in Hiberno-Latin hymnody and the Old Irish ’Tract on the Mass’.59 Meeting
this radically different theology could provide a rich, common, but alterna-
tive locus for ecumenical debates. One does not simply ’go back and try to
start again’ for one cannot simply write out the centuries of thought and life
that have formed us; rather, we look back to set the centuries of division in
perspective, while also reminding ourselves that, as we have evolved radically
in the past and yet remained in the faith of Christ, so we can evolve radically

51. The image is that of Tyconius, see T. O’Loughlin, ’Tyconius’ Use of the Canonical
Gospels’, Revue Bénédictine, 106 (1996), 229-33.
52. See T. Finan, ’St. Augustine on the "mira profunditas" of Scripture: Texts and
Contexts’ in T. Finan and V. Twomey (eds.), Scriptural Interpretation in the Fathers: Letter
and Spirit (Dublin: 1995), 163-99.
53. See T. O’Loughlin, Teachers and Code-Breakers: The Latin Genesis Tradition, 430-800
(Turnhout: 1999), 157-205.
54. The Mystery of Christian Worship (new ed., New York: 1999), 63-93.
55. See T. O’Loughlin, ’Distant Islands: The Topography of Holiness in the Nauigatio
Sancti Brendani’, in M. Glasscoe ed., The Medieval Mystical Tradition: England, Ireland, Wales
(Exeter Symposium VI), (Woodbridge: 1999), 1-20; and idem, Journeys on the Edges, 91-7.
56. The signum - res distinction developed by Augustine in the De doctrina christiana
becomes the threefold division of signum, signum et res, and res tantum in the Nauigatio, see
the work cited in the previous note.
57. The method of exegesis that stands behind this complex monastic allegory is that of
Eucherius (see my ’The Symbol gives Life: Eucherius of Lyons’ Formula for Exegesis’, in
Scriptural Interpretation in the Fathers: Letter and Spirit, loc. cit., pp. 221-52) and this is exam-
ined in my ’Distant Islands,’ loc. cit.
58. Isidore’s hermeneutic, especially when it comes to the Christian mysteries has been
subject of much criticism in recent decades (e.g. C. Vogel, ’An Alienated Liturgy’,
Concilium, 2, 8 (1972), 15-17) but this is, in my view, unjustified as it takes his rather jejune
encyclopaedic writings as characterising both his thought and his principal influence.
However, when we look at his hermeneutic we find that it is subtle and sophisticated (cf.
my Teachers and Code-Breakers, op. cit., 185-94; and idem, ’Christ as the focus of Genesis
exegesis in Isidore of Seville’, in T. Finan and V. Twomey (eds.), Studies in Patristic
Christology [Dublin: 1998], 144-62) and far more influential than has been recognised (cf.
Teachers and Code-Breakers, 245-72).
59. The eucharistic chants from the ’Stowe Missal’ can be found in my Celtic Theology,
143-4 and in my ’Breaking and Sharing: Inspiration from Early Christian Ireland’, Scripture
in Church, 122 (2001), 246-9; the Tract can be found in the edition by G. F. Warner, The
Stowe Missal (London: 1906 and 1915; rept Woodbridge 1989), 40-2.

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 165

in the future in ways that take what is best from the widest range of Christian
experience.

Starting with diversity

In building any religious vision, and such a vision (be it a healthy or
unhealthy one) is implicit in every act of Christian communication and
preaching,6’ there are two sets of poles against which we can locate individ-
ual theological approaches. The first set concerns the direction of movement
between diversity and unity. The question is whether one starts with a notion
of a unity which sees diversity as subsequent - perhaps the result of calamity
-

or the reverse. If one starts with an image of unity, then given the reality of

diversity in our world, the desired unity is an overcoming of diversity - seen

as the fly in the ointment - and a restoration of what was there originally.
This approach is often indicated by its praise of the unity that once existed,
and which might again come about. The other pole is that which starts with
diversity and notes all its richness and complexity - it is the ’Stamp
Collector’ instinct since that hobby only makes sense because of the variety
already there - and then sees unity as something that has to be built, but in
such a way that one keeps all the different makes, types, flavours, and even
the erratics as curiosities. One can hardly imagine one philatelist boasting to
another ’I have less kinds of stamps than you and no unusual ones!’ Unity for
those who start at the pole of diversity is not a restoration or a golden age,
but a true telos which only comes about at the Eschaton when Christ gathers
the whole universe into himself and offers it to the Father. This approach is
usually indicated by praise not of the past but of the diversity and richness of
the present, and assumes that no great calamity has happened but that the
Spirit is promoting such rich diversity as the glory of God shining in the
creation.
The other set of poles represent those who want to begin with universal,
and thus abstract, notions - most famously omnis homo naturaliter scire
desiderat6l - and then move to local and individual matters as secondary; and
those who want to begin with local matters and then form more general
notions in response. In this scenario, one does not start with some theory
about how Christians pray/act or should pray/act, but rather with a close
study of how a specific community of Christians pray, and then you move to
another group, you see how they organise their liturgy, and all the time you
are picking up pointers that may show you what to imitate and what to avoid.
Newman’s approach to historical theology is a pristine example of someone
who begins at this pole of the local in all its particularity.6’-
60. In every act of communication - every homily or this paper - there are assumptions
about how the world works, and the act of communication creates a world by describing
what is meaningful action in that world. See E. W. Rothenbuhler, Ritual Communication:
From Everyday Conversation to Mediated Ceremony (Thousand Oaks: 1998), especially his
concluding pages.
61. This is the opening statement (in the mid-thirteenth century Latin translation) of
Aristotle’s Metaphysics (980a); but it is worth noting that it passed into Western spiritual-
ity through the De imitatione Christi of Thomasà Kempis: ’Everyone, by nature, desires to
know; but what value that knowledge without the fear of God’ (1, 2, 1).
62. See his method for the study of the role of Mary in Christian theology in his Essay on
the Development of Christian Doctrine.

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166

Clearly, there is a certain congruence between the pole of beginning with

unity and that of beginning with universals, similarly between the pole of
beginning with diversity and that of local experience; but it is worth keeping
both sets of starting points in mind when we reflect theologically. However,
starting with diversity is difficult in religious matters as many were trained in
a systematics that eschewed diversity as confusion, while others were trained
in using a model of theological parsimony so that the fewer notions that one
had to consider the better (anything that was ’not necessary for salvation’ or
’could not be found with scriptural warrants’ was deemed an unnecessary
accretion which should be removed), while others, more recently, have
adopted John Hick’s universalism that all religions are just paths to a com-
mon end, and so diversity is really irrelevant. Yet, one of the features of both

spirituality and theology today is recognition that such ’grand plans’ are only
formed when we ignore the richness and complexity of the human response
to the mystery that is beyond us. In consequence, many theologians recognise
and emphasise the need to start with the local and immediate, and they see an
ethical obligation to respect diversity, to avoid Procrustean solutions, or the
over-simplification of our world into ’one size fits all’. Indeed, the interest in
’Celtic spirituality’ is an example of this newer tendency: one of its attrac-
tions for many is that it allows them to emphasise the rootedness of Christian
faith alongside their specific sense of locality.63 Whether or not this desire is
fulfilled with something that is genuinely local and particular is another mat-
ter,64 but the interest in the particularity of Christian expression is, I believe,
a most healthy feature in itself. I have argued elsewhere that what we have in
the British Isles in the early medieval period is not a theology that is distinc-
tive-by-contrast with some other group of Christians, but distinct as a ’local
theology’.65 Given a common set of social circumstances, common sources
(most of which they shared with all Western Christians), a set of common
languages,66 and links between them, they produced a theological vision that
projected a world that was well-rooted within their own world. This pro-
jected world was then one in which those who heard them could live and act
meaningfully as Christians. The system of penance they evolved is the out-
standing example of this and shows them at their creative best.6’ There they
took a variety of materials and, adapting them to their own situation and the
practicalities Christians faced in discipleship, they produced a new theology
and a new praxis&dquo; that was judged by one Greek theologian at the time as

63. See D. Llywelyn’s Sacred Place, Chosen People, op. cit..

64. See Meek, The Quest for Celtic Christianity, 71-88, where he points out how many
claims to antiquity or specific location in these islands cannot be sustained.
65. See Celtic Theology, ch. 1; and "’A Celtic Theology": Some Awkward Questions and
Observations’, loc. cit..
66. See Bede’s opening remark in his Historia ecclesiatica gentis Anglorum.
67. I have a addressed this problem from a variety of perspectives: (1) for an examination
of the development against the background of Western theologies of penance, cf. ’The
Penitentials and Pastoral Care’ in G. R. Evans ed., A History of Pastoral Care (London:
2000), 93-111 ; (2) in terms of their own theological suppositions in Celtic Theology, 48-67;
and (3) to assess their place in the spirituality of discipleship in Journeys on the Edges, 99-
113.
68. See Cummean’s Prologue to his Poenitentiale; cf. L. Bieler, ed., The Irish Penitentials
(Dublin: 1963), 108-110.

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 167
’the work of men of the Church’.69 Equally, their systematic approach to
canon law shows their ability to borrow a vast body of material from else-
where and re-shape it to help build a Christian world within their world of
what could be understood and what would work in Ireland, and which could
be seen as a early example of systematic inculturation of Church laws
This phenomenon of creating a locally grounded Christian worldview
becomes even more obvious when we turn to some of the theologians, such
as Muirch6 and Adomnán,71 who were explicitly creating an Irish Christian
world. Both, working in the later seventh century, were concerned with a
perception of Ireland that would help overcome endemic tribal warfare.
Muirchd wished to create an image of a single gens - he is the first Irish writer
who thinks about Ireland and its inhabitants as a nation - which was now
being brought within the ’holy nation, God’s own people, that ... declare the
wonderful deeds of him who called’ them ’out of darkness into his marvellous
light’ (1 Pet 2:9).72 For his part, Adomndn sought at the Synod of Birr (697)
to produce an agreed code of practice to limit the worse excesses of warfare
that was explicitly based on a Christian vision of what a society should be.73
Local theologies are about local shared understandings and local solutions,&dquo;
and the early medieval world abounds with them.’’ On the one hand, it is the
presence of such locally rooted theologies that attract many Christians today.
While, on the other hand, it is a fear that any local theology is a threat to
universality that repels others when any mention of ’Celtic spirituality’
appears. Here we have only a fragment of a much larger question facing
Christianity: many Church people fear anything that appears to encourage
greater diversity, yet many Christians know that only through a local theol-
ogy, rooted in the particularity of their experience and culture - often threat-
ened today by the forces of globalisation - can the gospel take flesh and
become a meaningful world for Christian action. Then the larger Church,
the oikoumene, builds upon this diversity and forms a web (in the strict sense):
a system in which each point is equidistant from other points. Thus we have

a web with local rootedness in particularity which is reminiscent of the local

rootedness of Jesus in Galilee, then local diversities which are reminiscent of
the situation in the first millennium and with which many in this culture at
this time identify through an interest in ’Celtic spirituality’, then larger diver-
sities, and then the web of all these Churches. This approach to Christian
unity is radically distinct from a transcultural corporate homogeneity, for it
assumes that differences at local levels in specific cultures is a good thing, as

69. See T. O’Loughlin and H. Conrad-O’Briain, ’The "baptism of tears" in early Anglo-
Saxon sources’, Anglo-Saxon England, 22 (1993), 65-83.
70. See Celtic Theology, 109-27.
71. See Celtic Theology, 87-108 (on Muirchú) and 68-86 (on Adomnán).
72. See T. O’Loughlin, ’Muirchú’s Theology of Conversion in his Vita Patricii’ in M.
Atherton, ed., Celts and Christians (Cardiff: 2002), forthcoming.
73. See the essays on the Synod and a translation of its Law (Cáin) in T. O’Loughlin (ed.,)
Adomnán at Birr, A.D. 697 (Dublin: 2001).
74. While the phrase ’Irish solutions to Irish problems’ is usually used in a derogatory way
in contemporary Irish discourse, it should be seen as a measure of the society’s sophistica-
tion that it recognises the individuality of cultures moving through time.
75. Hence we speak of ’North African theology’, the ’writers of southern Gaul’,
’Merovingian theology’, ’the theology of seventh-century Spain’, ’Carolingian theology’,
and we could extend the list — each has recognisable features and flavours yet all were part
not only of the oikoumene but of the Western Latin Church.

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168
itallows discipleship to take on the contours of that situation and thus for the
Body of Christ to be built more effectively there.76 Towards such a dream, the
recollection of the local theologies of places such as Ireland in the sixth, sev-
enth, and eighth centuries makes this contribution: its shows that we have
lived in that way in the past and so some fears can be allayed. Moreover, it
can remind us of the possible extent of regional diversity within an incultur-
ated theology, thus providing an assurance that local solutions to local prob-
lems is a legitimate way of being a Christian. But again we should note the
dangers of naively imaging that there was a ’golden age’ or that ’we can recre-
ate it’: the past does
not present us with an ideal, but with ideas and exam-

ples that may help us create a more Christian future. To return again to the
example of eucharistic rites: the example of diversity in the city of Rome
itself may help us to check the desire for an imposed uniformity, but we must
not think that that diversity between monasteries in Ireland at the same time
was the result of a deep commitment to local theologies, it was simply a func-
tion of the absence of the printing press. If every church could have simply
bought a mass-produced liturgical book, it would have done so. But we should
pursue our reflection and note that the ability to have corporate uniformity
which is so much part of modern ecclesiastical culture is directly related to
mass-production technology - the printed book was the first mass-produced
item - than theology. However, at a time when we need to think about the
need for theologies and spiritualities that are finely tuned to the situations in
which we must be the living Body of Christ, then looking to the past shows
us what such local theologies might be like.

Christianity is, in the life of its Founder and in our relationship to him
through a tradition of witnesses, a thoroughly historical religion. It is, as Marc
Bloch remarked, ’a religion of historians’.&dquo; It is necessary therefore that it
constantly look back to its past to draw inspiration from examples of real liv-
ing of the Christian life from those situations that it admires: be it the apos-
tles,7S or the martyrs, or the fathers of the desert, 79 or the Christians of our
own region at an earlier time.so But in so doing it must reflect theologically
that the fullness of Christ beckons us from the future; and that a flight to the
past as a refuge from the challenges of the future is an abandonment of disci-
pleship in favour of being a world-denying sect.
76. This is the Christian analogue of the wisdom praised by Aristotle in the stonemasons
of Lesbos: there the stones were of a form peculiar to that island and so they used a lead
ruler which was adapted to the needs of the place where they had to build (cf. Ethica
Nicomachea V, 10, 1137b).
77. The Historian’s Craft (ET: P. Putnam, Manchester: rept 1992), 4; and cf. my introduc-
tion (v-xv) to the reprint of H. Delehaye, The Legends of the Saints (Dublin: 1998) which
explores his views in more detail.
78. While only one such work (Luke’s Acts) has remained in common use in the
Churches, this was a major genre of early Christian literature and passed over into the
genre of hagiography.
79. It is easy to forget that the single largest corpus of Christian writing from the period
prior to the sixteenth century is hagiography. A genre which can be traced back to the sec-
ond-century work, the Martyrdom of Polycarp, and which in its exemplars extends even fur-
ther back to the Second Temple traditions within Judaism.
80. Bloch, op. cit., put this rather well: ’Christianity is a religion of historians. Other reli-
gious systems have been able to found their beliefs and their rites on a mythology nearly
outside human time. For sacred books, the Christians have books of history, and their litur-
gies commemorate, together with episodes from the terrestrial life of a God, the annals of
the church and the lives of the saints.’

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