It is often said these days in Church circles, that when the generations who were born from the 1980s onwards look at the Church, they are more likely to ask, ‘Does it work?’ than ‘Is it true?’ They seem to be more interested in finding values that are sustainable than truths that can be cogently argued. Of course such truth questions might come later, but initially it seems people want to see a way of life which will speak to their aspirations and help them tackle the greatest challenges of contemporary society. ‘What must we do?’ would seem to come before ‘What should we believe?’
Our Lent Course this year will approach these questions under what might be considered a rather old fashioned title, ‘Seven Deadly Sins and Seven Lively Virtues’. The language of sin and virtue is perhaps not heard so much today in churches which occupy the centre ground in modern church life. The new liturgies in the Church of England in the second half of the last century considerably modified the number of references to sin which we find in the Book of Common Prayer, doing away with those prayers which were described as ‘a humble grumble.’ At the same time those who thought about good and bad behaviour tended to be guided by the moral philosophy which developed after the age of Enlightenment; for example Kant’s maxim that we should act only on such principles which we can will should become universal laws, or Bentham’s principle that we should choose those actions which will bring about the greatest happiness of the greatest number. The Enlightenment project broadly speaking looked for rule based ethics.
We might think that Christians ought simply to adopt Bible based ethics and yet the Bible is not as simple a guide as that suggests. The moral content of the Bible is much richer and more varied than a simple set of rules. Besides explicit laws (the Old Testament codes of moral and religious practice) we find general guidelines for behaviour (eg Love your neighbour as yourself) paradigms (illustrative stories or parables) and a symbolic world of perspectives, patterns and priorities. And this huge variety of material, developed over many centuries, doesn’t always speak with one voice. So as the Christians of the first five centuries pondered Scripture in the context of the philosophies of their day they evolved what might be described as a character based ethics. What that means will be illustrated by this course as we explore the traditional language of sin and virtue.
Early Christian reflection on sin and virtue brought together the thinking of Scripture and of Hellenistic philosophy and more particularly the latter’s emphasis on knowing ourselves. It is not only important that we should know what is right and wrong but that we should understand what inner processes lead us to act wrongly and what virtuous habits might lead us to act rightly. This way of thinking crystallised itself in the lives of the Desert Fathers and more particularly in the writing of a monk called Evagrius Ponticus. His work was introduced into the Western Church by Cassian who contributed a lot to the foundations of western monasticism.
In the West, however, sin and virtue came to be seen more as acts of will according to or against the will of God. Thus sin began to be viewed more forensically than as a kind of sickness and vulnerability to deception. With Gregory the Great we see a detailed analysis of sin as natural to us and requiring the cultivation of an iron discipline to counteract it and so avoid the retributive justice of God. Out of this grew the practice of confession and the imposition of penance as something which made up for the injury sin does to God’s honour. Thomas Aquinas restored something of the thinking of the ancients in his reflection on virtue as the cultivation of habit and in his understanding of the way in which compunction leads to confession and the healing of the soul. What this course will do, however, is combine modern thinking about sin and virtue with the earlier reflections on the thoughts or ‘passions’ which give rise to sin.
We shall look at the list of what came to be known as the seven deadly sins: anger, avarice (covetousness), gluttony, lust, envy, pride, and sloth (this is perhaps the most difficult to define as it goes further than laziness, and includes boredom, lack of attention and a dwelling on slights and failures); and the corresponding list of virtues: prudence, justice, temperance, fortitude, faith, hope and love. In this way we shall also begin to think about what our lives are for and how they are to be directed, and what it might mean to lead a good and happy life.
VICAR’S NOTES
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Just to say that a weekly newsletter is an excellent way to keep us all up to date.
In passing I remember reading ‘Mister God, this is Anna�’ and being very moved by it.
Found Mr God pretty trite and off-putting, I have to say
I think this is a brilliant idea thank you. I particularly enjoyed the thought for the week.
Thank you…this seems an excellent new idea….please keep me on the list.
This update meant a lot to me and it made me feel part of the community.
sincere thanks for the kindness and consideration,
A very good innovation. – you.
This lifted my weary spirits enormously; because it feeds me everything I need to know about what is going on in the church. I appreciated reading all the news, the humour and all the many events which make entertaining and light hearted reading in places.
Thank you for your comments – please keep them coming.
The Vicar Writes
Stephen Tucker