Well, to continue these observations of Athanasius, we can perceive that our soul, although dependent upon our senses for many of its functions, is different from our senses, and consequently is capable of living and functioning when our body dies. He's not, I think it's clear, giving these reflections as proofs of the immortality of the soul, but simply as hints of and suspicions that these notions are in fact well-founded. I believe he's entirely right in saying that an obstacle to these intimations seeming real is a conscious desire to deny the immortality of the soul, and a refusal to purify the soul in order that it may rise to the thought of God. I think one has met this in some people. It's not very common if one really gets them in a corner, but it can be found.

[01:06]

I think, as I say, if one can listen to one's heart, developing a listening heart is a very important thing, then one will be aware of these kinds of things. It is, I would have thought, at any rate, a universal human experience that the deeper we involve ourselves in the life of the senses, the more unreal spiritual things seem to be. There's absolutely no doubt about that, I think. In other words, I think Athanasius is merely saying that to bring ourselves into comity to what a human being is truly meant to be is approximate preparation for going further in a direction in which we cannot move without the help of grace. Later on, of course, theologians again talk about this as the preparation for faith. Athanasius, I think, is just saying, really just be quiet and think about, consider yourself

[02:17]

and then you'll see the beginning of this pathway. And I suppose when we add to this the theological certainty that God wills the salvation of all people, we can say that it's normal, and I think from observation, which perhaps you yourselves would also have made, that nearly everybody one has ever known does appear to have certain moments when these kind of intimations seem so real that they certainly are offered grace of responding to them. Do you have a citation on that deeper, we involve ourselves quotation? No, I haven't actually. That's only my own reflection on what Athanasius is saying. And I say this because, now we come to Athanasius himself, at the end of 34 he says, if the soul

[03:31]

does not suffice of itself to come to this doctrine on account of things from outside which disturb the spirit and prevent it from seeing what is better, it's still possible to get there moving from visible things to the knowledge of God. So, if you like, in the first place he's saying there are these interior experiences of the soul as functioning in a way which is not bound up with the senses, intimations in mortality and so on, and then if life is too disturbing you may suddenly find yourself, people do. I think it suddenly reminds me, I must interrupt to tell you this rather wonderful experience that came to me. I was working on Cistercian manuscripts at that particular point and so was my friend who is now a professor of history in the University of London. And we decided to meet for lunch and just have a sandwich and a glass of beer together and we walked into the Tate Gallery and sat down in front of Henry Wartmore's King and Queen

[04:35]

and suddenly he began to tell me the following experience. He and his young wife had taken for their summer holidays a little island, a remote island off the coast of Scotland. And when the day came for the holiday there they were, dumped on this little tiny island which only had a little bit of scrub and one or two short trees, and there they were left. And they realised within 24 hours they were going to get rid of it because it was a real crisis. And so they sat down and said to each other, well what on earth are we going to do? I mean we can either face the fact that here we are in this particular place and live it up and find out why we can't stand it, or else we're going to have to put up some torches and get someone to fetch us back. And so they very sensibly decided to stay where they were and of course all these kind of things which Athanasius is talking about, then they all became very, very real to them. It was a very extraordinary thing that this experience in their life and something which I'm sure

[05:40]

they will always remember as an experience shared together of suddenly being faced with themselves in solitude. And Henry decided whether they were going to run away or not. And they decided to stay and didn't regret it. At any rate, then of course they also began to be able to look out at nature and to do the next thing which Athanasius says, if you're too, you know, if there are too many buses going past and all the rest of it, and you can't get on with these kind of very interior thoughts, you might find yourself exposed to nature. It's that nice poem by Robert Bob Frost, do you remember stopping by? It's not evening yet. It's the kind of thing that can happen in anybody's life. Suddenly you get this impact of the world as something quite different and apart from you

[06:41]

which brings you back to a great simplicity. The creation, in other words, by its order and harmony, this is Athanasius, creation by its order and harmony, as by scripture, makes its master known and proclaims him. I think all the fathers feel very confident about this. That creation by its order and harmony makes its maker and master known and proclaims him. Indeed God, who is good and lover of human beings, what a pity we haven't got the equivalent of philanthropist, God is a lover of human beings, and has a care for the souls he's created, has ordained and disposed created things by his word in such wise that if he is invisible by nature, human beings may at least know him by his works.

[07:42]

It is indeed by his works that often one knows the artist even when one does not see him. This, he adds, is the sort of thing that was said about the renowned Greek sculptor Phidias. It is of course appropriate that in this paragraph 35, Romans 1.20, should be quoted as it was by both the first and second Vatican councils, namely that God can be known from natural things. Thus, having come to see a harmony in himself, man becomes capable of seeing a harmony in the universe. I think of course there is undoubtedly an interconnection between the two, whether if you like it starts by stopping at the woods on a snowy night,

[08:46]

or it comes from some confrontation with one's inner self, leading outwards to an awareness of the rest of the world too. These two do quickly come together. I believe it is thus that in paragraphs 40 to 42, we find what function as it were, is the fulcrum upon which the interrelated books hang. It is the conviction that the whole creation is as it were signed by the wisdom of the word. I don't know how else better to say that. It is extraordinary really, if you look, if you are reading this treatise, you get haunted by this idea of the logos, of the wisdom of the word. Thus, in the middle of 40, we read,

[09:51]

Since the world has been produced by reason, wisdom and knowledge, and adorned with every beauty, it must be that he who presides over and organises is none other than the word of God. I am speaking of the word of God himself, autologos, the word of God himself in person. The word of the good God of the universe, the living and acting God himself. He differs from beings that are made and from all creation. He is the only and proper word of the good father. It is he who has organised this universe and illuminates it by his providence. And so, in 41, we read, This word then, as I have said, is not like that of a human being composed of syllables. This takes us right back to our beginning, to the mystery.

[10:57]

This word is not like that of a human being composed of syllables, but is the complete image and likeness of the father. Human beings who are composed of parts and come from nothing, also have a composed and unabiding word. But God simply is, and he is not composed. His word too, also, is and is not composed. But he is the unique and only begotten God. The good God, proceeding from the father as from a good source, he ordains and contains all things. I don't know what image to offer you of that, except that I am always very struck by the fact of looking through windows, when they are as clean as these are. Anyway, this is the sort of thing Athanasius is saying,

[12:02]

the word is so transparent of God, that whichever way you look, and the approaches to it, you see it through the simplicity of oneself, through the simplicity of the overall view of nature. One comes to the confrontation with the word of God himself, with which the whole creation is signed, as it were. The word signed is my own phrase, but I don't know how else to... I've read these passages over and over again, and they seem to me to be so wonderful, it's the only way I can say it very shortly. The idea that this word is not like a written word, even the simplest word, like cat or mat, but simpler than that. And this, Athanasius insists, is the reason why the word of God came to us.

[13:05]

If you like, it's a sort of... You might say, in a sort of pattern, that here you've got the word making the world, and the word putting into the world the wonder of man, and then the word comes and chimes through the whole thing, and is seen to do so in Revelation. And thus, enlightened by the direction, the order, and the providence of the word, the creature is capable of existing solidly, since it participates in the word, who is truly of the Father, and receives his assistance to exist. It doesn't suffer the fate that would come to it if the word did not come to it. That is to say, annihilation.

[14:08]

As the servants of truth teach us in Holy Scripture, he is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For in him all things hold together, visible and invisible, and he is the head of the body, the church. That you'll remember is Colossians 1, verses 15 to 18. So this is a long reflection on that sort of a text, Colossians 1, 15 to 18. The firstborn of all creation, so it is the archetype after which everything is made. And then when it's present, you see this, whichever way you look, it's like holding up a sort of crystal. Not for the first time in this treatise,

[15:11]

Athanasius compares God to a musician holding his hand, his well-tuned lyre. Thus it is that through the word that everything in nature and grace is, as it were, brought together in dynamic harmony. Thus, in paragraph 45, looking at the sky and seeing its autumn beauty and the light of the stars, it's possible to form a notion of the logos, the word, who is the author of this order. Likewise, when one thinks of the word of God, one necessarily also thinks of God, his father. As coming from him, the logos is rightly called the interpreter and messenger of the father. And seeing the power of the word, we conceive a notion of his good father. As our saviour himself says,

[16:12]

he who has seen me has seen the father. You'll remember this is John's gospel. All this, the scriptures inspired by God, preaches to us in a much clearer and more powerful way. And so we come to the final exaltation of the word, culminating in the vision of the word, at paragraph 47. He is the word and the wisdom of the father, and at the same time, he comes down to his creatures and to let them know his father, he himself becomes their holiness and life, the door, the shepherd, the way, the king, the guide, and finally and above all, the saviour, the life-giver, the light, the universal providence. And if you have faith in him, O friend of Christ, be happy and of good hope, for the fruit of this faith and this devotion

[17:15]

is immortality and the kingdom of heaven, provided your soul is governed according to his laws. Well, I don't regret that I've inevitably taken most of this lecture to get a simple overall view of this first work, because it isn't often looked at closely, I think, in connection with the work on the Incarnation. Many theological students read the work on the Incarnation, of which we must now look rather more briefly, but few read what is, after all, meant to be the introduction to it, which is why I took so much trouble about Against the Pagans. Although, as I say, Ignatius, Athanasius explicitly refers to this book in the opening words of the work on the Incarnation. This will be very brief and then we take a break.

[18:19]

I hope you'll see what a loss it is if we don't see these two books together, for it is this overall view of nature and grace that commands the theological vision of Athanasius for the rest of his life. Do you want me to say that again, John Baptist? I hope you will see in advance why the truth of the Incarnation, of which Athanasius was soon to become the incomparable champion, was of such vital importance for him. For him, Christ is, for us, really and truly the door into the mystery of God. His theology cannot begin with God, it must begin with Christ. It is in terms of the word in creating and recreating

[19:24]

that we are able to make spiritual sense of ourselves and of the world about us. Right? Do not forget that we already have, in the middle of all this, the specifically Christian form of the maxim KNOW THYSELF. A conception which, as many of you are already aware, is the key to the understanding of the last great expression of the overall spiritual convictions of the undivided Church in that galaxy of writers of the early Cistercian school, which, although they come after the history book date of the schism between East and West, have clearly not yet suffered the terrible results of the breaking of the body of Christ, with which the entire history of the West is now almost indelibly marked. Not merely for a lack of reasonable time, but also because it is more accessible in itself and has been more frequently translated than any other work of Athanasius.

[20:25]

I shouldn't be surprised if you haven't got at least three translations of the library, have you? Very probably, yes. I would like to make what seems to me to be some key points about the Treatise on the Incarnation which it seems necessary to bear in mind if we are to appreciate how it completes what has been, as it were, anticipated in the work against the pagans. Remember how that work began with a glimpse of man in a state of paradise communion with God. So it is the restoration of this situation which is the underlying motive of the Incarnation. Thus we shall notice the end of paragraph one of the introduction to the second work. It is necessary to recall what we have already said so that you may grasp the reason for the appearance in the flesh of this Word of the Father so powerful, so great, and that you may not think that the Saviour was drawn to take a body by some natural necessity. By being incorporeal by nature and His Word,

[21:30]

it was because of His love of human beings and the goodness of the Father that for our salvation He was manifested to us in a human body. And so it is fitting in treating these matters to speak of the creation of the world and of God the Creator so that we can realise that the new creation of the world was brought about by the Word that He created in the beginning. And thus we shall find no contradiction if the Father realises the salvation of His creature by the very One by whom He has created it. I think you can see, surely, why the more one meditates on these works, the more one feels what a loss it is that this sense perspective has been lost so much in theological treatises. Because it's looking back and forth all the time, past and future and present. Now what is at issue is, of course, nothing less than the renewal of the image of God in human beings.

[22:31]

It is in this connection that later in this treatise Athanasius borrows a roughly remembered phrase of Plato's Politics, which is to have a considerable history in spiritual theory, especially, I suppose, again with the early Cistercians. In paragraph 43 he says, Plato, so much admired among the Greeks, says that he who made the world, seeing it given over to storm and in danger of sinking in the place of unlikeness, puts himself in the rudder of the soul, came to its help, repairing all its faults, sinking in the place of unlikeness. What then can be surprising in our saying that humanity going astray, the word came and placed himself there and appeared as a man to save it from the storm by his guidance and goodness. This naturally implies a restoration of the true knowledge of God, which has been lost. I draw particular attention to the end of paragraph 13. The word of God came himself

[23:35]

so that being the image of the father he might restore the being according to likeness of human beings. Yes, the word of God came himself so that being the image of the father he might restore the being according to likeness, you know, of human beings. Further, this could not have happened without the destruction of death and corruption. So it was fitting that he should take a mortal body to be able to destroy death in it and renew men according to the image. For this no one else would do other than the image of the father. In paragraph 26 we see how the cross and resurrection bring this about. In his final paragraph, 57, which begins with an exhortation to read the scriptures and lead a good life, Athanasius points out that if we do not imitate the lives of the holy ones

[24:36]

we shall not understand what they say. This is a very important idea. It's Geno's connaturality again. If we don't live like the good ones we shall not understand what they say. To do anything else would be to throw away the entire purpose of the Incarnation, which he so neatly expressed in a single phrase in paragraph 43, I'm sorry, 54, 3, so often translated, for he became man that we might become God. The Greek literature says, of course, he was hominized that we might be divinized. And he adds, and he made himself visible in his body that we might have a notion of the invisible father. I've not thought it necessary to emphasize what you will notice for yourselves all the way through this lovely little work. Not only the constant quotations from scripture,

[25:36]

but the continuous underlying allusion to the thought of scripture. Perhaps all especially to the Johannine formula, he who has seen me has seen the father. This is a very, very commanding idea, I think. I should like to finish with a fine sentence from Thomas Torrance, whom I've already quoted. It should now be clear that whatever Athanasius was doing in the De Incarnatione, the work on the Incarnation, was to find a way of understanding the interaction of God with the world in creation and redemption from a central point of reference in the Incarnation of the Word or Son of God. In such a way as to give inner cohesion and structure to all Christian understanding. In our next lecture on Monday, I want to look a little at another father of the church, writing in Latin, though much influenced by the Greeks, whose echoes in so many ways, I think, recall Athanasius.

[26:42]

This time it'll be Hilary Poitier. I believe that with the help of these two and perhaps some of the notions of a great predecessor of both, Arrhenius, we shall find our way to a picture of ourselves as God has shown us to ourselves in and through his Son. Well, let's take a pause and then come back and see... Mr. Tew, I really have managed to hold you to this vision of Athanasius. It is very, very beautiful, very, very simple, but very, very impressive indeed, I think. And obviously, I could have made it more elaborate by drawing material from other works, but it seems to me that this one, which is such an early one, does really give you his view of things.

[27:49]

And it contains all the elements that the later theologians are going to talk about in a so much more complicated way, and all the textbooks are going to want to know how the soul prepares itself and so on for making its initial act of faith, and so on. Whereas it seems to me, by having this sense of everything signed with words, somehow or other, whichever way you look, there is bound to come a moment when you may get a glimpse of the very beginning, whether you get it from inside yourself or from outside in the world, and then the whole thing comes together, and you see why the incant word... But of course, it seems to me, from the point of view of our own spiritual life and the monastic life itself, I suppose it all turns on the conception of an asceticism

[28:52]

which is appropriate to this, by which I just don't mean self-denying practices, but I suppose I mean the cultivation of a real kind of humanism, which this work is penetrated with. It's obvious that Athanasius is very close to the best pagan writers and is able to remember bits of Plato and so on, which help him to say what he wants to say, though they aren't integral to his conceptions. And I'm sure that it really is true that if you write the gradual purgation of the mind with the appetite for truth and also with, I suppose, with the purification of love,

[29:57]

these two purifications, the whole of the spiritual life becomes simplified. Did anybody want to talk about the idea of evil as deprivation? Does anybody find that a problem? Because you know, in fact, one of the points of Carl Jung's writing of his big book, Answer to Job, was to make his protest that evil really is something in its own right. And I suppose there are some people who, there always are some people around, in every century, who really do feel this. I'm inclined to think this is a psychological apprehension of the enormously inhuman dimensions of evil,

[31:00]

even when it starts in human beings. I must say that as somebody who lived through the last war and really only got to know slowly what it was about, and also had, I think perhaps one of the most memorable meals I had after the war was on one occasion when I was the only English-speaking person at the table, all the other people at the table, it was a collection of men and women, one of whom was a priest, two of whom were priests, and all the rest were German-speaking by birth, although they were not all Germans by nationality. This was merely taking place in Luxembourg. And I think the most moving thing about the conversation was how everybody, very convincingly to me, said that while the war was going on,

[32:02]

they really had not understood what it was all about. I know, for instance, that for me, the reality of the concentration camps only became real when I suddenly met, one afternoon by accident, well after this meal, I think, one of my school contemporaries, who had been one of the first doctors in Buchenwald and told me his impressions of what it was like. And it was the first time it really came home to me, what it has now been, and everybody is much more familiar with. But I think, if you like, when one met people who had been involved in this way and one saw that really they were aware, if you like, of the dimensions of something colossal going on around them, which they weren't quite directly responsible for, I think the whole thing, sort of, evil builds up and takes on dimensions which are rather likely, sort of fantasy, which Athanasius is describing

[33:05]

in his work against the pagans, which are beyond what any human being can conceive and do make it rather necessary for me at least to believe there really is a devil. Yes? You said evil is the deprivation of good. Yes. And you said the devil, was it something he was deprived of before he had it? What is he deprived of before he had it? What he's deprived of is, of course, the quality of the other archangels had, isn't he? Did he ever have it? Yes. Had he lost it? Yes, had he lost it. That's really why he's evil, isn't he? That's what we have to believe theologically. But his intellect he retained. His nature he kept. His angelic nature, of course, he had. Yes. So it was something similar to grace that we have,

[34:07]

that he doesn't have. Yes. Of course, we can't conceive of this very well. We have to say this, but we can't. We can only say the words. We can't conceive what it's like to be an angel. Because choice, I suppose, one of the reasons why it is so much more difficult for us. Peter, I will come back to you in a second. I'm trying to deal with this. I suppose choice for us is so much more complex thing, isn't it? It isn't usually, in fact, something one just does on the possible moment. There's a kind of build-up to it and so on. Which starts with fantasy and suggestion and all the rest of it, and so on, before one chooses. Whereas angelic choices seem to have been more absolute, at least if we are to picture them in the way they usually have been pictured. Because while I think the magisterium,

[35:08]

let's say the ordinary teaching of the church requires us to believe in the existence of angels, I think there are very few specific things defined about them. Just like, for instance, although we are bound to believe in the existence of hell, we aren't bound to believe that anybody is there. Are we? As far as I can see. What were you going to ask, Peter? You answered that. I was going to ask, well, I guess in the case of the devil, as you were saying, it seems to be more absolute. Yes. But it's the same with us. Is it by choice or is it by illusion do we start somehow fantasizing? Maybe Satan himself, he thought he was better than he was and he started living in that illusion and then he decided to make a choice. Well, any kind of different choices do,

[36:09]

won't it? Don't they say anything which makes you not human? I suppose the characteristic of all associated with the devil is pride. And I suppose that some of the people who have come to very notable destruction in the industry have obviously been guilty of a lot of pride. This was part of what was behind the German dream. Well, you know, if you're strong enough, it's also the American macho man, isn't it? A man who can do everything. I don't need your help. Germans are rather like a little player, I heard. Sometimes a player is better when you hear it and don't see it. And this was a conversation between two soldiers after a battle. They were both injured. It was a playful play, a tiny play, and it only lasted half an hour on the BBC Third programme, which is a rather distinguished kind of programme,

[37:09]

I think, very carefully thought. This is a man who's never got a play on stage, but his sound was simply marvellous. It was a play called Harry by Hand, and it was a conversation between an ordinary private and a sergeant. And the conversation went approximately along these lines. You see, the private was saying, I can't just go and leave you like this. I'll have to try and carry you somehow. And the sergeant was saying, I've always managed by myself. I can do without you. And so it went on for about half an hour. And then it finished with the private laughing and saying, I see we're really both the same, because you have not to be having anybody helping you, and I have to help somebody. So in one way, you're asking, really, what is really quite a complex question, aren't you? I mean, they say behind all this, the things which drive us are often very mysterious. Not everybody compassionate,

[38:11]

who appears to be compassionate, is wholly compassionate. Some people are almost neurotically driven by it. Some, just the same as some others, are almost neurotically self-possessed and not inclined to accept it, and so on. But at any rate, I suppose we can say that whatever our temperament is, whatever our chemistry is, and also whatever our history is, our chances of falling into illusions usually begin in that sort of area. And I take it the actual practice of knowing oneself, which frees one from illusions, and which is one of the things that contemplative life is about, has got something to do with actually praying to be delivered from illusions and then being willing to see sometimes. Of course, there are certain cases when one is confronted with oneself in a way

[39:11]

that makes one laugh, doesn't it? One does see how ridiculously one has behaved, and one also sees why. Then, of course, you know that very often it's a thing which is so subtle it's going to be quite difficult to keep in mind the next time it happens you may easily do the same things. Well then, of course, you can grow in humility, which is the virtue of truth, remember. So there's no doubt about it, you see, that what Athenaeus is pointing to here is something which can be talked about in a very much more complex way, but is very, very vital for anybody who's leading what is rather curiously called an interior life, because we can't, of course, lead a holy interior life in this world. But wherever you're leading it, you don't have to be leading it only in a monastery. It is, of course, I have no doubt you've had time to observe this.

[40:13]

There are always examples of it in every monastery, and I'm sure I can safely give you the sort of thing I have in mind, that people come sometimes, and we give them absolutely everything. There'll be something, they'll have one camp, or they must always have, or one place they must always sit in, or whatever the thing is. Everybody manages to have all these little things which they're tied up with, and can't get away from, and it takes half a lifetime to cope with them sometimes. I think one recognises this most clearly because in nearly every religious house there was a few people who somehow seemed to have got out into the clear more obviously than others. We could be wrong about this, of course. We don't really know how it seems on this side of the grave, I'm sure. But some people do seem to reach a kind of simplicity, which none of us begin with, I think. And I take it that it really is,

[41:16]

that slowly we have fewer disguises and less illusions. Would you see it maybe in the religious life that by staying in the place you just end up being confronted with your own humanity, and you end up accepting yourself as you are, and making yourself more livable? People end up finding you more livable? Presumably, it's one of the things that ought to happen. It doesn't always, does it? Of course, what can also happen, I don't even tell you, is that people identify with their habits and imagine that they are their thing. I mean, let's say, if you think I'm this white thing, and if I think it, it's much more dangerous than I think it is, if you think it's just too bad for you. It's much more dangerous for me if I think I am this thing. Yes? What were you going to say, do you know? No, I wasn't.

[42:17]

Yes? That fascinating story about the couple on the island. Yes? It seems like many people face that in retreat too, like people will come as guests. I think that is true. And get frightened. And some will actually leave. Yes, exactly. I can't understand why that is quite so frightening, to be by oneself like that. Why should that scare people? I think it's probably got much worse in the modern world, I'm inclined to think, Isaiah, because, for instance, you'll know that an enormous number of people in towns, I know a great number of towns in every country, where if you go to visit somebody, the radio is always on. There's no sound. And it's very strange how the friend who actually found me, my hermitage in Belgium, he also lives very much alone, in a small village, and he found exactly the same with all his visitors, who didn't really, who weren't used to living in the country. On the third day, at least the latest, the third day,

[43:20]

they found they had to go to town to get some pills, or something or other, they simply couldn't stay. LAUGHTER And obviously, that was quite an ordinary civilised house, where there was, in fact, a radio you could switch on if you wanted to, because he didn't run it all day long. His house was, I remember he had a radio in the house. I can't really remember. I remember much more vividly than many times we talked together in the evenings, very quietly. But it does seem to be a very, very real thing, anyway. What were you going to say? You are going to say something now. LAUGHTER Well, it seems to me that there is a sort of psychological context in which a person, for instance, who has for some years been living in that noise and so on, and it creates a kind of psychological context,

[44:21]

I call it in that term. And the moment he gets away from that, he would be missing that context. It's a kind of protective shell, isn't it really, so that one isn't confronted with one's own inadequacy, and isn't made aware how many times one fills one's own boredom with anything, rather than just simply bearing with it. Or, for instance, being able to say to oneself, I'm bored. I'm trying to find out why. Maybe it has, I'm sure, a lot to do with just being alone and seeing your own aloneness and be that it is. That may be the frightening... Yes, I think, if you like that saying,

[45:23]

there is a more serious element. I think you're talking almost about stage two when you're saying that, aren't you? That's to say... Don't you think even on stage one? Yes, perhaps on stage one. The person... Yes, this is the kind of intimation stage. I think the intimation of the presence of God is something quite overwhelming, if that's the sort of thing you're saying. Yes. Yes, I think it is so. Yes? Yes? That strikes me as being related somehow to what you said, that from seeing harmony in ourself, we're able to move to harmony in the universe. And much of the noise that one perceives that people surround themselves with is some form of musical noise, whether it's the stuff that plays in the supermarket or these things that people walk around with. But that reminds me of a psychological term,

[46:28]

the one-person world and the two-person world and so forth, that the stage of relating, you're able to have a successful relationship with two people and then you grow into something. But a lot of people stop at certain stages, or we all do as we grow along. It just seems like there's something in there that St Athanasius has really drawn to something very important. Yes. What is very interesting, I think, I would say in the successful marriages and successful friendships I've known, there are a few of them, even in 1984, they do tend to become very open, and let's say they make it more possible for other people to have the same experience. Let's say two people have learned to be very simple and very open with each other. You can often tell what's going on in a religious house by what this feels like, whether it feels tense or open or not.

[47:30]

I'd prefer to naturally not give practical examples, but at the moment I must say I find myself feeling rather happy and quiet here, because I feel the whole community is relaxed in the best sense of the word. You don't feel as though you're playing games. And this is something that comes across absolutely immediately to somebody who comes in from outside, to any group. I don't say there aren't any people who aren't, there probably are, but I just hope they haven't been looking round to see. I think it does communicate itself. One has known it very much. In fact, there was one time many years ago when I was living in a very mixed community, which was constantly changing, and had a tribune above the church, which you could enter quite silently during this. And sometimes I'd even make this

[48:33]

so people were actually present in the choir, by listening to what it sounded like. Because people were so different. Yes? I'm not sure if this is off the track, but when Ken said it alone, it struck a bell. There's been a thought in the back of my mind, and somebody had mentioned there is a radical difference between a loneness that we experience and being lonely. Oh, there is. It's the difference between isolation and solitude, isn't it? That's why some people can't be alone. Because they immediately become alone. You can only be alone if you're not alone, if you see what I mean. Do you see what I mean at all? That's what I mean also about relationship,

[49:33]

when it works. Is that in fact, because nothing is being excluded, which is true, then everything is allowed to come in. But it can come and go in the way the world itself flows. Does that make sense at all, saying that? Do you see what I mean? If you're not playing the games, then you haven't, if you're not saying to yourself all day long, I'm a hermit, here I am alone. Some people try it like that, and they go off their heads, of course. They really do. It's one of the more frightening things, isn't it? The advisor of Bishop John, who, as you know, is still a chaplist, canonically, and did actually have 14 years of monastic life before then. I remember he was telling me,

[50:35]

just as a kind of joke about as you approached the buildings at Gethsemane, first of all, natives say, no visitors beyond this point. Then it said men only. And then when you get to the door, there's an enormous concrete slab which says, God alone. In a certain way, of course, there's nothing strenuous, isn't there, about actually being with God alone. It's only when, it's only while you're still in the land of unlikeness that it's uncomfortable. Isn't it? It's when the truth is not bearable. Simply to be oneself is not really painful. Once you've got used to the idea that this is the point you're making, isn't it, Peter? I'm sure some people do.

[51:36]

I'm sure it's more particularly true, I think, of brothers and sisters in the kitchen. I found little kitchens in nearly all communities. Nowadays, of course, unfortunately, most people are not locked up in the kitchen for good, but some people used to be. In fact, I know one very delightful sister who eventually became a virus of calm and spent 20 years in the kitchen. And she really was a marvellously balanced human being, but she obviously had to face all these problems at their very worst because all of us know that in one way the cook always gets the rough end of everything. In the house, it all somehow devolves about the kitchen. I don't know why it should, but it does. At least as far as I can observe. In the houses, it's both men and women. So they get a very stern ascetic training, indeed, if they're there all the time. And some of them get through, and some don't. Some of them become very holy, indeed.

[52:39]

They've not done a thing. They really are able to see that they themselves are, and other people are, and so on, and one doesn't have to work one's head. People are playing games. They themselves are, and other people aren't? Is that what you're saying? Is that what you're feeling? That they themselves are, and other people aren't? No, I think they can see that lots of people will come and go, are playing games. One doesn't always have to challenge them. That's fine, isn't it? Obviously, I think in a certain way, in order to challenge somebody about something very deep, they have to ask you in such a way that they indicate they really want you to tell them. If you know, then you may say, perhaps I don't know this. Or sometimes you may have to say, if I tell you what I think it is, you won't be able not to know

[53:40]

what I've said. I think, surely, that Ignatius is absolutely on to something which is still very, very contemporary, that to get deeply immersed in the world of illusion, is to get very clear, very close to what it is to live in the world of idols, really. Because all these things to which one is attached by one's illusions, they all have to be placated in some way or other. Idols too, sacrifices have to be made in some way or other. And that's what it is. That makes it sound pretty precarious for, say,

[54:41]

anybody living in a big city, surrounded by so many distractions, just the culture of the modern world. I think it is, and yet you see, as I say, so many people get me, I'm afraid I think you'll call to mind immediately an old lady whom I pray a great deal. It's extraordinary how you can suddenly, in the middle of the city, get somebody who's absolutely real in a quite difficult way. I can only say this, one very short thing, immediately comes to my mind when you say something like that. When I was living in the middle of Oxford, the house, in front of the house, there was only a sort of narrow railing outside, very, very narrow, indeed only about a foot wide. And on one winter day, a cat somehow crept into this railing. And it sat there for days and days, didn't move at all. And on the third or fourth day, very early

[55:42]

in the morning, I'd just come out of choir, perhaps it was prime in those days, which we were sent, and the doorbell rang and I opened it and there was an old lady whom I knew worked in the laundry at the local hospital. And she said, here's half a crown to feed the cat. Now, this house was passed by thousands of people every day. But an old lady who certainly couldn't afford to give me two and six minutes to feed the cat, had noticed the cat and wanted to do something about it. I think this dimension of reality can be found absolutely anywhere if you really live authentically. Somehow or other, I had no aunt who was very like that, who eventually died quite alone, penniless. I had another one who died, my mother was a dead person at her funeral, and she found that had she lived another week, she wouldn't have had any money to live on at all. But she was the same kind of person, she would give away

[56:43]

the last thing she had if she saw somebody needed it. So those people exist everywhere. They really are. In the midst of quite ordinary lives, and they're to be found in religious houses too, I think. So I feel like, although I suppose you might say that it's more... I don't really know whether there's any way of knowing, in the abstract, what's the more difficult thing for somebody to do. Whether it's more difficult to live in a temple than to live in a monastery. Some people can live in a monastery for ten minutes, couldn't they? I don't think, of course, without its significance, that Daphnesius was, of course, also the man who wrote The Life of Daphnes, and he did have desert contacts. So I think this kind of

[57:44]

clarity of thought, which is so impressive about it, I think it's very impressive, isn't it? Extraordinary. Impressive vision of theology as seen as one whole thing. With its impact on the heart of man. So I think this must have had something to do with the sense of affinity he felt, and the friendship he had, and the friendships he obviously had with people living in the desert. Many of whom must indeed have been remarkable people. Because as you know from the desert stories of the desert fathers and their sayings and so on, how often these do turn upon challenges to people's bogus behaviour. You know, like the story of the young man who comes out and shuts himself up and doesn't eat anything for several days. And then comes and asks

[58:44]

when the Mother Angel is going to be saved. And gets the answer, well, we thought you'd become an angel so we haven't caught you. Those kinds of things. Desert fathers are full of these sorts of stories. You said something a little while ago about asceticism. And I wasn't sure if it was very brief. Do you remember what you... Well, I suppose what I was really thinking, I think as far as I can remember the context, which was in my own mind anyway, was that obviously one of the things we all go through when we first become novices in any form of religious life is that we have so much learning to do about things you do and things you don't do and so on.

[59:45]

That we can hardly begin to live until we've got past that. And not everybody does get past it. I mean, one has, some have, because it's people who go on identifying with this life with certain sorts of observances, I think. People who think the books have to be in a certain place in a certain way. Otherwise it's almost a mortal sin. And in a way I suppose that sort of thing is not really asceticism in the most searching form. Until you get to the point when what you're doing is based on some kind of insight into yourself and into the human situation. It's all about them. That's the same as I've been told indeed, quite frankly by some people, they fast easily. I can't. I find it very humiliating that I can't. I can't do that.

[60:47]

And so obviously it's no more, it requires sometimes some virtue to eat. Not everybody else is able to do that. And the opposite way around I suppose. Everybody has to find out what is it they can do. Because this is why, remember that, which I certainly didn't convince, it comes quite early in Asking the Fathers of Things, the all-night discussion in which there's about three meters, what's the most important thing about their way of life? And in the end Antony closes it by saying it's discretion, it's the capacity to decide what's the thing you have to do. Which comes back straight away into self-knowledge. Heaven and earth knows what it is. There's no rule for everybody. Yes? Father, this morning at one of the meetings there might have been applause who said

[61:55]

that we ought to have compassion for each other. Those people who can eat anything, it doesn't bother them. But those people whose faith is so weak that they cannot eat meat. Yes. That's something that's been very strange. This isn't ball, of course, isn't it? This isn't ball, saying that we should go along with the same issue. Obviously it is something I think in fact most religious houses have somehow rather written into their rule, at least into their practice, that if we all of a sudden have to take a drive by car we eat just what's put before us, whether it's something which we normally would eat according to the rule or not. It's actually more ascetic to do this than it is to make a great scene. As we've been hearing about Belov at lunch, I could tell I met Belov once in his very gaga state. I was told about him

[62:57]

when he wasn't a gaga. Apparently he once arrived at Ditchling for lunch and insisted there had to be a cottage loaf for lunch. Although the house was full of bread of all kind but there had to be a cottage loaf. I may say cottage loaf because I don't even know what it is. It's that loaf which you used to be able to buy in the English Bay. I haven't seen one since I moved up. The bottom part has a small round one on the top. There must be one of those on the table he said. When I met him he was a very, very striking man to see. I happened to be staying with him. It was a typical kind of continuity in his old age when he really was gaga. Often we'd go gaga along the lines we'd already been living on. I happened to be staying at a little house in Oxford. I used to come from my... I was working in the country and occasionally I used to take a weekend in Oxford because I wanted to be a preacher or something like that. I wanted to be an Oxford temple I think.

[63:57]

It was indeed a very remarkable preaching. So I'd come in on a bicycle and I took a room in a little lodging house not far from the centre of the city. Towards the end of the evening I heard an old gentleman arriving in the house and insisting on having the very top room in the house. And then in the middle of the night there were great people and everybody was shouting all up on every floor because suddenly he needed to go to the bathroom. And so he opened every door all the way down the house. One, two, one. And then eventually two or three times he'd gone and wandered round the streets and didn't know where he was at all. Apparently at that stage he always had to have his ticket and his money pinned to him. So he had to go and fetch him back to breakfast. He was the only one that I knew as Billock. He was very, very striking. He had very striking blue eyes, a very fine

[65:00]

large head and at that time a longish, very wide beard. He was a very striking man indeed. He had always been very, very eccentric in this kind of way. He and Chester were a very extraordinary pair in this way. There were many more characters in England at that time who lived on a shoe street very often. I may say that anything connected with distributism has got nothing to do with our class, but it's a kind of footnote to the lunchtime reading. I was once told by those who, as you probably know, there was a place in Ditchling where they tried to live in a kind of distributist way, which was a kind of mixed community, and I remember Father Conor Pepler who was one of the last survivors of the families who started it. He's now

[66:02]

in his middle seventies I think, telling me that of course the extraordinary thing about this kind of arrangement was that that meant that the women had to do all the chores, while the men said the oddies. So they had the babies to look after and the cooking to do and all this, but the men stopped and said sex and no, whenever they wanted to. Those were the days before feminism I think, hard to say. I don't think Bill and Chester would have been very sympathetic with feminism. It's strange that Brother Don Napsworth who obviously knows England very well I was wondering how many people in the room would have known who Conrad Noel was who you referred to yesterday, did you? Yes, but I don't know him. No, I don't think so. He was a very extraordinary man. He was an This is an example of another great extension of the period.

[67:02]

He was actually an Anakin person who got involved in the same kind of movement and had the very wonderful church of Thaxted not far from Cambridge and it was very fashionable for undergraduates to go out and stream on Thaxted which was a place where they did country dancing and all kinds of things and everybody had their looms in all the houses all round and it still, the last time I went to Thaxted, it still can't remember as you probably know it's still there now, it's still got a gun button between the nave and the daily chapel and so on and the chapel of Blessed John Ball who led some kind of riot in favour of the peasants up in the Thaxted It's extraordinary a great number of quite influential people in public life who got caught up in that movement

[68:04]

I was told it was a special train to go to socialist meetings Sorry, we've gone a long way from Athenaeum I hope we haven't gone into the world of deluge, but we could easily get into the world of... That's where, of course, talking about what was, I think, a very illusory kind of world, because in a way it was based on on a very romantic picture of the way you could live, but what none of these people said to themselves was in fact that all of them had private incomes which enabled them to do this and that most of the human race hasn't I think nearly all idealistic teams tend to fall down on that if you really have to have nothing but earth and land start and stop it's all very well, but you'd better have a reasonable sum of money in the bank when you start

[69:06]

it's going to work all the way through Is there anything else? I see you're looking into one of those Is there anything else about the reference Did I give you references clearly enough in the structure Is that all right? More or less? I don't... I think there is a translation in the in the Newman series at least of that work isn't there? There isn't a recent one in English that I know of of that particular work As I say, I think there are several of the thing on the incarnation, but I don't know if against the pagans it's been translated and I do think it is valuable to see the two together because then you get the vision through to the incarnation as being indeed the

[70:07]

son of women and obviously as far as the actual sort of more subtle kind of things which we tend to talk about just as a consequence of this, we will try and talk about them a little bit more next week when we get nearer What I would like to do I've been looking at what Michael Casey did on Anthropology and he seems to have taken everything out of the thermodynamic catacomb I think I would like to talk to you a little tiny bit about the first bit of the Steps of Humanity which seems to me to be a very valuable thing to look at later on, next week At least that's what's in my head to do at the moment, I'll have to see what happens as we go ahead Yes? I notice I'm trying from my last psychology teaching Yes?

[71:07]

I'm just trying to put together something that seems like this theological sense Yes that's here in what we're trying to look at Yes What he was saying was he took ourselves as a person Yes As an awareness Yes And I was thinking of the theological sense theological sense as being within our awareness or this awareness Yes, I think it is that, obviously I suppose if you like what one can't really hope to do normally except by a special gift and sometimes God does give one this sort of gift

[72:10]

for at least some days on end and some people hope even longer periods but I think one can't necessarily always expect to experience this in a very vivid way I think it's fairly normal that people who do live a life which is fairly retired from the demands which can occur those kind of demands which occur even in religious houses sometimes it does happen you're out in a patch of the clear and then sometimes I think you can be over quite prolonged periods very much within this kind of awareness I'm not sure that it can always be directly aimed at, I think it comes of itself really by letting things go by letting things drop and so on and certainly as I say, I think I don't want to anticipate this

[73:12]

especially until I've looked at it again but I think that one of the reasons why you'll remember the introductory bit of the Steps of Humility which is Ben's first book before he begins to talk about the steps themselves he had this very brief but very concentrated exposition of why do you have to go to God through the neighbour and I think you see that one way all the kind of joking we've been doing about this is because it's usually in interrelationship these kind of illusions come out they become we perceive them in ourselves and we perceive them to some extent in other people but one can't always know just how much one correct perceives another, one perceives them in oneself in one's interaction with other people in the group

[74:14]

yes that's what's puzzling about the thing about the deeper we're involved in the world of the senses the more illusory the spiritual world is going to appear I mean our very our whole conscious being is immersed in the senses from the very first moment of our birth and before so I'm just wondering how we can not be deeply involved in the world of the senses and to go to God through the neighbour well I think yes I think it's a very sensible question because I'm sure this is really why lots of asceticism goes wrong because the asceticism which goes wrong is the asceticism which tries to pretend that this is not our situation that we're kind of angels but being involved in the life of the senses is I think means I'm just giving a rather exaggerated

[75:17]

example of what it might be I always have to have oysters for breakfast I have a glass of Madeira in the middle of the morning I have a bottle of claret with my lunch and if you're not punctual with my tea at four o'clock I want to know why that's what being involved in the life of the senses seems I mean that's a really rather silly example but there are people like this who really are absolutely tied to little habits and of course they don't have to be so obviously expensive as my taste is run to but I think that's what he means by involved in the senses if you like it is gearing one's life about sensual pleasure it is extraordinary how some people would do almost anything to avoid any kind of minor physical discomfort sometimes they would do even quite uncomfortable things in order to get out of it

[76:18]

I have a question about the statement that to go to God or to know the way is the way is our soul and the spirit is the answer well that I'm sure it's not meant to be that way probably but it sounds in a way that's so individualistic an approach that would do away would you explain that further with the neighbour loving God and finding out your faults through interactions with others I think you see in a certain way as I say it seems to me that what St Bernard is saying what most spiritual writers who talk about this kind of thing are saying is that it is particularly if you really look at what happens when you're in reaction with other people it's particularly then you have the most obvious opportunity of getting to know yourself

[77:24]

if you're able to see yes Ken that's I think what I was really getting at those moments you said or quoted the movements of the heart that awareness to be aware exactly I think that is absolutely true you see I think the more egocentric one is of course the less one is aware of what anybody else is doing is it true to say that egocentricity is the key thing in being unaware I mean not the same thing necessarily is it or is it no I think it is really that you see what happens I suppose in the process of spiritual maturation is that well to use the language of Jung one moves away from

[78:29]

which is the kind of picture you build up of yourself I'm a servant and you hear me talk and you know what I do and so on that's my picture of myself when you live from the self then you allow that to come which comes spontaneously which is part of your life so you don't have to work out a theory about that you just let it be so ego to egocentricity is an enormous kind of barrier in communication and as you know you watch this in any ordinary group of people in a bar who spend all the time building up their character by telling stories about themselves which are meant to be some kind of one-upmanship and this goes on even though the stories are almost totally implausible

[79:30]

and everybody who is telling them knows their faults it's part of what one does it's alright to do it if you know you are doing it of course in a certain way, you can do it for fun but you have to be very careful about that kind of fun I have a question from yesterday it goes back to one of the first lectures you were talking about St. Thomas he said if all the sciences proceed from self-evident truths then you said theology couldn't because it was revealed but I read I thought that I had read I went back and read a second passage which said that self-evident truths cannot be proved yes this is really this is really the thing that if you like it's the

[80:30]

this board cannot be both black and green at one and the same time that is self-evident you can't be there and not there at one and the same time those sorts of things those are the kinds of things and there are very few of them you don't have to prove it this is something which is evident to everybody it simply cannot be argued against and so you see in fact really if I had stopped explaining the theory of the sciences as we did allude to this a bit on the way the sort of theory of sciences which Thomas was working with was one in which

[81:35]

you have some sciences like music which are dependent according to medieval theory upon the theory of arithmetic measuring and so on measures and rhythms in fact St. Augustine's very fascinating treatise on music is all about rhythm in fact and not really about sounds at all and of course as you know to some extent some of the more complex kinds of modern music are worked out on highly elaborate theories on which music itself is dependent so you've got a scheme if you like of very fundamental sciences which are very exalted and which cover a large number of areas from which the other sciences derive their first principles

[82:38]

so that really theology is a special case of what in other areas would be a minor science it's because of the dignity of the source from which it derives its first principles and let's say things we believe are clear to God though they are not clear to us this is what makes theology more dignified and not like the other sciences if it were one of the other ordinary ones then you would be able to be a mathematician and a musician it is actually I think very very interesting for somebody like me who is actually very interested in music I've noticed amongst my musical friends that an enormously high number of those of my musical school friends who went on being musical also went into the science subjects and so on they tended to be physicists and people like us

[83:39]

doing very very mentally exacting things, this is fairly true of course in order to be very musical you have to be capable, this is why I think much serious music you can't give yourself to if you're not fresh, because it's a very intellectual, it would be of all the arts, it's most mentally demanding to listen to a symphony it's very mentally demanding if you're really listening to it and you're not hearing certain clashes of sound you're already following the structure of the symphony it's very mentally demanding it didn't seem to me to be sensible to give you a kind of full-blown picture of the way these things work but you can see the general lines of it in fact it was really important it seems to me whether you look at it from the point of the summa or some other kind of theology like the one we've been looking at today the central vision from which all this

[84:40]

springs is the idea that there is a word of God and this is a real thing if you like God should God say himself there wouldn't be any syllables there'd be one thing one person God bless you all have a peaceful weekend and we'll have a look at a slightly different way of looking at the same sorts of things in history it's a very neglected theology very little has been done about it and I think there are two sorts of things

[85:42]

that we could very well do with some more work perhaps I'll try to do some of it someday I'll give you a little paper of mine which I gave some years ago just one little tiny piece of work but it doesn't go very far and I was interested to find that nobody else had gone very far with it to try to find out just how much Gregory did really owe to the short period when he was living in a Greek speaking part of the world like most educated people in the late Latin empire although he came from France he certainly could read and speak Greek we don't really know how far some of his ideas would arrive very directly from Greek sources, it's very probable they were, because in fact especially the last work I'll be referring to which in many ways is the most fascinating one which is incomplete, we've only got one manuscript and even that is not complete it does look as though

[86:46]

there may very well have been something that he worked on while he was living in a Greek speaking area but he is a very important early Latin writer but because he is, again, because he is one of these kind of people who either get a vision of it or you don't, he tends to be rather rejected, people want things that are tighter and easier to talk about so bless you all thank you very much

[87:11]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ