Spirituality in Ministerial Formation

The Dynamic of Prayer in Learning

Andrew Mayes

• Publisher: University of Wales Press
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9780708322246
• eBook ISBN: 9781783163816
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

This is a ground-breaking study into a crucial area of theological education. It traces the origin and evolution of the formation model of training and identifies what difference this paradigm makes to present practice. It uncovers significant and surprising functions of prayer in the formational and learning process as discovered in empirical research (informed by theological and psychological perspectives on prayer) among a sample of newly ordained clergy and tutors. The practical implications of the research are identified, offering creative ideas for a renewed understanding and praxis of the role of prayer in learning. This is essential reading for theological students and teachers alike, and calls for a clearer articulation of a spirituality of education as needed by our present culture and context.

Part I

Formation Past and Present

1

Models of theological education in the first millennium

Introduction to chapters 1 and 2

At the heart of this study is the concept of ministerial formation, and chapters 1 and 2 explore its historical antecedents – paradigms of leadership training that have served the Church in the last two millennia. They will identify six major models and describe their chief characteristics, especially as they touch on issues of concern to this study: What concept of theology is in view here and how is this related to spirituality? What forms of prayer does this model require and what are their purposes? What view of leadership/priesthood does this model engender? How does this model challenge contemporary training of priests and leaders?

While a comprehensive historical account is not attempted, successive (and overlapping) models will help to tell the story of how the Church has prepared and equipped its leaders over twenty centuries. The methodology involves returning to key figures and primary texts. In our encounter with these texts we shall be guided by Sheldrake’s (1991a: 165) advice about a two-way conversation: ‘What is needed is a receptive and at the same time critical dialogue with a spiritual text in order to allow the wisdom in it to challenge us and yet to accord our own horizons their proper place.’ Thus the exploration of the past both gives a sense of perspective and of origins, and raises issues about current forms of training, to be taken further into the present research.

Praxis – action/reflection model

In the synoptic gospels, the relationship between Jesus and the disciples is expressed in different ways, including rabbi/master and disciple (mathetes), leader and follower. As Kittel (1967: 441) points out, this word ‘always implies the existence of a personal attachment which shapes the whole life of the one described as mathetes, and which in its particularity leaves no doubt as to who is deploying the formative power’. Such discipleship pictures Jesus as a trainer and the disciples as apprentices who learn ‘on the job’. Within this pattern of training, it is possible to identify the significant inclusion of both prayer and reflection on ministry.

In Mark’s gospel, the Twelve are chosen (chapter 3) ‘to be with him and to be sent out’ – for a learning process and an apostolate. Early on Jesus chooses a small team (Peter, James and John) who are given privileged access to his way of working and healing behind closed doors (Mk 1: 29; cf. 5: 37, 9: 2). In the first part of Mark’s gospel, the Twelve learn by observation of Christ’s healing and teaching techniques, and at an early stage (6: 7) they are sent out in pairs. In Mark 8, in the journey together towards Jerusalem, Jesus invites his disciples to copy him, to take up their cross and follow him (Mk 8: 34). As Best (1981: 39) notes: ‘There is thus here the beginnings of an imitatio Christi theology.’ Processes of interaction between Jesus and the disciples, allowing for reflection, are also identified in Robbins (1984).

This perspective is echoed in Luke’s account, and the missions of the Twelve and the Seventy reveal key aspects of the learning process. First there is a period of intense training, which includes listening to Jesus, watching his pastoral approach, comprising ministry both in the marketplace (Lk. 7: 32) and in the home, and sharing meals with outcasts. Then the Twelve are sent out (9: 2) and report back to Jesus (9: 10). Next Jesus withdraws with them to a place apart, a ‘lonely place’ (9: 12) for a time of shared reflection.

This pattern is repeated in the experience of the Seventy, sent out in pairs (10: 1) for a ministry of preaching the Kingdom and healing, modelled on Christ’s. Upon their return there is reflection, debriefing and feedback on the exercise (10: 17–20). Banks (1999: 104) identifies four elements in this process: 1. induction: the disciples hear the basic message; 2. observation and participation: they are drawn into helping with Christ’s ‘hands-on’ ministry; 3. modelling: Jesus exemplifies patterns of ministry; 4. fellowship: the experience of being together a learning community. What also stands out as a highly significant aspect is the time given over to debriefing and reflection, in which the first, tentative experiences of ministry can be reflected on and lessons drawn out (cf. Lk. 10: 19 where the concept of authority is reflected upon).

Both Mark and Luke emphasize the role of prayer and silence in the example Jesus sets before the disciples, following the forty days of prayer, struggle and preparation in the desert. In Mark chapter 1, a hectic twenty-four hours of ministry is followed by prayer before dawn in an eremos – lonely place (1: 35): the time of prayer is both the conclusion of an intense period of ministry and the prelude to the next stage. This rhythm of prayer and activity is repeated in the disciples’ experience, as they go to a place of retreat enabling rest and reflection after first incursions into ministry and giving an account to Jesus (Mk. 6: 30, 31). As Lane (1974: 81) points out: ‘In each instance reference to the wilderness-place is preceded by an account of Jesus’ preaching and power; he then withdraws from the multitude which seeks his gifts.’ After this retreat, another time of ministry (6: 35–45) is followed by Christ’s retirement into the hills for prayer at night (6: 46): the pattern of intense activity and solitude is repeated.

Luke gives a similar picture. Jesus withdraws to the hills and prays through the night after a demanding period in which great crowds gathered for preaching and healing (Lk. 6: 12). After another time of intense ministry, there is further prayer which becomes the context for learning and questions: ‘Once when Jesus was praying alone, with only the disciples near him, he asked them, “Who do the crowds say that I am?” ’ (9: 18).

This passage vividly highlights Jesus modelling solitude to the disciples and the thin line between teaching and prayer. Eight days later, the pattern is repeated as Jesus goes up on the mountain to pray with Peter, James and John. This prayer experience becomes a learning experience in a different sense, in the encounter of the transfiguration (9: 28–36). In the return of the Seventy after their mission, within their debriefing and reflection with Christ, perspectives arising from prayer are shared; as Wright (2004: 125) puts it: ‘Jesus in prayer had seen a vision…[he] had seen, in mystical sight, the heavenly reality which corresponded to the earthly victories won by the 70.’ There is a further example of the integration of prayer and learning, as Christ spontaneously moves into thanksgiving ‘at that same hour’ (Lk. 10: 21), in which he celebrates apokalupsis, disclosure or revelation, taking place in the pastoral experience of the Seventy. As Dunn (2003: 561) puts it, we should note ‘the degree to which Jesus provided a model to his disciples as a man of prayer…To be a disciple of Jesus was to pray as Jesus prayed.’

Christ’s practice of modelling a balance between prayer and activity is communicated to the disciples not only by his own personal example but by appeal to other expressions, notably in the passage about Mary and Martha (Lk. 10: 38–42) in which Mary chooses ‘the better part’. This prompts the disciples to request particular training in prayer (Lk. 11: 1). Christ speaks of the kind of prayer that involves bringing questions and puzzlement to God: ‘Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock and the door will be opened for you’ (Lk. 11: 9).

As Jeremias (1974: 78) puts it, with Christ’s approach to God as Abba ‘a new way of praying is born’. Jeremias (1974: 76) points out that, in giving the disciples the Lord’s Prayer in Aramaic vernacular, ‘he removes prayer from the liturgical sphere of sacred language and places it right in the midst of everyday life’. Also significant is a daring, radical fluidity in respect to the traditionally fixed Jewish Shema of Deuteronomy 6: 5, so that Mark (12: 33) commends loving God with heart, understanding and strength, while Luke (10: 27) advocates loving God with heart, soul, strength and mind. While this may point to the replacement of the recital of the Shema by the Lord’s Prayer, it also points to a holistic approach to prayer encompassing both affective/feeling elements and intellectual/thinking dimensions (Jeremias, 1974: 80). In his study of the prayer-life of Jesus, Thomson (1959) identifies it as a crucial source of inspiration and illumination for his ministry. In a more recent study, Chilton (2002) characterizes Jesus as a ‘mystic’; for a more cautious approach to the prayer of Jesus, see Cullmann (1995). Borg (1993) sees Jesus as a ‘Spirit person’, interpreting the long periods of prayer mentioned by Luke (6: 12) implying Jesus’ use of contemplation or meditation.

Paideia – holistic model

Paideia represents a second model of learning that developed throughout the Greek world and forms the background to theological thinking in the first centuries of the Church. Werner Jaeger, in his major study Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture (1945: 286), understands paideia as a holistic approach to learning that enables a person to participate fully in the culture, with the formation of character and virtue as its central aim:

Paideia was now connected with the highest aretē possible to man – it was used to denote the sum total of all ideal perfections of mind and body – complete kalokagathia [nobleness and goodness], a concept which was now consciously taken to include a genuine intellectual and spiritual culture.

Thus paideia represents the process of instruction that made a person complete in body, mind and soul. This shaping of a virtuous person took concrete expression in the earliest schools of the Church, of which the catechetical school of Alexandria is the greatest example. Here Christian leaders were trained alongside pagan seekers after truth. Founded in about 180 by Pantrenus, it has been called ‘the first Christian academy’ and ‘the first catholic university’ (Wilkin, 1984: 15). Pre-baptismal catechesis led to an exploration of the Christian tradition and of philosophy understood as ‘living the virtuous life’. It was not so much a school as a network of students, enabling one-to-one tuition or learning in small groups with a tutor.

Clement of Alexandria

Clement of Alexandria (c.150–c.215) gives us insight into the educational process of paideia in his treatise Paedagogus on ‘Christ the Teacher’. For Clement, education is concerned with living the ethical life: what matters are behaviour, attitudes, values. What is the aim of the teacher? ‘His aim is thus to improve the soul, not to teach, and to train it up to a virtuous, not to an intellectual life…[he] first exhorts to the attainment of right dispositions and character’ (Clement, 1997a).

He develops his view of paideia through the concept of gnosis, in which he presents true Christian knowledge in opposition to the heretical esoteric gnosis. As Jaeger (1961: 61) says: ‘The true paideia is the Christian religion itself, but Christianity in its theological form and conceived in Clement’s own system of gnosis.’ For Wiles (1977: 182), Clement represents ‘the first extensive synthesis between Christian faith and Hellenistic philosophy’ while, for Danielou (1973: 453), Clement enables ‘an interplay and encounter between Greek paideia with elements originating from the Judeo-Christian apocalyptic tradition’. In Clement’s (1997b) Stromateis VII: 10, ‘Knowledge (gnosis) is added to faith, and love to knowledge, the heavenly inheritance’. There is a progression: ‘“O taste and see that the Lord is good.” Faith will lead you in, experience will teach, the Scripture will instruct…’ (Clement, 1986: 54).

The content of the gnosis is essentially the Christian tradition, but Clement is concerned not only with knowledge about God, but rather knowledge of God. He urges his students to seek the experiential vision of God he calls theoria: ‘Embracing the divine vision not in mirrors or by means of mirrors, but in the transcendently clear and absolutely pure insatiable vision which is the privilege of intensely loving souls…this is the function of the Gnostic…to have converse with God’ (1997b, II: 7).

‘Converse with God’ is Clement’s favourite phrase for prayer, which is crucially important because ‘does not he who always holds uninterrupted converse with God by knowledge, life and thanksgiving, grow at every step superior [to the good man] in all respects – in conduct, in words, in disposition?’ (1997b, II: 7). In Clement’s paideia, prayer becomes thoroughly integrated into the learning process, which itself is a prayerful process of discernment, while also allowing for dedicated time and space for wordless prayer and contemplation:

While in silence, while engaged in reading or in works according to reason, he in every mood prays. If he but form the thought in the secret chamber of his soul, and call on the Father with unspeakable groanings, he is near…Prayer, then, may be uttered without the voice, by concentrating the whole spiritual nature within on expression by the mind, in undistracted turning towards God (1997b, II: 7)

Flew (1934: 25) appreciates Clement’s approach: ‘The perfection to which believers are called by the Stromateis is theoria, a full unification of the powers of the soul. There is knowledge in it, but there is also love (Stromateis VII: 2), complete harmony of purpose and desire.’ Meredith (1986: 115) observes: ‘The personal note apart, there is little in Clement’s conception of perfect prayer to distinguish it from the private intellectual contemplation outlined by Plato in the Republic and Aristotle in the tenth book of the Nicomachean Ethics.’ Yet Clement has been hailed as ‘the founder of Christian mysticism’ and ‘the creator of mystical theology’ (McGinn, 1991: 101). Clement does encourage a contemplative, reflective approach to study and there is a balance: ‘Our philosophy is concerned, therefore, with three things: first, contemplation (theoria); secondly, the fulfilment of the commandments; thirdly, the formation of the man of virtue’ (1997b, II: 10). The teacher has the highest vocation: ‘he who has undertaken the first place in the teaching of others…mediates contact and fellowship with the Divinity’ (1997b, II: 9).

Origen

Origen (c.185–c.254), who succeeded Clement as the third head at Alexandria after 202, develops this further. Gregory Thaumaturge (c.213–c.270) tells us in his Panergyric of Origen:

Nothing was forbidden to us, nothing hidden from us, nothing inaccessible to us. We were to learn all manner of doctrine – barbarian or Greek, mystical or political, divine or human…[Origen] went on with us…directing us, pointing out to us all that was true and useful, putting aside all that was false.

(Murray, 1957: 157)

Prestige (1940: 51) observes: ‘Origen wanted the minds of his pupils to retain a fluidity and independence – a very important point in the education of young clergymen…so long as the process leads in the end to acquiring powers of judgement and decision.’ Kelsey reminds us (1993: 9): ‘The goal of paideia cannot be taught directly, by simply conveying information about various philosophers’ doctrines regarding virtue. Knowledge of the Good only comes through contemplation, the ultimate fruit of which is an intuitive insight, a gnosis of the Good.’ At the heart of this paideia lay ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part I Formation Past and Present
• Part II The Role of Prayer in Formation: Findings and Reflections
• Part III Possibilities for the Future
• Bibliography