Greg Peters’ recent book, Anglican Spirituality: An Introduction has as its subject “a uniquely Anglican endeavor to explain how baptized men and women seek to live out their lives over against the ‘flesh’ in light of their understanding of the Christian scriptures.” (Intro.; I read the copy on everand.com, so I have no page numbers)
Greg takes two frames for the book’s overall structure and means of explicating and introducing the spirituality of the Anglican faith. The first gives coherence and structure to the whole volume, which is a threefold rule of Anglicanism as delineated by Anglican priest Martin Thornton. The second is an ongoing interlocutor, which is the Benedictine and monastic tradition, a reality that had direct influence upon the Reformational tradition of Anglican spirituality and that has maintained that influence for almost five centuries more, both directly and indirectly.
To return to the superstructure of the book, provided by Martin Thornton, Peters takes this threefold vision from Thornton’s Pastoral Theology, that the
Rule of the Anglian Church can be summarized as consisting of (1) the Office, which is the corporate worship of the Body of Christ to the Father … (2) The Mass is the loving embrace of Christ in joy, attained by the synthesis of his complete succor offered and his absolute demand accepted … [and] (3) Private prayer concerns the sanctification of the individual soul by the indwelling spirit, to the glory of God. (pp. 205-6, cited in Introduction)
This threefold vision is detailed by Peters in three subsequent chapters, drawing on the most important texts of the English Reformation and some later texts, but also from the monastic tradition. This book frequently throws the reader upon John Cassian, the Rule of St Benedict, Bernard of Clairvaux, Guigo II le Chartreuse, Thomas a Kempis, and other ancient and medieval monks, plus modern scholars of monks such as David Knowles. It is certainly true that they themselves, being pre-Reformation and, outside of St Anselm, not based in England, are not “Anglican” in the strictest sense of the word. Nonetheless, these monastic sources fed the soul of English spirituality for well-nigh a millennium before the Reformation, and so, as I say, inform the ongoing stream of English spirituality that flows from the reign of Edward VI onward. Furthermore, the ideas expressed by these monastic interlocutors are fully in accord with the Anglican tradition. The truths expressed, then, are part of our Anglican tradition, regardless of who says them.
These monastic sources are balanced by a range of post-Reformational Anglican sources: primarily Thomas Cranmer’s writings, the early editions of the BCP, the Articles of Religion, The Books of Homilies, George Herbert (both the poetry and The Country Parson), John Donne, and Lancelot Andrewes (both the private devotions and the sermons). Each chapter engages with a prayer or poem in depth, exegeting it in the manner we have come to expect of Greg, who helps us see more fully the writings of our forebears in the faith. I’ll return to the question of Greg’s sources again towards the end of the review.
As I said above, the chapters discuss the office, the mass, and then private devotion in turn. Following Fr Thornton and ancient, centuries-old Christian practice, the office is cast as a form of corporate prayer, even if today it is mostly said privately. This is not simply because its origins lie in the monasteries and cathedral churches of the ancient Mediterranean, but because even when prayed alone, the office takes the pray-er out of the purely private into the prayers of the church. Every morning I pray the Venite, I say, “Come, let us sing unto the Lord.” Scot McKnight considers the office a form of praying with the church (as, indeed, is the title of his book on the subject). We come together not just through the first person plural but through the common forms and words of the prayers and readings. When I read the First Lesson at Morning Prayer, I know that my brother in Manitoba and my father in Saskatchewan are reading the same Scriptures.
This chapter digs deep into the Anglican practice of reading the Scriptures communally and meditatively, seeing how important they are as the foundation of all our common life and belief, giving an extended meditation on that inestimable collect for Advent 2, and its prayer that we might “read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest” the Bible.
Alongside this daily round of corporate prayer, in which we are bound together even when separate, is the weekly, gathered corporate worship focussed on the blessed sacrament of the most holy body and blood of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Greg rightly sees the Eucharist as the central element of Anglican spirituality. I say this knowing that for centuries, many parishes of the low church tradition out of which I come would only celebrate it once a month. Nevertheless, the BCP gives provision for it every Sunday, and our own Anglican desire to align with the best of the catholic, patristic tradition, would have us celebrate it weekly in a tradition from the Didache to Justin Martyr and then the later Fathers and on.
The Mass is not merely central in its frequency but in its meaning. Greg shows us this centrality through various prayers from the BCP as well as Cranmer’s own explanation of the sacrament, itself a beautiful statement worth repeating:
Christ ordained the sacrament to move and stir all men to friendship, love, and concord, and to put away all hatred, variance, and discord, and to testify to brotherly and unfeigned love between all them that be the members of Christ. … And that finally by his means they may enjoy with him the glory and kingdom of heaven. (cited in ch. 3)
How could this not be central to our spiritual life?
For private devotions, Peters deviates slightly from Fr Thornton who cites the third element as private prayers. He uses Lancelot Andrewes’ Private Devotions as a jumping-off point, but moves us into the territory of the active life, how our devotion to Christ our God moves us beyond the comfortable pew and the prayer corner in the home out into the rest of our lives and our world.
After these three elements that comprise the Anglican spiritual life, Fr Greg demonstrates how they work together to propel our life of spirituality and mission. I maintain that effective disciple-making and mission will always be rooted in deep spirituality.
Finally, in a chapter that is billed as an appendix but which I see as essential, he takes us to biblical anthropology in the final chapter, which is an extended exegesis of and meditation upon John Donne, Meditations 5.
As someone who grew up Anglican and has swum the waters of the office for decades, the parts of the book that were most impactful for me were his excursuses of our poets—George Herbert’s “The Holy Communion” (one of my favourites) and “Lent” (which I had forgotten, shame on me) and Donne’s Meditations. As a reviewer, however, I see its wider use for a broader audience, as an introduction for those new to the Anglican way.
Finally, I must answer a criticism of this book that caused me to write this review. It has been levelled against Anglican Spirituality that it is not Anglican enough. Too many Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and even Lutheran interlocutors (a paragraph is given to one of Bonhoeffer’s teachings), not to mention Thomas Aquinas. Now, Aquinas is forgiveable in any context, if you ask me. But what of these others? What of the block quotations from Vatican 2 or Kallistos Ware? Why not more space for the Anglican Reformers? I agree with the basic criticism that some of the extensive engagement with non-Anglicans could have gone elsewhere, but not that this undermines the book as a whole.
My response, then, is threefold. First, I agree that in those places where Greg gives a block quotation from a modern non-Anglican, it would be preferable to have an Anglican voice, for example, in defining the church. However, the sources cited do not contradict the Anglican tradition. Second, I disagree with the explicit call for more from the Reformers. If we want more Anglicans to show us Anglican spirituality, fine. But our post-Reformation tradition is well-nigh half a millennium, and representative voices can be found from any century. If Greg were to have cut Kallistos Ware and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, it is not necessary to add Jewel or Parker or Vermigli; anyone else from our tradition would do—William Law, the Wesleys, John Stott, or Rowan Williams!
Third, I return to Aquinas and the pre-Reformation sources. Part of Greg’s underlying theme of this book was, if not always completely explicit, was the monastic foundation of so much of our spiritual tradition. Therefore, the pre-Reformation monks are necessary to that end. Moreover, including the Fathers such as Hippolytus, Cyprian, Augustine, and Gregory, along with the best of the medieval like Anselm and Aquinas, is itself deeply Anglican. If we start spending time with the early modern sources when our tradition was settled and sifted in the Reformation, Caroline Divines, and Restoration, we will see them continually referencing the Fathers and medieval divines, whether we look at Hooker or Jewel or Vermigli or even as late John Wesley. In a book about Anglican spirituality, these pre-Reformation voices are, I believe, necessary to the ongoing project of keeping us rooted in the English school of spirituality and its 1000-year tradition.
Classically Christian 