A Following Holy Life. Kenneth Stevenson

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Название A Following Holy Life
Автор произведения Kenneth Stevenson
Жанр Словари
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Издательство Словари
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isbn 9781848253490



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first ordinary current in which the Spirit moves and descends upon us’, requiring godparents (the traditional practice), not parents, as the Reformed-minded wanted. We come across the same balance that we saw in the Eucharist between sacrament and experience – ‘baptism and its effect may be separated, and do not always go in conjunction . . . the Church gives the sacrament, God gives the grace of the sacrament’. Both here, in the Discourse on Baptism in ‘Great Exemplar’ (1649), and in his baptism liturgy are to be found references to the gift of the guardian angel, a notion which he clearly likes, but will not require as a belief.[15] His overall understanding of baptism, however, has been described by Boone Porter as more Johannine (rebirth) than Pauline (dying and rising), with a strong emphasis on re-birth (John 3.5). It is certainly iconographic, as we have already suggested, by the way he uses the narrative of Christ’s baptism as the place near which the Discourse is placed in ‘Great Exemplar’ (1649), and the way he (uniquely for his time) uses that narrative in his baptism rite.

      Where does Confirmation fit in? He wrote learnedly on the subject, and saw it as a way of bringing Christians from other churches into the Anglican fold: he knows (and favours) communion for the young (and even their Confirmation) as an ancient practice in his early years as a priest, yet, as a bishop, requires the Prayer Book position on the matter; ‘Worthy Communicant’ (1660) concludes that infant communion is ‘lawful’ but not ‘necessary’. And his reading of history enables him to see the laying-on of hands by the bishop as a way of reconciling or drawing in Christians to the Church. But he still highlights the radically distinct functions of baptism as the start and the Eucharist as the renewal. That basic approach also enables him to be demanding but unrestrictive about who and how he baptizes, yet firm and searching in the recommendations he makes in all his writings on Holy Communion about due and proper preparation. In a line going back to Hooker, baptism is the start and Eucharist is the continuing of sacramental life. This could speak volumes to an age like ours, far more fragmented in human experience than many previous generations, that at times leans too heavily on different sorts of baptismal renewal.

      Social and personal living

      Taylor is a theologian of the whole human life-cycle, where it is difficult to distinguish between the public and the private. Otherwise we would not have had either ‘Great Exemplar’ (1649), ‘Holy Living’ (1650), or ‘Ductor Dubitantium’ (1660). ‘Holy Living’ opens on a note that could – mutatis mutandis – have been written for a modern personal organizer: ‘he that is choice of his time will also be choice of his actions’. From that starting-point, he expounds the virtues of discipleship, prayer (‘we are cabinets of the mysterious Trinity’), sobriety, temperance, chastity, humility, modesty, and contentedness. On chastity, he is more explicit than any Christian writer so far, on the basis that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit: ‘in their permissions and licence, they must be sure to observe the order of nature, and the ends of God . . . with a desire of children, or to avoid fornication, or to lighten and ease the cares and sadnesses of household affairs, or to endear each other’.

      It is against this background that he deals with Christian justice, making the distinction between commutative (contracts and agreements between equals) and distributative (the command of God, or a relationship not between equals), and the importance of restitution as a social responsibility. Taylor, man of his time, is more deferential about authority than he would be today, but he nevertheless balances this with a definite emphasis on the responsibilities, moral and economic, of the one who wields power over the one who doesn’t. This comes through in what he has to say about the State, and the place of the Church within it, in ‘Ductor Dubitantium’ (1660). When a civil contract is being negotiated, ‘use not many words: for all the business of a bargain is summed up in few sentences; and he that speaks least means fairest, as having fewer opportunities to deceive’ (‘Holy Living’, 1650). He condemns excessive profit-making, and the exploitation of the poor, and crippling others with excessive debt. In ways reminiscent of the mediaeval penitentials, manuals for priests when dealing with sinners, he makes recommendations about adultery resulting in offspring (pay for their upkeep) and murder of another man (ensure the widow is looked after properly).

      Never one to play down the role of the entrepreneur, Taylor nonetheless cautions against greed and dishonesty, stressing again and again the importance of good human relationships. He does not go as far as Thomas Traherne (c. 1636–74) in condemning the trend from exchange-value to use-value, but he comes near it. Many more of these themes recur, and in more detail, in ‘Ductor Dubitantium’ (1660), which he begins with the story of a hungry child who had run away from home and wanted to be fed: what was the right course of action, because to refuse him by telling him to go back might mean he would die of hunger, and to feed him might indulge his desire to escape further? In the end, he decides to feed him, enough and no more, and rebukes him for leaving home, on condition that he will indeed return. Taylor’s quaint habit of making a serious point from a homely image can be incisive, even if a touch sentimental. This is ‘moral-ascetic’ theology at its best. It is about real life, where faith in God, the virtues, and above all attention to the Word and the sacraments are seen to change not just individuals but society as a whole. That is why ‘Holy Living’ ends with teaching about prayer, the Eucharist, and preparation for and receiving the holy communion.

      This could reflect the times: clergy may not have been accessible. It may also reflect a suspicion of