In his latest book Silence – A
Christian History (Viking, September 2013,) MacCulloch shows how
Jesus chose to emphasize silence as an essential part of his message and how
silence shaped the great medieval monastic communities of Europe. He dives into
Carmelite Mysticism, Dionysius the Areopagite, Christian Meditation and more.
He also examines the darker forms of religious silence, from the church’s
embrace of slavery and its muted reaction to the Holocaust to the cover-up by
Catholic authorities of devastating sexual scandals.
The book is a must-read and reviews are
starting to come in, both positive and negative. Of particular note to
Contemplative Christians is this review by
Karen Armstrong. The Guardian also has a very thorough review of
note here.
Professor Diarmaid gave a series of
lectures just over a year ago on the contents of the book for the University of
Edinburgh, which they recorded and uploaded. The contents and links to
them are below, the description for each video in quotes in written by the
University.
The lecture discussed a change in emphasis
between the Hebrew Scripture (the Tanakh) and what Christians made of what is
arguably a minority positive strand in Judaic thinking on silence; we survey
the growth of a consciousness of silence, particularly in the cosmos, in Jewish
religion. We seek the voice of Jesus to be heard behind the text of the New
Testament, with his distinctive use of silence and silences; the place of
silence in the first Christian attempts to understand the significance of Jesus
Christ, and its relationship to the formation of the Church.
Counter-strands to silence in the early
Church, encouraged by its congregational worship and cult of martyrdom, and the
effect of gnostic Christianities in shaping what the emerging Catholic Church
decided to emphasise or ignore.
The emergence of new positive theologies of
silence: negative theology and its sources in the Platonic tradition; the
development of asceticism in the mainstream Church in Syria from the second
century, and its possible sources: the place of silence in the development of
monasticism and eremetical life in Christianity.
The importance of the remaking of
monasticism in Egypt; the vital role of a forgotten theologian, Evagrius
Ponticus.
The significance of the threeway split in
Christianity after the Council of Chalcedon (451). The purposeful Chalcedonian
forgetting of Evagrius Ponticus and the contribution of an anonymous theologian
who took the name Dionysius the Areopagite. The role of Augustine in the
Western Church: a theologian of words, not silence. The transformation in the
use of silence and its function after the Carolingian expansion of Benedictine
monastic life (together with the West’s discovery of pseudo-Dionysius), and the
further development through the great years of Cluny Abbey. Counter-currents on
silence in the medieval West, and the significance of the Iconoclastic
controversy, and later hesychasm, in the Byzantine world. Tensions between
clerical and lay spirituality in the late medieval West.
The noisiness of Protestantism,
particularly exacerbated by the end of monasticism, unsuccessfully countered in
the Church of Zürich but transcended first among radical Reformers (especially
Caspar Schwenckfeld and Sebastian Franck) and a century later by the Society of
Friends. The difficulties of contemplatives in the Counter-Reformation, where
activism was the characteristic of the new foundations of Jesuits and
Ursulines, and the problems faced by such revivals as the Discalced Carmelites.
The troubles of Madame Guyon and Quietists.
So far, the story has largely been about
overt history: the positive utterances and actions of public Christianity. We
turn now to further and more complex varieties of silence: first the phenomenon
of ‘Nicodemism’, simultaneously audible to those with ears to hear, and not to
be heard by others.
New politic silences were caused by the
fissuring of Western Christianity, through efforts to sidestep the consequent
violence and persecution; a rediscovery of classical discussion of silence took
place on the eve of the Reformation in the writings of Italian civic humanists,
and this tradition fused with the debate about Nicodemism and the place of
quiet versus overt toleration.
Over the centuries, particular groups who
represented the ‘Other’, some Christian, some not, have made themselves
invisible simply in order to survive: crypto-Judaism and its effect on
Christianity are discussed, together with examples of Christian Nicodemism,
notably the Reformation ‘Family of Love’ and the growth of a distinctive gay sub-culture
within nineteenth- and twentieth-century Anglo-Catholicism.
We move to those things best left unsaid in
order to build identity in Christian organisations and newly-evangelised
regions, and the way in which themes and dogmatic position once considered
vital and central for the Christian life have been quietly abandoned without
much acknowledgement of their one-time importance. We scrutinise Christian
problems in dealing honestly with sexuality, with a specific example.
Finally we turn to the confused reaction of
Churches to shame over past sin, the example being complicity in the slave
trade.
We consider the democratisation of the
quest for silence in industrial society: the tangling of a secular society with
the silences provided by Christian tradition, through for instance the
popularity of retreats, or the observance of silence in remembrance. We see the
importance of ‘whistle-blowing’ to modern Christianity, and its use of the
historical discipline. We ponder the relation of agnosticism to silence; the
role of music in silence and Christian understanding; the relationship between
Word and Spirit in the future of Christian life.
Source: The Seeker's Lamp
