Abstract
It is only right that I begin this book review with full disclosure. I met Greg Peters perhaps four years ago when I was lecturing at Biola University, where Peters teaches. I was addressing perhaps a dozen resident scholars who were involved in a special Biola sabbatical program funded by the John Templeton Foundation. Peters joined these well-known scholars from around the United States as a participant in the program. I spent half a day lecturing on John Cassian, focusing specifically on how he reinterpreted Evagrius Ponticus’ exploration of the Eight Deadly Thoughts in light of the needs and conditions of western monasticism, which Cassian helped to found. I discovered after my lecture that Peters had studied under the leading Cassian scholar and consequently knew more about Cassian than I did. He was gracious throughout my presentation and even commented afterwards that he had learned something new. Cassian would have been pleased with Peters’s humility!
Greg Peters has devoted his academic career to the study of monasticism. As a scholar teaching at an evangelical institution, his interest in monasticism sets him apart. Monasticism is hardly a topic close to the heart of evangelicals! Peters wants to demonstrate the relevance of monasticism for the people who view it as a strange and alien institution. What seems medieval and Catholic (or Orthodox) is far more relevant than it at first appears. Peters is committed to showing us how. Peters could be numbered among a group of scholars who are seeking to retrieve traditions, like monasticism, that have long suffered popular abuse and neglect. Monasticism has something to teach the church: hence the “monkhood of all believers.”
Peters is a first-rate scholar. His knowledge of the sources, both primary and secondary, is impressive. He reads carefully and widely. His range of interests cuts a wide path. He moves from such familiar figures as Benedict to obscure figures, from mainstream movements like the Cistercians to marginal movements. Though a scholar of monasticism, Peters is comfortable in the larger world of theology. He writes to scholars, yet he strives to make his research accessible to nonspecialists. He wants to show how important monasticism is to the life of the church.
He argues that monasticism as a movement and as an institution arose at least in part as a reaction to the Christianization of the west. Over time it helped establish a rigid hierarchy within the church. On the one hand, there was the mass of ordinary believers; on the other hand, there was a small group of serious Christians. The result was a two-tiered system of spiritual life. Monks occupied the higher tier; they were the real Christians. John Cassian was one of many to explain how and why this division occurred. He argued that monasticism emerged because at the close of the apostolic age the church began to wane in zeal and compromise the apostolic standards of discipleship. Monasticism upheld those original standards. Cassian was a bad historian, as Peters points out. But he was a good apologist for monasticism.
Still, it was never meant to be so. Peters shows that monasticism as a movement was actually intended for all, not for the select few. He sets out to prove that the essential features of monasticism cast a vision and embody practices that apply to all. Moreover, he demonstrates that even monastic theologians, including medieval monastic theologians, made the same point. How so?
First, monastic spirituality is essentially interior, as applicable to lay people as it was—and is—to monks, though the two groups cultivate it in different settings and in different ways. Peters uses “single-minded,” a Pauline phrase, to describe this kind of monastic (really, Christian) interiority. All Christians are Christians because of Jesus Christ. All Christians should be single-minded in their devotion to God, not simply monks. All Christians should order their lives under the rule of God.
Second, monastic asceticism should not be confined to the monastery alone, nor was it ever intended to be. In the minds of most evangelical Protestants asceticism is just one of many examples of medieval excess. Here Peters makes a useful distinction between “materiality,” which is the result of God’s good creation, and “carnality,” which is the result of the abuse of materiality. Christians have often confused the two, as Peters argues, pointing to St. Augustine’s view of sex as a noteworthy example. But at least some monks knew better. Perhaps the most formative monastic founder, Benedict of Nursia, emphasized balance and moderation, even for monks. And some monastic writers argued that a proper understanding of asceticism puts all human endeavors to discipline, including something as earthly as marriage. Marriage provides an occasion for ascetic practice, too. The monastery provides one setting; marriage another. God calls both monks and married people to submit to him.
Third, monasticism as a vocation stands alongside other vocations, not as superior but as different. At this point Peters makes a distinction between a Christian’s primary vocation, which involves his or her calling at baptism to follow Jesus and belong to the church, and a Christian’s secondary vocation, which concerns how Christians serve God in the world. He believes that a calling to the monastery is still legitimate. But we should view it as we view other particular vocations, such as farming or teaching or raising children. We stand as one in Christ. There is thus no distinction among Christians. But God calls all Christians to serve him in the world, where distinctions among callings abound.
Peters explores a broad range of primary and secondary sources to make his argument. He cites several medieval texts—for example, Robert de Sorbon’s sermon on marriage—to prove that even monks believed monasticism was applicable to everyone. He exposits modern Orthodox writers—for example, Paul Evdokimos—to prove that ordinary Christians are called to be monks, though outside the walls of the monastery. He mentions the most virulent critics of monasticism—for example, Martin Luther—to argue that even the reformers believed monastic practice was still relevant if applied to all Christians. It is not the monastery that matters so much as the vision of the Christian life that monasticism embodies. God calls Christians to an interior monastic devotion, to moderate asceticism, and to service in the world.
In addressing the problem of church schism, Paul wrote, “All things are yours,” implying that believers would be wise to learn from everyone, not simply their favorite teacher (or tradition). Peters believes that we would be wise to do the same. His book wanders a bit, to be sure, and it is dense. It could have been written more accessibly. It is clear that he is writing to scholars. But it is ordinary Christians who really need to discover that there is a rich and diverse world of Christian traditions out there—monasticism being one good example—that has much to teach us. As Peters argues, their calling is ours, however different our circumstances. If we are believers, we are monks.