YEARNING
FOR GOD:
THE
POTENTIAL AND POVERTY OF
THE
CATHOLIC SPIRITUALITY OF FRANCIS DE SALES
There is renewed interest among evangelicals,
as well there might be, in what is now known as spirituality or spiritual
formation. For too many the distinctively evangelical phrase Aa personal relationship with Jesus Christ@ has deflated to a cliché, and the vital
experience which it once honestly represented has faded to a memory or, sadder
still, remains a plaintive wish. A new generation of evangelicals wants to know
just how personal and transforming the presence of God can actually be in its
experience today.
To some extent this renewed evangelical
interest in spirituality is our own in-house
expression of the much larger (indeed, culture-wide) recoiling of the
human spirit from the ethos of our materialistic, technological and ultimately
alienating way of life. The contemporary cry of the human spirit is our cry
too. We must not dismiss the divine impulse in all of this simply because this
spiritual hunger spills out beyond ecclesiastical boundaries, nor because it
often manifests itself in offensively narcissistic ways.[1]
Whatever the generic and very slippery word
spirituality may mean to others, for Christians spirituality is about
experiencing the Triune God in a personally transforming way. Intimacy with
this God, by reason of God=s infectiously holy nature, is necessarily purging and sanctifying. For
this reason, there can be no artificial division between spirituality and
ethics.
An assumption underlying the renewed
evangelical interest in spiritual formation is that such a Atransforming friendship@[2] is not automatic: it requires an intentional
and disciplined approach. Here we have been at a bit of a loss. It is not as
though the evangelical tradition lacks a heritage of spirituality, but our
collective memory is weak, and we have grown unfamiliar with the rich resources
of a host of evangelical mentors, women and men alike, from John Bunyan to
Hannah Whitall Smith to A. W. Tozer.
Yet there is another factor involved here too.
One of our strong suits as evangelicals has always been our vigorous activism,[3]
which has led to many achievements for which we may be properly grateful. But
busy people tend not to cultivate the interior life with a lot of
sophistication. Often we are at a loss when we try to move, as Charles
Nienkirchen has put it, Abeyond the Quiet Time.@[4] So it is entirely appropriate that we cast
our net more widely, and explore the resources of Christian traditions beyond
our own. And the tradition closest to hand is the rich one of our Aseparated brethren@ here in the West: Roman Catholic
spirituality.
Among these resources evangelicals are
regularly attracted to the spiritual legacy of Roman Catholic bishop Francis de
Sales[5]
(1567-1622), who authored the spiritual classic Introduction to the Devout
Life (editions from 1608-1619) and the lesser-known but more substantive Treatise
on the Love of God (1616), and won a name for himself (plus sainthood) in
part through his success in winning back the spiritual descendants of John
Calvin to Catholicism in the environs of Geneva, Switzerland. De Sales, whose
influence continues to extend well beyond Roman Catholic boundaries, was a
compelling champion of a life of ready obedience rooted in a passionate love
for God. This, and the relative accessibility of his approach to meditation and
other spiritual disciplines, account in large part for his appeal to
evangelicals today.[6]
The sphere of spirituality is often viewed as
fertile ground for an emerging Christian ecumenicity. With modernity in a
seriously geriatric condition, the postmodern spirit is ascendant, and with it
an attitude that experiencing God is both possible without theology and
infinitely more important than a rational understanding of God and God=s ways.
There is growing sympathy for the notion that our Ahead-games@ (that is, our doctrines) only lead to logically-irreconcilable
differences and push us apart when, in fact, we are Aone in the Spirit.@ Our
experience of God, if not our interpretations of it, are one and the same. Theology only gets in the way of spiritual
reality.
My argument, however, is just the opposite:
our doctrines (and by this I mean our real convictions, and not necessarily
those to which we may officially and even officiously subscribe) do affect our spirituality. Evangelicals should be in mutually-respectful
dialogue with Roman Catholics.[7] Who would deny that we stand to learn a
thing or two from Catholics--even from those older writers like de Sales who
lived and moved in the fierce anti-Protestant ethos of Tridentine Catholicism?
And for that matter, who is to say that the current glimmers of reformation and
renewal in the Roman Church will not flourish someday? Who but a cynic would insist that this
centuries-old divorce of ours is destined to be an everlasting one?
In precisely the same spirit of openness and
humility we ought to access the works of Francis de Sales and, for that matter,
other resources of Roman Catholic spirituality.[8] At the same time, however, we must do so
with discrimination, combining an appreciative spirit with a critical eye. For as Wendy Wright and Joseph Power, two
authorities on Francis de Sales and his (Salesian) spirituality, themselves
admit: AAny spirituality rests upon, or better yet,
includes a set of assumptions about God and humankind and about how they are
related to each other.@[9] Such
assumptions need to be identified, and their consequences traced. The thesis of
our appraisal is that evangelicals can profit from a selective appropriation of
Salesian spirituality, at the heart of which lies a profound yearning for God.
I. THEOLOGY AS BIOGRAPHY:
FRANCIS
DE SALES AND HIS TIMES
All theology is colored by autobiography, and
the shortest and most direct route to the heart of Salesian spirituality is
through an examination of de Sales= personal pilgrimage in its historical context.[10] Like our own day, early seventeenth- century
European life was a time of spiritual aridity and soul-sickness. The Reformation impulse of the previous
century converged with powerful forces of nationalism and economics to twist and
transform the Acrazy-quilt geography@[11] of Europe, and at ground level to
precipitate turmoil, massacres and wars that would leave the landscape of
Europe burnt and devastated, and its population degraded and calloused by its
own dark war crimes. The Thirty Years War (1618-1648), ostensibly about
religion, reduced the population of Germany, for example, from sixteen million
to less than six. As Williston Walker observed, Alittle evidence of spiritual life was manifested in this frightful time
of war.@[12]
Yet in the incubus of this pending holocaust
also developed a remarkable, though smaller counterpoise movement of renewed
spirituality within the ranks of French Roman Catholicism. It was a movement characterized by Aa thirst for the ascetic, the mystical and
the visionary,@[13] and it claimed many notable figures besides
its leader Francis de Sales, including Vincent de Paul, Francois Fenelon, Marie
of the Incarnation, and Jean de Chantal. It is perhaps significant that unlike
the contemporary battlefields it would make space for women, and some
remarkable women at that. In contrast to the brutality of the times, to the
politicized strategies and anathemas of Trent, and even to the relative
severity of the Jesuit spirituality of the Spaniard Ignatius Loyola, its
distinguishing feature continues to be recognized as its gentle humanism. No
mere quietist movement of affluent salons, it produced an enduring social
conscience (Vincent de Paul) and actually created the motive and religious raison
d=etre for Nouvelle France (now French Canada). AThe love of God has,@ de Sales mourned, Abecause of the overflowing of iniquity, grown cold
. . . in almost all souls.@[14] His distinctive emphasis on love of God was
a deliberate counter to the spirit of the times.
De Sales was the first-born child of an older
Savoy aristocrat and his fifteen-year old wife. His education in the humanities in Paris, and subsequent law
studies at Padua in northern Italy, gave him a rich insight into the
intellectual life of the times--one remarkably similar to that acquired by John
Calvin a couple of generations earlier.
The Huguenot alternative in French life was
still strong and viable during these years, and Lutheran ideas exerted a
powerful and unavoidable influence in the Paris of his day. Reading theology voraciously under Jesuit
tutilege, de Sales explored Augustine=s and Aquinas=s
views on predestination.[15] No doubt his reflections were further
stimulated by his encounters with the contemporary Protestant doctrine of
predestination. As he approached his
twentieth birthday around 1587, this fixation precipitated a spiritual crisis
that had a profound and lasting effect upon his life and outlook. The crisis
revolved around the panic he experienced over the possibility that he was in
fact, his religious aspirations notwithstanding, already and nonetheless
predestined to damnation and permanent estrangement from God.
In his personal case, the crisis was not
resolved in the classic evangelical Protestant way through a settled, inner assurance of salvation. Rather, it was
resolved in de Sales= case
by his decision to unconditionally love God while he could, and regardless of
God=s final determination of his destiny.[16] As de Sales put it: AIf I am condemned not to love you in
eternity, I can at least love you with all my power during this life.@[17] For him, this became a Apure@ love, purged entirely of self-interest. In this, he believed, he had discovered the freedom to exercise
his own volition in a fashion and to an extent that he had been led to
understand that the Protestant doctrine of predestination denied.
Before long, he came to adopt a very modified
doctrine of predestination, one which leaned away from the dark and troubling
side of double-predestination, and affirmed both God=s heart for the whole world and human freedom
of will to respond accordingly. He thus
acquired a deeper sense of God=s love undergirding human living and choices, even though it never
quite issued in the settled confidence in God=s provision and application to oneself that the Reformers cherished and
celebrated.[18]
To the disappointment of his ambitious
father, de Sales declared his sense of call to a church vocation, and in 1592
was promptly catapulted up into the significant role of assistant to Claude de
Granier, the exiled Roman Catholic Bishop of Geneva. With much chagrin, de Granier was obliged to maintain his
headquarters in Annecy, a much smaller Savoyan community about 50 miles to the
south. For a time the French-speaking
Chablais region just south of Lake Geneva (which was part of de Granier=s diocese) had been controlled by Swiss
Cantons of Protestant conviction, and its residents had largely converted to
the newer faith. Subsequently, however,
these territories had been returned to Duke Charles Emmanuel of Savoy, and in
time he decided to exercise his influence to re-convert the Chablais to his own
Roman Catholic commitments.
De Sales became the primary Aapostle@ through whom this religious reclamation initiative (1594-1602) was
carried out. In the face of sometimes life-threatening hostility, he pressed on
all fronts for the re-establishment of Roman Catholic institutions, services,
and most of all, authentic Christian discipleship. His compelling ministry and personal charisma were instrumental
in re-converting an estimated sixty thousand Chablais back from Protestantism
to Roman Catholicism.[19]
He even had the temerity to attempt (albeit unsuccessfully)--by clandestine
visits to Geneva in disguise--to personally re-convert the much older Theodore
Beza, Calvin=s aging successor there. Evidently in this
instance de Sales was treated with a modicum of tolerance, and permitted to
enter and leave the city with impunity.
Geneva had asserted its independence in 1535,
with the dukes of Savoy bent on recovery of their principal city ever
after. In 1602, in the very month that
de Sales was consecrated bishop, the Duke sent about 2,000 men up to take
Geneva by night. The attack (known as
the Escalade) was repelled; more than fifty Savoyards were killed, and another
thirteen captured, and Athough the following day was Sunday@ the thirteen were promptly executed. Sixty-seven Savoyard heads
appeared on the city wall, and remained there for six months. Though Protestants accused de Sales of
co-conspiracy, there is no conclusive evidence that he was personally involved
in the plot.[20] He
did, say, however, that AThe Blessed Virgin . . . will trample and crush the head of the
poisonous serpent which has sought refuge in Geneva and Lausanne.@[21] Throughout his life he remained an implacable foe of the
Protestants, all the while cautioning his followers that ultimately Alove alone will shake the walls of Geneva.@[22]
De Sales= tireless commitment to fostering authentic discipleship among many
lapsed and often-decadent residents of his diocese (for he had become bishop
himself in 1602) involved him in extensive spiritual directing. His two most influential works, Introduction
to the Devout Life and the Treatise on the Love of God, emerged
directly out of such efforts. Another
means by which de Sales worked towards his goal of Aa society infused with the spirit of true
devotion@[23] was by co-founding, with Jane Frances
Frémyot, Baroness de Chantal, a female order known as the Visitation of Holy
Mary. By the time of Jane de Chantal=s death in 1641, the Visitation had expanded
outwards from Annecy to become a network of some eighty houses. Its rule was somewhat less rigorous, and
thus more accessible, than certain existing alternatives for women. Its goal was to cultivate Aa deep interior intimacy with God.@[24]
II.
POTENTIAL: THE COMPELLING FEATURES OF HIS SPIRITUALITY
De Sales has exercised a tremendous influence
both within, and far beyond, the boundaries of Roman Catholicism, and there are
good reasons for this: the cheerful spirit that animated his love for God, the
level of personal disinterest in his brand of Christian consecration, his focus
on the interior life of the heart, and the accessibility of his spirituality to
ordinary people.
In the first place, de Sales sought to
champion Athe devout life,@ a life of ready obedience rooted in love for
God. He identified such love for God as the true wellspring of everything the
Christian did. As he put it, the Pentecostal imagery of flaming tongues was
meant to indicate that the Gospel was Awholly designed for the inflaming of hearts.@[25] He
viewed the devotion that issued from this as the ardor and alacrity that
motivates good deeds.[26] Contrary to its falsely negative stereotype,
he insisted, the authenticating signature of true Christian devotion is
cheerfulness.[27] De Sales did not want his disciples to act
like those who Akeep the commandments as sick men take medicines,
more from fear of dying in a state of damnation, than from love of living
according to our Savior=s pleasure.@[28] We
are a long way here from the (Protestant) stereotype of a grim Catholic outlook
dominated by guilt and fearfully fixated on moral duty. The depth of de Sales= love for God, and the liberty of spirit that
flowed from this love, remain an inspirational challenge to all who read his
work.
Secondly, de Sales made a compelling appeal
for a love for God that was purged of self-interest. He was not the first to
encourage the development of pure love through the cultivation of indifference
or Adetachment,@[29] but
certainly he was one of the most articulate and influential. He insisted that
the focus of one=s relationship to God had to be upon God, and
not upon one=s own ultimate good.[30]
The extent of the self-denial he sought and embraced would have been completely
pathological, had such self-denial not been in fact the paling of self-interest
in the face of a much higher and passionate love for God.
Thirdly, his emphasis on the interior life of
the heart, rather than external actions, should be welcomed in our age which,
like his own, wallows in immorality and a dearth of vital spirituality. As Ruth Kleinman has stated the matter, de
Sales Aemphasized the importance of personal
religious feeling as the foundation of religious belief and practice.@[31] AI have never been able to approve,@ de Sales explained, Athe method of those who, in order to reform me, begin with the outside,
with faces, with clothing, with the hair. It seems to me, on the contrary, that
one must begin with what is within . . . .@[32] Our
goal, he explained to the devout women of the Visitation, is this: AWe desire to erect within our souls a great
building, even the dwelling place of God.@[33]
Finally, recognizing that the malaise of the
post-Reformation Catholic Church could not be cured without a renewal of the
spiritual life of the Catholic laity, de Sales devised an approach to
spirituality that deliberately cushioned the rigorous demands of monastic
discipline in order to make spirituality accessible to the general laity.[34] De Sales= desire for the renewal of the laity is in itself quite consistent with
the spirit of the Reformation and the genius of evangelical Christianity. For
example, as a shrewd communicator, he deliberately wrote in short chapters, so
lazy readers would not tire quickly.
Even the female order of the Visitation of Mary, which he helped to
found in 1610 with Jean de Chantal as an alternative to existing monastic
orders, was an order with scaled-down performance demands--a sort of Bible
Institute substitute for seminary in the realm of the devout life. De Sales envisioned it as Aa gentle and gracious refuge@ which would nonetheless encourage the
practice of Athe essential virtues of devotion.@[35]
De Sales= own preference was for a contemplative life Alived without undue austerity.@[36] This
translated into a desire to develop an accessible way for other souls to find
union with God.[37]
His relatively simple guidelines for meditation and contemplated,
outlined in his Introduction to the Devout Life, have become his most
sought-after advice. His articulation of a simplified and accessible approach
to the cultivation of the interior life (one might call it a methodology of the
spiritual life) is probably his greatest contribution. The Salesian method of meditation treated
both how one should meditate, and on what one could most
profitably focus. The method begins with the manner in which one places oneself
in the presence of God, and concludes with a technique for preserving and
retaining the best insights and discoveries made. In the Awhat@ of meditation de Sales directs us away from the trivialities of life
and religiosity to what is really real--the things that matter most. His method became almost normative in the
Church of England, and de Sales continues to provide, for evangelicals and
others, an intentional and disciplined approach to experiencing God in a
transforming way.
III.
POVERTY: DEFECTS OF SALESIAN SPIRITUALITY
Francis de Sales remained an implacable
opponent of the Protestants of his day. Biographical considerations certainly
help to account for this level of hostility, since throughout his professional
career he felt the sting of his banishment from Geneva, and viewed that nearby
Protestant city as both his beloved Geneva and Athe Rome of heresy.@[38] But this hostility was rooted at least as
much in his own doctrinal integrity, for de Sales was a person committed to
implementing the spirit and canons of the Council of Trent, which vigorously
and pointedly anathematized each distinctive of evangelical Protestant faith.[39]
Inevitably de Sales spirituality was shaped
by his unequivocally Tridentine Catholic commitments. Such influence is
apparent, of course, in such obvious items as his veneration of Mary, his
restriction of the locus of salvation to those in the fellowship of the Roman
church, and his emphasis on the sacraments as essential means of grace, the
Mass, confession and the saints. These features do not need to be belabored,
since even relatively unsophisticated evangelical readers are able to recognize
these Ausual suspects,@ and move on discriminately.
There are, however, some other equally
significant, but perhaps less readily detected, features of de Sales= work that require screening. Although his
own writings are rich in biblical content, imagery and allusions, de Sales
insisted that Christians needed church authority to help them correctly
interpret the Bible.[40] He opposed translating the Bible into the
vernacular. He followed the Council of Trent in opposing the reading of
Scripture by laypersons. Even in
exceptional cases special permission must be sought, de Sales argued, as Aa very reasonable precaution against putting
this sharp and two-edged sword into the hands of one who might kill
himself therewith.@[41]
Likewise he opposed services in the vernacular (preferring a universal
Latin uniformity as a sign of church unity).
The Huguenot practice of singing the Psalms in the vernacular struck him
as sacrilegious. AIs it
not good,@ he asked sarcastically, Ato hear cooks singing the penitential Psalms
of David, and asking at each verse for the bacon, the capon, the partridge?@[42]
This flaw affects the meditative practices de
Sales prescribes. The devout are quite properly directed to focus their
reflection on such profound themes as our intended end, on sin and death, for
example, and on hell and heaven. All of
these themes are biblically rooted, of course, but the invitation to meditate
on these themes is not supplemented by recommendations on how also to meditate
directly on the text of inspired Scripture. The classic Christian practice
using Scripture as lectio divina is a helpful and necessary corrective
for a spirituality that connects directly with the inspired Word of God. This
is essential to evangelical meditation.
Evangelical students of de Sales should also
be wary of tendencies towards an excessively intrusive style of spiritual
directorship. Spiritual direction is a long-established practice in the Roman
Catholic tradition, and one eminently compatible with the hierarchical
structures and priestly roles of the Roman church. Spiritual direction, as de Sales practiced it, certainly fostered
a high degree of intimacy between director and directee, and in the case of his
relationship with Jane de Chantal, a love relationship that was preserved from
sexual impurity only by their mutual capacity for sublimation. In keeping with
the gentleness that characterized his spirituality generally, de Sales did not
proceed in a heavy-handed or authoritative style. In fact, his approach was almost Rogerian as he saw himself as
one who facilitates the emergence of embryonic goodness in the directee herself
or himself.
Nonetheless, their is a hierarchicalism
implicit in the spiritual direction structure itself that de Sales is unable to
escape. De Sales was fawned upon as a veritable guru by the women of the
Visitation, and his visits to their establishment were treated as virtual
theophanies. To maximize the effectiveness of spiritual direction, de Sales
counsels that the devout disciple must Asubmit their will@ to their guide. They must view
him as an angel--Ado not
look on him as a mere man@--who has come from heaven and will lead them there. In keeping with this, prayers of confession
are to be expressed while kneeling before one=s confessor. In a huge
understatement, de Sales cautions the devout to choose their spiritual guides
carefully.[43] In
his Spiritual Conferences he addresses the women of the Visitation as Amy dearest daughters@[44] and in other language which, in view of its
context, falls on contemporary ears as quite patronizing. In short,
evangelicals who borrow from the Salesian model of spiritual directorship need
to be careful to prevent unwholesome dependencies or control dynamics in
mentoring relations.[45]
Also of concern is de Sales= very optimistic assumptions about the
capacity of human nature to reach upward to God, assumptions which lead him to
place an almost exclusive emphasis on human agency and initiative in the
pursuit of God. In fact, it has been suggested by Salesian scholars that
optimistic Christian humanism constitutes a seminal theme of this particular
spirituality.[46] Consistent with Tridentine theology, de
Sales emphasized Athe
centrality of human freedom in the divine scheme of things,@ a freedom which, he added, finds its
ultimate test in our decision to love God or not to love Him.[47] No doubt de Sales was encouraged in this
orientation by the humanism he absorbed in his formative years as a Parisian
student, and also by his recoiling from the fatalism he assumed to be implicit
in the Protestant doctrine of predestination. A further explanation may lie in
de Sales= understanding of the nature of the true love
God seeks to solicit from his creatures.
He wrote: ALove
should not force the will but should leave it in its freedom.@[48]
Certainly there is little here to resonate with the Magisterial
Reformers= wonder at being forcefully wrested from the
dominion of darkness, and captured and claimed by God through his irresistible
grace.
Protestant spirituality has different
anthropological assumptions and, consequently, predominantly theocentric
syntheses. Any Protestant who happens
to be browsing through a devotional library, and spies a volume entitled A
Treatise on the Love of God, will instinctively assume that it is on
an attribute of God, and written in the adoring theocentric spirit of F. M.
Lehman=s great hymn:
O Love of God, how rich and pure!
How measureless and strong!
It shall for evermore endure
The saints= and angels= song.[49]
This is because Protestant spirituality has tended not to focus so much
on the activity or cooperation of the human spirit in allowing Jesus to live
through us.[50] It is
significant that when de Sales speaks of the love of God, he almost invariably
has in mind a devout human love for God rather than divine love for
humanity. The love of God is something
we learn to exercise rather than something we behold and receive.
De Sales= Treatise on the Love of God begins by stressing the pivotal
role of the human will in spiritual formation.
The emphasis of the first book of the Treatise is that our
natural inclination to love God is real enough, but sadly somewhat weak. All
devotional advances consequently presuppose God=s enabling grace, just as much as they require our laborious and
careful response. The purpose of the
grace of God, as de Sales conceived it, is very much to enable us to answer the
bell.[51] While de Sales= spirituality can offer a healthy corrective for those who are
indifferent to their spiritual responsibilities, the countervailing risk lies
in accepting the false, anxiety-creating and ultimately secularizing assumption
that spiritual formation is entirely a human task with its own techniques.
A final, and most important, consideration is
de Sales= understanding of the divine-human
relationship of love. De Sales= love for God was a yearning for the ecstasy of a full and complete
union with Him. While its complete
fulfilment awaits heaven, the penultimate experiences of this union as they may
be known in this life (and of which de Sales obviously knew something himself) are described in language of mystic rapture
that shades at times into the erotic.[52]
For all its inspirational qualities, however,
the intense love for God to which de Sales aspired is flawed in two ways. For one thing, it is a love dominated by
aspiration rather than by gratitude and confidence. In his Treatise on the Love of God, de Sales
devotes considerable attention to expounding the many good reasons humans have
for loving God with all our hearts. These include the goodness of God=s own nature, the character of his
providential government, and his loving
interventions in history for the purposes of redemption. They also include his
gracious Aassistances toward salvation,@ as when He infuses our hearts with
inspirations to love Him, and the glorious vista of an eternity in which we may
hope to participate.[53]
What is conspicuous by its absence is love
for God rooted in gratitude for an assured salvation and a secured hope.[54]
It is instructive to recall that de Sales had an unqualified commitment to the
Canons of Trent, which, among other things, charge as accursed all those who
claim that justification is by faith alone and who claim a certain assurance of
salvation. As Trent puts it bluntly, ANo one can know with a certainty of faith . .
. that he has obtained the grace of God.@[55]
Thus by reason of its disfigurement de Sales= love for God takes on a tragic-heroic
character. As we noted earlier, de Sales= decision to love God despite his lack of assurance of salvation was a
watershed event in his life. It
converged with his understanding of the virtue of holy indifference--that is,
the importance of cultivating a complete disinterest in his own selfish
interests and even his eternal prospects.
AIndifference,@ insisted de Sales, Agoes beyond resignation.@[56] Accordingly, one must learn submission to
the will of God=s good pleasure (i.e., whatever actually
happens) while continuing to cultivate conformity to the signified will of God
(i.e., His prescriptive will). Jane de Chantal suggested that the powerful
appeal for the Visitants was their Atotal abandonment of themselves to Holy Providence.@ De Sales= own obiter dictum for this was Ato ask for nothing, and to refuse nothing.@[57] De Sales= vision of God was the prevailing notion of an absolute monarch whose
will was ultimate and not to be challenged.
Holmes summarizes De Sales= outlook thus: AIf He wants us to go to Hell, that is fine.@[58] Such passivity and self-abnegation may have
offered an appealing consolation to women of the seventeenth century,
proscribed as they were by their submissive roles, but it can hardly be viewed
as appropriate for today. And it certainly fails to measure up to the bold and
personally-affirming ethos of the New Testament Gospel.
Elsewhere, when speaking of the hopefulness
of love, de Sales seems to allow room for a qualified degree of
self-interest. While it is wrong to say
we love God only for the good which we expect from Him, it is acceptable to
love Him in part for such good. In
other words, hope is legitimate. In
this love Athe love of ourselves is mingled with that of
God, but that of God floats on the top.@[59]
De Sales addresses the matter again in his
conference with devout women who had raised questions about the level of
confidence the godly are entitled to possess, and in this instance his position
is less concessive. The real reason we
are troubled about not being perfect before God, he argues, is love of
ourselves. Peaceful resolution comes in
abandoning ourselves to God, and leaving ourselves at the mercy of His will.
Such self-abandonment Ais
nothing else but the acceptance with perfect indifference of all the events
which may befall us.@[60] It
is hard to equate such an outlook with our normal assumptions of the meaning of
confidence. Nonetheless, suggests de
Sales, Athe saints who are in heaven are so closely
united to the will of God that if there were even a little more of His good
pleasure in hell than in paradise, they would quit paradise to go there.@[61] Devout believers are encouraged to ground
their confidence in Athe
infinite goodness of God,@ even though there are no guarantees of whether that infinite goodness
will be able to ensure their personal salvation.[62]
In his conference on hope, de Sales sounds
more hopeful. He assures the Visitants
(in an apparent echo of Jesus=s assurance to the disciples) that those who abandon themselves to God
will be compensated by God beyond comparison in both this life and the next.[63] Likewise he adds in the Treatise that
it would be the ultimate torment if we had no assurance that our passion for
God will eventually be satiated.[64] Still, the assurance of which de Sales
speaks is consistently qualified by the specter of sabotage through the
wrongful exercise of human volition. We can enjoy the assurance of
paradise--and here is the grand caveat--Aprovided always that we will to employ the means which has prepared for
us.@ God
is the source of grace, but we must cooperate with his favor. Salvation is a
cooperative enterprise. Hope is
generated by the promise of God=s strong assistance, while aspiration utilizes Ameans that lie in our own power.@ Consequently our hope is always mingled in
some way with our aspiring.[65]
So his advice is: ATake
great care to increase in love and fidelity . . . keeping as close to Him as
possible, and then all will be well with you.@[66]
CONCLUSION
Evangelicals can profit greatly from a
selective appropriation of Salesian spirituality. It is a historical fact that
de Sales, who espoused such a compelling and joyfully devout life, one rooted
in heart-love for God, and made possible even for the laity through reasonable
and accessible spiritual disciplines, remained nonetheless an implacable
opponent of the Protestants of his day. Nevertheless, following the example of
Theodore Beza in the early 1600s, we too ought cordially to entertain de Sales,
and engage him in conversation. The Roman Catholic--Protestant divide, even
when we are dealing with a pre-Vatican II variety of Catholicism, should not be
viewed as altogether impassible, just as the differences which exist should
neither be ignored nor dismissed as insignificant. A harsh response on our part to de Sales= partial-sightedness may actually say a lot
about the level of our personal pain and frustration over our own spiritual
incompleteness and woundedness. In the spirit of the 1977 Chicago Call: An
Appeal to Evangelicals, we should acknowledge our need for a recovery of
our full Christian heritage. As this Call states, Awe cannot be fully evangelical without
recognizing our need to learn from other times and movements concerning the
whole meaning of [the] Gospel.@[67]
De Sales= commendably accessible approach to meditation and other devotional
disciplines is of enduring and much-needed helpfulness to evangelicals. We
would simply insist that de Sales= guidelines should be supplemented with provision for direct meditative
encounter with the inspired Word of Scripture, and that his hierarchical
attitude and approach to spiritual direction be nuanced by a deeper regard for
the privilege and dignity of direct access to God which are implicit in the evangelical understanding of
the priesthood of all believers.
Even more importantly we should draw
inspiration from this compelling champion of a life of ready obedience rooted
in a passionate love for God (if there was more of this in our circles, there
would be fewer shrill exhortations to deeper commitment, less temptation to
legalism, and no need at all for our ALordship Salvation@ controversy). Yet despite its inspirational qualities, the love for
God which de Sales sought to nurture was a love dominated more by aspiration
than by firm assurance of faith. Consequently evangelicals are wise to reject
the excessive passivity of his notion of A holy indifference,@ and should reform de Sales= exemplary yearning for God with a more profound, confident, and
grateful (i.e., more evangelical) sense of being unconditionally grasped and
beloved by God.
This study illustrates the need for
evangelicals to utilize meritorious works of Roman Catholic and other Christian
spiritualities appreciatively, but always with discrimination and a critical
awareness of their formative theological premises. Perhaps the seminal insight
with which we come away from our encounter with Francis de Sales is that the
love of God is both our action and God=s gift. We resonate with the invitation to put down the tools of our
bustling activism for a time, and learn to practice the love of God more
passionately even while we behold it gratefully and receive it most assuredly.
This is the substance of a truly evangelical yearning for God.
ENDNOTES
1 L. Gregory Jones, AA
Thirst for God or Consumer Spirituality? Cultivating Disciplined Practices of
Being Engaged
by
God,@ Modern Theology 13, no. 1 (January 1997) 3-28.
2 For a profound exposition of this as the essence of
Christian spirituality and prayer, see James M. Houston, The
Transforming Friendship (Oxford: Lion, 1989). To appeal more to an American
audience, the book was recently re-
titled
The Transforming Power of Prayer (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 1996).
3 David Bebbington cites activism as one of four
defining features of the evangelical movement in his Evangelicalism
in Modern Britain: A
History from the 1730s to the 1980s
(London: Unwin Hyman, 1989) 2-19. Mark Noll ruefully
reminds us in his The
Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994) that it has
also led to a relative
neglect
of the intellectual life.
4 Some years after Nienkirchen coined this term, and
used it for a series of retreat-styled courses on contemplative
disciplines, it found its way
into the title of a work on evangelical spirituality: Alister McGrath, Beyond
the Quiet Time:
Practical
Evangelical Spirituality (Grand
Rapids: Baker, 1995).
5 His name ought to be written either as Francois de
Sales (French) or Francis of Sales (Anglicized version). However,
he has traditionally been
designated in English literature by the conflated title of Francis de Sales. De
Sales has been
described as Aone of the strongest single influences on spirituality
from the seventeenth century to the present day@
(Jordan Aumann, Christian
Spirituality in the Catholic Tradition [San Francisco: Ignatius; London:
Sheed & Ward,
1985] 211). The definitive
collection of de Sales= writings is the 27-vol. French-language Oeuvres de
Saint Francois de
Sales (Annecy: J. Niérat, 1892-1932, 1964). In English,
there is the 7-vol. Library of St. Francis de Sales, ed. and trans.
by H. B. Mackey (1873-1910).
Individual volumes and selections of de Sales= writings have also been published by
others.
6 Samples of evangelical attentiveness include Richard
Foster and James Smith, eds. Devotional Classics (San
Francisco: HarperCollins,
1990) 26-32; Peter Toon, Spiritual Companions: An Introduction to the
Christian Classics
(London: Marshall Pickering,
1990) 81 ff. Generally, evangelical writers cite the writings of De Sales only
eclectically,
e.g.,
Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines (San Francisco: Harper,
1988), 70, 203.
7 Recent even-handed but uncompromising works like
Norman Geisler and Ralph Mackenzie=s Roman
Catholics and
Evangelicals: Agreements
and Differences (Grand Rapids: Baker,
1995) and Charles Colson and Richard Neuhaus,
eds.,
Evangelicals and Catholics Together (Dallas: Word, 1995) are
exemplary.
8 J. Mary Luti argues that Protestants can profit from
the writings of Aheavy users of the whole Catholic apparatus@ in
her article AReappropriating Classic Texts of Catholic Spirituality
for Protestant Devotion Today,@ American
Baptist
Quarterly 16, no. 1 (March 1997) 56-68. David
Gillett makes the same point while noting that Adiscernment is central
in spiritual exploration@ (p. 183) in his Trust and Obey: Explorations in
Evangelical Spirituality (London: Darton,
Longman
& Todd, 1993), ch. 8.
9 Wendy Wright and Joseph Power, introduction to Francis
de Sales, Jane de Chantal: Letters of Spiritual Direction,
Classics
of Western Spirituality (New York: Paulist, 1988) 34.
11 Katherine Brégy, The Story
of Saint Francis de Sales: Patron of Catholic Writers (Milwaukee: Bruce,
1958) 26.
12 Williston Walker, A History
of the Christian Church, 3d ed. (New York: Charles Scribner=s Sons, 1970) 396.
14 Quoted by Ruth Kleinman, ASaint Francois de Sales and the Protestants@ (Ph.D. thesis, Columbia University, 1959)
1.
16 Wendy Wright, AFrancois
de Sales: Gentleness and Civility,@ in
Roots of the Modern Christian Tradition, vol. 2 of
The
Spirituality of Western Christendom,
ed E. Rozanne Elder (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 1984) 132-134.
18 "Unlike the young Luther, whose own spiritual
struggle this recalls, the discord did not give way to the dominant
chord
of certainty. Rather, it resolved itself in an act of ultimate surrender to and
trust in the uncertainty.@ Ibid.
19 When dealing with individual Protestants, De Sales
always began with respectful and persuasive entreaties. When
these proved insufficient, he
was prepared to supplement them with political pressures and economic
discrimination,
and indeed recommended such
measures to the Duke of Savoy. AFrancois de
Sales believed it legitimate, when religious
appeals for conversion had
been tried and failed, to apply all forms of pressure short of physical
violence and open
war.@ Kleinman, ASaint
Francois de Sales and the Protestants,@
xi. In this de Sales was essentially a
person of his times.
22 New International Dictionary of the Christian Church, rev. ed., ed. J. D. Douglas (Grand Rapids:
Zondervan, 1978),
s. v. AFrancis of Sales.@
Compare Michael de la Bedoyere, Francois de Sales (New York: Harper
& Brothers, 1960)
10.
24 Ibid., 30. The transcription of de Sales= counsel to these women [Francis de Sales, The
Spiritual Conferences, trans.
Abbot Gasquet and Canon
Mackey, Library of St. Francis de Sales (Westminster, MD: Newman, 1943)] is his
third
most
important writing.
25 Francis de Sales, Treatise
On the Love of God, trans. H. B. Mackey (Westminster, MD: Newman, 1953) 3.
26 Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life,
trans. John K. Ryan (Garden City, NY: Image Books, 1972) 39-
41.
30 Ibid., 53. One thinks, by comparison, of Protestant
Social Gospel theologian Walter Rauschenbusch=s stinging
criticism of the common
motivation for pursuing personal salvation as simply Aself-interest on a higher level.@
Predictably emphasizing the
social plane more than de Sales, Rauschenbusch believed the corrective lay in
adopting an
Aanthropomorphic mysticism@ that recognized God in humanity. A Theology for
the Social Gospel (New York:
Macmillan,
1917) 108.
32 De Sales, Oeuvres [Devout
Life]; quoted by Kleinman, ASaint Francois
de Sales and the Protestants,@ 26.
34 In keeping with the consistent assessment of Salesian
scholars, Wendy Wright views Aspiritual
egalitarianism@ as a
defining feature of de Sales= life and work (AGentleness
and Civility,@ 141-142); compare also Elizabeth Stopp,
AFrancois de Sales,@ in
The Study of Spirituality, ed. C. Jones, G. Wainwright and E. Yarnold
(New York and Oxford:
Oxford
University Press, 1986) 379-385.
38 Robert Ornsby, The Life of St. Francis de Sales
(New York: P. J. Kennedy, n.d.) 29. AWhat
Rome is to the Angels
and the Catholics she
[Geneva] is to the heretics and devils@
(E. K. Sanders, S. Francois de Sales [London: SPCK,
1928]
116).
39 See Philip Schaff, ed., Creeds of Christendom,
3 vols. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1977), 2:77-206. Compare Francis de
Sales, The Catholic
Controversy, trans. H. B. Mackey, vol. 3 of Library of St. Francis de Sales
(London: Burns & Oates,
1886).
40 Even so he offers a passionate exhortation to another
bishop to devote himself to biblical preaching (APreach often
. . . you can do it . .
. and you must do it . . . . God wills
it, and men want it. It is God=s glory; it is
your salvation. Act
boldly . . . and take courage
out of love for God,@ p. 72) in Francis de Sales, On the Preacher and
Preaching: A Letter by
Francis de Sales, trans. John K. Ryan (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1964).
Scripture is essential, but that its meaning be
mediated
through the clergy equally essential.
41 De Sales, Catholic Controversy, 125. This is,
of course, a far cry from the heuristic Protestant interpretation of the
Hebrews
4:12 reference to Scripture=s double-edged
power.
45 On her deathbed, a nun intimates (according to an
account in St. Francis de Sales: Selected Letters, ed. and trans.
Elisabeth Stopp, in Classics
of the Contemplative Life series [New York: Harper, 1960]) that she has a
secret she does
not wish to share. De Sales, dutifully stationed at her
bedside, is determined to pry it out of her, first by request and then
by persuasive tactics. Finally she discloses her secret when he
warns her not to make him command her to tell. She tells
and then dies. We are a long
ways here from the priesthood of all believers. Contemporary spiritual
mentoring is
becoming increasingly
sensitive to these issues; cf the AGuidelines
for Ethical Conduct@ (1996) adopted by Spiritual
Directors International, a
predominantly Roman Catholic but ecumenical and interfaith organization in
which some
evangelicals participate. See
also the careful treatment of spiritual directing in Marjorie J.Thompson, Soul
Feast: An
Invitation
to the Christian Spiritual Life
(Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1995), ch. 7.
46 See, for example, Wright, AGentleness and Civility,@ 130-132. Compare Michael J. Buckley, ASeventeenth-Century
French Spirituality,@ in Christian Spirituality: Post-Reformation and
Modern, eds. Louis Dupré and Don Saliers (New
York:
Crossroad, 1991) 39-40.
52 De Sales, Treatise, 150-164. "As we see a
hungry child closely fixed to his mother=s
breast, greedily press
this dear fountain of most
desired sweetness, so that one would think that either it would thrust itself
into its mother=s
breast, or else suck and draw
all that breast into itself; so our soul, panting with an extreme thirst for
the true good, when
she shall find that
inexhaustible source in the Divinity,--O good God! what a holy and sweet ardor
to be united and
joined to the plentiful
breasts of the All-goodness, either to be altogether absorbed in it, or to have
it come entirely into
us.@ Ibid., 154.
54 Contrast the theme of Athe exhilarating release effected by his [Paul=s] gospel of redeeming love@ (p. 15) pervading
F.
F. Bruce, Paul: Apostle of the Heart Set Free (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
1977).
55 Canons of Trent, chap. 9, and canons 12 and 14, in
Schaff, ed., Creeds of Christendom, 3:99, 113. Contrast Luther:
AWe conclude therefore with Paul >that we are justified by faith only in Christ, without
the law.= Now after
that a man is
once justified, and
possesseth Christ by faith, and knoweth that he is his righteousness and life,
doubtless he will not be
idle, but as a good tree he
will bring forth good fruits. For the
believing man hath the Holy Ghost, and where the Holy
Ghost dwelleth, he will not
suffer a man to be idle, but stirreth him up to all exercises of piety and
godliness, and of true
religion, to the love of God
. . . .@ Commentary on Galatians, quoted in H. T. Kerr,
ed., A Compend of Luther=s
Theology (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1966) 104.
57 De Sales, Spiritual Conferences, 94.
Evangelical mystic and writer A. W. Tozer appears to have picked up on this
Salesian theme to define the
response of the twentieth-century Christian and Missionary Alliance, his own
denomination, to the
Pentecostal phenomena of tongues-speaking. On the Alliance=s 1963 ASeek
Not, Forbid
Not@ statement, which effectively squashed glossolalia in
Alliance churches, see Charles W. Nienkirchen, A. B.
Simpson and the
Pentecostal Movement (Peabody, MA:
Hendrickson, 1992) 139-140. It would also be interesting to
compare de Sales= sentiment of holy indifference with Friedrich
Schleiermacher=s absolute-dependence feeling, which
he
regarded, of course, as the universal ground of religion.