By Cynthia R. Nielsen
Archbishop Rowan Williams’ recent Holy Week lectures focused on the subject of prayer. He began by discussing insights of three early Church figures: Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, and John Cassian. In his second lecture, he discussed several Protestant and Catholic Reformers, highlighting their common emphases on God’s free action, God’s majesty and God’s mystery. (Williams, by the way, gave a very positive presentation of John Calvin’s views on prayer, referring to one of Calvin’s sermons on Abraham and Isaac. Hermeneutically speaking, it is interesting to note that Calvin’s exposition of the text is anything but a strict grammatico-historical reading. I applaud Williams for avoiding the herd mentality about Calvin and engaging in a bit of 21st century ad fontes activity). In this post, I draw our attention to the Archbishop’s third lecture, viz., those who have written on prayer in the 20th century. More specifically, I focus on the two eccentric female “outsiders” (that is, outsiders to Christian orthodoxy), Simone Weil and Etty Hillesum.
The question of prayer and how to pray, as Williams’ points out, was still quite pressing in the 20th century. That is, the events of the war, the Nazi invasions and the resultant crimes against humanity, all played a role in pushing people to seek God. First, Williams’ discusses Simone Weil, a Jewish philosopher, who died in 1943 at the young age of 34. Because of Jewish identity, her historical situation, and her own desire to connect with the plight of the poor, Weil was intimately acquainted with suffering. For example, when the Nazis took over France, Simone was uprooted and forced to flee. In the final months of her life, she decided to eat no more food than was available to the poorest in France in her day. This decision had deleterious consequences on her health and contributed to her death. Weil’s family was a secular Jewish family and also a very intellectual family. At an early age, Simone evinced intellectual gifts and a proclivity for philosophy and languages. In addition to teaching at a high school, Weil also worked in a factory, as she wanted to relate with the working class and their struggles. Weil’s life was one of intensity, and that intensity comes through in her writings.
As Williams explains, although she was an intellectual, Simone had a life-changing mystical experience in her twenties while on a retreat at a Benedictine Abbey. As she read George Herbert’s poem, “Love Bade Me Welcome,” she had what she describes as an encounter with Christ-as she puts it, “Christ came down and took possession of me.” She, however, was eccentric and struggled with Catholic theology. For example, she refused to be baptized. Why? She believed that most of the human race was not baptized and out in the cold and felt that her call was to stay out in the cold with most of the human race. Had she lived longer, perhaps her views on baptism would have changed; nonetheless, one can respect her desire to existentially connect with the alienated and downtrodden. Weil did, in spite of her differences with traditional theology, spend much time reflecting on the Eucharist and the Trinity. In addition, she spoke out against the impersonal and technological totalitarianism of her day-that is, against the kind of life she had seen and experienced in the factory.
Weil’s best known book is entitled, Waiting for God. As Williams’ explains, for Simone, the essence of prayer begins in attention, in waiting attention. This kind of posture involves self-denial, a kind of selflessness. That is, (quoting Williams) “you put your thoughts and anxieties on the backburner, [you] let your self be there and let your mind be shaped by what is in front of you. In learning a language, you submit your mind and your feelings to the structure of something that is there, and as you do that you enter into a kind of freedom.” In other words, by de-centering the self and one’s own concerns and preoccupations, you allow what is there to shape you. You allow the Other a voice, a potentially transforming voice. In fact, Weil sees the de-centering necessary for prayer as that which is required in many “ordinary” activities. As Williams’ puts it, “the selflessness of learning a language or a craft-all of that is a preparation for the deep attention of waiting in which you turn toward God. That is her most central idea. It connects experiences that we all share in some way with the experience of connecting with God.” Thus, whether learning to ride a bicycle (or in my daughter’s case, a tricycle), learning a craft, or learning a foreign language, we are de-centering ourselves and being shaped by an “other.”
Weil’s philosophical ideas are quite complex. (Interestingly, they remind me of some of Balthasar’s teachings). For example, “Simone sees this selfless giving as the ground of God, because God himself is always giving himself so selflessly that you can almost say that he cancels himself out, so that the world can exist, can come to light. That gift, in which you cancel yourself as the giver, she translates into the idea that somehow in our own relationship to God, we, in response to God’s stepping out of sight, cancel ourselves and our absorbed into God.” Weil speaks of this as “de-creating” ourselves. Of course, that moves a bit outside of Christian orthodoxy; yet, her point about self-less giving is very much at the heart of Christianity. Williams ends by saying, “the power and density of her writing is addictive. She covers such a range of thinking and feeling, and though she herself found it very hard to accept love, she never lost sight of that experience where Christ came down and ‘took possession of me’ when she was contemplating George Herbert’s poem,
‘LOVE bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.’”
In part II, I shall summarize Williams’ lecture on Etty Hillesum.
By Cynthia R. Nielsen
Fr. Dan at “Catholic in the Third Millennium” blog has a series of provocative and insightful posts related to recent events in the Anglican world. Even if one doesn’t agree with him on every point, the posts are well worth the read. If there are other thoughtful discussions that you’ve come across in the blog-o-sphere (opposing as well as agreeing with the posts below), please let me know. (Given my current workload–preparing lectures for a new class that I will be teaching in the fall, I will not be able to participate in a discussion on the posts below. However, I would love to hear from you, pro or con).
1. Personal Reflections for Remaining in TEC.
2. The Problem with Confessionalism.
3. Restating a Third Mill Catholic Prophecy.
4. Response to Al Kimel (new).
By Cynthia R. Nielsen
St. Augustine, arguably the most influential Christian theologian in the West, penned his Confessions while serving as a bishop in North Africa. Although the Confessions is written unashamedly from within the Christian tradition, its message speaks both to Christians and non-Christians alike-to anyone who has experienced the pangs and pulls of a restless, unquiet heart. In books I-IX, Augustine takes us through the winding journey of his boyhood, adolescence and young adulthood without hesitating to reveal his moral, intellectual, and other struggles and failings along the way. Through a series of encounters with various texts and individuals, both pagan and Christian, which include Cicero, the Platonists, St. Ambrose, and St. Paul, Augustine encounters Jesus Christ in a life-transforming way and narrates this experience in the famous garden-scene conversion of book VIII. We invite you to join us at St. John’s this summer during the month of June, as we “take up and read” Augustine’s Confessions, with the hope of being transformed ourselves and entering into the life, thought and prayers of this great saint.
Great are you, O Lord, and exceedingly worthy of praise; your power is immense, and your wisdom beyond reckoning. And so we humans, who are a due part of your creation, long to praise you-we who carry our mortality about us, carry the evidence of our sin and with it the proof that you thwart the proud. Yet these humans, due part of your creation as they are, still do long to praise you. You stir us so that praising you may bring us joy, because you have made us and drawn us to yourself, and our heart is unquiet until it rests in you (St. Augustine, Confessions, Boulding translation).
Class details: The class will be taught by Cynthia R. Nielsen (me), doctoral student of philosophy at the University of Dallas, and will meet at St. John’s Episcopal Church on Tuesdays from 6:30-8pm during the month of June, beginning June 3, 2008. For more information email Cynthia Nielsen at crn@pobox.com. For those who desire to read the book while taking the course, I highly recommend (but do not require) Maria Boulding’s translation of the Confessions, which is the translation that I will be using for the course.
By Cynthia R. Nielsen
J.I. Packer recently presented his thoughts on Anglican realignment vs. schism, as well as thoughts on a number of other important topics in the current Anglican/Episcopal world. Thoughts?
By Cynthia R. Nielsen
The second half of the document under discussion (Women Bishops: A Response to Cardinal Kasper) falls under the broad heading, “Women Bishops: Biblical Exegesis and Theological Anthropology,” and attempts to sketch the biblical basis for the Anglican position on the ordination of women. For a more detailed, yet (popular-level rather than academic) presentation of some of the exegetical positions noted below, see N.T. Wright, “The Biblical Basis for Women’s Service in the Church,” Priscilla Papers Vol. 20, no. 4 (Autumn 2006): 5-10.
In this post, in addition to hearing thoughts from Anglicans, Episcopalians, and Roman Catholics (as well as other thoughtful contributors), I am particularly interested in hearing Roman Catholic counter arguments and alternative exegetical readings of the following passages presented below (as well as those commented on in N.T. Wright’s article above). I am not suggesting that I agree with all the conclusions or am convinced in toto by Wright’s intepretations. However, in my opinion, Wright offers a number of plausible exegetical alternatives to the commonly appealed to texts that are typically interpreted as prohibiting the ordination of women (e.g., I Corinthians 11 and 14, Ephesians 5, and I Timothy 2).
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Everything that follows is taken directly from the official document (see bibliography below).
1. Cardinal Kasper’s reference to Junia in Romans 16:7 itself seemed to allow that there might after all be a possibility of re-opening the question; if, he seemed to imply, it could be demonstrated that Junia really was a woman (not ‘Junias’, a supposedly masculine name, as most translations have had it), then even Roman tradition might be forced to recognise the possibility that women could be apostles, and therefore presumably could hold ordained ministry in the apostolic succession. In fact, despite what the Cardinal suggested at that point in his paper, recent scholarship, drawing on excellent philology and study of ancient names, strongly suggests that the person in question was female. Junia is a well-known female name of the period, but the suggested male name Junias is not otherwise known; and, when Greek scribes began to introduce accents into their texts, they accented the name in such a way as to make it clear that it was female. That, despite what the Cardinal said, is how it appears in the most recent edition of the Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament; and the newest edition of Metzger’s commentary on textual variants indicates that those who still preferred the masculine accentuation did so simply on the grounds that they doubted whether a woman would be referred to as an ‘apostle’ – which precisely begs the methodological question.
2. This small but significant point opens the way for a consideration of the larger exegetical and theological issues which will come before Synod in July. First, and most important, we must give great weight to the fact that all four evangelists, but especially John, place the testimony of the women, and especially Mary Magdalene, in prime position in their accounts of Easter. It is to these women, and particularly to Mary, that the risen Lord entrusts the good news, not to the male apostles themselves. It cannot be overemphasized that this was hugely counterintuitive in the ancient world. Had the narratives been invented later, this would never have commended the account; had the evangelists had any doubt that women were to be regarded as primary witnesses of the resurrection, they would never have allowed such a story to remain in their texts. Yet there it is, in each gospel. If, with Paul, we regard ‘apostleship’ as primarily constituted by witness to the resurrection, Mary Magdalene is the ‘apostle to the apostles’, as indeed some Roman theologians have styled her.
3. This addresses the highly significant question of anthropology, rightly raised by various parties in the debate. The evangelists, again particularly but not exclusively John, present the resurrection of Jesus not as an isolated ‘miracle’ but as the beginning of God’s new creation, God’s renewal of the whole world. Within that, the roles of men and women are re-evaluated, not (to be sure) to make them identical or interchangeable in any and all respects, but to celebrate their complementarity, not least their complementary apostolic witness to Jesus’ resurrection. The same point is visible in Acts, where it is remarkable how women are singled out both as co-equal recipients of the outpoured Spirit and also as co-equal sufferers of persecution (Acts 9:2 etc.), a tell-tale sign that they were community leaders in their own right.
4. Witness to the resurrection on one hand, and participation in the Spirit on the other, is the gospel foundation of all sacramental life. The question of what has been called ’sacramental assurance’ is answered in the New Testament not by a theory about ministry – the NT is innocent of any explicit or developed linkage of ordained ministry and the sacraments – but by the fact that, with the resurrection of Jesus and the gift of the Spirit, the new creation has begun in which heaven and earth, and also present and future, now overlap. That is the ontological basis for sacramental assurance.
5. The biblical argument against the ordination (and, a fortiori, consecration) of women has tended to rest on a portfolio of texts often supposed to speak of ‘headship’ in a way which rules out women’s ordination. In fact these texts – in I Corinthians 11 and 14, Ephesians 5, and I Timothy 2 – are by no means as clearly opposed to female ordination as their proponents usually make out. ‘Headship’ is in fact only mentioned in I Corinthians 11 (where it has to do with headgear worn while leading in worship – hardly an argument against women’s public ministry) and Ephesians 5 (where it concerns the manner of mutual submission between husband and wife). The passage in I Corinthians 14, thought by some conservative textual critics on good manuscript evidence to be an interpolation, relates, even if original, not to ministry but to the good order of worship services in which, as in some Middle-Eastern churches today, local women might not always understand the language of public worship and might be inclined to chat amongst themselves. The famous passage in I Timothy 2 does not mention ‘headship’, and can properly be read, within a context (Ephesus) where the mainstream religion was female-only, as a warning against allowing women to usurp the proper ministry of men. In fact, the primary exhortation of I Timothy 2:11 is ‘let the women learn’ (the Greek manthano means ‘learn, especially by study’), and is qualified with a phrase which can mean ‘in silence’ but equally ‘at leisure’: in other words, women must be given the space to study for themselves, an obviously revolutionary proposal in that age as in many subsequent ones, not least because, in Paul’s world as in Jesus’, to ’study’ would not be for one’s own benefit alone, but in order to become a teacher of others. These arguments, so briefly sketched, are of course too brief to be conclusive, but should indicate that those who support the ordination of women to priestly and Episcopal ministry cannot be dismissed as treating scripture in a cavalier fashion, or as indulging in a fancy, exercising fancy hermeneutical footwork to imply that the text is now unimportant.
6. A second strand relates to the foundation of the theology of orders in Christology, rather than in the examination of the practice of the early church. The ordained ministry of the Church does not simply fulfil useful functions of oversight, leadership and service, such as are variously described in the Epistles: rather the ordained ministry focuses in those ministers the diaconal and priestly call of all God’s people, a call that is founded in their baptism. They become what Austin Farrer called ‘walking sacraments.’ In speaking of our baptism, Paul is clear (Galatians 3:27,28) there can be no division between male and female: both have put on Christ. Which of the baptised then can represent Christ in the ministerial orders of the church, can stand in the imago Christi? Can it be only men, or would that be to confuse the universal Christ with the Jesus of history? There is a strong argument to say that only a ministry open to both men and women can properly represent Christ, who became, in the words of the Nicene Creed, anthropos (human), not aner (male).
7. A third strand develops the theology of creation and the new creation. The old dispensation has God creating human kind, male and female in his image and likeness (Genesis 1:27). Men and women have an equal dignity, and male and female are seen as complementary. Thus far we travel together. But if complementarity means differentiation of the two sexes by function, as is clearly expressed in Cardinal Kasper’s paper, what does this have to say about how men and women are together made in the image and likeness of God? The true complementarity of the new creation surely envisages men and women working together, representing the unity of the divine image together, in a way that makes the kind of complementarity that Cardinal Kasper speaks of look more like a kind of Modalism. Certainly the place of the Virgin Mary in the theology of the Victorines is more robust than the traditionally passive one. When Hugh of St Victor describes Mary’s part in the birth of the Saviour in De Sacramentis, he says
‘Nor is the Holy Spirit himself to be called the father of Christ because his love operated the conception of the virgin, since He did not contribute the seed to the foetus of His own essence to the virgin but provided substance to the Virgin herself from her own flesh through his love and virtue.’
8. A further strand acknowledges the ‘dynamic nature of tradition’, and develops the notion of apostolicity in an eschatological direction, where it becomes more important to consider the church’s apostolic witness not just in terms of historical perspective but as a sign of a redeemed creation. If there is ‘an apostolic procession to the end of time’, then women and men have an equally significant contribution to make to the apostolic mission of the church now, in the apostolic order.
The Faith as the Church of England has Received it
The faith that the Church of England has received is, as already indicated, the apostolic faith uniquely revealed in holy scripture, set forth in the catholic creeds, and witnessed by our historic formularies, including the Ordinal. It focuses on Jesus himself, and his unveiling of the Father through his kingdom-announcement and his death and resurrection, and on the sending of the Spirit through whom his followers are enabled to bear witness to him throughout the world. Announcing the Son in the power of the Spirit is the foundation of all Christian, new-covenant ministry. There is ample evidence in the earliest Christianity known to us that this ministry was shared by women. Nothing in holy scripture, the catholic creeds, or our historic formularies makes it necessary to go against this primal witness.
How we move forward in these matters is a question of appropriate and careful strategy, granted our calling to guard the unity of the church. That we may, and indeed must, move forward is a conviction that can be reached, not on the basis of a casual or sloppy attitude to scripture and theology, nor in disregard for our ecumenical partners, but out of a deep conviction rooted in the gospel itself. It may be that the prophetic witness in this matter to which the Church of England is, we believe, called is a greater contribution to the unity of the whole people of God for which our Lord prayed so deeply.
*Women Bishops: A Response to Cardinal Kasper by Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham and David Stancliffe, Bishop of Salisbury. A background article written for the discussions at General Synod, York, July 2006.
By Cynthia R. Nielsen
The following passages are excerpts from a document called Women Bishops: A Response to Cardinal Kasper (a background article written for the discussions at General Synod, York, July 2006) by Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham and David Stancliffe, Bishop of Salisbury. I bring this to your attention as the result of the very fruitful discussion centered on the question “What is Anglicanism.” I do not offer any commentary on the text below, and have decided to highlight the following paragraphs for discussion because they relate to our previous discussion on Anglicanism and present the following: (1) an Anglican understanding of unity, (2) a discussion of women’s ordination in a non-polemical tone and free of the common rhetoric, and (3) the Anglican view of the relation between Scripture and tradition.
I am particularly interested in hearing from Anglicans, Episcopalians, and Roman Catholics (as well as other thoughtful contributors) on anything that directly relates to (1)-(3) as set out in paragraphs 7-10 below. Critical, explanatory, or other constructive comments are welcomed; however, I do plan to moderate the comments (as usual) and will despotically delete any that are in my opinion lacking substance and are simply rhetorically charged (from either side).
In part II, I will post excerpts from the second half of the document, which attempts to sketch some of the exegetical reasons for the Anglican position on the ordination of women.
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Excerpts from “Women Bishops: A Response to Cardinal Kasper”
[7] The question of Cardinal Kasper bringing a distinctively Roman perspective to Anglican affairs is also revealed in his remarks about unity, and about the role of the ordained ministry, and particularly of bishops, in engendering communion within that. The Anglican tradition takes its role as a ‘bridge’ seriously, and we too believe that we must work for, discern and enhance that unity for which Jesus prayed. But we do not believe that eucharistic unity (’communion’ in that sense) is only attainable when there is full recognition of ministries, and all are in communion with the see of Rome. In Anglican theology, unity is achieved by our saying yes to God’s gracious invitation to his table. It is because we are one with God through being caught up in Christ’s one perfect self-offering to the Father that we have unity with one another, rather than communion with God being a consequence of our union with one another. We, in other words, are inclined to see eucharistic sharing not as the goal at the end of the ecumenical pilgrimage where God is waiting for us, but as the path of that pilgrimage itself, along which he accompanies us on the way. We would base our theology of union within the Godhead on a dynamic incorporation into the divine life of the Holy Trinity, rather more than on a sacramental theology based on the validity of the sacrament confected by one who has the authority to do so; and we would prefer to see debates about orders within the frame of mutual eucharistic hospitality, rather than the other way around. In this regard, we would look to Galatians 2, with its clear teaching that all who believe in Jesus Christ belong at the same table, no matter what their cultural background.
[8] There also needs to be further discussion on the nature of Catholicity. What was distinctive of the Church of the New Testament and the early centuries was that, unlike many other religious movements of the time, it was not based on race or profession. It broke through social but also natural divisions such as age and gender. It did this above all in its foundational, Eucharistic life, as we learn from I Corinthians 11, and from that basis its total life was formed. The Church today in its local existence must continue to embrace people of a wide variety of different types and kinds, including people with diverse opinions. This is, indeed, what is constitutive of the Church’s Catholicity, as has amply been demonstrated by the Greek Orthodox theologian, John Zizioulas,[1] who writes “the eucharistic community was in its composition a catholic community in the sense that it transcended not only social but also natural divisions, just as it will happen in the Kingdom of God of which this community was a revelation and a real sign”. The Augustinian understanding of Catholicity as universal overtook the more ancient Pauline and Ignatian understanding of Catholicity as inclusive. Wholeness is of the very essence of Church and without it the Church is not what she is called to be.
[9] In discussing the source of the Church’s authority, the Cardinal comes close at times to saying that it is only through the lens of the Church’s tradition that scripture can be read. That has never been the Anglican position on the balance between scripture and tradition. Our formulation, carefully balanced, is that the faith we profess is a faith ‘uniquely revealed in the Holy Scriptures, set forth in the Catholic creeds, and to which the historic formularies of the Church of England bear witness.’ Our formularies continue with this historically based mission imperative: ‘the Church…led by the Holy Spirit…has borne witness to Christian truth in its historic formularies, the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, The Book of Common Prayer and the Ordering of Bishops, Priests and Deacons, …and is called upon to proclaim [this faith] afresh in each generation.’ This commitment to proclaim the faith afresh is a challenge to pursue those developments in the Church’s life which are consonant with scripture and are found to be life-giving. In the end, the arbiter is the sensus fidei, the entire body of the faithful, as was pointed out to Pius IX in 1848 by the Eastern Patriarchs in their Encyclical: “the protector of religion is the very body of the Church, even the people themselves”. The faithful are the ultimate guardians of Tradition and the faith.
[10] Thus, while the Cardinal declares that the Roman Catholic Church is convinced that she has no authority for ordaining women, the Anglican church would characteristically say that if this undoubted innovation can be shown to follow from, or be contained in, scripture, then that is sufficient authority whether or not the subsequent tradition of the church has allowed it. This is not to be cavalier with tradition, to which we give a very high regard; merely to insist that (since, as Aquinas himself insisted, ‘tradition’ is the deposit of what the church has said as it has read scripture) it must always take second place to scripture – the whole of the scriptural revelation and not just a selection of ‘proof texts’ – itself. This is the method which Anglicans have classically embraced, and which we attempt to follow as a fundamental theological method.
Notes
[1] John Zizioulas:
Being as Communion, SVSP, NY, 1985,p. 152 and more generally pp.149-154. See also
John Zizioulas: The ecclesiological presuppositions of the Holy Eucharist (Nicolaus 10, 1982). ‘This Pauline ecclesiology which identifies Church and Eucharist so closely is developed further by St Ignatius of Antioch. What characterises Ignatius in particular is that the Eucharist does not simply make the local catholic community into the Church, but that it makes it the catholic Church (katholike ecclesia), that is, the full and integral body of Christ. It would not be an exaggeration to say that for Ignatius the catholicity of the Church derives from the celebration of the Eucharist. And this allows Ignatius to apply the term ‘catholic Church’ to the local community. Each local eucharistic community presided over by the bishop surrounded by the college of presbyters and assisted by the deacons, in the presence of the multitude (
plethos), the people, constitutes the ‘catholic Church’ precisely because in it the total Christ is found in the form of the Eucharist.After Ignatius the preoccupation of the Church with the danger of Gnosticism and other heresies forced her to emphasise orthodoxy as the fundamental and decisive ingredient of ecclesiology. Thus, the relation between Church and Eucharist seems to be weakened to some extent in the writers of the second century, though it is not absent from their thought. The situation is exemplified by St Irenaeus who regards orthodoxy as fundamental to ecclesiology while making the Eucharist the criterion of catholicity: ‘Our faith (belief: gnome) is in accordance with the Eucharist and the Eucharist confirms our faith’ (Adv Haereses 4.8,5). It is mainly for this reason that in all ancient writers before St Augustine each local Church is called catholic, the full and integral body of Christ.With St Augustine something seems to change in this respect. Striving with the provincialism of the Donatists, for the first time the term ‘catholic Church’ acquires the meaning, not of the local Church, but of the Church universal. This gives catholicity the meaning of universality, and with it a quantitative and geographical content instead of the original qualitative one.’
By Cynthia R. Nielsen
A friend of mine recently directed me to the following article in First Things entitled, “What is Anglicanism?” by Archbishop Orombi. If any of you have read it–particularly those who are Anglican/Episcopalian, but others are also welcome to join in, so long as the discussion stays engaged with the article and is constructive, which doesn’t mean un-critical–I would be interested in hearing your thoughts.
I am particularly interested in what you think of Archbishop Orombi’s description of Anglicanism and whether you see it as harmonizing (or not) with the historical, ecclesiological self-understanding of Anglicanism as a communion of common worship (Eucharist, BCP) whose identity is found in its continuity with the catholic and apostolic Church as mediated via the Church of England? In other words, do you see a different orientation or set of emphases in Orombi’s description, and if so, are these emphases compatible with the traditional understanding or is a new center being established? Any thoughts that are direclty related to the article and my questions are most welcome. (I am being deliberately vague in a number of places above, as I want to hear your thoughts).
Archbishop Rowan Williams’ recent Holy Week lectures focused on the subject of prayer. He began by discussing insights of three early Church figures: Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, and John Cassian. In his second lecture, he discussed several Protestant and Catholic Reformers, highlighting their common emphases on God’s free action, God’s majesty and God’s mystery. (Williams, by the way, gave a very positive presentation of John Calvin’s views on prayer, referring to one of Calvin’s sermons on Abraham and Isaac. Hermeneutically speaking, it is interesting to note that Calvin’s exposition of the text is anything but a strict grammatico-historical reading. I applaud Williams for avoiding the herd mentality about Calvin and engaging in a bit of 21st century ad fontes activity). In this post, I draw our attention to the Archbishop’s third lecture, viz., those who have written on prayer in the 20th century. More specifically, I focus on the two eccentric female “outsiders” (that is, outsiders to Christian orthodoxy), Simone Weil and Etty Hillesum.