English Spirituality is effectively a sequel to Spiritual Direction, although it was written first (and is more frequently read). Having accidentally read them in this order, I do think they work well this way, since you get an understanding of Thornton’s ascetic framework and then get the different schools of prayer that he advises sorting clients into. While I think this order is probably better, it is not necessary, as he includes a brief outline of his framework in the first third of the book (plus, you can read my summary of Spiritual Direction).

Spiritual direction is essentially moving people towards union with Christ, so this book focuses on the ascetical traits (that is, the knowledge of spiritual development and training) of the different schools and how they contribute to the formation of English ascetical practice. Broadly speaking, English ascetical theory follows the traditional Three Ways mediated by Walter Hilton: of purgation (re-forming in faith), illumination (re-forming in feelings), and unitive/contemplation. This provides the high-level map of the Christian journey. More specifically, the English school aims to accomplish this journey with a balanced speculative (intellectual) - affective synthesis, and Thornton identifies theological errors with schools of prayer that are one or the other. English spirituality also emphasizes habitual recollection with short, frequent prayers. English spiritual direction is a partnership, with the client needing to accept the direction for it to be valid, which leaves room for questions about why and how, discussions, and even arguments. English spirituality is focused on the unique individual.

Thornton also focuses on the Bible ascetically. Bible study, he says, is of limited utility for the average layman, because to actually get good theology from the Bible takes a lot of work and training. He advocates using it like Julian of Norwich, reading it imaginatively. However, he also suggests that the Bible, and Jesus specifically, should be read ascetically (that is, in terms of wisdom in progressing along the journey). For instance, we can look at the times Jesus was “troubled in spirit”, which resulted in him praying honestly in specific situations (colloquy), leading to surrender. He also traces the Three Ways to the Bible: Israel was in the purgative stage (bless/punish, struggle with sin), Paul describes the illuminative stage (moving from carnality to following the Spirit), and Hebrews talks about the unitive stage.

St. Augustine was the first major contribution to English spirituality. The earliest Christians had embraced self-discipline and celibacy as training for martyrdom, which was understandable given the circumstances. After Christianity became legal, the question became between rigor and laxity. Desert Fathers embraced a living martyrdom, continuing rigorous self-discipline, but they also experimented a lot in seeking God. The questions were roughly along the lines of does seeking God require personal integration or suppression of the flesh; is it by grace or by works? St. Augustine produced a synthesis, saying that God created the world, so the flesh is good, but we have inherited a disorder in our desires. Reordering our desires is work that we must do, but it is also work that God must do in us through grace. Augustine is seeking a harmony.

St. Benedict was the second major contribution. Thornton sees Benedict’s contribution as the ascetical framework of Office - Mass - private devotions. Benedict created a family organized around this ascetical framekwork, so Benedictine monasteries tended to be a smaller size: the complaints about Cluny were not just that it was too rich, but that it was too large.

St. Bernard of Clairvaux was the first strongly affective theologian, and he took Augustine’s four loves from an intellectual analysis for literature Romans to four-stage affective devotion for illiterate peasants. In stage one we love ourselves for our sake; in stage two we love God for our sake; in stage three we love God for his sake; in stage four we love ourselves for God’s sake. Loving Christ’s humanity is how we love God, hence his focus on the Sacred Heart, the Virgin Mary, etc. Bernard himself based his affective devotion on solid theology, but he preached “religion” and minimized theology, the school that came after him were pretty weird, like the flagellates, which is a strong warning for us against separating the affective from the speculative.

The English school did not go this direction, and because it was influenced by William of St. Thierry. He blended Origin, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Augustine. he saw the person as the physical/fleshly “soul” (anima), the reasoning soul (nous), and the spiritual soul (pneuma). This also represents a three-stage progress, from the child, where the person is presented with external teaching, etc. (anima), which is incorportated into the nous, eventually resulting, through grace, in the life of love. William agreed with Irenaeus that “image” and “likeness” are different (Gen 1 says God said he would make man in the image and likeness of God, but only says that we are made in the image of God, so likeness must be a process.) Since image is an ontological status given through baptism, we cannot lose that through sin, but can only loose our likeness. Peter still loved Christ, despite denying him. This approach informed English Confession.

The monastic community located in St. Victor, near Paris, was part of the Austin Cannons Regular, a group of Augustinian clergy who practiced Augustine’s Rule. Anselm brought their influence to England. “St Augustine laid the foundation of ascetic by insisting that spirituality is rooted in dogma; William of St Thierry improved upon that by finding a place for St Bernard’s affective Christology within a speculative system.” (110) The Victorines added the idea that all knowledge aids spirituality because God created the world, and so both science and meditating on the symbolic language of creation are understanding the God and his mind better. They tended to have scholars who had an equal speculative / affective balance. Hugh of St. Victor saw creation as symbols of God, with Christ being the complete symbol. Prayer is a process of meditating on creation (reading the book of Creation) and then discussing with the author. His integration of man and creation does a better job of explaining sin and Christ’s vicarious redemption that Augustine.

The Franciscans were not a large influence on the English school of prayer. They did temper the idealist tendencies of the Victorines (St. Victor, not Victorians!), though. The normal method the Christians influence society is the slow, leavening of the dough, but St. Francis showed the value of a candle defying the darkness. Bonaventure tempered the Franciscan affect much as William of St. Thierry tempered Bernard, although he did not have much of a speculative/affective synthesis. He was the first person to discus the Three Ways in detail, and he pairs each stage with exercises: purgative → meditation, illumination → colloquy and pentitence, unitive → contemplation. He may have come up with the four last things (death, judgment, heaven, hell), but certainly with the idea that holy death is an accomplishment at the end of the spiritual journey. Bernard introduced Sacred Humanity in the Incarnation, Francis narrowed it to the Passion (and invented the Stations of the Cross), and Bonaventure narrowed it still further to the Crucifixion. He also made the speculative affective: the beauty of truth.

Since Aquinas was so broad, his influence in the English school of prayer was through Catherine of Sienna, whom Thornton does not talk about. He saw creation of a hierarchy of being, from God as Being itself, then angels, man, the animals, plants, and rocks. Sin is not a disease, as for Augustine, but a failure to achieve our telos (end, purpose). He saw the Christian life as a journey towards perfection, using a five-stage process: sense life (gaining knowledge of the world through the senses), natural life (using the will and intellect to acquire the Acquired Virtues), the supernatural life of grace (entered through baptism, and through grace cultivates the other virtues), the supernatural gifts (using the supernatural gifts maturely), and finally the Beatific Vision. In Aquinas’ view, non-Christians can be “good” (that is, moral excellence), but this is not goodness, which is achieving your telos. The Dominicans invented the Rosary, which allowed normal people to imitate the monks by saying 150 Ave Marias instead of 150 psalms.

This is all the background for the development of the English school of prayer. The development of the English school starts with Celtic Christianity, which developed out of the indigenous Anglo-Saxon cultural values, and created the soil which other influences either took root or did not, depending on how compatible they were. Celtic Christianity also influenced Rome in the sacrament of Confession, where its application of the sacrament by the parish priest in more of a pastoral role in partnership with the person replace the Roman approach where the bishop did Confession with a juridical approach to sin.

Anselm was the father of English spirituality. He saw the intellectual life as leading to love; his books are not someone trying to impart knowledge, but someone praying. He saw doubts as an opportunity for wrestling with mysteries and producing greater love of God. In fact, blind faith is an unhealthy, purely affective spirituality and “is not loyalty but sloth” (159). Following Anselm, Anglicans should be uncompromising on the fundamental doctrines, but not propose speculative doctrines with are required belief. His theory of the atonement, combining Christ as judge and savior, was an improvement of the medieval view of ransom to the devil, and of Christ as only judge and a coterie of saints to insulate us from him. His theory is not widely used today, but he intended it ascetically, to lead to penitence.

English spirituality grew out of spiritual direction by, solitaries (notably anchoresses), unlike in continental Europe, where it arose from monasteries. In England there were monks, clergy, Austin Cannons Regular, and solitaries (anchorites and hermits), and it was the latter who did the pastoring. The anchorite was single, spiritually knowledgeable, living a life of prayer, study, and work, and submitting to the guidance of the priest. She did not take vows, live in austerity, or live in poverty. This matches up well with a lot of Anglican ladies, whose gifts are currently wasted. Much of the development happened in the 14th century, with the remainder by the 17th century Carolines.

Walter Hilton, an Austin Cannon Regular, is best known for the Scale of Perfection. He wrote giving advice to an anchorite. He saw sin as having misshappen through our racial participation in Adam, rather than through transmission. Pride is the root mortal sin, with the others being symptoms of it. The difference between mortal and venial sin is whether you are seeking the flesh as “full rest for [your] heart” or are of “general good will towards God”. The Church is the residence of the family of believers, so it is difficult to be kicked out (in contrast where serious sin causes returns us to the unsaved state). He saw the Three Ways as “re-forming in faith” (purgative) → “re-forming in feeling” (illuminative) → contemplative (unitive). Prayer is a four-fold progression: knowledge of God and “ghostly things” (does not require salvation), affection without knowledge via Holy Spirit (common in simple people), habitual recollection of God while engaged in the active life, and perfecting a synthesis of knowing and affection. Hilton has no use for mortification of the body, because it does not work, and cannot work because it cannot develop humility; he explicitly condemns flagellation.

Julian of Norwich was an anchorite, known for The Revelations of Divine Love, regarding “showings” which she received when she was thirty. She wrote a short version soon after receiving them, and a longer version twenty years later. We need to be “oned” with God, and are not at rest until we are. Unusually, she saw our sin as all part of the original sin, because she thought God sees us and Adam as all one. She was optimistic, so while she acknowledges the Church’s teach on damnation, she focused on God restoring all things. She saw feelings as “right nought” because they are transitory and not habitual; Christian joy is not ecstasy but harmony. Prayer is habitual, depends on facts, is from child to parent (not servant to master), and is eternal because God treasures our prayers. “In practice, it is impossible to clearly distinguish between imaginative meditation leading to doctrinal considerations, and ‘intellectual’ meditation helped by imagery and symbol.” (202) and she did both: meditating on the Passion with atonement doctrine supplying the meaning.

Richard Rolle was a mendicant hermit along the lines of St. Francis, although without his warmth. He was notable for being very experimental, for instance, he recommended praying while seated because he found that he was able to remain focused on God for longer that way. Like Hilton, who recommended reading the Bible (while acknowledging that it was impossible for his anchorite to do it, presumably because she did not read Latin), Rolle also recommended reading the Bible, and probably influenced Wyclif, who Thornton sees as not an aberration, but an inevitable outcome of English spirituality. He is antidote against the via media being moderation. However, since he did not value education (despite being somewhat educating), his influence was limited, and both Hilton and Margery Kempe had to moderate him.

Margery Kempe is Thornton’s favorite, and his research on her for this book led to entire other book. She does not offer anything new ascetically, but in The Book of Margery Kempe we see an excellent example of living out the framework, except that, unlike Julian of Norwich, she was an ordinary person. She used Hilton’s five stages of prayer. She also saw prayer as a way of way of gaining theological insight. She is very broad, pulling from lots of sources (unlike Hilton and Rolle), and she experiments with many techniques. She exemplifies the practice of habitual recollection.

The Caroline Divines (roughly 1594 to 1729) have too many books and authors to summarize, unlike the 1300s. The Carolines borrowed Patristic sources, including the Eastern Fathers, as well as from contemporary Roman Catholic sources, but they borrowed what was good and incorporated it into the English framework. They also brought back an emphasis on Creation, with Hooker combining both Creation (natural law) and grace (divine law). The world was seen as good because God had made, not suspect (unlike Rolle). All sin tended to be seen as mortal (but not, therefore, equal), since how could sin not separate us from God, but there was also an emphasis on God’s redeeming love. The corporate Church was working out “occasional” theology (that is, related to specific events and topics), so with the assumption of spiritual direction, sermons could take priority, there was discussion during the sermon, and frequent discussions during the week. This occasional theology developed a sort of case-theology (as in, “case law”). The medieval church had tried to incorporate everyone in the Kingdom, lax and observant, with the result being a wide gulf between clergy and laity. The Carolines saw no point in pushing people to do what they were not interested in, and Anglicans as a result expect people to be responsible; this results in a congregation of the very devoted and very lax.

At the start of the Caroline age, the laity had been freed from their medieval low spiritual status, but because they were illiterate, uneducated, unfamiliar with the Bible, and due to lack of theological knowledge, unable to pray “acceptable” prayers, they needed to be taught how to properly exercise their freedom and responsibilities. The Carolines developed the Book of Common Prayer (BCP) as an ascetical framework, keeping the Benedictine habitual recollection and Office-Mass-Prayer structure. Thus, the Office has multiple readings (“lessons”) from the Bible, the sermon was prioritized, and the common prayers provide known-acceptable prayers. Also, since Communion was only once a month (despite Caroline attempts for increased frequency), self-examination and penitence are fairly detailed.

Unfortunately, the Caroline conditions no longer hold, which means that the BCP is not as ascetically appropriate for modern conditions, and would be helped by an update. In particular, since the laity are literate and knowledgeable about the Bible (at least for the 1963 and/or 1986 printing), Thornton recommends a shorter Office by removing the lessons. Also, a lengthy self-examination appropriate for once-a-month Communion is too time-consuming every week. Finally, the Office was designed to be said by a community, together, but modern conditions mean that people are doing it largely independently (Thornton offers no solutions here).

Since the golden ages of the 14th century and the Carolines, Thornton sees nothing new, ascetically, and a disintegration of the different elements. The Oxford Movement brought no synthesis, just a grab-bag of mostly liturgical practices. The early 20th century authors, such as Evelyn Underhill (Practical Mysticism) are worthwhile, but a little limited and with nothing new ascetically.

English Spirituality is a comprehensive look at the ascetical journey and composition of Anglicanism. It is filled not only with Thornton’s wit, incisive insight and theological critique, but it is also a compendium of people to read/study for those wanting more resources on spiritual formation. As a sequel to Spiritual Direction, it gives the spiritual director resources to offer his clients, once he has categorized them “on the slab” and determined schools of prayer that would be helpful for them (albeit in the Anglican tradition). This book, more than Thornton’s other books, defies summarizing and my attempt to do so loses much that I thought insightful, and since this has taken quite some time, likely has some errors an misinterpretations, so I recommend reading the notes if you find this summary interesting.

I am quite a fan of Thornton’s writings, and have little to critique in this one. However, because of its breadth and detail, it is not a quick read. (It especially slow if you want to take good notes or summarize it!) Also, because of the quantity of great material, it is also easy to forget a lot from the previous chapter. Taking notes helps, but this is definitely a book that rewards revisiting.

Thornton hoped for a 20th century synthesis producing another Anglican golden age, although as it turned out, the opposite has happened (albeit mercifully after his death). However with Enlightenment materialism successfully critiqued by Postmodernism, and the full consequences of society functioning with a materialistic underpinning is becoming evident in loss of community, lack of inherent meaning in life, and the associated prevalence of anxiety and depression, Orthodoxy, traditional Catholicism, and Anglicanism are seeing an increase of interest (roughly in that order). Orthodoxy has been appealing because of its philosophical richness, and as a reactionary rejection of the West, but Anglicanism is the native religion of the Anglosphere, and is both reasonable and philosophically rich, so an Anglicanism that is ascetically consonant with modern conditions still offers the possibility of a golden age.


Review: 10
This is a thorough and definitive summary of English ascetical thought and practice. If other works come along, they will certainly cite and build on this one.
▶ Notes

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