“Religion” is one’s ongoing relationship with God, not a set a beliefs to espouse. It is like the flash in photography, while theology is the process of understanding what the experience means, like developing the film (Thornton wrote this in 1958). Ascetic theology is theology applied to the goal of seeing the vision of God. Pastoral theology is essentially spiritual direction: how to apply the art and science of Prayer.

“Prayer” is not just words addressed to God, but the entirety of our personal interaction with God. Spiritual direction (formally, “ascetical direction”) is essentially coaching in prayer, that is, coaching in relating to God. It is not teaching theory, but rather instructions on how to do, which is rather like teaching how to hit a baseball and catch a pop fly, rather than the rules of baseball. It is worth noting that Jesus was a spiritual director; he did not teach theory like the Scribes and Pharisees, but rather gave instructions on doing. Spiritual direction is also not moral direction, which aims to replace the vices of sin with the virtues.

The main question that motivates this book is how to view the priest’s “cure of souls” that he accepted: does this mean all souls in the geography encompassed by the parish, or just the Christians in the geographical parish? Practically, the first is roughly the same as the second, since the non-Christians are not easily persuaded. The prevailing approach (at least in 1958) was multitudinism, trying to get as many people as possible into Church. However, we need a way to somehow integrate the multitudes (who wanted to hear Jesus, but who did not understand him) and the Marys who want to sit at Jesus’ feet and be his disciple. Historically the Church has been rigorist and selective during persecutions, and world-embracing but lax during positive periods.

The solution is the theology of the Remnant. Taken from the Old Testament prophets, the word does not mean “the select few”, but rather “those who pray vicariously, on behalf of”. So a Remnant church is one where the priest and people offer prayers on behalf of the whole parish. The Old Testament progression is: multitudes of humanity → the Chosen People → the faithful remnant. Applying this to the church makes the Church of Little Puddlecombe Parish (for example) a microcosm of the whole Church. There are the people of the parish → the not-yet-mature Christians → the Christians vicariously praying for the parish. This theory holds for secular organizations, too. The cricket team plays on behalf of the fans, the soldier fights on behalf of the country, and in any organization there are the outsiders/fringe → the up-and-comers → the leaders. The vicarious effect can be seen in the meaning of “a law-abiding country”, which means that it has an efficient justice system, not that everyone is a lawyer.

That ends the introductory chapters; Part One gives arguments for the validity of the Remnant hypothesis. First, Jesus clearly has a Remnant perspective. He is clearly not multitudinous, as he spends his time training the Disciples, not teaching the multitudes (which often happens when the multitudes crash his teaching sessions). He draws the multitudes, but he only gives himself to those who follow him. Jesus’ parables use a Remnant perspective: in the feeding of the multitudes, Jesus gives bread, the Remnant distributes it, and the multitudes consume it. Jesus even has a Remnant view for his community, since the Aramaic word Jesus uses for “church” even means “remnant”. Most obviously, though, Jesus himself functions as the Remnant, since he does vicariously for us what we cannot do ourselves. He was baptized vicariously, lived vicariously, and died vicariously. Thus, the priesthood needs to do what Jesus did, and focus 90% of their time on the Remnant.

Secondly, the Remnant hypothesis appears in the theology of the apostolic church. Jesus did spiritual direction, so the Apostles’ fruit was the result of teachings either secret or which, by nature, cannot be reduced to writing, and of the (spiritual) direction of the Holy Spirit. The infant church was not prepared for a large influx of people (since they had not prepared for it and had to scramble when the Grecian widows were overlooked); the native approach was not multitudinous. That happened after the Church gained influence: those inside the Church had salvation, and those outside, not, and it welcomed as many as it could. Monasticism was in response to the watering down of the spiritual intensity, as a way for people who wanted to be martyrs to “martyr” themselves in the desert by devoting their lives to prayer. They had heavy Manichaean (spirit good; matter bad) tendencies, but they illustrate a Remnant approach.

The Desert Fathers sought the Divine Vision through “heroic” austeriy (as in Greek hero), and pioneered ascetical science, where “ascetical” means “‘athletic’ training for godliness”. Monasticism had difficulties maintaining retreat from the world to God, and it tended towards anti-world an perspective. St. Benedict combated that with work, and although he does not mention vicariousness in his Rule, the Office has this function, and by the late Middle Ages it was definitely there. For instance, gifts to monasteries implied a duty to pray for the giver. The Cistercian reforms are explicitly Remnant. The monks recite the Office on behalf of the illiterate oblates who worked in the fields (and could only be taken from the illiterate population, which allowed people to become monks who previously could not).

Monasticism was structured for medieval life, and does not fit modern life. In England, Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries and so there was no chance for monasticism to evolve to fit modern life. However, the Catholics had no such problems, and what happened there was that Ignatius of Loyola’s system of spiritual direction was the evolution. Pursuing God could now be done individually through spiritual direction. “By analogy, the only way to learn to swim in the Middle Ages was to jump into the river and hope for the best; but wisdom suggested a river full of friends who had already made some progress in the art of swimming. If the worst happened, they could, as a large corporate body, save you from drowning. But in these days of scientifically developed technique and contrivances, all you need is a competent and qualified instructor and you can learn both gradually and more or less alone.” (99, emphasis in original)

Descartes’ splitting of mind and body made sacramental thinking impossible, since sacramental thinking sees the spiritual and the material as being together. Decartes’ thinking resulted in functional Deism, with God rarely directly involved in the world. Thus teaching replaced spiritual direction, moral theology replaced ascetical theology, and faith became a synonym for mental assent. Two notable possible paths back in the English Church failed. The Wesleys attempted a Franciscan-type reform, but while the Franciscans reverted to monasticism, the Wesleys could not, because the Church of England was not supportive. The Oxford Movement brought wealth from Catholicism, but since the environment was multitudinous, it ended up bringing liturgical practices rather than ascetical theology. However, even modernist philosophers from Leibniz onward have been trying to articulate some way that the many become one; since the Remnant theology does produce this synthesis, this philosophical search is some validation of the Remnant approach.

Natural theology (which is general theism with a general unitive principle, as opposed to the revealed theism of Christianity which identifies more precise the nature of the unitive principle) also shows a propensity for the Remnant approach. For one thing, Christianity is itself a Remnant-type synthesis: Deism says that God is separate from the world, Pantheism says that God is the world, but Christianity says that God is of the world: the Logos became flesh. However, there are four cases we see in the natural world. First, the inter-relationships between the many species creates a unity (“Nature”). Second, order and contingency create a synthesis: the universe has order, but it is not a machine, because God directs it to a specific end (its telos, not its finish). Third, evolution has a teleological plan, namely, survival to reproduce. Fourth, hierarchy is many synthesized into a unity. These have spiritual correspondents: one body many parts; God’s first-order actions produce order, but his second-order actions prevent the order from being mechanical; we participate in our environment but we also change our environment; and things like Michelangelo’s art producing conversions despite him not directly evangelizing.

The detailed arguments for the validity of the Remnant hypothesis completed, part two gives outlines a pastoral-ascetical theology based on the Remnant. Such a theology must be able to include the unbelieving multitudes of the geographical parish, the babes in Christ, and the mature Remnant in the cure-of-souls that the priest accepts as his commission. Furthermore, while monasticism required vowing obedience to the Abbot, it is the Anglical prerogative to be able to critique, and modern people insist—as is only valid—on knowing Why, so the theology must provide this. Finally, the theology must give a framework for understanding spiritual health, since spiritual direction is concerned with spiritual health, not growth (since God gives the growth).

Extending ascetical theology to include not only the mature Christians, but also to the unbelieving multitudes and the babes in Christ, is possible, but requires some preliminary observations. The Saints demonstrate that “religious experience” is just “experience” to someone religious (“religion” here, remember, is the experience of God). However, there are two components to it, just as there is of any experience: there is the subjective (our sense-perceptions, feelings, etc.) aspect of the object upon us, and there is the objective aspect of focusing on the object. Which one predominates the experience depends on our focus, whether we are focusing more on our experience or on the object itself. Both are necessary; for instance, romantic love focuses on the other person but the experience has a notably strong effect on ourselves, too. The descriptions of religion match this. First there is the unitive desire, the desire to be in harmony with one’s environment; this is like Moses. Then there is the experience of the transcendent Other, which is Second Isaiah. So religious experience is a unitive-duality.

Now we can use Aquinas’ levels of spiritual progression to extend ascetical theology, using the metaphor of a family moving into a house. The first stage is sense-life, which is harmony with environment: placing the furniture in the appropriate rooms based on their function (which is similar to biological adaptation). The second is natural-life, which adds a moral component: how does the family does who uses the bathroom first when all four want to use it at the same time. The third is supernatural Grace-life, which moves from a utilitarian decision (let mother go first, because she needs to make breakfast), to self-sacrifice. Mother goes first because we want her to; we obey Father because we love him and desire to accept his ordering. This is a slow progression that takes effort, but at this point we are in harmony with our environment and can talk about “home”, like a farmer who works the land year in and year out, discovering its quirks, who eventually talks of unity with the land. The fourth is body-life, where there is rapport, all disharmonies have solutions, talk of Sin and Worship make sense, and where the family functions as Body in Place. The fifth is contemplation-life, where the family experiences the Presence of God.

Starting with the unbelieving multitudes, it is clear that the priest must relate authentically Christian, and it is clear that attempting to argue them into the faith is unhelpful and often harmful. The priest should spend almost no intentional time here, but while Jesus focused on the Remnant, he did have a framework for dealing with the multitudes and drawing them towards himself. It is possible to sub-Christianize ascetical theology to give a framework for drawing the modern multitudes towards Jesus. This starts with the observation that all the Saints see religion (remember, the experience of God) as beginning with sense-perception (not mind, as is commonly thought), and everyone since everyone has access to sense-perception, there everyone has some access to basic experience of God. We usually teach beginners theology and then wonder why they lapse; this is like teaching beginning athletes the rules of the game and then sending them out to play. Instead, we first should teach them how to play. Since religion begins with sense-perception, the first place to begin is simply attending to one thing, like a daisy, long enough to begin to love it. Evelyn Underhill suggested this in Practical Mysticism for Normal People, stating that it trains discipline, involves a “pushing outwards” from the self, and is a sort of purgation. (Recollection and purgation are unanimously the beginning stages in the ascetical writings.)

The second group, the babes in Christ, are not sub-Christian, but are also require extension of ascetical theology, since the writings of the Saints on the topic assume fairly mature people as the starting point. Human babies grow naturally as long as they are healthy, and, although the mother desires growth, she can do nothing to cause it directly, apart from maintaining health. Babes in Christ grow the same way; healthy babies grow naturally (via the Holy Spirit). Another way of saying this is that we can help people be in a state that is receptive to God’s movement. Using the writings of Ignatius of Loyola, which are a method of spiritual progression (rather than of prayer, as is commonly thought), we can distill a four stage process of growth for babes in Christ. The first stage is searching for God in the world, which uses the mind, will, and emotions. The second stage is encountering Christ through the disciplines of recollection, meditation, and imagination; encountering Christ produces living theology (as opposed to dead theology that is taught). The third stage is conversations with God (colloquy). The fourth stage is corporate worship: worshipping with other people who converse with God. Another way of seeing this progression is “natural contemplation” → meditative prayer → prayer with words → corporate worship. Unfortunately, churches try to do this progression backwards.

Spiritual health, itself, is a Trinitarian tension between the objective (outward-focused), transcendent (Other) Father; the subjective (response of self focused), immanent Spirit; through the mediative Son, with whom we have communion and love. This can be looked at as five parts, all of which need to be there for full health. The Father is both transcendent, the unknowable Other, but he is also axiologically Other (that is, Otherly Beautiful/Valueful), which inspires awe and leads to love. This is like a little girl relating to her father: the father is Other (male), transcendent (she has no conception of what he does at work, or what he wants as a gift, etc.), but he is also awe-inspiring. The Son is both perfect succor, but also makes complete demand. This is like two lovers: the lovers give themselves fully to each other, but love also demands that the other give themselves fully. The Holy Spirit is the subjective, feeling aspect. Unhealth is a result of severe imbalances. For instance, the Father without the Spirit is Deism; the Father with only the demanding Son and not the loving Son as well, is Puritanism; a focus only on the Spirit produces an ungrounded subjectism.

The focus at this point is the third group, the Remnant. These are “adult” Christians, so now the ascetical traditions can be used, namely the Rule of the Anglican Church. This Rule is composed of three parts: the monastic Office, the Mass, and private prayers. The first part, the Office, in the form of Morning and Evening Prayers in the Anglican tradition, is completely an objective (other-focused) offering of worship to God. It is like a little girl wanting to giver her father a gift, so she asks her mother (the Church) what her father would like, and the mother offers a suggestion (which pairs well with what the other children were suggested). Varying the Office would be like the girl giving her father a lollipop because that is what she would like. The Office is not supposed to be a “helpful” service; it is the gift that the Church in her wisdom through the years has determined would please the Father. Some personality types will have no difficulty faithfully saying a predetermined service, but the more feeling-oriented find it drudgery. (But, those who say the Office with ease tend to struggle with meditation, while those who struggle with the Office tend to be able to meditate for long stretches and enjoy it.)

The Office is the most difficult part of the Rule. At its fundamental, it is saying the Psalms, and it takes a long time to learn them well enough to progress from stage one of saying the Office (saying the words with meaning) to stage two (saying the words, but focusing on God). Stage three is the synthesis of the first two: saying the words with meaning and simultaneously focusing on God. Stage two requires that the text be very familiar. Probably for this reason, Thornton argues for a shorter version of the Office than the Church now offers, and without the confessions and prayers (since it is an offering of worship). The current Office seems to him to be too long for laity (he says that if the collators expected normal people to say the whole thing, they were naive in the extreme), but not clearly for priests either. But, imperfect as it is, this is the one we need to use, because everyone needs to be using the same text all the time, or no one will get to the point of knowing the text well enough to progress to stage two.

The Mass, one of the few direct commands of Jesus, is what maintains the life of the Church. It allows some variation and to speak of doing the Mass well is not relevant, unlike the Office on both counts. The Mass itself is balanced; the first part, teaching, is succor, and the second part, is the demand love makes. In this respect the Mass, which focuses on the Son, also resembles the Son. The Mass is also emptying ourselves and being filled with Christ’s love. However, while the Mass is balanced, only attending Mass and not saying the Office or private prayer, is unbalanced (as is, of course, only attending Mass three times a year).

Private prayer is infinitely variable, and must be tailored (through spiritual direction) to the needs and temperament of the individual. The spiritual director can suggest one of the historical schools of prayer that best matches the attrait of the individual, and can also use schools of opposite attrait to treat imbalances. However, “balance” does not mean equal parts; the Saints were able to over-weight based on their personal attrait, while still remaining balanced: for instance, under the sugar-coated, subjective, crust of The Little Flower of Lisieux, she had clearer understanding of God’s objective, transcendent nature than most moderns, prone as we are to subjectivism. The Saints could be, for instance, subjective without falling prey to subjectivism.

When the Office, Mass, and private prayer are integrated in an orderly fashion, they form the traditional Rule of the church; traditionally this is the Office twice a day, Mass once a week, and private prayer every day. This takes about 5 - 6 hours/week, which is what people frequently give to an organization they are a part of, although it is a bit much, and a “shorter chapter” is to be hoped for. (Thornton’s view has apparently not been taken up by any Anglican organization, however, as a shorter chapter has not been forthcoming in the 60 years since publication.) However, there are ways to minimize the time spent, while maintaining vicarious prayer of the Remnant for the parish, such as dividing the Office into six days, and a different person or group of persons could say the Office every day.

It is important to note that Rule is not an end, but a means to the end of seeing God. Breaking one’s Rule is not a sin (although repeated faults may have a pattern that points to an area of sin), and it is better to partially keep a Rule that to live one’s spiritual life haphazardly. In Christian Proficiency, Thornton argues that Rule develops a person into a proficient Christian, one who’s spiritual activities are efficient in producing the desired outcome. The goal of Rule is also not to progress along the spiritual stages—God brings the progress; Rule helps us do the stage we are in more skillfully, and helps keep us healthy so that we are most likely to be in a position where God’s movement is able to actually move us. Part of God’s movement results in the Remnant naturally beginning to do the good works that we are called to do.

Pastoral Theology is a comprehensive framework for parish priests, written academically to both instruct and persuade. However, it feels much less elegantly constructed that either Christian Proficiency (aimed at lay readers) or Spiritual Direction (written late in life, for spiritual directors). In part this is because he spends a lot of time demonstrating that he has read widely in the topic. However, it is also because he tries to make a bullet-proof argument, but only partially succeed. The topic of ascetical theology, or the theory of spiritual formation, is not a field amenable to a “scientific” (as he likes to say—in 1958 when it was written, scientific was quite hip) construction. However, he did also partially succeed, in that he took psychology discoveries and used them to inform the framework, which I found insightful.

As is usual for Thornton, he has all sorts of insightful thoughts, both big and small. The observation of objective and subjective components in any experience (taken from secular psychology) is insightful, especially when applied to spiritual formation and our experience of God. He is the first person I have encountered who can give a purpose for the monastic Office, beyond the Desert Father’s implicit purpose in killing the flesh through saying all the psalms every day, and he fits it into a coherent structure of objective-mediative-subjective pieces. His framework for thinking about spiritual health, mostly through identification of how imbalance results in unhealth and citing concrete instances in Christian history helped me articulate the problems I have subjectively felt existed in American Protestantism. However, for all his talk about a “scientific” approach, Thornton is not a rationalist (which is actually an unhealthy imbalance he cites). His framework is simply a means to an end, that is, the beatific vision. So he is Anglo-Catholic and has a formalist streak, but he says that experience of God is the fundamental part of religion, which is more like a Charismatic. Yet, he balances the subjective experience with objective components of the God who is a beautiful, valueable, awe-ful, unknowable transcendent Other. Similarly, love accepts fully, yet love also demands all; this is no “kindly old man” Christianity.

While I like Thornton’s pastoral approach of Remnant in Place, I am not convinced by the vicarious aspect. In the first place, the usage of “remnant” that he cites in the Old Testament seem to refer to a numerical remnant, not a vicarious remnant. Secondly, I was not clear on whether vicariously praying “for” the geographical parish meant praying for, e.g. the needs of the parish and for the kingdom of God to come, or whether it meant that God sees the the entire people of the parish praying because the Remnant was doing the praying on their behalf (instead of them). If the former, it’s not clear how this is really vicarious, but if the latter, I find it hard to justify with scripture. It seems to me to be the sort of ossified sacramentalism of Catholics, where not only do matter and spirit coexist, but they are fused into a tool that can be relied on to always work the same way (e.g. we are spiritually fed by the sacrament of Communion; it might be true, but it seems to come purely from intellectual reasoning from a chain of sacramental principles, while Jesus said that we live not by bread alone but by the word of God—nothing to do with Communion). In the Bible it is clear that we can intercede for the good of others, but, apart from Jesus, it seems pretty clear that we are judged on our own actions, not actions done on our behalf. Perhaps my understanding is faulty, but this was a weak point in the argument for me, although on a practical perspective, I seems wise to focus your efforts on training the committed, like Jesus did. I have also heard at least one megachurch pastor say something similar: spend the time with your leadership team, because that is the only way you can possibly reach all the people in the congregation.

I found Thornton’s explanation of the Office as objective worship helpful, but his Rule seems weak on the Bible, which also has an objective component. Anglican Morning Prayers do include substantial Bible-reading, but it seems like the “shorter chapter” that he argues for would be pretty much only the Psalms. Willow Creek discovered in their REVEAL study, somewhat to their surprise, that Bible reading was the only thing that was consistently helpful in all stages of the maturity from babe in Christ to adult in Christ. The effective Christian leaders, including the Pentecostal “saints” consistently read the Bible regularly. Would a practice of, say, reading the next two chapters of the Bible every day, work as a substitute for the Office? Should non-Psalms Bible reading be included in any short chapter Office? Would replacing the Office with Bible reading and objective worship of God’s character qualify as objective worship? And more fundamentally, what Role does the Bible play in spiritual formation? Omitting the one thing that all Christians in all times and in all places have found helpful in spiritual growth seems like a serious oversight.

One of Thorton’s insights not mentioned above is that the Church has two aspects. In ages where the Church is has strong social influence (most of Western history), it needs to include everyone who desires to be included, even if they have little or no intent to actually follow Jesus. But there also needs to be a part of the Church that is only for people desiring to follow Christ. Historically, the voluntary aspect has been monasticism. His evaluation of monastic reform movements cites Wesleyanism (the Methodists) as a failure because they did not revert to type. (Well, he says it is unclear, as of the publishing date of 1958, but it seems clear to me that contemporary Methodists have mostly succumbed to the surrounding culture.) However, he says that St. Francis’ reforms succeeded because they did “revert to type”, that is, his mendicant friars became monks. I think most of the founding friars who joined Francis saw that as rebellion against Francis and God, as is clearly indicated in The Little Flowers of St. Francis. In their view, reversion to type was failure.

One other fairly minor disagreement I have is that Thornton says that Aquinas’ fifth stage is only achieved by God’s sovereign choice, and thus washes his hands of the matter. In another place he says that mystical experience is a sovereign action by God, and similarly says that we can ignore that for pastoral direction, because we cannot make it happen. In one sense, he is correct, since any revelation of God is, by necessity, a sovereign action, but that does not stop him from developing a framework to position ourselves to encourage and fruitfully receive God’s actions in the earlier stages. In fact, the Pentecostal tradition suggests that diligently seeking encounters with God and revelation of God tends to result in getting what you were seeking. Bethel Church in Redding, CA, goes so far as to consciously experiment with partnering with God for miracles—another clearly sovereign act. Bethel Church sees miracles on a regular basis, and furthermore, people that adopt their perspective of partnering with God and of experiment also tend to see an increased amount of miracles (“increase” usually meaning zero to definitely not zero). The record of the Saints (and the Pentecostal “saints” like Smith Wigglesworth) suggest that things like prayer, worship, love, and spiritual maturity have a positive correlation with God sovereignly acting in their lives.

The only critique I have of Thornton in this book is that he likes to have contrasts that upend how we naturally think about things, but he sometimes takes things too far. He says something to the effect that two people praying the Office do infinitely more for the Parish than distributing food to the homeless. Really?! The New Testament explicitly commands giving to the poor, and raising vicarious Office-praying to that level risks being of the sort that says “go and be well fed” but does nothing, which James explicitly condemns. Now, Thornton believes that the Remnant will naturally start doing good deeds, but the statement, on its face, seems blatantly false. Similarly, he says that a priest attending to a buttercup does more spiritual good that all the things an Anglican priest did in 1958 regarding his parish. Clearly Thornton thinks that the Church was doing things backwards, and he argued that persuasively throughout the book. Statements like this, however, do not help his case. Attending is the first, sub-Christian level of meditation and encounter with God; while traditional pastoral activities are empirically ineffective at building the Kingdom it is not clear what their level of worth is relative to attending to buttercups, especially if done with the desire to serve God. The book is full of nuance, and then there are questionable black and white comparisons used as exclamation points, sort of like the clean and argumentative analogue of emphasis by swearing (which is, perhaps an illustration of what I am complaining about).

In this book Thornton gives a lightweight ascetical framework with rich underpinnings. His categorizations of spiritual health, and the objective-mediative-subjective nature of experience are deeply insightful. This is a book densely packed with wisdom (which made it a real chore to take notes on, because there was so much that leaving anything out of a summary felt like jewels falling through your hands), and anyone interested in spiritual formation will find it helpful. I would like to see some statistics or even case studies on churches that have implemented the Remnant ideas. However, at least in spiritual direction, his books have been incorporated as textbooks. I think this is a hundred year book, even though it has some flaws, because it articulately and completed presents the Remnant framework. Even if you disagree with the pastoral theology (that is, Remnant theology as pastoral theory), the articulation conveys understanding of the theory, which will profitably inform your own theology.


Review: 9.5
▶ Notes

Copyright © 2025 by Geoffrey Prewett