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Who thinks that they can subdue Leviathan? Strength resides in its neck; dismay goes before it. It is without fear. It looks down on all who are haughty; it is king over all who are proud. These words inspired PJ Wehry to create Chasing Leviathan. Chasing Leviathan was born out of two ideals: that truth is worth pursuing but will never be subjugated, and the discipline of listening is one of the most important habits anyone can develop. Every episode is a dialogue, a journey into the depths of a meaningful question explored through the lens of personal experience or professional expertise.
PJ Wehry (00:03.231)
Hello and welcome to Chasing the Viathan. I'm your host, PJ Weary, and I'm here today with Dr. Michael Allen, the John Dyer Trimble Professor of Systematic Theology at Reformed Theological Seminary. And we're here today to talk about his book, The Fear of the Lord, Essays on Theological Method. Dr. Allen, wonderful to have you on today.
Michael Allen (00:23.254)
So good to be with you, thanks PJ.
PJ Wehry (00:26.015)
So tell me, Dr. Allen, why this book?
Michael Allen (00:30.434)
Yeah, so this book arose at a range of different points. If you read into the preface, you'll see that essays that make up the book were written over roughly a 12 year period. And I realized over time that I was getting a number of comments from readers, from students, from colleagues elsewhere around the world asking for this or that essay or article.
having seen a reference but never finding the source. And so it seemed a good time to pull together some essays and articles that really related to theological method and a number of key topics therein where there are two or three essays related to this or that subtopic so that people could see something of a package, a number of themes regarding how we
do or practice theology today.
PJ Wehry (01:32.701)
One of the major themes kind of throughout the book is the idea that you're pulling on a resource mall. when you are working with, first off, can you tell us what is resource mall and then why are you writing about it?
Michael Allen (01:47.766)
Yeah, resourcement or retrieval is the way in which we seek today to glean from and be resourced by the riches of an intellectual or spiritual tradition. This happens, of course, in all sorts of fields, in artistic fields. T.S. Eliot wrote a century ago about tradition and the individual talent and the role of even zany fiction.
being rethought in the mid 20th century, being nonetheless informed, shaped and resourced by literary tradition. We could see similar trends in all sorts of musical fields from classical to hip hop. In theology, we are thinking about what it means to do theology, not just at the end or at some late phase of a longstanding intellectual tradition, but also
for those of us who are Christian theologians, in the communion of saints, in the one holy Catholic and apostolic church. And therefore, we don't just look back at a tradition of sort of the sociology of knowledge, though that is a reality, but we look at a deeper spiritual reality, that the Lord Jesus Christ has sustained a church.
that by his spirit he has superintended in his providence and care, her expansion, her growth, her development, her maturation. And therefore we'd be foolish today to try to go about the faith or Christian practice apart from really deeply engaging the brothers and sisters we share through the ages and around the globe.
PJ Wehry (03:40.377)
That's a book that you've written with Dr. Scott Swain on reformed Catholicism, and you reference it in the book. Can you talk a little bit about what it means to aim for reformed Catholicism? I'm thinking too about your insistence on saying Roman Catholic and not just Catholic.
Michael Allen (04:02.251)
Right. Yeah. So Scott Swain and I a decade ago published a book called Reform Catholicity. And there, you know, we observed there were a lot of trends scattered here, there and everywhere amongst Protestants and especially people in our own reformed tradition who were in different ways going back and gleaning from Christian tradition, not not being content to be parochial.
or just to be contemporaneous, but to really begin to deeply engage with the hymnody of the past or the art of the past. And yes, with the biblical commentary and the Christian doctrine that was written in the past. And Scott and I aimed in that short manifesto a decade ago to offer a positive reformed account for why that matters and how that ought to be done.
why it is not a dilution of reformed and Protestant commitment to care about Catholicity, but it's actually ingredient and essential. And secondly, to begin to suggest how one can actually go back and glean from folks who've been dead and gone, from episodes that sometimes are in a world that seems mighty exotic and rather different.
That was a suggestive work. It was a principled manifesto. It wasn't a full-scale manual, much less an encyclopedia, but it really did, I think, crystallize and call for a convictional Protestant and Reformed engagement of the wholeness of the faith as attested by the whole Catholic Church.
And as you mentioned, that involves a bit of an argument with those in the Roman Catholic tradition. And the argument would be that to be Roman Catholic is actually to shrink the Catholic tradition. And we want to think more expansively about folks from early Christianity to folks around the globe today and how all of us can glean more.
PJ Wehry (06:02.56)
Hehehe.
Michael Allen (06:24.437)
as Ephesians 3 puts it, of the height and depth and width and breadth of God's love for us in Christ, if we are in fact actually seeking to know that love of God together. And so there's a sense that because we need the whole counsel of God, because we need the whole of Holy Scripture, we also need the whole of God's people to help in hearing and seeing and receiving and knowing as we are.
PJ Wehry (06:52.382)
Can you give, and I have my own suspicions, but do you mind giving an example of someone that you've tried to retrieve from one of these, I believe you said wildly exotic, maybe not wildly, you said these kind of exotic locales, deeply alien historical setting.
Michael Allen (07:13.165)
Yeah, I mean, I would say one smattering of figures that I've engaged, especially thinking about topics like eschatology and ethics in my own writing, have been early Christians and early medieval Christians practicing and reflecting on what we would call the ascetical life. Some were monks, some weren't.
but there are figures reflecting on the call to self-denial, the need for community and discipline, the goal of aiming to be spiritually minded, not fleshly minded. I've found that often sounds really strange to students when I introduced them to, you know, third and fourth century ascetical texts every autumn.
It sounds gnostic to them or Platonist. It sounds world-hating. It sounds just incredibly exotic and foreign and very strange. But we can actually journey through the Christian tradition and find that up till about yesterday, every serious Christian theologian believed that they really did have to have some kind of ascetical theology.
PJ Wehry (08:28.468)
Yeah
Michael Allen (08:35.029)
And that doesn't mean they all agreed about everything, of course. You can actually get some of the feistiest debates amongst people who are committed to the importance of the question. And not surprisingly, when you have various orders develop over time to instill and sustain and develop that vision, you have different orders with slightly different sort of marching orders to them.
Introducing students to Basel of Caesarea or Gregory Nyssa or the Rule of Saint Benedict, or much later to the ascetical writings of John Calvin or the Puritan John Owen. Those are at first glance, I think, to most modern Western Christians going to seem very, very exotic and in many cases, completely foreign. But
I actually find that as we study them, we find that they're drawing on biblical language that, if we're honest, may feel equally foreign, may sometimes feel very strange to us, but obviously is a gift of God meant to form us, to instruct us, to give us life. And so taking the time patiently to engage those writers in context, to listen to scripture with them, to...
be alert enough to observe their own arguments with each other and with those who've gone before them. All of that repays dividends, I think, in theological study and in the pursuit of spiritual formation today in a very secularized age.
PJ Wehry (10:17.812)
There are a couple of things I'd love to dig deeper into that you've talked about there. But first, taking a step back as we talk about this retrieval project, what are some common misconceptions, things that you'd like to tell people that they often have with the retrieval project?
Michael Allen (10:38.987)
Yeah, there are, suppose, different impressions. And I can appreciate the impressions because people may observe people doing something, and they think that's representative of all things retrieval or resourcement. And there are less than ideal examples. And we want to cultivate not just the best of ideals, but increasingly, we want to spread best practices.
You know, I I think in a real sense there are a number of things that are easy and frequent misconceptions I can list a few and we can linger over whichever ones you might want to to reflect on I mean one would be to pay attention to the fact that As as I try and engage earlier figures they're doing many other things but
they're never doing less than engaging Holy Scripture. And so whether I'm reading a doctrinal treatise or a document from a monastic orders rule of life or a medieval textbook or a patristic homily or the correspondence of a North African bishop in the early fourth century, I want to be watching for the ways they are using Holy Scripture.
and glean from them how to engage it more productively. So the history of Christian thought just is the history of biblical exegesis. That's one thing easily missed. A second thing easily missed would be the idea that these folks already exist in a remarkably self-critical culture. When you pay attention to early Christianity and medieval Christianity, it's not with the Reformation later.
that critical thought enters and a desire for reform. Again and again, what we find in earlier figures is they're trying to reform what they believe is bad practice and misjudged theological conviction. And they're having vigorous debates, whether it's about interpreting a passage or about how to put together a doctrinal synthesis.
Michael Allen (13:02.153)
or about how to engage some ethical conundrum. And so we need to catch that they're already engaged in remarkably self-critical conversation. We also need to engage the way in which they are very much wedding together things that we often assume are separate. So for them, spirituality and devotion
frequently exist in the closest of relationships to careful interpretation and contemplation. And that means that the same figures who write the most dense and complicated textbooks are also figures commending the most mystical of devotional practices. And that just makes them
complex, multifaceted creatures. And we need to appreciate that. That's true in a way that I suppose many of our stereotypes of the modern ivory tower don't quite fit. So those would be a few examples. I'm sure there's others. those are things where, in various ways, I think as we read and we seek to retrieve, we find
PJ Wehry (14:13.393)
Yeah.
Michael Allen (14:29.197)
surprises and challenges and provocations. And maybe there'd be one more I'd add would be simply retrieval isn't about baptizing the status quo. No reformed theologian would be kosher with it if it simply meant saying that the way things are is the way God intends them to be full stop.
PJ Wehry (14:52.596)
Hmm.
Michael Allen (14:54.349)
And retrieval is about engaging the communion of saints, both so that we can hold fast to what's right that's been passed on, but also so that we can be alerted to things where we've either lost or where we need to develop still further. so retrieval is really tied together to the prophetic calling of the church and her ministry.
It's not for nothing that's modeled in the Old Testament when prophets are called to challenge the status quo. What do they do? Again and again, they retrieve the law, the foundational document of traditions past, and they show how it raises all manner of question and provocation. And on that basis, they're able to offer principled opposition to the problems of the day. so retrieval is very much not about
papering over the problems of the church, which in a sinful age are still many. It's about giving us all the resources God has provided so that we can continue our journey ever onward to reform and renewal and growth and maturation all the way until we enter into glory at the return of Christ.
PJ Wehry (16:18.17)
One, thank you. Incredible answer.
I don't want to miss this question from before. I kind of jumping around a little bit and trying to keep track of you're giving such fertile ground to continue on. When you're talking about the aesthetical life, and I think this comes out of some of your discussion of the misconceptions too, you talk about this idea, we struggle with the ivory tower idea that someone is actually
wedding, mystical practices with very careful, rigorous scholarly work. And there was something similar there too, when you were talking about the ascetical life and the way that you're talking to your students, you mentioned self-denial and discipline. These are things we think that go together, but you said they're also seeking in the midst of that communal life. And I think for a lot of people, that immediately pinged for me. I think I can kind of see how that goes together.
But when we talk about self-denial, how are they seeking self-denial and communal life at the same time?
Michael Allen (17:26.849)
Yeah, whether folks are going to be entering monastic order, which a minority do, or they're going to be living in various households around a city, participating in a Christian congregation. Early medieval Christians realized that Christianity is not a single player sport and that the call to formation and in particular to self-denial
is going to be something that is going to be unwieldy and unfeasible for ordinary Christians, apart from the encouragement, the exhortation, the accountability, the support of brothers and sisters, the example of models. One of the crucial things that we see as we read across the Christian tradition
is the consistent focus upon imitation and exemplarism. The idea that older Christians, not just clergy mind you, but older senior mature Christians model the faith, model godliness, model mission, and model self-denial for newer Christians, whether they're children or they're converts later in childhood or adulthood.
And I think in our day, we sometimes have a false humility where anyone who claims they want to be a model for others is viewed with suspicion. And there's plenty enough reasons why we can have that cynicism or suspicion. I get it. We live very much quite a ways down this side of Watergate and any number of other scandals. so
People eager to exercise power do sometimes throw up alarms, fair enough. But the idea of mentors and of modeling for imitation's sake is really a part of Jesus's original design, and it's apart ingredient of the apostolic mission. And we could observe that across a range of texts in New Testament and early Christian literature.
Michael Allen (19:49.102)
And twas ever thus, it's been a part of both early Christian and medieval and then later Protestant, Roman Catholic and Orthodox traditions. And we need to reclaim that. We also need to reclaim the significance of lay Christian community as something that doesn't exist merely for clergy or for monastics, but the idea that brothers and sisters need each other.
if they're going to go about this remarkable calling of putting oneself and your fleshly desires to death for the sake of the greater goal of conformity to Christ. If you're going to take up your cross and follow him, that's going to be something of significant cost. And we know we need a team when we go to the gym. The New Testament and early Christian literature models similar
imagery as we think about the remarkable calling of discipleship and the spiritual journey to which we're invited. And we need to be mindful of that as well. It's appropriate we care about having godly clergy of integrity. I spend most of my time trying to train folks for that calling. It matters a lot. You want people who are capable of leading.
both with their teaching and with a life of integrity and character. At the same time, though, we also need to tend the fact that you need communities of lay encouragement and engagement that are going to resource Christian faithfulness and self-denial and what we call the ascetical life and Christian mission. And that's absolutely essential, too.
PJ Wehry (21:42.825)
I appreciate that. I think for me, and I, you know, I'm reading through the book, I understand where you're headed with it, but it's really hard to get past that connotation of the ascetic as the hermit, right? And so just to like, there's that redefinition, just like at a popular level, like that's what I have to keep redefining it in my head, if that makes sense. That's really helpful. Thank you.
Michael Allen (22:00.82)
Yeah.
Michael Allen (22:05.185)
Yeah, well, if I could, know, there's deep in the tradition, two different pathways for someone who's going to enter into the monastic life. And I'd want to just highlight two things. One, most ascetics aren't monks, though many are. And second, most monks aren't anchor Riddick. That is the person who goes off into the desert on their own. Most exist in what we call a synabetic lifestyle and a synabetic lifestyle.
PJ Wehry (22:07.4)
Yeah.
Michael Allen (22:34.057)
is a communal lifestyle, where you're going to have brothers here or sisters there. You're going to have a community that practices a rule together, and they're going to seek to serve one another for the sake of serving Christ. And we could add a third wrinkle. They reach out to the wider world. There are walls, and there is a separation for a purpose, but it's for a purpose of mission. And so
You can look at these various lifestyles and they each in their own ways are serving the wider population as well. So it's not as though they're completely removed. So when you actually get your hands dirty and dealing with some of the real history here and some of the texts behind it, we see actually, you know, they're different and it's a different world, but they're not completely different. There's all sorts of analogies we can trace out.
PJ Wehry (23:31.385)
I want to talk about, and I think we can kind of combine two of these misconceptions with this question. And it was a phrase that really kind of stuck with me and I'm really curious about that when we're working through retrieval theology, it's never less than Holy scripture, right? It's always that kind of, they're working through that and that it is self-critical. is prophetic. And so,
Michael Allen (23:55.815)
Thanks for
PJ Wehry (24:00.129)
One of the phrases you use is that theology should be a positive, not a poetic science. Really packed terminology. Do you mind unpacking for us what you mean by a positive, not a poetic science? Because I think there's questions of authority there, but then I'm curious when you say not poetic, how does that work in terms of, you talk about Walter Brugman's kind of lyrical
Michael Allen (24:10.743)
Right.
Michael Allen (24:16.802)
Yeah.
PJ Wehry (24:29.652)
prophecy. so, how does that, where is the end of theology, and where do we enter other disciplines, and what do you mean by positive and poetic sciences?
Michael Allen (24:41.131)
Yeah, I mean, this is where we've got to talk about theology at a couple different levels, not just at the level of epistemology or of neuroscience, like what's going on in terms of the philosophical sketch of what I'm doing when I do theology or a neuroscientific one, but also at a deeper level that we think metaphysically and theologically even about the practice of theology.
Yes, when I do theology, my eyes are moving, my brain is engaged, my synapses are hopefully firing, and I'm thinking of subjects and verbs, I'm thinking of how various clauses connect, and so we could describe any number of active practices going on at different layers. At a deeper level though, metaphysically and theologically, want to say Christian theology, rightly practiced, is receptive.
it's responsive before it is active. And that's to say it's practiced by one who's the creature of the word, by Christians and churches who are utterly dependent upon God's provision and grace, God's speech and light, God's wisdom being granted to us. And so just as much as we live on borrowed breath physiologically,
So we really do live upon the life-giving word of God theologically. And so to say that it's a positive science is to say that there is a reality, the word of God, the revelation of God himself, which is positive and to which we are responsible. It's our norm, it's our limit, and we are not free simply for the task of poiesis or construction. Theology is not
Art in the same sense, sculpture is art. Theology is not about just fashioning as you might wish. There is a creativity that's involved literarily or perceptionally in certain respects, but that's grounded and bounded significantly by these metaphysical and theological claims that theology occurs in the realm of sin and of grace and that therefore,
Michael Allen (27:05.249)
Theology needs to be done by faith alone and dependence upon God and his grace alone. And so, you know, that's simply to say we need to construe the practice of theology theologically just as much as we think about our spiritual life theologically or think about our conversion from another religion or no religion to the Christian religion theologically. One of the great
insights of a mentor and colleague of mine, the late John Webster, this call to what he called theological theology, that we not be content to think about what theology is in terms of some other science. And there's lots of willing alternatives. There's folks who'd like to describe it simply as a psychological affair or a phenomenological matter or a political concern.
You name it. And those things can have insight. Those lenses can be useful to bring out certain elements of what's going on in the practice of theology. But none of them is going to displace or to provide what theology alone can do. That is to provide a description of how this practice is itself a result of who God is and what God has and is doing.
PJ Wehry (28:36.83)
So first off, just acknowledging the authority that is above us and that we need to be responsive. I don't think it's necessarily.
Michael Allen (28:42.989)
Hmm.
PJ Wehry (28:49.202)
As I was working through the Walter Bruegman, your assessment of him, you seemed to quote him the subtlety and the lyricality positively, but you said that it does not reflect perhaps the agency of God as much as it should. It does not reflect the authority of God as much as it should. Like it talks continually about human things. If the authority and agency of God is respected, it...
then is there a creative aspect in the forming of the vision that should be? And I understand like that might be, okay, go ahead.
Michael Allen (29:21.495)
Sure, yeah. Yeah, and you know, I think we can think of different examples through the tradition where there are folks who have brilliant insight into the way creaturely agency works. You you think, for instance, the rediscovery in the high medieval world of Aristotle's writings and when Christians are engaging to what extent he can be absorbed or integrated
It's predominantly not his metaphysics, but his physics and his ethics that are going to be of greatest concern. He's useful in helping us understand human psychology and politics and the way the natural world works in that era. In another sense, we could say, in the last century, we might benefit from folks who have literary attentiveness to the way in which rhetoric functions.
And similarly, we can glean from reading Christian doctrine as rhetoric, creative, insightful, varied, divergent, just like engaging Aristotle's ethics or physics. So here, engaging literary or narrative criticism can alert us to what's going on in the way someone frames their rhetoric or their text.
In both cases, though, Christians, I think, rightly need to say neither Aristotle nor modern literary theory is sufficient to describe theology. Theology is ultimately, as 2 Corinthians 5 would say, it's from God. so however much Aristotelian or other ethical theory might be useful to explain agency in psychology.
However much literary theory or rhetorical criticism might be enabling to help me be attentive to the different way that Christian men and women communicate. Nonetheless, I'm gonna glean from that, but insist that I also always use theological language foundationally to explain what's going on in the practice of Christian theology.
PJ Wehry (31:41.235)
And I could see your use, for instance, you quote Franz Kafka in talking about the active, living word. The word of God is active and living, coming from God, but it is alive and active in you. And so I assume that that is part of even your use of, I love the reference to zany.
Michael Allen (31:58.123)
Yep.
PJ Wehry (32:08.205)
20th century literature, right? Like, like, we have Beatles Beatles on their backs. Yeah.
Michael Allen (32:12.759)
Kafka counts, I think.
PJ Wehry (32:18.504)
So you mentioned the use in the Middle Ages about the appropriation of Aristotle. you seem to, you have several of your essays that seem to deal with Thomas Aquinas. Seem to, they do deal with, I don't know why it's that seem, but they do deal with Thomas Aquinas. What is...
Michael Allen (32:35.952)
He did, think.
PJ Wehry (32:44.582)
What is the future of reformed scholasticism? What is the purpose and the use of reformed scholasticism?
Michael Allen (32:50.945)
Yeah, you know, I think when you talk about engaging the Catholic tradition, there are going to be different sorts of resources useful in different ways. Obviously, things like homilies can be especially helpful in alerting you to how this or that text is read. There are going to be other things that oftentimes are really useful in helping you see the big picture.
And oftentimes among the most prominent would be some of the great medieval textbooks of theology when Christian growth and development has led to the beginnings of universities, whether it's in Paris or Oxford, Cambridge, et cetera, Salamanca and elsewhere in the medieval period. in some of those texts,
like those written by Thomas Aquinas or Bonaventure or Peter Lombard, we find a serious engagement of scripture that is so serious as to demand engaging others who've wrestled with scripture, believing that one can only do so if one does so with the benefit of the full community of saints. And so, you know, I find that
any number of these texts are absolutely remarkable resources that we ought not overlook. I'm not a card-carrying Thomist by any stretch of the imagination. And I'd really love to widen people's attention to some other medieval voices so that we can actually not just listen to this author or that textbook.
but often to the conversations between a number of these figures. And so in my teaching and some of my research and writing, I try and help reengage some of those texts that too often go unheard or unbickered with. of course, engagement needn't always involve acceding or agreeing with someone.
Michael Allen (35:06.357)
You know, one of my love languages is is good intellectual sparring. And so I'm I'm happy to show dependence by taking someone seriously enough to think through why they say something theologically and to come out perhaps in a slightly different place. But all the better for having engaged and argued with their best thoughts and principles and hopefully having gleaned from them.
Thomas is a remarkable figure like Bonaventure, like Peter Lombard, like Maximus the Confessor, like any number of these others who are so engaged in reading scripture, in engaging the Christian tradition, in being critical but hopeful and engaging other sources of truth philosophically and ethically. And in a real sense, they're grown-ups, they're adults.
as far as Christian intellectuals go. And we live in a day and an age where we need adult examples. We don't need to ape their every move. We don't need to imitate their every statement or belief. We do need to be struck by serious observation and by gleaning from the ways they model mature Christian reading of scripture. And, you know,
PJ Wehry (36:04.712)
Hahaha!
PJ Wehry (36:11.764)
Mm.
Michael Allen (36:31.551)
reception of the tradition and careful thought and scholarly rigor and humble service and so forth. And Thomas, like those others, commends himself in that way. However much I may not be a Dominican or a Roman Catholic.
PJ Wehry (36:49.812)
If I'm hearing you correctly, I'm just trying to clarify here. think part of what you're saying in appropriating and retrieving and bickering with Thomas of Aquinas is that we're not just trying to retrieve the content and that can sometimes, especially with, you when you talk about card carrying Thomas, it could be like, this is, you know, this is the pinnacle of everything, but also we're trying to, we're trying to retrieve the spirit and their method. so
Michael Allen (37:13.111)
Yeah, sure.
PJ Wehry (37:19.708)
At the time, Thomas is trying to use the best of what he has. And so if Thomas was here today, it seems like he would, instead of just following along with what he had, what had been done before, he would try and appropriate the best of what was available today. Is that, is that a way of talking about how you, how you do it?
Michael Allen (37:38.444)
Yeah, that's a great contrast to draw out. And we ought to say there have been efforts to treat him as though he's the endpoint of all development. mean, in a real sense, late 19th century, early 20th century Roman Catholic theology, its predominant struggles were owing to the fact that there was a top-down effort to use Thomas, a 13th century voice, to respond to 18th and 19th century skepticism.
which would be a surprise to Thomas, I think. And given that he'd not engaged the Enlightenment, I suspect he would think further work needed doing. Now, some of those folks engaged in that were brilliant. They did far more than they said they were doing, and thus they're not as bad as they sometimes sound. But the call really was somehow...
PJ Wehry (38:11.794)
Yeah, yeah, I think so too.
Michael Allen (38:34.423)
to treat him as the perennial doctor who's answered these questions. And today, I mean, there are some Protestants seeking to use Thomas as if he likewise answered all skeptical questions. He's useful. He does inoculate us against certain things and not just him, but many figures in the Catholic tradition that is ours just as much as any Roman Catholics.
But he doesn't prophetically foresee every philosophical or cultural or ethical conundrum that arises later. And so, you know, we don't want to sort of offer a heavy-handed and overly simplistic response to modern skepticism or to postmodern criticism or to any other perceived threat. We want to...
gather all the resources we can. We want to glean wisdom and discernment from becoming intimately familiar with them. But we're called to run the race set before us. We're not called to build a boat like Noah. We're not called to leave Ur like Abraham. And we're not called to address the 13th century like Thomas or the 16th century like Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin.
We want to glean from all of them. We want to pass on what's handed down. But we also want to come to possess the mind of Christ and to walk in our own day. And I think oftentimes there's the temptation to contempt for our present age and to idealize and aspire to living in a different world in a different age. And that's a spiritual malady, but it's also an intellectual vice.
And, you know, the calling of retrieval is not about cosplay intellectually or spiritually. It's not about me pretending that I could be an early Christian or a medieval or a reformer. It's about me learning of what God has done in and through them, learning of their witness to God, but me faithfully following where God has me today.
Michael Allen (41:01.043)
and where he leads tomorrow. And we need to walk with hope and confidence that's instilled by the past, but that's not trying to live in the past.
PJ Wehry (41:12.766)
So we just talked about the past and I feel I'd be remiss. I want to be respectful of your time. So I'll have this question and one final question. But you've written a book on the beatific vision. as you're working through Thomas Aquinas, you talk about the active and the contemplative life. And it does feel in some respects, that's something that you talk about this, it's missing in today's culture. Can you talk about what is the active and contemplative life and
Michael Allen (41:19.693)
Yeah, sure.
PJ Wehry (41:42.161)
why we need contemplation of the beatific vision.
Michael Allen (41:46.38)
Yeah, yeah. So it's a key distinction. It's simply a way of parsing the fact, as Christians like Jews before them have observed, that we're called to service and to active engagement in a host of ways. You have a job, you have a household, maybe a family and children, you have neighbors, you have commitments in terms of a political or civic life, wherever that might be. And of course, you
You have congregational or religious commitments to the body of believers to which you're a part. All of that involves doing and action. At the same time, we are also made to rest, to see, to behold, to dwell, to chew, to linger. And we see this repeatedly throughout scripture.
perhaps modeled most emphatically in Jesus's own rhythm and cadence of life where he is so busy serving others in his teaching, in his companionship and friendship, in his miracles. But he also repeatedly steps aside to pray, to contemplate, to remove himself from the crowd.
We see in one story, in Luke 10, the story of Mary and Martha, what's become a classic text for this distinction, the idea that, yes, somebody's got to make lunch. And that's really the challenge. One sister is upset that her other sister is leaving her to prepare lunch for Jesus and a whole group by herself because that sister's gone and is sitting there listening to Jesus at his feet, as it were. And Jesus says, you
You're concerned with many things, but your sister, she's concerned with one thing and it's not to be taken from her. In other words, he highlights the fact that, yes, we all know somebody's got to make lunch. I mean, you we got to eat. We have real world needs and each of us play myriad roles in getting the trash out, getting children educated, getting schools and cities and businesses and churches to function. All that's well and good.
Michael Allen (44:10.029)
But one thing won't be taken away, the call to be with Jesus, to contemplate, to rest, to listen to him. And this has led Christians from the earliest of decades on to talk about the need for us to balance the active and contemplative. And we who live in the United States, a culture so premised on efficiency,
and utility, a culture where Cornel West says the only philosophy we've invented is the philosophy of pragmatism. And we're the most inventive culture in human history. And pragmatism is the only philosophy we've invented. It suggests we're very much doers, right? We certainly need to be reminded of this calling to contemplation.
that will actually serve and benefit our active lives as well. And so that's modeled scripturally in lots of ways from Sabbath keeping to prayer, fasting and so forth. It's something that in a very real sense is meant to draw us away from the busyness of life, to reorient us to the fact that we're not made for our family or our city, for money.
or for achievement, we're ultimately made only for God. And all those other things are goods only to the extent that they are subordinated to our enjoyment of God. And so in a real sense, contemplation is like repeated temporary practice of what eventually will be experienced on the regular and eternally when we receive the vision of God, the beatific.
or blessed or happy vision of God and Christ in the new heavens and the new earth. And in a secularized world, where being secularized tends to mean more that you are religious, but not that theological, not that spiritual, not that heavenly. Religion becomes more about this world, about psychological health, about political activism, about monetary advancement. We need to be reminded
Michael Allen (46:34.821)
and we need to be led to repent and to do otherwise by learning to slow down, learning to listen, receiving God's word, communing with God in prayer, fasting from other good things from time to time so that we can increasingly see a spiritual mindedness mark our lives and hearts.
PJ Wehry (46:59.142)
A powerful answer. Thank you.
As we conclude today, besides reading, buying and reading your excellent book,
Michael Allen (47:10.381)
Buy and read it and give another copy away.
PJ Wehry (47:12.756)
Yeah, there you go.
But yeah, yeah, yeah. Besides besides buying multiple copies and just leaving on people's doorsteps, putting them in their mailboxes, shipping it over all across the world. Now, besides buying and reading your excellent book, what would you recommend to someone who has listened to this episode that they either do or think about over the upcoming week after after listening this episode?
Michael Allen (47:18.847)
You had another idea. What was that?
Michael Allen (47:47.756)
Yeah, couple things. You know, I would say, you know, the first thing you can do, of course, is simply practice some of the things that are being theorized here. And it might be as simple as reading and praying a Psalm tomorrow. So start with number one and work your way across. But, you know, read and meditate and try and
pray the words of Psalm 1, ask what it leads you to say of your day and your concerns to God. Or show up and instead of many other things you might do on Sunday, go to worship and deny other goods for the sake of that greater good. So practice the things being talked about would be one. A second though would be if you want to explore further, hopefully my book,
and other books that I've written are just an entryway to a world of Christian literature. And I would say, you know, there's no one place that everybody needs to go other than the Bible. But in the world of Christian literature, there are so many spots you could go. You could read Bernard of Clairvaux on loving God, or you could read Martin Luther on the freedom of the Christian, or you could read
John Owen on the grace and duty of spiritual mindedness. So you could read Augustine of Hippo and his Confessions. You could read any of those and so many others. You can go to Christian Classics, Ethereal Library, and just freely tour all sorts of classical Christian literature through the ages and particularly read homilies and commentaries on scripture.
PJ Wehry (49:41.652)
Hmm.
Michael Allen (49:43.073)
that will just help you imagine anew what various passages and verses are meaning to do for you and to invite you to. And I just suggest jumping into the deep end. It doesn't have to be a daunting deep end. In fact, I think you'll find those early and medieval and Reformation era authors often are way simpler. They're certainly easier to understand normally than I am.
PJ Wehry (50:12.286)
Hahaha
Michael Allen (50:12.333)
But they're there and they're there to be engaged. And so I'd really commend, take up some of the practices that you've not yet done and explore a bit further touring into the literature of the Christian tradition.
PJ Wehry (50:30.568)
Dr. Allen, it's been an absolute joy talking to you today. Thank you for coming on.
Michael Allen (50:34.752)
My pleasure. Thanks so much, PJ.