By Derek Olsen
I was swaddled in the fourth century again last week. Eyes filled with the detritus of the early monastic movement, we were moving through the feast of that western monastic pioneer Martin of Tours when I was struck forcefully by a basic reflection on the ways they thought and wrote about what they did. One of the strongest strains of the early monastic literature is the life. Not the treatise, not the argument.
The life.
Martin of Tours is a perfect case in point. We have nothing that he wrote. He left behind no rule of life. We receive Martin in stories about how he lived. Sulpicius Severus should be reckoned as one of the major ascetic theologians of fourth century Gaul but he rarely is—because we know him chiefly as Martin’s biographer. But, actually, isn’t that the point? Sulpicius could have written treatises, could have written arguments, but instead wrote of lives. Even his most argumentative piece, the dialogues is a comparison of lifestyles—how the faithful lived, believed, and acted in the Christian East and West.
Even St. Jerome the Cantankerous, one not above a sharp-tongued sarcastic treatise when the mood moved him, wrote his best words on the monastic life not as sets of instructions—though he produced those—but as reflections on the lives of friends who had died, remembering them and their examples to their loved ones.
Some of our most precious and most important theological writing is the biography, the hagiography, the theologically infused and understood account of people in the world who point to it, through it, and beyond it.
It hardly need be said—we have no treatises from Jesus. We have gospels.
That’s not to say that we don’t need Paul; it’s not to say we don’t need Augustine or Aquinas. It is fair to say, however, that the treatise may be incomplete without the life. Rational, consistent thought is balanced and born from the messiness, the inconsistency, and fragility of life lived in clay vessels.
The religious life of the Middle Ages produced theologically laden lives as stories of the saints and warnings of the fallen. The Office of Chapter—originally the monastic business meeting—became an opportunity for reading and reflection on the Martyrology, the lives of the holy dead.
How now do we reflect upon our holy dead? Where now do we hear narratives of faith as theologically significant compositions?
Athanasius, Jerome, and Bede—all theologians of the greatest weight—wrote life as theology in addition to their letters, tractates, and commentaries. Who now writes the holy life?
Derek Olsen recently finished his Ph.D. in New Testament at Emory University. He has taught seminary courses in biblical studies, preaching, and liturgics; he currently resides in Maryland. His reflections on life, liturgical spirituality, and being a Gen-X/Y dad appear at Haligweorc.