Christianity Was a Religion of Silent Meditation from the Start
Deconstructing Christianity: Meditation is not just for other religions. Jesus taught it too. And it was integral to Christianity until it was forgotten.
In church history, the fourth century CE was an intense period of contention over exactly who or what Jesus was, how he was related to God, what were the essential attributes of God, what was God’s relationship to and manifestation within the universe, and what body of Greek writings would make up the official canon of Christian scripture. Many theological ideas long considered basic to Christian orthodoxy were hashed out during this time. For more on that, see my post Is Doctrinal Correctness About Jesus Absolutely Essential?
While theology may describe how some people understand God and spiritual concerns, all the wordy doctrinal and terminological wrangling over theologically (and politically) correct views of Christ, the Godhead, the Trinity, and the scriptural canon could not truly settle matters. In the end, language is insufficient to describe the transcendent realm of human experience rooted more deeply in the psyche than thought—even expressed as doctrine, or emotion—even expressed as spiritual ecstasy. There arose a movement toward Christianity not as a set of correct teachings and beliefs (orthodoxy), or of feelings and their expressions (orthopathy), but as a proper and disciplined practice, a challenging way of life (orthopraxis), rooted in a spirituality of silence.
In this movement lay the roots of Christian monasticism. The communities that emerged and flourished would harbor and anchor Christianity’s faith, practices, and principles for the next thousand years. Monasteries and convents would play a crucial role in seeing Christianity through the spiritual depredations of societal and economic collapse, brutal military conquest, ecclesiastical supremacy, the amassment of vast wealth, and the cataclysms of the late Middle Ages.
As early as the third century, there were Christians who sought to put the teachings of Jesus into practice by relinquishing what they owned, going to live alone in caves in the desert, seeking inner stillness and silence (ἡσυχία or hesychía) through meditative prayer techniques, developing lovingkindness and hospitality, chanting and meditating on scripture, and practicing some form of mendicancy, production, or craft to support themselves. It is worth noting that this could just as well describe the consecrated life and practice of a Buddhist, or a Hindu. In Egypt, these Christians are known as the Desert Fathers and Mothers. Scriptural underpinning for their way of life can be found in the lives of Elijah and John the Baptist, in Jesus’ praying alone in seclusion, in Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness, in the early apostles’ dedication of themselves to a life of prayer, and in teachings from the epistles concerning prayer.
See these related posts:
The Lord's Prayer Doesn't Ask for Stuff - It's a Guided Meditation
Though others predated him, the person best known as an originator of this practice was Anthony of Egypt (251–356), primarily due to the story of his life written by Athanasius (296-8–373). By the middle of the fourth century when Anthony died, there were thousands of monks and nuns living in the Scetis desert south of Alexandria (Wadi El Natrun today). Christian pilgrims traveled into the desert to seek their spiritual advice.
Some of these desert dwellers had pioneered an apophatic, wordless spirituality that brought them into a state of hesychía. Apophatic theology holds that since God cannot be described, the descriptive terms we use fall short, and we are left with everything God is not. The influential theologian and gifted writer Evagrius of Pontus (345-8–99) taught his monastics yogic techniques of stillness and concentration. The purpose was so that instead of limiting the divine within human rational categories, they might cultivate an attentive, listening silence through which to connect with the deeper, transcendent realm that is the object of religion in general.
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The practices of monasticism are also recorded to have appeared quite early in the Judean desert. The widely read Latin translation of Anthony’s biography would help spread its concepts and practices westward. Desert monasticism was replicated in Italia, Gallia, and Britannia.
While maintaining an eremitic existence, these hermits would also meet periodically in small groups. From these meetings developed the cenobitic monasticism wherein contemplatives lived together in a community, regularly engaging in common prayer under shared rules of living and the authority of a spiritual director, not unlike a guru. Such support guarded against extreme loneliness, and the potential for psychiatric breakdown on the part of those unprepared for the spiritual journey inward, toward what lies buried in the unconscious mind, toward the transports and terrors with which we can sometimes respond.
The disciplined spiritual journey inward was not just prescribed for the solitaries who dedicated their lives exclusively to it. The theology, liturgy, exegesis, morality, and acts of lovingkindness practiced by all Christians were to be informed by hesychía as experienced in public worship and human relationships. This was reinforced by Paul’s carefully measured qualifications concerning the ecstatic practices of Christians at Corinth (First Corinthians 14).
Gregory, bishop of Nyssa (331-5–95), one of the ‘Cappadocian Fathers’, was a famous exponent of this apophatic theology of inward journey. So was his elder sister Macrina, who influenced him. For them, theology depended on spiritual practice. A God positively defined by rational means was simply an idol.
Their brother Basil, bishop of Caesarea (330–79) was especially instrumental in formalizing the doctrine of the Trinity. For Basil, the new doctrine of creation ex nihilo showed that God is unknowable. The whole point of the Trinity was to present a paradox that stops people from thinking about God in rational terms.
Trinity is a mythos that speaks truth not available to logos; as such, it only makes sense in conjunction with a contemplative practice wherein the mind is allowed to oscillate between trinity and unity. For the Cappadocians, new converts were not required to believe in the Trinity as a fact; it was intended to initiate a new way of thinking about God. Further, the unity of mutual deference among the three persons of the Trinity is itself a symbol of Christlike self-emptying.
The gospels make clear that Jesus’ practice of prayer was one of solitary engagement in quiet, focused meditation. If Acts is to be understood properly, the apostles continued this practice as they learned it from Jesus. The epistles also reflect such an approach, if not interpreted according to the received notion of prayer as asking God to fulfill a list of personal desires. (See the posts linked above).
The Desert Fathers and Mothers carried forward the disciplined contemplative practices of Jesus and the apostles, creating the basis of a monastic system that would sustain Christian spirituality for another thousand years. This essential, practical aspect of Christian faith and teaching has been lost amid the dogmatism, literalism, and emotional manipulation of both Catholic and Protestant Christianity in the modern era. That kind of religion is now running its course in the postmodern world.
These modern forms of Christianity are becoming useless (at best) on a personal level. People in our contemporary sociocultural context will continue to abandon them and with good reason. Christianity has a chance to become vibrant, functional, and practical in people’s lives. This will require its reestablishment according to the actual teachings of Jesus, and importantly, the ancient spiritual practices in which he and his followers engaged—practices that have the potential to slowly transform individuals and communities, and bring about the empire of the sky about which Jesus had so much to say.