Abstract
A critical assessment of Bishop Kenneth Kirk’s classic book The Vision of God and its reception within, and influence upon, Anglican moral theology.
What is clear so far is that Christianity came into a world tantalised with the belief that some men 1 at least had seen God, and had found in the vision the sum of human happiness; a world aching with the hope that the same vision was attainable by all. 2
This brief extract from the abridged edition of Kirk’s book, based on the 1928 Bampton Lectures in Oxford, both captures the focus of his argument and sets the context from which he saw it spring. It also illustrates something of the richness of his style and clarity of writing throughout. 3 Kirk was born in Sheffield in 1886 to Methodist parents; his father was a manager within the steel industry. As he grew towards maturity, so the family edged towards Anglicanism, with Kenneth being confirmed in 1899. He prospered as a student at Sheffield Royal Grammar School, winning a Classical Exhibition at St John’s College, Oxford. By the age of 19, he had already decided to offer for ordination and became involved with the embryonic Student Christian Movement, for which he later worked, alongside helping to run a student hall of residence in West London. During this time, he suffered a breakdown, following tension with Walter Seton, his immediate superior. By 1911, he had recovered and began ordination training at Cuddesdon in the ‘long vacation term’. After a short break, he completed two further terms before his ordination to a title parish near Mexborough, then in the diocese of York.
With the outbreak of war in 1914, Kirk volunteered and spent much of his time as a chaplain on the Western Front, rising to become a senior chaplain. He returned for his final year to a home posting at the barracks in Ripon. During his time as a military chaplain he wrote his first published piece, a contribution to a volume of essays by a group of chaplains, titled The Church in the Furnace. In his essay, he reflected: Foremost among them [the lessons chaplains had learned] is the conviction that, hidden under ‘the inarticulate religion’ of the British soldier of which so much has been written lies a deep and intense reverence for the priesthood. Almost any chaplain can evoke it: the few who fail to do so fail because they do not reverence the priesthood themselves.
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In the first of these three major works, Kirk sets the scene. He notes that the Church of England has focused both on ‘Christian ethics’ and on the ‘theory and practice of the confessional’ but argues that moral theology comprises far more than this: [W]ithin the last fifty years, apparently only three books have attempted to present the whole content of moral theology in such a form as should guide the theory and practice of the Church of England, and all three are out of print and consequently difficult of access.
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Kirk’s admiration for the Caroline Divines is rooted in their integration of worship with moral theology and doctrinal reflection. Curiously, however, despite clear resonances in The Vision of God, his other two moral theological treatises include few references. Indeed, Kevin Kelly, a rare example of a Roman Catholic writing on the Caroline Divines, notes acerbically: ‘Unfortunately his own moral thought, especially in the field of conscience, seems to have drawn little inspiration from this source.’ 10 Elsewhere, Kelly also points to inconsistency in Kirk’s evaluation of his own work. Kirk complains of the tendency of Roman Catholic moral theology to opt for actions that are legally safe rather than morally commendable. Kelly, however, quotes Kirk’s wife pointing to an irony. She once remarked: ‘Kenneth spends all his time inventing clever reasons for doing with a clear conscience what we all know to be wrong.’ 11
Further pursuit of this, however, belongs elsewhere in a focused critique of Kirk’s work on conscience. Undoubtedly, within The Vision of God, there are clear reflections of the influence of Caroline scholarship and their concern with the pre-eminence of worship. What is clear in the above brief excursus is Kirk’s desire to follow a pathway between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism. 12 Kirk was himself an Anglo-Catholic, but a ‘liberal Catholic’ after the fashion of Charles Gore. This underpins his desire to follow a middle way and also to be prepared to be open to the insights of psychology and the advances of the natural and human sciences. 13 The argument of the volume demonstrates his sources: Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Augustine and Gregory the Great are key people for him in the Patristic period. From the mediaeval period, St Bernard, St Francis and, of course, St Thomas Aquinas provide crucial elements within his edifice.
In the modern period, there is significant variety, with Bousset as a major influence and, on the technical level, the German philologist Richard Reitzenstein, who is much quoted in the Vision – notably in the tension between early Christianity and Gnosticism. Perhaps most interesting and surprising is Kirk’s frequent reference to, and occasionally an acknowledged dependence upon, Henri Brémond. The fundamental doctrine of humanism is simple. It is an accepted axiom that a man feels little interest in that which he holds contemptible. The humanist does not consider humanity contemptible. He whole-heartedly takes the part of human nature; even when he sees it miserable and impotent, he excuses it and defends it and raises it.
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But now to the book itself. Following the lectures, it was published in two very different editions. Although delivered in 1928, Kirk did not publish the ‘Complete Edition’ until 1931. This subtitle is misleading, for this edition was a vastly expanded version of the original lectures, with copious notes and elaboration of the text, in a volume of some 550 pages. The complete edition is invaluable to the researcher with its numerous references but almost unreadable in forming a first impression of the lectures and their aim. Instead, to engage with the lectures as delivered, the abridged edition is the obvious starting point. Kirk notes in the preface to this shorter edition: ‘What remains approximates to, though it is not quite identical with, the actual lectures as originally delivered in the University Church.’ 15
How, then, do Kirk’s Bampton Lectures fit into the wider moral theological spectrum. The lectures sit within the Caroline tradition: that is, an integrated theological vision where doctrinal, ascetic and moral theology form part of one whole. Kirk argues for this more than once, even though ultimately his chief mentor in all three books is Thomas Aquinas. This approach requires worship to be the starting point for all moral theology. Kirk notes in his preface to the abridged edition: It is suggested in the chapters which follow that the doctrine ‘the end of life is the vision of God’ has throughout been interpreted by Christian thought at its best as implying in practice that the highest prerogative of the Christian, in this life as well as the hereafter, is the activity of worship; and that nowhere except in this activity will he find the key to his ethical problems.
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Perhaps the best known summary in the modern period is in the Shorter Catechism from the Westminster Assembly of 1646–47. To the question ‘What is the chief end of man?’, the response is ‘Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.’ Kirk traces this sentiment back to the equally well known phrase of Irenaeus: ‘The glory of God is a living man; and the life of man is the vision of God.’ 18 At the heart stands worship, and ultimately the primary focus on God through ‘contemplation’. Kirk establishes this primary significance of worship, contemplation and the vision of God through the explicit architecture of his book. Indeed, this principle is declared (in passing) in his initial foray into moral theology. 19 Here, however, he traces the theme of the visio Dei throughout history, beginning with references in pre-Christian thought.
In preparation for this, he begins (as per Keith Ward) with blessedness and notably with Jesus’ sixth beatitude in St Matthew’s Gospel (5.8): ‘Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.’ The quotation with which this article began brilliantly summarizes the quest: ‘Christianity came into a world tantalised with the belief that some men at least had seen God and had found in the vision the sum of human happiness.’ 20
Indeed, Kirk argues that the history of the phrase is the history of Christian ethics itself. 21 So, Jewish anticipations are explored: elements are noted in apocalyptic literature (Ezekiel and Daniel), in the Rabbinic tradition (notably Akiba), and in what Kirk describes as the Pharisees’ ‘aristocratic intellectualism’. It is there, too, in Plato, and through that source becomes an essential part of Philo’s thought: ‘To see God was his aim, and he thought of this vision as a “vision of peace”; for “God alone is perfect peace”.’ 22
Kirk is particularly fascinated by Philo on account of his proto-psychological appeals to faith; Kirk pioneered this crossover with mysticism. He quotes Bousset in support: ‘Apart from Isaiah, Philo is the first great psychologist of faith.’ 23 But Kirk also warns of Philo’s rigorist asceticism, which for Philo is the medium leading to the vision. This comment prefigures Kirk’s careful dance between rigorism and formalism (an obsession with codification) as he traces the history of the doctrine.
The second lecture takes one into the New Testament, and here, once again, Kirk’s scholarship is impressive. Contemporary biblical scholars, including A. E. J. Rawlinson, remarked on this, and particularly on his knowledge of the detailed work of then contemporary or recent scholars, including Johannes Weiss and Albert Schweitzer, with their emphasis on the apocalyptic. Throughout the argument there is a stress on Jesus’ humanism, a humanism fashioned by a constant focus on the divine. The seeds of rigorism and formalism have blown across into the meadows of New Testament Christianity but Jesus’ teaching is captured by neither. In another resonant quotation we read: ‘Jesus gave us a vision of God where others could only speak of it.’ 24
The development of this strand in Kirk’s thought is essential, for it protects him from the criticism of espousing a vague mysticism in his focus on the vision; this humanist impulse puts flesh on the bones – Jesus, in his teaching, passion, death and resurrection, gives substance to the vision of God. Kirk argues that doctrine must precede ethics, since ethics of itself is bound (to a degree) to centre on the self, through the practice of self-discipline, self-denial, and so on. Instead, the path of purity – that is, blessedness and humility – is the only path towards self-forgetfulness or better ‘unselfing’. Such unselfing is rooted in a focus on the vision of God and the commitment to contemplation. Again, there are pre-Christian resonances with Platonism; and, in contemporary philosophy, Iris Murdoch starts from Platonist philosophical principles. At one point, she writes: ‘[I]f quality of consciousness matters, then anything which alters consciousness in the direction of unselfishness, objectivity and realism is to be connected with virtue.’ 25
Murdoch includes a focus on ‘contemplation’, although rooted in ‘beauty’ and relating to Plato’s foundation concept of ‘the Good’. Kirk again quotes Brémond, who argues that contemplation is the only way an individual can ‘disinfect himself from egoism’. 26 Again, ethics must follow doctrine, hence Jesus himself talks not of humankind but of God and of what God has achieved for humankind.
The next four chapters focus on the ethical dangers of formalism and rigorism and ultimately the ‘double standard’. Formalism is effectively the desire to codify and to produce tables of rules, which undermine the doctrinal foundations of moral theology in the vision of God. Such dangers are unique to no single tradition. Early examples of this occur in the New Testament and include ‘household codes’ that were probably borrowed from Greek and later Hellenistic thought. From this source, then, among others, household codes drifted into the apostolic writings, and notably, but not exclusively, into deutero-Pauline literature. Instead, in the Beatitudes and in much of Paul’s writing (see, for example, Romans 12.1–15) we encounter not actions but dispositions – effectively encouraging the nourishing of virtues. Following this, Kirk discusses reward and punishment. He argues that, in the New Testament, emphasis on reward will appeal only to those trained in the virtues and thus disinterestedness is preserved. Once again, self-forgetfulness cannot be pursued first, for it morphs immediately into self-interest. This discussion of formalism recurs to some extent in ‘rondo’ form throughout the book.
We are next invited to reflect on rigorism, which is self-explanatory. Kirk pithily notes: ‘[T]he martyr defied the world, but the ascetic anathematised it.’ 27 Some extremes are mentioned: taking refuge in holes in the ground, standing day and night exposed to the rigours of heat and cold. Kirk ironically notes: ‘The Stylites of Northern Syria adopted the pillar asceticism of the votaries of Atargatus (Dea Syria); their vigils were relieved by the knowledge that statuettes commemorative of their exploits commanded a ready sale in the distant streets of Rome.’ 28
The danger is for asceticism (not a vice in itself) to become an ‘art’, even a virtuosity. Similarly, seeing ‘the vision’ as an experience of ecstasy is always there, so contemplation is the key; here, Kirk argues that the intrusion of Gnostic thought was one underlying cause for self-gratifying ecstasy.
The rise of monasticism in the fourth century is the starting point for the fifth lecture. For all the merits of Antony, Jerome and the ‘desert tradition’, once again the danger of rigorism rears its head, and, equally and alarmingly, the rise of a double standard, where the secular life was seen to be ‘second class’. Kirk describes two responses to the double standard – one valid, the other invalid. The first assumes that the final vision is open to all, albeit that, at various points, individuals or groups may find themselves at different stages. The invalid approach assumed a difference in kind. It was Gregory the Great who first set the record straight. Rooting his response in Augustine’s thought, Gregory argues that contemplation is open to all, and that it must also be a pattern that engages with good works: this is a theme that recurs in the second half of Kirk’s Vision. Gregory is realistic: ‘We cannot stay long in contemplation … we can only glance at eternity through a mirror … we have to return to the active life and occupy ourselves with good works.’ 29
This applies also in its own way to the monastic life. The development of monasticism from Pachomius to Basil and Benedict and towards an emphasis on the cenobitic tradition centres the vision in community and not just the individual. Kirk remarks: Within the limits prescribed by the double standard, he [Benedict] succeeded in all but abolishing the double standard itself. He put forward his system as a ‘very little rule for beginners’, but behind that modest phrase is the spirit of our Lord’s own words ‘Take my yoke upon you; for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.’
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Kirk argues that Augustine holds the tension between rigorism and a proper naturalism, affirming divine creation, and a naturalism lapsing easily into a form of pantheism. He concludes with Bernard of Clairvaux: ‘[O]f one thing he [Bernard] is certain. Moral advance is impossible without the vision of God in Christ; and moral stagnation is a sure sign that, however much we claim to know God, our claim is empty and void.’ 32
Continuing the story of monasticism, the penultimate lecture sees a variety of influences undermining the danger of the double standard, and thus positively placing the vision four-square before all. The rise of the mendicant orders in the twelfth century and then the advent of visionaries, including Bridget of Sweden, Hildegard of Bingen and others, was followed by the consolidated writings of the Austin Canons of St Victor. The balance swung back to include the secular life, and both Hugh and Richard of St Victor produced ordered and disciplined thought in relation to the vision. Their emphasis shifted from Bernard’s naturalism towards the person of Christ. It was from this school effectively that the Angelic Doctor himself would emerge. Building on their work, Aquinas evolved a new humanism/naturalism of an ‘otherworldly’ pattern. Aquinas sees contemplation as a total focus on God but set within a framework of reason; at the heart lies the mystery of the Eucharist. Following Aquinas, and the subsequent decline of Scholasticism, Kirk moves directly to the fifteenth century, to Thomas à Kempis and the impact of the imitatio. He points to the influence of this tradition on the conversion of St Ignatius Loyola (which he admits in comparison with other similar accounts is more than a little subfusc); indeed, Kirk quotes the droll observation of Ferdinand Cavallera on Ignatius – within Ignatius himself ‘something of the Sancho Panza as well as of Quixote’ resided. 33 Nonetheless, Ignatius’s contribution to the project here was critical. The exercises, as Kirk puts it, ‘ring with the name of Jesus from beginning to end’. 34 Ignatius, then, magnifies the focus – and crucially in terms of the vision of God. He saw that the life of service, to which he was so clearly committed, must be the fruit of an inner communion with God. Completing this penultimate lecture with reference to the contribution of St Francis de Sales, we are then directed to the final lecture, which he titles ‘Law and Promise’.
Both Reformation and Counter-Reformation, in their own ways, played down contemplation, Protestantism focusing instead on prophetic or petitionary prayer and Catholicism showing suspicion of mystical prayer, despite the remarkable example of the Spanish Carmelites Teresa of Ávila and John of the Cross. Both streams of thought tended to press back towards the double standard in its invalid form, challenging the primacy of the vision of God. Kirk then investigates the unselfishness or otherwise of the desire ‘to see God’. In examining this he argues that the vision must be corporate. Using Dante’s picture in the Paradiso of the Divina Commedia, we are directed to the final vision of the ‘great rose of God’. We read of the host gathered in the great rose: And all their faces were of living flame and of gold their wings; for the rest they were all white beyond the whiteness of snow … This realm of security and joy, peopled by folk alike of old time and new, centred its looks and its love upon one mark alone. O threefold light, whose bright radiance, shed in a single beam upon their eyes, doth so content them, look hither down upon our storm-tossed lives.
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But the key here is a matter of attitude to not experience of worship. Such a doctrine is rooted, as we saw from the beginning, in pureness of heart, as in the Matthean Beatitudes. Both there and in Romans 12, it is a focus on attitudes or effectively on virtues that lies at the heart, thus tending towards disinterestedness. The spirit of worship, then, is no ‘remote prize’ but an actual endowment potentially there in all people. But this requires – and indeed this is crucial to Kirk’s argument – that we should study ‘the nature of God as revealed in Jesus … then our thought moves naturally upon lines akin to those discernible in the thought and speech of Jesus’. 37
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It could be argued that Kirk’s Vision of God is the single most significant essay on moral theology written by an Anglican in the twentieth century. At the heart of this claim would be its determination to reverse the trend towards codification through any one of the different rule-based ethics on the market. Unashamedly and powerfully, the vision of God and the priority of worship are asserted. In doing this, there is a prophetic element in the argument, since throughout the book we are directed to attitude rather than some form of Pelagian self-discipline, winning our way to divine perfection: so, in all this, it is effectively a prolegomenon to virtue ethics, which, since the advent of Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue, 38 has once again taken pride of place. But Kirk’s argument also directs us towards an integrated vision of theology, where moral, ascetic and doctrinal thought coalesce within one context.
The argument is impressive, too, for its extraordinary range of reading and hinterland. Kirk’s grasp of the New Testament scholarship of the time is remarkable, and his recognition of the importance of psychology in relation to morals is pioneering in this field. The writing itself is beautifully conceived and a pleasure to read.
Kirk has not, however, been without his critics. Already we have seen that his desire to embrace the Caroline tradition is undercut by his single-minded Thomist focus. Furthermore, his other two key volumes on moral theology show a more constrained approach, rooted in casuistry: the dangers of formalism in those works persists. Also, it is not clear that he has brought these two strands together, and that is crucial if we are to understand his complete pattern of thought.
Oliver O’Donovan poses different questions to Kirk’s legacy, notably on conscience and casuistry.
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But he also takes a tilt at The Vision of God, playing down Kirk’s emphasis on worship
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and implying that there is no clear focus for the vision. Already, however, we have seen how firmly Kirk stresses the vision of God as revealed in Jesus Christ: ‘He gave us a vision of God where others could only speak of it.’ David Smith, in his perceptive introduction to the 1999 reissue of Conscience and its Problems, offers a far more measured approach. He notes: Kirk’s own major concern, of course, was with the Christian tradition and Christian worship. Formal Christian worship he thought could consistently provide a reorientation of the self. Moreover he stressed the necessity for Christians to supplement communal worship with study of the life of Jesus and daily meditations based on the Gospels.
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This emphasizes again the uniqueness of Kirk’s achievement. Perhaps the next key contribution might be a fully edited version of the abridged edition of The Vision of God, 45 responding to some of these critical questions and using some of the critical apparatus that overwhelms the complete edition.