Alexandrian Christianity: Then and Now
New Camaldoli Hermitage: Big Sur
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without
Love
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the
dancing.
–T.S. Eliot, “East Coker” Four Quartets
The earliest forms of Christianity emerged from the matrix of the Jewish Tradition, but Christianity, within a generation, encountered the Classical world. The much larger and more cosmopolitan ethos of Classical thought and culture was neither rooted nor grounded in Jewish religious thought, but such a civilization was deeply spiritual and religious. This meant that when Christians encountered the Classical world, they could not appeal to Jewish thought (which was largely foreign to such a civilization). The journey, then, of Christianity from Jerusalem and Palestine outside such an enclosed form of religion meant Christians had to speak their faith to a form of religion that was deeply contemplative, spiritual and religious but not Jewish.
Alexandria was, in the first few centuries of the Common Era, noted for its diverse cultures, pluralistic religions and crossroads where different forms of spirituality met one another. Alexandria had one of the largest libraries in the ancient world, one of the fullest diasporic Jewish communities (the Septuagint and Philo called this creative place home) and it was a vibrant centre in which Stoicism, mystery religions, Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, Judaism, Egyptian cults, middle Platonism, Taoism, Zoroastrianism, Yoga, Gnosticism, early forms of Christian desert spirituality and Christian thought and culture encountered one another on a daily basis.
In fact, Alexandria was one of the most vibrant centres and cities of Christianity from the 2nd to the 5th centuries of the Common Era. Pantaenus (120-200), Clement (150-215) and Origen (184-254) embodied, in their life and writings, a form of contemplative theology and philosophy that embraced the finest and most probing insights of the wisdom traditions of the East in their deeply meditative forms of Christianity. This was not a Tertullian’s “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem, What has the Academy to do with the Church?” form of Christianity. Alexandrian Christianity was much more about contemplative Christians finding those points of concord and dialogue between Christianity and the “logos spermatikos” in the best of all religions and spiritual philosophic traditions.
More than three decades ago I tracked and traced, in my graduate studies, the impact of Pantaenus, Clement and Origen on the deeply contemplative lives of Anthony the Great (251-356), Evagrius (345-399) and Cassian (360-435). It was the Alexandrian church that birthed the renewal life of Anthony (and those who followed in his unique and meditative footsteps). It was the lives of such saints that both transformed the church and world in a substantive and responsible manner. This was not the thin and vapid, amateurish and house league forms of spirituality and Christianity that dominates so much of Christianity these days.
It was this creative, nuanced and refined type of Christianity in Alexandria that drew those with restless hearts, those thirsting for the waters of eternal life. Pantaenus, Clement, Origen and the larger church in Alexandria had the unique ability to hear and heed the deeper longings and life questions of those who lived in or visited Alexandria with thoughtful and insightful responses. There was, in brief, a mature contemplative wisdom tradition that permeated the souls, minds and imaginations of the Alexandrian church that can, if heeded well and wisely, address the more thoughtful in the church and society today.
I mentioned above that Alexandria was a cultural and religious crossroads of sorts. Most of the major and minor religious of the then known world could be found in Alexandria. The spiritual hunger that was part and parcel of Late Antique thought has many an affinity with our post-Christendom and post-scientistic (rationalist) western culture and civilization. In fact, the contemplative vision of Late Antique Alexandria and Alexandrian Christian has many a point of overlap with the longings of many today who are in search of a deeper spiritual vision to live by. We can, in short, learn much from the contemplative approach to religion that existed in Alexandria and Alexandrian Christianity in our age where is a definite quest for depth of insight on our all too human journey.
My wife (Karin) and I spent a week at the New Camaldoli Hermitage in Big Sur/California the 2nd week of April 2016 (we have spent time there before). New Camaldoli Hermitage is perched high on a rocky ridge above the Pacific Ocean gazing, as it should, to the West (where the sun finally sets). The spiritual pilgrims of Cascadia (Northwest culture in BC, Washington and Oregon) and Big Sur (California) have a decided hunger for depth. Many turn to various forms of Eastern spirituality, Zen, 1st Nations, Sufism, Tibetan Buddhism to slake such a thirst and hunger, and this is quite understandable, given the fact that the Western Church has tended, for the most part, to marginalize its contemplative history. But, to the credit of the many monks at New Camaldoli, the contemplative core of Christianity is front and centre. Bede Griffiths, Bruno Barnhart, Robert Hale, Thomas Matus, Cyprian Consiglio and many others incarnate, in their life and writings, a form of communal and contemplative Christianity that thoughtfully, and in an informed manner, engages the diverse forms of spirituality that thrive and flourish in Cascadia and Big Sur. It was a delight for Karin and I to meet with the monks who have pondered, in much depth and detail, the relationship between contemplative Christianity and the contemplative forms of others religions in the area. The ongoing dialogue between religion and science was more than worth the heeding. The liturgical life of the community was the food that nourished one and all.
If Christianity is ever going to renew and recover in any meaningful and mature manner, there will need to be a turning from the addiction to the centuries long drug of the vita activa to the more transformative vita contemplativa–Alexandrian Christianity and the New Camaldoli tradition can certainly, if entered and heeded well, teach us much about contemplative waiting, attention and the deeper meaning of, hope, faith, love and meditative thinking of a more contemplative and listening nature.
There is an obvious sense that the New Camaldoli Hermitage in Big Sur stands, for the most part, in the line and lineage of Alexandrian Christianity. Those who lower their buckets ever deeper into the contemplative well of historic Christianity will soon discover that this is neither New Age nor liberal Christianity—it is, in fact, Christianity at its fount and centre, living and animating those who dare to make the trips to a place in which Alexandra still lives, thrives and draws many.
Ron Dart