Diary of a Theologian

The Fear of Old Men

I first read T. S. Eliot’s words when I was not quite twenty years old. “Do not let me hear of the wisdom of old men, but rather of their folly, their fear.” This (from “East Coker”) is not necessarily Eliot’s own view—Eliot was a master of putting multiple voices in a single poem. But it is an arresting view. Convention has us venerate the elderly for their wisdom. What convention overlooks is the danger, as age creeps along, that fear will overtake wisdom and turn it to folly.

What do “old men” fear? Ultimately it is belonging, which Eliot puts in reference to three objects: the fear of belonging “to another, or to others, or to God.” What might these be, these three flavors of fear?

For me, the first two can be read in terms respectively of marriage and friendship. A person might fear to venture into a new marriage, a new belonging to a particular person, “to another.” Our culture’s acceptance of nonmarital cohabitation functions, of course, as an accommodation to this fear of belonging to another.

To fear belonging “to others,” in the plural, is different, and usually stronger. It is the fear of making new friends as one’s old friends pass away, fear that, being old, one is extraneous and unable to “connect.” It is also, often, simple physical fear: of slipping on the ice, of losing one’s grip on the handrail, of being lost and unable to navigate an unfamiliar situation. Stay isolated and alone, and one need not face the risks of belonging to others. Which is to say that aging has its own inertia that shuns exposure and risk and prefers staying at home, staying ultimately alone.

Why would “old men” fear most of all belonging “to God”? It is, I think, because God is the ultimate outsider. God is not us and he wants move us outside ourselves. You can map this in terms of the Trinity. God created us in such a way that it is not good to be alone. He rises in front of us on the awful cross to make us turn our attention outward. And he resides in the ultimate future as an ever-present lure for us to venture something new.
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I could be entirely wrong about Eliot, but these lines speak ever more strongly to me as I get close to taking a long pilgrimage on a road that I have never walked. The closer I get I realize how much it would be true to say of me, “He has a lot of fears.” I do not know the extent to which I will be entrusting myself to others, but it is certain to be more than I can imagine. Furthermore, I fear facing what it means fully to trust myself to God. What do you do with fears? You face them, drag them out of the shadows and give them their names. Then you start walking.
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Out & About. Thus Sunday, March 20, I will be with St. Philip’s Church in Frisco, Tex.; the services are at 9 and 11:15 a.m. I am preaching on friendship as a spiritual discipline, and also, between services, teaching a class on friendship.

That same day at 5 p.m., the “Good Books & Good Talk” seminar will discuss The Children of Men by P. D. James. We meet at Church of the Incarnation in Dallas; entrance at the Visitor Center. Anyone who reads the book is welcome to join the conversation (others are welcome to come and listen).

On the Web. I was interviewed on the Ember Days, which were last week: https://www.foxnews.com/lifestyle/lent-ember-days-russia-ukraine-war . The reporter takes my final point, that one of the contemporary Ember Day themes is the ministry of reconciliation (a theme that is pressed upon us by the current war in Ukraine), and makes it the lede. But most of the article is a brief account of these days’ history and theology.

Creeds Holding Close

To hold the Prayer Book close is to embrace the creeds. A creed is a summary of essential Bible teaching; creeds come under the authority of the Bible. But they also serve us as guides to reading the Bible. Beginning students of the Bible would be helped by using the creeds as their guide to the Bible; more advanced students can then use the Bible to help interpret the creeds.

When I first started these posts on our need, at this time, to hold the Prayer Book close, someone on Twitter tried to start an argument (surprise!) by pitting the Prayer Book against the Bible. I refused to engage because the Prayer Book is suffused with Scripture; there is hardly a phrase in it that lack scriptural foundation. What is true of the Book as a whole is true to a supreme degree in the creed
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That we have the Nicene Creed was a close thing. A “latitudinarian” spirit being strong in the late 18th century, the 1786 proposal for the first American Book did not include it. But the first American Book of 1789 printed the Nicene Creed in the Holy Communion service after the Gospel. It, or the Apostles’ Creed, was to be read there, although it could be omitted if the creed had been said immediately before in Morning Prayer.

That same latitudinarian spirit is present in some current proposals for liturgical revision: they would remove the Nicene Creed from being something to be said at all Eucharists on Sundays and Major Feasts—the requirement in the Prayer Book. It is true that a recitation of the Nicene Creed was not done at Eucharists in many places in the first Christian millennium. But it has been our usage (with, until 1979, the Apostles’ Creed as an alternative). Our Prayer Book locks the Nicene Creed to the Eucharist apart from weekday celebrations on non-feast days.

Since the creed follows the sermon, it can provide a correction for whatever crazy things the preacher might have proclaimed. A dear (now departed) theologian friend, not an Episcopalian, marveled at this. He found the Episcopal Church remarkable, that the faith of the ages could be undermined or ignored or outright rejected in a sermon, and then everyone would rise up and say, “We believe in one God . . .” Another friend has told me that sometimes the first word of the creed should be, “Nevertheless”! This, I think, is an underappreciated strength of the Episcopal Church.
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The Apostles’ Creed is the ancient creed for baptism. Episcopalians extend that use by putting it in Morning and Evening Prayer. Every day, when we say those set prayers, we reaffirm the faith proclaimed at the baptismal initiation of Christian life.
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There is a third creed, the Athanasian, which is long and didactic. It is printed in the Prayer Book as a historical document but is never prescribed for use in worship. This is its first appearance in an American Book. It is stubbornly and charmingly pedantic, saying for instance: “yet ... there are not three incomprehensibles ... but one incomprehensible.” It lacks the authority of the Nicene and Apostles’ Creeds.
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To hold the Prayer Book close is to take the creeds seriously and to study them. When I was on staff at Saint Thomas in New York City, we organized a series of Evensong sermons on the creed, taking them more or less one line a week. I have written on them myself. They are worth whatever study we are able to give them.

Study, and also proclaim: the Apostles’ Creed daily, and the Nicene Creed weekly.
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Out & About. The next “Good Books & Good Talk” seminar will be at 5 p.m. on Sunday, March 20, on Children of Men by P. D. James. The book is quite different from the movie, and more theological (which, in my book, means better).