These weekly “People to Commemorate” posts are a kind of calendar for the commemoration of the saints, reproduced here from a Uniting Church Assembly document which can be found in full here. They are intended for copying and pasting into congregational pew sheets on the Sunday closest to the nominated date.

Images (where provided) are of icons by Peter Blackwood; click on the image to download a high resolution copy of the image.

Friedrich Schleiermacher, Christian thinker

Schleiermacher (1768-1834) was unquestionably the most influential Protestant theologian of the nineteenth century, so much so that he has been called ‘the father of modern Protestant theology’. The word ‘modern’ here is a technical term. It does not mean the latest, but rather is a synonym for, in this case, a new theological system made necessary by the widespread collapse of classical theology initiated by the human centred strictures of the European Enlightenment, which had reduced religion to the knowledge of God in terms of arguments for his existence, or more exactly, to natural theology and to morality.

To this end, Schleiermacher began his apologetic (‘apologetic’ is a positive word meaning ‘making a statement on behalf of’) endeavour by publishing a book he called “ On Religion, Speeches to its Cultured Despisers” (1799). Here, he attempted to win back the educated classes to a serious encounter with religion, which he defines as ‘a sense and taste for the infinite’, a foundation independent of all theological dogma. He contended that religion was based on intuition and ‘feeling’, by which he meant not subjective emotion but an experience of ‘absolute dependence’, the impact of the universe upon us in the depths of our being which transcends subject and object. In this respect, Schleiermacher wanted to affirm that although Christianity is the highest of the religions, it is not the only true one.

In 1809 he became Dean of the theological faculty in the newly founded University of Berlin. By this time he was recognised as a stirring and convincing preacher. From 1819 he was chiefly occupied with his most important work, “The Christian Faith”. The title is significant; not “The Doctrine of God”, since what is positively given in the world is the Christian faith as such. That is to say, for Schleiermacher you do not first have to decide about the truths or untruths of religion in general or Christianity in particular. Rather we find Christianity given as an empirical fact in history, and only then do we have to describe the meaning of its symbols.

When he explains why he thinks Christianity is the highest manifestation of the essence of religion, Schleiermacher says it is because Christianity has two defining characteristics. The first is what he calls ethical monotheism, namely a dependence on God as the giver of the law which reveals the goal towards which we have to strive. The second is that everything is related to salvation by Jesus of Nazareth. Since this One possesses the fully developed religious consciousness, he does not need salvation. So he qualifies supremely as being the Saviour.

The import of Schleiermacher’s theology is that he subjects Christianity to a concept of religion which at least in intent is not derived from Christianity but from the whole panorama of world’s religions. Two significant consequences follow from this foundation, both exemplifying what are essentially the presuppositions of Modernity. First, his method is always to move from the general to the particular, and second, he insisted that knowledge and action are consequences of religious experience; they are not the essence of religion. It is readily apparent how successful Schleiermacher has been since these principles continue to inform modern Protestant liberal Christianity, despite their being radically called into question by the prevailing theological concerns of most of the twentieth century.

Contributed by Bruce Barber

These weekly “People to Commemorate” posts are a kind of calendar for the commemoration of the saints, reproduced here from a Uniting Church Assembly document which can be found in full here. They are intended for copying and pasting into congregational pew sheets on the Sunday closest to the nominated date.

Images (where provided) are of icons by Peter Blackwood; click on the image to download a high resolution copy of the image.

Simeon & Anna, witnesses to Jesus

Simeon and Anna appear in the second chapter of Luke’s Gospel. Forty days after his birth and according to the Law, Mary and Joseph brought Jesus to the Temple in Jerusalem so the he might be named, and Mary could undergo the Rite of Purification of the mother.

When they entered the Temple, there were two people who recognised God’s son. Faith was not dead in Israel, there was still a remnant.

We are first of all introduced to Simeon. We are told he is a righteous and devout man who was waiting for God to deliver Israel. Luke tells us that Simeon had the Holy Spirit upon him and that he had been told he would not die before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. Therefore, the Holy Spirit had prompted him to come to the Temple because God’s Messiah had come.

Upon seeing Jesus, he took him in his arms and speaks a prophecy. This has become known as the ‘Nunc Dimittis’, from the first words of its Latin translation, ‘now dismiss’. Simeon was ready to die. He had seen the Messiah, God’s salvation.

Simeon was familiar with the scriptures and his insight flowed from this knowledge. He was referring to a passage from Isaiah about waiting for the restoration of Jerusalem; for the coming of the Messiah, the Christ, who God had promised. Jews of that time had taken the scriptural prophecies to mean that they, the Jews; either those who kept the Torah or those born Jews, would be saved, but they had not recognised that God spoke about him bringing salvation to the whole world, Jew and Gentile. In giving the prophecy of Simeon, Luke is letting his non-Jewish listeners know that Christ came to save all who believe. Simeon tells Mary that although the offer of salvation is for all peoples, it will not be received by everyone. Luke uses this theme throughout his Gospel.

The second person we meet is Anna. Anna means grace. She is called ‘Daughter of Penuel’. Penuel is the place where Jacob wrestled with the angel and means ‘I have seen Gods face, yet my life is preserved.’

Anna we are told is an elderly woman. She is either 84 years old or a widow for 84 years which would make her over 100 years old. She is described as a prophet and had given her life to prayer and fasting, both night and day. We are told she never left the Temple. Anna thanked God and then told everyone about the Messiah.

There is much we can learn from these two elderly saints. While the authorities carried on with their religious duties these two prayerful people recognised in Jesus that the Messiah had come to the Temple. Simeon tells us that the challenge of Christ causes people to reveal their true attitudes. Some will speak against the sign of God’s love, it searches their hearts, some will be scandalised by a salvation that can only be achieved by way of a cross.

Simeon can now depart this life in peace, but Anna wants everyone to know that the Messiah has come and had come for all who receive him.

Rev Peter Welsh

These weekly “People to Commemorate” posts are a kind of calendar for the commemoration of the saints, reproduced here from a Uniting Church Assembly document which can be found in full here. They are intended for copying and pasting into congregational pew sheets on the Sunday closest to the nominated date.

Images (where provided) are of icons by Peter Blackwood; click on the image to download a high resolution copy of the image.

Lesslie Newbigin, Christian thinker

The Right Reverend James Edward Lesslie Newbigin, CBE (1909-1998).

Newbigin was born 8 December 1909 in Northumbria (North Britain) to a devout Christian family. This was not a faith he shared, for during his time at boarding school he had “abandoned the Christian assumptions of [his] home and childhood.” This changed when he attended Cambridge University and became a member of the Student Christian Movement. At the end of his first year of study Newbigin spent his summer at a Quaker service center in South Wales, one that catered to the miners of the region. In the midst of the hardship he witnessed, Newbigin had a vision,

“a vision of the cross, but it was the cross spanning the space between heaven and earth, between ideals and present realities, and with arms that embraced the whole world. I saw it as something which reached down to the most hopeless and sordid of human misery and yet promised life and victory. I was sure that night, in a way I had never been before, that this was the clue that I must follow if I were to make any kind of sense of the world.”

Though a long quote, this vision became the central point of all that followed in Newbigin’s life and work.

Upon graduation from university, Newbigin became part of the SCM staff and here he met and married Helen Henderson (they would have three children). He would train for the ministry within the Presbyterian Church before becoming a missionary to India (1936). He served as a “district missionary” in Kanchipuram for the period of WWII and was instrumental in working towards the creation of the Church of South India. In 1947, he was appointed Bishop of Madurai and Ramnad.

Newbigin was instrumental in the ecumenical movement, working as General Secretary of the International Missionary Council (IMC) and drafter of many ecumenical statements. He was responsible for overseeing the integration of the IMC and the World Council of Churches (WCC). At the conclusion of his secondment to the WCC, Newbigin returned to India, and served as the Bishop in Madras until his retirement in 1975.

After returning to England, Newbigin taught theology of mission and ecumenical studies along with Hinduism at Birmingham University. He transferred his ordination to the United Reformed Church, and in 1980-88 became the minister of the URC, Winson Green, Birmingham. This church had had no minister for 40 years and was housed in a building that had stood condemned for 30 years. The neighbours were from the Indian subcontinent and the West Indies, and the church stood opposite the gates of HM Prison Birmingham. This experience confirmed for Newbigin the missionary context of western society.

Newbigin was the keynote speaker and bible study leader at the first (and only) National Conference of Australian Churches held in Melbourne February 1960. 350 attended the 10 day conference and 175 participants (46% of the total number) were members of Methodist, Presbyterian and Congregational denominations in Australia. The conference signalled a renewed emphasis on the mission for the local congregation. In his closing remarks Newbigin stressed that the ecumenical encounter was, “for the sake of the gospel and the witness that you have to bear to the Australian nation.

The conference was timely and influenced the work of the Joint Commission on Church Union formed by the three denominations. The November 1962 report, The Church its Nature, Function and Ordering was a key document that led to the formation of the Uniting Church 15 years later. Members of the Joint Commission and participants in the conference included Alan Watson, J. F. Peter and John C. Alexander (Presbyterian), Frank Hambly, Hubert H. Trigge, and Bertram R. Wyllie (Methodist) and J. D. Northey (Congregational). Colin Williams and J. Davis McCaughey were also involved as conference members lived in at the 5 denominational colleges within the University of Melbourne. Harvey Perkins was conference secretary and with others continued to provide leadership in the ecumenical movement in the following decade.

Proposals for the united church included the recommendation that ordained ministers be named Presbyters, leadership to include bishops and that the consideration be given to forming a concordat with the Church of South India. It could be that Newbigin’s role as Bishop of the Church of South India contributed to this proposal. After further debate and consideration each of these proposals were not agreed to when the Basis of Union was adopted.

He initiated The Gospel and Our Culture Movement in the early 1980s, which would become better known as the missional church movement in the USA. Newbigin died in 1998, as one of the key and most creative ecumenical and missionary thinkers of the twentieth century. A prolific author, a good number of his books have stood the test of time, but if I had to recommend one as compulsory reading it would be his 1953 “Household of God.”

Rev Dr John Flett / Dean Eland

These weekly “People to Commemorate” posts are a kind of calendar for the commemoration of the saints, reproduced here from a Uniting Church Assembly document which can be found in full here. They are intended for copying and pasting into congregational pew sheets on the Sunday closest to the nominated date.

Images (where provided) are of icons by Peter Blackwood; click on the image to download a high resolution copy of the image.

Andrei Rublev, person of prayer

Very little is known for certain about the life of Rublev. The date of his birth is probably between 1360 and 1370. It is recorded that he died 29/1/1430, though even that is questioned. He was a Russian Orthodox monk, and it was the custom for iconographers to sign their work only as “A Monk of the Eastern Church”. Attention was to be focused on the subject of the icon, and not who painted (or wrote) it. Only a very few particularly talented and significant iconographers were remembered by name and their work identified. Rublev was certainly one of these.

He appears to have lived most of his life in the Trinity-St Sergius Monastery near Moscow. He may have come from a family of artisans, as the name Rublev comes from “Rubel” a particular tool in Russia. There is a legend that he was shy and calm by nature. The first reliable record is dated 1405, when he painted icons and frescoes in the Annunciation Cathedral, which still stands in the Kremlin in Moscow. Most of his work was destroyed. Although we know little about Rublev himself, we know a good deal about the turbulent times in which he lived. Warring princes destabilised the country, weakening it and making it vulnerable to invasion by Mongols and Taters. Plague swept through Russia early in the fifteenth century, and it was a time of brutality and corruption.

Rublev rose above all this to paint works that are marked by simplicity and peace. His most famous icon is the Old Testament Trinity, which is also adjudged by many as the greatest icon ever painted. It was done about 1410, and has a story of its own. Icons were protected by a finishing treatment of olipha (basically linseed oil), which darkened over time, and which, together with soot from candles and general dust and dirt, meant that a century after they were painted they were obscured. Rublev’s Trinity was over-painted several times in an attempt to preserve it, but eventually it was discarded.

In 1905 new techniques for cleaning old icons were developed, and some restorers happened upon this old board. A small test strip revealed exquisite work and it was sent to Moscow, where it lay until the revolution. In 1918 the first Minster for the Arts in the Communist government had it restored to its present condition and hung it in the Tretyakov Museum in Moscow, where it still resides, with several other undisputed works of the master. Apart from technique, the work of Rublev reveals deep insight into Orthodox theology and devotion. This is brought out in the film of his life made by Tarkovsky in 1966. The film was immediately suppressed by the Soviet Government, but was shown to great acclaim at the Cannes Festival of 1969. A censored version was then allowed into the Soviet Union, but it was cut even further for the American market in 1971. The version now available is disjointed, but shows Rublev as a man of prayer, deeply affected by the chaos of his time, and only rising to greatness after much suffering.

The Trinity icon depicts the Trinity as the three angels who appeared to Abraham at Mamre, and presents them as equal, bound together in a community of love. There is a space at the table so that person praying before this icon can be included in the life of heaven through the Eucharistic chalice that sits on the table.  This divine energy cannot be shaken, no matter what disasters may occur on earth. Surrounding all is God’s peace and light and life.

by Rev Dr Rob Gallacher

These weekly “People to Commemorate” posts are a kind of calendar for the commemoration of the saints, reproduced here from a Uniting Church Assembly document which can be found in full here. They are intended for copying and pasting into congregational pew sheets on the Sunday closest to the nominated date.

Images (where provided) are of icons by Peter Blackwood; click on the image to download a high resolution copy of the image.

Alan Walker, faithful servant

Born in Sydney in 1911 the eldest of two boys, he was proud of the Walker heritage. John Joseph Walker was sent to Australia in the early 1800s as a convict, as was a young woman Ann Gill who became his partner. Their son John was an unruly young man but was converted through a Methodist preacher in 1838. He joined the local Methodists and began to preach. Alan’s father was an evangelist and he responded to his father’s appeal to people to give their lives to Christ at a service at the Boolaroo Methodist Church. He became the youngest student ever to be admitted to theological training in 1930. Due to the financial situation he had to pay his way, which he did through a profitable fruit and vegetable run.

He did well at theological college and asked to do university studies at Sydney University which he did while serving brief terms at Hornsby, Croydon and with the Young People’s Department. Some key lay people at Croydon recognised his potential and offered to send him to England for a year to gain experience in ministry with leading ministers there. He was about to get married but they agreed he could take his new wife if he raised the cost of her fare. He was given a one-way fare and living expenses for three months. After that he was on his own financially. In 1938 he was enabled to spend time on the staff of each of the leading mission churches throughout the country. He was impacted especially by the ‘big three’ of English Methodism, namely Sangster, Soper and Weatherhead. During this time he went to Europe, witnessed a Hitler rally in Germany, and attended a Faith and Order congress in Switzerland where he met William Temple.

On returning to Australia he was appointed to Cessnock, a coal-mining town. He learned to understand the people and community he served, he made use of the mass media of radio and newspapers, as a pacifist he had to cope with controversy, and he developed links with the Trade Union movement. During this time he gained a master’s degree in sociology published as Coal Town: A Sociological Survey of Cessnock. Next he was appointed to Waverley.

There he continued to develop his media ministry, built a community centre with a range of programs and the congregation grew. He was chosen to represent the Methodist Church at the first assembly of the World Council of Churches in Amsterdam in 1948 and the Australian government at the United Nations in New York in 1949.

He was asked to head up the Methodist Church’s “Mission to the Nation” which was launched in April 1953 in the Melbourne Town Hall. He travelled the nation speaking to huge crowds and attracting a great deal of media attention. A National Christian Youth Convention was held in January 1955 as part of the Mission to the Nation. He was then invited to the US to serve the Board of Evangelism of the Methodist Church for a year in 1956. This was followed by becoming visiting professor of evangelism at the Boston School of Theology for a semester and then returning to Australia by ship via Europe and the Suez Canal.

In 1958 he began as superintendent minister of the Central Methodist Mission in Sydney. He emphasised worship, social witness and evangelism as he sought to minister not just to the congregations but to the city. He instigated programs such as Teenage Cabaret, College for Christians, Singles Society and School for Seniors. The television program “I Challenge the Minister” gained high ratings. Vision Valley conference centre was established. The most notable development was Lifeline, the telephone counselling service that became a worldwide movement. In 1970 he became President of the NSW Methodist Conference, which included conducting “Newness NSW” missions and the Valley Festival. He was constantly in the media speaking on social issues, most notably opposing the war in Vietnam and Apartheid in South Africa. He had many overseas trips speaking to different groups: to the US in particular but also memorable ones to Southern Africa.

After 21 years at the Mission he became director of World Evangelism for the World Methodist Council from 1978 to 1987. He and his wife Win literally travelled the world proclaiming his holistic gospel that held together the personal and social dimensions of the gospel. This is best expressed in his most important book, The Whole Gospel for the Whole World (published by Abingdon in 1957). He wrote over 20 books and numerous articles especially the Easter and Christmas editorials for the Sydney Morning Herald. At an age when most people are retired he established the Pacific College (now Alan Walker College) of Evangelism at North Parramatta and served as principal until 1995 when he finally retired. He is remembered as a powerful speaker and leader who proclaimed Christ, spoke out on social issues, and established Lifeline. He was an evangelist, a prophetic voice and a person with a pastoral heart who became one of Australia’s living treasures. His voice and life are heard today in the need to keep evangelism and social justice, personal and social holiness together, along with worship and pastoral care.

Contributed by Chris Walker

These weekly “People to Commemorate” posts are a kind of calendar for the commemoration of the saints, reproduced here from a Uniting Church Assembly document which can be found in full here. They are intended for copying and pasting into congregational pew sheets on the Sunday closest to the nominated date.

Images (where provided) are of icons by Peter Blackwood; click on the image to download a high resolution copy of the image.

Thomas Aquinas, Christian thinker

Thomas Aquinas was one of the greatest philosophers and theologians in the history of the Church. Born around the year 1225, he lived at a critical juncture in the flowering of Christian life and theology.

At the age of five, he was admitted into the Benedictine monastery of Monte Cassino where his studies began. Diligent in study, his teachers quickly noticed his meditative disposition and devotion to prayer. Indeed, even at this tender age, he would frequently ask his teachers “What is God?”

In his adolescence, he was transferred by his family to the University of Naples where he come into contact with the fledgling new religious movement of friars who combined the contemplative life of the monks with the active life of teachers and pastors. In particular, he was drawn to the life of the Order of Preachers, an order of friars recently established by St. Dominic. Over the protests of his family, he decided to commit himself to a life of prayer, study, preaching and teaching in the Order of St. Dominic.

His formation and study in the Order saw him come under the tutelage of St. Albert the Great whose interest in the re-emergence of the philosophy of Aristotle in the Latin West quickly rubbed off on his student. In these classes, Thomas’ humble silence was misinterpreted as dullness so much so that he was called the “dumb ox”. Albert, however, could see the genius of his student and proclaimed that one day the entire world will hear the bellowing of his teaching.

Having achieved his bachelors and raised to the priesthood, Aquinas began his tireless work of prayer, preaching, teaching and writing. Appointed to the Dominican house in Paris, Aquinas would twice occupy the chair of theology at the most prestigious of medieval universities, the University of Paris. Indeed, the university system itself as well as the friars movement were Church responses to the increased urbanisation of medieval Europe where more and more people sought a living in the merchant trade of the cities. During his teaching career, Aquinas became great friends with a shining light of the recently founded Franciscan Order, St. Bonaventure. Though they would have their academic differences, the two remained life-long friends.

Thomas’ writings over the course of his life were prodigious. Though he lived less than fifty years, he composed more than sixty works on Sacred Scripture, theology, ethics, politics, catechesis and spirituality. His greatest was the Summa Theologiae or ‘summary of theology’ wherein he treated of salvation history as the great unfolding of God’s truth and love in creation and its return through the grace of redemption wrought by Jesus Christ.

However, following a sublime mystical encounter in prayer, Thomas could see that human words were incapable of grasping the greatness of the truth, beauty and goodness of God. One must ultimately fall silent before the majesty of the divine. He put his pen down, the Summa remained unfinished and God called him to Himself a year later in 1274.

Brother Thomas Azzi

These weekly “People to Commemorate” posts are a kind of calendar for the commemoration of the saints, reproduced here from a Uniting Church Assembly document which can be found in full here. They are intended for copying and pasting into congregational pew sheets on the Sunday closest to the nominated date.

Images (where provided) are of icons by Peter Blackwood; click on the image to download a high resolution copy of the image.

Anthony of Egypt, reformer of the Church & First Desert Father

There are few more important figures in the history of early Christianity than Anthony of Egypt. By his actions as a desert anchorite he paved the way for the practice of Christian life to develop a genuine monastic ideal. Alone in his cell on Mt Colzim in the Eastern Desert of Egypt, inland from the Nile, he refined asceticism to the point where it became the template for all of monasticism in both Europe and Greece.

Born into a farming family on the Nile in 251 AD, in a village called Coma, Anthony embraced the ascetic life after an early encounter in his local church with a Gospel text that urged him to break with his material ways. “If you be perfect, go sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven” (Matt. 19:21). He received the calling and acted accordingly. At the age of 20, he chose to become a solitary living in a hut outside his village.

Thus began one of the most revolutionary lives in the history of Christianity. No man before Anthony has set such store in the practice of anchoresis (solitary life) and in metanoia (repentance or a turning-about). These became the touchstones of his life as an anchorite, firstly outside his village, later inside an Egyptian tomb for 25 years, and finally as a hermit on Mt Colzim for a period of more than 50 years. He ate little, slept even less and, over the years, turned himself into a ‘metanoic’ man.

His encounter with the mystical impulse was fulsome and unremitting. As St Athanasius, his great chronicler, remarked, he was capable of “going out of himself” and remaining in a state of ecstatic trance for long periods. At other times he experienced challenging battles with demons, which gave us the iconic motif of the so-called “Temptations of Saint Anthony” as depicted in so much of European art. Somehow he was able to overcome these bouts of accidie (spiritual boredom), which themselves were probably the remnants of the psychological taboos of the old Pharaonic religion of his time, in order to become a man of truly luminous statue in the eyes of his contemporaries.

His example made it possible for other men to embrace the anchoritic life. In the years following his death in 256 AD, thousands of men took to the desert up and down the Nile. These actions alone undermined Roman exploitation (through taxes) of Egypt, and the now outmoded Classical ideal then still in vogue in Alexandria. His simple premise that a man could lead an autarchic life in the middle of urban existence set the scene for the great monasteries of Europe to emerge as the founding ideal of early medievalism.

Great saints, such as Francis of Assisi, Ignatius, and much later Simone Weil in the 20^th century, sought guidance from his actions. Christ’s life now possessed a practical expression not so much in the value of good works, but in the search for a mystical alignment between a man and his God. Jesus was the intercessionary figure in this respect; but Anthony was his exemplar. Out of this man’s life a new society was born: one that owed its allegiance to no man save he who was prepared to dedicate himself to cultivating what Novalis called “the blue flower” of ascesis.

James Cowan

These weekly “People to Commemorate” posts are a kind of calendar for the commemoration of the saints, reproduced here from a Uniting Church Assembly document which can be found in full here. They are intended for copying and pasting into congregational pew sheets on the Sunday closest to the nominated date.

Images (where provided) are of icons by Peter Blackwood; click on the image to download a high resolution copy of the image.

Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa & Gregory of Nazianzus, Christian thinkers

The Cappadocian Fathers – Basil, brother Gregory Nyssen and friend, Gregory Nazianzen – dominated much of theological debate in the Eastern church in the latter part of the 4^th century. Basil was the somewhat ruthless church politician and organiser of much monastic life in the East, his brother Nyssen a second-rate bishop but possessing possibly the finest theological mind of them all, and the somewhat hapless Nazianzen making perhaps the most significant contributions to Trinitarian thought in the fourth century, at least as recognised at the time. The younger sister of Basil and Gregory, Macrina, was also a recognised theologian and is sometimes thought of as the fourth Cappadocian.

Basil (c.329-379) was born into a wealthy Cappadocian family. Though not himself drawn to the solitary life, he embraced the communal one and established guidelines for this based on prayer and manual labour. Basil attended the Council of Constantinople in 360 after which he became a fervent supporter of the Creed of Nicaea (325). While not as highly regarded as his friend as a theologian, his On the Holy Spirit and Contra Eunomium are read widely even today. He was an inveterate letter writer and three hundred of these are extant, indicating the esteem in which he and his writings were held.

Gregory Nazianzen (c.329-390) was a trained orator. His family were wealthy landowners and his father, a convert, became bishop of Nazianzus. While the son preferred the quiet and contemplative life, his father (and later Basil) preferred to employ him for their own ecclesiastical purposes. Basil ordained him in 372, against his will, as bishop of Sasima, a small but strategically well placed town; he spent little time there and soon returned home to Nazianzus to assist his dying father. In 375 he withdrew to a monastery for a time. In 379 a synod at Antioch asked him to go to Constantinople to aid the Nicene cause there. In 380 he became bishop of that imperial city. After the death of the Meletius, bishop of Antioch, he was elected to preside over the famous 381 council. His influence on the language of its great Creed is acknowledged. Towards its end, however, he came under attack from those who challenged his episcopate and resigned. He returned to Nazianzus and later to the solitude of Arianzum. He wrote much and was known in antiquity as ‘The Theologian’. His Five Theological Orations, particularly the Fifth on the Holy Spirit, are masterpieces of erudition and continue to be influential into the modern era.

Gregory Nyssen (c. 335-395), bishop of Nyssa from 372 to 376, was not a manager and organiser like his elder brother, but in modern times his value as a first-rate thinker is firmly established. Like Nazianzen, he was quiet and reserved, a scholar by nature. He worked early on as a rhetorician but came into ecclesiastical preferment under the guidance and direction of his brother. He was an original thinker influenced by both Origen and Plotinus the Neoplatonist. His work shows the influence of the latter tradition much more than does that of his two more illustrious [in his time] brother and friend. His very originality is what makes him so acceptable to modern eyes. His primary works, such as the Contra Eunomium – written against Eunomius of Cyzicus – and That there are not three Gods bear close reading even today.

Rev Dr David Rankin

These weekly “People to Commemorate” posts are a kind of calendar for the commemoration of the saints, reproduced here from a Uniting Church Assembly document which can be found in full here. They are intended for copying and pasting into congregational pew sheets on the Sunday closest to the nominated date.

Images (where provided) are of icons by Peter Blackwood; click on the image to download a high resolution copy of the image.

Richard Baxter, faithful servant

Richard Baxter, born in Shropshire in England on 12 November 1615, was one of the most learned and well-read divines of the seventeenth century. His family’s impoverished circumstances saw him brought up by his maternal grandparents until the age of about ten. It is in his Reliquiae Baxteriannae, or Mr Richard Baxter’s narrative of the most memorable passages of his life and times published posthumously in 1696, that Baxter reflected upon his upbringing.

Baxter’s mother Beatrice had died when he was just 15, and he was greatly affected by his father, Richard Baxter’s ‘serious speeches of God and life to come’. His father encouraged him to read, especially the Bible, and so ‘without any means but Books’ Baxter’s spirituality developed, and God was ‘pleased to resolve me for himself’. Baxter’s education was indifferent, and yet his keen intellect and application saw him acquire a great knowledge and understanding of theological debates and controversies. A constant regret throughout his life, however, was his ‘wanting’ of ‘Academical Honours’ as he was persuaded at 16 against attending university. Yet his wide and voracious reading of books and pamphlets over his lifetime nourished his intellect and debating skills. He amassed a personal library at the time of his death of no fewer that 1400 books.

Although ordained a deacon on 23 December 1638 at Worcester, there is no record of any subsequent ordination, however it is assumed he did enter the ministry. His impressive oratory style of preaching demonstrated his ability to gather and built congregations of like-minded Christians around him.

It was in the early 1660s that Baxter met Margaret Charlton (1636-1681), and corresponded with her on spiritual matters. They were married on 10 September 1662. Margaret Baxter would prove to be a driving force in Baxter’s life and ministry. During the civil wars in the British Isles 1642-9, Baxter had sided with the Parliamentarians, and although refusing an offer made by Oliver Cromwell to be a Chaplain of his troop in the New Model Army, Baxter later would act as a Chaplain for Edward Walley’s regiment. Even after the Restoration (1660), when he was prosecuted for sedition and briefly imprisoned, he maintained his beliefs and continued preaching, and was supported and encouraged in all of this by Margaret.

These life experiences further developed Baxter’s emphasis on morals and grace within his ministry, as well as his desire to seek unity amongst Christians of differing persuasions. Baxter also took great spiritual enjoyment and comfort from psalm singing. He was an advocate for the composition of hymns to enable congregational singing, at a time when only psalms were set to music. In Saints Everlasting Rest (1650) Baxter considered that ‘a singular help to furthering of the work of Faith’ was ‘to call in our Senses to its assistance’. His poem ‘Ye holy angels bright’, from his text ‘A Psalm of Praise’ from Poetical Fragments (c1681) was set to the music of the 136^th and 148^th psalms respectively from the early eighteenth century onwards.

Baxter’s life-long ill-health, which on a number of occasions saw him ‘expecting to be so quickly in another World’, influenced both his evangelical approach to his preaching and his pastoral ministry. He not only joined in common prayer, but also preached at home to those in his household including his neighbours. 

Baxter published some 130 volumes on varying themes ranging from the art of writing and preaching sermons, and religious instruction, to the study of religion. He received no income from his prolific publications, preferring instead to receive free copies that he then gave away. Some of his works continue to be reprinted today. When Margret died aged 45 in 1681 Baxter wrote A Breviate of the Life of Margaret Baxter (1681), which was a moving tribute about her life. Baxter died ten years later on 8 December 1691, aged 76, and was buried, like his wife, in Christ Church Greyfriars, London.

Dolly MacKinnon

These weekly “People to Commemorate” posts are a kind of calendar for the commemoration of the saints, reproduced here from a Uniting Church Assembly document which can be found in full here. They are intended for copying and pasting into congregational pew sheets on the Sunday closest to the nominated date.

Images (where provided) are of icons by Peter Blackwood; click on the image to download a high resolution copy of the image.

Nicholas Ferrar, deacon and person of prayer

Who was Nicholas Ferrar?

Nicholas Ferrar led a spiritual household at Little Gidding, Huntingdonshire, England for two decades. They were turbulent times: the godly stability of the community in the midst of religious strife commended it to many. It centred around Nicholas’ extended family of some forty, from babes to his elderly mother Mary. His siblings, John and Susanna, continued the community with their families for two more decades after Nicholas’ death, surviving the Civil War.

Nicholas was an academic prodigy: by 18 he was a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge. In 1613 he left England as part of the retinue of Princess Elizabeth, James I’s daughter, who married the Elector Frederick V. Over the next five years he visited the Dutch Republic, Austria, Bohemia, Italy and Spain, learning Dutch, German, Italian and Spanish, undertaking medical studies at Padua. Meeting Anabaptists, Roman Catholics and Jews broadened his perspective on Christian life.

The formation of the community came about in large part due to disillusionment with business and political life. His father supported the Virginia Company, which founded the American colony in 1607; Nicholas became involved in its administration on his return to London. In 1624 he was a Member of Parliament for Lymington, but a court case saw the Company lose its charter, and Nicholas’ brother John faced the threat of bankruptcy. The family decided to leave London and devote themselves to godly living.

In 1626 Nicholas and Mary purchased the manor in the deserted village of Little Gidding, as part of a deal to rescue John from debt, and were joined by others of the extended family. The abandoned church was cleaned and restored before the house! The renovated manor included an almshouse and dispensary. The Bishop of St David’s, William Laud (later Archbishop of Canterbury) ordained Nicholas deacon later that year.

There was no formal ‘rule’ (despite Puritan suspicions), but the household followed closely the provisions of the (1604) Book of Common Prayer. It processed daily to the church for Morning and Evening Prayer, led by Nicholas; hourly devotions were led by members in the house, based on the psalms and gospels. On Sundays local children were included, and taught psalms; preaching was by the local rector, and Holy Communion was celebrated monthly. In the afternoon, the family walked to Steeple Gidding for Evening Prayer.

The Little Gidding household lived a ‘full homely divinity’. It was active in educating and caring for local children, learning and practicing bookbinding. Harmonies of the Gospels were made by cutting up and pasting lines together, one being made for King Charles I. George Herbert, in his last days, sent Nicholas his poems collection, The Temple, telling him to publish it if he thought it might encourage “any dejected poor soul”: they are still in print, a spiritual literary treasure.

Nicholas died in 1637 on the day after Advent Sunday at 1am, the hour when he began his prayers. He was buried outside the church, leaving space for John to be buried inside, near the church door. (He is commemorated on 4 December, though he died on 2 December.)

S. Eliot honoured Nicholas Ferrar in the Four Quartets, naming one ‘Little Gidding’: its recurring motif, “if you came this way, it would always be the same”, evokes the sense of the eternal which its ‘homely divinity’ embodied amid the strains and stressed of the hectic world around.

The ‘Friends of Little Gidding’ was founded in 1946 with T. S. Eliot as patron, “to maintain and adorn the church at Little Gidding, and to honour the life of Nicholas Ferrar and his family and their life in the village.” The Friends organise an annual pilgrimage to his tomb each July, and celebrate Nicholas Ferrar Day on 4 December.

John’s descendants continued at Little Gidding manor for a century. When the line died out the manor was sold, and was demolished in the early 1800s. St John’s church continues to be in use for occasional services, and is open on weekends.

Resources for liturgical use

Service introduction

Nicholas Ferrar led a spiritual household at Little Gidding, Huntingdonshire, England for two decades during the turbulent reign of Charles I. Well-educated and well-travelled, he became disillusioned with business and political life, and in 1626 moved with his extended family to a deserted village, restoring the manor and church. The household of around 40 led a “full homely divinity”, following the Book of Common Prayer closely. Hourly devotions went alongside educating local children, book-binding and writing, and ministering to those in need. Nicholas, ordained deacon by Bishop William Laud, led the household until his death in 1637.

Sentence

How good and how lovely it is, when brothers live together in unity. It is fragrant as oil upon the head that runs down over the beard; fragrant as oil upon the beard of Aaron, that ran down over the collar of his robe.
Psalm 133.1-2

Prayer of the Day

Heavenly Father,
after whom every household in heaven and earth is named,
we thank you for your servant Nicholas Ferrar,
and the members of the Little Gidding community.
We bless your holy Name for their discipline of prayer,
their delight in the psalter,
their concern for the well-being of others,
and the spiritual treasures of their writing.
Give us grace to follow their simple lifestyle,
that the communities in which we dwell
may know your generosity and practical compassion,
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who though he was rich, yet became poor for our sake.
Amen.

Readings:      Proverbs 2.1-15
                        Psalm 15
                        Acts 2.44-47 or Titus 2
                        Matthew 5.1-15

by Charles Sherlock