Don't be Tozer
Why vocation is essential to the Spiritual Life
I’ve been a part of a Martin Thornton study cohort with Akenside Institute for English Spirituality for a little over a year now. In that time we’ve read Fr. Thornton’s Pastoral Theology and we’ve begun his Spiritual Direction –both essential works for Priests in the Anglican Tradition to be aware of. This week’s session left me thinking about those who dive head long into the Church’s ‘Spirituality’ or ‘Mystical’ Tradition without taking stock of themselves– often to the detriment of their faith and the shipwreck of souls.
But before all that, likely because the Charismatic Movement was my gateway into Christian Theology (see more about that here), it’s still difficult for me to think about these topics without recalling one man: Aiden Wilson Tozer. For those unfamiliar with the name, A.W. Tozer was a famous self-taught theologian and spiritual writer in the Christian Missionary Alliance. His most notable works being The Knowledge of the Holy and The Pursuit of God. Pastor Tozer is still so influential across denominational lines that today if you were to go to the Anglican Church in North America’s website and scroll down, it will not be long before you find a Tozer quote. Now what makes Aiden so remarkable is that his theological system was the product of copious ‘mystical’ works he consumed over the course of a very successful writing career. What others had learned through the study of dogmatics, Tozer acquired through the diligent reading of the great mystics. Anecdotally, I first learned of the “celebrated little work The Cloud of Unknowing”1 from Tozer well before I ever waded into the English Spiritual Tradition. His writing had Evangelicals –myself being no exception– micro-dosing on Catholicism without them realizing it. For this reason, no matter how far I’ve wandered from the Tradition that welcomed me with Baptism, I have continued to love ol Aiden.
Now, many are familiar with Tozer the mystic, but few are aware of Tozer the negligent husband. Ada, his wife, famously remarked after his death:
“Aiden loved Jesus Christ, but Leonard Odam [her second husband] loves me”
For those who have read Tozer’s work, this may come as quite the shock! How could someone so devoted to the love of God and his neighbor neglect something so basic as to cherish his wife who is –according to Fr. Luther– his closest neighbor? This is unsurprising to the great spiritual writers of the Christian Tradition, however. We should not be amazed in the least that a man who fed himself exclusively on the writings of Religious –those who cultivated a spirituality uniquely adapted to the celibate life– to find difficulty in marital holiness. The Cloud of Unknowing mentioned above, for example, is very clear that it is a manual for those who live within the contemplative and not the active life; for the Monk and not the Parish Priest or devout Layman. The infamous Ladder of Divine Ascent by St. John Climacus self-advertises the very same thing: it is a treatise on the Monastic’s way to Perfection. Throw a dart at any of the foundational books which make up a ‘Christian Mysticism’ shelf at your favorite bookstore, and chances are the book it lands on was not written for you. One does not have to look very far for the danger to become apparent: a husband and father cannot take a vow of poverty. A mother cannot take a vow of silence. Context matters.
But lest anyone think that the monastics inhabit their own higher sphere of Christian Spirituality, we ought to remember that the sword cuts both ways. The magnificent English Mystic St. Walter Hilton tell us:
They [laymen] in their worldly business flee many sins which thou [monks] if thou wert in their state shouldest fall in, and they do many good deeds which thou couldest not do.2
According to St. Hilton, there is just as much danger in the monastic attempting to emulate –or even judge– the secular. The monastic’s occasions for sin and piety are radically different. The layman may do many good deeds that the monk cannot, and the monk is not susceptible to the same temptations given his rule of life. How can the monk then provide spiritual counsel to someone when he is incapable of empathizing with his day to day temptations? How can he lead him in a spirituality which he has never learned himself? Hilton says that he can’t. Were the monk in the layman’s shoes, he would likely fail miserably for lack of experience. It is not a greater life, it is a different life. There is a divergence in vocation, and therefore a divergence in duty; it is spiritually detrimental to think that you can swap one for the other. The monk rises at midnight to chant the Office; the mother rises at midnight to comfort the crying child –and both meet God.
The muddying of vocation was directly responsible for much of the abuse in the Western Medieval Church so fiercely denounced by the Reformers. At one point the Church was plagued by a forced celibacy; now it is sickened by precisely the opposite extreme. Now there are no spaces afforded at all for any real kind of discernment. Instead, there is a weak active life coated with a thin ‘mystical’ veneer –sure this is palatable but that’s about it. Friends, this new abuse is just as destructive as the former. I understand that many are eagerly hoping to reconnect with Christian Spirituality, but Christian Spirituality is therapeutic. The medication must match the sickness (or lack thereof). You wouldn’t go to an optometrist for an ear infection.
This is not to say that there should not be ‘third orders’ or ‘oblates,’ but all know that these are not the same thing as a professed Religious life. Nor am I saying that only monks should be allowed to read certain spiritual texts. What I am saying is that the distinctions matter. William Law’s A Serious Call will be far more useful to the Active Life than St. Benedict’s Regula; Taylor’s Holy Living & Dying than St. Basil’s. “Obedience is better than sacrifice” we must recall (1 Samuel 15:22). Serving God the way He has asked you will always take precedence. I’m sure that Tozer lived a devout life, but it was not his life to live.
Perhaps many of you are called to be a monk or nun (by God I pray so!), and perhaps you are not. Whatever your calling, do that to the glory of Almighty God.
A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy, Chapter 2.
St. Walter Hilton, The Scale of Perfection, Chapter 17