A Rule of Life
Problems, possibilities, and the danger of writing in spiritual formation
I have been in the conversation about spiritual formation for about 30 years, and have been writing and teaching in it for the past 18. As I think about how these sorts of conversations develop in the church, I want to bring a sort of warning. It is easy to get stuck in a kind of echo-chamber with these things, that we allow a kind of laziness to run rampant. I don’t love doing this, but I find the need to call out some of this from time to time. For the greater health of the conversation, we have to be honest.
In keeping with my quest to be slow to the uptake on controversies and debates on social media, I want to reference a curfuffle that took place on substack a while ago. It started with Erik Coonce’s post over at Mere Orthodoxy about the relatively new emphasis of establishing a rule of life. His critique has been met with several responses, but I find things I agree with among all of the folks commentating. I say this as someone who has both taught and written on developing a rule of life, and is planning something soon on my substack about a rule of life (more about this in the near future). Overall, I am a fan. But I have worries.
My first worry doesn’t apply to everyone who talks about developing a rule of life, but definitely a lot. I worry about how little our views actually track with the tradition we claim we got them from. There is, it seems to me, less honesty about what these are. I don’t think that anyone is trying to deceive, just so I’m clear, but there is a kind of laziness that has surrounded this term in particular.
I’m happy to use the term “rule of life” today, and I’m even fine with folks using it the way it tends to get used. But let’s be honest that we’ve taken a technical term and emptied it entirely of its content to use for our own purposes. There is nothing wrong with doing that, so let’s just be honest about it. What worries me is when I hear folks throwing around comments like, “A rule of life is how ancient Christians organized their life.” No it isn’t. That isn’t a thing.
There is also a tendency to just point to St. Benedict, but he was a late-comer to that conversation. Like many figures in church history, St. Benedict was more of a synthesizer of an already established tradition but became the only one remembered for writing a rule. There were several important rules written before his [for a one-stop overview, that is characteristically well done, read this by my friend Greg Peters].
But leaving aside the historical inaccuracies that abound, there is a deeper problem. In many ways, what folks mean when they say “a rule of life” today, is actually the opposite of the tradition they are supposedly trying to recover. It isn’t only that small details differ, but the entire purpose, goal, and structure are opposed to the historic vision.
The whole point of a rule was that you weren’t the one who created it. You submitted to it. The rule wasn’t organized around an individual’s life, but around a specific calling that was embedded in pre-set vocation. This is why it isn’t true to say that “the ancient Christians” used a rule of life. Only monks did. It wouldn’t have even been seen as appropriate for those living out a “secular” vocation.
Keeping in mind I am using a very broad brushstroke here, trying to reveal contrasts, and there are counter-examples (one which I will consider below), but consider how different many new versions of a “rule of life” is to the ancient:
New rules are based on individual desires, callings, and passions; old rules were based on a singular vision of life to be submitted to.
New rules are under the authority of the self (no doubt seeking to follow the Lord, but the self is often the authority over which the rule is determined); old rules were under the authority of another (who had actual authority over your life).
New rules start with the reality of one’s actual life, and ways to reorganize that into a new sort of life that is given shape by how a person understands their individual calling; old rules were for the sake of learning obedience to an ancient model of a distinctively religious life.
New rules tend to be individual; old rules were (more often than not) communal (I’m thinking here not only of Pachomius’ Rule but Augustine’s Rule and also Basil the Great’s Asketikon - both versions!).
There is nothing wrong with the new rules of life. I like them. I think we should help folks navigate the messy reality of discerning their calling and situating their lives in light of that. I think we should give people a better sense of expectation at what the Christian life is like in this present evil age, and I think churches should help them do it. But whatever that is, it isn’t like what we used to call a “rule of life.”
Beyond semantics, I think it is important to reimagine how the tradition did things and accept the fact that it will inevitably look different in our content for people in a modern world who are not monks! This is why I worry about people saying things like, “ancient Christians lived this way.” It plays on the evangelical desire to believe that there is a pre-baptized era of history that if we only mimic we can get life figured out. Whether that is the New Testament era, the desert fathers and mothers, or the 1950s, there is a weird tendency to try to freeze-frame a certain era rather than wrestling through walking with the Spirit today.
A good example of embracing a rule of life in light of today’s reality is Peter Scazzero, who talks about using a rule of life for individuals and families applying for membership at their church. A congregant wanting to become a member would walk an elder through their rule of life and receive push-back from an elder. Typically, he wrote (if I recall correctly), the elders would most often point out how the congregants were taking on too much, and how rest was not a part of their life. That is really interesting. It recognizes the communal nature of a rule of life and the necessity to discern how one’s own calling needs to give shape to a life.
The reason I talk about a rule of life is simply because I think it is a helpful construct to think well about one’s calling. In the tradition there is a tendency to see the monastic calling as the most significant, and everything else is viewed as lesser. So the average person wouldn’t have a rule of life and could, at least in certain eras, outsource their spirituality to the professionals. I find the construct helpful because I think it can be a meaningful way to discern, with others, what I am called to and how I can live into that calling.
What I like most about it, perhaps, is the acknowledgement, up front, that we do have unique callings (even if they are not entirely unique). The uniqueness of our calling and circumstances demands differing rules of life based on the vows I have taken, the circumstances I am in, and the calling I have discerned. For instance, I believe I am called to be a teacher and preacher in and for the church, and so my life has to take on a certain shape to live that out faithfully. While we are all called to wisdom and love, the way I go about seeking knowledge for the sake of that wisdom and love will look different from many other callings, with different familial, financial, and ecclesial responsibilities.
This leads to perhaps a harsher critique. The spiritual formation conversation is in great danger because of what counts as doing spiritual formation today. There is a real temptation to offer what is easy and what is cheap, rather than doing the hard work personally and intellectually to teach well. It is easy to talk about spiritual disciplines and to just quote interesting things, without actually embracing a life of wisdom and of love. Modern publishing - removed from the life of the church - cannot really ask questions about patience, knowledge, and the kinds of qualifications we typically look for in elders.
The danger today is that it is relatively easy to talk about the spiritual life without giving oneself to it themselves. It is easier to talk about community than to serve for decades in the ministry of the church. It is easier to teach in public than to teach in a small community of faithful Christians seeking care and guidance. It is easier to herd crowds than to shepherd God’s sheep.
What does this have to do with a rule of life? The danger is not in the idea of a rule itself. The danger is not that we are failing to be faithful to the tradition (I’m not actually worried about that). The real danger is that we fail to shepherd.
Writing, speaking, and teaching in spiritual formation can never simply be passing on information about the spiritual life. It is always calling people to draw near, and then helping them navigate the difficult realities of life in the presence of God. That means you can never say, “this isn’t Pelagian,” or “this isn’t self-centered” or “this isn’t individualistic,” because of course it is. Everything God gives his people, from the Tabernacle, to the Temple, to manna, to sacrifices are used in the flesh and for the flesh, because that is what fallen humanity does.
This is why Paul writes, “O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you?,” only to go on a say, “Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?” We cannot merely point to a path and tell people to walk. We have to lead them into the presence of the Lord and then shepherd them in his presence. This means, that for those of us who teach, write, and lead in this area have to constantly hold open before others our own brokenness, our own failures, and our own temptations, and help others seek to see theirs. Of course people will take a rule of life and use it in the flesh. Only absolute naivety would assume otherwise. We have to shepherd souls in and through these things so that they do not remain that way.
In this sense, I worry that teaching and writing in spiritual formation today is not of the “ancient Christians” (or, sadly, even the historic saints of our own Protestant faith), but of the ancient sarabaites. Cassian narrates the three different types of monks he found in Egypt, not limiting his disdain for the third:
“There are in Egypt three kinds of monks. Two of them are very good, while the third is lukewarm and utterly to be avoided. The first is that of the cenobites, who live together in a community and are governed by the judgment of one elder. The greatest number of monks dwelling throughout Egypt are of this kind. The second is that of the anchorites, who are first instructed in the cenobia and then, perfected in their practical way of life, choose the recesses of the desert. We too have chosen to be part of this profession. The third and blameworthy one is that of the sarabaites.”
Before explaining the sarabaites a bit, just pause and consider the communal emphasis of Cassian’s claim. There were “hermits” in the desert, known as anchorites. But one doesn’t just waltz out to the desert and proclaim, “I’m going to be an anchorite.” You first learned monasticism under the rule of an elder who ruled over a community. You submitted to that elder’s judgment, guidance, and care. Only after you lived this way for many years, and with the elder’s permission, took on the other calling.
Cassian goes on to explain the sarabaites:
The sarabaites “do not submit to the judgment of the elders, nor are they formed in their traditions, and they do not learn to conquer their own wills; neither do they accept, as a result of some prescribed training, any rule of sound discretion. Instead, they only make a public renunciation – that is, in the sight of men – and either remain in their dwellings, bound to the same occupations, thanks to the privilege of this name, or build themselves cells and call them monasteries, living in them at liberty under their own law and never obeying the gospel precepts. They do this so that they might not be preoccupied with any concern for daily food or with any worries over domestic affairs.”
It shouldn’t surprise us, if we know our own flesh, that folks went out to the desert and began to look for a shortcut. It was hard work to become a sage - and to be known as an elder - and so it was just easier to start your own thing. Faced with the rigor of a rule of life, it was easier to just make a public declaration (“I DECLARE BANKRUPTCY!!!!” IYKYK).
We have to be really honest about how easy it is today to be seen as a sage. Maybe we don’t do this on Substack, but the bulk of evangelicalism equates the size and extend of one’s platform with holiness and insight. A platform is often equated with God’s anointing. The temptation to take shortcuts in growth, holiness, knowledge, and wisdom, not embracing a call but simply writing about it, is immense. There is a cheap counterfeit of depth on the market, that continually trades in exaggeration, faux-vulnerability, pop-psychology, and pop-sociology, without the patient humility that wisdom requires. We often trade depth for what is cheap.
This is even easier, I think, with spiritual formation, that too often trades in cliche’s that vaguely point to “ancient Christian practices” without actually attending to who those ancient Christians were or what they were doing. I have no problem reaching outside of our own Protestant tradition, it is, in many ways, the Protestant way to affirm with Paul that we don’t simply grab into Peter, Paul, or Apollos, because in Christ they are all ours. But we must be honest about what we are doing, and we should have a profoundly Protestant vision of theology, spirituality, and church that governs and guides our vision for spirituality. Sadly, I rarely find this.
The danger with any recovery of an ancient practice is that it can easily get co-opted by this temptation. Nonetheless, I like much of the emphases I see when people talk about a rule of life, because I think we need to be thoughtful in consideration of our calling. But we don’t name the temptations enough. The idea of a rule of life cannot simply be tacked-on like I often see it tacked-on. It needs to be a part of the broader logic of our spiritual theology, because we are not called to make it up as we go.
There is a kind of package deal, we might say, between a rule of life, authority, and calling, keeping in mind that the broadest notion of calling is about life in the body of Christ. So to talk about a rule of life we need to talk about ecclesiology.
I like the emphasis on a rule of life, but I don’t like what often appears to me like a random buffet-line of spiritual practices that seem to have no inner-logic to them. All of these ancient practices abided by a deeply coherent vision of life. We have to do more than just excise the practice out of its context; we need to reimagine these things in the Spirit today.