What happens when big brains meet in Oxford to talk about the Church Fathers.

Church mice are such appealing characters, appearing as they often do in whimsical tales about the vestry or rectory. Have you ever heard of a “church rodent?” This is not some morph of the former into the latter by virtue of scientific categories; it is rather a means to explore church history that is lively–sometimes racy --and accessible. It is a website, Church-Rodent, with hundreds of entries where in minutes you can become an expert on everyone from Arius to Zinzendorf. Try it--it’s fun!

The Oxford Patristics Conference is not fun, not accessible, not for the faint of heart. It is about serious scholars who read at least Latin and Greek, plus some German and French to communicate with fellow scholars, and a dash of Syriac, Aramaic, or Coptic for good measure. You’ll see long black robes and beards to match, simple clerical collars, a growing number of women contributors, and lots of cool GAP. So why even go there?

One of the men in black with a white beard says that early Christian history is terribly relevant to the contemporary Anglican scene. That is the opinion of the Most Reverend Dr. Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, whose invitation to give the inaugural lecture reflects the high regard with which he is held as a longtime organizer and contributor to the conferences and as a senior patristics scholar.

Just what is “patristics?” A branch of theological study, it engages with the Church Fathers who wrote after the completion of most of the New Testament books near the end of the first century, up to the close of the eighth century. Their authority on doctrinal matters carried special weight particularly during the Christological debates of the fifth century. The International Conferences on Patristic Studies held in Oxford since 1951 and continuing at four year intervals have been seminal in the establishment and development of this discipline. The long-standing trend away from strictly confessional and sacramental institutionalism to more purely scholarly pursuits has quickened with the growing representation from religious studies departments in secular universities. A highly pluriform field of research, patristics embraces such disciplines as biblical studies, critical theory, feminism, iconography, law, philosophy, sociology, spirituality and theology.

The Fifteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies met in Oxford from August 6 to 11. A record gathering of scholars and presenters numbered near 900-strong. The publishers’ exhibit of their new books was a favourite spot to browse, dream, chat and refresh with tea and biscuits.

Across High Street from the Conference and down a few blocks was the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin. It was here in the high pulpit, installed in this 13th-century parish church in 1827, that Archbishop Williams delivered his lecture, “‘Tempted as we are’:

Christology and the Analysis of the Passions.”

The church was bursting with patristic pilgrims: Americans, British, German, Italian and French predominated, with a surprising representation from Japan and Korea, and a sprinkling of scholars from Egypt, Greece, Russia, Latvia, Bulgaria, Georgia and Poland.  On this hot evening some of us Canadians  sat crammed in our pews awaiting the address, discussing whether the Archbishop would make some reference to his predecessors, the famous Oxford martyrs Latimer, Ridley, and Cranmer who were tried for heresy in this church in the mid-1550s before being burned at the stake. He began with asking our indulgence, that if his views did not satisfy the Conference standards of orthodoxy that he not be dragged out into the streets after the manner of Archbishop Cramner [595].

Yet however much the idea of orthodoxy and heresy trials evoked laughter from Williams’ eager audience, it was not without its heavy ironies. In a sense this Archbishop is on trial in the global Communion. This is his great peirazmos, his moment of testing. His admirable quality of humility and preference for collegial decision-making notwithstanding, he is called to decision, not in the context of an academic conference where interpretations bend and stretch under the strain of many readers, and where all of us like Alice-in-Wonderland’s Humpty Dumpty make words mean what we wish. Standing in the place of Cranmer, Wesley, Keble, Newman and C. S. Lewis before him, Williams the historian and poet could not but be struck by this moment.

If the crisis within the Communion were but an instance of the Menippean satire or carnivalesque discussed in the lecture, then these polar tensions could develop into illustrations of narrative truth. As it is, we are left with Adam in the garden and Jesus in the desert, both experiencing hunger and the temptation to eat from an illicit source. Williams scrupulously tracks these scriptural events in Tertullian, Origen and Evagrius Ponticus and notes: “Get this wrong as Adam did and results follow; get this right as Christ did and results follow.” “What happens when we give way under peirazmos?” Williams asks. Our mode of perception is skewed and we can’t see perfectly. Nothing is real in the elaborate scenarios we construct, Williams notes.

Yet surely there was not a multiplicity of competing paths for the actors in the garden and desert. We may need to put forward more than what Williams terms our “moral vulnerability,” however important such personal transparency is. Ambivalence and ambiguity lack muscle and are conspicuously absent in the enduring meta-narratives of Scripture. How will the Archbishop apply his meticulous study of Christ under trial to a Communion in crisis?