Rewilding the Word #7

A Story

There was a boy, a native of Alexandria, Egypt, who lost his eyesight at the age of 4. History would come to know him as Didymus the Blind (313-398 CE). But for a man who could not see, he was among the greatest Christian biblical scholars and theologians of his time. He worked in the 4th century, which very few Christian centuries since then can match for the intensity and depth and range of original^[1] Christian thinking. About Alexandria, St. John Henry Newman (1801-1890)^[2] wrote:

Because Didymus lacked physical sight, he developed his memory prodigiously^[9]. So that as he heard read to him the Scriptures, and a vast library of theological books and biblical commentaries, he retained to startling degree both general and specific memories of all of them.
 
In our current American moment, we must consider what great harm has come to our first “power of soul”^[10] – memory – which we have failed to build, to train, and to colonize with images and thoughts truly worth remembering. Instead, we “look things up”, using search engines, or we go find what we are looking for in familiar books. We refuse to work at our memory. We give over a central power of soul to machines! And now we are given the opportunity to let A.I. find for us that which we have forgotten. How interesting, isn’t it, in a frightening sort of way, that we as a nation appear to be more and more susceptible to the onset of Alzheimer’s disease.^[11] We have been practicing for it for a long time!^[12]
 
He composed in his head, and then dictated to scribes, his own deeply learned books. And as with all the greatest teachers of the early Church^[13] (especially of the first six centuries), the study of the Old and New Testaments was the central task, the primary font of all theological and spiritual understanding.
 
What, I wonder, does Didymus, a blind man, “see” in Psalm 23, who may have never seen sheep or restful waters or shepherds at work with their flocks in the wilderness? Because of a discovery of his Commentary on the Psalms in 1941, we can find out.

A Reading: With Special Attention to Didymus the Blind

“he makes me lie down in green pastures” – Didymus notices how we – the sheep/ souls – are always on the move. Though this Psalm breathes serenity and “rest”, notice how many verbs of movement there are – “leads … renews … guides … walks … follow”. St. Ignatius of Loyola (1492-1556) wrote that Christ is always laboring and so we should be content to labor also.^[15] N.T. Wright^[16] remarks that from the moment of Christ’s death on the Cross, and then after His resurrection and ascension, the real work, the revolution that is the Kingdom of God finally and fully began. Didymus, emphasizing how the “sheep” are a metaphor for the human soul, wrote:
  
I can think of no better expression of Jeremiah 31 than Didymus’ image of the “portable house: virtue itself”.
  
A shepherd leads from the outside; virtue leads a person from his or her inside. The latter is the goal, what St. Ignatius of Loyola means by “always growing in devotion”, which is another way of expressing what he means by “finding God in all things.”

“he renews life within me” [or, “he restores my soul”] – Notice the unexpected shift here. We would assume that it is the “restful waters” and the “green grass” that “renews” or “restores” us. Not for the Psalmist here. It is the shepherd who accomplishes this. It is the way that the shepherd is; His personality in His leadership of us, in His care for us. Didymus argues that this Psalm describes a development of the soul from always needing to be attended to by God (Jeremiah 31:31 – “I took them by the hand to lead them”) – to becoming a soul so familiar with God and God’s ways that it can lead itself (virtue) – a soul now mature and deeply conformed to God. This is what it means to “walk in the paths of righteousness”. As Jesus insisted, “I do nothing on my own; I only do what the Father tells me.” Didymus explains:
  
St. Ignatius of Loyola teaches that the highest point of spirituality is familiarity with God, such that in all our thinking and doing and planning we, with St. Peter, could say, and mean:
 

“and for his name’s sake” – Notice this subtlety: the good shepherd acts as he does for the renewal/restoration of his sheep because of the kind of person he is. It is not that a shepherd is good because the needs of his sheep make him be the shepherd that they prefer! No, our needs before God do not make God be the way that He is. The shepherd is good in himself, who “already knows what you/the sheep need before you ask it.” Didymus remarks:
  
What a beautiful expression, and insight: “You have enlarged my heart and have given it breadth.” Notice how we did not or could not have asked this of the good Shepherd, because we did not know that we needed it. We asked for fresh water and green grass. But because the Shepherd is good, He knows what we need even when we do not know what we need.

An Action

My suggestion is for you to try an experiment, doing so in imitation of the life and work of Didymus the Blind. When next you go to a Church Service, through as much of that Service as you can practically maintain it, keep your eyes closed – make yourself blind. See how much you can see because you cannot see. What does your blindness make possible for you to notice, to learn, and to focus on? Do you notice how being able to see can cause you to miss so much?

^[1] “original” – What I mean here is that these thinkers thought about the meaning of Christ in ways that no one had yet thought. They did this because of the interest people had in that early period to know about “this Jesus Christ about whom we are hearing”. Also, they did this because they needed to learn how to “incarnate” the meaning of the God-Man within the culture of the Greco-Roman world, to make sense of this great Mystery of God and God’s way with human beings, to give reasons to those asking.
   
^[2] Newman was canonized a Saint on 13 October 2019, by Pope Francis I, in St. Peter's Square.
   
^[3] Newman here echoes the traditional belief that St. Mark, after the resurrected Jesus Christ had ascended to Heaven, deployed to the great city of ancient learning, Alexandria in the delta of the Nile River, building a Christian community there, which became one of the most famous centers of learning in early Christianity. Recall how it is widely concluded that St. Mark was the inventor of the “Gospel” literary form, that it was he who wrote/dictated the “first” Gospel – the Gospel According to Mark. Scholars now do not agree that the Didaskaleion was “founded” by St. Mark, but by Origen of Alexandria in the 3rd century.
   
^[4] John Henry Newman, The Arians of the Fourth Century (London: J. G. & F. Rivington, 1833), 45.

^[5] About whom John Henry Newman wrote: “Origen, who was soon after appointed catechist at the early age of eighteen, had already given the earnest of his future celebrity, by his persuasive disputations with the unbelievers of Alexandria.” [John Henry Newman, The Arians of the Fourth Century (London: J. G. & F. Rivington, 1833), 46.]
   
^[6] A didáskalos is one who trained students in what was the rapidly developing and deepening Christian theology. The name given to such students, accepted into this school in Alexandria, was catechumen. The Oxford English Dictionary at “catechumen” - 1. - a1500 – A new convert under instruction before baptism.
   
^[7] “scholarch”; that is, a Master Teacher of teachers – The Oxford English Dictionary at “scholarch” - 2. – 1846 – historical. The head of a school; spec. the head of an ancient Greek school of philosophy.
   
^[8] Emanuela Prinzivalli, “Didymus the Blind of Alexandria,” Encyclopedia of Ancient Christianity (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic; InterVarsity Press, 2014) 710.

^[9] The Oxford English Dictionary at the adverb “prodigiously” – 1. – 1541 – Wonderfully, amazingly; (also) to a great extent or degree; extremely, immensely; prolifically, copiously.

^[10] “power of soul” – One can recognize the presence of one’s soul – that one has one! – by noticing the powers one possesses that cannot have their source in our physical being. Traditionally there are identified three powers: (1) memory/imagination and (2) understanding and (3) will/affect. But as with other human powers, we by the exercise of our freedom have the ability, and must, develop the strength and range of these powers; we must work at them.
   
^[11] “Alzheimer’s disease” – The Oxford English Dictionary: I.1. – 1911 – Alzheimer's disease noun (also Alzheimer disease) A common form of dementia (progressive mental deterioration) typically beginning in late middle age, characterized clinically by memory loss, confusion, and disorientation, and pathologically by degeneration and loss of neurons and the presence of neurofibrillary tangles and senile plaques in certain parts of the brain.
   
^[12] When I was a boy, in grade school, there had developed in the school system a strong distaste for making students memorize. Part of this distaste was developed in us by teachers who never helped us understand why the development of the power of memory was humanly essential. They could have analogize to athletes who never miss the requirement that they build strong muscles, training them hard and consistently. As a result, the American educational system formally scorned the development in students of one of the three most important powers of soul. We called it scornfully “rote memorization”.
   
^[13] We call these greatest of teachers of Christian theology and philosophy in the first six Christian centuries, most all of whom were Saints, “the Fathers of the Church.” There has developed an interest in knowing whether there existed at the same time “Mothers of the Church”, whose writings we ought to edit and make available. The hunt has been on. But in doing this, we overlook how each of the Fathers of the Church had mothers, and some of the most famous of those moms are formally acknowledged by the Church as Saints. A rare man it is whose spirituality was not significantly formed by that of his mother.

^[14] The New English Bible (New York: Oxford University Press; Cambridge University Press, 1970), Ps 23.

^[15] See, for example, the Spiritual Exercises, in “The Contemplation of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ” [93] – “Therefore, everyone who wishes to accompany me should be ready for no food, clothes, and other things besides those he sees me use. He or she should also persevere through the same daily labors, night watches, and other situations with me so that he or she will be a part of the victory and joy, because he or she stood with me in labor and difficulties.”
   
^[16] See his The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus’ Crucifixion (2016).
   
^*12 Ps 42:4 (41:5 NETS).

^[17] Didymus the Blind, Lectures on the Psalms, ed. Jonathan Douglas Hicks et al., trans. Jonathan Douglas Hicks, Ancient Christian Texts (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic: An Imprint of InterVarsity Press, 2024), 54.

^s Ex 24:7–8; Dt 5:2.

^t Jer 32:40; Ez 37:26; Heb 10:16.

^u Is 54:13.

^[18] New American Bible, Revised Edition. (Washington, DC: The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2011), Je 31:32–34.

^[19] Didymus the Blind, Lectures on the Psalms, ed. Jonathan Douglas Hicks et al., trans. Jonathan Douglas Hicks, Ancient Christian Texts (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic: An Imprint of InterVarsity Press, 2024), 54–55.
d 11:27; Mt 16:16; Mk 1:24; Lk 4:34.

^[20] New American Bible, Revised Edition. (Washington, DC: The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2011), Jn 6:68–69.

^*23 Ps 119:32 (118:32 NETS).

^[21] Didymus the Blind, Lectures on the Psalms, ed. Jonathan Douglas Hicks et al., trans. Jonathan Douglas Hicks, Ancient Christian Texts (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic: An Imprint of InterVarsity Press, 2024), 55–56.