NASHOTAH HOUSE AN ANGLICAN UNDERSTANDING OF THE THEOLOGY AND PRACTICE OF SANCTIFICATION IN THE THOUGHT OF CHARLES CHAPMAN GRAFTON SECOND BISHOP OF FOND DU LAC A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF NASHOTAH HOUSE IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF SACRED THEOLOGY BY THE REVEREND JOHN BERNARD PAHLS, JR, B.MUS., M.DIV. NASHOTAH, WISCONSIN MAY, 2005 With undying love and gratitude to the memory of my parents John Bernard Pahls and Mary Louise Johnson Pahls who never lost faith in their son and gave him unfailing support in all his struggles et soli Deo gloria Copyright ©2005 by John B. Pahls, Jr. All rights reserved. Reproduced online through Anglicanhistory.org 2011 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS THE WRITER wishes to acknowledge the Trustees and Administration of Nashotah House, especially The Very Reverend Gary W. Kriss, D.D., XVII Dean and President, for the revival in 1991 of the summer S.T.M. program which provided him the venue and welcome opportunity for undertaking this project. Thanks are due The Reverend E. Charles Miller, Jr, D.Phil. (Oxon), sometime Associate Professor of Historical and Ascetical Theology in the Michael and Joan Ramsey Chair, the original director of thesis studies, who offered much initial encouragement in the pursuit of the project; The Reverend Charles R. Henery, Th.D., William Schaff Helmuth Professor of Ecclesiastical History and John Maury Allin Distinguished Professor of Homiletics, for his welcome guidance as director following Father Miller’s departure from the faculty of the House, having served originally as second reader; and Canon Joseph A. Kucharski, RSCM, D.Mus., Associate Professor of Church Music, for his kind help as second reader at the time of the project’s completion. The writer also acknowledges The Reverend Canon A.M. Allchin, D.D., whose Petertide 1995 course, “The Reciprocity of the Human and Divine in Classical Anglican Theology,” together with his book, Participation in God, first inspired the project. Thanks are also due The Reverend Pastor G. Thomas Osterfield, Ph.D., sometime Associate Professor of Bibliography, and the staff of the Frances Donaldson Library, Nashotah House, and Ms. Sylvia Rail and the staff of the Archbishop Urban J. Vehr Theological Library, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Denver, for their invaluable v assistance in allowing access to their collections, particularly the Vehr Library’s E.M. Womack Anglican Studies section; The Right Reverend Russell E. Jacobus, D.D., VII Bishop of Fond du Lac, and Miss Marjorie Goelz, Secretary to the Bishop, for their generosity in allowing access to the Archives of the Diocese of Fond du Lac for research into the collection of unpublished Grafton documents; and the late F. Garner Ranney, Ph.D., Archivist of the Diocese of Maryland, for his kind assistance in providing materials on Bishop Grafton’s Maryland years and his relationship with and influences on him of Bishop William Rollinson Whittingham. The writer wishes to express his appreciation to the staff of Nashotah House for their kind assistance and hospitality, especially Mrs. Sherri Kuehn, sometime of the Business Office, who arranged housing and amenities and provided welcome tea breaks and congeniality on many a long and busy afternoon during summer terms. The writer acknowledges with great affection the hospitality and encouragement of the Sisterhood of the Holy Nativity, of which the writer is an Associate, and their Superiors, The Reverend Mothers Boniface and Maria, SHN, respectively, who over the years provided at their late convent in Fond du Lac welcome lodging and a wonderful setting in which to study, pray, and derive spiritual refreshment. Finally, a special word of profound gratitude to those many and dear friends who gently kept encouraging and prodding the writer when, during a protracted period of profound grief, stress, and increasingly fragile health, he felt weak, exhausted, and unequal to the task. Their loving friendship and kind concern are more precious to him than they will ever know. May God shower His richest blessings on them all! vi CONTENTS Acknowledgments. .v List of Abbreviations. viii Preface. ix Chapter I. Introduction: The Nature of the Question and Purpose of the Project . 1 Chapter II. Sanctification in Anglican Thought: Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries . 7 1. Richard Hooker: “Man Is an Associate of Deity” . 11 2. Lancelot Andrewes: “Our Participation of His Divine Nature”. 16 3. John Donne: “Onely the Meere Goodnesse of God” . 21 4. Jeremy Taylor: “Holy Living” and Sacramental Discipline. 26 5. William Law: “A Renovation of Some Divine Birth” . 32 6. John Wesley: “The Heaven to Which We Are Going”. 35 Chapter III. Grafton the Man: Beginnings of the “Journey Godward”. 39 1. The Church of the Advent: Croswell and Prescott . 45 2. Maryland: Whittingham; Ordination; St. Paul’s, Baltimore . 49 3. Cowley: “To Be With R.M.B.”. 54 Chapter IV. Pusey and Benson: Influences on Grafton’s Thought. 59 1. Pusey: Impartationary Process and Catholic Synthesis . 63 2. Benson: Impartationary Process and Religious Life. 69 3. Resonances in the Grafton Corpus . 78 Chapter V. Grafton on the Theology and Practice of Sanctification. 82 1. The Call of Christ and the Soul’s Response . 83 2. The Holy Spirit as Sanctifier . 87 3. The Church: Mystical Body and Deifying Community . 90 4. The Sacraments: Means of Grace and Participation in Christ . 95 5. Prayer . 118 6. The Religious Vocation: Surrender to the Divine Will . 121 Chapter VI. Conclusion: Grafton’s Place in Anglican Thought on Sanctification . 126 1. His Understanding of Sanctification: Theosis?. 128 2. His Message for Anglicans Then and Now . 130 Appendices . 139 vii Bibliography . 154 ABBREVIATIONS +CCFdL John Mark Kinney, “+C.C. Fond du Lac: The Life of Charles Chapman Grafton, Second Bishop of Fond du Lac” (S.T.M. Thesis) CMAEC George E. DeMille, The Catholic Movement in the American Episcopal Church Do. Ditto (identical title, subject, or date) EcclPol Richard Hooker, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, in The Works of Richard Hooker, ed. John Keble (WRH, q.v. below) EcclPol/EL Richard Hooker, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (Everyman’s Library ed.) Eirenicon E.B. Pusey, The Church of England a Portion of Christ’s One Holy Catholic Church, and a Means of Restoring Visible Unity: An Eirenicon, In a Letter to the Author of “The Christian Year” In pag. In [ibidem] pagina, footnote within a citation, on the same page in the cited work and directly referring to the material quoted in the principal footnote OxDict The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, ed. F.L. Cross ParAdv The Parish of the Advent in the City of Boston: A History of One Hundred Years, 1844-1944, pub. Parish of the Advent PiG A.M. Allchin, Participation in God: A Forgotten Strand in Anglican Tradition TLC The Living Church (periodical) WCCG The Cathedral Edition: The Works of The Rt. Rev. Charles C. Grafton, S.T.D., LL.D., Second Bishop of Fond du Lac, ed. B.T. Rogers WRH The Works of That Learned and Judicious Divine, Mr. Richard Hooker, ed. John Keble viii PREFACE IN HIS thesis “+C.C. Fond du Lac: The Life of Charles Chapman Grafton, Second Bishop of Fond du Lac,” The Reverend John Mark Kinney wonders that there had not up to that time (1967) been written a biography of Grafton, given his reputation as a parish priest, his participation in the founding of the Cowley Fathers, and his episcopate marked by firm teaching of orthodox faith, as well as his undisputed leadership of the Catholic movement in the American Church. Given the large scope of Grafton’s writings, it is similarly a puzzle that there seems not to have been undertaken some sort of comprehensive appraisal of the works, the subjects addressed, and their theological content. Grafton has been treated in monographica and articles in scholarly journals, primarily as a matter of American Church history; but in recent years he seems with a few exceptions to have been relegated to entries in historical footnotes. In any event, he is far less well known in the American Church today, at any rate outside the Diocese of Fond du Lac where his memory is still revered and his remains enshrined in the Cathedral church. In his own time, however, he was widely known and highly respected as a preacher and teacher, though in some quarters feared and reviled as a dangerous Anglo-Catholic extremist. The thought occurs that perhaps now, nearly a century after his death, Grafton is due for some kind of re- examination, specifically as a theological writer and an apologist for traditional Anglicanism. This project will, perhaps, be at least a modest beginning of such an effort—to analyze his works and the influences on his thought and, in short, to find out what he looks like as theologian and as guardian of the “deposit of the faith.” Specific to ix the project is an examination of Grafton’s understanding of the theology and practice of sanctification, of the Christian soul’s process of growing into God-likeness and eternal communion with God. Evidence of the practice of sanctification is abundant in the personal holiness of Grafton’s own life. The writer began to hear about Bishop Grafton early on in his journey as an Episcopalian and postulant for Holy Orders. Visits to Grafton’s tomb in the Cathedral at Fond du Lac while a divinity student at Nashotah House, reading and listening to the body of accounts and legends that had inevitably grown up around him in the rarified Anglo-Catholic atmosphere of the Church in Wisconsin, and work later on as a parish priest in the Diocese of Fond du Lac for several years, brought him to count Grafton as one of his personal heroes.