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The Astonished Heart

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I love this author. He is literally salt and light--sometimes salt in the wound and light shed on dark places--but always offering a profound perspective on the Christian faith. The Astonished Heart shows the evolution of the Christian church and how various cultural models have affected the way Christians understand their faith. From the beginnings of the church to the medieval model of Christendom to the modern corporate model, Capon helps readers understand the dynamics of the development of the church and how it relates to their faith (or disillusionment, as the case may be). But beyond historical models, he shows (as he does in all of his books) that Christianity is an incarnational religion of grace and that we lose sight of that to our peril. This book is not so much a church history as an argument drawn from church history to illustrate that God's grace is greater than our legalism and that our relationship with God is always perceived in a particular historical context. Anyone who is jaded with church hierarchies and institutionalism will find refreshing perspectives in this witty and slightly cantankerous book. Any book by Robert Farrar Capon is a treasure and The Astonished Heart is no exception. I wholeheartedly recommend it.

The author, Robert Farrar Capon, an Episcopal priest, states that his book is "an argument drawn from church history designed to demonstrate what I consider to be the egregious mistakes the church has made as the result of turning itself into a religious institution and thus losing its grip on its catholicity." He states that "most of the forms of the church we've known either have collapsed or are collapsing before our eyes," and we are faced with "the task of creating new forms."

One of Capon's declarations reads: "Our two-thousand-year love affair with excommunication--with the expulsion of sinners, heretics, and other troublemakers--has been a disaster for the Good News of free grace."

Another of his points is that "building cathedrals" and "running parish fairs" is, after all, not what Christians are really sent to do, but, rather, to proclaim the foolishness of God that is wiser than that of human beings and the weakness of God that is stronger than human beings (I Cor. 1:25). "Marginality, in short," says Capon, "leaves the church free, if it is faithful, to cherish its absurdity; establishment just makes it fall in love all over again with the irrelevant respectability of the world's wisdom and power."

In his first two chapters, Capon deals with an overview of church history and where we are now. In the next five chapters, he describes models of the church that have arisen during the course of church history. These periods include: "Before the church," or the "Jerusalem" model; secondly, the church model in the period from "Peter through Paul;" thirdly, the church in the Greco-Roman world; fourthly, the "Christendom" model; and fifthly, the church model in the period from "Christendom to the Corporate Model." He concludes with two chapters entitled "The Church in the Marketplace of New Models" and "The Brighter Future," and then with an impassioned epilogue about the mere Good News.

One of Capon's remarks about the church models reads: "....[I]n the period of the New Testament and beyond, the Jerusalem church model lasted less than a hundred years and the marginal Greco-Roman model only three hundred. But so great were the charms--and, of course, the political timing--of the Christendom model that it endured for fifteen hundred years, all the way into the nineteenth century. True enough, it was on its last legs from the sixteenth century onward. Still, any model that can keep up a swan song for that long has got to be a super model." --It is the Jerusalem model and the Christendom model that Capon focuses upon most favorably toward the end of his manifesto about the particulars of church renewal that he envisions.

Favoring the Christendom church model, Capon says that it has been "a storehouse of images and archetypes without which our culture would be unintelligible to us," and "it was precisely Christendom's incarnation of the Incarnation itself that made it all possible. It was its firm grip on the truth that matter matters to God that has led us, in our finest moments, to love matter (and to love the crowning glory of matter, PERSONS) as much as we do....The next form of the church must be positively hostile to the ethereal, the transcendent--yes, even the spiritual enthusiasms that now surround us. Christendom, while it flirted dangerously with the "otherworld" of religion and spirituality, never lost its footing in this world. It didn't despise the world; it romanced it. And it didn't despise even the ignorance and brokenness of the world; it built universities for the one and hospitals for the other. For all its sometime barbarities, it did teach us to care. Any future form of the church that does less than that--that threatens to make us a club dedicated to our own uplift rather than a cheering section for THE WHOLE CREATED WORLD--should be nipped in the bud. We don't need it, and God doesn't want it. He has better things in mind for us than keeping our hearts closed and our hands clean. Time at last, therefore, for the comfort of ASTONISHMENT."

One of his remarks within his discussion of ecumenism reads: "From the Reformation right up to this century, there were so many contradictory views of what the Eucharist was supposed to mean that there was simply no theological way of getting it back where it belonged." Further along in his discussion centering upon ecumenical issues with regard to ministerial identity, he foresees a way to bring about unity: "We give up on trying to sell our own versions of ministry or confessional statement to each other. All our sales pitches for bishops or doctrines were dreamed up almost five hundred years ago, and we've had plenty of time to resolve them on the basis of their original terms if we could. But we haven't. So we just cash in our chips from the old confessional-principles casino and simply keep talking to each other and visiting each other's shops until we spot a way of acting out the entire problem." And then, Capon thinks that the "ace" will turn out to be that "As we inch our way toward celebrating the Eucharist regularly, we will all begin to treasure more and more the notion of priesthood: of the priesthood of Jesus to begin with; of the great but largely neglected Reformation insight of the priesthood of all believers--that is, of the priesthood of the church itself; and finally, of the ministerial priesthood of those who are ordained." He thinks that "when the Protestant ministers take great delight in thinking of themselves as priests, the job will be done without any corporate fix whatsoever. We'll simply say that because the priesthood of Jesus was already declared to be in those ministers by the Sacrament of Baptism, they've been priests all along....[T]he truth is that we're not just trying to sell them a widget called priesthood or a program for manufacturing it; what we really want is to see it used in ordinary practice. Once that happens, we're all home free."

Capon deals with various problems in churched Christianity. Although published in 1996, contemporary religious situations cited in Capon's arguments are still entirely timely now, 15 years later [I'm reading the book in early 2012] and would be applicable both in Protestant and Catholic establishments.

Capon's casual language and vernacular style make this book easy to read, and it reads blessedly fast. (I say "blessedly" because his summary manner of covering, pointedly, a lot of ponderous material about church history was simply a relief for me as a reader because of my limited inclination and limited time for becoming much more deeply informed about church history than I am, in order to draw out for myself Capon's salient conclusions which probably wouldn't have occurred to me anyway.) The writing is incisively intelligent and witty. His narrative manner takes you on an up and down and all around kind of expository ride and deposits you in some unexpected, and sometimes amused, conclusions. For those who agree with his views, Capon's exposition will surely be very heartening and delightful. Likewise for those who do agree but don't agree to greater and lesser extents about certain issues.

The conclusion in his Epilogue is stated in apotheotic language which has not been characteristic of his earlier overview of the church models. His Epilogue begins with the declaration that "We are in a war between dullness and astonishment." He states that Creation is a dance of desire. He goes on to focus upon Jesus as the Lover who can give life to the dead who are nevertheless thirsting with desire--desire for a God that is utterly desirable.

His vision about how to actually implement a new form of truly Good News church is not fully realized in these pages. He is searching and even asking for outside help from readers who may want to offer practical suggestions.

I was ASTONISHED by this BOOK and the fact that I found it just by chance at just exactly the same time that I had been worrying over some of these same issues about the contradictions in varied Forms in the Christian churches. I enjoyed the running exposition of his argument and resonated well with some of his insistences about what is necessary for the future vitality of Christianity.

I've offered a long review of this book, including many quotes, so that the reader can sample his style and "gift" as a writer and can observe what he says about a few issues. A brief biography including a statement about Capon's "theology" can be found on-line in the Wikipedia and other web-sites.

The first chapter alone is worth the price of this book. But it gets better from there. Capon is a playful writer; thought provoking and interesting to read.

Capon summarizes 2000 years of church history, analyzing the good and the bad from the various church models that have been used, and then closes by stating some ideas for the models of the future. If you are planting a church, or trying to transform your church into something more mission-oriented, I highly recommend this book.

Capon is classic Christian thought from the perspective of Grace, Forgiveness, and Mercy. The recent history of Christianity is often seen in the caricature of judgmental fiery evangelical preachers who find judgement too each, condemnation too convenient and religious bigotry "biblical".

Capon has excellent skills in reminding the reader of the more widely accepted aspects of Christ's teaching regarding grace, forgiveness, and mercy. We are long overdue for more dialog on these issues.