Ordo Amoris: Heartbeat of the Anglican Way

Ordo Amoris, #1

“The heart of Tudor Protestantism was not right doctrine, but right desire,” Ashley Null

***There are three more essays in this series, which you can find by clicking at the following links: "Loving to Know", “Reading to Love,” and "Right Desire and the Anglican Witness".

INTRODUCTION

Is there an Anglican Way, and if so, how can we identify its center, among so much seeming disagreement and division? Can we even speak of an Anglican consensus that should draw all biblically faithful, orthodox Anglicans together? In a wonderful little essay titled “On the Reading of Old Books,” which I’ve mentioned before on this Substack, C.S. Lewis writes that

The divisions of Christendom are undeniable…. But if any man is tempted to think—as one might be tempted who read only contemporaries—that “Christianity” is a word of so many meanings that it means nothing at all, he can learn beyond all doubt, by stepping out of his own century, that this is not so.

In this essay, I’ll make a similar argument for the Anglican tradition. There are significant divisions within Anglicanism, and this is true even among biblically faithful Anglicans who’ve remained committed to orthodoxy. However, if we step back and survey the whole, a consensus or “heartbeat” clearly emerges.

This series of essays will offer a sustained argument for the classic theological theme of ordo amoris, or the proper ordering of love, as among Anglicanisms’s most compelling consensus points. Rooted in Scripture, developed by Church Fathers like Augustine, and reinvigorated during the English Reformation, ordo amoris provides a framework for understanding not just Anglican spirituality, but the essence of Christian faith and practice. As we explore this classical principle, we'll consider how it can bridge divides within Anglicanism and offer a path forward that honors both our catholic heritage and our reformational theology.

The idea of “rightly ordered love” is deeply rooted in Scripture and has been explored by some of Christianity's greatest thinkers through the ages. In the most general terms, love is that which moves us towards unity with the object of our affection. Love, in other words, is a movement directed by the will. Obviously, love can be unholy and disordered, but love can also be holy, as is the form of love that in greek is called agape and in latin, caritas or charity.

In order to explain the meaning and theological significance of ordo amoris, as well as its role in the Anglican way, we should begin with scripture.

ORDO AMORIS IN SCRIPTURE

The order of love is evident in Scripture from the very start. In Genesis 3:6, we find Eve looking at the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and seeing "that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes" and "desired to make one wise.”^[1]

Notably, the Hebrew word, taavah, which is translated “delight” in this passage, could also be translated “desire.” The word Taavah suggests that the fruit was intensely desirable to Eve, even though God expressly forbade its consumption. Eve looked upon the fruit and longed, with a disordered love, for the satisfaction that she imagined it would bring. The original fall from grace renders a pivotal moment where the divinely ordained order of love was rejected. Eve's attraction to the forbidden fruit - for its appeal to physical appetite, aesthetic pleasure, and promise of wisdom - represents a reordering of desires that places created things above the Creator.

By sharing the fruit with Adam, Eve's disordered loves spread, affecting their relationship with each other and with God. In the original fall, sin was not merely an act of disobedience, but a fundamental distortion of love's proper hierarchy, with universal consequence. Although the word “sin” (chattat in Hebrew; hamartia in Greek) is not used until Genesis 4:7, it is implicitly present in the transgression of Adam and Eve. Both in Hebrew and in Greek, the word sin means “to miss the mark.” In other words, it means to be “disordered” or “off course.”

Obviously, love continues to play a central part through the entire biblical canon, providing one of the deepest theological threads tying the old and new testaments together. Although we are saved by faith, faith works by love (Galatians 5:6). Indeed, love is the way God relates to humans and humans are intended to relate to God. Moreover, Scripture presents God as the ultimate source and embodiment of love. In Exodus 34:6-7, God describes Himself to Moses as "abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness," setting the stage for the Old Testament's recurring theme of God's hesed, or covenant love. This divine love finds its ultimate expression in the New Testament declaration that "God is love" (1 John 4:8).

Additionally, the redemption of God’s people is described as a process of learning to love God in return and other people in God and for God’s sake. Jesus insists that Love is the greatest commandment and summary of the entire law (Matthew 22:36-40). Love is described as the identifying mark of Jesus' disciples (John 13:35), the fulfillment of the law (Romans 13:10) and the greatest of all virtues (1 Corinthians 13:13). We can only love God because he first loved us (1 John 4:19), and if we do not love, then we do not know God (1 John 4:8). We can know what love is because it was made manifest in Jesus Christ (1 John 4:9) and especially in his passion (John 15:13). No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. (1 John 4:12). Moreover, love has priority over knowledge (1 Corinthians 8:1-13), and although knowledge comes to an end, love is eternal (1 Corinthians 13:8-13).

This understanding of love as both the means and the evidence of God's presence among us has profound implications for the Church as the body of Christ. The Church is not merely a human institution but a divine-human community formed by the Holy Spirit and united to Christ. As Paul writes in Ephesians 4:15-16, we are to "grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love."

As a visible expression of the Word of God written, the Eucharist stands at the heart of this community of love and offers a means for our entry into that Word. In the Eucharistic celebration, we remember Christ's sacrificial love, receive His life-giving presence, and are formed into His body. The Prayer of Consecration reminds us that in partaking of the bread and wine, we "become one body with him, that he may dwell in us and we in him." This sacramental reality empowers us to love one another as Christ has loved us.

Furthermore, the Comfortable Words in the liturgy remind us of the basis for our love: "Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest" (Matthew 11:28), and "If anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world" (1 John 2:1-2). It is from this place of rest and forgiveness that we are able to extend love to others.

The Church, as a forgiven and forgiving community, becomes the arena where God's love is perfected. As we confess our faith and our sins, receive God's forgiveness, and extend that forgiveness to others, we take our place among the members of the community ordered by Christ’s love. The Peace exchanged in the liturgy is not merely a social greeting but an enactment of this reconciling love.

In The City of God, Augustine writes that

“if we. . .  say that a people is an assemblage of reasonable beings bound together by a common agreement as to the objects of their love, then in order to discover the character of any people, we have only to observe what they love” (Book XIX, Chapter 24).

The church, remarkably, is the only community on earth bound together, not by a love arising from some common interest or necessity, but by the gracious, sacrificial love of God poured into the community. This love is articulated again and again through the reading and preaching of God’s Word, but the community’s responsive embrace of that love is enacted at the Lord’s table. This is why, throughout much of church history, it was said that “the eucharist makes the church.”^[1] The eucharist draws God’s people, again and again, to the source of the love that they hold in common.

There is much more to say about the centrality of love in the bible and in the body of Christ, but this brief overview should suffice for now.

ORDO AMORIS IN AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO AND HIS HEIRS

Early Christian thinkers recognized and built upon Scripture's emphasis on love as fundamental to human nature and our relationship with God. Augustine of Hippo, mentioned above, explored the proper ordering of love (ordo amoris) in several important works and had a profound influence on christian thinkers in subsequent ages, including Thomas Cranmer. At its core, this teaching held that there is a proper hierarchy and order to what humans should love, with God at the summit. As we saw regarding Eve and the original fall from grace, sin involves prioritizing lesser goods over higher ones, which is to love created things more than the Creator. The existential consequence of disordered love is restlessness and a fragmented existence. Only as God graciously reorders our loves, can we find true peace, fulfillment, and ultimately salvation.

Augustine opens the second paragraph of Book II in his Confessions with an unforgettable statement: "The single desire that dominated my search for delight was simply to love and be loved."^[2] This statement resonates deeply because it captures something universal to human nature. We all recognize this foundational desire in our own lives. Who doesn’t want to love and be loved? And who doesn’t know that fulfilling this desire, by the grace of god, requires much patience?

Book II recounts how, from that fundamental desire to love and be loved, Augustine filled his life with “foulness and carnal corruptions” as he raced headfirst into “a whirlpool of vice.” Throughout the Confessions, Augustine grapples with the nature of love and desire. He asserts that the human heart's yearning for love is good and God-given. Yet, he also acknowledges that his own loves were profoundly disordered, leading him to search for “satisfaction in hellish pleasures.”  Consequently, his teenage years led him further and further from God: “I travelled much further away from you into more and more sterile things productive of unhappiness, proud in my self-pity, incapable of rest in my exhaustion.”^[3]

If you’ve never read the Confessions, then you should pick it up and give it a try. The entire book is addressed to God as a prayer, and it serves as a kind of double confession. On the one hand, Augustine confesses his sinfulness, but on the other, it is among the most profound confessions of faith ever written. The beauty of the book’s opening paragraph offers a preview of what is to come:

‘You are great, Lord, and highly to be praised (Ps. 47: 2); great is your power and your wisdom immeasurable’ (Ps. 146:5). Man, a little piece of your creation, desires to praise you, a human being ‘bearing his mortality with him’ (2 Cor. 4: 10), carrying with him the witness of his sin and the witness that you ‘resist the proud’ (1 Pet. 5:5). Nevertheless, to praise you is the desire of man, a little piece of your creation. You stir man to take pleasure in praising you, because you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.

Confessions is something like a biography, since it recounts Augustine’s life from infancy through adulthood. However, it’s unlike any other biography, since every page is meant to help us understand that we are not the author or even the ultimate interpreter of our own lives; God is. We find our rest as we come to terms with and embrace this momentous truth, as Augustine finally does in Book VIII. In Augustine’s telling, we find true rest when we learn, by God’s grace, to love God above all else and all else in God and for God’s sake.

One of the most widely read books ever written, Augustine's Confessions has resonated deeply for fifteen hundred years because it renders the all too human condition of restless desire in a beautiful and personal way. It is easy to see ourselves in this book, but the attentive reader will do much more than that. Augustine wants us to see God and God’s grace at work in our own lives, even in our restlessness.

In the Confessions, Augustine’s restless searching eventually gives way to a genuine seeking after God. However, that search for God does not end with “Augustine the Champion” – having attained his prize. Instead, in his search for God, Augustine comes to see that God’s love and grace have always been prior and that he has been rescued. From the beginning, and through various means of Grace,^[4] God has pursued, mastered, and ultimately redeemed Augustine.

We get an early hint of this rescue in Book I. Augustine has just recounted his infancy and an upbringing that shaped him according to the profoundly disordering patterns of Roman education, showing us that disorder surrounds us, not only in education but in politics, business, family life, entertainment, and more. We are born into a tempest and voluntarily conform to this disordered world. Confessing the difficulty of the human situation, Augustine writes:

Woe to you, torrent of human custom! ‘Who can stand against you?’ (Ps. 75:8) When will you run dry? How long will your flowing current carry the sons of Eve into the great and fearful ocean which can be crossed, with difficulty, only by those who have embarked on the Wood of the cross (Wids.14:7)?^[5]

Augustine understands that we cannot set our own loves in order to save ourselves. The “torrent of human custom” conforms us to the world unless we “present ourselves as living sacrifices” (Romans 12:1) and “embark on the wood of the cross,” finding rest in Christ’s finished work.  Augustine ultimately finds this rest after reading Romans 13 and Paul’s encouragement to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh in its lusts (Romans 13:13-14).^[6] Recalling his conversion, he writes in Book IX:

Suddenly, it had become sweet to me to be without the sweets of folly. What I once feared to lose was now a delight to dismiss. You turned them out and entered to take their place, pleasanter than any pleasure but not to flesh and blood, brighter than all light yet more inward than any secret recess, higher than any honour but not to those who think themselves sublime. Already my mind was free of the ‘biting cares’ of place-seeking, of desire for gain, of wallowing in self-indulgence, of scratching the itch of lust. And I was now talking with you, Lord my God, my radiance, my wealth, and my salvation.^[7]

Notice, that God removed Augustine’s illicit loves by stepping in “to take their place.” His love of God was entirely indebted to and dependent upon God’s prior love and grace.

Although his teaching on the “right ordering of Love” is articulated in a clearer and more systematic way in works like Teaching Christianity^[8] and The City of God, I have been most deeply affected by his personal treatment of the subject as narrated in the Confessions. However, Augustine’s entire body of work on this subject had a profound influence on the development of Western Christian thought through the Middle Ages and into the protestant reformation. 

Below, I offer just a few illustrations from some of the greatest theologians and spiritual writers who employ the theme of rightly ordered love in their work. Each of the works listed is focused on love as the primary locus of God’s redemptive work in a human life. To say that this list could be much, much longer is no exaggeration. My intention is merely to show that, from the time of Augustine and into the late Middle Ages, ordo amoris was a common part of the spiritual vocabulary in the west.

1. Gregory the Great (540-604): "Moralia in Job" (ca. 578-595) and "Pastoral Care" (ca. 590)

2. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153): "On Loving God" (De diligendo Deo) (ca. 1128) and "On the Song of Songs" (Sermones super Cantica Canticorum) (ca. 1135-1153)

3. Hugh of St. Victor (1096-1141): "On the Substance of Love" (De substantia dilectionis) (ca. 1120-1140) and "On the Praise of Charity" (De laude caritatis) (ca. 1120-1140)

4. Richard of St. Victor (d. 1173): "The Four Degrees of Violent Love" (De quatuor gradibus violentae caritatis) (ca. 1170) and "On the Trinity" (De Trinitate) (ca. 1170)

5. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274): "Summa Theologiae" (1265-1274) - particularly the sections on charity and love

6. Thomas à Kempis (1380-1471):  "The Imitation of Christ" (De Imitatione Christi) (ca. 1418-1427)

7. Catherine of Siena (1347-1380):"The Dialogue" (Dialogo della Divina Provvidenza) (1378)

8. Richard Rolle (1300-1349): "The Fire of Love" (Incendium Amoris) (ca. 1340) and "The Form of Living" (ca. 1348)

9. Walter Hilton (1340-1396):  "The Scale of Perfection" (Scala Perfectionis) (ca. 1380-1396)

10. Julian of Norwich (1343-1416):  "Revelations of Divine Love" (ca. 1395)

Interestingly, through the late middle ages, theologians and spiritual writers such as these not only continued thinking deeply about love, but they preserved Augustine’s biblical emphasis on the necessity of God’s prior, intervening grace in the process of setting love in order.  Consider this from Hugh of St. Victor, of the 12th century. This from Akenside Press’s translation of The Divine Love: The two treatises De Laude Caritatis and De Amore Sponsi ad Sponsam, I, VI.:

Charity is the gift of God, however, for this reason: that the Holy Ghost is given by God to the faithful, and charity is God, because the same Spirit is consubstantial and co-eternal in the selfsame Godhead with Him by Whom He is given. God, then, bestows the other gifts of grace even on those of whom He disapproves; but He keeps charity, as being His own self, for the peculiar reward of those He loves.¹

Walter Hilton, a 14th century English spiritual writer and major influence on Thomas Cranmer, offers another excellent example. The quotation below is from The Scale of Perfection, Part 2, Section 3, chapter 5:

This love cannot be had by a man’s own travail, as some imagine. It is freely had by the gracious gift of Jesus after much bodily and spiritual pains going before. For there are some lovers of God that make themselves to love God as it were by their own might; for they strain themselves through great violence, and pant so strongly, that they burst into bodily fervours, as if they would draw God down from Heaven to them. And they say in their hearts and with their mouth: Ah, Lord! I love Thee, and I will love Thee, and I will suffer death for the love of Thee. And in this manner of working they feel great fervour and much grace. And true it is, I think, this working good and meritorious, if it be well tempered with humility and discretion. But yet these men love not, nor have the gift of love on that manner that I speak of, neither do they ask it so. For a soul that hath the gift of love through gracious beholding of Jesus, as I mean, or that soul that hath it not yet, but would have it, she is not busy to strain herself above her strength, as it were by bodily might, for to have it by bodily fervours, and so far to feel the love of God, but thinketh herself to be right nought, and that she can do right nought of herself; but as it were a dead thing, only depending and borne up by the mercy of God. She seeth well that Jesus is all, and doth all, and, therefore, asketh she nought else but the gift of love; for since the soul seeth that her own love is nought, therefore she desireth His love, for that is enough.

While these works demonstrate the persistence of the ordo amoris principle throughout the Middle Ages, the development of Roman Catholic penitential practices like indulgences and beliefs such as the treasury of merit gradually obscured this fundamental teaching. By the 15th century, these practices had become deeply entrenched in Roman Catholic piety, often overshadowing the primacy of God's grace in salvation.

This tension between the enduring concept of ordo amoris and the development of merit-based soteriology created a paradox in late medieval Catholic spirituality. On one hand, the writings of mystics and spiritual teachers continued to emphasize the primacy of love in the Christian life. On the other, the institutional Church increasingly promoted practices that seemed to place human effort at the center of salvation.

The Reformers, including those in England, saw this as a fundamental distortion of the Gospel. They argued that these practices not only obscured the free gift of God's grace but also hindered the very goal they purported to achieve: the right ordering of human love towards God. In their view, only by returning to scripture, reclaiming the Augustinian tradition, and reaffirming the absolute priority of God's love and grace could Christians truly cultivate the right desires that Augustine and others had long emphasized.

It was in this context that Thomas Cranmer and other English Reformers sought to revitalize the classic ordo amoris tradition. They believed that by emphasizing salvation by grace through faith, they could provide a proper doctrinal home for this ancient understanding of love's right ordering. Cranmer, in particular, saw the doctrine of justification by faith not as a rejection of the ordo amoris tradition, but as its necessary foundation. He believed that only when individuals were freed from the anxiety of earning their salvation could they truly love God for His own sake.

This effort to reclaim and refocus Christian piety on right desire became a cornerstone of the English Reformation, particularly evident in Cranmer's Book of Common Prayer. As we will see, this renewed emphasis on ordo amoris within a framework of justification by faith would profoundly shape Anglican spirituality.

ORDO AMORIS IN THE ENGLISH REFORMATION

Ashley Null has focused much of his career making precisely this case. Indeed, he argues that “the heart of Tudor Protestantism was not right doctrine, but right desire.”^[9]  In Null’s mind the doctrinal emphasis of the English Reformation was thoroughly Protestant in its sensibilities because doctrines like sola scriptura and sola fide were a necessary correction to medieval error. Through its progressive embrace of protestant doctrine, especially evident in the 39 Articles, the English Church made itself a hospitable environment for the proper reception, continuation, and development of the early Catholic tradition represented by Augustine of Hippo and others.^[10]

We might think of it like this: the distinctively protestant doctrines summarized in the solas were like medicine, or perhaps a major surgery, but the real concern was a healthy patient – a church built upon “wholesome doctrine,” grounded in the apostolic witness, and truly catholic in its concerns.

In the portrait above, Thomas Cranmer holds the Epistles of St Paul, while resting on his desk are two books, including Augustine’s “Of Faith and Works.”

It should be obvious that when Null speaks of “right desire” or “affective piety,” he has in mind the biblical and Augustinian notion of a “right ordering of love” that attends our reconciliation with God and neighbor.  A church built upon wholesome doctrine, grounded in the apostolic witness and truly catholic in its concerns will be a church where “the right ordering of love” is central. The church is healthy when the grace of God works through it to rightly order the affections of God’s people.

Null suggests that the tradition of affective piety was especially strong in 15^th century England due to the writings of Richard Rolle and Walter Hilton who “encouraged their readers to ruminate on Scripture so that they would experience a burning love for Christ.”^[11] Although laudable, this affective piety was negated by the erroneous, merit-based soteriology of late-medieval Catholicism, as I’ve mentioned above.

In his book, Thomas Cranmer’s Doctrine of Repentance, Null writes that: “Cranmer believed that justification was being made “right-willed” by faith, not being made inherently righteous, and its evidence was love and repentance toward God and neighbor.”^[12] Thus, we should see Cranmer as a sort of bridge figure, leading a reformation in England to ensure true catholicity. Anglican adherence to the “faith once delivered” and the “order of love” at the heart of this apostolic faith, required reformational doctrine. Null argues that Cranmer “embraced justification by faith not as a repudiation of his Medieval English spirituality but as the only possible means for attaining its fulfillment.”^[13]

Null’s argument is entirely convincing: Cranmer’s embrace of the solas was grounded in a deep and sustained reading of the church fathers and a sincere embrace of the English spirituality of Rolle, Hilton, and others. Nevertheless, I have some concerns about the reception of Null’s work and the reception of the English Reformation in general among Anglicans. That’s what I’d like to address in this series of posts, moving forward.

HOW SHALL WE RECEIVE THE ENGLISH REFORMATION?

Anglicans tend to receive the English Reformation in at least two ways, and both are common in the Anglican Church in North America. First - there are those who emphasize Anglican continuity with the pre-Reformation tradition. More catholic in their sympathies, they tend to argue something like this:

The English Reformation enables the proper reception of catholic faith - Yay catholic faith! All hail St. Augustine - let’s protect and keep the ordo amoris tradition handed down to us.  We find among these Anglicans an emphasis on liturgy and sacrament and a tendency to stress the “contextual and incomplete” nature of the 39 Articles.

But there is another way to receive Null and the English Reformation - there are those who emphasize, especially, the protestant theological agenda of the Tudor era (Henry VII/1485 - Elizabeth I/1603). They tend to argue something like this:

The English Reformation enables the proper reception of the catholic faith - Yay English Reformation!  All hail Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley! Let’s keep and protect the treasure of reformation doctrine, handed down to us. This group emphasizes the 39 Articles and gospel centric preaching, above all else.

Although this may be obvious, I’d like to point out that each way of receiving the English reformation can lead to imbalances. Those with more catholic sympathies can easily repeat the errors of medieval Catholicism.  Forgetting the importance of reformation doctrine, Anglican identity can too closely tether itself to a ritualism and a traditionalism that obscures or at least mutes the gospel of Jesus Christ. The Anglo-Catholic parish with dynamic gospel preaching, vibrant liturgical celebration, and sustained growth is not unheard of, but it is rare. It shouldn’t be so rare.

On the other hand, Reformation Anglicans need to be wary of embracing a “doctrinaire” confessionalism that makes “right doctrine” its own end. Note that Ashley Null, a respected scholar among reformation minded Anglicans, argues that “right desire” is the heartbeat of the Anglican way, not “right doctrine.” Making right doctrine primary is sometimes the approach of the more strident reformed traditions - it should never be the Anglican approach. For Anglicans, right doctrine is important, but as a means to achieving the greater good of “rightly ordered love,” which Cranmer sometimes describes as “lively faith, that worketh by charity.” 

Over the next few weeks, I’ll publish several more essays to complete this project. My intention is to outline a theological approach for Anglicans that honors the catholic theological tradition while embracing and celebrating reformation doctrines, positioning the English Reformation as a continuation rather than a rupture. Too often, those most committed to reformation doctrine, pay too little attention to the continuity of catholic faith through the ages. In contrast, those Anglicans who emphasize a catholic continuum through the English reformation, too often disregard the gift and necessity of reformation doctrine which pervades the Anglican formularies. My outline will move through three simple arguments:

• First, as it was in Cranmer’s time, “rightly ordered love” must remain at the heart of Anglican and all true Christian faith. I’ll make a theological case for valuing and preserving this tradition in our own time.

• Second, I’ll explore the sacramentality of Scripture and argue for the centrality of Word and Sacrament in the right ordering of desire. Anglicanism offers an excellent way to be a mere Christian, and this is due in no small part to the place of our prayerbook tradition in our ecclesial life.

• Finally, I'll examine the challenges Anglicans and other Christians face in our current cultural climate and consider the highly polemical nature of Anglican cultural engagement in the ACNA. Drawing on historical examples, I'll demonstrate how an emphasis on properly ordered love has guided God's people through tumultuous times in the past and can continue to serve us today.

In short, with the next few posts, I’ll outline an agenda for Anglican theology that features ordo amoris as the heartbeat of the Anglican Way and receives the contributions of the English Reformation with enthusiasm because those contributions legitimate the Anglican claim to catholicity..

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^[1] Lubac, Corpus Mysticum: The Eucharist and the Church in the Middle Ages, 88.

^[1]Augustine explains the right ordering of love this way: “But living a just and holy life requires one to be capable of an objective and impartial evaluation of things; to love things, that is to say, in the right order, so that you do not love what is not to be loved, or fail to love what is to be loved, or have a greater love for what should be loved less, or an equal love for things that should be loved less or more, or a lesser or greater love for things that should be loved equally. No sinner, precisely as sinner, is to be loved; and every human being, precisely as human, is to be loved on God’s account, God though on his own,” Augustine, Teaching Christianity, I.27.28.

^[2] Augustine, The Confessions, (2.2.2).

^[3] Augustine, The Confessions.

^[4] Augustine understands that God’s grace is at work all around us. We only need eyes to see. Our restlessness is itself a grace because, when it is not satisfied, it fuels our continued, restless search.  In Augustine’s life, the Word of God is a prior grace, as is a loving mother, friends who offer rebuke, the Roman philosopher Cicero, Bishop Ambrose, saints like Antony of Egypt who inspire, a singing child in a garden, and much more. 

^[5] Augustine, The Confessions, 1.16.25.

^[6] Augustine, 8.12.29.

^[7] Augustine, 9.1.1.

^[8] Teaching Christianity is more commonly referred to using the title, On Christian Doctrine. However, I’m using the New City Press translation, which uses this equally legitimate title for the work.

^[9] Null, “Thomas Cranmer’s Reputation Reconsidered,” 195.

^[10] That the embrace of protestant doctrine was “progressive” is due to the changing political context of the English Reformation. As with the continental reformation, the “reform” of doctrine required state protection or, in the case of England, approval. Thus, Cranmer’s truly reformed sympathies could not be entirely embraced until the reign of Edward VI. See MacCulloch, The Boy King.

^[11] Null, “Thomas Cranmer’s Reputation Reconsidered,” 195.

^[12] Null, Thomas Cranmer’s Doctrine of Repentance, 24.

^[13] Null, “Thomas Cranmer’s Reputation Reconsidered,” 194.

1. Hugh of St Victor, The Divine Love: The two treatises De Laude Caritatis and
De Amore Sponsi ad Sponsam, I, VI.