St. Vincent of Lerins

St. Vincent of Lerins

Homily delivered at Trinity Parish, Ashland (OR)

Thursday May 22, 2019 12 noon said Mass with healing

The Very Rev. Anthony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.

Isa 49:8-13; Psa 23; 1 Pet 5:1-4; John 15:12-17

God, take away our hearts of stone
 and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

Vincent was a monk and writer who died c. 445. Born to a noble family of Gaul (modern France), he initially served as a soldier but gave it up to become a monk on the island of Lerins off the southern French coast near Cannes. He was ordained there and in about 434 authored his famous work the Commonitorium (“On What is Held in Common”).  A measure of how risky it was to publish in theology in this period of great controversy is that Vincent published under the pseudonym Peregrinus (the pilgrim). 

In the book, Vincent took on the theological giants of his age.  He argued against the Bishop of Constantinople, Nestorius, and affirmed the rightness of referring to the Blessed Virgin Mary as Theotokos, “Mother of God.”  He also took on the bishop of Hippo, Augustine, and condemned what he saw as the extremism of St. Augustine’s doctrine of grace and predestination.  In both cases, Vincent argued caution about “new-fangled” teaching.  He includes his famous maxim, the Vincentian Canon, by which he hoped to be able to differentiate between true and false tradition: quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus credituni est (“what has been believed everywhere, always, and by all”). He believed that the ultimate source of Christian truth was Holy Scripture as interpreted and understood by the authority of the larger Church. 

Monastics in Southern France during this age tended to share British monk Pelagius’ objections to Augustine’s teaching on grace because they saw Augustine’s teachings as undermining the basic monastic ideal of spiritual practice helping make one closer to God, though they shied away from outright support once church councils began to condemn Pelagius’ obsession with human free will.  Centuries after Vincent’s death, these so-called semi-Pelagian views were condemned as heretical just as Pelagius had been condemned.  But it is not clear that Vincent actually held any of the specific tenets at issue.  It is clear that he opposed views later labeled as Calvinist; committed Calvinists to this day condemn what they still call “Semi-Pelagianism” in the traditions that honor Vincent as a saint:  Roman Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and Anglicanism.   

What is the value of the Vincentian canon?  Some argue that it is meaningless, given the great diversity of Christian faith over the ages and in different locales.  Or they say that it reduces the deposit of faith to a lowest common denominator of what doesn’t offend most Christians over time.  But I think there still is great value to what Vincent was getting at.  Congregational determinations on the content of faith are notoriously cranky and eccentric.  Even in the Episcopal Church, we hear on occasion that the true core of faith is constituted by Scripture, Tradition, and Reason, and, most importantly, what the previous Rector taught.  Using the general standard of what has passed the laugh test over the ages and in many different locales as at least a hint of what the heart of our Catholic and Orthodox faith is, well, that is to my mind a wise practice.

Thanks be to God.