Further to my other posts about Mark Ashton, Vicar of St. Andrew the Great in Cambridge, I’ve created a page which links to all the MP3 files of his sermons. It’s here. The files are on the church website, although I have taken a copy should they disappear.
UPDATE: This post at the Vicar’s Wife blog links to a collection of responses from around the web to Mark’s death. It’s a more extensive list than I was able to find myself by Google searching.
UPDATE: Mark’s booklet, On my way to heaven: Facing death with Christ is available for purchase from 10ofThose online here. I’ve just ordered a copy, to sit on my shelves for when I need it. A fund has been established to help his widow, Fiona, here.
I still can’t really come to grips with the death of Mark Ashton, of St. Andrew the Great in Cambridge. There’s quite a few of his sermons in MP3 form on the church website, and I have been downloading them.
Somehow this is painful too; because it brings home to me that there won’t be any more; the set is complete, the collection final. I’ve always been in the habit of treating one of his sermons as one in an endless stream, that I could go to hear whenever I wanted to, where I knew that God would speak.
Now I can’t do that. It’s Sunday tomorrow, and I could go. But to what end? Mark is gone, and with him has gone a world of spiritual wisdom and kindness.
All that is left of that wonderful man is some bytes on a disk. Maybe there is a hundred or so; each about 3Mb long; 300Mb or so in total. That’s it. He is now just a soon-fading memory in our minds, and some bytes.
It’s one thing for me to collect the words of the Fathers. I never knew any of them. But to do so for someone I knew? How inadequate those few hundred megabytes are, in exchange for what has departed!
I’ve been negotiating to get a translation of the full Greek text of Severian of Gabala’s sermon On Peace made. The translator has accepted, and it should be ready by the middle of May, or — more likely — end of June. The translator is not a Yank or a Brit, so some correction of the English will be necessary. The report from the reviewer was basically positive, tho. My estimate at the moment is that it will cost $150 to do, plus whatever a corrector charges, which is quite a bit, but worth it. I’ll put it in the public domain and post it online when it arrives.
UPDATE: 14/12/2011: The translator never completed any more and emails went unanswered. Oh well.
I’m still reading through Quasten’s Patrology volume 3, looking for interesting texts which might be translated. A few more have caught my eye.
It seems that Epiphanius of Salamis, author of the Panarion, also wrote three works attacking the veneration of images. He became concerned that people were putting up such images in the churches, pagan-style. These are extant (more or less). K. Holl, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Kirchengeschichte, vol. 2 (1928), pp.356-363. I wasn’t able to find this online, unfortunately.
Theodore of Mopsuestia on Genesis I have mentioned before. I admit that I am still drawn to this. Likewise I need to remember to do something about the remains of Philip of Side.
Another snippet from Quasten relates to Diodore of Tarsus. During the reign of Julian the Apostate he resisted the attempts at re-paganisation. In a rage Julian wrote an angry letter to one Photinus describing Diodore as “a priest sorceror of the Galileans” and “a keen defender of a religion for farmers” who was defending the Christians with “the wisdom of Athens itself”. Erudite Christians always tend to infuriate Christian-haters. The letter is preserved by Facundus of Hermiane (who?), Pro defens. trium capit. 4, 2. I am unfamiliar with this work, but the letter sounds like something that should be online, and does not seem to be.
I wonder if the letter is present in the Loeb Julian? I always hesitated to scan material from these, not least because I am very much in favour of the Loeb Library, and the volumes are still in print. But now that PDF’s are online there seems little reason to hold back.
This letter may have been written at any time between Julian’s arrival at Antioch in July 362 and his departure thence, in March 363. The Greek original is represented by curious and sometimes untranslatable Latin. Photinus, bishop of Sirmium, where Constantius resided in 351, was tried, deposed and banished by a synod convened there by Constantius. According to Sozomen 4. 6, he wrote many Greek and Latin works in support of his heretical views on the divinity of Christ, which were opposed by both Arians and Nicaeans. He is mentioned by Julian, Against the Galilieans 262c.
Moreover the Emperor Julian, faithless to Christ, in his attack on Diodorus writes as follows to Photinus the heresiarch:
O Photinus, you at any rate seem to maintain what is probably true, and come nearest to being saved, and do well to believe that he whom one holds to be a god can by no means be brought into the womb. But Diodorus, a charlatan priest of the Nazarene, when he tries to give point to that nonsensical theory about the womb by artifices and juggler’s tricks, is clearly a sharp-witted sophist of that creed of the country-folk.
A little further on he says:
But if only the gods and goddesses and all the Muses and Fortune will lend me their aid, I hope to show that he is feeble and a corrupter of laws and customs, of pagan * Mysteries and Mysteries of the gods of the underworld, and that that new-fangled Galilaean god of his, whom he by a false myth styles eternal, has been stripped by his humiliating death and burial of the divinity falsely ascribed to him by Diodorus.
Then, just as people who are convicted of error always begin to invent, being the slaves of artifice rather than of truth, he goes on to say:
For the fellow sailed to Athens to the injury of the general welfare, then rashly took to philosophy and engaged in the study of literature, and by the devices of rhetoric armed his hateful tongue against the heavenly gods, and being utterly ignorant of the Mysteries of the pagans he so to speak imbibed most deplorably the whole mistaken folly of the base and ignorant creed-making fishermen. For this conduct he has long ago been punished by the gods themselves. For, for many years past, he has been in danger, having contracted a wasting disease of the chest, and lie now suffers extreme torture. His whole body has wasted away. For his cheeks have fallen in and his body is deeply lined with wrinkles. But this is no sign of philosophic habits, as he wishes it to seem to those who are deceived by him, but most certainly a sign of justice done and of punishment from the gods which has stricken him down in suitable proportion to his crime, since he must live out to the very end his painful and bitter life, his appearance that of a man pale and wasted.
* Twice in this letter Facundus translates Julian’s “Hellenic” as “pagan.”
Interesting that this Photinus was currying favour with Julian. We tend to think of the corrupt bishop as a modern figure, but of course it is not so.
… Or so the Arians must have thought! Yes, it’s the Cappadocian Fathers. These are the group of clergymen who turned the tide against Arianism in the mid-4th century; Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory Nazianzen.
Less well known are some of their associates, such as Amphilochius. I’ve been looking at his works with an eye to seeing whether any of them are (a) short and (b) untranslated.
One interesting text is the Iambics for Seleucus (PG 37, 1577-1600). This is a set of moral advice to a friend, composed in verse form, and ending with a recommendation to study the scriptures and a list of canonical books. There is a poor translation of the latter here – the portion of Hebrews misrepresents what Amphilochius writes.
I understand that a critical text of all the works of Amphilochius was made by C. Datema, Amphilochii Iconiensis Opera,CCSG 3 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1978). I don’t know whether any translation of the Iambics exists, tho; I could find none.
Another interesting text was published in Leipzig in 1906 by Gerhard Ficker in his Amphilochiana, I., p.23-77, Against the Apotactites and Gemellites. Quasten says this is a Coptic version, but it seems to be a mistake; there is a Greek text, and then another work on Isaac, presented in German translation only of a Coptic text. Who the people attacked in the former are I do not know, but they seem to be ascetic or perhaps encratite heretics. Thankfully Ficker’s book is online here.
Asterius of Amasea was another of the Cappadocian Fathers. Fourteen homilies survive, and the same Datema made an edition with English notes (but no translation!) here. The edition appeared from Brill in 1970, who have put online a limited preview. It is a pity that they didn’t make the whole book available. Five of his fourteen homilies are online in English at my site.
The translation of Eusebius Gospel problems and solutions (Quaestiones ad Stephanum/Marinum) is nearly done. The one big chunk to do is the transcription of the Syriac fragments. Producing an electronic file containing the text is not quite as simple as it sounds, tho; and not merely because of the Syriac alphabet! The words were originally printed without vowels, and I feel that these should be added. It’s going to be fairly expensive and time-consuming, but a sample appeared today which looks very good, and I am promised it by the end of May.
I also need to finish off the transcription of the Latin text, which I am doing myself, but which is trivial. There are minor tasks such as adding cross-references to be done. I suppose I ought to add some kind of index.
I expect the book to be done by the end of May, all the same. Then the whole book needs to be typeset, and then marketed.
It will be worth the wait. The material is excellent, the translation is good, the inclusion of the original language will give readers the chance to check particular wording, and all in all I think it will be a good thing. Eventually the translation will go online as well, but not until I have managed to recoup some of the cost by book sales! So far it’s cost around $4,000, which is quite a lot!
Mark Ashton, Vicar of St. Andrew the Great, Cambridge
I bought a copy of Evangelicals Now today, and saw with delight a picture of Mark Ashton, Vicar of St. Andrew the Great in Cambridge at the top of an article. This is a student church, and I have always thought of it as my ‘home’ church, although I cannot get there very often because I live a long way off.
But looking closer, I saw with alarm that it was a piece about terminal cancer, addressed with his usual clarity. (The whole article is here) And at the end — even worse — was a short note that he had died on April 3rd!
For me this is dreadful news. I had had no idea that he was ill. In my memory he is still a man in vigorous good health. Perhaps I might share some memories here.
When I first went to the Round Church (as it then was) in the early 80’s, Mark had just arrived and was assisting Mark Rushton, who had made the Round the great centre of Christianity in the UK that it was during the 60’s and 70’s. In those days Mark had dark hair, I recall, and he grew grey as I sat under his ministry. When Mark Rushton died soon afterwards, Mark became vicar, a post he held for the remainder of his life.
The congregation outgrew the little church building, and moved to St. Andrew the Great some years later. He led the largest and most successful church in Cambridge, and was a powerful preacher heard with pleasure by his congregation, mainly composed of students and academics. I never heard him preach a bad sermon, nor one that did not lead the hearer to turn his mind to God.
The congregation in turn became too large for that building. Mark was always keen to do “church plants”, sending a clergyman plus a chunk of the congregation to renew a parish church in Cambridge that was on its last legs. I remember the first of these, when Christopher Ash was the clergyman, and it was a great success. I recall a subsequent visit to preach by Christopher Ash, and Mark saying at the end of the sermon how much he loved those sermons, “… I could sit under his ministry all day.” They were indeed excellent; but Mark’s were better.
He was primarily a preacher. There are few such whom I would willingly ask an unbeliever to hear, but he was one. I wish I had asked various people to hear him, now that it is too late. Too many preachers like baby-talk, and their efforts are an embarassment. But his sermons were for adults, and adults who were educated and educated and intelligent to the standard of a Cambridge undergraduate. Nor was the message watered-down; the full gospel was preached, and the non-Christian always had the opportunity to come to Christ. In the last respect, indeed, God blessed his ministry. There are many of his sermons on the church website in audio form — the only form in which they should be encountered.
He was not lacking in pastoral concern either. I remember that he once invited me back to the vicarage after a sermon, together with a few others. He can hardly have known me, but it was typical of the man. At the lunch he mentioned an incident in the previous week when he had found himself near a group of policemen harassing some people for no obvious reason. Mark stopped to see what was happening, and a policeman came up to him and rudely demanded who he was and what he thought he was doing there. Mark replied in his best preachers’ voice “I am the clergyman of this parish, and I am observing how you are treating my parishioners.” The policeman went back to his colleagues without a further word, there was a brief conversation among them, and they all departed promptly.
Indeed it was a mark of his pastoral care to notice the marginalised members, people like myself who could not attend often but would keep right on coming as they could. I remember after a sermon how he invited people who needed to talk to someone about a pastoral issue to come and speak to him. I was suffering at that time in the aftermath of an illness brought on in part by a church which demanded too much of me, was unable to offer commitment to anything, but I went to talk to him. His pastoral advice and encouragment was invaluable to me. He didn’t measure me by an attendance, but encouraged me to walk with God. Without saying so, he also prayed for me for the remainder of that year — I could actually feel the effect on my prayer and bible-reading, and I could feel it when it stopped, at the new year when (naturally) he must have revised his prayer list. From a man in church of a huge congregation this was kindness indeed.
He was also a very humble man. I remember one week that he illustrated his sermon with some cartoons, including a comic devil. I think he must have drawn them himself, although he did not say so, and they were excellent. But the following week he told the congregation that some people had objected that a comic devil was misleading and tended to suggest that we should not take Satan seriously, and apologised sincerely and profusely for them. I suspect that I was not the only person who wanted to kick whoever had criticised!
His preaching was powerful, and at one time I carried around cassettes of sermons from the Round to play in the car. It is unfortunate that his written work was not so good. He preached in 1996 a series of sermons on James, which were master-pieces. They were also issued in booklet form, but the booklet is lifeless and dull, while the sermons were among the best I have ever heard.
He never received any preferment in the Church of England, not even a canonry during the thirty years that he laboured. The congregation must have been the largest financial contributor to the diocese, and the success of the church plants must have increased the numbers of communicants and donors to the diocese. But that did not qualify him, it seems. Indeed we might ask who did fill the stalls at the cathedral, if such a man was not considered suitable. But I never heard Mark even mention the matter.
I only corresponded with him once. After an administrative change to a standing order, I queried the office as follows:
Thank you for this. I have completed it [a mandate] and returned as requested.
May I ask a difficult but necessary question?
Giving goes to maintain the ministry of the Round, and the fabric of its buildings. But this gay priests business leads one to ask, just who owns these buildings? I’ve been watching events in the US where apostate bishops have been seizing the assets of parishes and evicting congregations. Charles Raven had the same experience here. My little contribution is intended for the Round, not to pay a gay bishop to close it down: and I expect the same is true of a lot of people.
Can I ask what measures have been put in place to ensure that, in the event of this happening here, the diocese will not simply appropriate whatever is given to the Round? I know we raised a lot of money to refurbish the building: but I wonder, if the StAG building belongs to the diocese, not to the congregation, why are we raising all this money for it, if we have no guarantee against eviction? This question must be going to hit us in a few years, I would have thought.
It is hard to justify giving money to the Church of England as an institution at the moment, and questions of responsible stewardship come into this. I hesitated a lot before restarting this standing order. Has any thought been given to this?
All the best,
Roger Pearse
I was surprised but pleased to get a reply from Mark:
Dear Roger,
I’ve received your email of the 12th of November (which I will also forward to the church treasurer, in case he wishes to comment).
You are very generous to support us with a standing order and thank you very much indeed for that.
You are perfectly right to put your finger on that particular issue. Of course, the overwhelming majority of our income goes on paying for the staff and current programmes of the church. But the ownership of the church property is a moot question – vested in me while I am vicar, and the Church of England would find it very hard to get it away from me, unless they find me to be heretical or convicted of gross immorality. But at the moment of succession there is great vulnerability, and I’m certainly not in a position totally to reassure you in your misgivings.
We do have a couple of charitable trusts, which, we believe, are safe, and which support gospel ministry, both here and in some other churches. You can always route your giving to these, rather than to the Round Church at St Andrew the Great.
On a slightly more reassuring note, my own faith is not in the morality or faithfulness of the institution, nor even in our own power to resist it, but in the power of the gospel to continue to replicate itself in people’s lives. It always seems to me that the best safe-guard we have against the sort of fears you express is faithful gospel ministry, leading to conversion and growing discipleship amongst a body of people who will be kept by the word and spirit of God from straying out of His paths. It may at times seem a slim hope, but I believe it to be a Biblical one!
With very best wishes,
Mark
The combination of a straight answer combined with a focus on God, not the world, was typical of the man.
I’ve just created the link to Mark’s article above, and I read portions of it, and I admit that I am sitting here in tears. Mark was one of the best of men, and I feel sensibly diminished. My world has grown smaller with his passing.
The church website is here, with video of the service of remembrance here. A great number of his sermons are online at the church website in .mp3 format. There is also a useful talk he gave in March – pretty much his last, his voice showing the sign of illness, in .mpg here. See also a video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?hl=en-GB&v=H7Y_GJMnj_4.
