Defense Laboratory / Is private Christian practice historically defensible?
1. The objection
“Private Christianity is a modern invention. For most of history, to be a Christian meant to be baptized into a church, to receive the sacraments from a priest and to worship with others. The idea that a person can pray, read the Bible and follow Christ alone belongs to the age of individualism and the internet. The early believers met in houses, the monks lived in communities, and even the hermits answered to a bishop. Take away the church and what is left is a private taste for spirituality with a Christian label, not a practice with any roots in the tradition.”
2. Investigation
Assumptions
- That private prayer, reading and discipline were not part of Christian life before the modern period.
- That ‘private practice’ means the same thing as having no connection with a church, no sacraments and no teachers.
- That a practice must be common to be defensible, or that it must have been the normal way of life for most people.
- That the hermits and desert monks should be counted as examples of private practice, or that they should be counted only as members of an ascetic community.
- That a practice with historical roots is by that fact right, and a practice without them is wrong.
Evidence and historical claims
- What did Jesus teach about private prayer? Read Matthew 6:5-6 and note what is said about the inner room and the Father who sees in secret.
- What did the early church do about daily prayer, and how much of it was at home? Look at the Didache’s instruction on praying the Lord’s Prayer three times a day, and at the hours of prayer in the early church.
- Who were the desert fathers and mothers, such as Antony of Egypt, and how did they live? How much of their life was alone, and how much was connected to elders, visitors and the Eucharist?
- How did Christians live in times when they had no access to a church, for example during persecution, or in remote places? What did they do for prayer and for the sacraments?
- How did the Reformation understand the Bible in the home, and what did the Reformers say about the priesthood of all believers? Look at 1 Peter 2:9 and how Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants each read it.
- What did writers on the spiritual life, such as Augustine, John Cassian and Teresa of Avila, say about solitude and its dangers?
Philosophical and theological claims
- What is the difference between a practice done in private and a practice done apart from the church? Can a person pray alone as a member of the church?
- What makes a practice legitimate: its age, its fruit, its fit with Scripture, or the approval of an authority?
- Is something defensible if it was an exception in history and not the rule?
Logical structure
- Premise 1: Christian practice in history was normally carried out in and through a church.
- Premise 2: A practice that departs from the normal historical pattern has no standing as Christian.
- Conclusion: Therefore private Christian practice is not historically defensible.
- Test each premise separately. Premise 1 is largely true, but it says nothing about private prayer within a churchly life. Premise 2 is the weak point: ask whether being unusual in history is the same as being excluded.
3. Christian responses
Response A: Private prayer is ancient, and solitude is a recognized vocation within the church (Catholic and Orthodox view)
Catholic and Orthodox Christians point out that private prayer is as old as the faith. Jesus himself prayed alone (Luke 5:16) and told his followers to pray in secret (Matthew 6:6). The Catholic Church today recognizes the hermit life in canon law, supervised by a bishop, and the Orthodox tradition honors hermits and recluses as part of the church’s life, usually connected to a monastery or an elder.
On this view, private practice is defensible when it is practiced within the life of the church: with the sacraments where possible, under guidance, and with ties to a community. It is not defensible, they would say, as a replacement for the church.
Response B: The Bible in the hands of every believer (the Protestant view)
Protestants hold that every believer has direct access to God through Christ (Hebrews 4:14-16) and that Scripture is for all Christians to read, not only for the clergy. The Reformers promoted the translation of the Bible into common languages and the practice of daily Bible reading and prayer in the household. Many Protestants, especially in the Puritan and Pietist traditions, wrote at length on private devotion and the keeping of a spiritual journal.
The Reformers generally also held that the Christian is to be part of a local church, with the preaching of the word and the sacraments. Defenders of private practice among Protestants therefore tend to argue for an addition to churchly life and not a substitute for it.
Response C: Solitary life has often been the practice of Christians without a church to go to (the historical record)
Christians have, at many times, lived without regular access to a church or a priest. Examples include believers under persecution, prisoners, isolated rural families, and those in places where clergy were scarce. Historians record cases where lay Christians kept the faith alive for generations with household prayer, memorized Scripture and catechism, such as in Japan after the seventeenth century, when the hidden Christians kept their practice without priests for about two hundred years.
This does not show that this was the ideal. It shows that the faith has survived and been sustained in private form when there was no other way, and that the churches generally treated such Christians as members under hardship, not as outsiders.
Response D: A historian’s caution (scholarly view)
Historians of religion often caution that the sources for ordinary private devotion in the ancient world are thin, since most surviving texts were written by clergy and monks. This means that claims about how common private practice was in any period should be held with care. The best evidence points to household prayer and the reading of Scripture as common in many periods, and to a clear distinction between private devotion and the rejection of the church.
The word private also carries different meanings in different periods. A modern person who is entirely independent of any church has little precedent in ancient or medieval sources, and it is fair to say that the historical case is strongest for private practice as part of church life and weakest for private practice as a complete replacement.
4. The strongest counterargument
The strongest reply to Responses A, B and C is that the examples they give do not match the case the objector is describing. Hermits answered to bishops, the hidden Christians of Japan kept up their practice in the hope of a priest’s return, and the Reformers insisted on a gathered church. None of these is the case of a person who has chosen to practice alone and permanently with no teacher and no church. The defender of private practice must therefore show that the principle is defensible even if the exact case is rare, and that is a harder thing to show from history alone.
The strongest reply to the objection is that it proves too much. If a practice must be common to be defensible, then many things the church now treasures, such as the monastic movement, began as unusual and were first regarded with suspicion. The reply also notes that the objection conflates the age of a practice with its rightness, and that Scripture, and not only the history of practice, is the final test for most Christians. A practice can have a thin historical record and still be consistent with Scripture, and a common practice can still be wrong.
5. Your independent defense
- Write the objection in one sentence in your own words, and say what you think the word private means in it.
- List the premises hidden in it using the logic outline above, and mark the one you think is weakest.
- Read Matthew 6:5-6 and Luke 5:16. Write what each passage shows about private prayer in the life of Jesus and in his teaching.
- Read a reliable account of the desert fathers and mothers. Write a paragraph on how much of their life was solitary and how much was connected to a community, an elder or the Eucharist.
- Look up the Catholic canon on hermits and the Protestant teaching on the priesthood of all believers. Write a paragraph on each that a Catholic and a Protestant would each accept as fair.
- Choose your own position and write 300 to 500 words defending it. State what private practice you keep, what ties you keep to other Christians, and what you do about the sacraments.
- Write the strongest objection to your own position. Make it as strong as you can, then answer it.
- Finally write one sentence on what would change your mind.
- Keep this in your own notebook or document. Do not send it anywhere.