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Course 20 · Lesson 3.1

Lectio divina: its history and the four movements

11 minute read

Lessons in this course

Course 20 outline

Module 1: Spiritual Formation and the Doctrines Behind Prayer

  1. What spiritual formation means in Scripture and tradition
  2. How the Trinity, the Incarnation and grace shape Christian prayer
  3. A map of the prayer traditions: Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant
  4. Ways and stages of growth: purgation, illumination and union, and their critics

Module 2: The Desert and Early Monasticism

  1. Anthony, Athanasius and the beginning of the desert movement
  2. The sayings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers: how to read them
  3. John Cassian and the eight thoughts that trouble the mind
  4. From the hermit to the community: Pachomius, Basil and Benedict

Module 3: Praying with Scripture and with the Church

  1. Lectio divina: its history and the four movements
  2. The Psalms as the prayer of the church
  3. The Divine Office and the Liturgy of the Hours: hours, texts and structure
  4. Using the daily office alone, and the Protestant daily prayer tradition

Module 4: Hesychasm and the Jesus Prayer

  1. Stillness and the prayer of the heart in the early Eastern church
  2. The Jesus Prayer: its words, its sources and its history
  3. Gregory Palamas and the fourteenth century controversy over light and energies
  4. Practice and cautions: the role of a guide and the warnings of the tradition

Module 5: Fasting, Discernment and Spiritual Direction

  1. Fasting in Scripture and in the three traditions
  2. Asceticism: its purpose, its dangers and its abuses
  3. The discernment of spirits from Antony and Cassian to Ignatius of Loyola
  4. Spiritual direction: the elder, the confessor, the pastor and the mentor

Module 6: Contemplation and Action

  1. Mary and Martha: how the church has read the two lives
  2. Prayer that issues in service: Benedict, Brother Lawrence and the Reformers on vocation
  3. When practice goes wrong: pride, quietism and spiritual experience without doctrine

Module 7: Building a Rule of Life

  1. What a rule of life is, and what the word rule meant for Benedict
  2. Choosing practices: Scripture, prayer, fasting, rest and service
  3. Dryness, failure and starting again
  4. Reviewing and adjusting a rule over time

All courses

Program / Course 20: Spiritual Theology / Lesson 3.1

What you will learn

  • Define lectio divina and trace its roots from the early church through Benedict to the twelfth century.
  • Name the four movements as described by Guigo II and say what each means.
  • Explain the theology of Scripture that lies behind the practice.
  • Compare Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant ways of reading Scripture prayerfully.

The big idea

Lectio divina, Latin for divine reading, is the slow, prayerful reading of Scripture in which the reader listens for God to speak through the text. It grew from the early church’s conviction that Scripture is God’s living word, and was set out in a classic form by the Carthusian monk Guigo II in the twelfth century as four movements: reading, meditation, prayer and contemplation. The practice rests on a theology of Scripture as both a human text and the means by which God addresses the church. Other traditions have their own forms of prayerful reading, and the differences reveal differing views of how Scripture works.

Key terms

Lectio divina
Latin for divine reading. The prayerful, unhurried reading of Scripture as a way of listening to God.
Lectio
The first movement: reading the text slowly, often aloud, attending to its words.
Meditatio
The second movement: reflecting on the text and letting its words sink in, often by repeating and pondering them.
Oratio
The third movement: responding to God in prayer, in thanks, petition or repentance, out of what the text has stirred.
Contemplatio
The fourth movement: resting quietly in God’s presence, beyond words and thoughts.
Four senses of Scripture
The medieval reading of a text as literal, allegorical, moral and anagogical (pointing to the final hope). They shaped how monastic readers listened.
Inspiration
The teaching that God is the source of Scripture through human authors. See 2 Timothy 3:16.

Background

Reading Scripture as an act of prayer is older than the name lectio divina. Origen, in the third century, urged readers to approach the Bible with prayer, since it is God’s word that opens its meaning, and he gave the pattern of reading, seeking and knocking. Ambrose of Milan, according to Augustine, read silently, which struck Augustine as unusual. Jerome and others spoke of the continual reading of Scripture. The monastic tradition made it a daily habit. Benedict assigns set times in the day to sacred reading, and chapter 48 of the Rule sets out those hours.

The four movements were given classic expression by Guigo II, prior of the Carthusian charterhouse near Grenoble in the late twelfth century, in a short work called the Ladder of Monks, also known as the Scala claustralium. Guigo describes reading as putting food in the mouth, meditation as chewing it, prayer as tasting it and contemplation as the sweetness that refreshes. The image is intentionally bodily. Scholars note that Guigo’s four steps are a description of a pattern rather than a mechanical method, and that earlier monastic writers used the words in somewhat varied ways.

The practice faded in some periods and was recovered in the twentieth century in Catholic and then wider circles. The Second Vatican Council’s constitution on divine revelation urged that all the faithful have easy access to Scripture and that prayer should accompany reading, so that dialogue takes place between God and the reader. This lesson is about the history and the theology. Practical instruction on how to carry it out regularly belongs to the course on the rule of life.

Step-by-step explanation

Step 1: The conviction behind the practice

The practice assumes that Scripture is more than a document. The Letter to the Hebrews says that the word of God is living and active (Hebrews 4:12). Paul writes that all Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for teaching and training (2 Timothy 3:16). Christians have taken these texts to mean that God uses the Bible to address readers now.

At the same time, the tradition holds that the text has a human history and meaning, and that careful reading includes attention to its words, setting and literary form. Lectio divina is not a substitute for study. It is a way of listening that rests on study.

Step 2: From Origen to Benedict

Origen taught that the interpreter needs both skill and prayer, because the Spirit who inspired the text must also open it. Augustine’s conversion came as he read a few verses of Paul (Confessions, Book 8). Benedict’s Rule gives the monk fixed hours for reading and, in chapter 48, says that on Sundays all are to give time to it. Reading was a duty and a source of prayer.

Step 3: Guigo’s four movements

Guigo’s image is of a monk taking a bit of Scripture, perhaps a verse, and moving through four stages. In reading, he attends to the words. In meditation, he considers what the words say and asks what they mean for him. In prayer, he turns to God with what has arisen. In contemplation, God gives a sweetness that goes beyond the words. Guigo says that reading without meditation is dry, meditation without reading is error-prone, prayer without meditation is lukewarm and contemplation without prayer is rare.

He also insists that the last stage is a gift. A reader cannot produce it by effort, only prepare to receive it.

Step 4: The four senses of Scripture

Medieval monastic readers did not read only for the surface sense. A common summary, preserved in a Latin couplet, gave four senses: the literal, which tells what happened, the allegorical, which shows what to believe, the moral, which shows what to do, and the anagogical, which shows where to hope. Jerusalem, for example, could mean the historical city, the church, the soul and the heavenly city.

Modern Catholic teaching retains these senses in the Catechism, while Protestants since the Reformation have generally emphasized the literal or plain sense as primary, with the others handled with more caution. This difference shapes how each tradition reads prayerfully.

Step 5: Other traditions of prayerful reading

Orthodox Christians hear Scripture mainly in the liturgy, with a lectionary and the Fathers as guides, and many also read at home, often with the commentary of the Fathers. Luther described a threefold approach to the study of theology, using the Latin terms oratio, meditatio and tentatio: prayer, meditation and the trial or testing that comes from living the word. Puritans and Pietists encouraged daily meditation on Scripture. Each tradition kept the aim of hearing God through the text, with different habits to guard against error.

  1. What do I assume about Scripture when I read it for prayer?
  2. How do I distinguish what a text meant from what it says to me?
  3. Why might Guigo say that contemplation is a gift and not an achievement?
  4. What guards against reading my own thoughts into the text?
  5. Which of the four movements do I skip most often?
  6. How does hearing Scripture in a group differ from reading it alone?

Examples

Guigo’s image

Guigo compares reading to taking food into the mouth and meditation to chewing it. A reader who rushes through a chapter gets the first and misses the second. A reader who takes one verse and returns to it three times may not finish the page, but has chewed.

Augustine in the garden

Augustine reports that, in distress, he heard a child’s voice repeating take and read, took up the book of Paul’s letters and read the first passage he saw, in Romans 13. He treats the moment as God’s word to him. Readers note that this was not a random opening of a book, since he was already deeply engaged with the faith.

A test against private fancy

A woman reading Matthew 25 finds herself drawn to an interpretation that excuses her from caring for a difficult relative. A friend in her small group reads the same text aloud and asks what the passage says about the least of these. The shared reading corrects the private one. (A constructed example.)

Different perspectives

Catholic

The Catholic Church teaches in Dei Verbum, the Vatican II constitution on divine revelation, that Scripture is to be read in the same Spirit in which it was written, with attention to the unity of the whole Bible, the living tradition of the Church and the analogy of faith. It recommends prayerful reading so that a dialogue takes place between God and the reader.

Orthodox

Orthodox Christians stress that Scripture lives within the Church, and is interpreted with the Fathers and in the liturgy. Many Orthodox readers hold that private reading should be guided by that context, and some Orthodox writers caution against reading in isolation from the tradition.

Protestant

Protestants hold that Scripture is the supreme authority and that the Spirit enlightens the believer who reads it. Luther’s oratio, meditatio and tentatio and the Puritan practice of meditation show a long Protestant tradition of devotional reading. Protestants often warn against allegorical readings that depart from the plain sense.

Scholarly view

Historians of exegesis note that the four senses were more a practice of reading than a formula, and that the medieval monastic tradition prized memory and repetition of the text. Many scholars observe that prayerful reading is found in Judaism as well, in the study of Torah as an act of devotion.

Why it matters

Lectio divina shows how a tradition can treat a text as both an object of study and the voice of God. A student who knows its history can use the practice without treating it as a technique, and can recognize how different traditions guard prayerful reading against private fancy.

Common misunderstandings

Misunderstanding: Lectio divina is a modern invention or an Eastern-style meditation.

Correction: It is an ancient Christian practice, set out in its classic form by Guigo II in the twelfth century and rooted in the early church and the monastic tradition.

Misunderstanding: Lectio divina means that whatever I feel while reading is God’s message.

Correction: The tradition says reading is tested by Scripture as a whole, by the church’s teaching and by wise counsel. Feelings are not a reliable test by themselves.

Misunderstanding: It replaces Bible study.

Correction: Lectio divina rests on study and complements it. It does not replace attention to meaning and context.

Misunderstanding: Contemplation is the goal that a person achieves by doing the first three steps well.

Correction: Guigo describes contemplation as a gift that cannot be forced. The first three stages prepare the reader to receive it.

Knowledge check

What are the four movements in Guigo II’s description?

Lectio, reading the text slowly. Meditatio, reflecting on and pondering it. Oratio, responding to God in prayer. Contemplatio, resting in God’s presence beyond words. Guigo used the bodily images of taking food, chewing, tasting and being refreshed.

Why do the traditions insist that lectio rests on study?

Because the text has a human history and meaning, and prayerful reading that ignores it can import private fancy. Catholic teaching asks for attention to the whole of Scripture and the tradition, and Protestants point to the plain sense. All three hold that reading is a response to what is actually written.

What are the four senses of Scripture?

The literal or historical sense, the allegorical sense showing what to believe, the moral sense showing what to do, and the anagogical sense showing what to hope for. Medieval readers used them together, and Catholics retain them, while Protestants generally prefer the plain sense.

How did Luther describe the study of theology?

In the preface to his German writings, he named three rules: oratio (prayer), meditatio (meditation on the text) and tentatio (trial or testing). The third means that living by the word brings struggles which teach the reader what the word means.

Think it through

  1. What do you expect when you open the Bible, and how does that shape what you find?
  2. How might the practice change if you read in a group?
  3. What would it mean to treat the text as addressed to you without treating it as written about you only?

Independent assignment

A text read four ways

In your notebook, write 350 to 500 words. Choose a short passage of ten or fewer verses, such as part of a psalm or a Gospel scene. Read it through the four movements described by Guigo, and note in one paragraph for each what you did and noticed. Then write a short paragraph on how you checked your understanding against the wider Scripture or a trusted commentary. Do not share this with anyone.

Further study