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LEISURE IN CHRISTIAN THOUGHT AND PRACTICE
David Purcell's Seminar Paper

You will look in vain in a dictionary for a definition of Leisure. A dictionary will express its meaning vaguely as being "free time," which conveys a completely inadequate impression of what leisure really is. Now it is hardly surprising that a dictionary cannot help us. Leisure is a spiritual and mental attitude - an Idea - and we cannot encompass in a single term or sentence the definition of an Idea. An examination of some aspects of this Idea, however, will help us to understand the nature of leisure. The first thing to note is that leisure has a positive value of its own. It is not merely the negation of work. In Greek and Latin there were only negative words to express the idea of work. In Latin, the word for leisure was "otium." The word for business was "neg-otium"-"not leisure." Similarly also in the Greek. Most of the work in the Greek and Roman civilizations was performed by slaves. A free citizen would however have been involved in negotiations of one kind or another and would have regarded negotiation or what we call commerce or business as the negation of leisure and hence work.

Leisure is an attitude of contemplation, of an inward calm, of surrendering to Reality. The English word "leisure" is derived from the Latin word licere meaning "to be allowed." The Book of Ecclesiasticus gives us an insight into the nature of leisure when it tells us "The wisdom of a learned man cometh by his time of leisure, and he that is less in action, shall receive wisdom." (Ch. 38, v. 25). "Leisure is a receptive attitude of mind, a contemplative attitude, and is ... the capacity for steeping oneself in the whole of creation." (Leisure The Basis of Culture, Josef Pieper, p. 49.) Here again we note this idea of receptiveness - of letting things happen Licere - to be allowed. It should not be supposed that leisure means just idleness. The meaning of the Old English word "idel" was probably "empty." (Concise Oxford Dictionary.) An idle person then was one who was empty of reality. ''Idleness . . . means that a man prefers to forego the rights . . . that belong to his nature ... he does not wish to be what he really, fundamentally IS." "At the zenith of the Middle Ages ... it was held that sloth and restlessness, "leisure-lessness," the incapacity to enjoy leisure, were all closely connected, sloth was held to be the source of restlessness, and the ultimate cause of "work for work's sake." (Pieper, op. cit., pp. 48, 49.)

It has been held by many philosophers that what is hard work is good. This view was held by one of Plato's companions, by Emmanuel Kant, by Calvin and by a lamentably large numbers of modern (self-styled) Christians. The historical Christian view, still held (at least nominally) by the majority of Christians, is diametrically opposed to this viewpoint. St. Thomas Aquinas held that the essence of virtue consists in the good rather than the difficult and that virtue makes us perfect by enabling us to follow our natural bent in the right way. And he wrote "there should be men who devote their lives to contemplation ... necessary not only for the good of the individual who so devotes himself, but for the good of human society." (Commentary On Proverbs.)

It is obvious therefore that in classical and mediaeval Christian thought leisure did not derive its value from the relief it brings from work, nor from the fact that it can be a restorative after work or a strengthening agent for present or future work. If leisure is considered as merely a break in one's work it "is still a part of the world of work. The pause is made for the sake of work . . . and a man is not only refreshed from work but for work." (Pieper, op. cit., p. 56).

But we will more clearly understand the nature of leisure by examining the idea of leisure in Christian thought and teaching. Though one may only rarely find the word "Leisure" mentioned in Christian writing - the idea is inherent in Christianity and indeed is "one of the foundations of Western culture." (Pieper, op. cit., p. 25.) We can only comprehend this by understanding the Christian teaching on man's origin, nature and destiny. The Christian holds that "God created man to His own image and likeness." (Genesis 1, 26-27), and that "This image of God in man, is not in the body, but in the soul, which is a spiritual substance, endued with understanding and free will." (Notes on the Revised Rheims, Douay Bible, 1750, Bishop Challoner). Now although Christians held this for many centuries and the majority still holds it, there has been a denial of the true nature of man, which, as I will show later, has profoundly affected man's attitude to leisure.

"All things are ordered to one good, as to their ultimate end . . . and this is God." (Summa Contra Gentiles III, Ch. 17, St. Thomas Aquinas). Nothing can satisfy man's will completely except God alone, for God is his beginning and his end. Man is imbued with what has been called a "divine discontent." This is what St. Augustine of Hippo had in mind when he prayed "Our hearts, O Lord, are restless, until they rest in Thee." Christian belief then is that God is the ultimate object; the ultimate end of all man's desires, and the possession of God by the soul is complete happiness. Since then this is so, all human activity should be directed towards true happiness. Every effort of man, which endeavours to deny God, or to ignore Him, or to leave out of account the destiny of man, will suffer the fate of the ancient Tower of Babel. Men then attempted to build their own path to happiness. Because their actions were not in accord with reality, their efforts disintegrated. And the very name of the edifice, which they attempted to erect, has become the symbol of confusion - of feverish activity directed to a futile end, of activism, or work for work's sake.

LEISURE IN THE NEW TESTAMENT

When we read the New Testament we notice immediately similarities between the civilization in which Christ lived, and our own civilization. We must be similarly struck with the contrast to these attitudes to life in Christ's teaching. Here there is no stressing the virtue of work for it's own sake; there is no praise for material efficiency for its own sake. In fact we find the very opposite. In the New Testament we read the message of peace and tranquility of mind, and we find repeated warnings about the dangers of world-liness - of concentrating our attention on material things. "No man can serve two masters. You cannot serve God and mammon." (Matthew VI, 24). The Knox translation of the Scripture puts it "you cannot serve God and money." "Come unto Me all you that labour and are burdened and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and you shall find rest unto your souls." (Matthew XI, 28.) I think that the "rest" of which Christ spoke here, could not possibly have been closer to the true nature of leisure. We find in the New Testament too a warning to distinguish between shadow and substance, between what appears to be important and what is in reality our destiny. "Lay not up to yourselves treasures on earth: where the rust and the moth consume and where thieves break through and steal. But lay up to yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither the rust nor moth doth consume and where thieves do not break through and steal. For where thy treasure is, there is thy heart also." (Matthew VII, 19-21.)

There is in the words of Christ Himself the first Christian pronouncement specifically on the subject of what I term activism - that is, the practice of activity without reference to the true purpose of Man - the modern concept of work. The scene was at the village of Bethany and Our Lord was the guest of the two sisters Martha and Mary. Mary sat at the Lord's feet and the Scripture tells us, she "heard His word." But Martha, busy with the housework and serving, complained that Mary had left her to do the work alone. And Christ rebuked her saying, "Martha, Martha thou art careful and art troubled about many things. But one thing is necessary. Mary hath chose the better part . . .". (Luke X, 38-42.)

The primacy of the spirit, the supremacy of the spiritual over the material is exemplified in the Old Testament in the words: "Not in bread alone doth man live, but in every word that proceedeth from the mouth of God." (Deuteronomy VIII, 3.) And in the New Testament: "For the Wisdom of the flesh is death, but the wisdom of the spirit is life and peace." (Romans VIII, 6.)

ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI

It is important not to misunderstand this attitude to material things - to what in Christian parlance is called the "world." The Christian speaks of this world as a "Vale of tears" and yet he knows that all creation, even material creation bears witness to the existence of God and a higher life. If we try to divorce this world from its origin and if we deny our own ultimate destiny, then this life becomes meaningless and empty and well we may despair for then we are really idle persons. This is one of the many paradoxes of Christianity.
Of all men, this paradox of being in and of the world and yet unworldly, of despising this world's goods for their own sake and yet loving them as God's creation, is most clearly seen in the life of St. Francis of Assisi. A man so detached from material things that he actively envied with a burning zeal the materially poor and the destitute, and yet a man who so loved all created things that he bestowed upon them the title of "Brother," "Brother Dog" and "Brother Sun," and even his own body, with a paradoxical mixture of contempt and love, he affectionately called "Brother Ass."
I mention St. Francis of Assisi for another reason. He is a Saint who is revered by Christians of all denominations and one who is frequently admired even by atheists and agnostics, usually because there has come to be associated with his name a kind of benevolent humanitarianism and because his poetic nature appeals to the human imagination. It is very strange, that such a man should be revered, because in the sense that our civilization understands the term "work" he was a waster. From youth onwards he didn't do a day's "work" for the rest of his life! Could there possibly be a greater antithesis to modern thinking about work than the spirit of the Poverello of Assisi who typifies the attitude of the Christian Saints?
St. Francis appreciated profoundly the true meaning of leisure. He loved nature-more than any other human being he considered the lilies of the field and the fowls of the air, and because of this, more than any other man, he followed implicitly the injunction: "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His justice, and all things shall be added to you." (Luke XII, 31.) If a man first seeks the Kingdom of God, and to the extent that he does so he will appreciate truly the gifts of God.
It is an interesting commentary on the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries that St. Francis, because he first sought the Kingdom of God, inspired the art and poetry of these ages. These were the centuries in which, however imperfect in their individual lives they may have been, men had a clear idea of their nature and their final destiny. They knew the importance of developing one's personality, which they termed personal sanctification, and so it was natural that one in whom there was so great a development of sanctity should be revered as St. Francis was.
It was not a matter of indifference to the men of the 13th to the 15th century how their lives were spent. They understood craftsmanship because they knew that God is glorified by beauty of form. The appearance of the Church - the House of God - was a matter of importance, and in building the great cathedrals they have left to us, they endeavoured to glorify God by building Him as fitting an abode on earth as possible. All this was directed towards their own sanctification - towards the development of their own personalities through glorifying God. These were the centuries of the artisan, the craftsman who was engaged in the creative, organic process of true work. He was in contact with the finished product of his labour and it was stamped with his personality. He was "not the servant but the master in the process of production." (The New Tower of Babel, Dietrich von Hilde-brand, 1953.) The artisan loved his work, and he may have been attached to it for the joy he derived from it, quite apart from its usefulness to him. The artisan has gone. He is replaced by the process worker, who is engaged on what is called "repetition work," who is a cog in the machine of the assembly line, who is no longer the master but the slave of production.

It is, I hope, now evident that there is a definite relationship between religion and leisure. Our modern materialistic "full employment" social system however, requires for its service men that are spiritually bankrupt. The spiritual void in the life of modern man is filled with "work" and his total occupation with this activity in, one form or another, gives him a false sense of fulfilment which mitigates the despair into which he inevitably lapses. A man spiritually enlightened achieves fulfilment - achieves his instinct of "belonging" to God and in God's creation in his religion. A man spiritually bankrupt feels a spurious fulfilment in "work." And so "work" has become the "religion" of our materialist age. What happened then to break down the idea of leisure, which we have considered, so that, even though the idea survives, it is become clouded and is jostled into the background by new ideas?

ORIGINAL SIN AND LEISURE

At this point it is necessary to explain the Christian doctrines of Original Sin and Justification, for the Christian attitude to leisure is dependent upon the truth about the nature of man, and his state before and after the Fall of Adam. When the truth of these doctrines was denied, then the basis of the idea of leisure was undermined. Briefly then, I summarise the teaching, which was denied in varying degrees by Luther, Calvin, Jansen and others. God created Adam as the first man and Eve the first woman. From Adam and Eve the whole human race descends. When God created man, He gave him, in addition to his nature, certain other endowments to which man could lay no claim by virtue of his nature. Of these gifts the primary one was sanctifying grace. God gave Adam other gifts - immortality (ie., freedom from bodily death and from sickness and pain) and integrity. By the gift of integrity man was free from that inclination to evil, called concupiscence. These gifts Adam lost through the Fall and through Adam they were lost by his descendents - the whole human race.

Justification is a Divine act, which conveys sanctifying grace to the soul, which by sin, either original or actual, was spiritually dead.

CALVINISM

As simply and as briefly as I can put it, those are the doctrines, which were held generally by Christians until the time of Martin Luther. It is true that early in the Fifth century, a British monk, Pelagius, denied the doctrine of Original Sin. His view and the views held by Luther on the matter were poles apart, and we need not concern ourselves in the context of Leisure with Pelagianism. It held sway for only some 25 years, and its chief opponent was St. Augustine (354-430).

Primarily it was the doctrine of Justification, which Martin Luther denied. Luther's teaching is not pertinent to the subject of the Christian view of leisure except in one aspect, and that is the influence of his teaching on his own and subsequent generations, which opened up the way for Calvinism. (I am not here dealing with what is held by modern Lutherans or Presbyterians, on which I am not qualified to comment. Here, and in the paragraphs which follow, I speak of what Calvin himself believed and taught.)

In the middle sixteenth century John Calvin accepted the Lutheran view that human nature is irremediably vitiated by original sin. But Calvin was a much clearer and more logical thinker than Luther. He developed Luther's ideas and held that view of the absolute predestination of mankind which though humourously expressed by Robert Burns in "Holy Willie's Prayer" is by no means misrepresented:
"O Thou, that in the heavens dost dwell, Wha as it pleases best Thysel',
Sends ane to Heaven and ten to Hell,
A' for Thy glory,
And not for onie guid or ill They've done afore Thee."

Calvinism spread from Geneva to France (where its adherents were called Hugenots), to Scotland (where John Knox was its chief propounded to Holland, to Poland, and to England through the Puritans. From England it crossed the Atlantic to America. In Geneva where Calvin had complete control, doctrine was quickly translated into action. Elders were appointed whose function was to watch over the lives of all individuals. They were stationed in every quarter of the city so that nothing could escape their scrutiny. There must be no leisure for its own sake - "those that are prodigal of their time despise their own souls." (The Worth of the Soul, Matthew Henry.) Contemplation became for the Puritan, a form of self-indulgence. Work was exalted into a virtue - "God hath commanded you in some way or other to labour for your daily bread." (Baxter's Christian Directory, Vol. 1, p. 168.) Calvin's followers accepted "the necessity of ... large scale commerce and finance, and the other practical facts of business life." (Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, p. 113, Prof. R. H. Tawney, 1926.) The word business is more correctly written and pronounced busy-ness.

JANSENISM

In the year 1640, there was published a book (Augusti-nus) which was the fruit of twenty years' study of the writings of St. Augustine. Its author, Cornelius Jansen, a Flemish Catholic Bishop, had died two years before its publication. In his book he refused to recognize that in the state in which man was created by God, he was endowed with numerous gifts and graces that were the pure gifts of God, in no way due to human nature. Since these gifts were, according to Jansen, an integral part of man's natural equipment, and since they were forfeited in the Fall of Adam, it followed that by Original Sin, our nature was corrupted in its essence. Man fell helplessly under the control of evil, so that, do what he would, there was an irresistible inclination drawing him towards evil. To counteract this inclination, Jansen held, God gives grace as a force drawing man in the opposite direction, consequently man is drawn, and drawn irresistibly towards good or towards evil according to the relative strength of these two conflicting inclinations.

The Jansenist doctrine was taken up in France by many who had hitherto rejected the teachings of Luther and Calvin, and led to a campaign of rigorism in the Catholic Church in France which lasted for nearly a century, and which was reminiscent of Pharisaism or Puritanism, which have much in common. It has been said that the Jansenists never learned to smile.

These policies were the logical outcome of the philosophies from which they sprang. They have reached their apotheosis in the period from the end of World War I to the present day. Exactly how successful they have been in completely changing the social structure of the world is, I think, self-evident. Why they were so successful and how the policies have been helped to fruition is outside my scope and would require a separate study.

THE GREEK AND ROMAN ATTITUDE TO WORK

To the Greeks and the Romans work was un-leisure. To the modern world leisure has become un-work. We rest from work only to repair the wear and tear of past work - only to build a reserve of energy to fit us for more efficient work. The work of man has become the same as the work of animals. Both men and animals work to produce something. The sheep works of its nature to produce wool and lambs. There is no intention on the part of the sheep to do this - it does so of its very nature, operating by instinct. But in the work of man there is an element other than the result produced - this element is intention or purpose, which involves the exercise of reason and will and which includes self-perfection or self-development.

Errors regarding the nature of personal beings have led to the idea that the importance of a man consists primarily in the production of impersonal goods or in some aspect of organization of that production, and in his accomplishments for the State, for art, for science, for economics - even for sport. Achievement, as such, is placed above personality. Within the range of goods produced, the preference is given to those which are least stamped with the impress of individual personality. These goods are considered to represent the "important" and "serious" part of life such as the sphere of economics, politics, national "development" and so on. Pure knowledge or art, or communities such as family and marriage, are relegated to the background. Work, as such, is immensely overrated. The terrible rhythm of work enslaves the individual person and prevents him from fulfilling his true purpose. Pope Pius XI pointed out (in Quadragesima Anno) that " ... it may be said with all truth, that nowadays the conditions of social and economic life are such that vast multitudes of men can only with great difficulty pay attention to that one thing necessary - namely, their eternal salvation." This is a modern reminder of the injunction of Christ to Martha "... one thing is necessary . . .. Speaking as the shepherd about his flock he remarked in a most poignant passage: "We can scarcely restrain our tears when we reflect upon the dangers which threaten them."

WORK FOR WORK'S SAKE

The position to which the function of work has been exalted, does not mean that all persons are engaged in the work itself for particularly long stretches of time. In fact, it is probable that the majority of people work for less time than they have done in past epochs. The important thing is though, that the function of work has been elevated into an end in itself. Individuals, trades' unions, employers' unions, political parties, whole nations are pursuing work as an end in itself. All clamour insistently that we must have "full employment." Since work has become an end in itself life is orientated towards it. Studies of the aged are made with the primary aim of equipping them for useful work. They must not be allowed even to grow old in graceful leisure. Hours of work are shortened, and leave from work is increased, so that work may become more efficient. Special universities are instituted for the specific purpose of training people for work. Even the insane are conscripted for work. It has been found that they excel at certain functions, which are soul-killing for a normal person. There has been speculation about what this type of work will do to one who is normal.

The alternative to work is amusement, and this is regarded as important and necessary, but of course, somewhat frivolous in comparison with the really serious business of work. Amusement plays an enormous role and is considered an essential part of life. The racecourses, the football field, the television screen, the radio, the picture theatre, the hotel, have become the alternatives to work. We hear frequently the terms "escape films" and "escape literature." Escape from the soul-destroying tedium of work into the dream world of amusement. Idleness in its true sense. Beelzebub is invoked to cast out Satan.

"The modern alternative to work on the one hand and amusement on the other is, in a certain way, an expression of infantilism. It is normal for children to consider school as being the serious part of life and to identify seriousness - with unpleasant, burdensome tasks. The child is free to play only when schoolwork is done, and playing thus becomes identified with the joyful. The same unfortunate-alternative has sometimes-grave consequences in education. Many guilt complexes are due to the fact that work is considered to be the only serious part in life. Some people feel morally guilty as soon as they are not working. They even feel "guilty" when they give their time to some important human affair rather than to professional work, even though in doing so they behave in the morally right way." (Von Hilderbrand, op. cit., p. 226.)
New Times October 10, 1958.