First of all, Merry Christmas to everyone and I hope you all had a peaceful end to your year. Emily and I were able to come home for the week, trading time between our families…a couple days here a couple days there. We’re very thankful our families live in the same city. Through all the chaos we ultimately had a very lovely Christmas, being able to spend time with just about everyone. But it’s back to Durham, NC tomorrow and back to the ‘Salt Mines.’
Some of you have been reading these posts pretty regularly, being very patient with me as I try to sort through everything I’m learning at Duke Divinity School. It was a very intense semester, but it was also incredibly rewarding. I just wanted to thank all of you who are reading these posts, especially to those who offer feedback. While at Duke, surrounded by people who live in the ‘Duke world,’ I often find myself speaking the same language with everyone else. It’s so refreshing to have people from the outside world ask questions and offer criticisms or raise points of thought because it interrupts that ‘Duke language’ I previously mentioned; I thank my wife for this constantly.
With that said, I wanted to share some thoughts I had while attending church on Christmas Eve. Em and I attended the same church where we basically grew up. It has grown from a humble beginning to one of the largest churches in Birmingham, AL. It draws largely from the Southern Baptist tradition, but also differs from the SBC (Southern Baptist Convention) on a couple of minor points (but not by much). Incidentally, we took Communion during the Christmas Eve service. Now, keep in mind I’ve just come home from a Methodist/Ecumenical seminary where the Eucharist is big deal. Combine that with my Anglican/Catholic leanings and you’ve got someone loaded up on all types of ideas, none of which are very present in a traditional Baptist church. This says nothing in criticism of the latter, only of the condition in which I find myself, trying to make sense of various theologies and age-old teachings of the Church. I only said all that for the sake of context.
As we took Communion, our Pastor quoted from Scripture the passage where Jesus administers the first Eucharist. As he spoke those words, however, he accidentally misspoke and said, “This represents my body…” I seriously doubt anyone else in that whole service cared, but remembering the context I mentioned above (and because I’m a theological nerd) it mattered a lot to me. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus tells the disciples that the bread “is” his body and the wine “is” his blood of the new covenant. I only mention this because I wonder if the Baptist church (and any church that does not celebrate Communion for the sake of God’s Incarnation and only for a type of memorial celebration) is missing out on some very powerful truths that the Church believed in and upheld for well over a thousand years and even after the Reformation.
For Anglican, Catholic, Lutheran and other churches the Eucharist is celebrated every Sunday and on other certain special days. The altar or table is at the center of the Church, and the pulpit where the priest stands to preach is usually off to the side. They do this because behind the Gospel, behind the Crucifixion, behind everything we celebrate as Christians, is the foundational truth that God became human. Jesus Christ took on the likeness of human nature, uniting fully the nature of God and humanity. This is the Incarnation. If Jesus had not become human, then the Crucifixion would not have ‘worked.’ Salvation could not have been offered to humankind. The Father poured out His wrath not only on Christ, but on humanity. Christ was not only the perfect Son of God, He was the perfect human. Without the Incarnation, Christianity falls.
In order to experience this truth, each and every Sunday, the fore mentioned churches celebrate the Eucharist. In this Sacrament, the Church believes that the substance of Christ replaces the bread and the wine. By ‘substance’ I mean the identity of something. Think of your first name. What makes you, ‘Joe’ or ‘Brad’ or ‘Jason’ or ‘Angela?’ We each have identity. But we also have ‘accidents,’ or traits which have nothing to do with our identity. For example, I have reddish hair and am tall and have two eyes and a mouth and am wearing shoes. None of these things make me ‘Brad;’ none of these traits give me identity. Change my hair color, put me in a wheel chair, ruin one of my eyes and take off my shoes, and I’m still ‘Brad.’ Now think of the bread and wine. They are ‘bread and wine.’ We might say they taste like bread and look like wine, but these are only traits that we expect from bread and wine. Now, when the priest consecrates the bread and wine, and they ‘become’ the body and blood of Christ, they do not look, taste, or feel like human flesh or human blood. None of the accidents, or traits, have changed. The only thing that changed is their identity. They look, feel, and taste like bread and wine, but now they ARE the body and blood of Christ. Before we roll our eyes, though, and say this is crazy, think of your own identity. I am ‘Brad.’ But, because I’m a Christian and because I am a part of the body of Christ’s headship, I am also ‘Christ,’ in the Mind of God. Christ takes on our identity and gives us his own. He makes us righteous not because we magically are perfect now, but because Christ becomes our righteousness. Christ becomes our new identity. I still look, feel, and act like ‘Brad,’ but now ‘Christ’ has taken over my identity.
SO…this exact thing happens when we celebrate the Eucharist. It is the Incarnation, being given for the sake of the Church, always remembering and acting into God becoming flesh and giving Himself up for us all.
This is far too long, and I thank you for reading these thoughts. Please let me know what you think…I’ll finish the thoughts later. Godspeed in all things…
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One thing this brings up in my mind is the juxtaposition of "low" ecclesiology and "high" sacramental theology, which seems to me typical at Duke: as strange as it may seem, there are any number of people, like you, who have been convinced (thanks to Warren Smith) that "transubstantiation" never meant for Aquinas what late medieval distortion seemed to take it to mean, and that therefore it must be true or pretty close to the truth; yet often at Duke the same people who would profess a very "Catholic" view of the Eucharist have a purely Reformed (or sometimes not even that) view of the Church. In other words, "Eucharist" is ripped from its context (the sacrament of holy order) and made into an abstraction which can be "incarnated" in any gathering.
ReplyDeleteI myself fell into this category when I first began to understand the significance of Holy Communion. It led me to purport to "celebrate" it myself in some odd places (at an Intervarsity leadership meeting in college, at an organizational retreat in Slovakia). But sincere as those attempts were, and as "meaningful" as they may have been, they lacked the "substance" of the Eucharist which is not only the Body of Christ the historical incarnate Lord of All, but the Body of Christ which is the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.
So, I'm coming to this posting quite late and perhaps out of date. And I don't have the theological background you do. However...my thoughts:
ReplyDeleteI find myself somewhere between the high, Catholic-like sacramental theology and the Baptist understanding. I've discussed this very issue with a few devout Catholics, and I can't say I see a very strong argument in the strict transubstantiation interpretation.
Is it incorrect to say "This bread and wine represent the Body and Blood of Christ"? Perhaps...but often when Christ spoke using predicate nominatives, He spoke metaphorically. I am the Shepard, I am the Living Water, I am the Vine, these all come to mind.
A metaphor or symbol bespeaks a higher reality, rather than a lower (i think Lewis said that?): Christ is not literally a Vine, He is something More. He is not Bread, He is something more.
The Bread and Wine need not have their identity changed to represent a symbolic, higher Truth.
After all, we are to eat and drink "in remembrance of Him"...He doesn't say, "do this and My Body and Blood will be before you again." We are the Body of Christ, and we take the Bread and Wine to remember the Crucifixion--not to manifest yet again the broken Body before us, because it is in fact in us already.
I do believe something of spiritual, sacramental import takes place; but to suggest it is an identity change of the elements is, i think, to ignore the weighty, spiritual, symbolic language Christ spoke in so as to help us see a Realm above our own. C.S. Lewis's essay "Transposition" touches on some of this better than I can.
Puddleglum:
ReplyDelete1. Why must metaphor preclude reality, especially when we're talking about divine things? Why limit the meaning?
2. Chesterton said that all true religion is materialistic, which is to say: matter matters. (Lewis has some good thoughts on that as well.) What you're going for is a highly "spiritual" interpretation of the sacrament.
3. It is easy for a modern person to come to the Scriptures and think, "ah, yes, this is clearly what this means." And you may have employed very good and reasonable exegetical resources. But you have to somehow account for why it is that the early church -- and we're talking about the earliest known Christian writings of the 2nd-3rd century, some of which likely predate the final form of the gospels -- seemed to think it so important to believe that they were really eating the Body and Blood of Christ. You don't have to call it transubstantiation, but no where in that time can you find a purely "spiritual" interpretation.
4. At play here are different ways of reading the Bible. A modern liberal Protestant (even of the "conservative" sort) comes to the Bible and thinks that he or she can read it. A Catholic knows that it is the whole Church that reads and interprets the Bible. One does not prove transubstantiation sola scriptura; if that's what one wants to do it's a hopeless project. Guided by the Holy Spirit the Church -- and particularly the successors to the apostles -- is able to rightly discern the truth of things like "This is my body."
Admitting my reluctance to engage in theological debate on brad's posting, I'll nevertheless overcome that advised reluctance and address some of the questions you posed:
ReplyDelete1. I never said metaphor precluded reality...only that the symbol points to something higher than itself, as the spiritual is higher, weightier, more laced with meaning, than the material (Lewis's "Transposition" is key in my understanding of this). I don't mean to limit the meaning, but rather point to a higher meaning than the physical. (For a very poor, vague, late-night comparison) similarly, no matter the unimaginable intensity of Christ's physical suffering, His spiritual suffering as the Father turned His face away was deeper.
2. I agree with Chesterton, in so far as he agrees with such dictates as "true religion is this, looking after widows and orphans." true religion is certainly acted out in the material. However, the Father is Spirit and I believe the Sacraments point to a spiritual reality. Yes, I'm going for a highly "spiritual" interpretation of said Sacrament...for the wars are waged and the victories won in the spiritual, and it diminishes the weight of the sacrament to focus on its physical aspect. After all, in the material, the bread is still bread and the wine still wine; the change of identity (as Brad calls it) happens in the spiritual realm--that is to say, the realm which matters in a lasting way.
3. You reference the writings of the Early Church, although you bring up no specifics. in any case, whatever their date, they are a shadow of the authority of the Gospels and Epistles (and Torah and Tenakh, for that matter). the Early Church is not the authority--how often does Paul castigate them for living the wrong way? not in the 2nd or 3rd centuries, but in the 1st? why suppose they had it right and we have it wrong?
4. I would share some of your disdain for the individualistic interpretation of Scriptures by modern man. Yet, I would indeed say a believer can come to the Bible and read it with confidence and actually interpret as aided by the Spirit; reading the Psalms shows, for example, that David did, too. Throughout the Scriptures, meditating on the Word is highly commended--both individually and as a collective. And perhaps if the Body of Christ spoke with a single voice, we need not glean ourselves...but what voice do we listen to? Greek Orthodox, Armenian, Roman Catholic, Baptist, Presbyterian? Even within each tradition, there are separate beliefs on doctrine.
The Church does not interpret Scripture...only the Holy Spirit can do that, and as He lives in each member of the Body, He reveals God's Will to those adopted as sons: Romans 8:14 addresses this. We are led individually by the Spirit towards a goal larger than any of us (calls to mind emergent properties in biological systems, but that's an aside).
It's a bit of a cop out to pass off the interpretation of what Scripture says (and what it doesn't) to other men. and i think it's downright dangerous to step away from the Word of God as the ultimate authority and supplement or supplant it with the understanding of a select group of men. I may not wholly agree with many standards of the Reformation, but the emphasis on the Word over human traditions is one I certainly feel incredibly necessary.
I know much of this is simply a Protestant-Catholic divide. Not that I'm a Protestant in the definitive sense: I'm not "protesting" against anything, merely standing as surely as I can on the Word and following as nearly as possible the Spirit. The traditions of 2000 years of Christians carry much weight, indeed...but as that tradition says many conflicting things, and because it wouldn't challenge the other two sources of authority anyway, I'm left with the belief that the best approach to such issues is prayerfully and carefully seeking understanding of God's will and truth. I don't seek to prove or disprove transubstantiation; I ask questions, surely, but knowing that my understanding matters not a whit compared to my obedience.
ReplyDeleteSorry for the length, both sam and bradford; I'm brevity-challenged.
It strikes me as incredibly arrogant to imagine that you can read the Scriptures more clearly than those who were around when they were written. For someone like Ignatius of Antioch or Irenaeus of Lyons (these are two very familiar to the Duke curriculum at least), the Real Presence was axiomatic: it was used as proof that Jesus was really human and not merely a Gnostic or docetic spiritual presence. Doubt about the real presence of Christ's body in the Eucharist always went along with doubts about the incarnation.
ReplyDeleteBut... I don't want to argue this because it's not a point that can be argued. That is the difference between dogma and doctrine. I didn't come to accept a Catholic/Orthodox theology of the Sacrament because I reasoned it out; I came to it because I discovered the Church and her teachings. The sacramental theology that we're discussing is not something separate from ecclesiology; it cannot be discussed abstractly as a set of ideas, but rather is part of the way of life of the Catholic Church.
fair enough...this can not, you're right, be argued out. after all, a man with an experience is never at the mercy of a man with an argument, and both of us have convincing experiences that shine a light on a Truth neither one can completely grasp, much less articulate.
ReplyDeleteHowever...if i or you or brad read the Scriptures more clearly than anyone else, it's a clarity that comes from the Holy Spirit--the only true Interpreter of the Word of God. it's not arrogance, but rather a trust in the Spirit, Who the Word promises will "move you to follow My decrees and be careful to keep My laws." to sit comfortably on dogma alone is to take the guidance of the Counselor out of the picture. the very churches to whom the Epistles were addressed got as much wrong as we would today. there is no sanctity in antiquity (this coming from a historian who is prejudiced in favor of the past).
Nevertheless, i do NOT think i understand the Scriptures better than those who were around when they were written (although Irenaeus, of course, was not such an individual); but members of the flawed Early Church have the same authority as members in the flawed Contemporary Church--for our authority comes from the Name of Jesus, not our time period.
Perhaps in the early centuries, doubt about the Real Presence went hand in hand with doubts about the Incarnation; now, that is most certainly not the case. It has no bearing on whether Jesus was fully Man, and it's a simplistic view to suppose that just because the Real Presence was used to prove an actual Truth, that the proof itself is sound.
And anyway, I maintain a Real Presence in the Eucharist...just a Real Presence that is primarily (whether or not "exclusively" as well doesn't matter much to me) spiritual. By which i mean the Presence is even more Real than the atomic, material composition of the Bread and Wine (which can be readily enough proved to stay the same). The identity changes, as Brad says...but identity is not a physical quality. when i die and my body rots away, my identity--the Real Me that matters, i.e. the spiritual--remains the same. in the same way, the Real Presence of Christ is in the Eucharist...but to say that the elements are symbolic of that Presence is to say something MORE than saying their substance changes. Matter matters, but it is transient and not what we should fix our eyes upon.