MetaCatholic

The New English Bible was often one of the more daring translations in many ways, from heavy conjectural emendations in the Old Testament, through startling (and not always successful) turns of phrase everywhere. As I was reflecting on John 6 on this feast of Corpus Christi, I tracked down a vague memory that the NEB had gone for a punning translation. Sure enough, it’s in John 6:60. Here it is in NRSV, Greek and then NEB. The teaching referred to is the whole bread of life discourse.

When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?”

Πολλοὶ οὖν ἀκούσαντες ἐκ τῶν μαθητῶν αὐτοῦ εἶπαν· σκληρός ἐστιν ὁ λόγος οὗτος· τίς δύναται αὐτοῦ ἀκούειν;

Many of his disciples on hearing it exclaimed, “This is more than we can stomach! Why listen to such talk?”

The pun reflects the extraordinary ambivalence John shows between very literal language of eating the flesh and drinking the blood of the Son of Man, and appearing to switch this to an equivalence of accepting his words and teaching. There’s no way you can really get it out of the Greek, but there’s a sense in which the English idiom improves on the text. Its use fits the context, and the play on words fits John’s style. It’s an example of creative translation that is hard to defend on any technical theory, since it is neither formally nor dynamically equivalent. It does, however, seem to me to verge on the inspired.

Michael Bird has drawn attention to an interesting series of posts on Darrell Pursiful’s blog, which I’d not come across before, but shall be adding to my feedreader. He discusses the separation of Eucharist and Agape, and has a lot of useful comment on the topic. He is quite right to state that:

It is universally agreed that the earliest forms of Christian worship were integrally related to the congregation’s communal meal or agape.

I do find myself wondering, however, whether that universal agreement is one that imposes a clearer shape on the evidence than it really admits, even while it seems the most likely overall pattern. I enter the following observations:

• The clearest NT evidence comes from 1 Corinthians. The problem is that in many respects this seems to have been a very atypical church, both in Paul’s day, and at the end of the first century when we encounter it via Clement. Given that the social mores of eating seem to have been a significant problem, how much should we assume about Eucharistic patterns elsewhere?
• The evidence of Jesus’ meals as sacramental of inclusion, forgiveness and the bonds of fictive kinship should not be overlooked as giving some force to the importance of a communal meal. There is no clarity, however, on how these relate to the Last Supper, nor on what seems to have led, quite early on, to a Sunday observance of Jesus’ actions with the bread and wine, taken out of the annual Passover context in which they originated.
• The Didache seems to talk about a eucharistic gathering which comes at the beginning of a meal (Did 9, 10), although exactly what it is describing is not as clear as we would like. But there is another eucharistic reference in Didache 14, which seems not to relate to a meal, but be a more cultic observance (and the first mention of Malachi’s pure sacrifice in relation to the Eucharist).
• I find the evidence of Pliny useful but not unambiguous. While it is most reasonable to assume that the Eucharist was part of their evening meal, it is not impossible that the ritual remembrance of Jesus with bread and wine was connected to the morning oath, and that may be why the evening meal is referred to as food “but ordinary and innocent food”. It is, after all, this latter evening meal that they appear to have given up on Pliny’s direction.

The way Darrell read the evidence, is that the separation of Eucharist and Agape begins to happen sometime between Pliny and Justin. This would be the near universal consensus. But he wants to give far more stress to the continuing pattern of conjoined Eucharist and Agape running alongside the increasingly widespread separation.

What I would suggest may be worth further consideration, however, is the possibility that the pattern of separate Eucharists and Agapes was pretty much always there — perhaps as a function of numbers, perhaps of persecution. At first it was unusual, but later it became more common, before finally displacing the conjoined celebration.

I’m afraid I can’t give you all the links for this post, at least for a week, since the Church Times irritatingly insists on reserving much of their current content for those who subscribe to the print edition. They charge more for the print edition if you subscribe, than if you buy it in the newsagents, so I suppose they see this as part of what they’re making you pay extra for. Personally I think it’s an exceptionally daft business model.

Anyway, that aside, their regular columnist Giles Fraser veers between the thoughtful and the silly. His column last week was one of the silly ones. And the silliest observation was this one (on this story):

This week’s latest irritation from the Bishop of Rome was the proclamation that anyone baptised according to the Trinitarian formula “Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier” would have to be baptised again using “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit”. The first description of the Trinity is apparently dangerous feminist propaganda, and must be stamped out.

This week’s letters contained some responses, from the knee-jerk, to the well-reasoned, and the best among them was that by Clifford Longley, one time doyen of religious journalists in the UK, in which he carefully took Fraser’s objections apart. As he dryly pointed out, changing the baptismal formula is almost certainly as much against Anglican Canon Law as it is against the Roman Catholic. (There is no specific canon, but one can deduce this from a mix of the canons and the liturgy.)

It seems to me blindly obvious that while phrases such as “Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier” may legitimately supplement the traditional language, it cannot replace it.

• The traditional formula deals with relationships within the Trinity, and not simply the relationships of the Trinity to us.
• The modern formula deals only with divine works, none of which are exclusive to any one person of the Trinity. It fails to make any differentiation of persons within God, and could easily be read as modalist.
• The traditional formula is not an abstract ascription of patriarchal language to the Godhead, but is rooted in the real language and story of Jesus of Nazareth. Trinitarian language is not the invention of theologians from thin air, but a description of God as he is known through the history of Jesus. It anchors us in the gospel.
• The modern formula could be used about God in a whole range of religious traditions, including those which entirely reject the Trinity as tritheist. It has no specific roots in the story of Jesus.

While I think that validity is rarely a good way of talking about sacraments, those do seem compelling reasons for rejecting any attempt to use the newer formula in baptism. Viva Papa Ratzi.

This is cross-posted co-operatively as part of Nick Norelli’s Trinity Blogging Summit. When I volunteered, I’d intended to do all sorts of reading and thinking about the topic. When the date drew near I’d done absolutely none, and resorted to that old stand by: a stream-of-consciousness make-it-up-as-you-go-along. I hope it’s still at least semi-coherent.

Trinitarian language is embedded in the liturgy. From the traditional opening invocation of the divine name in the Western rite of Mass (but also in many other forms of prayer) to the closing formula of blessing, God is named as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Between these Trinitarian punctuation marks, the language ebbs and flows more widely. There are many places where all three persons of the Trinity are named, most often in doxologies and other endings. Equally there are many places where one or other person is addressed, most usually the Father. The doctrine is scarcely spelt out, yet the language is pervasive. It is impossible to join in the liturgy without learning to speak Trinity, whatever sense one might make of how the language is organised, or the persons related to one another.

There is a counter trend within this, which is that a great many prayers simply begin “Almighty God …”. These prayers end with variations of a formula “through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.” To the less alert, this traditional collect structure appears to suggest that there may be a sense (at least) in which the Father is properly “God” and somehow Jesus and the Spirit are more means to God. To the more percipient it sets up something of a puzzle. The Father is addressed as “Almighty God”, yet all three persons are referred to in the closing formula as “one God”. From time to time, a prayer may be addressed directly to Jesus, and (less frequently) the Spirit may be directly apostrophised and invoked – “Come Holy Spirit”.

Most noticeably in the Eucharistic rites, Jesus tends to be directly addresses in relation to receiving Holy Communion: “Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world …”, “Lord, I am not worthy to receive you …” . The sense of personal engagement with the risen Jesus properly receives its greatest stress at this point. Yet this address of Jesus may also be Trinitarian in expression, as in one of the prayers of preparation to receive the Sacrament “Lord Jesus Christ, by the will of the Father and the work of the Holy Spirit, your death brought life to the world …”. In one way or another the liturgy is ineluctably but often inchoately Trinitarian, but the purpose is always engagement with God, rather than organising one’s doctrine of God.

This seems to me to mirror the language of Scripture, which is resolutely non-systematic in its speech about God, but cannot avoid talking of God as Father, the Lord Jesus and the Holy Spirit, often in one breath. The diversity of language both demands and escapes organisation. Perhaps it is also no coincidence that one of the most developed Trinitarian expressions – “The Grace” – is a closing prayer in both its Pauline origin and its most common usage. Likewise perhaps the one place where Paul may call Jesus “God” comes in an ascription of praise (Romans 9:5).

This current seems to run through the history of worship, theology and the church. If you had asked a Christian if Christ was God at the beginning of the second century they would probably have said “No” or at best “Depends what you mean.” But to an outside observer looking on, one of the most noticeable things about the movement was that “they sing a hymn to Christ as God”. (Pliny Letters 10.96). St Basil’s treatise On the Holy Spirit is in many respects about what the correct scriptural understanding and form of the prayers should be, and whether they express the right relation of Father, Son and Spirit. The church’s practice of baptism (following the Matthean formula given by Jesus) is a major plank in his argument.

There is a long-standing and deeply embedded conjunction of Trinitarian language and the liturgy that means engaging in worship is always about learning to speak to and of God in Trinitarian language. This goes back to the very beginnings of Christian description of God, and ascription of praise. You might come away from Christian worship entirely confused about how the language works, but you come away unable to articulate the story of God without using language of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It goes more deeply than this, however, and in the remainder of this post, drawing on Augustine’s idea of the trinity of Lover, Beloved and Love, I want to explore the idea that worship is not simply to use Trinitarian language but to enter into Trinitarian life.

“In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.” The invocation of the Trinity that introduces the Western Mass (and many other forms of prayer) is traditionally accompanied by the making of the sign of the cross over the body. While originally the sign of the cross was accompanied by a variety of formulae, the one that has stuck is the one that names the Trinity. Likewise the Mass ends with a blessing in which the sign of the cross is again traced over the body at the naming of God as “the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit”. For any regular participant this association of triune name and sign of the cross becomes deeply embedded and habituated. To name the Trinity is to think of the cross.

This is not simply a liturgical coincidence. At the heart of the Mass and the Church is the sacrifice of Christ which recreates us as God’s people. We are invited to experience ourselves as offered to God with and by Christ, we are invited to experience God offered to us in and through Christ. The former tends to demand language of the Almighty Father from us. The latter tends to demand language of the life-giving Spirit. Yet neither can be adequately talked about without some kind of threefold naming.

To be drawn into communion with God is to be drawn into a relationship, yet it is less what it is commonly referred to “a relationship with God” and much more “a Relationship: that is, God”. The cross of Christ is the ultimate worship (Malachi’s “perfect offering” much loved in patristic Eucharistic theology) of the Father, the place and time at which humanity has fully said the beloved’s loving “Yes” to God. The cross is also the Father’s ultimate mission through his sent Son, the fullest extent of the divine Lover’s outstretched arms. The love between the Father and Son is enacted in history, and through the incarnation humanity is drawn into the beloved’s yes. The death, hatred, and violent division which always threaten the permanence of our human loves are let loose on the divine love, which indeed proves stronger than death. Within time, the Spirit belongs to the new era, because it is only in this historically enacted division of Father and Son by death that the unbreakable unity of the love which was always there becomes clear, and comes into its own. (Yes, I know that needs all sorts of qualifications.)

Paul speaks of God as the one “who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist” (Romans 4:17). In a later letter he, or his interpreter, makes a similar, seemingly more interconnected parallel between Christ as “first-born of all creation” and “the firstborn from the dead” (Colossians 1:15,18). It is possible to see these not simply as parallels between God’s power to create and raise, and Christ’s role in creation and recreation, but, from at least one perspective, different aspects of the same work, the same role. The work of creation involves the making of that which is other, not God, or the developing of a space in which the other that is not God might be brought into being. The Father, who characteristically knows himself first as Lover, seeks to love the world into existence. To be brought into being as “not God” is to be loved, but not to love equally (or at all) in return. Instead of reciprocal relationship, asymmetric relationship characterises what is created. The perfect love of God both seeks and demands that love is met by love for what is made truly to enter into the fullness of existence. What is “not God” is always intended and desired to become one with God, chosen by God that it might come to choose as God chooses.

That creation might be completed, the Son comes into the world. The Son, who characteristically is himself first as beloved, enters what the Father loves to enable it to return that love. He is the God who goes where God is not, and so his coming into the world must lead him to the dissolution of death, to face the abyss of non-existence. The Cross is where he is most truly the first-born of all creation, because it is on the Cross that creation is made possible as more than “not God.” Creation is cosmos redeemed, that can enter into the movement of love, and begin to glorify God. If creation is God’s work of mission, redemption is creation’s participation in worship. So the cross is the apotheosis both of God’s mission (his outgoing love) and creation’s worship (his returning love). Worship then happens (perhaps, simply, exists) through a sharing in the Spirit, who characteristically knows himself first as the love shared by Father and Son, and a standing with Christ both as beloved, and the one who fully and equally returns the Father’s love.

This is why the relation of Eucharistic celebration especially to the sacrifice of Calvary matters. It is wrong to use language which suggests a repetition, not so much (as the reformers thought) because the sacrifice of Christ is unrepeatable (though it is) but for the same reasons why it is wrong to use language which suggests only a memory of a past event. At Mass in a particularly focussed way, but in worship, prayer and life more generally, we are invited to participate by the Spirit in the relationship which God discloses to us and for us on the Cross of the eternal Son. Just as “The cup of blessing that we bless is a sharing in the blood of Christ, and the bread that we break is a sharing in the body of Christ” (cf 1 Corinthians 10:16) so a sharing in Christ’s sacrifice, this body and blood, is a sharing in the relationships that are constituted by the nature of the Triune God. It is at the Cross that worship is truly disclosed, and so it is at the Cross where we worship by means of the gift Christ gives us to take us there. The language of Christian worship is naturally Trinitarian, because the activity of worship is essentially Trinitarian: it is a participation in the Triune relations of the one God.

(This post is part of a series on the 39 articles of the Church of England)

For some people, the Church sometimes seems to be a “yesterday’s controversy preservation society”. This is especially apparent in some of the arguments over justification that are currently raging around Bishop Tom Wright. It is also true, I think, of many Christians’ attitudes to the Eucharist. First, then, the past controversy as reflected in the thirty-first article.

XXXI. Of the Oblation of Christ of Christ finished upon the Cross
The offering of Christ once made is that perfect redemption, propitiation, and satisfaction, for all the sins of the whole world, both original and actual; and there is none other satisfaction for sin, but that alone. Wherefore the sacrifices of Masses, in the which it was commonly said, that the Priest did offer Christ for the quick and the dead, to have remission of pain or guilt, were blasphemous fables, and dangerous deceits.

It is not apparent to me whether this article intends a distinction between a “common view” of Eucharistic sacrifice as a repeated one, and an unspecified more theological view, or if it intends to subsume all Catholic teaching under “in the which it was commonly said”. But there are potentially many ways in which sacrificial language can be used of the Eucharist which continues to maintain the uniqueness of the Cross.

There are two arguments that might be worth considering, which I will not do so here, except to note them, which might reframe some of the questions about the past controversy. One concerns the theory of atonement adopted by the Reformers, and whether models other than propitiation and satisfaction might offer a different set of approaches to Eucharistic theology. It might also be worth discussing if reading Paul entirely in the light of the stress of Hebrews on the “once and for all” sacrificial nature of the Cross doesn’t distort some of the ways in which Paul speaks of the unique salvific role of Christ’s death.

Regarding the dispute, however, both Anglicans and Roman Catholics have moved on. I quote first from the Agreed Statement on the Eucharist of the Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission.

Christ’s redeeming death and resurrection took place once and for all in history. Christ’s death on the cross, the culmination of his whole life of obedience, was the one, perfect and sufficient sacrifice for the sins of the world. There can be no repetition of or addition to what was then accomplished once for all by Christ.

Any attempt to express a nexus between the sacrifice of Christ and the Eucharist must not obscure this fundamental fact of the Christian faith. … Christ instituted the Eucharist as a memorial (anamnesis) of the totality of God’s reconciling action in him. In the eucharistic prayer the church continues to make a perpetual memorial of Christ’s death, and his members, united with God and one another, give thanks for all his mercies, entreat the benefits of his passion on behalf of the whole church, participate in these benefits and enter into the movement of his self-offering.

In response to queries about the statement, ARCIC said:

There is therefore one historical, unrepeatable sacrifice, offered once for all by Christ and accepted once for all by the Father. In the celebration of the memorial, Christ in the Holy Spirit unites his people with himself in a sacramental way so that the Church enters into the movement of his self-offering. In consequence, even though the Church is active in this celebration, this adds nothing to the efficacy of Christ’s sacrifice upon the cross, because the action is itself the fruit of this sacrifice. The Church in celebrating the Eucharist gives thanks for the gift of Christ’s sacrifice and identifies itself with the will of Christ who has offered himself to the Father on behalf of all mankind.

Both the statement and the elucidation are worth reading in full. This view is of course consonant with the argument I put forward in an earlier post. I will not repeat those arguments here, although they underpin my own thinking, and explain why I find this ARCIC statement one rooted in scripture and the Church’s traditional reading of it.

Here I want to go on exploring agreed views, not personal ones. While I am reluctant to lend any weight to the “creeping magisterium” view of the Lambeth Conference, currently being attributed to it by the proponents of a traditional view on gay relationships, it is worth noting the Lambeth Conference resolution on ARCIC. This has more authority than the current bug-bear of 1998’s resolution 1:10, since it was agreed after a consultation with all provinces, and thus represents the mind of the Anglican Communion reasonably comprehensively.

While we respect continuing anxieties of some Anglicans in the areas of “sacrifice” and “presence”, they do not appear to reflect the common mind of the provincial responses, in which it was generally felt that the Elucidation of “Eucharistic Doctrine” was a helpful clarification and reassurance. Both are areas of “mystery” which ultimately defy definition.

But the Agreed Statement on the Eucharist sufficiently expresses Anglican understanding.

The Eucharist, in short, while in no sense being a repetition of Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross, is a means of participation in Christ’s self-offering. Seeing it in this way allows us to express in prayer and liturgical enactment the calling “to offer ourselves, our souls and bodies as living sacrifices” (Romans 12:2) and “to make up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ for the sake of his body, the Church.” (Colossians 1:24). These actions are responses, but they are not simply responses to Christ, they are responses in Christ, as we get caught up in his work of drawing us and all people into an offering of love to the Father.

(This post is part of a series on the 39 articles of the Church of England)

My first thoughts on the thirtieth of the articles were somewhat unhelpful: a) I couldn’t think what there was to say about it, since the point of its polemic is now history, and b) the pleasure at thinking there were only nine more articles to go. On further reflection, however, I felt there were some more or less tangential observations to make.

XXX. Of both kinds
The Cup of the Lord is not to be denied to the Lay-people: for both the parts of the Lord’s Sacrament, by Christ’s ordinance and commandment, ought to be ministered to all Christian men alike.

This has ceased to be a point of division, but there are other issues around the practicalities of administration which might generally worth be subsuming under this heading. The argument of the article is grounded primarily in what happened at the Last Supper, sharing one loaf (unleavened, presumably) and one cup with his disciples. It is less grounded in any theological dispute over the nature of the sacrament, although such issues are related. And it is in the area of theologically informed practice that I want to keep my observations.

First, I note what I see to be an unfortunate attitude that has almost created a doctrine out of receiving in both kinds. You see it when people, having a cold or some other transmittable illness, hold on to their wafer and then dip it in the chalice. Certainly with everyday bread, and even with broken wafers, this runs the risk of leaving lumps in the chalice for someone else to swallow. Yet so important has reception in both kinds become, that people seem unable to do the obvious thing, which is to receive under one kind alone. It does seem to me that one needs to emphasise that Christ is wholly given in either species. Christ and his self-gift are not divided, with one benefit coming from the host and the other from the chalice.

Second, there does seem to be a strange irony in inter-traditional criticism. Many of those who are critical of the practice of using wafers are quite happy to have individual thimbles of grape juice. Those most critical of the grape-juice mini-cups, are appalled by the use of ordinary bread. The latter have at least the justification that unleavened wafers are rather more like what Jesus would have used than leavened bread, though I suspect that his would have been more like chapatti than matzos. It does seem to me that a shared loaf and a shared cup convey something about what the sacrament is, not only in terms of its origins, but in terms of its efficacy as a sacrament of unity. Neither individual wafers nor individual cups serve that symbolism well. In churches like mine, which for the practical reasons of reservation, use wafers, we have for this reason adopted the use of very large wafers, so that everyone shares a broken piece.

Finally, there is the difficult area of inculturation. If we are at least to some extent to be governed by the practice of Jesus, is the use of bread and wine (indeed, wine mixed with water) absolutely essential? I note that there are ways in which we are not governed by the practice of Jesus. We do not only celebrate this meal annually, in the context of a seder. Many Protestant communities have long ceased using wine, and substituted unfermented grape juice or (less commonly) some other fruit-based drink. Most (as also many Anglican Evangelical churches) do not have a mixed cup of wine and water, although that would seem to have been the norm for wine in the first centuries of the church. In the majority of communities that do use a mixed cup, additional symbolic meaning has somewhat obscured the link with normal first century use. But where are the limits to how far churches should go from treating Jesus’ institution as normative?

The use of bread and wine, as also the use of a whole range of linguistic symbols in Scripture, are embedded in the culture of Israel, and the history of God’s specific dealings with his chosen people. Just as I would argue for continuing to use the metaphor of shepherd, even in cultures that don’t know what a sheep is, and develop appropriate footnotes, teaching and explanation, so I would argue for continuing to use bread and wine. I do not say that one can never celebrate the Eucharist with something else. I can easily imagine times and places when bread or wine is simply unavailable, and I do not think that ought to prevent a Eucharist taking place. I am arguing here for normal and normative practice. But the meaning and practice of the Eucharist is not merely found in some generic human practice of shared hospitality, even if it is deeply related to it. It is found in the specific history of Jesus, the Judean who interpreted his death in the light of Israel’s Passover. Bread and wine root the Eucharist in that story. (And even more so unleavened bread and a mixed cup!) In that sense, the essential instinct of this article, that Jesus’ practice should inform our celebration, offers wise guidance.

(This post is part of a series on the 39 articles of the Church of England)

From time to time it can be a little hard to see exactly what point one of the articles is making, since they are, as short statements, relatively free of a discourse context. This is to some extent the case with the twenty-ninth article. Is it directed against an antinomian position, and seeking to reinforce the importance of moral behaviour for worthy reception of the sacrament? Or is it directed against strongly realist views of the sacrament, by stressing the importance of faith for worthy reception? (The title makes me think it is this latter.) Whichever of these be the primary force of the article, it also need to be asked whether it ends up putting too much stress on the worthiness of the one who receives, and not enough on the grace that transforms.

XXIX. Of the Wicked which eat not the Body of Christ in the use of the Lord’s Supper
The Wicked, and such as be void of a lively faith, although they do carnally and visibly press with their teeth (as Saint Augustine saith) the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ, yet in no wise are they partakers of Christ: but rather, to their condemnation, do eat and drink the sign or Sacrament of so great a thing.

The quotation from Augustine comes from his homilies on John 6, a fairly discursive commentary, which, rather as the Johannine discourse itself, veers between a strongly realist language and statements about the need for faith. An earlier quotation from the same homily offers a slightly different nuance:

Believers know the body of Christ, if they neglect not to be the body of Christ. Let them become the body of Christ, if they wish to live by the Spirit of Christ. None lives by the Spirit of Christ but the body of Christ.

Here, Augustine, following St Paul, links recognition of the sacramental body with participation in the ecclesial body, and he develops the interweaving of these themes of unity in the one body signified by eating the one body (made of diverse grains of wheat), stressing that through both together there is participation in Christ. It is only then that he comes to the argument quoted by the article.

Consequently, he that dwelleth not in Christ, and in whom Christ dwelleth not, doubtless neither eateth His flesh [spiritually] nor drinketh His blood [although he may press the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ carnally and visibly with his teeth], but rather doth he eat and drink the sacrament of so great a thing to his own judgment, because he, being unclean, has presumed to come to the sacraments of Christ.

For Augustine, this is not then about directly either wickedness or faith per se, but about someone who is not properly part of the ecclesial body attempting to receive the eucharistic body. That may be because they have estranged themselves from the body by broken relationships, or not yet entered properly into the one body of the Church. Proper sacramental participation is not judged directly on either the faith or morality of the individual, but determined by their relationships in the life of the body. This in turn, though expounded here as a commentary on John, is drawn essentially from St Paul.

When you come together, it is not really to eat the Lord’s supper. For when the time comes to eat, each of you goes ahead with your own supper, and one goes hungry and another becomes drunk. What! Do you not have homes to eat and drink in? Or do you show contempt for the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What should I say to you? Should I commend you? In this matter I do not commend you! … Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be answerable for the body and blood of the Lord. Examine yourselves, and only then eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For all who eat and drink without discerning the body, eat and drink judgment against themselves. For this reason many of you are weak and ill, and some have died. (1 Corinthians 11:20-22, 27-30)

Seeking to celebrate the sacrament of the Eucharist while disfiguring the relationships that it is meant to create, signify and seal, is a failure to discern the Lord’s body: either the true significance of the broken bread, or the true identity of the fellowship as Christ’s body. There is a a dual vision of the Lord’s body, eucharistic and ecclesial, which cannot be properly celebrated apart from one another. Likewise in every celebration of the sacrament, there is a dual communion, with God in Christ, and with one another in Christ. I can never make my communion, without also being part of the we who celebrate one communion in Christ. While the article can be interpreted in a way consonant with this view, it seems more directed to the validity of individual communions: “do I have faith and good behaviour so that by my receiving I will commune with the Lord?” It seems to me that receptionism may well tend towards individualism, and against the dual nature of sacramental communion.

Paul in fact, is far from receptionist here in the Reformation sense of the term. Proper reception for Paul is about recognizing the body in both its ecclesial and eucharistic forms. The church and the eucharistic body are there prior to the recognition. They are not created by it, but are gifts of God to be rightly discerned and participated in. Not discerning the body renders it dangerous rather than salvific. Improper reception is a violation of the integrity and purity of the body of Christ, and so in turn the integrity and purity of one’s own body is violated: the offending participant is laid open to invasive illness. Paul is not working with mere symbols: such thinking presupposes a reality that is violated, and one cannot separate the sacramental from the social body in his language.

Augustine (who can be ambiguous about the sacraments) offers some support for this article, but even so is still far more relational than Cranmer’s implications. Paul, on whom Augustine directly, and Cranmer indirectly, draw, offers very little. His language is not only even more strongly relational, but inescapably realist, and, on this point, uncomfortably close to the magical.

A strong sense of faith in the reality of the Eucharist often does seem to slip over into what would seem to us to be magical views, not simply in the mediaeval period, but in the early period (St Cyprian, in De Lapsis 25,26 offers a notable example), and that can be traced back to this passage of Paul, which has been softened through repeated reading and theological schemes, so that we scarcely notice the implications of his language. I do not want to defend such views, or argue for them. I think we need the interpretative work of Augustine and others who seek to place this in a broader and more organized framework.

It does seem to me, however, that both Scripture and early tradition are more strongly realist than the Reformation tradition has been comfortable recognising. If our ideas of the mystery of the sacrament are always going to err in one way or the other (and who can fully understand it), better that they err in this direction than away from it. But above all, Paul and Augustine together testify to the strong insistence that recognition cannot be severed from relationship. The Body of Christ is both Sacrament and  Church, and cannot truly be discerned in one without being discerned in the other.

(This post is part of a series on the 39 articles of the Church of England)

In a comment on the first post on the twenty-eighth article Peter Kirk said:

Do you have nothing to say about the last paragraph of this Article, which is blatantly ignored by Anglo-Catholics?

The last paragraph (to save you looking it up) reads:

The Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper was not by Christ’s ordinance reserved, carried about, lifted up or worshipped.

I have spent far too long on this one article already, but I did promise to get to this point, and find a certain irony in doing so on what some keep as Reformation Day. Of course, the article does not really say enough to make its point “And therefore you shouldn’t do it.” Catholics and Protestants can quite happily agree that none of these behaviours were or are done “by Christ’s ordinance.” So in that sense, Anglo-Catholics don’t ignore what the article says, they ignore what it may reasonably be assumed to have intended, but never gets around to saying.

First, I regard reservation of the sacrament as quite uncontroversial nowadays. In this parish, for example, there are about ten people on average in any one week who receive Holy Communion from the reserved sacrament in acts of worship led by lay people in the homes of the sick or housebound, or residential care homes. The Church of England provides official rites for this, and also for the use of “Extended Communion” where Holy Communion is administered from the reserved sacrament in public Sunday worship where there is a shortage of priests. This latter use is intended for unusual circumstances, and not as a routine matter. The former use of communion of the sick is generally routine.

So if reservation is unexceptional, the question is then what one does with the reserved sacrament? I have argued that the idea of change in the elements, however (un)precisely conceived, needs to be seen both in the context of the eschatological transformation of all things, and as a sign of that work of the Spirit who is our present foretaste that God will be all in all. Once the elements have been consecrated, they should not be treated as anything else than vehicles of Christ’s presence in the church as the crucified and risen Lord, because his word of promise and the work of the Spirit is irrevocable. At a minimum that requires treating them with reverence at all times.

But the Eucharistic elements powerfully represent how Christ is always given to us in his Church. It is his risen body that makes us one body, and it is his sacrificed life that is the life given to us that makes us alive. In that sense continuous reservation witnesses to what the Church truly is, a Eucharistic community always gathered in prayer and praise around the cross. I see no reason why meditation in front of the reserved sacrament, reverencing and worshiping the Christ who gives himself to us in this Eucharistic gift, should be regarded as a problem. The hymn from which I take the title for this post is used in services of such meditation and prayer before the sacrament. The last two lines of the verse are worth noting here:

Faith our outward sense befriending,
makes our inward vision clear.¹

This practice, which some find execrable and others dubious, is one I and many find helpful, precisely as a focus for our faith in Christ, and his gift for us and to us.

As for Corpus Christi processions and the like, I’m not convinced that they lead to reverence. I think they tend to a triumphalism at odds with the humility of self-giving represented in the sacrament. So I’d be very dubious about engaging in them. But I would note that some historians, at least, seem to think that in the high mediaeval period they were a significant reaffirmation of corporate Christian society, and a celebration of its communal life constituted by equal access to and gift from Christ and not simply by the feudal structures. I don’t know enough history to know how well supported this view was. But I can see, if this is true, why neither the rising class sense of the merchant bourgeoisie, nor the absolutism of the Tudor monarchs would have been terribly comfortable with it. I don’t think I’m prepared or equipped to argue the rights and wrongs of it historically, any more than I would want to argue for doing it today.

1. St Thomas Aquinas Tantum ergo, tr. E Caswall [↩]

(This post is part of a series on the 39 articles of the Church of England)

This post follows on from yesterday’s on the twenty-eighth article about the Eucharist. I don’t particularly want to get stuck in the Reformation debates, and, as I noted yesterday the development of Anglican spirituality in Eucharistic hymnody, as well as the development of theology in the structure and content of Eucharistic rites, has moved beyond those debates in many respects, sometimes recovering parts of the mediaeval tradition, more often returning to the liturgy of the patristic era.

The single most influential text in this reshaping of modern liturgies is the historically problematic Apostolic Tradition, once almost universally attributed to Hippolytus and early third-century Rome, but now disputed as to both provenance and date (see the Hermeneia Commentary). The Eucharistic Prayer from the ordination rites described in this underlie both the English Anglican Eucharistic Prayer B, and Roman Catholic Eucharistic Prayer 2 (= South African Anglican Prayer 3). The overall structure that underpins the modern Western rites can still be argued for as a mainline development within the Church, but much greater stress is now put on historical diversity, a diversity that has begun to be reflected in the Common Worship prayers.

While there are still recognizable theological differences between RC and Anglican liturgies, it is again possible to talk of a common Western rite in which there is also a renewed emphasis on the role of the Holy Spirit and the eschatological horizon. In Anglican rites, particularly, there is a considerable move away from a “magic words” approach to the narrative of institution. While in most Eucharistic Prayers the invocation of the Holy Spirit to consecrate the elements precedes the narrative, in common with the Roman rite, in two (F & G) this epiclesis follows the narrative and anamnesis, after the fashion of Eastern rites. The whole prayer is held to be consecratory, rather than any particular element within it, so that it is the response of God to the prayer that is seen as efficacious and transformative.

The Reformation debates, by contrast, focussed heavily on the words of institution alone. This was always going to problematic, since at one level, we have a metaphor (the language of body and blood) applied to symbols (bread and wine) representing an event yet to happen (the sacrifice of Calvary). The early seeds of rationalism sown at the Renaissance which would come to full flower in the Enlightenment seems to struggle with this combination of metaphor, symbol and representation. So one ends up with the entirely inappropriate wooden literalness of discussing whether Jesus’ risen body can only be in one place at one time.

In this post-Renaissance context, transubstantiation had itself become problematic. First, of course, because it was poorly understood, and seemed to the new humanists to encourage magical views and superstition. Secondly, because it was always problematic to envisage substance independent of its accidents. Thirdly, and perhaps above all, because the new humanists had no patience with Aristotelian metaphysics, but were often neo-Platonists in a new guise. As such they seemed to miss the point that in its original Thomistic form, transubstantiation insisted that the change in the elements could only be known by faith, and not by the senses.

In reframing this question it seems to me that the forward-looking direction (to God’s final kingdom) of the Eucharistic celebration needs to be taken into account quite as much as the backward-looking direction (to the sacrifice of Christ on the cross). This is part and parcel of the biblical narratives in the Synoptics and Paul:

He said to them, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer; for I tell you, I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.” Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks he said, “Take this and divide it among yourselves;  for I tell you that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.” (Luke 22:15-18 – the last verse is paralleled in Matt and Mark)

For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. (1 Corinthians 11:26)

This future orientation also picks up the Passover theme, which is a historical remembrance of a liberation into future freedom. I also place myself with those who see “remembrance” as having a forward looking dimension. When God remembers things, he acts in the present and future according to his past pledges. And in prayer, God’s people may invite him to remember these promises (see. e.g. Ps 20:3-4, Ps 74:2, Ps 132:1, 1 Macc 4:10, 2 Macc 1:2). There are interesting parallels (for those of us who think Paul’s language in Rom 8:32 and Gal 2:20 justifies them) in later traditions about the Binding of Isaac, where the prayers not only assume Isaac’s binding is an effective sacrifice, but invite God to remember this sacrifice. It is, I judge, impossible to think in terms of any remembering of Jesus and his sacrifice that is not also a remembering before God, and therefore an invitation to God to act in accordance with this ultimate example of his faithfulness that Christians call a new covenant.

The supper, then,  has a prayerful and eschatological orientation, which is precisely why the work of the Spirit is invoked in its celebration, for the Holy Spirit is the mode of our participation in the resurrection of Christ, and the one through whom we begin to experience the life of the world to come. So transformation of the elements, that they may truly feed us with the life of Christ, the bread of heaven, is seen against the horizon of the power of God who promises, in fidelity to his work in Christ, to transform all things. Christ is truly present in the elements, because his life is the life we share by the Sprit now, and in eternity. They focus the promise of God’s transformation on real material things, real food and drink, as a foretaste of the promise that the world has a future in which we shall be nourished by Christ without sacramental mediation, and that’ God’s remembrance of Christ’s sacrifice, and his own covenant promises, will change all things.

These tokens of creation are transformed as vehicles of Christ’s presence, as a promise that we will be saved not out of the world, but with all creation. It is in this context that we may speak of (Schillebeeckz’s term) transfinalization, not simply as a change in purpose, though it is that, but as a change oriented towards that final horizon when God will be all in all, and all creation’s substance will be shot through with the divine life.

(This post is part of a series on the 39 articles of the Church of England)

I take the title of this post on the first of the articles about the Eucharist from the most common translation in Anglican hymn books of one of St Thomas Aquinas’ great Eucharistic hymns. The presence of this hymn, Pange lingua, gloriosi, in Anglican hymnals for over a century is a reminder that the developing tradition of Anglicanism has (whether others judge this as right or wrong) re-appropriated much of the Eucharistic devotion of the pre-Reformation Church.

Anglicans interact with this (and subsequent) articles from a diverse Eucharistic spirituality that has not been in every case constrained by the controversies of the Reformation. St Thomas’ Eucharistic theology was not confined simply to the Anglo-Catholics, but through Hymns Ancient and Modern, the most popular Anglican hymnbook across a broad spectrum, many Anglicans became acquainted with not just Pange lingua, but also Verbum supernum, and Adoro te devote. At the same time, most saw nothing inconsistent in continuing to reject, usually in a garbled form, the doctrine of transubstantiation – though poorly understood, it served to distinguish them form Roman Catholics. The background for approaching these articles is therefore complex.

XXVIII. Of the Lord’s Supper
The Supper of the Lord is not only a sign of the love that Christians ought to have among themselves one to another; but rather is a Sacrament of our Redemption by Christ’s death: insomuch that to such as rightly, worthily, and with faith, receive the same, the Bread which we break is a partaking of the Body of Christ; and likewise the Cup of Blessing is a partaking of the Blood of Christ.

Transubstantiation (or the change of the substance of Bread and Wine) in the Supper of the Lord, cannot be proved by Holy Writ; but is repugnant to the plain words of Scripture, overthroweth the nature of a Sacrament, and hath given occasion to many superstitions.

The Body of Christ is given, taken and eaten in the Supper, only after an heavenly and spiritual manner. And the mean whereby the Body of Christ is received and eaten in the Supper is Faith.

The Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper was not by Christ’s ordinance reserved, carried about, lifted up or worshipped.

I will save the discussion of the place of faith, and the question of worthy reception, to a later discussion of the twenty-ninth article, and here concentrate on the understanding of what change happens in the sacrament. Of course, there are those who say that no change happens in the sacrament, but only in the hearts of those who receive it in faith. I think myself, that the 1559 and 1662 revisions of the BCP somewhat ruled that out by entitling the prayer over the elements “The Prayer of Consecration.” Something was supposed to happen, though that something could be interpreted minimally or maximally.

In one sense, Anglicanism has tended to be reticent about spelling out what that something is, whether of political necessity at the time of the the Elizabethan settlement, or out of reverence for the mystery of God’s working. In that sense, the words attributed to Elizabeth still hold some force and appeal for Anglicans.

Christ was the Word that spake it.
He took the bread and brake it;
And what his words did make it
That I believe and take it.

On the one hand there is in those words a reluctance to embrace particular theories of consecration that has tended to characterise Anglicanism, whatever those theories be, Protestant or Catholic. Before we pray the Eucharistic Prayer, we speak of the elements as bread and wine; after we have prayed it we speak of them as Christ’s Body and Blood given for us. And we are not, on the whole, particularly interested in exactly how God accomplishes this. It is enough that he does.

On the other hand, in common with the mainstream Western tradition, Elizabeth’s words reflect an overwhelming emphasis solely on the  words of institution as having power to consecrate, that modern Anglican rites have moved away from to some extent. Calvin was the only reformer to seek a significant role for the Holy Spirit, but his interest was more, I think, in preserving God’s sovereignty than asking about what happens. Modern rites, Anglican and Roman, learning from the early Church and the Orthodox, have returned to making more space for the work of the transforming Spirit in the Sacrament. In doing so, they reopen the eschatological context of the Eucharist as pointing not only back to the sacrifice that makes our peace with God, but to the eternal celebration of that life of peace in the feast of the kingdom.

It seems to me that this eschatological reframing of the Eucharist, together with a due attention to the work of the Spirit, are key elements in allowing us to move beyond the debates of the Reformation. In a subsequent post I intend to develop this further.  At the same time, I want to err on the side of delineating mystery rather than trying to explain it away with over-precise theories, and that perhaps, is why I remain an Anglican.