A Patchwork Quilt of Broken Vessels

I haven’t blogged in a while and it’s getting high time I did. Your humble correspondent must admit that he has been a bum and an insufferable jackass for a good little bit now, and explaining my recent experience and unloading some of the insights gained from said experience is a good preparatory exercise for leaving that state and returning to productivity.

I am entering a new phase of life that scares me. Seminary education via correspondence was proceeding at a snail’s pace, and I found that undertaking the enterprise of theological education with only myself as a conversation partner was becoming an exercise in spiritual pride and constipation. I have also come to the realization that continuing with more school right now is simply a stall tactic to avoid the inevitable. Don’t get me wrong, I treasure the deeper knowledge and experience of Christ our Savior and training in his service I have gained in my time at seminary and this course of action has been faithful to God’s calling on my life, but I realize that if I don’t get on the horse now and quit waiting around for my future, someday will become never. In light of these realities, I’m reluctantly hauling my happy self off to look for a job. The hitch is that I’m a bit lazy and unmotivated and that working with a disability is fraught with challenges but mostly I’m afraid of the unknown and of the answer to the question of whether or not I can hack it. Currently I’m steering toward work in education, social services, or counseling. It would be ideal if I could find this kind of job in a church or ministry context where I could also use my training and passion for theology and worship.

Another course of events that has gone down recently is a source of much sorrow and a cause for repentance at my own stubbornness and naiveté and the effects it has had on family members who had to suffer through a community that apparently did not want them. In spite of my many and controversial ruminations in recent years about the importance of the worship, teaching, and community of the church and the need to return to a churchly and sacramental Christianity as the path to reform, I find myself at the current time without a church. A piece of advice for those who would follow the path I have attempted to trod from broad evangelicalism to high Protestantism: prepare for a rude awakening if you think because of its traditionally high ecclesiology this segment of the American church has been resistant to the compromise with unhealthy individualism that has plagued mainstream evangelicalism. In spite of my profound Presbyterian convictions I am in all likelihood returning to the Baptist tradition. Let me note that the abuse of the doctrine of covenant succession coupled with the abandonment of the Scriptures and the Reformed confessions and catechisms has coalesced in many historically Reformed churches and denominations in a closed-off, self-conscious elitism that will soon strangle those communities caught in its grasp. The children of mainline Presbyterians have stopped going to church and so the Presbyterian Church USA is experiencing an inevitable numerical hemorrhage. With all of its talk about inclusiveness and diversity, the increasingly liberal Presbyterian Church USA is faithful to the culturally “respectable” progressive ideals of pluralist theology, sexual confusion, and uncritically leftist social and political action but far too often fails to live up to the more countercultural and scandalous progressive ideals of the biblical witness, i.e., preaching the gospel and fostering cohesive and nurturing communities where people from diverse social, cultural, racial, and economic backgrounds are warmly welcomed and accepted into the full worshiping, witnessing, serving, and fellowshipping life of the church.

Lest this turn into a rant against liberal Protestantism based on my limited experience of that segment of American Christianity, I want to emphasize a couple of things. 1) The community in which I gained the unhappy surprise of humbling disappointment has its good points and fair share of earnest, welcoming, and wonderful Christians, as I’m pretty convinced almost all churches do. Elvis has not left the building but his representatives are swimming upstream against the inertia of generations of taken-for-granted grace and the stubborn insistence on, “Well, this is just how we Presbyterians are!” 2) This is not just a problem in liberal and socioeconomically ascendant churches. The keynote of churches in America, conservative and liberal, Protestant and Catholic, is voluntarism. The church is an optional society that we get to make in our own image. An elder in the church I have left essentially told me as much. He was of the opinion that the Scriptures do not teach that individual Christians are obligated to be committed to a particular group of believers. The church exists for no other purpose than to feed individual Christians for their personal ministries in the world. This is sad. The church exists to feed and please me; I do not need to love and serve Christians who do not look, think, or act just like me. Pray tell, if we feel this way about other believers, what does it say about how we will treat nonbelievers who do not look, think, or act just like me?

Pardon me if I suggest that it is precisely this kind of thinking and behavior that causes people on the margins to give up on the church altogether. If outcast church members are not part of the in-group and the members of the in-group feel no sense of Christian love to include and welcome “the least of these” among their brothers and sisters, how can the church possibly realize its mission of being the suffering and world-healing Body of Christ and mother of all the faithful that Jesus has purchased her to be?

Pay close attention, when I say shocking and controversial things like the church is “the house and family of God, out of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation,” as Presbyterianism’s Westminster Confession of Faith does (25.2), I am not positing a works righteousness whereby all Christian people are forced to conform to the misleading, superficial, cookie-cutter image of the hyper-caffeinated, elite super Christian in order to be saved. The church is not a voluntary society for heroic Christians who have everything together and are of old family, of respectable reputation, of upper-middle class means, or of vast influence in the community. No, the church is the Body of the Lord that has big and loving arms in which to embrace nobodys, losers, outcasts, ordinary people, and those unfortunate fools who think they do not belong to these kinds of categories. Jesus does not embrace people in his body for their social connections or money; he embraces us in his flesh purely because we are sinful and weak and small and empty. He is interested not in what we can bring of ourselves that the world so clamors after and esteems but in the wonders he can work in the world through a patchwork quilt of broken vessels like us—broken vessels that he takes such pleasure in putting back together, making holy, and using to advance His Kingdom. What I hear when I hear that the church is voluntary is really that certain people for whom Christ died are not wanted or that other believers have shown that person that he or she was not wanted or needed after all. My brothers and sisters, this should not be. We need the church and the church needs us because Jesus Christ is there. It is the place through which healing flows to the nations. I think we have to get rid of this notion that the church is supplemental or not necessary to Christian life in order to see this more clearly. Maybe if we came to see it as a tragedy that people are rejected by the church and leave it, then maybe we will realize the gravity of Jesus’ command that we love one another and start doing it on an individual and communal level.

Learning from the “Sacramentalists”: Weaknesses of the Commemorative Ordinances View

I issue apologies for last time and issue them ahead of time in this post. Labels are tricky. Usually they are misnomers. It is a bit inaccurate to associate the Baptist view of the sacraments with Zwingli, who retained infant baptism (though the Anabaptist movement did begin among Zwingli's followers in Zürich who simply disagreed with the Reformer on the mode and subject of baptism but not on the spiritually "dry" nature of it, and, of course, one can argue that adult baptism is the logical development issuing from Zwingli's understanding of the nature of faith and his radical duality between spirit and matter.)

The "sacramentalist "label I utilize this time is liable to get me in trouble from the Reformed direction because it sounds too Catholic, but thankfully Scott Clark, Michael Horton, and the other radical Puritans do not read my blog even though I read theirs (though, duh, 1) who am I that they would read me, and 2) I read those guys primarily for comedic purposes anyway).

I must also note that it almost feels as if I take everything I offered as potential strengths of the commemorative ordinances view back in critiquing it, but I would offer that those things still are commendable even if emphasizing them too much can lead us into trouble. Such, however, is the nature of the entire theological enterprise, hence the things I'm always muttering about "balance." Now to my list. Please note there will be more personal prognostications and theologizing in this list than in the last one, as I am in apologetic mode for my position. Plus, some of my points require explanation:

1. That Baptist common sense, of which the commemorative ordinances view of baptism and the Lord's Supper is part, is often a good old-fashioned virtue. Sometimes, however, we are called on to repent of our virtues. That Baptist common sense is partially an un-biblical Cartesian brand of common sense that marks a wide gulf between spirit and matter. For instance, I bring forward the short version of the Southern (and I mean Southern) Baptist catechesis about baptism: "Water don't do nothin’ for you. If you ain't already saved, you go down a dry sinner and you come up a wet one." Absolutely, baptism is not effective for salvation if it is unaccompanied by present or future faith in Christ. What this fails to grab hold of, though, is the way signs and symbols, rites and rituals, and group belonging and identity can strengthen, form, and even create faith in individuals. Through baptism and the Lord's Supper, God can plant, water, and nourish seeds of faith and activate them for regeneration. Do we doubt that God's Incarnation as Jesus Christ, Christ's physical death and resurrection, God's Word spoken and read, and human messengers to bring the Gospel are indispensable to bringing us to saving faith and in causing that faith to grow and be nourished through sanctification? Matter matters and God has repeatedly used it throughout salvation history to reveal himself, accomplish his redeeming purposes, and communicate his salvation to his people.

2. The commemorative ordinances view of the sacraments presupposes an understanding of God's workings in the material and temporal spheres of existence that denies the angels' confession that "heaven and earth is filled with his glory." Modern evangelicals, even Calvinist ones, have conceived of God's work in the world and even in the visible church in ways that smack of Gnosticism, Platonism, and/or Deism. Basically, earthly, material existence is governed by the laws of nature and spiritual existence is governed supernaturally by God. This is not a biblical viewpoint. In spite of the Fall, God still actively governs the world. As Calvin has it, we should not think of ourselves as being nourished by food through the self-perpetuating, God-independent natural process of digestion but by the God who miraculously converts dead food into life and energy for our bodies. Of course, I am not denying biology or laws of nature, but nature could not function without the God who sustains all things by his power. The "death of God" theologians of the 60's were foolish to suppose that the universe would not dissolve into nothingness if God were to empty himself of his being.

3. Continuing in this line of thought, the commemorative ordinances view of the sacraments seems to be part and parcel of a truncated understanding of the scope of salvation and the means through which God communicates that salvation to us.

I will preface my explanation of that point by saying that Christians who hold the commemorative ordinances view of the sacraments are very good about getting the absolutely essential, first-order points of the Gospel right. Salvation is for the souls of individual people, and the salvation of the world begins with the spiritual salvation of individual people. Indeed, we are the firstfruits of cosmic salvation, because, as the spiritual condition of humanity goes, so goes the rest of Creation. Also, people are most assuredly added to the Kingdom by ones and by grace alone through faith alone.

However, where modern evangelicals and even classical, sacramental Protestants go wrong is in limiting salvation to human beings and in applying it almost exclusively to the spiritual capacities of human beings. God means to redeem every single inch of us and every single inch of the universe. In redeeming humanity to the uttermost, there is not a single aspect of human existence that is not grasped in some way by God's saving intentions. God means to redeem not just humans souls but human bodies as well and not just individuals but families, societies, and nations as well: "Go into all nations, baptizing them and teaching them everything I have commanded you." If God has targeted human society for redemption, then it follows that redemption is going to be expressed and communicated in and through human social structures, i.e., the family and the visible church. Likewise, if God has targeted the whole Creation for redemption, then it follows that redemption is going to be expressed and communicated in and through the earthly means of words, water, bread, and wine.

4. The commemorative ordinances view of the sacraments is connected to a misleading understanding of what faith is. The commemorative ordinances view seems to equate faith directly with beliefs, feelings, thoughts, and works of the will and works with anything that has a material or physical expression. Put in equation form, it looks this way: faith = spiritual > works = matter. That sounds a lot like the barren faith of James 2 that consists exclusively of propositions. This conceives of faith far too platonically. I think of faith as having an erotic quality. Like erotic love, faith is produced, revved up, and expressed through the senses. The sacraments work for faith like sex does for marriage. Sex produces, deepens, and expresses creaturely dependence on and trust in one's spouse (or so I‘m told) and the sacraments produce, deepen, and express the creaturely dependence on and trust in God that is faith.

An example: I have heard it suggested that the Roman Catholics might have come to a point of agreement with the Calvinists and Lutherans on the issue of justification by faith alone had they not confused or feared the confusion of the Platonist and anti-materialist understanding of faith espoused by the Zwinglians and the Anabaptists with the Calvinist and Lutheran understanding of faith. The Council of Trent condemned justification by faith alone because they feared that the Protestants meant in this doctrine that the sacraments had nothing at all to do with the application of salvation, as Zwingli and the Anabaptists taught. However, Lutherans and Reformed non-Zwinglians have absolutely no problem reconciling justification by faith alone with the sacraments' role in salvation. In fact, you won't find stronger stalwarts for the doctrine of justification by faith alone than the Reformed and Lutherans. Indeed, for us, the sacraments' role in creating and strengthening faith is a great support for justification by faith alone.

5. Holders of the commemorative ordinances view of the Lord's Supper, while not subject to the exclusive, myopic focus on the elements, have unduly narrowed the focus of this sacrament to a memorial of Jesus's death. What!? I'm not mad. Christ's death is the central focus, but he did rise again and he is coming again. The Lord's Supper is not a funeral; it is a celebration of the resurrection and the dawning of the New Creation. We remember Christ's death because of the resurrection. And, we are not just "remembering;" we are sharing in the body and blood Christ sacrificed for us once and for all at Calvary. Furthermore, we are not just communing in the body Christ offered for "me" but in the body he offered for the world and the body he has assembled and knit together out of people from every nation under heaven. We are not to simply look upward in worship to God but around us in love for our brothers and sisters. There is a lot to chew on in the Communion rite.

6. If the commemorative ordinances view does not kill the mystery in the sacraments by subjecting them to scholastic theology, it kills the mystery by denying that it exists! Mystery is not a bad word; it is our life. Luther believed that the memorial view was a "rational emptying" of the Lord's Supper. I agree. There is more than meets the eye going on in baptism and the Lord's Supper. We are worried about "magic," but I think we all too serious moderns could use a little more "magic" in our lives. Kids are far more innocent than we are and they like “magic.” They don't deny stuff because they can't explain it like we so often do. Faith is not so much the land of understanding as it is the land of simple belief and childlike awe and wonder. There’s nothing wrong with expecting God's work right where he promises it. This sacraments business may seem a little goofy and "mythological," but I'm fully prepared to be ridiculous. Screw Tillich and Bultmann! A "de-mythologized" Christianity is as good as dead.

Seminary Shenanigans 1

The semester is over, so my really busy days are over for a while. I now have no excuses for not blogging more frequently, so stay tuned for my snarky, irrelevant, and irreverent thoughts throughout the summer. I'll take the opportunity in my next several posts to share my big projects from my seminary courses at Covenant this past semester. I would like your input and constructive criticism on my labors.

I most enjoyed and benefited from my Christian Worship class with the fantastic Dr. Mark Dalbney. I love the guy. He's full of great stories, is youthful and funny, knows more about Reformed worship than all but a half-dozen people on the planet, and has worshiped and led worship in the most widely divergent worship circles you could imagine. He grew up and began ministering in a tradition that only sings the Psalms, and that without musical accompaniment, and has evolved from that point to a contemporary worship guy who also exhibits a deep love for traditional hymnody. You can hear his lectures and access course materials here.

Here's the hymn I wrote for this class. You know that old Gospel song, "There is a Fountain Filled with Blood?" Well, I wrote a Communion hymn called "In Breath and Flesh and Power" to the tune of that old song. I might have biffed the assignment a bit by using an unoriginal tune, especially an old one, but I like the lyrics. I took a few risks with them, but feel I have faithfully articulated a well-rounded, Reformed view of the sacred Supper, though it rather provocatively trends Lutheran in verse two. Ecumenist and sacramentalist that I am, that doesn't bother me, so get over it. What I do worry about theologically, however, is whether in the first few lines of the first verse I diminish the glory of the Word of God spoken and written in extolling the value of the Sacrament? Keep in mind, in the full-bodied Reformed sacramental understanding, the Sacraments are nothing more or less than the Holy Spirit's application of the Word of God (in the Jesus sense too) and His promises to us in a bodily, material, communal manner; therefore, the Sacraments’ glory and that of the written Word is one. That being said, I do not wish to undermine that proposition by affirming the value of the Sacraments at the expense of the Bible. You be the judge of whether or not I have done this. Here's my song.

"In Breath and Flesh and Power"

Verse 1
Christ, meet us not in speech alone, but in Breath and flesh and power.
We have heard Your voice in holy Word and sang with You this hour.
By the Spirit's power, lift now our hearts in holy conqu'ring love.
For we long to share the blessed feast—Your once-offered flesh and blood.
Refrain 1
Your once-offered flesh and blood, your once-offered flesh and blood.
For we long to share the blessed feast—Your once-offered flesh and blood.

Verse 2
Jesus, what a joy to feast with You in Your resurrection power.
You have raised us to Your heav'nly throne for this blest, appointed hour.
For here we know You face-to-face as will be when Kingdom comes.
This table then will be faith's stay till the Consummation's done.
Refrain 2
Till the Consummation's done, till the Consummation's done.
This table then will be faith's stay till the Consummation's done.

Verse 3
Christ, as we share love's meat and drink with brother, sister dear,
Make one our hearts in charity, casting out unholy fear.
Unite us as one temple built on You, our cornerstone.
One holy loaf permeated through with You and You alone.
Refrain 3
With You and You alone, with You and You alone.
One holy loaf permeated through with You and You alone.

Verse 4
We have been with You this Easter Day in the new Jerusalem.
You have fed us with the bread of life and filled our hearts with hymns.
Strengthened by Your death and victory, conform our lives to You,
And send us as Your co-laborers in making all things new.
Refrain 4
In making all things new, in making all things new.
And send us as Your co-laborers in making all things new.

More Thoughts on Rome and Constantinople

3. I do not view the Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox positions on apostolic succession and their concomitant views on the Church's infallible teaching authority to be absurdities that can be summarily swept aside by all sensible, clear thinking people, as most Protestants seem to think. Indeed, in light of the fractiousness that has always characterized Sola Scriptura Protestantism, these points of view might just be valid correctives to the subjectivism and individualism that have run amok throughout Protestant history. Perhaps, in this regard, John Henry Newman was right to muse that to study history is to cease to be Protestant.

4. The above being said, I must put forward a few keenly-felt objections to apostolic succession and Orthodox and Catholic views of the authority of the Church:

1) my autonomous Protestant spirit rankles at the thought of all Christian people being obligated to submit their reason to the teaching authority of a Church hierarchy that claims infallibility for itself and really means it.

2) Likewise, my democratic and egalitarian American soul finds it terribly constraining and inconvenient to limit the Body of Christ as it is expressed in its full-flower to communities led by a particular class of men who have been handing on an ecclesiastical baton for 2000 years.

3) Finally, the vestiges of my rationalized, pietistic, common-sense spirituality find very quaint and superstitious the notion that Christ's spiritual Kingdom can be tied so closely to the historical continuity of a flesh and blood community, or, God forbid, an institution.

Well, I can resolve, at least to some degree, the three objections above by highlighting the cultural context in which they occur. I won't reduce them entirely to cultural accident, but I have a feeling non-Western Protestants might object to Orthodox and Catholic views of Church authority on grounds different from the rather WASP-ish ones I just put forward.

On 1), I have a feeling that that autonomous Protestant spirit would rankle under just about any kind of dogmatic authority by any ecclesiastical body. I can't hack the idea of the Church being infallible in its teaching capacity, but we can't expect anything other than absolute doctrinal chaos if each individual Christian's conscience is a law unto itself, standing entirely apart from and unaccountable to the witness of communities of faith to what they believe the Scriptures to teach. That being said, historically, Protestant confessionalism has only seemed to raise the bar of "solo Scriptura" from an "every man for himself" type of anarchy to a scarcely more civilized species of tribalism.

On 2), Americans value nothing more than their sense of equality and their convenience. I don't know if these values of liberal democracy have the greatest relevance to issues of ecclesiastical validity, though. I believe Kingdom authority has definitely spilled over the bounds of the episcopate (otherwise, I should be compelled to become Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox), but I do not think that this is the case simply so that those of us in churches outside of apostolic succession may have our Christianity on our own terms. The Reformers valued legitimately constituted and exercised authority in the Church. I still think their reasons for schism were proper and weighty. Are ours?

On 3), what I referred to as "common-sense spirituality" is actually a denial of the significance of the Incarnation. Matter matters. The Church of Jesus Christ has been a continuously-existing, concrete, flesh and blood reality in the world since 33 A.D. Or has it?

If we evaluate the Church according to the criteria of doctrinaire Protestantism, we are left without a true, "New Testament" Church in the world for the vast majority of history because, for most of the Christian era, the only visible, established church has been distinctively Catholic. This is obviously a problem, if 1) Catholicism and Orthodoxy are apostate forms of Christianity, and 2) we take seriously Christ's promise in Matthew 16:18 that the gates of hell will not prevail against His Church. The standard solution to this problem has been to shift our gaze from the church of history to a more immaterial conception of the Church.

In order to find the persevering Church of Christ's promise somewhere else than directly in the at times rather suspect church of history, most Protestants predicate this perseverance on the mystical "invisible Church," which consists of the whole number of the saved but is spiritual in character and is thus ultimately known only to God. In Matthew 16:18, though, Jesus is clearly referring to the organized, tangible, worldwide assembly of believers that he knew would go on to meet in divers places every Lord's Day for at least the next 2000 years. What good would the promise of Matthew 16:18 be to us if its fulfillment was lodged in a kind of church whose perseverance could not be empirically verified? Resorting to the invisible Church on this account would be an equivocation. If there has been any point in history since the founding of the Church that there has not remained on earth a true Church, we would just have to man up and admit that Jesus was mistaken.

5. The burden is on Catholic and Orthodox apologists to "prove" their particular brands of Church infallibility. I don't think their arguments work, but, when it comes to the way Protestants understand Christ to operate in and through His Church, we must come up with something better than what essentially amounts to "ecclesial deism." Ecclesial deism is basically the implicit idea that God has dealt with the post-apostolic Church in much the same way Deists understand God to have dealt with the world, i.e., created it as if it were a watch, wound it up, and then withdrew from it to let it operate on its own. In ecclesial deism, therefore, Christ founded the Church and then withdrew from it, leaving it to its own devices.

I learned this concept from a thought-provoking, sharply reasoned essay on the subject by Catholic apologist and friend of a friend, Bryan Cross. You can read the essay and engage with it at this link. What follows is just a bit of my own preliminary engagement with said essay.

Ecclesial deism is the necessary inference that issues from the standard Protestant account of Church history. At some point in the first 1500 years of the Christian movement, the pure Church of the apostles degenerated into the apostate Church of the Middle Ages that required the Reformation in order to be restored. In order for the Church to have gotten into this condition, Christ must have chosen not to preserve the Church in her fidelity to the deposit of faith she had received from Himself and the apostles, allowing her to fall into heresy and apostasy. The degree to which she compromised the central doctrines of the faith or the rate at which this compromise occurred may vary depending on who you talk to, but the general consensus among Protestants is that at least by the time leading up to the Reformation, the (by that point distinctively) Roman Catholic Church had so distorted the Christian faith that a break with her was necessary in order to restore the Church on earth.

As I've noted above, and as I agree with Mr. Cross, this is a problematic account of history because, if we buy it, it means we have to either: a) resort to the invisible Church gobbledygook that doesn't work, b) admit that Christ was wrong about the perseverance of His Church, c) hold to a weak and defective ecclesiology in which we have no assurance that Christ is present and working effectively through His earthly Body, or, d) all of the above.

6. This particular point is probably going to tumble out like a train wreck, but it seems like Protestant-Catholic back and forth about Christ's work in and through the Church is painted in entirely too much of a black-and-white kind of discourse. Either we have a Church that speaks infallibly because Christ has promised to lead His Church into all truth, or we have a Church in which Christ is scarcely thought to be present and working effectively because of a fundamental Protestant mistrust of material and social realities and of authority.

Maybe we’re speaking past each other. Maybe not. What I do know is that either-or categories are too simplistic for this discussion but that thinking in shades of gray won't get it done either. Dialectical or analogical thinking might be better suited to the task.

7. Bryan Cross is wise to utilize Christological categories in discussing the nature of the Church. After all, the Church is Christ's Body, "flesh of His flesh and bone of His bones." Cross exposes the weakness of Protestant ecclesiology by defining the oft-used distinction between the "outward" and "inward Church," or, "visible" and "invisible Church," as an "ecclesial Nestorianism." Nestorianism is the ancient heresy that Christ's human nature is a complete created being united extrinsically to the Divine second Person of the Trinity and, thus, that Jesus Christ is not one person but two persons, a human person closely united to a Divine person. For this reason, Nestorius refused to refer to Mary as Mother of God because, in his view, she did not give birth to the Divine person her Son was united to. In critiquing Protestant ecclesiology, then, Mr. Cross likens the outward Church to the human person and the inward Church to the Divine person in the Nestorian Christ.

Cross is right. The doctrine of the "-ible Church" is an ecclesial Nestorianism, and worse yet, implies an "ecclesial Docetism." Let's let Mr. Cross explain:

Ecclesial Nestorianism necessarily collapses into ecclesial Docetism. Here is why: given that Christ is the Head of the Mystical Body, then treating the Mystical Body as something distinct from, even if extrinsically united to, the Catholic Church [he's talking about the earthly Church], reduces the Catholic Church to a merely human institution, just as Nestorianism reduces Jesus to a mere human being. The real Church (i.e., the one that Christ founded), given ecclesial Nestorianism, is the invisible Church that may or may not be in some way related to the Catholic Church. That is ecclesial Docetism. The real Church . . . is the inward or invisible Church; there is no “visible Church” per se, nor do the promises of Christ apply to it. There are many visible churches, but no universal visible Church.

In other words, the visible Church only appears to be the Church Jesus founded. The invisible Church is the real Church. This basically makes Protestant ecclesiology a peripheral theological issue. Protestants have to arrive at something better to describe the reality of Christ present and powerful in the society of the Church that we actually do have access to as flesh and blood human beings or go to Rome or Constantinople where real, tangible, and consequential ecclesiology exists.

I would infer from Cross's application of Christological categories to the "-ible Church" that proper thinking about the nature of the Church should correspond with the orthodox, Chalcedonian Christology of the hypostatic union, in which Christ is defined as one person of two perfect and complete natures joined to one another in hypostatic union, without confusion or mixture. This means that Christ's human and Divine natures may be distinguished but they cannot be separated from one another without destroying the Incarnation, hence why the Church of antiquity rightly insisted on referring to Mary as Mother of God rather than simply as mother of Jesus. Basically, Christ's actions or attributes cannot be attributed this to His human nature and that to His Divine nature but both actions and attributes proper to His humanity and proper to His Divinity to the one God-Man.

The distinction between a human visible Church and a Divine invisible Church dissolved, would then the proper view of the Church in Catholic thought be to analogize from the hypostatic union of Divine and human natures in Christ to the relationship between Divine and human agency in the Church? After all, Augustine thought of the Catholic Church as totus Christus—the total Christ of Head and Mystical Body united. Does Cross mean to imply that human and Divine agency in the Church, at least at some level, may not be abstracted one from another on the basis that the Church is the Body of Christ—"the fullness of Him who fills everything in every way" (Ephesians 1:23)?

This is simultaneously profound and dangerous to my yet deeply Protestant sensibilities. What the Catholic Church and the apostolic churches of Orthodoxy want us to see is that through the humanity of the Church, sinful and broken yet as it is, Christ has promised that He will be present and working, speaking faithfully to His people through the ages in the Holy Spirit-guided episcopal successors of the apostles. On the one hand, this is profound because it reflects the covenantal pattern of God coming to dwell among and guide His people that appears throughout Scripture and culminates in God's Incarnation as Jesus Christ. On the other hand, this is dangerous because the temptation exists that in the recognition of God's agency through human figures, God may become displaced, with bare human authority rising to the level of Divine authority and man-made traditions supplanting the original, pure deposit of faith.

My Protestant cautions noted, I think the use of the hypostatic union of the two natures in Christ is a good point from which to analogize about human and Divine agency in the Church, provided that the understanding is that it is analogical—at least until we arrive at ecclesiastical maturity when the Kingdom arrives in full force—and that we reason forth from it even-handedly. I affirm together with my Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox brothers and sisters that Christ is, in a profoundly Incarnational way, present to us through the Holy Spirit in the earthly assembly of the Catholic Church, and that, in spite of sin and human failing within the Church, the Church—in toto—is truly one flesh with Jesus Christ and, as such, will be preserved in faithfulness to Him through the ages. I am skeptical, however, about describing this faithfulness in terms of infallibility.

When it comes to the question, though, of a sphere in which the infallibility of the Divine Person is predicated of His human ministers, it would seem to re-raise the specter of ecclesial Nestorianism to abstract the teaching capacity of the Church from its other functions, ascribing the category of Divine infallibility to the Church in its fundamental teaching capacity, while admitting of human fallibility for the Church in its other capacities. Remember, the hypostatic union does not allow us to divide Christ.

Perhaps, though, I have not fully understood what Catholics and Orthodox affirm respectively about Church infallibility. If Christ's infallibility were predicated of the Church only when she speaks or acts as one (which would be the rare instance, indeed), logical consistency with the hypostatic union would be preserved, but would this still be taking the Incarnational nature of the Church too far?

I certainly share the faith that Jesus Christ has led thus far and will continue to lead His Church into all truth and preserve her in faithfulness to Himself through the ministry of his servants, but my Protestant skepticism remains strong whether "infallible" can be applied to any singular function of Christ's Church or even to Christ's Church in those limited occasions when it speaks or acts as one before the Kingdom comes in full force.

Where I Sit with Churches of Apostolic Succession

As those of you who know me know, I've been expressing a certain affinity with Roman Catholicism for awhile now. Indeed, my encounters with the Church of Rome and to a lesser though still important degree my brushes with Eastern Orthodoxy have resulted in a rather significant shift in my theological outlook. I've gone from being a dogmatic Protestant to a confused one of the kind that should scare the be-Jesus out of all dogmatically convinced anti-Catholics.

I must admit that some of this arises from a felt need to embody the prevailing cultural fascination with novelty and thus one could say that to some degree I question and challenge conventional Protestant convictions simply because that's my background. Thankfully, that rather suspect and dangerous motivation is not my primary one. I may be a rebel, but I'm no rebel without a cause. My peculiar fascination arises from that point in my spiritual development when I began to feel a strong desire to see Jesus Christ in the face of the Christian other but found that my Protestantism was of a far too narrow character to admit that those Christian believers who differed significantly from me in any way could even rightly be called Christians.

In order in my mind to rescue the vast majority of Christian believers who have ever lived from the fires of hell, my theological outlook got "all messed up," as some would undoubtedly describe it. In that messy process, I've spent some time studying Church history—the undivided Church of ancient times, the medieval Church—and the great figures—the Church Fathers, the Protestant Reformers. As I had suspected, historic Christianity, including classic Protestantism, looks and sounds peculiarly Catholic.

I have also spent some time studying the character of Christianity as it currently exists throughout the world. To view the contemporary global Church through my former narrow separatist Protestant lenses would be to cast off the greatest part of Christ's body as chaff, whereas to view it through the more charitable eyes I believe God has given me is to see a miraculous God-wrought diversity in Christ's Kingdom as it advances ever gloriously on to the ends of the earth.

What exactly is my theological and ecclesiological identity at this point, then? As I said, I'm a confused Protestant; I have a strong dose of Reformed but I find myself even more captivated by forms of Christianity that value the sacraments and the mystical side of faith and hold the Church and its continuity of life and thought in highest regard.

Yes, I recognize that for many this place where I am at is the beginning of the road that leads to Rome or to Constantinople. Even as I write this, I am thinking of a friend who is well down that road and wrestles with whether to continue on to Rome or to remain a Protestant. I am praying for him that God grants him peace as he wrestles with this question that I myself have spent some time considering. I take this opportunity to take stock of my own thoughts as to where I sit in regard to those venerable churches that claim apostolic succession as a mark of the true Church.

1. The strongest and most compelling link in the apologetic chain for either Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy is that the line of succession of bishops down to the time of the apostles has been regarded since the beginning of the Christian movement as a mark of the true Church. Indeed, the first time in Church history that we see significant numbers of Christian people not under the authority of bishops within lines of succession from the apostles being regarded as genuine Christians is at the Reformation, and even then, it is only the Protestants who regard themselves as genuine Christians.

So what? It's no matter of small consequence that the apostolic succession of bishops in the period of the early Church was vital to the Church's preservation of theological orthodoxy against the claims of the heretics.

So much, in fact, did the Reformers value apostolic succession that they were initially very reluctant to break with it but later rejected the doctrine in no uncertain terms. Was this because they could not substantiate it based on Scripture or because apostolic succession became an impediment to the Reformation when few bishops sided with the Protestants?

That we call ourselves Protestants seems to imply to me that, at some level, reunion with Rome was the stated objective of the Protestant movement. Considering that the division of churches is a scandal to the Gospel and that unity between Christians is a command of the Savior, if all the doctrinal issues that separate Protestants and Catholics were to be resolved tomorrow, even if the Catholic Church still maintained its administrative structure intact, I would say that individual Protestants and all Protestant communities would be obligated to at least give the possibility of reunion with Rome serious consideration. For me, even if we were to pare that down to most or even half of the doctrinal issues that separate us, I think it would still be "Rome sweet home" for me!

2. Like the apostolic succession claim, the inability of Sola Scriptura to produce a consistent, principled hermeneutic for interpreting Scripture hits right at the heart of the conversions from Protestantism to Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. It's high time that we Protestants admit that the Scriptures are not nearly as perspicuous in a broad systemic sense as we have been saying they are.

Due to the privileging of private interpretation over any kind of tradition (except for that of one's own Protestant tradition), not to mention the limits of human perspective in regard to any text, using Sola Scriptura as a biblical hermeneutic always results in interpretations of Scripture that are ultimately unfalsifiable. When a private interpretation or the interpretation of a group of Protestants has been opposed (even with other Scripture verses), the invariable response has always been, "You are stiff-necked and wicked people! If you would just listen to the Holy Spirit and approach the Scriptures objectively, you too would see what we see. You obviously do not listen to the Spirit or to reason because you do not see what we see; therefore, we are going to separate from you!" Thus goes the standard justification for our countless schisms.

Even when we push past the pop Protestant, "solo Scriptura," just me and my Bible distortion for the true, historic Sola Scriptura of classic Protestantism, i.e. Scripture as the final and sufficient doctrinal authority when interpreted in light of the historic Rule of Faith, we are still operating with a degree of subjectivity sufficient to shipwreck the prospects for doctrinal unity, since 1) Anglicans, Lutherans, and Reformed did not arrive at confessional consensus, and 2) the Rule of Faith Tradition 1 Protestants appeal to includes a great many items, like apostolic succession and Marian devotion, for instance, we would eschew out of hand.

The problem, however, for the Roman Catholic position on final doctrinal authority, is that appeals to an infallible teaching Magisterium and infallible Pope, even when limited to those circumstances in which papal and magisterial infallibility are said to apply, also result in pronouncements of Christian truth that are ultimately unfalsifiable. Indeed, for Catholics there is the conviction that when the Pope has ruled ex cathedra or when an ecumenical council or the Sacred Magisterium has ruled infallibly on a matter pertaining to faith or morals that Jesus Christ has spoken with His own authority. That being said, one still cannot help but fear that the line between "The Church has so ruled because it is true" and "It is true because the Church has so ruled " can easily disappear if the inability of the Church to be wrong is a given right from the get-go.

A great deal of misrepresentation has settled in with regard to the self-purported infallibility of the Pope and the Roman Magisterium—no, papal infallibility does not mean the Pope is incapable of personal sin or that all his public statements are to be viewed as infallible, nor does the infallibility of the Sacred Magisterium mean that everything the Church teaches or has ever taught is to be regarded by Catholics as infallible. I do not wish to add to the misinformation, but I can sincerely say that the degree of un-falsifiability insulating Roman Catholic dogma from critique is as great a logical shortcoming for Roman hermeneutics as the subjectivity and un-falsifiability inherent in Sola Scriptura is for Protestant hermeneutics. However, in light of the sheer weight of 2000 years of official Roman Catholic teaching that the Magisterium and the papacy must avoid running afoul of, there is little room left in their procedure, at least at this point in history, for the subjectivity and innovation that has so often plagued Protestant teaching.

The Eastern Orthodox position on Church infallibility appears somewhat more tenable to me than the Roman Catholic position, as it centers on the authority of the entire Church represented in the gathered bishops of an ecumenical council. In effect, then, the Eastern Orthodox Church speaks infallibly only when it speaks with the voice of the entire Church. This is not all that different from the way confessional Protestantism has strived to work, but it has not worked to preserve Christian unity the way it has in Eastern Orthodoxy. Stay tuned for more to come.

We Already Share in Body and Blood

Here's just one gem of many from today's Calvin reading:

But the flesh of Christ does not of itself have a power so great as to quicken us, for in its first condition it was subject to mortality; and now, endowed with immortality, it does not live through itself. Nevertheless, since it is pervaded with fullness of life to be transmitted to us, it is rightly called "life-giving." In this sense I interpret with Cyril that saying of Christ's: "As the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself" [John 5:26, cf. Vg.]. For there he is properly speaking not of those gifts which he had in the Father's presence from the beginning, but of those with which he was adorned in that very flesh wherein he appeared. Accordingly, he shows that in his humanity there also dwells fullness of life, so that whoever has partaken of his flesh and blood may at the same time enjoy participation in life.

We can explain the nature of this by a familiar example. Water is sometimes drunk from a spring, sometimes drawn, sometimes led by channels to water the fields, yet it does not flow forth from itself for so many uses, but from the very source, which by unceasing flow supplies and serves it. In like manner, the flesh of Christ is like a rich and inexhaustible fountain that pours into us the life springing forth from the Godhead into itself. Now who does not see that communion of Christ's flesh and blood is necessary for all who aspire to heavenly life?

This is the purport of the apostle's statements: "The church . . . is the body of Christ, and the fullness of him" [Eph. 1:23]; but he is "the head" [Eph. 4:15] "from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by . . . joints . . . makes bodily growth" [Eph. 4:16]; "our bodies are members of Christ" [I Cor. 6:15]. We understand that all these things could not be brought about otherwise than by his cleaving to us wholly in spirit and body. But Paul graced with a still more glorious title that intimate fellowship in which we are joined with his flesh when he said, "We are members of his body, of his bones and of his flesh" [Eph. 5:30]. Finally, to witness to this thing greater than all words, he ends his discourse with an exclamation: "This," he says, "is a great mystery" [Eph. 5:32]. It would be extreme madness to recognize no communion of believers with the flesh and blood of the Lord, which the apostle declares to be so great that he prefers to marvel at it rather than to explain it. Institutes 4.17.9

If we as the Church already share in the Body and Blood of Christ through our union with Him, is it such a stretch to consider that in some mystical way we share truly and really in flesh and blood in the Supper of the Lord and not just in the Spirit? This is precisely the line of reasoning Calvin is following here.

A Change of Direction

I'm not much good lately about keeping the promises I make regarding what I'm going to write about in the future on this blog. I've promised posts on predestination, the doctrine of Scripture, and probably numerous other things, so I apologize to my great faithful horde of blogosphere followers for my grave dereliction of duty. I know the two of you (presumptuous, I know) are desperate to learn further from my wisdom, but please, hang in there a while longer and I just might get to the promised projects . . . one of these days.

Truthfully, I don't feel a great deal of motivation lately to do much writing. It's not that I'm too busy. I'm just taking one class, leading a Bible study, and not doing much of anything else productive other than these two things that really are important. No; I have struggled from time to time throughout my life with laziness, procrastination, and depression, and that’s where I am at in the current season of my life. When mired in the mud, it can be difficult to find that surge of energy that is required to crawl lose, dig out, and get up into standing position again like a man.

The source of my current malaise is an unresolved question of purpose coupled with a fear of continuing for all of my days in a state of disappointment and unfulfillment. I am profoundly unhappy, and I do not know how to proceed to remedy that. I never have known how to change that.

Plans have been frustrated, the search for deep community in the embrace of a local expression of Mother Church has been unsatisfactory, my isolation has increased, my search for "Eve" has been ill-conceived and thus unproductive, friends do not draw close (mostly, I fail to seek them out), I drink from empty or fouled cisterns, I capitulate to fear, and pervasive feelings of unreality and futility—embodied in the questions, Who reads my stuff? Is it important, and, even if it is, does it make a difference?—stifle the creative urge to write.

That's enough feeling sorry for myself. I think you get the picture about my emotional, relational, vocational, missional, creative, etc., state at the present time. I truly covet your prayers, but the point is that problems don't get solved by wallowing or by withdrawing deeper into oneself to find the answers. That's what I have always done and it doesn't help. I hear the Savior calling us to a better way: "He who loses his life for My sake will find it" (Matthew 10:39). He's telling me, "If you're unhappy with yourself and the direction your life is headed in, quit worrying about it. Turn your attention from yourself and your problems and focus on serving others!"

I'm worrying too much about my purpose writ small. Our purpose writ big is, "LOVE GOD, LOVE PEOPLE!" That's first. Get that established and you're on the right track. You don't have to go to seminary to do that or write brilliant blog rants that acutely point out and remedy everything that's wrong with American Protestant Christianity.

I have apologies to issue and prophetic words to preach to myself before I preach them to others. Much of what I have written from my armchair theologian's position as a blogger has been self-important, hypocritical, and self-serving. I have written a good deal about certain emphases held by the historic Church that have been neglected in American evangelicalism, much to our detriment. Usually the emphases I have taken up to recover are those that have been thrown out the door in the name of protecting equal and seemingly opposite emphases we have deemed to be priorities in authentic Christian faith and practice.

For instance, in order to preserve the utter transcendence of God and the immediacy of His saving works in His creatures and in His world, we have exclusively emphasized the way that God works using spiritual means, rejecting the ideas that God works redemptively in His creatures and in His world through a human church and the material means of the sacraments as "superstitious," Roman Catholic-sounding doctrines that belong in the dust heap of Church history.

I have engaged in some pretty harsh rhetoric on this front, so, undoubtedly, some of my writing has proved to be less than charitable to the Baptist tradition of my youth and to other credobaptist and non-sacramental traditions. I apologize to friends of these persuasions whom I might have alienated in my overzealous attempts to recover a robust ecclesiology and sacramental theology for evangelicals. I have been obtuse and rude and self-important to think my efforts alone could make apparent the correctness of a high ecclesiology and sacramental understandings of baptism and the Lord's Supper, much less show how important it truly is to believe correctly on these matters. I mean well, and I will try to speak more charitably on these points from here on out.

In the same vein and more directly to the point I'm trying to make, I have made a great deal of bother about how we have blown up the importance of one's personal relationship with God and the application of salvation to individuals to the point that the communal nature of our salvation and the importance of the church to that salvation has been obscured and thus that the love Christians are to have for one another (both the love we are to give and that which we should receive) has been downgraded from being one of God's surest testimonies to His children that they are His own to being simply a matter of optional, supplementary support for private Christians in their personal relationships with God. I absolutely think this is the case, and I think that this is one of the chief tragedies rampant individualism in American Protestantism has wrought.

I will inevitably be, and have been, accused of advocating salvation by love and will be accused of mixing up loving one another—a matter of sanctification—with individual justification before God, but does not John say, "We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers. Anyone who does not love remains in death." (1 John 3:14)? Has he not also said, "Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love." (1 John 4:7-8)?

Doctrinal issues aside, I must confess that, what I believe has been a burden given to me by God to be prophetic voice for reform in mainstream American evangelicalism arises (I will have to tell you the story sometime of how a charismatic/Pentecostal revivalist anointed me with oil and asked for God to give me the gift of prophecy and how I see that as an authentic commissioning, but that's for another time) from my own self-interest. I am so passionate for God's Church and for my vision of what a wonderful, loving, world-changing, Kingdom-ushering-in reality it was meant to be, can be, and will be because I want to find a place for myself where I can be loved and accepted at any time and in any place by loving Christian people in spite of the deep relational, emotional, and social brokenness and isolation I so often feel. I know God is for me, and when I stop to ponder God's graciousness to me, I remember so many instances of extravagant love that so many brothers and sisters in the Lord have undeservedly poured into my life at so many times and in so many ways and when I needed it the most. You wonderful folks know who you are! Still, I long for the days when the consolations of God's Spirit through His people will constantly flood over my loneliness and brokenness, freeing me to love fully in turn and be all that God has called me to be for the sake of the Church and the world!

What I have just said puts all the focus on my own needs, and I know our joys in the Lord and in one another will never be complete until Christ returns, but I also want you to have power to grasp "together with all the saints . . . how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God" (Ephesians 3:18-19).

This is where I must preach prophetic words to myself. I am part of the problem. When I clamor for my rights as a believer for the love of my fellow Christians while failing to love my brothers and sisters in the Lord as passionately as I desire them to love me, I fail to pay the debt of love I owe to Christ and to my co-heirs in and with Him. I too fail to love my brothers and sisters in Lord as they deserve to be loved. As C.S. Lewis reminds us repeatedly in the Chronicles of Narnia, "Each is only told his own story," and as Jesus said to Peter, "What is it to you? Feed my sheep" (John 21:17, 22).

If I am lonely, let me love my brothers and sisters in the Lord unreservedly. If I am concerned that I be included and welcomed more deeply into the community of my church, let me strive ever-harder to warmly love those I worship with. If I am concerned that I as a marginal person be loved and accepted among the cultural majority in my congregation, let me love in a radically counter-cultural way both those esteemed as marginal and those esteemed more favorably. If friends seem to be far away in times of need, let me reach for them in-season and out-of-season. If I believe God has something to say through me, let prophets preach to themselves.

Fun with Predestination, Pelikan, and Post-millennialism

I've been working on and wrestling with some pretty rich and thought-provoking material since I last posted. Of course, Calvin's Institutes has been my constant companion throughout this year and has continued to provide depths of profundity for my soul to glory in and my mind to contemplate.

I have also been recently engaging patristics beyond the encounter with the Church Fathers I have found in Calvin (He's a bit too heavily reliant on Augustine but also liberally references Chrysostom, Cyprian, and Ambrose, among others). For those interested (as you should be:) in the development of Christian doctrine immediately following the biblical period and continuing on into the Imperial Church and beyond, Jaroslav Pelikan's first volume, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition: 100-600, of his landmark four-volume series, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, is essential reading. I think Pelikan was still a Lutheran when he wrote this, but he eventually became Eastern Orthodox, so reader beware! Exploring patristics as thoroughly as Pelikan did might just blow up some sacrosanct Protestant presuppositions, not to mention certain Roman Catholic ones as well. I just might return to blog about some of the gems from Mr. Pelikan's doctrinal history in the coming weeks.

The other thing that has really flipped my lid lately is Peter Leithart's The Kingdom and the Power: Recovering the Centrality of Church. In relation to Alexander Schmemann's enchanting classic, For the Life of the World, Leithart's book is a distinctively Reformed and biblical continuation of the former's theme of the realization of the Kingdom of God here and now in the Church and its centrality in God's broader, ongoing economy of cosmic consummation. Schmemann's prophetic focus in For the Life of the World is addressing the challenge of secularism in general to the authentically Christian worldview embodied in Orthodoxy. Leithart, on the other hand, writing in the early 90s, speaks a prophetic word to American evangelicals about their exclusively political response to the “culture war,” urging them to respond as the Church rather than as a political interest group, since our hopes for cosmic renewal are caught up neither with America—the "Redeemer Nation"—and its political and military operations nor in some impending dispensationalist scenario. No; our hope is in Christ and His Kingdom as it is already being realized in the teaching, worship, sacraments, discipline, and the spiritual and cultural dominion of the Church.

I think Leithart makes a very strong exegetical argument that I am compelled for the most part to agree with, but I am unfamiliar with and not entirely on-board with the amillennial/post-millennial preterist interpretation he puts forth of the Olivet Discourse in Matthew, Paul's discussion of physical Israel's rejection of Christ in Romans 9-11, and the events in the book of Revelation. Leithart is of the opinion that the events foretold and fulfilled in these famous passages are the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 A.D. and the Jews’ dispersal by the Romans that followed.

Leithart is not making a concession to Higher Criticism in this position, being in agreement with those who date Revelation prior to 70 A.D. I think it doubtful Revelation was composed before the fall of Jerusalem, but having Christ's prophecies refer to the fall of Jerusalem is satisfying for those otherwise left wondering why the events He told His disciples they would see fulfilled in their generation did not come to pass. At any rate, Leithart asserts that the destruction of the Temple was God's judgment on physical Israel for rejecting Christ and that this event heralded the arrival of the Kingdom of God—Christ's "millennial" reign over the world through the Church until He returns to bring in the full consummation. This is not the literal millennium in Revelation but a metaphorical one between Christ's first and second comings; hence Leithart is technically an "amillennialist" rather than a "post-millennialist," though his scheme is admittedly more of a hybrid of the two than purely one or the other.

These are certainly new ideas for those of us reared on popular Dispensationalist evangelical eschatology. I will simply say that these ideas are new to me but already seem more plausible than the eschatological scenarios the snake oil salesmen have been peddling to us for years. Admittedly, though, I don't need much reason to reject eschatological scenarios that are overly pessimistic, escapist, and just generally Gnostic, especially since these are invariably the ready handmaidens of individualistic, radically anti-materialistic, and consequently world-denying, Church-minimizing, and sacrament-less theologies.

That being said, the view that Leithart puts forward has some problems for me, especially in the characteristically-Reformed assertion that God's covenant with Abraham has been transferred completely from his physical descendents—Israel according to the flesh, the Jews—to his spiritual descendents—the new Israel in which there is neither Jew nor Gentile, the Church. I would argue, of course, that Christ, the Gospel, and His Church fulfill the Law and the conditions of God's covenant with Israel, indeed that for the most part the Church has superseded physical Israel in God's economy of earthly and cosmic consummation. However, I too cannot shake Paul's firm conviction that "all Israel will be saved" on the basis that "the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable" (Romans 11:26, 29). God is not through with unbelieving Israel because He is the God who "has shut up all in disobedience so that He may show mercy to all" (Romans 11:32).

The central passage for resolving what God has revealed to us concerning the physical descendants of Abraham is Romans chapters 9 through 11. It is also the central passage for discussing the biblical teachings on predestination, election, and reprobation. As a recent post of mine indicates, this too is an issue I have been thinking a good deal about lately as well, thanks to my engagement with Calvin’s treatment of predestination in his Institutes. The questions relating to election and reprobation are closely related to the question regarding God's ongoing plan for Israel, as it is specifically in the context of Paul's teaching regarding the unbelief of Israel that his lengthiest and, historically, most doctrinally-decisive treatment of predestination takes place. I will address both issues as I attempt to begin a brief exegesis of Romans 9-11 in my next post.

Calvin on Mother Church

Calvin is a bit too decretal and Augustinian for my taste in his opening remarks on the Church in his Institutes. He incorrectly applies the discussion of the Body of Christ in Ephesians to the invisible Church, evidencing an over-spiritualization of the communion of saints and a high degree of individualism. Much better are these remarks on the necessity of membership in the visible Church:

But because it is now our intention to discuss the visible church, let us learn even from the simple title "mother" how useful, indeed how necessary, it is that we should know her. For there is no other way to enter into life unless this mother conceive us in her womb, give us birth, nourish us at her breast, and lastly, unless she keep us under her care and guidance until, putting off mortal flesh, we become like the angels [Matt. 22:30]. Our weakness does not allow us to be dismissed from her school until we have been pupils all our lives. Furthermore, away from her bosom one cannot hope for any forgiveness of sins or any salvation, as Isaiah [Isa. 37:32] and Joel [Joel 2:32] testify. Ezekiel agrees with them when he declares that those whom God rejects from heavenly life will not be enrolled among God's people [Ezek. 13:9]. On the other hand, those who turn to the cultivation of true godliness are said to inscribe their names among the citizens of Jerusalem [cf. Isa. 56:5; Ps. 87:6]. For this reason, it is said in another psalm: "Remember me, O Jehovah, with favor toward thy people; visit me with salvation: that I may see the well-doing of thy chosen ones, that I may rejoice in the joy of thy nation, that I may be glad with thine inheritance" [Ps. 106:4-5 p.; cf. Ps. 105:4, Vg., etc.]. By these words God's fatherly favor and the especial witness of spiritual life are limited to his flock, so that it is always disastrous to leave the church. (4.1.4)

Leithart on the Kingdom of God

Some really good stuff on the relationship between the Kingdom of God and the Church in Peter Leithart's The Kingdom and the Power: Rediscovering the Centrality of the Church.

I have emphasized in this chapter that Jesus rules as the Son of David and the Last Adam over all things in heaven, on earth, and under the earth. At the same time, however, I will insist equally strongly that His rule has a particular focus and center. Paul wrote to the Ephesians that Christ has been exalted far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and has been made head of all things for the church (Eph. 1:20-23). Paul did not deny that Christ rules all things. On the contrary, he stretched the limits of language to express the absolutely comprehensive dimensions of Christ's rule. But Paul also recognized that the central concern of Christ's rule is the church, the assembly of God's people. . . . (60-61)

Scripture explicitly teaches that Jesus Christ rules all things as well as the church. He is "Head" over all things (v. 22), as well as over the church (Eph. 5:23). Headship implies authority and rule. Christ is also said to "fill all things in every way" (1:23); in fulfillment of God's command to Adam, He "fills" the whole creation with His presence. At the same time, the church is called the "fullness" of Christ (1:23). Christ is present among His people in a way that He is not present in the whole creation, and His headship over the church is different from His headship over all things. There is a headship over the church, and there is a headship over the world; there is a filling appropriate to the church, and a filling appropriate to the creation as a whole. We distort the Scriptures if either of these truths is denied, or if either is subordinated to the other.

Jesus, moreover, does not rule the church merely to perfect and build the church. The church exists for the life of the world. Thus the two dimensions of Christ's rule circle back on each other: Christ rules the world for the sake of the church, and He rules the church for the sake of the world. And He rules both to bring honor and glory to His heavenly Father. (62-63)

Immanence and transcendence held in proper balance. This is the same principle at work in a high ecclesiology and in sacramental theology. Does it sound so "un-biblical" now?

For the Life of the World 3

The Time of Mission: Eastern Orthodoxy and the Sacrament of Time

The last few times, we have been up on the mountain in the new Jerusalem. We have been talking about the Sunday feast of the Church, the Eucharist. We have gotten a glimpse of heaven. Now we have to go back out into the world again to do mission. We have to come out of the timelessness of heaven and enter again into time.

Time. How do you view time? That's an ambivalent subject. It's a two-sided issue. Time opens up life as a possibility for growth and fulfillment. We move forward hopefully into the future. For all of this good possibility that time opens up for us, though, we all also experience time as an enemy. We're always running out of it. We're always on the clock. Time is tick, tick, ticking away. One day, the clock is going to run out for each of us. Time ultimately means death. On that unhappy note, let's begin our exploration of the Eastern Orthodox perspective on time. As our author lets us know, what Eastern Orthodoxy provides when it comes to time is not a solution but a gift.

The gift is liturgical time, the Church calendar. Fortunately, I think, Protestants are beginning to reclaim the Christian year, the feasts and the seasons and even the old liturgical cycles of prayer. The Reformers, especially Zwingli and Calvin, rejected a lot of this stuff as ceremonialism and superstition. They thought that one day was just as sacred as the next and there's also the fact that they couldn't find any mention of feast days and seasons in the Bible. They thought that these were man-made traditions that Christians were not obliged to follow. I think they were right to reject the idea that observing the days of the Church gets us points with God but I think this was a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

What is the benefit of the liturgical calendar anyway? Schmemann talks in the opening pages of this chapter about the "symbolism" of feast days and seasons. Are these just symbolic decorations or occasions for remembrance of things that happened in the past, or are we to understand them as having some other kind of significance?

Well, he thinks that viewing these times just as symbols is a problem. For him, it reflects the Christian rejection of time as having any real meaning. So, I raise the question, What do we understand to be the significance of time in our faith? Does it have any real significance? Isn't Christianity really about salvation from time? We talked a while back about the otherworldly perspective that thinks of Christianity in terms of salvation from the world. I think we see this in our attitude toward time also. We want to escape time and the world and all of the frustration and difficulty that go along with them. We want rest and relaxation. Vacation, retirement, heaven. Rest. When we think of Christianity's relation to time in this manner, the liturgical calendar is basically just a way to decorate meaningless time with beautiful symbols and colorful rituals. Do you all agree with his portrayal?

Well, Christ didn't enter time just to rescue us from it. Nor did he leave us here in time just so we could fill it up with symbols. Just as he came into the world not just to save us from the world but to transform the world and give it back to us as a means of communion with God, so has he come into time not just to rescue us from time but to transform time and return it to us as a means of communion with God. Alongside the sacramental Church and the sacramental world we have discussed, Eastern Orthodoxy has sacramental time.

The first place to start in discussing the sacramental time of Orthodoxy is in talking about the Lord's Day. Christians have always had their own special day. Of course, that stretched all the way back into Judaism with the Sabbath, but Sabbath and Lord's Day are not interchangeable. They're connected, but there's a difference. In Judaism, the Sabbath is the seventh day, but, in Christianity the Lord's Day is the first day of the week. It's also the eighth day of the week. To understand this though, we need to talk about the Jewish Sabbath first. What does Sabbath represent in Judaism? Schmemann talks about it on 50.

In the Jewish religious experience Sabbath, the seventh day, has a tremendous importance: it is the participation by man in, and his affirmation of, the goodness of God's creation. "And God saw it was good. . . . And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made." The seventh day is thus the joyful acceptance of the world created by God as good. . . . It is the active participation in the "Sabbath delight," in the sacredness and fullness of divine peace as the fruit of all work, as the crowning of all time.

There is a problem with God's good world though. It is also the world of sin and revolt against God. We aren't in Eden anymore. Because of this, the seventh day as it is in the fallen world has to point beyond itself to the day of God's triumph over evil. That's why we get this talk about an eighth day. It's beyond the limits of the seven, where death now reigns. This eighth day is also the first day because it marks the beginning of a new time—that of God's Kingdom.

This is where the Christian idea of the Lord's Day comes from. It fulfills the Jewish Sabbath. It's not incidental that Jesus rose from the dead on the day after the Sabbath. It's the eighth day of broken creation. It's the end of the old creation and the beginning, the first day, of the new creation, the day on which, in remembrance of the Resurrection, we ascend into heaven to share in a foretaste of the Lord's Banquet in the "age to come." Notice too how Schmemann says that this first day and eighth day business shows up in John's account of the Resurrection. I hadn't noticed that before.

It's also important to understand that the Lord's Day is a fixed day. For the early Christians, in addition to Sunday being the day of Christ's Resurrection, it was just one of the days of the week. I think he says that for three centuries Sunday wasn't even a day of rest. Notice how this otherworldly event of Christ's Resurrection, and the celebration of it that includes the Eucharist, which we have seen is a step out of time and into eternity, notice how, in spite of all of its heavenly significance, that it is just one of the days of the week. Sunday belongs completely to the world as well. That the Lord's Day belongs both to the world and to heaven indicates that the joy of Sunday is to spill out into the rest of the week and fill the whole week with the joy of the Lord. Every moment, every hour, every day, is to be understood in the light of the Lord's Day.

On 51 and 52, Schmemann describes it this way:

On the one hand, Sunday remained one of the days, the first of the week, fully belonging to this world. Yet on the other hand, on that day, through the eucharistic ascension, the Day of the Lord was revealed and manifested in all its glory and transforming power as the end of this world, and the beginning of the world to come. And thus through that one day all days, all time were transformed into times of remembrance and expectation, remembrance of the ascension, and expectation of its coming. . . . The week was no longer a sequence of "profane" days, with rest on the "sacred" day at their end. It was now a movement from Mount Tabor into the world, from the world into the "day without evening" of the world to come. Every day, every hour acquired now an importance, a gravity it could not have had before: each day was now to be a step in this movement, a moment of decision and witness, a time of ultimate meaning.

I think this is as far from dualism as we can get. All of time, each moment, each hour, each day becomes sacred in this sort of understanding. The Lord's Day sanctifies time, makes it communion with God. This is what makes our mission as the Church possible. It transforms each and every day into the time of mission.

The next thing Schmemann points us to when it comes to the sacramental time of Orthodoxy is the Christian year with its sequence of liturgical feasts and celebrations. The whole idea of this revolves around the joy of the feast. Schmemann has some interesting things to say about our modern skepticism when it comes to the joy of the feast. He says we are too adult and serious in our modern Christianity to enjoy what was once such a central aspect in the life of the Church. In this description, I see that Puritan work ethic creeping around that makes us feel guilty when we aren't doing anything productive or serious, when we’re partying instead of working. I am certainly prone to those Puritan moments of guilt when I'm not doing something productive, when I'm enjoying myself instead of working. What about you all? We really can't resonate with the idea that the joy of the feast is the root or even the goal of our work in the world as the Church, but that's where we are headed with the Orthodox understanding of the Christian year.

Just as is the case with the Lord's Day, for the Orthodox, the feasts of the Church and the liturgical seasons are all about filling up time with meaning and giving it purpose. In this respect, the early Christians were simply carrying on a tradition from the pagan cultures around them, in which feasts were central aspects of life. In those cultures, the feasts served to make the hard work and the fruits of that work and the natural cycles of time all worthwhile. The feasts were a source of power and meaning for the rest of life. What the early Christians did was take those feasts, as Schmemann says, through death and resurrection and made them apply to Christ. In that context, then, what the feasts did for the early Christians was to enable their mission, to give them their power to go out into the world and spread the Gospel of the Kingdom. Let's read that first paragraph of section 5 on page 55.

"Through the Cross joy came into the whole world"—and not just to some men as their personal and private joy. Once more, were Christianity pure "mysticism," pure "eschatology," there would be no need for feasts and celebrations. A holy soul would keep its secret feast apart from the world, to the extent that it can free itself from its time. But joy was given to the Church for the world—that the Church might be a witness to it and transform the world by joy. Such is the "function" of Christian feasts and the meaning of their belonging to time.

Do you all resonate with this? Are Christmas and Easter times that really excite you and encourage you to do mission? I must say that we do Christmas really well around here. It was truly a pleasure to be with you all this past Christmas and to join in all the pomp and pageantry and beauty of the Vespers service and the Christmas Eve service and Epiphany. Those were times of excitement for me. I can really see how the Christian feasts can put a fire in our bellies and give us the joy and energy to go out and change the world and people's lives for God's glory.

I'm starting to run out of time here, but, I want to take a brief look at his critique of the idea of the feasts as times of commemoration. He points out that remembering Christ's death, burial, and resurrection is always central to our mission. We don't just think about Christ's Passion during the Easter season but all through the year. In the Orthodox perspective, then, what we are doing on our special days, in some way, just as is the case with the Eucharist and the Lord's Day, is sharing in the very mystery that we are signifying. During the Easter season, for instance, we are given the gift of the very joy that Mary Magdalene and the apostles experienced on that day when they found the tomb empty and when they encountered the risen Lord. Schmemann really has a wonderful description of the Easter Vigil in the Orthodox Church. As he quotes St. Gregory of Nyssa, the night of the Easter Vigil is the night that becomes brighter than day. It is this joy that gives time its ultimate meaning and transforms the year into the "Christian year." He also talks about how the 50 days between Easter and Pentecost are given to us as the joy of the feast. I really think that we need to recover this full Easter celebration in the Western Church. I'm not sure how we do that though. At any rate, it is the joy of Easter in the Orthodox tradition that enables the Church to enter back into the world after Pentecost and carry out its mission. And he emphasizes that this mission is taxing and difficult. He calls it fasting for the world, it's effort, sacrifice, self-denial, and death. This is especially so for the Church in the places where there is persecution. It is only through the gift of Joy that the feasts bring that the Church can fulfill its mission, that we can be, as Schmemann says, "the fragrance of the Holy Spirit, the presence here in time of the feast of the Kingdom."

Finally, I'll conclude with a brief note on Schmemann's discussion of the Church and the individual Christian's relation to the time of day. He talks about the Vespers service in the evening and the Matins service in the morning. The thing to take from this is this idea of the rhythm of the beginning and end. Vespers is at the end of the day, but it is in the beginning of a new day. It is the end of life in the world of sin and death but the beginning of the evening without end that Christ will bring when he comes. Schmemann refers us to the story in Luke's Gospel of the old man Simeon, who had waited for the coming of the Lord. God had promised to Simeon that he would see the coming Messiah before he died. When Simeon saw the Christ child in the temple that day and held him and gloried in him, he was ready to depart. It was the end of his days, but the beginning of God's reign, which he was about to experience in an ever deeper way in his death. When it comes to Matins, Schmemann makes this point about how we are at our weakest and most pathetic in the morning. With the rising of the sun, we are at the end of the night of sin and weakness and death and at the beginning of the new day of the Lord's reign.

We will conclude with the thought that time becomes meaningful when we refer it to beginning and end. In this way it becomes "Christian time."

We are always between morning and evening, between Sunday and Sunday, between Easter and Easter, between the two comings of Christ. The experience of time as end gives an absolute importance to whatever we do now, makes its final, decisive. The experience of time as beginning fills all our time with joy, for it adds to it the "coefficient" of eternity.

For the Life of the World 2.2

"Lift up Your Hearts!": Eastern Orthodoxy, Reformed Protestantism, and the Eucharist (Part 2)

What is the Lord's Supper?

Westminster Shorter Catechism again, Q 96- The Lord’s Supper is a sacrament, wherein, by giving and receiving bread and wine, according to Christ’s appointment, his death is showed forth; and the worthy receivers are, not after a corporal and carnal manner, but by faith, made partakers of his body and blood, with all his benefits, to their spiritual nourishment, and growth in grace.

What is the role of eating? If we do not commune with Christ after a "corporal and carnal manner" but by "faith only," can we not be "made partakers of his body and blood” without eating? Can't we just watch it and think pious thoughts and get the benefit that way? This question reveals the shortcomings of most Reformed views of the sacraments in general. We haven't done particularly well with our attitude toward human actions and things. If no significance is attached to the eating, we can end up with something like the medieval Roman Catholic view that Luther and Calvin were fighting against. At a certain point in the Middle Ages, it became customary for Christians only to receive the Communion bread once a year. The rest of the time they were told that they could receive the benefit of the sacrament simply by watching the priest break the bread at consecration. I think this represents a devaluing of the material.

There is also another direction we could go if we don't attach any significance to the eating. We could end up with a Baptist view of the Lord's Supper where God doesn't do anything at all in the sacrament. It's all about what we do. We simply obey and remember. We don't receive any direct spiritual benefit from the ritual because eating is natural and material but God is supernatural and spiritual. We don't want to confuse nature and supernature or matter and spirit. Well, this kind of understanding is a serious problem. This is a clear example of the dualism that completely separates the world and nature from God. Sounds an awful lot like that darned noneucharistic life in a noneucharistic world Schmemann has been warning us about. This is precisely why I'm not a Baptist anymore.

According to Schmemann, something else that smacks of dualism is the distinction we make between Word and Sacrament. We are accustomed to thinking of sacraments merely as secondary helps to the Word. We usually think of the Word in terms of God's activity and the sacraments exclusively in terms of our activity. If we think of it that way, from a Calvinistic perspective the sacraments really aren't that important. Well, I don't think Calvin would agree that the sacraments are unimportant but he unintentionally created that impression when he described the sacraments as appendices to the Word.

So, if the distinction between Word and Sacrament is artificial, how do we overcome it? I want to point us to what Schmemann says on page 33 about the Word being as sacramental as the sacrament is "evangelical." What does the statement that the Word is as "sacramental" as the sacrament is "evangelical" mean?

There’s a couple of things. The first thing is that Scripture is the sacrament par excellence of the Church. I don't want to devalue Scripture, but it must be apparent that the words printed on the page or the words spoken by one reading Scripture or preaching from the Word are also things, things as earthly as water, bread, or wine. These are all earthen vessels that only through the power of the Holy Spirit can carry and deliver the weight of Divine reality. Due to the power of the Holy Spirit, who both inspired the writers of Scripture and who enlivens the printed or spoken words of the Bible for us that read them or hear them today, God speaks to us through His Word. Likewise, it is only through the power of the Holy Spirit that a community ritual meal becomes a sharing in the Body and Blood of Christ. Granted, there are some important ways in which the Scriptures are unique from the things we properly call sacraments (Scripture, being God-breathed, is, with or without the Spirit's new activity of enlightening us, already sacramental), but, just as bread and wine, the ritual actions, the Word spoken, the people, the minister, etc., require the action of the Holy Spirit in order for the sacrament of the Lord's Supper to truly take place, so too do we need the Spirit's activity in order for the Bible to make its transformative mark on us.

The second thing is that the sacraments are an essential part of our evangelical mission as the Church. We are commanded to preach the Gospel to every creature, but we are also commanded to baptize and to gather together to share the Eucharistic meal by which we remember Christ and eat Him as our spiritual food. The sacraments themselves, particularly the Eucharist, both enable our ministry to the world and demonstrate the Gospel to an unbelieving world, showing forth Christ's great love for us and our love for one another. Sacraments are also evangelical because, like the Word, they are means by which the seed of faith can be planted in our hearts and by which that seed can be watered so that it bears much fruit.

Is the above description consistent with the significance of the Lord's Supper in traditional Reformed faith and practice? If not, how central should it be?

We have customarily thought of and acted as if the Word has precedence over the sacraments. I don't think this was the intention of the Reformers. For Calvin, for instance, the right administration of the sacraments was every bit as much a mark of the Church as the right preaching of the Word was. Calvin wanted weekly Communion, but the Geneva city council would not let him. It might have gone differently had Calvin been able to have weekly Communion, but the sacraments have always had second billing in our tradition.

I think this is a mistake, especially when we think about both Scripture and the sacraments as means the Word of God uses to communicate with us. Who is the Word of God? Jesus, of course. He promises to make Himself present both in the Scriptures and in the sacraments. In some sense, then, the Bible and the sacraments are both the Word of God, or, more properly, manifestations of Him. They are really two sides of the same coin, and they complement each other really well. The Bible, for instance, appeals to our minds and to our hearing, while the sacraments appeal to our senses of sight, touch, smell, and taste. God seeks to get to our hearts through every aspect of our humanity so I think we should give Him every opportunity to do so. With that in mind, I think that Word and Sacrament should be equally central to our faith and practice.

Let's look at another perspective. I'll read the following statement about the Lord's Supper. Tell me if this is the statement of a Presbyterian or of an Orthodox or a Catholic.

The Eucharist is the world in miniature; it has cosmic significance. Within it we find clues to the meaning of all creation and all history, to the nature of God and the nature of man, to the mystery of the world, which is Christ. It is not confined to the first day, for its power fills seven. Though the altar stands at the center, its effects stretch out to the four corners of the earth.

Is this the statement of a Roman Catholic or an Orthodox? Well, I changed a few words—I turned Lord's Supper into Eucharist and table into altar to make this sound like something an Orthodox or Roman Catholic would say but actually it is from a Presbyterian pastor and professor who is part of a group that has caused a big commotion over in the Presbyterian Church in America and the other conservative Reformed denominations about the importance of the sacraments and the Church in our salvation. In fact, Peter Leithart, whose words I just read has been investigated not less than three times by his presbytery and has endured at least one heresy trial for his positions. Many Reformed evangelicals think all this sounds too much like Catholicism, so some of them are waging a campaign against those who are attempting to recover the full-bodied Reformed sacramental and churchly heritage.

This is an important question. How central is the Lord's Table in our life together as a congregation? This gets into the issue of frequency. How frequently should we take Communion?

Well, I certainly have a position on frequency. I think every Lord's Day celebration should include the Lord's Supper. Not only does it "show forth Christ's death till He comes" but it guards against this whole tendency toward dualism. The Lord's Supper with its emphasis on ritual and the community of faith and material things tells us right away that our spiritual lives are not lived apart from the world or from other people or even from material things. Our spiritual life must embrace the world, people, and things, not just as purely incidental to our lives, but as means of connection with God.

If we move forward on this idea that the Lord's Supper is the world in miniature; that it is central; that its significance fills all seven days of the week and the four corners of the earth; we have a lot of room to fill out our definition of the Lord's Supper. Of course, the Lord's Supper is a sign and remembrance of Christ's death. I think we all understand that. We have talked about the importance of Communion for our mission—how it turns us into the Body of Christ so that we can be His physical presence in the world and tell others about His Kingdom. We've talked about how for the Orthodox this gets into the whole question of the Eschaton—that time when Jesus returns and sets everything right. It gives us a glimpse of that time so we can prepare the world for His Return. I think we have a bit of that in our Reformed understanding of the Eucharist as well.

In talking about all that this sacrament means for us, I think a discussion about the many different terms we use to describe it would be productive. Somebody give me a name for this sacrament.

1. Lord's Supper- it tells us that this is a meal Jesus has with all of his friends. Not only is Jesus our dear friend at this meal but we are all dear friends to one another. This term points us to his death because it was the last meal he shared with the disciples.
2. Communion- I like this one because it tells us something about our relationship to one another as the Body of Christ. We are one. We must truly love one another. That scary passage of Scripture in 1 Corinthians (11:17-32) that talks about profaning the Body and Blood of Christ by unworthily taking the Lord's Supper is most likely about people in the Church failing to love each other—failing to recognize the Body of Christ in the poorer members of the Corinthian congregation. Paul ultimately says that the sacrament will damn us if we fail to love each other.
3. Lord's Table- This is my favorite because it illustrates our relationship to God. That we get to eat at the table with Jesus says that we are the very sons and daughters of God.
4. Eucharist- This is the one that's most important for the Orthodox. I want to spend a little time with this one. The term Eucharist makes us understand that the sacrament is joy, that it’s praise, that it's thanksgiving. We focus a lot of attention on the fact that this sacrament is about Jesus’ death, but it's also about the Resurrection. It's in the context of the Resurrection that this meal is thanksgiving and joy, that it is Eucharist.

This concept of Eucharist is very strong in the Communion liturgy that we use. I just want to emphasize very strongly once again that the Eucharist is a liturgy. We have to include all of it as sacramental. We can't take it apart and focus just on the bread and wine. It's a seamless action and procession of thanksgiving from beginning to end.

With that in mind, I hope you guys noticed in the last part of this chapter how similar our liturgy is to the Eastern Orthodox liturgy Schmemann discusses in our book. They differ from one another in a few places, but, for the most part, each has a very similar structure to the other and very similar content to the other. I want to have us meditate on this idea of thanksgiving, of offering, of sacrifice that is present in both of our liturgies. Schmemann has some very profound and beautiful yet also very difficult things to say about all this in the last 10 or 12 pages of the chapter. There is a lot of giving going on. Let's look at this on page 35:

This offering to God bread and wine, of the food that we must eat in order to live, is our offering to Him of ourselves, of our life, and of the whole world. . . . It is our Eucharist. It is the movement that Adam failed to perform, and that in Christ has become the very life of man: a movement of adoration and praise in which all joy and suffering, all beauty and all frustration, all hunger and all satisfaction are referred to their ultimate End and become finally meaningful.

I think this correlates really well with the statement from Peter Leithart that the Eucharist covers the four corners of the world. We are offering ourselves and the whole world to God when we offer the gifts of bread and wine.

Well, it's after this point that trying to follow Schmemann begins to make my head hurt a little. It gets a little confusing. He begins to talk about how Christ has already offered all that is to be offered to God by giving Himself, so Christ offers Himself as a Eucharist to God. Well, we as the Church have been taken up into Christ's Eucharistic life, so Christ offers us as a Eucharist to God as well. To make it even more confusing, we then offer the self-offering of Christ as a Eucharist to God. In the end, we end up with four offerings that have occurred in the Eucharist. First, we have offered ourselves and the whole world to God. Second, Christ has offered Himself to God. Third, Christ has offered His Body, the Church, to God. Finally, as a response, we offer Christ's self-offering to God.

This kind of talk makes some Protestants very nervous, especially those who are highly suspicious of anything that sounds remotely Catholic. This begins to sound like we are sacrificing Christ all over again or that we are doing some kind of good work here to earn God's grace. I really don't think that's what's going on here. In fact, we get a very strong affirmation of grace in this. All of this is possible only because of what Christ has done in His once-and-for-all death for our sins on the cross and in His Resurrection, and, at the end of the liturgy, God gives the bread and wine that we have offered to Him back to us as the gift of Christ's Body and Blood.

No one has been "worthy" to receive communion, no one has been prepared for it. At this point all merits, all righteousness, all devotions disappear and dissolve. Life comes again to us as Gift, a free and divine gift. . . . Adam [and Eve are] introduced into Paradise, taken out of nothingness, and crowned king [and queen] of creation. Everything is free, nothing is due and yet all is given. And, therefore, the greatest humility and obedience is to accept the gift, to say yes—in joy and gratitude. There is nothing left we can do, yet we become all that God wanted us to be from eternity, when we are eucharistic.

With that in mind, we can conclude our look at the Lord's Supper with Calvin's view of Christ's presence in the sacrament. This is from his "Short Treatise on the Lord's Supper":

We all confess, then, with one mouth, that, in receiving the sacrament in faith, according to the ordinance of the Lord, we are truly made partakers of the real substance of the body and blood of Christ. How this is done, some may deduce more clearly than others. But be this as it may, on the one hand we must, to shut out all carnal fancies, raise our hearts on high to heaven, not thinking that our Lord Jesus Christ is so abased as to be enclosed under any corruptible elements. On the other hand, not to diminish the efficacy of the sacred mystery, we must hold that it is accomplished by the secret and miraculous virtue of God and that the Spirit of God is the bond of participation, for which reason it is called spiritual.

Two things. One, Calvin understands Jesus’ words about his flesh and blood to be a promise. He rejects any idea of the bread and wine being transformed into actual flesh and blood, but he somehow still manages to take what Jesus says quite literally, even if he doesn't understand how exactly it works. And he makes it very clear that he doesn't know how it works. Listen here to Calvin's rather surprising mystical side:

Now if anyone should ask me how this takes place, I shall not be ashamed to confess that it is a secret too lofty for either my mind to comprehend or my words to declare. And, to speak more plainly, I rather experience than understand it. Therefore I here embrace without controversy the truth of God in which I may safely rest. He declares his flesh the food of my soul, his blood its drink. I offer my soul to him to be fed with such food. In his sacred supper he bids me take, eat, and drink his body and blood under the symbols of bread and wine. I do not doubt that he himself truly presents them, and that I receive them. Institutes 4.17.32.

The second thing we must note about Calvin's doctrine of the Lord's Supper is that he bids us to "Raise our hearts on high."

A question: Where is Christ physically at right now? He's in heaven at the right hand of the Father, right? Jesus Christ is fully God and fully human, right? Can human beings physically be in more than one place at a time? Well, as much as you might sometimes feel the need to be in two places at once, you that are parents know that this is impossible. Okay, let's try to get this straight; if we encounter Christ in His humanity in the Lord's Supper, explain to me how Jesus can be at a thousand different Communion services all at once. Jesus is human, so He can't do it without destroying His ongoing humanity, can He? What He can do, though, is bring all of us to His place. This is where Calvin looked East toward the Orthodox view of the Eucharist for help.

Leonard Vander Zee explains Calvin's solution:

For Calvin, the sursum corda, "lift up your hearts," was a favorite liturgical phrase, because at the Lord's Table we lift up our hearts to Christ in heaven by the Spirit who has united us with him in his glorified humanity. By the same Spirit and through the sharing of the bread and wine, we now partake in a unique way of that union with Christ.

Calvin's solution for the problem of Christ's physical presence in the sacrament is for the Holy Spirit to lift the Church into Christ's presence in heaven. This is the reason our Eucharistic liturgy is so similar to the Orthodox liturgy Schmemann has shown us. We are basically striving to do the same thing that Schmemann shows the Orthodox to be doing in their celebration of the Eucharist. We are ascending into heaven to offer ourselves and the world to God and to share in a foretaste of the great banquet of the Lord. Let's say a small part of the Great Thanksgiving we share with the Orthodox as we conclude?

Lift up your hearts!
We lift them up to the Lord.
Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.
It is right to give our thanks and praise.

I think we're ready to head into worship now. We will be gathering around the Lord's Table today, so let's go together and ascend with Christ into heaven to share in a foretaste of the heavenly banquet.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.