A Maundy Thursday hymn

Thee we adore, O hidden Savior, Thee,
Who in Thy sacrament dost deign to be;
Both flesh and spirit at Thy presence fail,
Yet here Thy presence we devoutly hail.

O blest memorial of our dying Lord,
Who living Bread to men doth here afford!
O may our souls forever feed on Thee,
And Thou, O Christ, forever precious be.

Fountain of gladness, Jesu, Lord and God,
Cleanse us, unclean, with Thy most cleansing blood;
Increase our faith and love, that we may know
The hope and peace which from Thy presence flow.

O Christ, whom now beneath a veil we see,
May what we thirst for soon our portion be,
To gaze on Thee unveiled, and see Thy face,
The vision of Thy glory and Thy grace.

Why Zwinglianism Doesn't Work (from a Zwinglian perspective)

This is something I just wrote up today, originally intended to Paul Nimmo, a young professor at New College that I enjoyed talking to at the Edinburgh Dogmatics Conference this week. He had argued that there are two senses in which the sacraments may be necessary—either necessary because they offer a grace that can’t be had elsewhere, or necessary because God commands them—and he insisted it was the latter, not the former. As I typed it up, it grew very long, and became more for my own benefit as I tried to think things through. I’m not sure at all whether I’m saying anything that’s actually relevant and valuable, so I'm not sure if I'll actually send it to him. But since I typed it up, I think I'll put it up here.

Dear Dr. Nimmo,
I very much appreciate your very helpful paper and interaction at the conference. I wanted to follow up the discussion we started earlier, because I’m not sure you saw where I was heading with my questions about sacramentology…indeed, I’m not entirely sure I know where I’m headed, or whether it leads anywhere, in fact. But I have to try it out to make sure. Now, I’m thoroughly familiar (I think) with the traditional discussions in sacramentology, and the basic difference you’re articulating between a sacramentalist understanding of the necessity of the sacraments, and a more Zwinglian understanding. The alternatives, as they are usually put, are conceiving of the sacraments as actually transmitting grace as something like a substance, and understanding them as simply memorials we are commanded to observe and proclaim. The question has often been put, “Is there an objective grace conveyed in the sacraments, or is any benefit based simply on my subjective response?” Or, another version of the question, “Is any unique grace offered in the sacraments that is not offered elsewhere, or not?”

Now you, Dr. McCormack, and Dr. Blocher espouse the latter alternative, partly out of a sense that the former depends too much on a grace-as-a-substance metaphysics. I don’t think the latter alternative, at least as it generally states itself, is quite coherent, and I don’t think you need to retreat into substance-metaphysics to resolve that. Let me see if I can show this by adopting your Zwinglian position for the sake of argument.

So let’s say, following the more Zwinglian position, that we observe the Eucharist because God commands us to do so, as a way of proclaiming his death to the world, as a way of affirming our identity as the people of God, who owe our life to the death of Christ, of publicly remembering who we are, why we are who we are, and pledging ourselves in thanksgiving to live like Christ, etc. Now, the question is, is it necessary that we do this through the Eucharist, or not? Now, it would seem that it’s not. Couldn’t any number of rites serve this purpose? Couldn’t we get together in the city square, read the Passion narrative, and say some vows? Or we could do something less “liturgical,” perhaps…just gather for a fellowship meal, not containing bread and wine, and sing a hymn.

That is the direction in which the Zwinglian position has generally led, against which you desire to guard by saying, “No, it is necessary that we do this, within fairly circumscribed limits, because God has commanded it.” Now, as soon as you say that it is necessary, it seems to me that you have a conundrum. Why does God command it as necessary? Is it purely arbitrary—God just commanded it because he wanted us to learn to obey him absolutely, even in doing odd rituals? Or does God command it for a good reason, a reason presumably involving certain specific benefits to the Church as a community, and involving the communication of truths which otherwise might have remained opaque to us?

Even if you take the first answer, it seems to me, the strict Zwinglian position is somewhat compromised. Because, there is presumably a benefit to be gained, a gift of some sanctification, in obeying God vs. not obeying him, even if the command seems arbitrary. So, even if the Eucharist is necessary merely because God says so, pure and simple, then it will remain true that there is a distinct benefit, a grace, if you will, that we receive through doing the ordinance. This grace, or benefit, or sanctification, or however you like, comes objectively through doing the rite, and it is unique—you couldn’t receive it by not doing the rite, and just exercising faith in some other way; just as Abraham couldn’t have said, “Well, I’m not going to take Isaac up to Moriah, but I nevertheless have full faith that you can raise the dead, and that you have absolute authority over me.” Even if there were nothing intrinsically beneficial about the rite, the fact that God commands it as necessary makes it uniquely beneficial to us to do it, a benefit we would lose if we didn’t do it. All this may not be saying much, though I think it does show that the Zwinglian position has tended to overstate itself in denying unique or objective spiritual benefit to attach to the sacrament.

But, I think we can go much further than this. I think we would both agree that God does not command the Eucharist arbitrarily, but because God intends and indeed promises that there is much to be gained through doing so, much to be gained that could not be gained through another means (otherwise, why insist upon this particular means). We could reflect much on what some of the benefits might be; much might revolve around the particular power and significance of eating, especially as a community. When we eat, we display our need for nourishment. When we symbolically eat the body and blood of Christ, we renew our identity as a community that derives its life only from Christ itself. When we memorially share in Christ’s death, we renew our identity as a community that has been rescued by death, and that by death has passed over from death to life. By participating in a meal that pre-enacts the marriage supper of the Lamb at the end of history, we renew our identity as the betrothed bride of Christ, a people awaiting the fulfillment of a promise. By participating in this meal, in God’s presence, at the invitation of the Son, by the power of the Spirit, we renew our fellowship with God, we show ourselves to be friends of God. And a thousand more such things could be said. All this, it seems to me, makes the Eucharist the means by which we receive innumerable gracious gifts of sanctification, both as individuals, and more importantly, as a community.
“Ah,” the Zwinglian will say, “but you have said, ‘renew our identity’—all these things that are enacted, proclaimed, represented, etc., are merely confirmations, reaffirmations of what is already the case, and which would continue to be the case with or without the rite. We already are a community which depends for its life on Christ, a community bought by his blood, etc. Our participation in the Eucharist merely restates this; it does not cause it to be the case.”

But I think this is to radically understate the power of ritual, or perhaps to miss what it means to be a community, and how important that is. I think I could also say that, in all the ways above, “we constitute our identity as…” What would the people of Israel have been without their ritual of Passover, and their other national festivals? Well, in one sense, they would have still been the people whom God had redeemed from Egypt—the historical facts of the case would not have changed (just as, a failure to observe the Eucharist would make no difference in Christ’s work of redemption). But, if the Israelites had never ritually remembered and reenacted the Exodus, or observed as a community the other rituals prescribed for them, then would they have continued to have their identity as the people whom God had redeemed from Egypt? It would be true as a bare historical fact that they were that people, but that fact would have no meaning, no impact in the present; it might be believed by individual Israelites, but without the public rituals, there would be no community of the redeemed. Just so with the Eucharist, if indeed God has commanded it, and vested it with these significances. If the Church never partook of the Eucharist, never gathered to renew its identity in this prescribed way as the people nourished by the shed blood of Christ, would the Church still be that people? Well, I think in many cases yes, but clearly only in a very attenuated, weakened, malnourished sense; just as Israel, when she failed to observe the commanded rituals that constituted her identity as the people of God, continued to be the people of God only in a very attenuated and deprived sense.

From all of which it is evident that a great deal of grace (or, if this term is fraught with questions, then blessing and sanctifying gifts) are objectively to be found in the practice of the Eucharist, grace that will not be found outside of that practice. Now, there still seems to be quite a gap between this “objective grace” and any kind of real presence of Christ in the sacrament; I think there are ways to bridge that gap, but that’s quite another conversation.

How Many Sacraments? follow-up

My replies to Bradley's questions ended up being rather too expansive for the comments section, so I figured I'd best just make it another post.

1. Perhaps we can think of Unction like a mini-baptism. Or more accurately, like a metaphorical baptism. It heals a man and thereby brings him back to meet with God's people on Sunday. It restores fellowship and strengthens it as we all pray for our sick brother. And it's quite clearly a redemptive act (healing the sick is part of the redemptive narrative, right?). I think Unction fits in quite nicely with your definition.

Thanks. I think that works well. I figured that something like that could be found with a bit more attention to the problem, which I didn’t have time to give before. Of course, this does make me wonder again whether we could start finding an example of these five criteria in other rites that haven’t been traditionally considered sacraments, which makes me a little leery.

2. You define sacraments as actions "...carried out by lawfully ordained ministers of the Church." I'm not sure this should be a strict part of the definition. Sure, *some* sacraments can only be carried out by ministers, but not all of them. What about baptism? Lay baptisms are valid. Certainly not preferable, but valid and sacramental just the same. Even Roman Catholics accept them (I just made a short blogpost about that, actually). Perhaps it'd be simpler to say, "a ritual enactment carried out by the Church."

This is a fair point…though the Roman Catholics, I think, would like to articulate this in terms of lay baptisms only being valid because this authority has been specifically delegated from the lawfully ordained ministers, so that sacraments still remain under the exclusive authority of the ordained ministers. At least, that’s my impression, and I’m not sure which direction I’d like to go on this myself. But sure, your definition works, especially since it guards against the main thing I was trying to guard against, which was any Christian just taking it upon himself to carry out the ritual and calling it a sacrament.

3. I don't agree with your fourth "in which." You say a sacrament must "restructure in some way the relations within the whole community of believers"? Why? Why can't a sacrament just bless one individual at a time, and thereby bless the whole community of believers?

Well, I included this because traditionally this has been a way of trying to limit the sacraments to only two. The Eucharist and Baptism, it is said, are rituals that are common to all believers, that belong to the whole covenant people, whereas marriage, unction, and ordination, at least, are received only by certain members. I’m not certain that the participation of the whole community is necessary for the definition of a sacrament but since it has often been insisted upon, I wanted to see if, using that criterion, the other five could still fit in. Thus I used the language of “restructuring” which I intend in a rather broad sense—“altering the relationships within the body of believers, either between all and all (as in the Eucharist) or between one and all the rest (as in Baptism, Ordination, Confirmation). When you look at it that way, it is clear to me that, for at least six of them (and quite possibly for Unction) as you mentioned, the whole body participates in the ritual act and is changed thereby. And if this so, I don’t see why we should want to take it out of the definition.

4. I think my definition of the word "sacrament" is wider than yours. But what's the difference? How is that any better or worse than folks who strictly teach only two sacraments? Every Presbyterian wedding I've attended has had a Minister of the Church presiding; what does it matter if they don't call it a sacrament? It works out the same anyway. Plenty of Baptist Ministers perform Unction, they just wouldn't call it a sacrament. So long as we have a sacramental view of the world, why does it matter how narrowly or broadly we define the noun "sacrament"? I enjoy this discussion--like I do any theological discussion--but I have difficulty seeing its applications. Practically speaking, I can see that it might influence what we incorporate into our worship service on Sunday, but that's about it. (Remember, this paragraph is a question.)

Yes, this is the key question. I agree that, since, Biblically, no strict definition is offered (indeed, the concept or category is not even clearly given in the Bible), then we should, in principle, be able to be flexible about the terms we use, as long as we can agree about the realities involved. That seemed to be one of Dr. Leithart’s tentative conclusions. But there’s at least two problems with that apparently simple solution. The first is that, although, if we were starting from scratch, with just the Bible, we might be relatively free to categorize and define these rites in a number of different ways, we’re not. We cannot pretend as if Church history has had nothing to say about this matter…for better or for worse, the Church thought it important to come up with a theological category here, and to treat certain things as belonging in that category, and other things as not belonging. There has not always been agreement about the conclusions of the discussion, but the terms of the discussion have been rather constant…rarely have more than seven rites come under consideration, and rarely have numbers between two and seven been proposed (though occasionally they have been). We have the freedom, I think, to venture toward new ways of discussing these issues (is “sacrament” a helpful category? What other terms might be valuable? Are there more than seven rites of this sort?) but we cannot be so bold as to do this unless we have first been willing to grapple with the question in the terms that have come down to us, and have tried to make sense of what the traditions that have come down with us were trying to say by their affirmations or denials on this issue.
Second (and here is the biggie, which preoccupies me a good deal)—naming matters. This is rather obvious when we encounter questions such as gay marriage…both sides in the debate realize that it really does matter whether we name what is going on “marriage.” The same is true here, especially because the terms have such a long history of theological usage by the Church. The problem is that, when the Reformers denied that marriage was a sacrament, for example, they were not intending to say, “Oh yes, it’s a sacred rite with all these features—corporate act by the Church, channel of God’s blessing, picture of God’s redemptive work, etc., etc., we just would prefer not to call it a sacrament.” No, they were saying, “Uh-uh. It’s a secular contract, it is not an act of the Church per se, it does not have these distinctively sacred features…the Church need have little or nothing to do with it”—the intent was to change the social meaning of marriage, and they succeeded. And many would still agree with that view of it, Pastor Wilson included. So there’s a lot of baggage attached to the desacramentalization of marriage, and it’s not that easy to just say, “Oh, we’re going to reattach all the sacred significance and make it a responsibility of the Church again, but we’ll continue to avoid using the language of sacrament.”
It is instructive to note that, with the other rites, like Confirmation, Penance, Ordination, Unction, etc., although the intent was not to say “Let’s get rid of them,” but rather, “Oh, they’re still important rites that we want the Church to keep doing, they’re just not sacraments,” they rapidly disappeared after their desacramentalization. Ordination has still held on in a very watered-down form, though many sects have tried to dispense with it, confirmation hangs on in certain traditions, but not others, unction is rare, and penance almost nonexistence. So, naming is important. For whatever reason, Protestants have been very hard-pressed to maintain much of the meaning and practice of these rites, once they took away the name. So I tend to think it is safest to return to the ancient landmarks.
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How Many Sacraments? (and what is a sacrament anyway)

So I really am going to post about Schmemann and the idea of the holy and all that. But I have been diverted by a fascinating discussion in class Tuesday regarding the sacramentality of marriage. Dr. Leithart had done some research, and offered us the results...which were more a host of new questions than answers. Raising the question of the sacramentality of marriage brings to the fore two other huge questions--What is a sacrament anyway? and How has the desacramentalization of marriage contributed to the secularization of Western society and the marginalization of the Church? On this latter point, Dr. Leithart suspects there may be a close connection, and I'm quite confident that there is. Which, of course, still doesn't answer the initial question--is marriage properly conceived of as a sacrament? To answer this, we of course have to answer what a sacrament is anyway, which, Dr. Leithart acknowledged on Tuesday, is a very slippery question after all. So here is a first stab at a definition of "sacrament"--one that seems to allow for the easy inclusion of five of the traditional seven, and maybe the sixth and seventh...but we'll have to see. Of course, it's possible this definition would also allow for the inclusion of acts that have traditionally not been classified as sacraments at all...I haven't thought of any examples yet, though. So here's the stab (currently awaiting feedback from Dr. Leithart.
Let us define a sacrament as “a ritual enactment carried out by lawfully ordained ministers of the Church
--in which the redemptive acts of God are pictured and proclaimed,
--in which the faithful recipients are mysteriously incorporated into this redemptive narrative, so as to partake of its benefits,
--in which God’s grace is poured out upon the recipients, both in clearly tangible ways and also in intangible, but very real ways,
--in which, although the grace pictured and offered might particularly concern an individual or individuals, the action functions to restructure in some way the relations within the whole community of believers
--in which common elements, which have already an accepted and valuable non-sacred use, retain that function in some respect, but are transfigured, by their sacred setting, by the divine promises annexed to them, and by their administration by lawfully ordained ministers, so as to offer a fuller, richer, and multi-dimensional, benefit to their recipients.”

Examples:
In the Eucharist, minimally, the death and resurrection of Christ, his passing over from death to life, as well as the marriage supper of the eschaton are pictured and proclaimed, and the recipients of the Supper, by being united to Christ, share in the benefits of his death and resurrection; this grace, though real and objective, is mostly invisible and intangible, although the common reception of the elements by the community of believers also serves quite visibly and tangibly proclaim and accomplish the knitting together of the body; in this sacrament, the chief object is the whole community, not any particular individual, although of course Christ’s benefits are also shared with each individual—the partaking of the body of Christ re-constitutes the assembly of the saints as the body of Christ, uniting the saints again to their Head and to one another; in the Eucharist, the elements employed are common bread and wine, and the action is a communal meal, but the Eucharist is not simply common elements put into a sacred setting—while bread is always nourishing, the Eucharistic bread becomes nourishing unto everlasting life; while wine always gladdens the Spirit, the Eucharistic bread gladdens with the Holy Spirit; and while a communal meal always serves to proclaim and accomplish the binding-together of a community, the Eucharistic meal accomplishes this on a deeper and more mysterious level.

In Penance, the forgiveness that Christ has accomplished and offered in his death are displayed again, and the penitent individual is, so to speak, inserted into that story, so that this forgiveness is applied to him and becomes effective and powerful for him; psychologically, the penitent individual receives a very tangible benefit from hearing the minister pronounce the words of forgiveness, but the grace goes deeper, since his status is now actually changed before God; although this grace primarily concerns only the penitent individual, the whole community is involved, because if one member suffers, all suffer, and now, by his forgiveness, he is reintegrated into the community of believers and the sin that impeded fellowship is now gone; in penance, an action that has a valuable non-sacred function—confessing one’s faults to a mentor and being assured of forgiveness and given counsel by them—becomes a sacred action, and receives a new, fuller efficacy—the ability to actually change one’s status before Christ.

What about Marriage?
Well, the first criterion is covered rather easily—marriage pictures and proclaims the union between Christ and his Church, the fulfillment of history.
The second is rather hard to nail down…does the union of man and wife in Christian marriage not merely picture, but somehow participate in the union of Christ and the Church? What exactly would this mean?
As for the third, a rather tangible grace is received simply by the act of publicly making vows, which impresses upon both the solemnity of their obligation and a desire to be faithful to it; I think we would also want to say that the minister’s blessing of the marriage imparts a real, though intangible grace to husband and wife, that knits them closer together and gives them greater strength to live together faithfully.
As for the fourth, like Penance (or Baptism), we have an example of a sacrament that focuses on individuals, but in which the whole body participates and is restructured. Everyone in the congregation now relates differently to the married woman and to the married man than they related to them prior to marriage, and vice versa.
As for the fifth, this is where some of the controversy lies…but can’t we say that Christian marriage is to pagan marriage as the Eucharist is to a communal meal, or as Penance is to confession to a psychiatrist? Marriage takes a common, non-sacred action—namely, the sealing of a contract between a man and a woman, promising fidelity to one another, etc., etc.—and transforms it into a sacred function, so that the original function is still there (it’s still a contract, with all those obligations) yet the rite is now different and is greater, because now God has become part of the marriage covenant, and his blessing has been bestowed upon it, and the marriage has become a reflection of the relationship of Christ and the Church.

On these criterion, Confirmation, Ordination, and Penance are easily “sacraments”; Marriage seems to be (with the ambiguities just mentioned), and Unction is a bit more difficult, in several respects (how does it restructure the community? for example).

Cavanaugh Chapter 5 (at last)

Ok, so, I'm finally posting some Cavanaugh. This is going to be a monumental task, so I'm starting with the most important chapter, Chapter 5. This is just the first installment, of what will hopefully be many such posts, just from chapter five.
This is basically a walking through the chapter, mostly by means of key quotes (the bold headings are Cavanaugh's). (Note: I'm going to have to go back through here soon and italicize all the italicized words)

Eucharist is the church’s “counter-politics” to the politics of torture
The Eucharist makes real the presence of Christ in the Church; resists the disappearance of the Body.
“Where torture is an anti-liturgy for the realization of the state’s power on the bodies of others, Eucharist is the liturgical realization of Christ’s suffering and redemptive body in the bodies of His followers. Torture creates fearful and isolated bodies, bodies docile to the purposes of the regime; the Eucharist effects the body of Christ, a body marked by resistance to worldly power. Torture creates victims; Eucharist creates witnesses, martyrs. Isolation is overcome in the Eucharist by the building of a communal body which resists the state’s attempts to disappear it.”

“Whereas New Christendom ecclesiology would cordon off the Kingdom of God into a space outside of time, in the Eucharist the Kingdom irrupts into time and ‘confuses’ the spiritual and the temporal. The Eucharist thus realizes a body which is neither purely ‘mystical’ nor simply analogous to the modern state: the true body of Christ.”

“In the Eucharist the church is always called to become what it eschatologically is. The Eucharist does make the church ex opere operato, but the effects are not always visible due to human sin. Christians are called to conform their parctic to the Eucharistic imagination. . . . the Eucharistic imagination is a vision of what is really real, the Kingdom of God, as it disrupts the imagination of violence.”

1: The Mystical and the True
The Church, with the coming of modernity, can no longer be seen as political institution of its own, but as consisting more in the invisible communion with believers.
Henri de Lubac pointed out that a dichotomy was created between the external institutional church and the invisible interior church. “In the term ‘mystical body,’ the adjective had swamped the noun.”

For this dichotomy,
“The church does not constitute a social body. Its visibility and unity rather consists in the external bonds of sharing the same profession of faith, the same rites, the same church laws, and above all the same allegiance to the Pope’s guidance.”

Beginning in the twelfth century, there begins to be an inversion of corpus mysticum and corpus verum. Corpus mysticum is now applied to the Church, corpus verum to the elements of the Eucharist.

“In the older understanding, according to de Lubac, the sacramental body and the church body are closely linked, and there is a ‘gap’ between this pair and the history body. The Eucharist and the church, both of which are understood by the term communio, are together the contemporary performance of the historical body, the unique historical event of Jesus. Christians are the real body of Christ, and the Eucharist is where the church mystically comes to be. The church and the Eucharist form the liturgical pair of visible community (corpus verum) and invisible action or mystery (corpus mysticum) which together re-present and re-member Christ’s historical body. The gap is a temporal one. The link between past event and the present church is formed by the invisible action of the sacrament. The ‘mystical,’ then, is that which ‘insures the unity between two times’ and brings the Christ event into present historical time in the church body, the corpus verum.”

In the inversion, “The Eucharistic host has become corpus verum, and has now taken on a ‘thingly realism,’ a visible and available sign in the here and now which produces reverence and awe. Eucharist is increasingly described in terms not of action but of object, such that the scholastic concentration is on the miracle produced in the elements, and not on the edification of the church by the presence of Christ in the sacrament. At the same time, the church is identified as corpus mysticum, whose essence is hidden. The visibility of the church in the communal performance of the sacrament is replaced by the visibility of the Eucharistic object. Signified and signifier have exhanged places, such that the sacramental body is the visible signifier of the hidden signified, which is the social body of Christ. . . . The real life of the church is relegated to the ‘mystical,’ the hidden, that which will only be realized outside of time in the eschaton. Rather than linking the present with Jesus’ first – and, we should add, second –coming, the mystical is now cordoned off from historical space and time. At this point in Christian history the temporal is beginning to be construed not as the time between the times, but as an increasingly autonomous space which is distinct from a spiritual space.”

Cavanaugh pauses here to clarify that this is not intended to undermine the doctrine of transubstantiation, only to guard against misguided emphases. He clarifies that de Lubac “thought that the best way to emphasize ‘eucharistic realism’ was precisely through an ‘ecclesial realism’ which sees Christ’s real presence in the elements as dynamic, working toward the edification of the church. What concerned de Lubac about the inversion of verum and mysticum was its tendency to reduce the Eucharist to a mere spectacle for the laity. The growth of the cult of the host itself in the later medieval period…was not necessarily an advance for Eucharistic practice. As Sarah Beckwith puts it, ‘the emphasis was increasingly on watching Christ’s body rather than being incorporated in it.’ ”

This discussion is of particular relevance for Protestants. And indeed, Cavanaugh goes on to critique the late medieval practice of the Eucharist (which Protestantism was a reaction to) in terms that are no less applicable to the modern Protestant practice:
“Laypeople were increasingly left to silent contemplation of the awesome spectacle, and this corresponded with a diminishing of the communal nature of the Eucharist and an individualizing of Eucharistic piety. Dom Gregory Dix describes this period in these terms: ‘The old corporate worship of the eucharist is declining into a mere focus for the subjective devotion of each separate worshipper in the isolation of his own mind. And it is the latter which is beginning to seem to him more important than the corporate act.’ . . . The individual Christian relates not to other Christians but directly to Christ as to the center of the circle, instead of incorporation with one’s fellow Christians into the body of Christ, which has a head, but no center.”