Symbol and Reality

Here's another both/and explication from Alexander Schmemann's The Eucharist: Sacrament of the Kingdom. In analyzing the liturgy and the Eucharist, he notes two malign tendencies in Orthodox theology (ones he attributes to Latin influence): 1) the focus on "illustrative symbolism" in the explication of the liturgy; and 2) the reduction of the Eucharist to the question of the precise moment, and liturgical action, that makes the bread and wine into Body and Blood. In his view the two are connected: illustrative symbolism (this or that action in the liturgy symbolizes this or that in the life of Christ, etc.) assumes an understanding of symbolism that isn't real. Thus the reality of the Eucharist as Christ's body is in question, which makes the precise moment and magical formula (yes, he uses that phrase as a critique of what this frame of mind can lead to) for transformation of the Eucharist central.

He writes:

And this is precisely the heart of the matter: the primary meaning of "symbol" is in no way equivalent to "illustration." In fact, it is possible for the symbol not to illustrate, i.e. can be devoid of any external similarity with that which it symbolizes.

The history of religions shows us that the more ancient, the deeper, the more "organic" a symbol, the less it will be composed of such "illustrative" qualities. This is because the purpose and function of the symbol is not to illustrate (this would presume the absence of what is illustrated) but rather to manifest and to communicate what is manifested. We might say that the symbol does not so much "resemble" the reality that it symbolizes as it participates in it, and therefore it is capable of communicating it in reality. In other words, the difference (and it is a radical one) between our contemporary [and I think you could say he means, such as, the last 1,000 years] understanding of the symbol and the original one consists in the fact tht while today we understand the symbol as the representation or sign of an absent reality, something that is not really in the sign itself (just as there is no real, actual water in the chemical symbol H2O), in the original understanding it is the manifestation and presence of the other reality -- but precisely as other, which, under given circumstances, cannot be manifested and made present in any other way than as a symbol.

This means that in the final analysis the true and original symbol is inseparable from faith, for faith is "the evidence of things unseen" (Heb 11:1), the knowledge that there is another reality different from the "empirical" one, and that this reality can be entered, can be communicated, can in truth become "the most real of realities." Therefore, if the symbol presupposes faith, faith of necessity requires the symbol. For unlike "convictions," philosophical "points of view," etc., faith certainly is contact and a thirst for contact, embodiment and a thirst for embodiment: it is the manifestation, the presence, the operation of one reality within the other. All of this is the symbol (from symbállō, "unite," "hold together"). In it -- unlike in a simple "illustration," simple sign, and even in the sacrament in its scholastic-rationalistic "reduction" -- the empirical (or "visible") and the spiritual (or "invisible") are united not logically (this "stands for" that), not analogically (this "illustrates" that), nor yet by cause and effect (this is the "means" or "generator" of that), but epiphanically. One reality manifests (epiphaínō) and communicates the other, but -- and this is immensely important -- only to the degree to which the symbol itself is a participant in the spiritual reality and is able or called upon to embody it. In other words, in the symbol everything manifests the spiritual reality, but not everything pertaining to the spiritual reality appears embodied in the symbol. The symbol is always partial, always imperfect: "for our knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy is imperfect" (1 Co 13:9). By its very nature the symbol unites disparate realities, the relation of the one to the other always remaining "absolutely other." However real a symbol may be, however successfully it may communicate to us that other reality, its function is not to quench our thirst but to intensify it: "Grant us that we may more perfectly partake of Thee in the never ending day of Thy Kingdom." It is not that this or that part of "this world" -- space, time, or matter -- be made sacred, but rather that everything in it be seen and comprehended as expectation and thirst for its complete spiritualization: "that God may be all in all."

Must we then demonstrate that only this ontological and "epiphanic" meaning of the word "symbol" is applicable to Christian worship? And not only is it applicable -- it is inseparable. For the essence of the symbol lies in the fact that in it the dichotomy between reality and symbolism (as unreality) is overcome: reality is experienced above all as the fulfillment of the symbol, and the symbol is comprehended as the fulfillment of the reality. Christian worship is symbolic not because it contains various "symbolical" depictions. It may indeed include them, but chiefly in the imagination of various "commentators" and not in its own ordo and rites. Christian worship is symbolic because, first of all, the world itself, God's own creation, is symbolic, is sacramental; and second of all because it is the Church's nature, her task in "this world," to fulfill this symbol, to realize it as the "most real of realities." We can therefore say that the symbol reveals the world, mankind, and all creation as the "matter" of a single, all-embracing sacrament (pp. 38-40).

Here I have two comments to make:

1) Did you notice that striking aphorism?

Therefore, if the symbol presupposes faith, faith of necessity requires the symbol. For unlike "convictions," philosophical "points of view," etc., faith certainly is contact and a thirst for contact, embodiment and a thirst for embodiment: it is the manifestation, the presence, the operation of one reality within the other.

What would Luther say? He would affirm the negative: faith can have nothing to do with "convictions" or "points of view" as Schmemann says. But Luther would say -- did say -- that faith of necessity requires the promise. Thus where Schmemann sees the liturgy, and Holy Communion at its heart, as the symbol set forth for faith, Luther sees it as the promise set forth for faith. But here is another both/and. In Luther's own work, the idea of the Eucharist as a visible sign of the promise always seemed to me to be somewhat inadequate. Why is it so important, if it is only a sign of the promise? (That it is so important is of course not in doubt.) So let us combine them and say faith demands a symbol, yes, but one that is benevolent toward us. The bread and wine are the symbol of Jesus; but does He love us? That is the promise -- that He is friendly to us and heartily wishes to forgive us. This possibility, that Communion may be a symbol of wrath and anger is not considered by Schmemann, but absent the promise delivered to faith it is a possibility. But all the symbols of the Church are accompanied by such a promise and hence are such objects of faith in God's mercy.

2) And I am pretty sure that in his mind Schmemann was going further and saying that just as the Eucharist is the symbol (=enduring corporeal epiphany) of Jesus, in the same way Jesus is the symbol (=enduring corporeal epiphany) of God. Indeed this is a good test of whether you understand symbol in Schmemann's sense. OK, you say the Eucharist is the symbol of Christ, well and good. But do you also agree that Jesus is, in the same way, the symbol of God the Father? If suddenly that sounds heretical, then you are not using symbol in the sense that Schmemann did.* Read that last sentence again: We can therefore say that the symbol reveals the world, mankind, and all creation as the "matter" of a single, all-embracing sacrament. Isn't this exactly what Colossians 1 is saying Christ reveals? By its very nature the symbol unites disparate realities, the relation of the one to the other always remaining "absolutely other." Isn't this a restatement in "symbolic" language of the two natures in Christ? But then he adds something: that even the experience of Jesus as the epiphany, the symbol, the reality of God, is not meant to satisfy us, but to go beyond, to create a thirst for the Kingdom. It is not that this or that part of "this world" -- space, time, or matter -- be made sacred, but rather that everything in it be seen and comprehended as expectation and thirst for its complete spiritualization: "that God may be all in all."

*Of course, a real heretic may affirm both, seeing in Jesus only an illustration of the absent God, and the Eucharist an illustration of the absent Jesus. But to diagnose this problem one need only ask of this two-stage epiphany as of the epiphanies of the Old Testament: is this a symbol such that refusal to believe in it when it is physically before you, to experience it without faith in the promise, is fatal? To say no, that it is only offered for us to take it or leave it, without harm either way, is to be back in the realm of illustrative symbolism.

The Bible's Baptismal Liturgy

It can be found in Leviticus, chapter 8, where the rites appropriate to enrollment in the royal priesthood of the redeemed are set forth, partly in literal form and partly in types:

Introit
And Moses said to the congregation, "This is the thing that the LORD has commanded to be done."

The Act of Baptism
And Moses brought Aaron and his sons and washed them with water.

The Dressing in Baptismal Robes
And he put the coat on him and tied the sash around his waist and clothed him with the robe and put the ephod on him and tied the skillfully woven band of the ephod around him, binding it to him with the band. And he placed the breastpiece on him, and in the breastpiece he put the Urim and the Thummim. And he set the turban on his head, and on the turban, in front, he set the golden plate, the holy crown, as the LORD commanded Moses.

Chrismation (also called Confirmation in the Latin tradition)
Then Moses took the anointing oil and anointed the tabernacle and all that was in it, and consecrated them. And he sprinkled some of it on the altar seven times, and anointed the altar and all its utensils and the basin and its stand, to consecrate them. And he poured some of the anointing oil on Aaron's head and anointed him to consecrate him. And Moses brought Aaron's sons and clothed them with coats and tied sashes around their waists and bound caps on them, as the LORD commanded Moses.

Sermon, that is, Explanation of the Need for Atonement and our identification by faith with the one being sacrificed for our sin, and the Prayer of the Church
Then he brought the bull of the sin offering, and Aaron and his sons laid their hands on the head of the bull of the sin offering. And he killed it, and Moses took the blood, and with his finger put it on the horns of the altar around it and purified the altar and poured out the blood at the base of the altar and consecrated it to make atonement for it. And he took all the fat that was on the entrails and the long lobe of the liver and the two kidneys with their fat, and Moses burned them on the altar. But the bull and its skin and its flesh and its dung he burned up with fire outside the camp, as the LORD commanded Moses. Then he presented the ram of the burnt offering, and Aaron and his sons laid their hands on the head of the ram. And he killed it, and Moses threw the blood against the sides of the altar. He cut the ram into pieces, and Moses burned the head and the pieces and the fat. He washed the entrails and the legs with water, and Moses burned the whole ram on the altar. It was a burnt offering with a pleasing aroma, a food offering for the LORD, as the LORD commanded Moses. Then he presented the other ram, the ram of ordination, and Aaron and his sons laid their hands on the head of the ram. And he killed it, and Moses took some of its blood and put it on the lobe of Aaron's right ear and on the thumb of his right hand and on the big toe of his right foot. Then he presented Aaron's sons, and Moses put some of the blood on the lobes of their right ears and on the thumbs of their right hands and on the big toes of their right feet. And Moses threw the blood against the sides of the altar.

The Offertory
Then he took the fat and the fat tail and all the fat that was on the entrails and the long lobe of the liver and the two kidneys with their fat and the right thigh, and out of the basket of unleavened bread that was before the LORD he took one unleavened loaf and one loaf of bread with oil and one wafer and placed them on the pieces of fat and on the right thigh. And he put all these in the hands of Aaron and in the hands of his sons and waved them as a wave offering before the LORD. Then Moses took them from their hands and burned them on the altar with the burnt offering. This was an ordination offering with a pleasing aroma, a food offering to the LORD. And Moses took the breast and waved it for a wave offering before the LORD. It was Moses' portion of the ram of ordination, as the LORD commanded Moses.

Holy Communion (bread, blood, sacrificial meat)
Then Moses took some of the anointing oil and of the blood that was on the altar and sprinkled it on Aaron and his garments, and also on his sons and his sons' garments. So he consecrated Aaron and his garments, and his sons and his sons' garments with him. And Moses said to Aaron and his sons, "Boil the flesh at the entrance of the tent of meeting, and there eat it and the bread that is in the basket of ordination offerings, as I commanded, saying, 'Aaron and his sons shall eat it.'

Provision for Reverent Handling of the Unconsumed Elements
And what remains of the flesh and the bread you shall burn up with fire.

Dismissal
And you shall not go outside the entrance of the tent of meeting for seven days, until the days of your ordination are completed, for it will take seven days to ordain you. As has been done today, the LORD has commanded to be done to make atonement for you. At the entrance of the tent of meeting you shall remain day and night for seven days, performing what the LORD has charged, so that you do not die, for so I have been commanded." And Aaron and his sons did all the things that the LORD commanded by Moses.

Sacrifice and Prayers of the Mass

Luther's Babylonian Captivity of the Church (available here) had to deal with the whole question of the legacy of the traditional teachings on the Mass. Convinced by the Scriptures and his whole understanding of how God relates to man, he had to deal with the issue of the legacy of teaching that the Mass was in fact a sacrifice offered to God by the priest. What is striking is the degree to which, while preserving the most resolute Evangelical substance, he anticipated the "catholic" liturgical experimentation and historical theology of the twentieth century.

First for the Evangelical substance. Let this be the watchword:

For unless we hold fast to the truth, that the mass is the promise or testament of Christ, as the words clearly say, we shall the whole Gospel and all our comfort. Let us permit nothing to prevail against these words, even though an angel from heaven should teach otherwise. For there is nothing said in them of a work or a sacrifice. . . . For at the Last Supper, when He instituted this sacrament and established this testament, Christ did not offer Himself to God the Father, nor did he perform a good work on behalf of others, but He set this testament before each of them that sat at table with Him and offered him the sign (p. 162).

As distributing a testament, or accepting a promise, differs diametrically from offering a sacrifice, so it is a contradiction in terms to call the mass a sacrifice; for the former is something we receive, while the latter is something that we offer (p. 163).

Having set these ground rules, how does Luther deal with the “canon of the mass and the sayings of the Fathers?” He first establishes that if they go against the Scriptural understanding they must be rejected, but then seeks to find a reasonable interpretation of them, consistent with the Evangelical faith. Far ahead of his time, he found it in the offertory, exactly the liturgical action whose organic link to the mass the twentieth century liturgical movement was to re-emphasize, and where the earliest Christian theologian St. Irenaeus had located the oblation. (I wrote about this earlier here and here). There are historical errors about the elevation and the origin of the word “collect” but the basic historico-theological point is sound:

The Apostle instructs us in 1 Corinthians 11 that it was customary for Christ’s believers, when they came together to mass, to bring with them meat and drink, which they called “collections” . . . From this store was taken the portion of bread and wine that was consecrated for use in the sacrament (p. 163)

He linked the elevation of the elements to the Hebrew rite of “lifting up,” meaning to sanctify something by word and prayer, and continues:

For this reason the words “sacrifice” and “oblation” must be taken to refer, not to the sacrament and testament, but to these collections, whence also the word “collect” has come down to us, as meaning the prayers said in the mass. (p. 163-64) . . . Let the priests, therefore . . . take heed, first that the words of the greater and lesser canon, together with the collects, which smack too strongly of sacrifice, be not referred by them to the sacrament, but to the bread and wine which they consecrate, or to the prayers which they say. For the bread and wine are offered at the first, in order that they may be blessed and thus sanctified by the Word and by prayer: but after they have been blessed and consecrated, they are no longer offered, but received as a gift from God. (p. 164-65; emphasis added).

Interestingly, Luther saw no aspect of “idolatry” in the elevation of the bread and chalice immediately after the consecration, nor something connected to the idea of sacrifice. Linking it to the Hebrew rite of elevating created things offered to God, he saw it as an acceptable stimulus to faith:

For it is faith that the priest ought to awaken in us by this act of elevation (p. 164).

Luther also had to deal with the matter of prayers. If the mass was a propitiatory sacrifice for the living and the dead, it meant that mass could be communicated by prayer to persons (living or dead) or intentions for whom it was offered. Luther laid down that:

when a priest celebrates a public mass . . . he may at the same time offer prayers for himself and for others, but he must beware lest he presume to offer [as opposed to receiving] the mass (p. 165; emphasis added).

We must, therefore, not confound the two -- the mass and the prayers, the sacrament and the work, the testament and the sacrifice: for the once comes from God to us, through the ministration of the priest, and demands our faith, the other proceeds from our faith to God, through the priest and demands His answer. The former descends, the latter ascends. (p. 167).
I am ready, however, to admit that the prayers which we pour out before God when we are gathered together to partake of the mass, are good works or benefits, which we impart, apply, and communicate to one another, and which we offer for one another [he cites James and Paul in 1 Timothy 2 on prayer] These are not the mass, but works of the mass -- if the prayers of the heart and lips may be called works -- for they flow from the faith that is kindled or increased in the sacrament (p. 160).

The prayer may be extended to as many persons as one desires; but the mass is received by none but the person who believes for himself, and only in proportion to his faith (p. 161).

Luther concluded thus that while the mass remains the mass even when a wicked priest administers it, the prayers said on the occasion of this sacrament are affected by the priest’s worth and godliness. God hears the prayers of the righteous, not the wicked.

It is striking how these Lutheran formulas underlay, even in their denial, the Roman Catholic scholastic theology of the sacrifice of the mass after Trent. Sacrament (down from God) and sacrifice (up to God) are distinguished quite after the manner of Luther -- only this time both are affirmed:

The Sacrament of the Eucharist is something essentially different from the Sacrifice of the Mass. In truth, the Eucharist performs at once two functions: that of a sacrament and that of a sacrifice. . . . The real difference between them is shown in that the sacrament is intended privately for the sanctification of the soul, whereas the sacrifice serves primarily to glorify God by adoration, thanksgiving, prayer, and expiation. The recipient of the one is God, who receives the sacrifice of His only-begotten Son; of the other, man, who receives the sacrament for his own good.

Luther predicted that resistance would come to his teaching, because by denying the ex opere operato efficacy of prayers for the dead, it would overturn all the different votive masses: anniversaries, intercessions, applications, communications, etc. in churches and monasteries -- that is to say, he cynically concluded, their fat income (p. 159).

And indeed just as "received orally" and "by the righteous and the hypocrite alike" is the acid text distinguishing Reformed from Evangelical ideas of the Real Presence, so too the idea of a multiplicity of masses being celebrated individually for the deceased or various intentions is the acid test of the mass as a work being done by the priest. Read the article linked to above, from the Catholic Encyclopedia, which does indeed carefully try to reduce the more objectionable elements from the Evangelical point of view: its declares that the expiatory effect of the mass functions only "mediately" through the creation of contrition and penance (i.e. an "act of sorrow") in the beneficiary (change "contrition and penance" to "faith" -- which will then involve repentance -- and the Evangelical can fully agree). Thus, only relief of the temporal penalties of the deceased in purgatory is dispensed by the mass, not expiation of sin and salvation itself. The authors are likewise careful to identify as closely as possible the sacrifce of the priest in the mass with that of Christ, so it is as much as possible no longer seen as the priest's own work. "As much as possible" -- but how much? The acid test remains when it comes to what Catholic dogmaticians call the "special fruit of the mass" which is what benefits those for whom it is celebrated. If the priest's work is wholly identified with Christ, than the fruit of the mass would presumably be infinite, and a priest who has received stipends for various deceased souls and intentions could say one mass and cover them all, thus defrauding the payers of the value for their money:

The question now arises whether in this connection the applicable value of the Mass is to be regarded as finite or infinite (or, more accurately, unlimited). This question is of importance in view of the practical consequences it involves. For, if we decide in favour of the unlimited value, a single Mass celebrated for a hundred persons or intentions is as efficacious as a hundred Masses celebrated for a single person or intention. . . . But, since the Church has entirely forbidden as a breach of strict justice that a priest should seek to fulfil, by reading a single Mass, the obligations imposed by several stipends . . . the overwhelming majority of theologians incline even theoretically to the conviction that the satisfactory -- and, according to many, also the propitiatory and impetratory -- value of a Mass for which a stipend has been taken, is so strictly circumscribed and limited from the outset, that it accrues pro rata (according to the greater or less number of the living or the dead for whom the Mass is offered) to each of the individuals. Only on such a hypothesis is the custom prevailing among the faithful of having several Masses celebrated for the deceased or for their intentions intelligible. Only on such a hypothesis can one explain the widely established "Mass Association", a pious union whose members voluntarily bind themselves to read or get read at least one Mass annually for the poor souls in purgatory.

So in the end, what is it that keeps in business the idea that the mass -- Christ's last will and testament -- can in practice be treated as a limited, quantifiable work done by the priest? Luther's answer seems to still hold: it is the continued practice of having special masses celebrated for the deceased and for particular intentions.

The more I blog this the more I am confirmed in my feeling that the Babylonian Captivity is indeed the central work of Luther's theology. Well, that's the mass/Eucharist/Holy Communion/Lord's Supper. On to baptism!

Continued from here; back to the first post in this series.

Against Shane Rosenthal's Attack on the Lutheran Teaching About Holy Communion

Josh S., speaking on behalf of someone hesitating between the Reformed and the Evangelical teachings, has asked us all to respond to this critique of the Augsburg Evangelical teaching on the Lord’s Supper. Here are my thoughts for his consideration:

The first big mistake of this critique is right there in the first line: treating the Holy Supper as simply a species of the genus sacrament. The writer goes on to define sacrament according to the Paul's view of circumcision: which is not actually a sacrament, but a typological ritual of the Old Covenant. So right there in the first couple of sentences, we have already assumed that baptism and the Lord's Supper cannot have any more real significance than any OT typological shadow. Sasse already made the point in This Is My Body that Augustine’s idea of sacrament as a sign (something nowhere asserted in Scripture about either baptism or the Lord’s Supper) can have all kinds of pernicious effects if taken too seriously.He then adds later the idea that since the Lord's Supper is like the Passover it must be ontologically similar -- forgetting the fact that the New Testament Lord's Supper is part of the reality of which the Old Testament Passover is the shadow. Shadows and realities are ontologically different.This foundational argument is basically circular, assuming what needs to be proved.

The Biblical argument of 1 Corinthians 10:2-4 is likewise invalid. In that passage, where Paul speaking of Moses and the peregrinations through the desert, he says "the rock was Christ." This is then a use of "is" (actually "was", which as a predicate of someone who is the same yesterday, today, and forever already has an inherently figurative sense, but never mind) which is indeed figurative. Now the use of "is" as figurative demands something very specific: a series of relations between multiple symbols and multiple things being symbolized. For example, one could say, "This bread here, see? This is the body of Christ, this knife here is the cross, and just as I break this bread on the knife, so His body was broken on the cross." In such a case, where something is acted out, or else where a scriptural type has multiple parts, context makes it clear that "is" is being used to identify the various parts in the metaphor. For example, I might say, "This ark is the church, see? And the clean animals, they represent Lutherans, and the unclean animals, well, those represent the Zwinglian blasphemers of the Holy Sacrament." (Sorry, I couldn't resist that naughty little comparison.) But "is" can only be used in this sense if there are multiple symbols in question and you need to know which one "is" (i.e. signifies) Christ’s body (as opposed to this other thing which signifies something else). Since only one thing is in question in the words of institution, it is not rational usage to use the verb "to be" in that way. If Christ wanted to set up a metaphor, he would have done it the other way around: "My body is bread."

Much of the rest of the argument is simply guilt by (pseudo-)association. So our division of truly efficacious sacraments from Old Testament shadows and signs is "proto-dispensationalist"? Big deal -- it is abundantly confirmed by Biblical evidence. If admitting that makes me dispensationalist, then good, I'm a dispensationalist.*

The irony is, of course, that dispensationalism came not out of Lutheranism, but out of Reformed Christianity.

And it is not the Augsburg Evangelical church and tradition that boggles at the full truth of the incarnation, or virtually ignores the Ascension, or has spawned a doctrine teaching a set of multiple returns of Christ, or turned the communion of the saints either into some invisible nothing that no one can see or touch, or else divided it in practice into a thousand sects each more pure than the next.

Finally, Shane Rosenthal is also simply ignorant of Evangelical Lutheran Biblical interpretation. When he writes: "Now they argue that we cannot truly feed on Christ unless it is by way of the physical mouth." this clearly a reference to John 6, which Luther himself concluded did not refer to the Lord's Supper (for the reason that baptized infants, etc., certainly are saved without partaking of the Supper, and others who do partake are certainly not saved). The word "cannot" here is a misrepresentation of Lutheran doctrine. "Ordinarily do not" would be the correct formulation, with "ordinarily" understood in the Christian, doctrinal sense of God's appointed means.

As for why it is good, right, and salutary for our Lord to have ordained a way in which we could receive objectively the benefit of His atoning death, just as those in Israel received typologically the benefits of the typological deaths of lambs and bulls, I’ve offered my thoughts here.

*For some arguments that Old-New Testament continuity can be over-emphasized, see here. Also relevant here is Luke 7:28, in light of John 3:5-6, and Rev. 7, which describes the already accomplished number of Old Covenant believers in the Christ to come, and the numberless multitudes who will believe in the Christ already come.

Originally posted at Here We Stand.

More on Sacrifice

Well, my previous post on Dix and the "sacrifice of the mass" (abominable or not) generated not a whole lot of comments (thanks, Eric, for yours!), so I am giving the ungrateful blogosphere a second chance.

What's going to follow is a brief restatement of the issue and some comments raised by the conclusions I've reached so far.

The Issue
In the ante-Nicene church, sacrificial language is routinely applied to the Eucharist. The question is, can this language of sacrifice be squared with the Lutheran Evangelical doctrine of justification by faith alone, and the understanding of the sacrament as a gift or promise of God which needs only faith to be received.

Dix said, No it can't, and that's why justification by faith alone is inconsistent with the apostolic Christian faith. Dix then went on to advocate the idea that through the offertory+eucharist the church as a whole participates in the sacrifice of Christ on the cross, thus through her actions propitiating God.

My answer is yes it can, but only under the fairly stringent conditions:
1) the material of the sacrifice be understood as the gifts of the offertory, which are then used (in part) as the elements of the Eucharist, and not the Body and Blood of Christ. That understanding, that the priest re-presents Christ's passion as a propitiatory sacrifice cannot be found before Cyprian (c. AD 255) although it soon swept the boards.
(Here it must be remembered that in the ante-Nicene church, the actual bread and wine used in each Sunday's Eucharist were brought that day by the congregation and put on the altar during the offertory by the congregation. The switch to special communion wafers and wine laid by in the church has broken this visual-liturgical link of the offertory with the Eucharist proper.)
2) the nature of the sacrifice be understood as a thanksgiving sacrifice, not a propitiatory sacrifice. While the ante-Nicene fathers are pretty vague on this whole distinction, the preponderance of early evidence shows that thanksgiving is indeed the strongly dominant note.
3) The thanksgiving sacrifice of the offertory be kept conceptually and theologically separate from the benefit of receiving the Body and Blood of Christ -- forgiveness of sins, peace, and immortality. And indeed, the major ante-Nicene authors who write on the Eucharist, Ignatius, Irenaeus, and Justin, show no sign of connecting these elements.

Let us note another point: both the Lutheran and Tridentine understanding of propitiation have benefitted from the immensely greater theological precision and the higher view of sin introduced into the Christian churches in the Middle Ages. Neither Evangelicals nor Catholics can go back to the cloudy, perfectionist ideas of St. Irenaeus or Justin Martyr and both have adopted dogmatic formulas that no one before Cyprian, let alone St. Anselm, would recognize.

William Tighe has very generously sent me a copy of an article by Oliver K. Olson, in the Lutheran Quarterly 19 (2005), pp. 199-207, in which he argues against any sacrificial understanding of the Eucharist on the grounds that it would be a betrayal of the Lutheran confessions. His occasion of disagreement is principle 43 in ELCA's new "Principles for Worship":
The biblical words of institution declare God's action and invitation. They are set within the context of the Great Thanksgiving [note: eucharist is simply "thanksgiving" in Greek]. This ecuharistic prayer proclaims and celebrates the gracious work of God in creation, redemption, and sanctification.

Olson makes a lot of good and blessed Evangelical points. He rightly points out that "participation in the redeeming deed of Christ" is downright blasphemous. Agreed -- I said the same at the conclusion of my previous post. He adds that such "participation" implies that the crucifixion is still going on, but "that the atonement is finished is clearly reflected in Luther's doctrine of the mass as testament. At communion, the believer does not participate at Calvary. Instead, the believer is granted the results from Calvary." I agree wholeheartedly, adding only that the results of the world's one truly propitiatory sacrifice are given in precisely the form that they are given in the general sacrificial practice of humanity, a share of the meat and contact with the blood of the sacrifice. I would not support principle 43 as it stands. Practically speaking, our offertory hymn gets it just about right:

Let the vineyards be fruitful, Lord, and fill to the brim our cup of blessing.
Gather a harvest from the seeds that were sown, that we may be fed with the bread of life.
Gather the hopes and dreams of all; unite them with the prayers we offer.
Grace our table with your presence, and give us a foretaste of the feast to come.

I find the third line a bit treacly in phrasing, but theologically this stands firmly on the common ground shared by Martin Luther and Irenaeus.

What this illustrates is that the distinction between communion which is purely a testament, a gift, a promise, in which we give nothing but purely receive from God by faith, and the service of the sacrament as a whole, from the offertory to the dismissal, which also has an aspect of a thanksgiving to God in which we do something (i.e. we offer to God our tithes and offerings, including the bread and wine used in communion). No language of sacrifice of any nature can be allowed to infect our understanding of the former. Holy Communion is not something we do. But we do need to be aware of the sacrificial aspect of the latter, because not just the ante-Nicene fathers, but the apostles themselves treat the offertory as a spiritual sacrifice.

As it says in Romans 12, when Paul moves from expounding the accomplished nature of our salvation to our response, he says:

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.

What is the content of that "living sacrifice"? Well he enumerates it, beginning with the renewing of our minds, and including

Distributing to the necessity of saints

which distribution comes from the offertory. When he receives such a gift from the offertory of the Philippians, sent by Epahroditus to him in prison in Rome, he writes

But I have all, and abound: I am full, having received of Epaphroditus the things which were sent from you, an odour of a sweet smell, a sacrifice acceptable, well-pleasing to God.

Likewise in Hebrews 13:16, after exhorting us that we have an altar which the Jews who offer sacrifice in the Temple cannot approach, the apostle asks us:

By him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name. But to do good and to communicate forget not: for with such sacrifices God is well pleased.

And Peter likewise speaks of the church as a spiritual priesthood offering spiritual sacrifices:

Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.

The generosity of our offering is miserably inadequate to be acceptable to God in itself, but when we have faith in the propitiatory sacrifice of Jesus Christ (Romans 3:25, 1 John 2:2 and 4:10) then even our thank offerings are a sweet savor to God.

It is common in anti-"Gnostic" polemic to emphasize the earthy, practical, ritual nature of Christianity. But we must also remember that the early Christians inherited and largely agreed with a long-standing Greco-Roman critique of Jewish ritual practice. This critique focused on Jewish rituals, arguing that they were unworthy of the highest religious ideals, by being ethnocentric (limited to a particular people, like the Sabbath) and also simply irrational (such as the idea that a sinner offering the blood of a bull can propitiate God). This latter critique had a long history in the prophets of Israel (e.g. Psalm 50, Is. 1:11, Hosea 6:6, Jer. 7:21-22) and many Jews, such as Philo, in the intertestamental period had set about reinterpreting the food and calendar laws, as well as the sacrifices, as fundamentally ethical, teaching institutions, expressing spiritual ideas and gratitude to God, not ritual actions possessing inherent efficacy.

It is common today for anti-"Gnostic" Christians to ridicule such "spiritualizing" interpretations, but this is in fact the background from which, for example, the writer of Hebrews is coming, when he points out the uselessness of the Jewish sacrifices. Justin Martyr's Dialogue with Trypho relies fundamentally on this skepticism about ritual propitiation of God. The Evangelical categorical rejection of the idea that anything a sinner does, week after week, no matter how divinely commanded, can propitiate a holy God is so fully in line with this long-standing critique, one which the apostles so clearly accepted, that the burden of proof lies with those wishing to claim that in fact the apostles would have accepted any propitiatory action in the Eucharist.

Now this skepticism about ritual propitiation can go in two directions: 1) toward ethical propitiation (we turn aside God's anger by doing right), and 2) substitutionary penal atonement -- the CROSS of CHRIST. Philo and the philosophical critique of Mosaic ritualism went toward the first, and regrettably early Christian apologists such as Irenaeus and Justin followed. But in the apostolic writings, no one can deny that it is the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross only, accomplished once for all time, which is treated as the propitiation, the turning away of the wrath of God. In the wake of this once-for-all atonement, we have only two ways of response: 1) to return to it, repenting of dead works -- this is receiving communion; and 2) to follow God's commands by diligently attending to prayer and thanksgivings, both verbal and material. This is our worship, the thanksgiving sacrifice, the offertory, and our songs. But as always, the once for all atonement is the sole basis for our acceptance by God.

Dix on the Ante-Nicene Theology of the Eucharistic Sacrifice

In his comments of Martin Luther (see here for previous discussion), Dom Gregory Dix's Shape of the Liturgy points the reader to pp. 111ff. and 273ff. for his explication of the issue of sacrifice (in context, he means his refutation of Martin Luther's idea that no sacrifice, but only a sacrament, is involved in the Holy Supper.) Together, his comments on these pages do indeed set forth a theology of the Eucharist. And by theology I mean that 1) he believes this to be the dominant ante-Nicene understanding of the Eucharist; and 2) he is unmistakably promoting this is a, if not the, crucial theological insight into the Eucharist. His argument is not just historic, but clearly also normative/theological.

This post is in four parts:

I. Dix's general statement of the theology
II. His reading of this theology in the ante-Nicene fathers
III. My evaluation of his argument
IV. My evalutation of his theology

I. Dix's general statement of the theology

The account on pp. 273-4 is more general and worth examining first. Dix first emphasizes, against skeptical critics, that the sacrificial understanding of the crucifixion was not added on later, but the only possible interpretation of the crucifixion that could make sense and allow the continued existence of movement formed around Jesus:

We have to bear in mind that no belief whatever in Jesus as Messiah could make head against the ignominy of Calvary except upon the sacrificial interpretation of His death (p. 273).

This sacrificial understanding extended to the whole action of Christ's death, resurrection, and return to His Father:

In the light of Calvary, Easter and Ascension together (understood in combination as the sacrifice and acceptance of the Messiah) no other interpretation [except as a sacrificial action] of what Jesus had said and done at the last supper was possible for jews.

He then emphasizes the absolute centrality of sacrifice to the covenant-people of God. (This is not restricted to the Jews, either, but can be argued for humanity in general.) This he argues was not lost, but preserved in both the Jewish and Gentile churches:

For the purely jewish church of the years immediately following the passion, sacrifice was necessarily of the essence of a covenant with God,not only for the inauguration of a covenant but as the center of the covenanted life. . . . The fact that the Messiah by His sacrificial death had instituted a New Covenant did not destroy the inherited idea of the centrality of sacrifice in any divine covenant. On the contrary it enhanced it.

The center of the covenanted life: that means the Eucharist. Dix interpreted the Last Supper as the meal of a chaburah common in Judaism of the time (see pp. 50ff and 76ff). The chaburah are basically small groups which meet weekly over a meal, to which each member contributed. The meals of such chaburoth (the plural) began with "relishes" over which each person would say his own blessing, and then formally began with a short thanksgiving/blessing (beraka) on the bread said by the host or president of the chaburah, followed with a thangsgiving/blessing on all other foods as they appeared, and concludedwith a final, longer, thanksgiving/blessing said by the host over a special cup of wine.

What was new with the Eucharist was, then, not the idea of a weekly meal, or the idea of a blessing over bread and wine (the actual meal was rapidly separated from the Christian Eucharist and held separately as an agape meal or love feast), but the two ideas of doing it in "re-calling" or "in memory of" Christ and the idea that it is His body and blood of His covenant. Put them together (as Dix argues they almost immediately were) and the chaburah meal thus becomes a sacrifice, in rivalry with and superior to the sacrifice performed in the Temple with sheep and oxen (cf. Hebrews 13:9-14, esp. v. 10).

The prayer of thanksgiving/blessing, merging that said over the bread with that over the wine, is thus the start of Eucharistic theology. What elements were found in this theology? 1) The idea of a thanksgiving sacrifice a "Thanksgiving for the New Covenant." As he notes:

It was the common jewish expectation that the 'Thankoffering' alone of all sacrifices would continue in the days of the Messiah.

To the thanksgiving for creation as found in the bread and wine is attached the anamnesis or "remembrance/recalling" of Christ's death. This parallels the twofold interpretation of Christ's death could be compared to the Passover sacrifice, as the annual commemoration of the actual historical events by which redemption was achieved, or as the Day of Atonement, as the anamnesis, the re-calling of the effects of redemption (p. 274).

2) The idea of offering the food back to God, implicit in the berakah (thanksgiving prayer for meeting), which is then, by the blessing of the Name (of God) released back for consumption by the faithful.

II. Dix's reading of this theology in the ante-Nicene fathers

Moving on to his reading of the sources in pp. 111, he cites the words of Clement of Rome, Justin Martyr, and Hipploytus. As he summarizes their data, he finds great unanimity:

Every one of these local liturgical traditions at the earliest point at which extant documents permit us to interrogate it, reveals the same general understanding of the eucharist as an 'oblation' (prosphora) or 'sacrifice' (thusia) -- something offered to God; and that the substance of the sacrifice is in every case in some sense the bread and the cup (p. 112)

We can add that in the reading the sources he presents, nowhere do we see the idea that the Body and Blood of the Lord is actually being offered to God by the bishop or church.

He adds that in Clement's letter to the Corinthians we find the whole church involved in the prospheron/offering: the communicants/members bringing it up, the deacons/assistants presenting it, and the bishop/pastor offering it. It is thus "at all points, from being first placed on the table by the communicants to being distributed by the bishops 'the gifts of Thy holy church'" (p. 112) -- and not only so after being consecrated as the Body and Blood of the Lord.

Despite this picture of unanimity, he then acknowledges that there one can find two different theological understandings of the Eucharist in ante-Nicene sources, the Irenaean and the Cyprianic (p. 116).

For Irenaeus, the eucharist is an oblation offered to God, but with a peculiar sense (it should be noted that this sense is "peculiar" only in the context of subsequent "Cyprianic" understanding, but fully in line with the berakah prayer which Dix had argued was the origin of the Eucharist).

Primarily it is for him a sacrifice of 'first-fruits,' acknowledging the Creator's bounty in providing our earthly food, rather than as 're-calling' the sacrifice of Calvary in the Pauline fashion. It is true that Irenaeus has not the least hesitation in saying that 'The mingled cup and the manufactured bread receives the Word of God and becomes the eucharist [i.e. thanksgiving] of the words 'in the New Covenant' to 'the first-fruits of His own gifts.' Irenaeus is clear, also, that the death of Christ was itself a sacrifice, of which the abortive sacrifice of Isaac by his own father was the type. But when all is said and done, he never quite puts these two ideas together or calls the eucharist outright the offering or the 're-calling' of Christ's sacrifice (p. 114).

By contrast for Cyprian, writing in Africa about sixty years later,

the whole question of how the eucharist is constituted a sacrifice is as clear-cut and completely settled as it is for a post-Tridentine theologian: 'Since we make mention of His passion in all our sacrifices, for the passion is the Lord's sacrifice which we offer, we ought to do nothing else than what He did (at the last supper) (p. 115).

He then goes on to state that while Cyprian's understanding was continued by Cyril of Jerusalem and came to prevail, that of Irenaeus virtually disappeared, remaining only as a kind of liturgical fossil, "though it passed out of current theological teaching" (p. 116).

III. My evaluation of Dix's argument

Thus far Dix's argument. In evaluating this, it is clear that he has in fact concealed in plain sight some facts of rather serious importance for a theological evaluation in terms of Reformation and post-Reformation categories accepted by Catholic and Evangelical theologians (see here). First of all let us return to his description of Irenaeus's theology. He says Irenaeus believes two things of the Eucharist: 1) that the offering of the created things by the church as a whole is a thanksgiving sacrifice for the gifts of creation; and 2) that it is the true Body and Blood of our Lord. Dix honestly points out that Irenaeus never identifies the Eucharist as the "offering or the 're-calling' of Christ's sacrifice." Now at this point, we can suddenly notice that the "offering" of Christ's sacrifice and the "re-calling" of Christ's sacrifice are in fact not the same thing, or at any rate, not the same words, and that by his own account, in Clement, Justin, and Hippolytus, the offering of bread and wine are offered and Christ's sacrifice is re-called. Dix himself throughout implies that offering the bread and wine is synonymous with offering Christ's sacrifice (as opposed to the church's own sacrifice of thanksgiving), but without offering evidence that any ante-Nicene father before Cyprian treated the issue in the same way.

When it comes to Cyprian himself, he notes the innovation but adds, "There is no reason whatever to suppose that Cyprian was the inventor of defining the eucharistic sacrifice, or in any intentional way its partisan" (p. 115). But there is not reason to suppose he wasn't either. There appears to be no evidence either way, since the idea that the Eucharist "offers the Lord's passion" is simply unknown in any previous source. He implies that this was the "African doctrine", but then honestly acknowledges that the only specific reference to a theology of the Eucharist in Tertullian, the only known previous African father, is closer to Irenaeus and in any case "we get no theory of the nature of that sacrifice from him" (p. 115).

Dix also argues that Irenaeus and Cyprian are simply emphasizing different sides of Justin Martyr's theology. In Dialogue with Trypho, chap. 117, Justin Martyr speaks of the Eucharist as a "pure sacrifice" and as "for the re-calling (anamnesis) of their sustenance both in food and drink, wherein is made also the memorial (memnetai) of the passion which the Son of God suffered for them." But is Justin's theology of the Eucharist as sacrifice actually unclear? In chapter 41, he writes:

"And the offering of fine flour, sirs," I said, "which was prescribed to be presented on behalf of those purified from leprosy, was a type of the bread of the Eucharist, the celebration of which our Lord Jesus Christ prescribed, 1) in remembrance of the suffering which He endured on behalf of those who are purified in soul from all iniquity, in order that we may at the same time 2) thank God for having created the world, with all things therein, for the sake of man, and for delivering us from the evil in which we were, and for utterly overthrowing principalities and powers by Him who suffered according to His will. Hence God speaks by the mouth of Malachi, one of the twelve [prophets], as I said before, about the sacrifices at that time presented by you: 'I have no pleasure in you, saith the Lord; and I will not accept your sacrifices at your hands: for, from the rising of the sun unto the going down of the same, My name has been glorified among the Gentiles, and in every place incense is offered to My name, and a pure offering: for My name is great among the Gentiles, saith the Lord: but ye profane it.' He then speaks of those Gentiles, namely us, who in every place offer sacrifices to Him, i.e., the bread of the Eucharist, and also the cup of the Eucharist, affirming both that we glorify His name, and that you profane [emphasis and numbering added].

There is more theological meat here than Dix seems to have recognized, meat which clearly aligns Justin's understanding of the Eucharistic sacrifice as a thank-offering for creation and redemption. In fact, Justin is clearly not saying that this rememberance of Christ's sacrifice is a re-presentation, a renewed propitiatory action (to use Tridentine terminology) of Christ's death. So far from being some sort of intermediate between Cyprian's doctrine of the Eucharist as a propitiatory offering of the Lord's passion, and Irenaeus's doctrine of it as a thank offering for creation and redemption, Justin Martyr is clearly simply expounding the Irenaean viewpoint. Assuming, as would seem legitimate, that Irenaeus certainly accepted that the Eucharist was a memorial/re-calling/remembrance of the Lord's Passion, one can thus say that all of the ante-Nicene authors, except Cyprian, understand the Eucharist in a three-fold way:

1) as a thanksgiving sacrifice of created things by the church as a whole to God for the gifts of creation and redemption;
2) as a remembrance/re-calling/anamnesis of the Lord's passion
3) that it is the true Body and Blood of our Lord

None link sacrifice to anamnesis so as to make it an offering of Christ's sacrifice. As far as pre-Cyprianic writers are concerned, it is indeed the prayer of the Eucharist that sanctifies the offering, but as a thanksgiving and as a setting aside of the offering from a common use to a holy one, just as in the Jewish berakah (blessing) over the bread and wine of the chaburah meal.

It is worth noting that the Didache (ch. 14) which uses the same typological reading of the same passage of Malachi 1: 11 (with a further citation from 1:14) about sacrifices being offered from the rising to the setting of the sun, again clearly associates the sacrifice solely with the offertory, and not with any consecration:

On the Lord's Day of the Lord, come together, break bread and hold Eucharist/thanksgiving, after confessing your sins that your offering may be pure; but let none who has a quarrel with his fellow join in your meeting until they be reconciled, that your sacrifice not be defiled. For this is that which was spoken by the Lord, "In every place and time offer me a pure sacrifice, for I am a great king," saith the Lord, "and my name is wonderful among the heathen."

The references to the defilement of the offering by the offerer's quarreling makes it clear that the sacrifices predicted in Malachi is not an offering of the Lord's Passion, but of the individual Christian's goods, his bread, wine, and first fruits to the church (cf. Didache 13). The difference here from Justin Martyr's reading of Malachi is purely in nuance; he too speaks of the value of the offering lying in the sincerity of the offerer, not the consecration of the church:

Now, that prayers and giving of thanks, when offered by worthy men, are the only perfect and well-pleasing sacrifices to God, I also admit [chap. 117]

Here he is agreeing with his Jewish opponent Trypho. Far from drawing any contrast between the unreal nature of "spiritual sacrifices" of praise and thanks and the "real sacrifice" of the Eucharist, he is in fact arguing that Christian sacrifices achieve most truly the rationalist Jewish ideal, found since the time of Philo, of a ethnically universal and purely ethical idea of sacrifice.

IV. My evalutation of Dix's theology

In conclusion, coming back to Luther, Dix has in no sense proven his point that the propitiatory offering of the Lord's passion, to use a combined Cyprianic-Tridentine way of speaking, is either a part of the pre-Cyprianic Christian doctrine, or that Luther was a bizarre exception in holding to the Real Presence apart from a propitiatory-sacrificial understanding of the Eucharist. In fact, read critically he does quite the opposite. His argument for such an understanding ultimately boils down to a word study of anamnesis (pp. 161-162, and repeated on p. 245), emphasizing that it refers to a re-presentation, not just a remembrance. Since this word is of course found in the words of institution, the crux of his argument is then not something that depends on great patristic erudition to address one way or the other.

The three elements of the Eucharist found in the pre-Cyprianic sources -- as a thanksgiving sacrifice of the church to God in the offertory; as a remembrance of the Lord's Passion; and as the real Body and Blood of our Lord: all of these are fully consistent with justification by faith alone. The second two are of course explicitly endorsed by the Augsburg confession and Apology, and while the first element is not explicitly found there, it is consistent with them and implied in Melanchthon's category of eucharistic sacrifice, as opposed to propitiatory sacrifice.

Dix is certainly correct that justification by faith alone is absolutely inconsistent with a priest (even acting in the role of Christ) participating in the propitiation of God. This synergy of sinner and Christ in propitiation is exactly what Luther taught as the blasphemous and abominable aspect of the Mass. But Dix's theology of the Eucharistic sacrifice generates a result more wildly synergistic than anything that came out of Trent. Dix emphasizes the "liturgy" in which every Christian played a part in the early church, the organic link of the offertory with what he insists is the offering of Christ's passion, and the identity of the body of Christ with the Body and Blood on the altar, in the offering up of propitiatory sacrifices to God the Father (as he [mis]interprets 1 Peter 2:5). In effect he combines the ante-Nicene theology of the thank offering in the offertory with the Cyprianic and Tridentine idea of the propitiatory sacrifice of the priest in offering in the stead of Christ His passion to the Father. But let us compare: if having a single select man, ordained in the apostolic succesion, and subject to a strict and rigorous discipline of life that sets him apart from his fellows, participate in the propitiation of God be a disastrous synergism, then what will we say about a doctrine that implicitly sees every communicant Christian in the church, regardless of his life, participating in the propitiation of an absolutely holy God? And this by as little as writing a cheque that will buy the bread to be consecrated as the church's offering of Christ's passion? Dix's view may be very "communal" and give an "active role for the laity" and emphasize "the people of God", but it has a far more abominably low sense of sin than even the worse of Tridentine ritualism.

No wonder it's popular!

More thoughts on sacrifice here.

Sacrifice? Could You Unpack That Please?

(Continued from here)

Well, where were we? Oh yes, I'm in the middle of a series examining the theological underpinings of Dom Gregory Dix's Shape of the Liturgy. To review:

I first noted that Dix sees the fundamental meaning of the Eucharist as something we do, as a sacrifice. Without that sacrificial underpinning, any acknowledgement of the Real Presence is ultimately meaningless.

I then took a brief tour around the world and concluded with a spiritual law: To receive the benefits of a blood sacrifice and membership in the community formed by the blood sacrifice, one ordinarily consumes the flesh of the sacrificial victim. Bloody offerings, unbloody offerings, and prayer and proper attitude are part of the human sacrificial system from the beginning with Cain and Abel, and to be part of it, the offerings have to be consumed. So yes, the Eucharist should have some link to sacrifice in it, since by we receive the benefits of Christ's sacrifice on the cross.

But before we go any further, we need to sort out what exactly kind of sacrifice we are talking about. And fortunately, this is an issue along which fairly clear lines have been drawn. The Catholic Encyclopedia has an excellent presentation (if really long) of the Catholic position, emphasizing the following points: the Eucharist has two separate functions: sacrament and sacrifice, which must be kept separate. The sacrament is received by the communicant with the intention of the sanctification of his soul, while the sacrifice is recieved by God (especially in His person as Father) with the intention of glorifying Him by adoration, thanksgiving, prayer, and expiation/propitiation. Note that last item. The sacrifice involved is propitiatory, that is expiates our sins and turns aside God's wrath from us as sinners.

The article then goes on to point a number of ways of understanding sacrifice that are inadequate, from the Roman Catholic viewpoint. Two points stand out. The sacrificial aspect must not be understood as

1) a "figurative or unreal" sacrifice, on the level with "prayers of praise and thanksgiving, alms, mortification, obedience, and works of penance."
2) or as taken place in the Offertory, that as the created gifts of bread and wine are offered to God by the church.

No, the sacrifice to be a truly expiatory sacrifice must be the bodily offering of Christ Himself. (The reason is fairly obvious, as on even the lowest view of sin, the mere offering of prayers of praise and thanksgiving, or of bread and wine to God could hardly be enough to expiate sins.)

From the Evangelical side, Philip Melanchthon's distinctions in his chapter on the Mass in the Apology to the Augsburg Confession used these same distinctions. (In fact, of course, most of the extremely subtle language in the Catholic Encyclopedia is Tridentine and post-Reformation.) The Mass as a sacrament (received by man for the good of his soul) is accepted, as a sacrifice (received by God for the expiation of sins) it is rejected. (Note that eventually Evangelicals began to use "Mass" for the Eucharist understood as an expiatory sacrifice; that is why the Smalcald articles denounce the "mass" while the Augsburg Confession accepts it--the understanding of the term is different.)

Melanchthon likewise distinguishes sacrament and sacrifice:
1) Sacrament: a ceremony or work in which God presents to us that which the promise annexed to the ceremony offers
2) Sacrifice: a ceremony or work which we render God in order to afford Him honor.

He then distinguishes between two types of sacrifice:
1) Propitiatory: one makes satisfaction for guilt and punishment, i.e., one that reconciles God, or appeases God's wrath, or which merits the remission of sins for others.
2) Eucharistic (i.e. thanksgiving): one rendered by those who have been reconciled, in order that we may give thanks or return gratitude for the remission of sins that has been received, or for other benefits received. It does not merit the remission of sins or reconciliation, but is the thanksgiving for the fruit thereof.

Melanchthon then defines the Evangelical position as follows:

1) The only true propitiatory sacrifice in the whole world has been that of Christ on the cross.
2) The Mass/Eucharist is rightly understood as a sacrifice only in the eucharistic sense, on the same level as "praise, . . . preaching of the Gospel, faith, prayer, thanksgiving, confession, [bearing] afflictions," etc.
3) This sense of the Eucharist as a thanksgiving is in addition to its efficacy as a sacrament, i.e. as God's promise forgiveness, the reception of which needs only faith.

While the idea of the offertory as a sacrifice is not mentioned by Melanchthon (the historic link of the offertory with the Eucharist had been heavily obscured by centuries of liturgical evolution by then), there is no reason why it could not be accepted as long as it is understood as a eucharistic sacrifice, not a propitiatory one. [UPDATE: Actually the idea of the offertory as the Eucharistic sacrifice is explicitly found in Martin Luther's Babylonian Captivity of the Church, as cited here. Undoubtedly Melanchthon was aware of this passage, even if he chose not to refer explicitly to it.]

Finally it is worth reemphasizing that Melanchthon and Luther both agree wholeheartedly with Dix that justification by faith alone and the evangelical understanding of the Gospel are flatly contradictory to any understanding of the eucharist as a propitiatory sacrifice whose merit can be applied to the living or the dead. They are, however, compatible with the understanding of the Eucharist as a eucharistic sacrifice, i.e. as an act of worship offered in thanksgiving. This eucharistic aspect is not so explicitly emphasized as the sacramental aspect, but it is well ensconced in the Augsburg Evangelical confessions, as well as in the current offertory hymns of our churches.

So one question is now, what the New Testament and early patristic evidence on this is: is the eucharist a propitiatory or eucharistic sacrifice? And can the understanding of the eucharist as a sacrament be coordinated in any sense with the sacrificial eating that seems demanded by the typology of the Old Testament, not to mention the expectations of humanity?

Why Do We Need to Eat Christ's Body?

Continued from here.

A common Reformed/revivalist response to the Augsburg Evangelical (Lutheran) understanding of the Real Presence is to ask "Why isn't a symbolic understanding of Jesus's statement 'This is My Body' sufficient?" To which the usual Evangelical answer is: "Because that's not what Jesus meant!" Fine enough; I agree. But despite that agreement, I think more is needed. As when people ask about women's ordination, a simple "God said so, so shut up!" answer is not enough. You've got to give a reason (I've made this point before.)

Which brings us back to Dix. As I said in my previous post, he says the Real Presence plays no role in Luther's Evangelical theology. Why? Because, he claims, justification by faith alone deprived it of any role, by removing the idea of a sacrificial meaning to the Mass/Eucharist. In other words the real presence is a meaningless theological doodad unless there it is part of a sacrificial action.

Although I think this is wrong, there is indeed an element of truth here. Why indeed do we need to eat Jesus's real Body and drink His real Blood, the same one that died and was shed for us on the cross? Human consensus supplies an answer: because one receives the benefit of a bloody sacrifice only when one eats the meat of the sacrificial victim.

Look at the rules for sacrifice given in Chu Hsi's Family Rituals, pp. 153-177. An essential part of all the meals is the consumption by the family of the foods offered to the ancestor. The food of the sacrifice is distributed to the congregants with these words:

The ancestors instruct me, the liturgist, to pass on abundant good luck to you filial descendants and calls you, filial descendants, to approach and receive riches from Heaven, have good harvest from the fields, and live a long life forever, without interruption (p. 164).

And in Mongolian, the word keshig which in other contexts means "the unmerited favor shown by a superior to an inferior," especially the favor of the emperor, the reception of which sends the loyal servant into transports of delight, means in other contexts the share of meat in a sacrifice, the reception of which confirms one's receipt of the benefits of the sacrifice and the membership in the congregation worshiping the deity or spirit concerned. As in a famous passage from the Secret History of the Mongols, when Genghis Khan's widowed mother is excluded from the sacrifice on the pretext that she arrived late (but really because rival queens wish to seize rule for their branch of the ruling family), she complains

How dare you leave me out from the grace/sacrificial meat (keshig) of the ancestors, from the reserved meat (bile'ür) and the sacrificial liquor (sarqud), thinking only that Yisugei Ba'atur [her late husband] has died and my sons have not yet grown big?

Today, among the Buddhist Mongols, blood sacrifices have fallen out of favor, but they are still practiced in the ancient cult of Genghis Khan. Owen Lattimore described Mongols rushing forward to receive their share of the sacrificial meat being distributed at one of the four annual sacrifices.

So if we assume this as a general principle of sacrifice, then we have a perfectly good answer to the Reformed question, "Why do we have to eat the Body and drink the Blood of Jesus?" The answer is "Because He is our sacrificial victim and in line with the universal human knowledge about sacrificial victims, one must eat of it to receive the unmerited grace of the sacrifice."

Now at this point, the Zwinglians are certainly shaking their heads at the grossness with which I make clear the pagan origin of the teaching of the Real Presence. And even to my mind comes the stern warning of Moses:

When the LORD thy God shall cut off the nations from before thee . . . Take heed to thyself that thou be not snared by following them . . . and that thou enquire not after their gods, saying, How did these nations serve their gods? even so will I do likewise. Thou shalt not do so unto the LORD thy God: for every abomination to the LORD, which he hateth, have they done unto their gods . . . .

But Scripture makes it just as clear that the Lord Himself ordained necessity of the application of the sacrificial victim to the body of the congregant who would worship. First of all we see that bloody sacrifice is the part of the common heritage of mankind (Genesis 4:4, 8:20-22). And in His own ordained cult, the consumption of the meat was intended to make atonement for Israel as was clear when, for an emergency, the meat was not consumed:

And Moses diligently sought the goat of the sin offering, and, behold, it was burnt: and he was angry with Eleazar and Ithamar, the sons of Aaron which were left alive, saying, "Wherefore have ye not eaten the sin offering in the holy place, seeing it is most holy, and God hath given it you to bear the iniquity of the congregation, to make atonement for them before the LORD? Behold, the blood of it was not brought in within the holy place: ye should indeed have eaten it in the holy place, as I commanded."

Likewise with the meat of the Passover and the smearing of things with blood; as Hebrews summarizes (9:22),

And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission.

Left unspoken, but implied, is the necessity physical application of the purifying sacrificial substance, in the old law the blood by sprinkling and the meat by consumption.

Most relevant is Paul's admonition in 1 Corinthians 10:

The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? For we being many are one bread, and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread. Behold Israel after the flesh: are not they which eat of the sacrifices partakers of the altar? What say I then? that the idol is any thing, or that which is offered in sacrifice to idols is any thing? But I say, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God: and I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils. Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of devils: ye cannot be partakers of the Lord's table, and of the table of devils.

What I want to note here is that Paul assumes an identity of procedure between the Christian church, the temple cult in Israel, and the pagan cults of Greece: consumption of the sacrificial offering results in receiving the benefits appropriate to the offering: communion with the living God, communion with superseded shadows of God, and communion with devils, respectively. The procedure (consumption of the victim) is the same, the result (communion/commensalism with the God to whom the sacrifice is offered) is generically the same, but differs specifically according to the differing nature of the God worshiped.

So we can make it a general spiritual law: To receive the benefits of a blood sacrifice and membership in the community formed by the blood sacrifice, one should consume the flesh of the sacrificial victim. Whether that is to your spiritual life or death depends not on the sacrificial procedure, but on the nature of the spiritual being whose favor is being won by the sacrifice.

UPDATE: As Eric Rasmusen points in the comment box on the post above, not all individual sacrifices will have the meat shared out. The Mosaic system is composed of several types of sacrifices, some (the burnt offering, and the sin and guilt offerings) of which are wholly destroyed, but others of which (the fellowship/peace offerings and the consecration offering) are consumed (cf. Lev. 1-8). The key point is, though, the system mandates the consumption of the sacrificial meat at specified points.

Another account of sacrifice can be found in the Iliad in Book 1, where the Achaeans make an offering to Apollo to avert the plague sent on account of the priest Chryses whose daughter they had raped. After restoring her, they pray:

And when all had made prayer and flung down the scattering barley
First they drew back the victims' head and slaughtered them and skinned them,
And cut away the meat from the thighs and wrapped them in fat,
Making a double fold, and laid shreds of flesh upon them.
The old man [the priest Chryses] burned these on a cleft stick and poured the gleaming
Wine over, while the young men with forks in their hand stood about him.
But when they had burned the thigh pieces and tasted the vitals,
They cut up all the remainder into pieces and spitted them
And roasted all carefully and took off the pieces.
Then after they had finished the work and got the feast ready
They feasted, nor was any man's hunger denied a fair portion (vv. 458ff.)

In addition it should also be noted that in all these cultures, blood offerings are not the only form of sacrifice. Sacrifice of vegetable food (barley sprinklings in Greece, rice in China, the grain offering -- flour and oil -- and shewbread of Leviticus 2) and of liquor are found in all. In all of these cases, a portion or first fruits is presented to the spirit being worshiped, and the rest is then eaten. In Israel, the shewbread was regularly eaten by the priests -- see Mark 2:25ff. All of these things: blood offerings, unbloody offerings, and of course prayer and the proper attitude are part of the human sacrificial system from the beginning with Cain and Abel.

(Continued here)

The Sacrifice of the Mass

Despite the vast size of Dom Gregory Dix's The Shape of the Liturgy (for previous posts on which see here, here, here, and here), the key point can be summed up this way: the most essential word in the Words of Institution is not is but do, not this is my body, but do this in anamnesis/remembrance of me.

His story can be summarized rather simply: the original ante-Nicene liturgy focused with admirable economy on the action of the Eucharist, doing the meal as Jesus had commanded. In the post-Nicene period from AD 325 to 800, this simple action was elaborated. Much was gained in this period: theology of sacrifice was developed more explicitly, the Eucharist was adapted to sanctify all Christian times and circumstances, while still maintaining its essential nature, both 'puritan' (about which Dix is surprisingly positive) and ceremonial aesthetics received due recognition. But some valuable things were lost: the eschatological element (the idea that the Eucharist is the in-breaking of the age to come) was replaced by an over-emphasis on the remembrance of the historical facts of Christ's Passion. The theology of the Eucharistic sacrificial action sometimes degenerated a crude viewpoint of the Eucharist as a repetition of the Passion. The tight connection of the offertory to the Eucharist which gave an explicit role for the laity to do something, not just communicate, was likewise lost. The excess of devotional language to some degree obscured the central action, although the Roman church stood like a bulwark against this.

After about AD 400, a much more dangerous distortion (according to Dix) developed. As lay communion declined, as the presbyters/elders became priests and the bishops/overseers became feudal lords, the mass was transformed from something that the church does together to something that the officiant (almost always now a presbyter, often serving alone) does and the church observes. For the laity the focus was now not doing the Eucharist, but watching the priest as he did it, meditating on the Passion that occurred in Israel a thousand years ago and worshiping the result: the Body and Blood of Christ made present. Devotion began to focus on the adoration of the consecrated host, not on communicating, and still less on the church as a whole joining in the Eucharist. The is had replaced the do, and seeing replaced participating.

When the Reformation and Counter-Reformation came, neither understood the issue. Both continued to focus on the is rather than the do. The Zwinglians (the only coherent Reformers in Dix's view) made the Eucharist an optional occasion for meditating on the Passion, explicitly reducing the laity's role to merely reverent attention (the triumph of the puritan aesthetic) and incoporating the suggested late medieval devotional literature into the very words of the liturgy itself, thus wounding fatally the true focus of the Eucharist: the church together doing this in anamnesis/remembrance. Eventually the Eucharist virtually disappears from devotional life and the Protestants revert to a kind of 'catechumen' spirituality. The catholics (a word he consistently leaves uncapitalized, along with christian, jewish, etc.; how clever an evasion is that!) continued the late medieval emphasis on remembering the Passion and worshiping the "is my body." But the retention of the liturgy and the theology of the Eucharist as sacrifice left the Shape of the Liturgy intact as the unspoken framework of Christian life, ready for more conscious recovery as scholarship illuminates the ante-Nicene theology (i.e. as people read and assimilate Dix's book.)

Where do Luther and the Lutherans fit into this picture? Surely we are an is people, not do people, yet presumably the Eucharist is important to us as well? Well, actually not; being an anomaly in his theory, Dix magisterially banishes us into the realm of historical mistakes. Putting aside his comments on the Luther = Hitler argument (a tad oversimplified, but at points remarkably insightful, he concludes on p. 636), Lutherans will be puzzled by statements like this: "Faith for Luther is always not in Christ as redeemer, but faith in my redemption by Him . . . The whole process [of partaking in Communion] is self regarding and self-generated as Luther presents it" (p. 635). How exactly Luther morphed into Jonathan Edwards is a puzzle here. Here is -- complete and unabridged -- his summary of Lutheran eucharistic theology since 1546:

It is perhaps not surprising that Luther's doctrine of the objective reality of our reception of our Lord's Body and Blood in the eucharist slowly declined in precision within the Lutheran churches. It is based simply on the literal understanding of the words of institution and logically unrelated and unnecessary to the Lutheran doctrine as a whole. (!!!) It kept its place in the Lutheran doctrinal confessions, but it received and could receive no adequate expression in the Lutheran liturgies. When the bulk of the German Lutherans were united with the German Calvinists in the Prussian State Church in the early nineteenth century it was in the result the Calvinist eucharistic doctrine which prevailed, though the question was formally left open for every communicant to decide for himself.

That it! That's all! Lutheran theology is just a evanescent wave in Luther's deluded brain! Move along, folks, move along, nothing to see here.

I think there's more to say about the matter. Future posts will address the natural theology of sacrifice, in what respect the Eucharist is or is not a sacrifice, the do and the anamnesis, and the place of the Sacrament of the Altar within the Lutheran theology and the Letter to the Hebrews.

UPDATE: Continued here.

Modern Lutheran "Eucharistic Prayers" (sort of)

As Chris Jones has pointed out, my account of the Eucharistic prayer in the post below was very, very oversimplified. (I've slightly remedied that in an updated version.) By the Reformation, the prayers in the canon (“official rule”) in the Roman Catholic liturgy between the Sanctus (“Holy, holy, holy”) and the Words of Institution, at which the consecration of the elements takes place, were quite long, and focused on the Mass as a propitiatory sacrifice for the living and the dead. (The full text and actions of the Tridentine Mass, which is post-Luther, but gives you the idea, is here, a walk-through starting with the Preface, i.e. beginning at “The Lord be with you,” is here.)

When Luther reformed the liturgy, he retained the Preface, Sanctus, and Benedictus (“Blessed is He who comes . . .") but eliminated the canon of the Mass entirely, leaving only the Words of Institution.

Later Lutheran hymnals have, however, restored something in the place of the Canon, although of course, very different in content. Here are three from Lutheran Worship (the LCMS's current hymnal):

That in Divine Service III (roughly designed on the pattern of Luther’s 1526 German Mass), is an admonition, not a prayer:

I exhort you in Christ that you give attention to the Testament of Christ in true faith, and above all to take to heart the words with which Christ presents His body and blood to us in forgiveness; that you take note of and give thanks for the boundless love that He showed us when He saved us from the wrath of God, sin, death, and hell by His blood; and that you then externally receive the bread and wine, that is, His body and blood, as a guarantee and pledge. Let us then in His name, according to His command, and with His own words administer and receive the testament.

Then follows the Lord’s Prayer and the Words of Institution, Sanctus, and distribution.

Divine Service I is basically a slight modernization of the liturgy of the LCMS’s famous “red hymnal," The Lutheran Hymnal (famous because every old Missouri Synod Lutheran grew up on it. For converts like me it’s just folklore):

Lord of heaven and earth, we praise and thank you for having had mercy on those whom you created, sending your only begotten Son into our flesh to bear our sin and be our Savior. With repentant joy we receive the salvation accomplish for us by the all-availing sacrifice of His body and blood on the cross.

Gathered in the name and remembrance of Jesus, we beg you, O Lord, to forgive, renew, and strengthen us with your Word and Spirit. Grant us faithfully to eat His body and drink His blood as He bids us to do in His testament. Hear us as we pray in His name and as He has taught us.

Then follows the Lord’s Prayer and the Words of Institution, Agnus Dei (“Lamb of God”), and distribution.

Finally Divine Service II is the most recent and strongly influenced by the rediscovery of the ancient ante-Nicene liturgies, as well as Vatican II's modernization of language (“and with your spirit” turns to “and also with you,” etc.) The influence of the scholarly re-discovery of the ante-Nicene language and spirit is especially strong in the "Eucharistic prayer":

Blessed are you, Lord of heaven and earth, for you have had mercy on us children of men and given your only-begotten Son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. We give you thanks for the redemption you have prepared for us through Jesus Christ. Send your Holy Spirit into our hearts that He may establish in us a living faith and prepare us joyfully to remember our Redeemer and receive Him who comes to us in His body and blood.

Then follows the Lord’s Prayer and the Words of Institution, Agnus Dei (“Lamb of God”), and distribution.

Perhaps it is because this last prayer is what is used in Faith Lutheran, but I find it much superior to the other two, in the lack of defensiveness (it is no longer has the air of a clenched-teeth “Make sure they understand it in a Lutheran way!”), in the accent on the church being in the presence of the Christ, and in the emphasis on joyful liberation from bondage (eternal life, redemption, Redeemer). The call for the Holy Spirit to descend not on the elements, but on the church to prepare and unify her and bring fitly her into the presence of God is a conscious reflection of Hippolytus's prayer, which after the words of institution concludes (Dix's translation, Shape of the Liturgy, p. 158):

Now therefore doing the 'anamnesis' [remembrance] of His death and resurrection, we offer to Thee the bread and cup, making eucharist/thanksgiving to Thee because Thou hast made us worthy to stand before Thee and minister as priests to Thee. And we pray Thee that Thou wouldst grant to all who partake to be made one, that they may be fulfilled with the Holy Spirit for the confirmation of their faith in truth; that we may praise and glorify Thee through Thy Servant Jesus Christ, through Whom honour and glory be unto Thee with the Holy Spirit in Thy holy church, now and forever and world without end.

Originally posted at Here We Stand

UPDATE I: As Bill Tighe (see the comments thread at Here We Stand) points out the prayer in one Divine Service II was first composed for the 1942 Church of Sweden liturgy.

UPDATE II: As Chris Jones points out, the extant texts of Hippolytus's prayer actually have an epiclesis, calling on the Holy Spirit to descend on the elements and transform them into the body and blood of Christ. Dix argued that this was an interpollation, added in the fourth century after such a theology became de rigeur, due to the influence of Cyril of Jerusalem and Syria generally. Other dispute this and contend rather that only the African (Tunisia, Algeria) liturgies didn't have an epiclesis. For my part, I can't see why if the ante-Nicene liturgy did have an epiclesis the Roman church, notoriously conservative in liturgy, would not have kept it in full vigor, as the true moment of consecration. Dix's hypothesis, that they added an epiclesis in vestigial form in the fourth century as a concession to fashion, but didn't like it and so stubbornly held to their Roman-African emphasis on the words of institution as the moment of consecration, seems much more plausible. But it seems to be a point on which scholarship is divided.

The Shape of the Liturgy

In drawing near to the end of Dom Gregory Dix's Shape of the Liturgy (only 150 pages or so to go! - - more on Dix here, here, and here), I would like to summarize his conclusion, using the great facilities of color provided by Blogger (if you haven't noticed already, I like to use color). Let me first note what Dix calls the primitve structure of the liturgy. First is the division into Synaxis or Liturgy of the Word and Eucharist or Liturgy of the Sacrament. There primitive structure (dating back at least to the later second century AD) is as follows (p. 434; italics is for actions, [] mark actions or words not performed or said in Lutheran liturgy:

Synaxis

A. Greeting and Response
B. Lections interspersed with
C. Psalmody
D. The Bishop's Sermon
[E. Dismissal of the Catechumens]*
F. Intercessory Prayers of the Faithful
(G. Dismissal of the Faithful if no Eucharist was to be held)

*The early church was even stricter than WELS/ELS about prayer: not only could a Christian not attend prayer by those outside the church, outsiders were not allowed to attend the church's prayers.

Eucharist

A. Greeting and Response
[B. Kiss of Peace]
C. Offertory
D. Eucharistic Prayer
[E. Fraction]
F. Communion
[G. Dismissal]

Now I will present a color-coded outline of the liturgy used in our church (LW's Divine Service, setting I), with each rubric colored as to its antiquity. The color will be given according to its first appearance in any Christian liturgy, with notes as to where and when it spread. Place terms that are not obvious are Syria (Jerusalem and Antioch), Africa (modern Tunisia), West (Rome, Spain, and southern France), and East (Syria and Egypt). The periods are:

I. Ante-Nicene, AD 200-325
II. The fourth century, AD 325-410 (Nicene Creed to sack of Rome)
III. The break up of the empire AD 410-800 (sack of Rome to Charlemagne)
IV. Middle Ages, AD 800-1521 (Charlemagne to Reformation)
V. Lutheran (AD 1521 to present in the Lutheran church)

Again, actions are in italics, and those no longer performed marked by []

Synaxis

Opening Hymn
Invocation
General confession and absolution

Introit
Kyries
Hymn of Praise/Gloria (East > West)

The Lord be with you . . .
Prayer of the Day/Collect

Lections/Scripture Lessons
Gradual

Hymn of the Day
Sermon

[Dismissal of catechumens] (disappeared in West c. AD 500-600)

Creed (Antioch > Byzantium > Spain & France > Rome; position very variable)

Prayer of the Church

Eucharist

Offertory
Offertory Hymn (originally a psalm chant)

The Lord be with you . . .
Lift up your hearts . . .
Let us give thanks . . .

Preface (It is truly good, right, and salutary . . .)
Sanctus (Egypt > Syria > West, replacing older thanksgiving prayers)
Prayer (changes, in fourth century, basically eliminated in Reformation, later revived)
Lord's Prayer (Syria > Africa > West)
Institution narrative

[Fraction] (rendered symbolic with advent of communion wafers, abolished in Reformation)
Peace of the Lord . . . and [Kiss of Peace] (originally before offertory, moved here in Africa > Rome)

Lamb of God/Agnus Dei
Communion
Distribution Hymns

Post-communion hymn
Prayer of Thanksgiving (Egypt > West)
[Dismissal]
Blessing (originally after dismissal, as the celebrant left)

Final note: This is a very draft sketch, by a mere amateur. If any readers have any corrections, I would be very happy to hear from them.

Originally posted at Here We Stand