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.

I Am a Melvin

I just wish I knew what it meant. Read this and see why it matters. Otherwise, I seem to be a normal human being.

And let me add one to the list, since Josh doesn't seem to have much experience with liberal or liberalizing liturgical churches.

Actually believe the things you say when you read aloud the Bible and the Creed, in simple, unconvoluted ways, without a hundred qualifications.

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

Cyril of Jerusalem's Purpose-Driven Eucharist

One of the themes stressed by Dom Gregory Dix (more here and here) was that innovation in the first millennium of the Christian liturgy pretty much always came from Syria (taken in the broadest sense, from Antioch east to the Tigris and south down to Jerusalem). From there it spreads to Egypt and Byzantium, and thence often to first Spain and then France. Last of all, the innovation would reach Rome, the most conservative (not to say stodgy) of the early churches (see e.g. p. 432). And the most striking burst of this liturgical (and theological) originality came from Jerusalem in the second half of the fourth century. The newly legalized church began making the pilgrimage to Jerusalem and there the bishop Cyril (d. AD 386) arranged a new form of worship for the church in a city which had a considerable proportion of monks and domestic ascetics from all over the empire as well as throngs of transient pilgrims visiting the holy sites -- a city whose main industry was already religion (p. 328). From there the returning pilgrims carried these innovations back to their home towns, pushing their bishops to get with the times and adopt the modern new forms of worship (p. 441n.).

One of Dix’s many wonderfully illuminating sidelights is his sketch of this Cyril of Jerusalem (pp. 350-353). Dix seems to like him, although with a shade of condescension, that reminds me of how Mark Noll might write about Bill Hybels: “He had just those qualities of earnest sympathy with the religion of unlearned people, combined with a real if not very profound theological understanding of doctrine . . . He was one of those men who, though without the exceptional religious power of an Athanasius, yet succeeded in crystallizing into definite and clear expression the religious ideas and aspirations of the better sort of average christian in their own time. Under the appearance of pioneering, such men are . . . often more closely in contact with the mind of the coming generation than . . . their own. There are half a dozen topics . . . on which Cyril spoke . . . with a plainness and simplicity which are almost unique in the extant christian literature of the next twenty years but which can then be paralleled a dozen times over in the writers of the following generation” (p. 352).

Although Dix goes out of his way not to stress overly Cyril’s innovation, the phrases he uses speak for themselves: “The church of Jerusalem in the fourth century is ‘very advanced’ and S. Cyril is ‘a very extreme man,’ with no overwhelming reverence for old fashioned churchmanship” (p. 200). And he says, “I hope it is not reading too much into the evidence to suggest that the men of Cyril’s own generation, anti-Arian stalwarts who . . . had been brought up in the old ways -- ‘on the prayer book’ so to speak -- were not altogether free from misgivings about his innovations. Perhaps, too, they remembered the old scandal about Cyril’s consecration as the candidate of the Arians . . . It was when men whom he really represented, the men of the next generation, began in their turn to succeed to the episcopal thrones, that his ideas began to be put into practice in other churches” (p. 353).

From a Lutheran point of view, his innovations are occasionally good, sometimes indifferent, but often bad, sometimes terribly so. Some of the more harmless ones concern matters of ceremonial: the introduction or at least elaboration into a formal ritual of the officiant’s hand washing before the Eucharist (p. 124), the introduction of the Lord’s Prayer into the Eucharist (p. 130), the use of vestments to increase the splendor of worship (pp. 350, 399 -- this innovation didn’t last; the current vestments are simply the late Roman version of the business suit preserved almost unchanged), lamps (pp. 350, 417), etc.

More important was his creation of Holy Week. Before him, Good Friday, Easter, Ascension, the whole deal, were celebrated together on Easter day. Cyril separated them out and keyed them to services at the various holy sites in Jerusalem. Multiple eucharists on Maundy Thursday, no eucharist on Good Friday and Holy Saturday were his arrangements. As a result, Dix argues, the previous eschatological emphasis -- the Eucharist as the foretaste of the feast to come -- was replaced by a historical emphasis on the life of Christ (pp. 348-349). Easter lost its ante-Nicene wholeness and became a celebration of the resurrection by itself, not of the whole story of liberation from sin and the devil.

But where Cyril’s innovations had the most important (and from the Lutheran point of view, deletrious) effect was on the celebration and theology of the Eucharist. He was the first to bring the language of fear and dread into the sacrament (p. 200). He may have been responsible for the elimination of the laity’s role in presenting the offertory (p. 438 n.), and in his description of the liturgy is the first to treat it as a “a monologue by the celebrant, in which the people have nothing to do but listen” (p. 442). Not surprisingly, then, Jerusalem in his time is where we first find a veil between the officiant and the laity (p. 481), precursor to the iconostasis taken from Byzantine theater. He was the first to introduce a commemoration of the living and dead directly into the Eucharistic Prayer, and thus explicitly treat the Eucharist itself as a sacrifice for the living and dead (pp. 199, 200, 442-43, 499; previously names of the living were listed if at all at the offertory and the dead only at special funerary eucharists). His Eucharistic prayer is the first to explicitly call on the Holy Spirit to change the elements into the Body and Blood and the first to omit entirely His role in preparing the hearts of the communicants to receive the Body and Blood to their benefit (pp. 198-199). As a result he “differs . . . from the whole pre-Nicene church” in changing the previous view in which the eucharist was “emphatically an action of Christ, the Word, the Second Person of the Trinity. . . He is the active agent in the eucharist who offers the church as found in Him.” In Cyril’s new theology, by contrast, “Christ plays only a passive part in the eucharist. He is simply the divine Victim Whose Body and Blood are ‘made’ by the action of the Holy Ghost, that the earthly church may offer Him to the Father ‘in propitiation for our sins’” (p. 278). It is not surprising that the Catholic Encyclopedia cites a passage of the Eucharist in Cyril’s Catechesis (cited also in Dix, pp. 188-196) and comments (approvingly) that it “reads like a modern prayer-book" (it's a long article, do a search with that phrase to find it)-- the accent is indeed on modern, since nothing like it can be found in any earlier liturgy.

When I look at articles like this, by confident, popular, dynamic "leaders" in the church in tune with the new era, who treat the old liturgy and hymnody as something so dead it no longer even merits much opposition, I am somehow reminded of Cyril of Jerusalem.

Originally posted at Here We Stand