#i LOVE talking about communion and sacramental theology

[rowenabean]

Guys I get to talk about the Eucharist at church probably next week I am so excited!

[givemearmstopraywith]

I often find myself having mixed feelings about my relationship with christianity. I love who god and jesus are and what the bible stands for and its teachings, but I feel guilty for not fitting in at church (I’ve been to multiple churches growing up, and even now at my family’s current one I still feel like an outcast- which is funny considering that’s who churches are for). I want it to be enough for me to just love god but I feel I can’t do that, especially since my current church teaches that you can’t have a relationship with christ if you don’t go to church. I see god’s people in church and I feel so disconnected with them, and I wonder if I’m doing something wrong and if I really *can’t* have a relationship with him if I’m not like them

churches have evolved to be about power. post-reformational, enlightenment developments in the church as an ecumenical body, on one side, opened more readily to the laity the mysteries of church, scripture, and sacrament. but this opening was simultaneously inoculated against any revolutionary impulse that might be ignited by the idea of a personal relationship with God by the institution– one which is about power, which is patriarchal and authoritative. it instituted an anesthetizing repression in which the personal and private element of faith that had once been part of devotion for clergy was not opened up to the laity but dissolved entirely. this element of personal faith constituted an unusualness, an autonomy, of erotic impulse too dangerous to allowed to proliferate in civilization at large unless it could be commodified, unless it was exploitable, made people submissive and easily persuaded. an example of this is the slave bible, which removed passages about equality and freedom from bondage in bibles intended for use by enslaved africans in the british west indies, in order to prevent them from having any idea that God, not man, was the ultimate authority: that anyone could have a relationship with God that was personal, private, empowering, and ultimately revolutionary.

conservative christianity, both protestant and catholic, responds to independent and personal faith as a kind of fetish rather than as a legitimate religious expression. i'm not saying the church you attend is conservative, but this is a fairly universal tack in all churches, because all churches are built on hierarchical authorities and require human forms of submission to that authority to remain vital and exert control. i do not hate the church, i love it, but i also recognize that it often stands more as an impediment for people gaining a closeness with God more than it acts as a means of bringing them closer to him.

in matthew 18:6, jesus says:

if any of you put a stumbling-block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were fastened around your neck and you were drowned in the depth of the sea.

in this passage, christ is specifically talking about children. but spiritually, we are all and are always children. i approach primarily theology through psychoanalysis, and one thing about children is that in their development they are disposed to see themselves and their mother- their nurturer- as part of them. separation is learned. maturation is learning how to be a part of and connect to the world while neither consuming it wholly for oneself nor being absolutely consumed by it. as simone weil says, to eat without being eaten. our spirituality, our connection to God, is similar: we recognize that we are made in God's image a priori, we may recognize our communion with him as private and beautiful, and separation is learned. we are made in God's image and our separation from him comes after: it is a human institution. all separations, not only in terms of personal relationships but in terms of christian conservatism, militancy, and nationalism. all separations are learned and human.

but simone weil also says: every separation is a link. our separation from God is our link to him, because we are separated from God but God is also separated from us. and our separation from other people is their separation from us. our innate state of being, our longing as human beings, is a longing for connection. but it is precisely this separation that is our communion. maybe the church you currently attend is not a good spiritual home for you, but that does not mean that you don't have a spiritual home. christ spent much time alone: he spent forty days in the desert, but a day is a thousand years to God: he has spent an eternity away from his creation, made in his image, whom he looked at and saw was good as he is good. the hebrew bible says tov, not only good as in physically good and beautiful to look at, or good as in virtuous, but good as in a fertile land, as in good gold. intrinsically good. creatively good. the first thing God asks of man is a question of companionship: humanity is capable of creating communion because that is what God does. but first, humanity- and God- were lonely.

your loneliness, your sense that you do not belong, is as profoundly a part of God as you are, as goodness is. don't be afraid of it and don't let how others behave convince you that you deserve loneliness. (God did not accept loneliness nor think we deserved it: that is the story of christ.) you will find a place meant for you. for now, lean on God: he is leaning on you. you will find your place, your heart, your love. christ also felt disconnected from his own community: a prophet is never recognized in his own town. you'll find your way. i love you.

[aion-rsa]

Midnight Mass: It’s Time to Talk About That Monstrous Twist

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This article contains huge spoilers for Midnight Mass. So help me God if you read this without watching the series first…

The version of Midnight Mass that Netflix advertised still would have made for a compelling horror series. 

An isolated, insular island community? Great. A young, charismatic preacher suddenly coming to town to shake things up? Perfect. That preacher proving capable of performing minor miracles? Love it, no notes! 

Of course, as viewers who have watched at least four episodes of the seven-episode series now know, Midnight Mass has one extra supernatural twist in mind that elevates an already interesting story to true mind-blowing status. Critics were understandably asked to keep this aspect of the show a secret before it premiered. So please indulge me as I finally slay these embargo demons and get it off my chest.

Vampires. Vampires! V-A-M-P-I-R-E-S. VAMPIRES! VAMPIRES VAMPIRES VAMPIRES! Literally like Dracula. And Nosferatu. Anne Rice’s Lestat. Stephen King’s ‘Salem’s Lot. Vampires. VAMPIRES, BRO, VAMPIRES.

For creator Mike Flanagan, a filmmaker influenced by all manner of classic horror, bringing the fanged bloodsuckers to life was a long time coming.

“My favorite vampire movie is (Werner) Herzog’s Nosferatu,” Flanagan told Den of Geek and other outlets prior to the premiere of Midnight Mass. “That film is the vampire story as high art. I also adore From Dusk Till Dawn. I read Dracula young enough for it to really burrow in for me. And I read ‘Salem’s Lot early enough to color an enormous amount of work that I’ll do for the rest of my life.”

Midnight Mass’s depiction of the mythological undead beast and how it can neatly fit into Christian dogma is one of the most satisfying horror twists in years. Now that the truth is out, let’s discuss Midnight Mass and how it conflates vampires and biblical angels. 

Mistaking a Vampire for an Angel

The interesting thing about Midnight Mass is that it clearly takes place in a universe where the average person has no knowledge of what a vampire is. Even Sarah Gunning (Annabeth Gish), arguably the most well-read person on Crockett Island, has to do some research into “porphyria cutanea tarda” (a.k.a. the real life “vampire disease”). This is similar to The Walking Dead’s approach to zombies, in which the “z” word and George A. Romero’s name are never spoken. This strategy in Midnight Mass allows for a truly fascinating case of mistaken identity.

While viewers immediately know that the creature Monsignor John Pruitt (Hamish Linklater) encounters is a vampire, he believes it to be an angel. Given how studied Pruitt is in the Bible and Cathloic theology, it’s entirely understandable why he would think a tall, muscular, bald-headed beast with fangs and leathery wings is an angel. As it turns out, the angels of the Old Testament can be truly terrifying. 

Not all angels are soft-featured human-like creatures with fluffy white bird wings. Some, like Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones are designed to intimidate God’s enemies. In the New Testament’s Book of Luke, an angel visits Zechariah and immediately asks him to “be not afraid” because the angel can see the poor guy absolutely shaking in his boots upon his arrival. Angels being terrifying is even something of an Internet meme, with users contrasting the phrase “be not afraid” with images of truly monstrous beasts. 

Not only does Pruitt’s vampire have the vague appearance of an angel, it also apparently holds the secrets to eternal life as promised in the Bible. By merely drinking some of the “angel’s” blood, a good Christian can live forever just like God says. Does that blood-drinking sacrament sound familiar? It did to Mike Flanagan.

“In Bible school I used to say ‘if the wine turns into Jesus’s blood literally and we’re drinking it so that we can live forever … that seems like a short leap to vampiric myth.’”

Of course, drinking the angel’s fluids in the case of Midnight Mass also leads to some unwanted side effects like a thirst for blood and extreme sensitivity to sunlight. Thankfully, good ol’ Bev Keane always has a Bible quote ready to go for that. When read through the proper perspective, the Holy Bible may as well be the original vampire story. 

The Rules of Vampirism

“The thing that I love about the vampire as a cinematic tool is how malleable it is,” Flanagan says. “We all agree that there is no canon. There are no rules. In fact, part of the joy is seeing what rules people cherry pick as they approach a vampire story.”

All depictions of vampires are indeed quite different. Vampires can range from the classic Stoker-ian monster to Twilight’s nigh-invulnerable sparkle bois. Midnight Mass’s version of the vampire leans towards the classic, albeit with some tweaks. In terms of appearance, The Angel (as we will be calling Midnight Mass’s O.G. vampire for simplicity’s sake) has a more bestial look like Nosferatu rather than an aristocratic one like Count Dracula or Anne Rice’s creations. 

“We winked at (Nosferatu the Vampyr actor) Klaus Kinski a few times when we designed our guy,” Flanagan says.

Though the Angel resembles Nosferatu in appearance, its vulnerabilities owe more to Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles. Religious iconography does not appear to hurt the Angel nor its thralls. Traditional human weapons like bullets or blades also do no harm (at least not mortally). These vampires are, however, tremendously susceptible to both fire and sunlight. Exposure to the latter for even a few seconds is enough to kill the Angel and his many acolytes. 

Read more

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Like in Rice’s works as well, the path to creating a new vampire is quite simple. Step 1: Drink its blood. Step 2: Die. In Dracula and ‘Salem’s Lot, the method of vampire creation is merely being bit by one, zombie-style. Rice and Flanagan’s approach is quite a bit more intentional and interesting. It also opens the door for perhaps Midnight Mass’s most ingenious storytelling quirk: communion. John Pruitt is able to get nearly the entirety of Crockett Island to become a vampire by spiking the communion wine with his buddy’s blood. Then, all that remains is for them to poison themselves to death, Jonestown-style. 

The mass “resurrection” scene in which the congregation awakes as their new vampire selves also provides some insight to just how hard it is to contain the vampire’s overwhelming hunger. Riley Flynn was able to resist it when he turned because John Pruitt babysat him like a psychedelic mushroom guide. The plan for the rest of the congregation was to have their babysitters as well but that didn’t quite work out. Still, Riley’s dad Ed makes it clear to his wife Annie, that even if it’s hard to resist the call for blood, it’s not impossible. 

“When I saw them at the church, I thought it was something they really couldn’t help. Like something impossible not to do. But it isn’t, Annie,” he says.

Maybe if more vampires were like Ed Flynn, a whole island full of vampires wouldn’t be too bad of a thing in the first place. 

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

How to Defeat a Vampire

While every vampire story presents its own unique take on the creature, the answer on how to defeat a vampire is usually the same: by doing it together.

“We poor humans only have so much that we can give,” Flanagan says. “We’re ill-equipped as individuals to make any kind of meaningful stand. The only way evil in the world can be brought down is through collective effort. That’s something Stoker understands inherently. It’s clearly something King understands.”

Alongside the aforementioned Bram Stoker and Stephen King, Flanagan presents a small team of humans at story’s end who will do what it takes to defeat evil, even if it means dying in the process. Erin Greene (Kate Siegel), Dr. Sarah Gunning, Sheriff Hassan (Rahul Kohli), Annie Flynn (Kristin Lehman), Warren Flynn (Igby Rigney), and Leeza Scarborough (Annarah Cymone) are the six residents of Crockett Island brave enough to try to take down the Angel. All but two (Warren and Leeza) die. They do succeed in eliminating the immediate threat on Crockett Island but it’s possible the Angel made it away to suck blood another day, damaged wings and all.

What’s interesting about Midnight Mass’s “final crew” is that six appears to be the magic number when it comes to taking down a vampire. Stoker’s Dracula has six heroes: Jonathan Harker, Mina Harker nèe Murray, Arthur Holmwood (Lord Godalming), John Seward, Quincey Morris, and Abraham Van Helsing (of which, only poor American cowboy Quincey Morris dies). King’s ‘Salem’s Lot also has six: Ben Mears, Matt Burke, Susan Norton, Mark Petrie, Jimmy Cody, and Father Callahan (of which, decidedly more than one of them die). This strange bit of arithmancy is something we asked Flanagan about.

“The number was certainly not intentional,” he says. “Once it was clear that Riley was not going to be carrying the torch to the end it really was about asking ‘who are the characters who seem in the very beginning to be at a disadvantage and how do we empower them in the end?’ This was gonna be played out by Sarah Gunning, Sheriff Hassan, and everyone else who would get to just give a little piece.”

Considering that Erin and company were outnumbered about 117 to six, it was a pretty good showing for Crockett Island’s last humans standing.

All seven episodes of Midnight Mass are available to stream on Netflix now.

The post Midnight Mass: It’s Time to Talk About That Monstrous Twist appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[daughterofmaryam]

Being a progressive catholic online is very difficult for me.

I have noticed that thanks to my faith journey, but it seems like that catholic spaces on social media are all very predominantly usamericans. This is not a bad things on it self, but as an italian the catholic experience is very different: it seems to me that majority of americans catholic are all trads which is something that is so not so huge here in Europe, or not the biggest component.

Nothing bad in wanting to partecipate in more traditional rituals - I am too very intrigued by the concept of veiling, for example, but too scared to try it out - but lots of the times, trads are very easy on shouting out stuff like "eretic" or "cafeteria catholic" and let's say it's not the most welcoming and not judgemental thing to say. Especially to people interested in learning more or wanting to convert.

I had a very difficult faith journey - a journey I am still on: I was baptized catholic, I considered becoming a lutheran for years, spent three years as an atheist (even if I never called me that, it was what I was) and then I started rediscovering catholicism. So, in addiction to reading the Gospels, talking to my priest and trying to find a spiritual father, I went online with high hope to find more people like me, that could understand my struggles and, since we're catholic, not judge me for that.

Instead I found a community that was easy on offending others, pointing out eachother faults and insulting their faith siblings for simply having questions or disagreements. Let's say that it made me want to leave catholicism behind a second time and never look back.

What helped me was my curiosity, my desire to understand and deeper my spirituality and the love for Christ and his message.

I am now comfortable in my spiritual skin. I am a moderate progressive catholic. I aspire to learn and study theology. I love everything about the early church. After Holy Communion, my favourite sacrament is confession. I adore Saint Francis of Assisi. Martyrs intrigue me. I would love to veil. I am what in the USA would be considered both a prolife and prochoice. I dress modestly. I have always my crucifix with me.

I am not a "classic definition" of catholic and I hope that people like me will have a better internet experience in the future.

So please, let's all not judge eachother. Faith is not a trad vs progressive debate. Faith is staying united in Christ and uplifting eachother.

Love is the most important thing. God bless you all 💕

[ironwoman359]

Can you explain the different beliefs of the different dominations of Christians? Like, the big differences I mean.

Well, I can’t accurately tell you what denomination neccessarily believes what, as I only really have first hand experience with two, but I can tell you what those different beliefs would be. A good way to find out what a specific denomination believes about an issue is ot look at their official website, but also, individual churches and congregations may hold different views than the official stance of the denomination they’re a part of, as many Methodist (i think it was) churches did when the Methodist leadership doubled down on their anti-LGBT stance. With that being said, here are some of the different teachings you may find across denominations:

Catholic vs. Protestant: 

While all Christians believe God to be Sovreign, the Catholic church tends to take reverence for God to the point of nigh unapproachability. When Catholics pray to saints, they are asking the saint to take their petitions before God in their stead, while a Protestant would just ask God directly. When Catholics go to confessional, they are confessing their sins to a priest and asking him to present them before God and ask forgiveness, while a Protestant would confess to God and ask for forgiveness directly. In general, Catholic churches tend to be more ritualistic (though there are protestant churches like that too, lutherans, for instance) and approach God with less familiarity than Protestant Churches. 

Calvinist vs. Wesleyan: 

In Protestant belief, there are two main schools of thought you’re likely to find, Calvinism and Wesleyanism. The differences between them get into very academic langauge that’s sometimes hard to explain, but I’ll do my best to explain. The big stickler of disagreement comes in the ideas of “Unconditional Election ” and “Irresistable Grace.” 

Undoncitional Election refers to the teaching that before God created the world, He in His infinite knowledge pre-selceted those who would be saved from sin and who would be condemed to the just punishment for their sins. 

Wesleyans, on the other hand, believe that Jesus’s atonement was for all people. Yes, God in His omnipotence knows who will and will not accpet His grace, but He still leaves it to the individual’s free will to make that decision. 

Irresistable Grace teaches that to those God has pre-selected for salvation, there is no resisting the call of the Holy Spirit. 

Wesleyans, since they believe that anybody could be saved, that the pull of the Holy Spirit is not irresistable, as humanity has been given the free will to accept or reject salvation. 

Another more minor disagreement between Calvinsim and Wesleyanism is the “once saved, always saved” argument. 

Since Cavlinists believe in Unconditional Election, they also believe in “Perseverance of the Saints,” which is the belief that if you are Saved you cannot ever lose your faith (you also don’t necessarily have to be a Calvinist to believe that once you are saved you can’t ever lose that salvation). 

Wesleyan teachings, on the other hand, state that Salvation can be lost, as continued salvation is conditional upon continued faith. Aka, someone who once had a strong and steadfast faith would have been saved at that point in their life, but if they lose their faith or walk away from it at some point, they have lost that salvation (though the arms of God are always open to welcome them back). 

The other points of Calvinism and Wesleyanism don’t necessarily contradict each other, and so aren’t worth pointing out, but as you can see the differences are pretty drastic, and it’s easy to see how these different ideas could have sparked different sects of churches.

Communion/The Eucharist: 

There are esentially two views on Holy Communion: that Jesus’s presence in the bread and wine is literal, or that His presence is symbolic. 

For Catholics, they take it to the literal extreme: Transubstantiation, which is the act of changing the substances of bread and wine into the substances of the Body and Blood of Christ. 

Most Protestants who believe in Jesus’s literal presence in the elements do not take it that literally, believing more along the lines of, just as the Holy Spirit is present in the waters of baptism and the water itself is not what’s special, Jesus is present in the elements of communion and it is not the bread/wine itself that is special. 

Then, there is the belief that communion is more a ceremonial remembrance of Jesus’s last supper and a communal declaration of faith.

While I personally don’t believe in Transubstantiation, I think that any of these interpretations of Jesus’s words at the last supper are valid, and that God cares more that the community of believers celebrate the Eucharist together than He does about the minutia of it.

Also some churches practice “open communion” meaning that any believer in Christ regardless of views on the meal may take communion at their church, while others practice “closed communion,” meaning you must either be a member of their denomination or have spoken with the pastor before the sacrament to confirm that your beliefs line up with the church’s before taking communion with the congregation.

Also also most churches have different ages they start children taking communion at, Catholics it’s around 6 years old I think, while I as a Lutheran had to take half a year of catechism classes and be Confirmed before I could start taking it, those classes begin around age 12.  

The Means of Grace

The Means of Grace refers to how salvation is achieved. In this, Calvinists and Wesleyans agree: there is nothing humanity can do to achieve salvation, it is solely through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ that humanity is granted Salvation. This belief is often referred to as “By Grace Alone,” or “Saved by Grace,” as their is nothing that a person could do to achieve Salvation, it’s all through God’s gift of Grace. 

The other view of Salvation is that it is achieved through Good Works, aka, what most non-christians probably think all Christians believe: If you are a Good Person and do Good Things you will go to heaven, but if you do Bad Things and don’t repent, you’ll go to hell. Most Christian theologians will tell you that this is False Doctrine, but there are some who insist that Good Works are a part of Salvation. Most, however, say that this does not line up with the Bible’s teachings.

The counter to Salvation by Works is that Good Works are not a means of Salvation, but rather evidence of it. Yes, a Christain should strive to do good works, because Jesus commanded us to love one another and to help each other, but if you’re doing these things because you think they will save you, you are missing the point. I personally really like the way a VeggieTales cartoon about St. Nicholas put it once, actually. Nick to a nun feeding the poor: “Do you do that to feel happy?” The nun: “Oh, no. I do it because I am happy.”

Other Differences

Baptism: Namely, should you baptize babies? Catholics and Lutherans and others say yes, Nazarenes and Baptists and others say no!

Biblical Inspiration: was the Bible 100% dictated to man by God and thus absolutely flawless (ie, all of the bible is what God said word for word), 100% inspired by God and thus flawless but not dictated directly (ie, the different writers used their own words and voices to write what was inspired to them), Inspired by God but written by man and thus subject to the trappings of humanity and possibly flawed in places? Vote now on your phones. 

Ordination: Who gets to be a pastor? Can women be pastors? Are youth ministers, worship ministers, and other types of minsiters called pastors or are they called something different? 

The End Times: Is the Rapture a thing, or what?

Creation: How literal is genesis exactly?

Queer Issues: A lovely can of worms that no one seems to be able to agree on and which is sometimes the sole reason for a denominational split (The Evangelical Lutheran Chruch of America split into two factions when they disagreed on whether or not gay people should be allowed to be ordained ministers. There’s now one faction of that church that does ordain gay people and one that doesn’t). 

Nondenominational Churches

Some bodies of believers have said “screw that” to all the crazy infinitesimal differences in theology between all the denominatons and said “We are simply Christains.” Now, each nondenominational church will likely have its own stance on each of the issues I’ve mentioned here, they just have chosen not to identify with any larger denomination, and if you’re church hunting and go to a nondenominational church, you’ll probably have to talk to hte pastor/look at their website to find out what they say about all these things. 

Again, for me at the end of the day, I hold my own beliefs about these issues, but concede that for about 95% of them, where you fall doesn’t matter (for me, the lines that I draw are the means of grace and unconditional election; I believe that anyone can be saved and that we are saved by grace alone), what matters is that if you believe in God and have accepted Jesus into your life, you are a Christian, and my sibling in Christ. Hope this answered some of your questions, and again, I’m always happy to provide more clarification/talk about this stuff! (can you tell I enjoyed the theology classes I had to take in college?) 

[prolifeproliberty]

Hi, I love your blog! I'm Catholic and genuinely curious about which beliefs differ between Catholics and Lutherans. I think my grandpa was Lutheran at one point but he never really talked about it and I'd really like to know! I know inn general we believe a lot of the same things, but what are the differences? Stay safe and healthy!

Hi @soxrox12, sorry this answer took so long! I wanted to take the time to explain everything as clearly as possible and give you a thorough answer.

The basics of what Lutherans believe (what we teach to adolescents and those new to the faith in Confirmation) can be found in the Small Catechism. If you want a more in depth version and don’t mind some more academic language, you can read the Large Catechism. If you’re a total theology/history nerd and want to read about the back and forth arguments between the original Lutherans, the Catholic Church, and other Protestants, the rest of the Book of Concord has all that and more!

To really understand the differences, we have to go back to the origins of Lutheranism with Martin Luther in the early 16th century. Luther was a Catholic priest who, in his studies of scripture, saw major discrepancies between what the Catholic Church was teaching the common people (many of whom couldn’t read and very few of whom had access to the Bible outside of hearing scripture read at Mass) and what he saw in scripture. 

The Catholic Church today is not the same as it was in the 16th century, but we still have some major differences. I apologize if I get some Catholic beliefs wrong here, I’m basing this on my understanding of Catholic teaching from my research and from talking to Catholic friends. 

I’m putting this all below the cut so I don’t flood everyone’s dash with this extremely long post!

Christian Freedom: Luther had a big problem with the church requiring Christians to observe certain traditions and festivals as a matter of law or obligation. Unless something is specifically commanded in Scripture, it’s optional or a matter of Christian freedom (aka it might be a good idea, but you don’t have to do it). Examples include fasting for Lent (or in general), liturgical gestures (genuflecting, kneeling, making the Sign of the Cross), and so on. We also don’t have any Holy Days of Obligation - while we observe many of the same feast days and festivals as Catholics, we never say anyone is obligated to observe them. 

Holy Communion: One thing Lutherans and Catholics have in common is that we both believe that Christ’s Body and Blood are truly and physically present and are truly and physically received by the communicant. Most other protestants see it as a symbol, or see Christ’s Body and Blood as spiritually, but not physically present. This was a big sore spot in the 16th century when Luther met with others who were questioning Catholic teaching. One story goes that he and other theologians were sitting around a table, and the others were arguing over whether Christ’s Body and Blood were truly present. Reportedly, Luther, frustrated by the back and forth, carved the words “This is My Body” into the table and covered it with a cloth. Every time someone (*cough* Zwingli) argued against the Real Presence, Luther whipped off the table cloth and pointed to the words. Jesus’ words on the issue were good enough for him. 

We do, however, differ with Catholics on a couple of issues related to Communion. 

1. We believe the bread and wine are also still present - we don’t believe that they changed into Body and Blood, but that the Body and Blood are united with the bread and wine. We call this “Sacramental Union.”

2. We don’t believe that Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross is being repeated every time we celebrate Holy Communion. We also don’t see it as the priest offering Christ’s Body and Blood as a sacrifice. Instead, we see it as participating across time and space in the once-for-all atoning sacrifice that occurred on Good Friday almost 2,000 years ago. Rather than offering the Eucharist, we are receiving it from Christ for the forgiveness of our sins. 

Sin, Baptism, and Confession:

I’m putting these all together because there’s a root difference in the way Lutherans and Catholics view sin that shows up in both Baptism and Confession. 

Like Catholics, Lutherans believe in original sin - that is, we are conceived and born sinful and in need of a Savior - as well as actual sin (we have sinned against God “in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done and by what we have left undone”). However, we don’t distinguish between the two when it comes to how we receive forgiveness. We believe Baptism washes away ALL sin, and that in Confession and Absolution as well as in Holy Communion we receive forgiveness for ALL sin. 

In Confession and Absolution, we confess all our sins, both those we know and those we don’t, and we receive absolution for all of them. We don’t do penance or have any other steps. Confession is:

Step 1: Confess sins

Step 2: Receive absolution from the pastor as from God Himself.

And that’s it! We do “corporate confession and absolution” (aka confession as part of the liturgy that the whole church says together - very similar to what Catholics have in the Mass) in any service where we have Holy Communion, but we don’t ever require private confession. It’s always available on request if someone is particularly bothered by a sin and needs to hear the pastor absolve that sin specifically, but it’s never mandatory (see “Christian Freedom”). 

The Pope, Church Hierarchy, and Tradition:

Luther also had a big problem with the Pope and the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, as he saw lots of potential for and examples of abuse of power. He has some very harsh words about the Pope in his writings. Many Lutheran churches belong to a synod that has a president and some kind of structure, but we don’t view our Synod president the way Catholics view the Pope. A synod is more administration and support, with some ecclesiastical supervision (although that often doesn’t work out the way it should, which is why my church left our synod and we are now an independent Lutheran congregation). 

We view Scripture as our highest authority and our Lutheran Confessions and other doctrinal writings as an explanation of what Scripture teachers. We do refer to the Church Fathers for clarification on some issues, but if something is not found clearly in Scripture we don’t take it as doctrinal.

Intercession and Prayer/Mary and the Saints:

We don’t ask for intercession from saints who are in heaven, or from Mary. We only pray to the Triune God - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We learn from the lives of the saints, and we believe they are in heaven with Jesus, but we don’t seek their direct help here on earth. 

We don’t pray the Rosary, mostly because it includes those prayers of intercession to Mary/the Saints. We do have several prayer liturgies like the Litany��(which our church has been praying a LOT lately because it’s been historically used by the Church - including pre-Reformation - in times of hardship, plague, etc.). 

We respect Mary as Jesus’ mother, but we don’t necessarily see her as our Mother or as Queen of Heaven or Co-Redemptrix the way Catholics do.

Essentially we say that our prayers should be directed directly to God and that the Holy Spirit is our mediator who makes intercession for us (Romans 8:26-27).

Monastic Orders and Priests:

We don’t have monks or nuns or any of the monastic orders. Those who wish to go into full-time church work can be Deacons or Deaconesses, and the responsibilities of those roles vary from church to church. Typically they teach (Sunday School, sometimes Bible Study or Confirmation) or are in charge of the charitable work the church does (food pantries, etc). 

Our pastors typically go to four years of seminary - 2 years of classes, one year of vicarage in a congregation (like an apprenticeship, working under an experienced pastor), followed by another year of classes before ordination. Then the pastor receives a Call from a congregation, decides whether to accept or decline that Call, and, if he accepts, stays with that congregation until he receives and accepts a Call somewhere else, retires, or (very rarely) for some reason the congregation asks him to leave (usually only if he’s doing something really wrong and is unrepentant). 

Our pastors are also free and even encouraged to get married and have children. My pastor has five children and I’ve lost count of how many grandchildren. 

-- -- --

This is by no means an exhaustive list of the differences, but these are the key areas that come up most often when I talk to my Catholic friends. I’d be happy to discuss any of these areas in more detail or point you to specific things in our doctrinal books that address them. 

Just for fun, here’s some similarities:

Liturgy:

Our liturgy is VERY similar to the Catholic Church’s liturgy. We have “Divine Service” instead of “Mass”, although you can find some very “high church” Lutheran congregations that do use the term Mass and call their pastors “priests” and “Father.”

We also have Matins, Vespers, and other services with very similar liturgies to what the Catholic Church uses. 

Here’s an excellent example of an Easter service (and here’s the bulletin if you wanted to follow along) from a high-church Confessional Lutheran congregation in Virginia that I attended when I was an intern in D.C. This was their live stream for this Easter, so due to the small attendance they didn’t do Communion, but otherwise you can see generally what our services are like. 

[eternal-echoes]

Some differences between Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism

I should first say that they are very similar in the regard that both churches claim to have the fullness of Truth, both have the apostolic succession, and both have the 7 sacraments. In fact, if there are no Catholic Churches nearby, a Catholic can receive communion from an Eastern Orthodox Church. We don’t do it regularly out of respect for them since they don’t believe we should receive theirs. 

So onto the differences: 

Scholasticism vs. Mysticism 

The Roman Catholic Church developed Scholasticism while there is more emphasis on mysticism in the Eastern Orthodox Church. 

Scholasticism is the term used for Medieval philosophy. It starts from the objective fact that God is the ultimate source of Being, the ultimate reality, and rationalizing from there. Formulating arguments for the existence of God by taking note of what we observe from nature and tracing ethics to God as being the source of morality. Scholastic philosophers in the Middle Ages drew heavily from the works of the Ancient Greek philosophers so you would see a lot of them, most notably St. Thomas Aquinas, comment on Aristotle. One criticism I’ve read from an Eastern Orthodox is that this development of rationalism in the Roman Catholic Church is what paved way to the Enlightenment. It’s honestly just a matter of perspective, rationalism is a tool; it can be used for either good or bad. Good in the way of strengthening the explanation in theology, but bad in the way that you just question the belief in God altogether. Rationalizing God as if you can fit in Him in your head. Even then, some skepticism is healthy to be able to dig deeper in the truth. 

This opinion is probably coming from ignorance, but personally, I think the mysticism in the Eastern Orthodoxy relies way too much on tradition. I believe you need rationalism to purify religion of superstitious whims that comes from human imagination. 

While it’s true that Eastern Orthodoxy didn’t change as much as Roman Catholicism, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. To quote Father Angel, “To be human and Christian is to be growing. It is be open to the ongoing inspirations of the Holy Spirit, who deepens our understanding of the Gospel and the Christ Event.” I believe that through all the years of the Church’s existence, the Holy Spirit has been spoon feeding us new ways for us to understand God’s word. Not to say that the Church’s teachings has evolved. Not to say that the Church’s teaching has evolved. Catholic theologians have a specific term for it: development in doctrine. Evolution in doctrine sounds like it has been cut off from its roots. But development in doctrine means that the Church receives her nourishment from her roots. G.K. Chesterton explains this better than I do: 

“When we talk of a child being well-developed, we mean that he has grown bigger and stronger with his own strength; not that he is padded with borrowed pillows or walks on stilts to make him look taller. When we say that a puppy develops into a dog, we do not mean that his growth is a gradual compromise with a cat; we mean that he becomes more doggy and not less. Development is the expansion of all the possibilities and implications of a doctrine, as there is time to distinguish them and draw them out; and the point here is that the enlargement of medieval theology was simply the full comprehension of that theology.”

Nicene Creed 

In the Nicene Creed, the Catholic Church has added the filioque, “and the Son,” while the Eastern Orthodox Church has criticized as for it. The reason why the Catholic Church added it is because: 

246 The Latin tradition of the Creed confesses that the Spirit "proceeds from the Father and the Son (filioque)". the Council of Florence in 1438 explains: "The Holy Spirit is eternally from Father and Son; He has his nature and subsistence at once (simul) from the Father and the Son. He proceeds eternally from both as from one principle and through one spiration... And, since the Father has through generation given to the only-begotten Son everything that belongs to the Father, except being Father, the Son has also eternally from the Father, from whom he is eternally born, that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son." 

248 At the outset the Eastern tradition expresses the Father's character as first origin of the Spirit. By confessing the Spirit as he "who proceeds from the Father", it affirms that he comes from the Father through the Son.77 The Western tradition expresses first the consubstantial communion between Father and Son, by saying that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son (filioque). It says this, "legitimately and with good reason",78 for the eternal order of the divine persons in their consubstantial communion implies that the Father, as "the principle without principle",79 is the first origin of the Spirit, but also that as Father of the only Son, he is, with the Son, the single principle from which the Holy Spirit proceeds.80 This legitimate complementarity, provided it does not become rigid, does not affect the identity of faith in the reality of the same mystery confessed.

- from the Catechism of the Catholic Church. 

One note about the filioque is that this is not included in the Nicene Creed in Eastern Rite Catholic Churches. That’s because the Greek language makes it seem to mean a different meaning. 

Original Sin

The Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church have a different perspective on Original Sin. I’m not an expert on the Eastern Orthodox position but they seem to believe that Original Sin is a flaw. They don’t believe that we inherit Original Sin because it was only our first parents who sinned, and we only inherited the effects of it. Effects being the flaw: weakened will, tendency to sin, and mistake evil for goodness. 

The Catholic Church position is that when Adam sinned, his body became corrupt, and there was no uncorrupted body for us to inherit. The term Original Sin implies guilt, someone did it out of their own free will that made us lost the grace. 

Here’s a better explanation. 

Immaculate Conception

Immaculate Conception is the doctrine that the Blessed Virgin Mother Mary was conceived without Original Sin, unlike the rest of us who have to receive the Sacrament of Baptism to cleanse the Original Sin from us. The reason God designed Mary to be that way is because the vessel for His Son has to be clean. Not to say that the Blessed Virgin Mother Mary did not need saving from Jesus, she did. But hers was unique because it happened beforehand. Jesus’ death still saved her. An analogy to explain this is how you would use a credit card to buy something you don’t have money for yet. You would eventually pay it off with the earned money at a later date. Another way to explain how Mary was saved compare to how we were saved is the two different ways you can save someone from the puddle. One is blocking their way of going to the puddle and one is after the person has slipped into the puddle, you offer your hand so he/she can get out of it. The Blessed Virgin Mother Mary was saved similar to the former, we were saved like the way in the latter. 

The Eastern Orthodox Church do not believe in the Immaculate Conception. There are two reason for this, one is because of what I said earlier, they have a different conception of Original Sin. Since they don’t believe we inherit the Original Sin but only the flaw that comes with it, they also believe Mary was flawed, even though she never personally committed any sin herself. The other reason is that the doctrine of Immaculate Conception has only been recently been promulgated. It wasn’t that the Church didn’t believe in it before, there was a tradition behind it. It was just implicit. Pope Pius IX made it more define. 

Sacred Heart of Jesus 

Someone asked me how to respond to an Eastern Orthodox about the devotion to the Sacred Heart, saying it was like praying to a body part. I think that reaction stems from the fact that Scholastic philosophy didn’t develop in the Eastern Orthodox Church. In Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophy, there is a term called Hylermorphic doctrine. It teaches that the body and soul, make up one substance. As opposed to the teaching of Descartes, dualism, teaching that the mind is separate from the body, and you are only your mind and the body is just your instrument. In relation to Christ, praying to His Sacred Heart is essentially praying to Him as a whole person. Just with emphasis on His heart because He loves us with it. 

Also, the devotion to the Sacred Heart is from the approved apparition to St. Margaret Mary of Alacoque. This happened after the Great Schism so this is absent in their tradition. 

Supremacy of the Pope

Eastern Orthodox Christians do not believe that St. Peter had that authority, but here are the passages in the Bible that we Catholics cite in support of that: 

+Among the Twelve Apostles, Peter’s name is mentioned the most, being 195 times in New Testament, while the next one, St. John, is mentioned 29 times.

+Whenever the apostles are all listed by name as a group, Peter’s name is always mentioned first, while Judas, the Lord’s betrayer, is always mentioned last.

+There are times when the apostles aren’t called by names but instead we see phrases like “Peter and the others,” which indicates that Simon Peter represented the college of apostles.

+Matthew 16: 18-19

+Jesus called Peter to come out of the boat and walk on water (Matt. 14: 25-33)

+Jesus Christ preached to the crowds from Simon Peter’s fishing boat.

+St. John waited for St. Peter to enter the empty tomb of Christ (John 20:6)

+Luke 22:31-32

+St. Peter preaches the first post-Pentecost sermon

+St. Peter performed the first miracle (Acts 3:1-10)

+God delivers revelation to Peter that Gentiles could now enter the Church without the need to observe Jewish Kosher food laws, and this teaching Peter made binding on the whole Church at the Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15.

+St. Paul checked in with St. Peter before starting his public ministry. 

Eastern Orthodox Christians would also argue that the Eastern Fathers before the Great Schism did not believe in the primacy of the Pope, but here is a website debunking that. 

Hope that helps. If anything is confusing let me know. I’d also ask my fellow Catholics to correct me if I’m mistaken on any of these.

[catholiccom-blog]

A Word That Every Catholic Needs to Know

This year marks the twentieth anniversary of my wife and I entering the Catholic Church from Evangelicalism. My upbringing skewed strongly the Fundamentalist end of the spectrum, while hers was more mainstream-Evangelical. Both of us were graduates of Evangelical Bible colleges, so we had a fairly in-depth understanding and experience of American Evangelicalism, which is a complicated and even bewildering world of numerous denominations, para-church organizations, and movements.

My interest in apologetics started when I read works by C.S. Lewis, whop played a significant role in our journey into the Church. Like so many other Evangelicals who “poped,” I worked through a wide range of questions about Mary, the Saints, authority, the sacraments, purgatory, and Tradition. In fact, the very first article I ever had published was a detailed account of that search and study for This Rock magazine, titled “Joining the Unsaved” (June, 1998). The experience could be likened to being dropped into a huge and exotic forest and spending countless hours studying the flora and fauna, trying to grasp the curious and often surprising details found therein.

During that time, I ended up writing a lengthy letter to my parents. In a way, it was like sending them a box with samples from the forest, with a mixture of tree leaves, flowers, and rocks. A few years later, when I re-read the letter, I saw that my explanation of Catholicism, while still quite correct and on point—and there were many points—lacked a sense of the big picture. Although I was able to defend against the negative stereotypes and false concepts which good people like my parents were tossing at me, I did not and I could not provide a positive, succinct picture of the essence of Catholicism.

Something was missing

This sense of incompleteness was especially strong when it came to the Church’s teaching about salvation. I knew the Church did not teach that our works alone save us, but I also knew that “faith without works is dead” (James 2:20). How so? I understood the importance of the sacraments; it was, after all, the reality of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist that drew my wife and I so powerfully to the Church. But how did that fit into the bigger picture of the forest of Catholicism, to continue the analogy? In what way could the forest be brought into focus and best understood?

The answer is theosis. It is also known as deification, divinization, participation, and divine sonship. The essence of Christianity and the gospel is that the triune God, who is perfect communion, “in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life” (CCC 1). The Father desires to gift us with his actual life and make us, through the Son and in the power of the Holy Spirit, true children of God. “See what great love the Father has lavished on us,” states St. John, “that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!” (1 John 3:1).

Now, as a young Evangelical Protestant I never questioned the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation—but I also rarely contemplated in depth what those two great Mysteries had to do with me. Sure, I knew God created me. Check. I accepted that God became man. Check. But these were more points of doctrine than realities to be contemplated, considered, pondered, and explored. And, to be both fair and blunt, that says more about my own personal failings than it does of failings in Evangelical theology. When I finally began to grasp the startling truth of theosis, I began to understand and see the details of the forest in an even more vibrant and life-changing way.

Considering this, how do essential but often overlooked truths—the subject of a detailed book that I co-edited with Fr. David Meconi, S.J.—help the apologist? Here are three basic ways:

1. Personal relationship

Most Fundamentalists and many Evangelicals see Catholicism as a religious system based on works, ritual, and “doing stuff.” What they don’t see, first, is that they themselves—for all the talk of a “personal relationship” with Christ—actively take part in a system based on works, ritual, and “doing stuff.” After all, they insist on the necessity of going to church, participating in some form of communal worship, doing good works, and so forth.

The heart of Catholicism is having a personal relationship with Christ. Yes, there is a lot of debate over whether or not Catholics should use such language, but to me it’s quite simple: the triune God, who is Creator of all, is perfect communion and love. He is relationship. And Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God, is one of three divine persons. So, yes, having a personal relationship with each person of the Trinity\ is the very essence of being a Catholic:

“O blessed light, O Trinity and first Unity!” God is eternal blessedness, undying life, unfading light. God is love: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. God freely wills to communicate the glory of his blessed life. Such is the "plan of his loving kindness", conceived by the Father before the foundation of the world, in his beloved Son: "He destined us in love to be his sons" and "to be conformed to the image of his Son", through "the spirit of sonship". (CCC 257)

2. Rules, rules, rules?

Catholicism, being deeply communal, familial, and covenantal, is never satisfied by a mere legal or juridical understanding of salvation. The irony is that some Fundamentalists and Evangelicals insist that salvation is juridical and reflects a sort of divine courtroom, denouncing Catholicism for being impersonal and devoid of relationship. That’s absurd. As Catholics, we always understand that laws and rules are rooted in the familial, communal nature of God, as they orient us toward our final beatitude, by God’s grace.

3. The reality of grace

The biggest divide between Catholics and many Protestants is the nature of grace. “Grace,” as the Catechism so succinctly states, “is a participation in the life of God. It introduces us into the intimacy of Trinitarian life” (CCC 1997). This is why Catholics can say that the sacraments aren’t just symbols, but signs that really accomplish, by the power of God’s grace, what they signify. We insist that we don’t receive bread at Holy Communion, but the very body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ.

Because we are filled, animated, and joined by the trinitarian life of God, we participate in the heavenly realities, being truly part of Christ’s body—not just in a metaphorical sense, but in a way that is truly real.

If we are really “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet. 1:4), then our deeds are not the works of slaves trying to impress a master, but the joyful works of sons and daughters on behalf our Father, joined to Christ our Savior, aided by the Holy Spirit our advocate. Catholicism, then, is not a religion of “works righteousness” but of righteous, holy children, growing even more righteous and holy as we continue to conform to the will and way of God. Understanding this theosis as deeply biblical and traditional view of the dense forest of doctrine and spirituality should guide the apologist in debates and conversations.

[globalworship]

Communion and Context in Downtown Chicago (CICW)

Derek Elmi-Buursma on Communion and Context

Whether you call it Communion, Eucharist, the Lord’s Supper, or something else, you may wonder how to connect this sacrament with real life. Learn how one small urban congregation creates eucharistic liturgies for living in a broken world.

By Derek Elmi-Buursma, interviewed by Joan Huyser-Honig

Derek Elmi-Buursma is the interim pastor at Loop Christian Reformed Church (CRC) in downtown Chicago, Illinois. While still in seminary, he served as project director for a Vital Worship Grant at Loop Church. In this edited conversation, Elmi-Buursma talks about how that grant changed the congregation’s invitation to, and practices of, communion.

Read the full interview at https://worship.calvin.edu/resources/resource-library/derek-elmi-buursma-on-communion-and-context

Excerpts:

... Our grant, “Communion and Context,” explored how our local social, economic, and political contexts impact our celebration of the Lord’s Supper and how this sacrament prepares us to live faithfully in these contexts.

... The way we celebrate the meal shapes who we are, who can come, and how we go back out into the world. I wanted to give worship team members the confidence that they could use their own voices and experiences to shape the liturgy and help lead the congregation in the meal Jesus gave us.

... Rev. Nannette Banks presided over the Lord’s Table with an authenticity and presence that is difficult to experience when using rote liturgical forms. Rev. Banks spoke of how we, even as imperfect people, have access to God’s perfect love at the Table. She explained that Jesus invited his disciples to the table, regardless of their intentions, with the hope that they would experience transformation in eating the bread and drinking the cup.

Rev. Banks invited us as a church to come to the table with these words: “Come vulnerable, come willing, come wide-open, come willing to be transformed, come now to taste the bread of life and drink from the cup of life.” She stayed after the service to talk with the congregation about how her social location as a black Christian woman in America has shaped her eucharistic theology and practices.

...  We still follow the basic structure of invitation to the table: “Lift up your hearts” [sursum corda], words of institution, and a prayer of thanksgiving. But we’ve continued to do what the grant pushed us to do—use different sources to create weekly communion liturgies infused with relevancy that reflects our local context or the sermon text...

+++

Joan: What’s an example of a communion invitation that expands your awareness of Christ’s body?

Thinking about who is welcome at the Lord’s Table pushed us to think beyond the circle of those present in our 90-minute service. At a recent service, we covered the communion table with a heap of bricks, to remember the devastation of flooding in the Midwest and Mozambique.

That day, after a sermon on the Lord’s Prayer, this was the invitation to the table: “This week we come to the table, remembering those in Mozambique who have had to search through the rubble to find the bodies of loved ones. At this table we remember those stranded on rooftops by floodwaters, those who are waiting for relief to arrive, those whose prayer ‘thy kingdom come’ takes on new meaning. We remember those who have not eaten for days, whose prayer ‘give us, Lord, our daily bread,’ takes on new meaning.

“As we prepare to come to the table, let us say the prayer Jesus taught, in solidarity with Christians in Mozambique and around the world.” And then we began the communion prayer of thanksgiving with the Lord’s Prayer, followed by other printed words that we said together. The final words of that section were: “Gather your whole church together, into your kingdom, where peace and justice are revealed, that we, with all your people of every language, race, and nation may share the feast and receive your presence.”

Joan:  How else did the grant year create lasting effects?

Our celebration of the Lord’s Supper, while always meaningful to the congregation, was infused with a new sense of life, possibility, and transformation. Creating new liturgies that reflected our lived experiences or sermon themes gave the congregation new ways to encounter Jesus during the sacrament. We developed meaningful relationships with people who’ve returned as guest preachers and presiders. Our worship team was challenged to approach the liturgy of the Lord’s Supper with new intentionality and creativity but have come away feeling refreshed by the new opportunities to be nourished by God at the table.

+++

Art from https://www.dreamstime.com/stock-illustration-modern-abstract-watercolor-tempera-eucharist-symbol-bread-wine-chalice-host-grapes-wheat-square-image62770404

+++

Read about Reverend Nannette E. Banks at https://mccormick.edu/content/banks-nannette

[callowsermons]

Pattern of Sound Teaching-Wrangling

“Avoid wrangling over words” Paul says, but I love to wrangle over words. When I was in middle school I probably spent more time on my computer seeking arguments with people than I did playing video games or doing homework. I love the give and take, the tussle, the strategy, thinking three steps ahead trying to trap someone in a position. Sadly I never went to a school that had debate.

But Paul counsels Timothy to avoid all that. It “does no good” he says, “but only ruins those who are listening.” Elsewhere Paul elaborates on what he means. Hymenaeus and Philetus have wandered away from the truth. In their speculations and disputations they’ve come to the conclusion that the resurrection has already happened and have destroyed the faith of some. He is not saying we should not have arguments, but we are to avoid “useless arguments” idle speculations, and focus on what matters.

So what is it that matters? “Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, descended from David. This is my gospel.” 

Last Sunday we talked about doctrine. Doctrines are the rules by which we can ensure that we are telling the story of the gospel rightly. The point of doctrine is not to have a source of endless disputation. Doctrines are not the result of “wrangling over words.” The doctrines we hold and teach are given to us as aids in our discipleship. Doctrines are meant to be lived.

Methodists, when we’ve been at our best, have always emphasized the practical aspect of doctrine. In John Wesley’s day doctrines were divided into three parts. There was systematics, apologetics, and what was called “practical divinity” or what we’d call practical theology today. Systematics had to do with the whole system of God’s being and action. Apologetics had to do with defending the faith. Practical divinity had to do with how we are to live. John Wesley focused his writing and teaching on “practical divinity.” Whenever he had a dispute it was always over a practical matter of our life in Christ.

I can give you two examples of how doctrine helps guide us in our life of discipleship. Early in Wesley’s life he was part of a group of Christians called the Fetter Lane Society. John Wesley was an anglican priest, and he had come to greatly respect the piety and holiness of the Moravian Brethren who had come to England from Germany. The Fetter Lane Society was first established by the Moravian Brethren and organized very similarly to how the Methodist Society would be organized: small groups that met weekly for worship. It was at the Fetter Lane Society that Wesley felt his heart strangely warmed, without them he would not have become the great evangelist he was. 

But Wesley eventually split with the Fetter Lane Society, and that split came over the issue of quietism that a new preacher was teaching. The Quietists said that until you have the experience of justification, like when Wesley felt his heart strangely warmed and knew he was right with God, there is no point in praying, reading your bible, or taking communion. You are to sit, quietly, and wait for the gift of the Holy Spirit. Without being justified, as Luther taught, you can do no good. So there was no way praying or taking communion could help you, it could only hurt. 

Quietism flabbergasted Wesley, and he saw as many fell away because either they began to doubt their salvation or spent so long doing nothing they faded away. Wesley insisted that prayer, bible reading, sacraments, are all means of God’s grace. God will always work through them regardless of our own capacity. So when we are waiting on the grace of justification, or the grace of sanctification, we ought to wait by attending to God’s ordinances, the means of grace.

You can see how Wesley’s doctrine, his understanding of how God’s grace is mediated through Church practice, determined how we are to live. It was not a meaningless squabbling over definitions, lives were on the line.

Another example of doctrine offering guidance, also in Wesley’s life, was his controversy over Original Sin. In Wesley’s day Original Sin, that is the doctrine that we all participate in Adam’s Sin and this has cascading effects on our own ability to do good, was called into question. Deists, those who believe that God created the world and walked away, saw no point in it. Others thought it was too dour. Those who would rather not have arguments, saw no reason to bother with defending it. But John Wesley wrote his largest work in defense of Original Sin.

I am not going to go over everything John Wesley said about Original Sin, it is after all his longest work. But it’s not hard to see why Wesley would be so bothered by the rejection of this doctrine. Wesley taught Original Sin so we would have a sense of how low we have gone. We are totally depraved, we are unable to save ourselves, every work we do to try and do good is always tainted by that Original Sin. But Original Sin, rightly taught, only makes us more amazed by God’s grace. It means we cannot rely on our own work, but solely on what God does through us. It causes us to attend more closely to the means of grace, and love God more for what God has done.

When we internalize the doctrines of our faith, we learn how to tell the story rightly. When we learn how to tell the story rightly, we know how to live within that story. The things we teach, the things we say, the things we learn, all guide us in how we live our lives. We learn doctrine so we can live it out. Every doctrine works itself out practically, in our lives. It is not to be ceaselessly wrangled over, like I would when I was in middle school. It is meant to be lived.

Questions for Reflection

What doctrines have changed your life?

What words do you live by?

What are some examples of meaningless wrangling over words?

What do you like to argue about?

[aliceviceroy]

Tarico: Let’s talk a little about marriage, because it seems that two of the issues you have really wrestled with are the role of women in Christianity, and the question of dignity and equality for LGBT people, including marriage equality.

Held Evans: I don’t agree with Christians who think that what makes a marriage sacred is a man and a woman with a man in charge. What makes a marriage sacred is not conformity to social norms, not how well you fit the Ward and June Cleaver model, not patriarchal hierarchy, but the degree to which there is love and self-sacrifice like we see in Christ, in that relationship. My aim is to say that what makes a marriage sacred and special and life-giving is that mutual love and concern and giving.

Tarico: For some who criticize Evangelical Christianity from the outside, who see it as harmful, what they find most untenable is orthodox Christianity’s exclusive truth claims, the claims that are laid out, for example, in the early 20th century pamphlets “The Fundamentals” that became the basis for our term fundamentalism. Worst, maybe, is the idea that anyone who isn’t an insider is an evildoer who lacks a moral core and is condemned to eternal torture. I say worst, because this is an idea that through history has opened up all manner of mistreatment toward outsiders. After all, burning someone at the stake is peanuts compared to burning them forever.

Held Evans: I understand why people wouldn’t want anything to do with the Church, I really do. But not everyone reduces faith to where you go when you die. Historically that has been a problem, but not every Christian has reduced Christianity to that. Not every Christian believes that everyone who doesn’t believe as they do is going to hell. Christians often act like they don’t understand why people doubt. That can make us seem really detached and checked out of reality.

Something I like about the Episcopal tradition is that it focuses on the mystery of faith: Christ has died; Christ has risen; Christ will come again. There are days I struggle to believe that literally, and there are days when it’s easy. But there is something unique and special about the teachings of Jesus and committing ourselves to following those teachings.

As to exclusivity, I believe people can embrace Christian belief and do Christian things without assuming that God isn’t present in other traditions or that we have nothing to learn from outsiders. I can hold my own tradition with conviction and respect and still think it possible to learn things from my Buddhist neighbors. I enjoy reading atheist and agnostic blogs and learn a ton from their honesty, for example.  We don’t have to choose between conviction coupled with strong faith identity and openness to learning from others or acknowledging their spiritual insights and shared humanity.

Tarico: Your focus on the sacraments is interesting because it strikes me as a move away from belief—from belief-ism toward a focus on practice or praxis, more akin to Dharmic traditions, like Buddhism, and more mystical traditions within Christianity itself.

Held Evans: Much of my evangelical Christianity was an assent to propositional truths. Christianity was something you believed. I’ve come to understand Christianity even more as something you do. It’s sharing communion not just around the altar but around the table. It’s anointing the sick—that’s not an effort to cure someone like a magic charm. It’s acknowledging someone else’s suffering and saying I am present and I am here and we can find god even in this. That is what it means to be Christian and a part of the church. Being in community and experiencing god in that community. The sacraments make that possible.

Tarico: When I think about what it means to be Christian, I’m struck by the bifurcation between liturgical and other traditions. It seems like the churches that have kept the traditional order of worship and liturgy have been more free to explore theologically, while for “Bible-believing” denominations, the thing that is immutable is the theology, which frees them up to be entrepreneurial about music, buildings, outreach, and the order of the worship service. So it’s like people can creatively explore the order of service or they can explore theologically – but not both.

Held Evans: I’m still exploring why the sacraments are so powerful for me personally, but that’s part of why I was drawn to the liturgy. The culmination of the typical Evangelical worship service is the sermon—the preacher’s interpretation of the text. In a more liturgical service, the climax is the table, gathering for communion. There is something mystical and ever-giving about that. It is centered around the community. It is also something very open to interpretation and people take different things away from it.

In an Evangelical church, people will say “I didn’t feel like I got fed today” as a reference to the pastor. In a liturgical tradition you never say that, because you are fed the communion—the body of Christ. Liturgical traditions give us more space to explore belief, because what unifies us is not shared belief but shared experiences.

Tarico: Let’s talk about the Bible, the center and source of those Evangelical sermons. When I look at the Evangelical tradition I grew up in, I think that the Bible has become a golden calf. The Bible has human handprints all over it and yet people treat it as if it had the attributes of divinity: timelessness, perfection, completion. In an age of the written word, what better golden calf than a golden book? I think of it now as a form of idolatry. How do you see it?

Held Evans: What troubles me is the notion that we can somehow read a sacred text without interpreting it. People say they are just reading the text. That’s not possible. The idea that we can approach a text without bringing our imperfect often greedy often selfish selves to it. It’s crazy to think that anyone is claiming simply to take God at his word.

Tarico: So how do you think about approaching the Bible?

Held Evans: The tendency is to accuse one another of picking and choosing. Of course we do! But how do we pick and choose in a way that is healthy and life giving? What method or metric should we use for doing that? As a Christian, as a follower of Jesus, I think it’s appropriate to think of Jesus Christ as the fulfillment of scripture, that in his life and death he put into practice what scripture was meant to teach us. It seems to me that I can take my cues from how Jesus interacted with scripture, which was always life giving. You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. This offers an illumination of how to approach scripture.

When Jesus was asked by experts on scripture what is the most important commandment, he said, Love the lord your God with all your heart soul and mind and love your neighbor as yourself. All the law and all the prophets land on this.The whole point of it all is love. If we take that posture when we approach the text—To what degree does this help us love God and each other better?, that is a helpful life-giving guide. If Jesus interpreted scripture that way, that’s how I hope to interpret it.

If you are going to scripture to look for a weapon you’ll find it. If you go to scripture looking for healing balm you’ll find that too. So much has to do with what we’re looking for. If we want to use the Bible to hurt other people, we can. If we want to use it to promote healing, hope, love and grace it’s there.

Tarico: Many Christians would argue that the Bible is the final arbiter of any doctrinal dispute; you are saying that the model of Jesus is the final arbiter, the lens through which people need to read scripture.

Held Evans: I believe the Bible is authoritative in Christian life, but that we interpret Scripture through Jesus, who is the ultimate expression of God’s will for us. The notion that we experience Christ only through the pages of the Bible isn’t even biblical! We encounter Christ in communion, in the needs of people who are suffering or hungry, where two or three are gathered in Christ’s name, and so on. When we care for those who are suffering we experience Christ.

God speaks to us through all of sorts of ordinary, everyday things. In a similar way God speaks to us through scripture–through imperfect words. The idea that God is too good to speak through imperfection is mistaken. God uses all sorts of everyday things to reach out to us.

Tarico: I’ve heard the natural order described as “God’s other book.” I guess that would include our experience of each other, of love, community, suffering and healing. It also includes the natural world, including the laws of physics and biology and genetics that increasingly are being unveiled by scientific inquiry. Any thoughts on that?

Held Evans: All truth is God’s truth. If something is true, then it’s true. If the universe is billions of years old and humans share ancestors with apes, then that’s the truth. God can reveal himself through science. More and more even in the Evangelical world I sense there is openness to what the natural world has to teach us. Evangelicals don’t have a great record. There has been science denialism, but I think there is common ground.

Denialism is based in fear, but we don’t need to be afraid, and in fact, this fear is such a denial of the core of Christianity. 1st John 4 says, Perfect love casts out fear.Fear is not a healthy way to view the world, and it’s not a healthy way to view and approach our faith. You cannot love God and be afraid—afraid of the world, afraid of a Bible that isn’t how we think of as perfect or afraid of new discoveries and information. Christians are called to be or do something more.

Tarico: Back when I was a college student at Wheaton, I remember reading an assigned book with the title, Your God is Too Small. I now find that even the god-concept proposed by the author seems too small, too modeled on humanity. But the title—the concept—stuck with me, as I discuss in my own book, Trusting Doubt. It seems like you are working to articulate an understanding of Christianity that is big enough to be compatible with both compassion and tradition, and what we know about ourselves and the world around us.

Held Evans: People fear this God who punishes everyone who is wrong. Really?! We’re all wrong about lots of things, even small ordinary things. When we’re talking about the nature of ultimate reality, we’re going to get some of this wrong. If I thought that God vindictively punished everyone who was wrong, I’d be afraid all the time too. (In fact, I used to live that way and I remember that fear; and it’s really nice to live differently.) Why is it hard to believe in a god who is big enough and kind enough to forgive us for being wrong?

[cabiba]

If you ask most people with only a passing knowledge of Christianity to explain the differences between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, they’ll probably mention communion. Catholics believe the bread and wine literally turn into the body and blood of Jesus Christ, while for Protestants the ritual is merely symbolic. Something like that? Martin Luther would have been horrified.The man credited with kickstarting the Protestant Reformation 500 years ago this month very much believed in the ‘real presence’ of Christ’s body and blood when Christians take communion. Among other things, Luther took issue with the Catholic church’s particular doctrine of transubstantiation, an attempt to square the miracle with Aristotelian metaphysics, but he certainly did not question the miracle itself. The Swiss reformer Ulrich Zwingli did suggest communion was more commemorative than ‘effective’, an idea that rubbed off on the hot-and-cold English Reformation. But even John Calvin, the most intellectually thorough reformer, maintained that the bread and wine were visible signs of Christ’s spiritual presence, not props in an empty ritual.To modern ears, of course, ‘spiritually present’ sounds a lot like ‘not really present’. Something that is not literally true is just not true. For the reformers, however, the spiritual was very real – and Christ’s spiritual presence was therefore no less miraculous than the gorier Catholic version. But the details mattered, because religion was not only a matter of life and death; it was more important than that. It was about eternity.As a young monk visiting Rome, Luther had been shocked at the worldliness of his fellow Catholics. There were smirky rumours that Roman priests mumbled under their breath as they celebrated Mass, ‘Panis es, panis manebis, vinum es, vinum manebis’ – you are bread and wine and will stay that way. At least that’s Latin. Luther’s direct experience was of priests who didn’t even know the mother tongue of the Church, rushing congregants along as they went through the motions carelessly and making a mockery of the whole thing (1).

Luther saw priests who didn’t even know the mother tongue of the Church, rushing congregants along as they went through the motions, making a mockery of the service

This is not to say ordinary Catholics were not pious, but to Luther and other reformers, the Church itself seemed far too at home in the world, with little apparent need for or interest in a supernatural God, except as an idea useful for wringing money out of the gullible masses, rich and poor. At the risk of stating the obvious, the Reformation was all about God.

Looking back on how the Reformation had swept from Wittenberg and thrown all Christendom into turmoil, Luther downplayed his own agency: ‘I simply taught, preached, and wrote God’s Word; otherwise I did nothing. And while I slept, or drank Wittenberg beer with my friends Philip and Amsdorf, the Word so greatly weakened the papacy that no prince or emperor ever inflicted such losses upon it. I did nothing; the Word did everything’. (2)

So the Reformation is best understood as a religious revival rather than a mere reform movement. It was emphatically not about bringing Christianity up to date. Calvin wrote to his Catholic antagonist Cardinal Sadoleto, ‘our agreement with antiquity is far closer than yours’. The Reformation was an attempt to ‘renew that ancient form of the church’ that had been ‘distorted by illiterate men’ and ‘was afterwards flagitiously mangled and almost destroyed by the Roman Pontiff and his faction’ (3).

It was not only a revival in the sense of a return to orthodoxy, however, but also in the sense of a popular religious movement. And it was not intellectual hair-splitting or indeed umbrage at flagitious mangling that inspired thousands and then millions of Christians to embrace religious reform: it began as a powerful appeal to individual believers as persons. While the role of the printing press in driving the Reformation is rightly celebrated, arguably an even greater vehicle of reform was the sermon. The sermon was not a staple part of a medieval Catholic church service for ordinary Christians. For the most part, people showed up, heard priests mumble in Latin, swallowed their communion bread (the wine was just for priests, so the plebs wouldn’t spill it) and left. In contrast, the reformers preached to them, talking in their own language about things they had perhaps never thought about before. Some people, at least, seem to have loved it.

It is an oft-noted irony that the Reformation in many ways paved the way for secular modernity – individualism, capitalism, even atheism – but the irony may be deeper than is often appreciated. Jean Delumeau, the French historian of the Catholic Church, sees both the Reformation and the Catholic counter-Reformation (through which the Church cleaned up its act in various ways) as aspects of Christianisation, moving away from a popular medieval religiosity that was not far from paganism (4).

What if it were not simply a case of a religious movement unwittingly speeding the demise of religion, but of Christianity properly establishing itself in Europe for the first time? The seeds of secularism would then be less an accidental consequence of a disruption of the established order than something essential to Christianity itself. Something like this is argued by Theo Hobson in his recent book God Created Humanism (5). In any case, the essence of Christianity was very much at stake in the debates surrounding the Reformation.

In Why the Reformation Still Matters, Christian authors Tim Chester and Michael Reeves emphasise that the issue was not simply the corruption and worldliness of the Roman Catholic Church: ‘The problem was not a moral issue – the Reformers accepted that on Earth and in history the church would always have elements of corruption. The issue was theological. Luther had described justification by faith as “the article by which the church stands or falls”. Since the medieval Catholic Church was denying justification by faith through its teaching and practice, it was fallen.’ (6)

But perhaps morality and theology cannot be so easily separated. Luther’s theology arose from an intense psychological struggle, and it was that struggle that led him to the issue of ‘justification by faith’. Karl Marx famously described religion as ‘the opium of the masses’, and less famously as ‘the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world’. The point was not that religion dupes people, so much as that it comforts them in their misery. But the young Luther’s faith was anything but comforting. He felt deeply, personally convicted of sin – not in a trivial sense of guilt about particular transgressions, but in a more existential sense.

When Jesus was asked which commandment was the most important of all, he answered, ‘you shall love the lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength’, and ‘you shall love your neighbour as yourself’. What would that mean in practice? And when you think about it, how can anyone possibly live up to it? How do you make yourself love a distant, mysterious entity you can never be completely sure even exists? And how can you care about every Tom, Dick and Harriet you bump into as much as you care about yourself? Never mind. Christianity is a religion for sinners, not saints. And Jesus died for our sins. So, nothing to worry about?

The Catholic Church taught that Jesus saves sinners’ souls, but it also asked the sinners to do their bit. One Our Father, 10 Hail Marys, something for the collection box. That stuff about love, too, sure. And it wasn’t shy about suggesting their salvation depended on it. As Patrick Collinson puts it in describing Luther’s early years in the monastery, ‘The sermons Luther heard and the theology he was taught made salvation a matter of God’s grace, not something that could be bought with a virtuous life. But for grace to work it was necessary for a man to do what he could from his side of the equation: facere quod in se est [do what you can]. How could Luther know that he had ever tried enough?’ (7)

We might say that Christian faith in God is like a child’s response to its parents’ love, its recognition not of their existence but of their status as parents

Relief finally came when Luther decided there was no Biblical warrant for that nasty bit of Latin. The Scriptures, and in particular Paul’s letter to the Romans, taught that Christians are justified by faith alone. They are imputed with the righteousness of Christ, regardless of their own sin. It is an entirely external thing and it comes first, before they are expected to do good works in loving response, and with the help of the Holy Spirit. For Luther, this was the best news since the gospel itself.

The best secular analogy might be the difference between a parent telling his or her child, ‘I love you. Now do your best,’ and saying, ‘Do your best. And then I’ll decide if you’re worthy of my love’. According to a certain ‘economic’ logic, the latter approach should incentivise better behaviour, but if you know anything about human beings, you know the opposite is true.

But what about justification ‘by faith’? Is this not just another kind of qualification, requiring something of the sinner in return for justification? One of Luther’s early adversaries was Cardinal Cajetan, sent by the Pope to confront him at the Diet of Augsburg in 1518, where the question of faith was pivotal. Lyndal Roper explains: ‘Luther argued that the sacraments [such as communion] were ineffective without faith, while Cajetan insisted that they were valid in and of themselves; indeed, as the cardinal argued, since one could never be entirely sure of one’s faith, it was vitally important that the sacraments did not depend on it.’ (8)

This brings us to an important clarification about the meaning of faith in the Protestant tradition. In his book Calvin and the Christian Life, Michael Horton notes: ‘Calvin recognises that “unbelief is… always mixed with faith” in every Christian. He frequently reminds us that it is not the quality of faith, but the object of faith, that justifies. “Our faith is never perfect… we are partly unbelievers.”’ (9). It is the object of faith, God, who bears the burden.

Returning to the parent-child analogy, we might say that Christian faith in God is like a child’s response to his or her parents’ love, his or her recognition not of their existence but of their status as parents. A child’s dinner is ‘effective’ regardless of how he or she feels about it. But the love of a parent, which is sometimes manifested in the form of dinner, steadily elicits something else in the child. Trust, gratitude, reciprocal love, even – the things that make Christmas more than a transfer of expensive objects from parent to child. But a loving parent does not test the child’s feelings for authenticity. Most reformers were content to accept the fact that some congregants would not be faithful: in the spirit of Jesus’ parable of the tares, they would allow the weeds to grow along with the wheat till harvest time.

In this respect, there is an important distinction between the mainstream, so-called magisterial Reformation and the ostensibly more radical, Anabaptist tradition. Anabaptist means ‘rebaptised’ – because they believed Christians should be baptised as adults, making a conscious decision to embrace Christianity rather than simply being born into it as babies. There were various Anabaptist sects, including some socially radical ones that were later claimed as harbingers of the age of political revolution, though it is the pacifist, separatist wing of that tradition that survives in the likes of the Mennonites today.

Far from bringing about the ‘disenchantment’ of Europe, the Reformation imbued everyday life for Christians with new meaning

In world historical terms, the magisterial Reformation was far more important. The name comes from the fact that the Lutherans and Calvinists sought the support of the secular powers, whether princes or magistrates. That was how they were able to ‘turn’ whole cities, provinces and even countries Protestant without unleashing anarchy. Luther argued that princes had the right to act as ‘emergency bishops’, reforming the faith and society in line with reformed teaching (10). Separation of church and state it was not, but it did affirm the legitimacy of territorial, secular authority, beginning the process that would lead to the development of the modern nation state, whose people are citizens by default and not by choice.

Observing that the Anabaptists sought a ‘pure church’, Luther once commented: ‘But I neither can nor may as yet set up such a congregation; for I do not as yet have the people for it.’ (11) He was unwittingly anticipating his countryman Bertolt Brecht, who four centuries later suggested ironically that the East German Communist government should dissolve its unsatisfactory people and elect another. The Reformation was about preparing for the Kingdom of God, not establishing it.

And arguably it was the reformers confidence in the Kingdom of God that allowed them to affirm the value of the mundane, material world, and the validity of secular ‘callings’. Anticipating Adam Smith this time: ‘When we pray, “Give us this day our daily bread,” Luther says, God answers it “not directly as when he gave manna to the Israelites, but through the work of farmers and bakers”. They are God’s “masks”.’ (12) In attending to their own work as businessmen, tradesmen and labourers, or indeed mothers, cleaners and servants, ordinary Christians were no less holy than priests and monks.

Arguably then, far from bringing about the ‘disenchantment’ of Europe, the Reformation imbued everyday life for Christians with new meaning. Of course, it would have been experienced very differently by its leaders and their enthusiastic followers, for whom it was a kind of personal awakening and psychological liberation, and those simply carried along in its wake, for many of whom it would have meant unwelcome disruption to no obvious purpose. Of course, the Reformation also led to vicious wars that lasted generations, but then Catholic Europe before that had hardly been noted for its Christian peace and harmony. The Reformation also imbued bloody power struggles with new meaning.

Ultimately it is impossible to say what would have happened had the Reformation never happened, or had it happened very differently. Looking back on what was significant about it at the time, however, it is possible to see it less as a bridge between the medieval and modern worlds than as reminder that the human story is more complicated than that. It was an historical process that involved both deep personal introspection and engagement with interwoven traditions of human thought going back millennia (partly made possible by the earlier Renaissance).

It also reflected both a persistent human intuition that there is more to life than animal existence and a yearning to transcend the merely human. Given the persistence of religion across much of the world, it remains to be seen whether those things will ever be fully secularised. In any case, anyone willing to take seriously the various debates and controversies thrown up over the course of the Reformation will find that in perhaps surprising ways they remain deeply relevant to the question of what it is to be human and how we ought to live.

Dolan Cummings is a writer based in London. He is the author of That Existential Leap: A Crime Story is published by Zero Books. (Buy this book from Amazon(UK).)

Picture published under a creative commons license.

(1) Young Man Luther, by Erik Erikson, WW Norton, 1993.

(2) Calvin on the Christian Life: Glorifying and Enjoying God Forever, by Michael Horton, Crossway, 2014.

(3) Calvin on the Christian Life: Glorifying and Enjoying God Forever, by Michael Horton, Crossway, 2014.

(4) The Reformation: a history, by Patrick Collinson, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2003.

(5) God Created Humanism, by Theo Hobson, SPCK, 2017.

(6) Why the Reformation Still Matters, by Tim Chester and Michael Reeves, Crossway, 2016.

(7) The Reformation: a history, by Patrick Collinson, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2003.

(8) Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet, by Lyndal Roper, Bodley Head, 2016.

(9) Calvin on the Christian Life: Glorifying and Enjoying God Forever, by Michael Horton, Crossway, 2014.

(10) Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet, by Lyndal Roper, Bodley Head, 2016.

(11) Calvin on the Christian Life: Glorifying and Enjoying God Forever, by Michael Horton, Crossway, 2014.

(12) Calvin on the Christian Life: Glorifying and Enjoying God Forever, by Michael Horton, Crossway, 2014.

[torreygazette]

Reformed Efficacy in the Supper

There are many conversations that we need to be having in the church today. While there are a great many threats to the purity of Christ’s church from both within and without, it is not a healthy posture to constantly seek out dividing lines of orthodoxy from one group to the next. There are most definitely times and places where we must dig our heels in and stand the line against error. I am not trying to diminish that, but I am suggesting that we also need to be having serious, uncomfortable, and passionate discussions and charitable debates with our brothers about things that matter. There is a whole host of issues that need to be addressed, one of which is our sacramental theology, specifically regarding the Lord’s Supper. To many today, this doctrine is very insignificant (matched almost by the insignificance of its practice). This is a tragedy, at least for the ecumenically minded among us.

Historically we know that one of the main reasons that the Protestants could not unite after the Reformation began was the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper. There was a substantial division between Luther and Zwingli, representing both major strands of the magisterial reformation. To dismiss these differences is to trivialize the struggles that the Lutherans and Reformed had to try and unite. If we are to have brotherly conversations with each other, we cannot simply discuss our differences today and expect to “come together” in some Kumbaya moment. The differences we have today are built upon the differences that defined our churches. With a view toward history, the Reformed will also recognize that there is a wide breadth in their own sacramental theology as well. Calvin’s view is, historically, much closer to Luther’s than to Zwingli’s, for instance.

While a great number of things could be talked about for this piece I wanted to discuss a couple things from the Westminster Confession. The Confession was the consensus document that brought a number of views together, yet it still takes a higher view of the sacraments than many contemporary Reformed people seem to today. First, I want to briefly discuss how Christ is related to the sacrament, and secondly, I want to briefly discuss its efficacy more broadly.

The Real Presence

“Worthy receivers, outwardly partaking of the visible elements, in this sacrament, do then also, inwardly by faith, really and indeed, yet not carnally and corporally but spiritually, receive, and feed upon, Christ crucified, and all benefits of his death: the body and blood of Christ being then, not corporally or carnally, in, with, or under the bread and wine; yet, as really, but spiritually, present to the faith of believers in that ordinance, as the elements themselves are to their outward senses.” - WCF 29.7

Here the Confession asserts that believers “really...feed upon” the crucified body and blood of Christ. As bread and wine nourish and sustain us physically, so too does the flesh and blood of Christ nourish us spiritually. The distinction is made between what is “real” and what is “carnal” and “corporeal”. If you are not comfortable with the idea that we are really and truly feasting on Christ’s flesh and blood, then you must object to the Confession at this point. It must be asserted by those who hold the Confession at this point that spiritually feasting on Christ is really feasting on Christ. The way many of our Lutheran brothers and sisters speak, they hold to the real presence of Christ in the Supper to be in contra-distinction from the spiritual presence of Christ in the Supper. In order to be really present in the Supper, Christ must be physically present.

Scripture, however, teaches that both the spiritual and physical experiences are “real”. Christ promises to be present wherever two or three are gathered in His name. Most certainly this means that Christ is really present (or he would be a liar), and yet he is not physically present. To argue that a spiritual experience is less real than a physical experience is more gnostic than Christian. So while there are most certainly differences that need to be established between the Lutheran and the Reformed on the Supper, the “real presence” of Christ should not be one of those differences. How do we spiritually eat Christ’s flesh and blood as we are carried up to feast on him in heaven? I have no problem saying that this is a mystery and I do not know how we spiritually feast upon Christ, but I know that we do.

Unto Grace or Judgement

“Although ignorant and wicked men receive the outward elements in this sacrament; yet, they receive not the thing signified thereby; but, by their unworthy coming thereunto, are guilty of the body and blood of the Lord, to their own damnation. Wherefore, all ignorant and ungodly persons, as they are unfit to enjoy communion with him, so are they unworthy of the Lord's table; and cannot, without great sin against Christ, while they remain such, partake of these holy mysteries, or be admitted thereunto.” - WCF 29.8

The sacraments are one of what are normally called the means of grace. The Reformed believe (as well as Lutherans) that the efficacy of the sacraments, by that I mean the conferring of grace, is attached to faith. It is the Spirit that works and not the signs themselves. That being said, the Reformed do believe that when the Christian partakes in the Supper in faith (believing the promises of God) the blessings and grace of God are conferred to “worthy receivers” (WCF 27.3). For unworthy receivers, however, the Supper also confers something. This is not a conferring of grace, however, it is a conferring of judgment. As our confession states, they are “guilty of the body and blood of the Lord, to their own damnation”. If the Spirit nourishes the believer who partakes in faith, we see that the Spirit afflicted professing believers in Corinth who ate unworthily with weakness, illness, and in some cases death (1 Cor. 11.30). What we see in the Supper then is that the Spirit is the efficacious agent and that the Spirit confers blessing or curse upon those who would feast upon Christ. In short, in the Supper God acts because he has promised to act.

There are a great many other questions regarding the Supper that we need to discuss: how frequently to partake, what methods are to be used in the administration, what requirements of fencing the table are both commanded and/or wise, and even at what age it is appropriate for baptized children to come to the table. I have made an effort to scratch the surface regarding a few details of the efficacy of the sacrament. If is a very insufficient treatment of the topic, but it is a call for brothers and sisters in Christ to take this sacrament seriously and to have these discussions. Know what you believe, and be fair with the beliefs of others. Have conversations (and at times debates) with those whom you agree and those whom you disagree. I have not interacted dogmatically with Lutheran theology on the Supper, but have expressed frustrations in conversations that I have witnessed and taken a part of, and done so with both frankness and a spirit of love. Toward that end, I hope that more people will read broadly and be charitable with others. Hopefully, we will start to treat the Supper, and the sacraments more generally, as seriously as our fathers in the faith did, because of these things matter. Hopefully, we will not only talk but also listen. Hopefully one day we will see brothers and sisters start tearing down denominational differences not because theology doesn’t matter, but rather because we have wrestled with each other and have become the John 17 church that Christ instructed us to be. Hopefully one day we can actually reform our churches in ways our fathers failed to do so.