Tuesday, August 03, 2010

The words he must have forgotten

Many years ago I saw a Baptist pastor leading a service of Holy Communion as they understand it. He read from the eleventh chapter of I Corinthians (vs. 24,25).

"And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me. After the same manner also he took the cup, when he had supped, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me."

After reading these words outloud, he prayed, "Lord, help us to remember that this bread and 'wine' [does Welch's make wine?] are symbols of your body and blood." I cannot tell if he was correcting the Lord, having just read what he had said on that night. No matter how you translate the original Greek New Testament, it does not come out "Take, eat: this represents my body symbolically..." On the other hand, we have other words the Lord must have forgotten to say, such as "Take, eat: I am present under these signs." Or, to others it is obvious that he really meant to say, "Take, eat: the whole substance of the bread will be converted into the whole substance of my body, being no longer bread..." He just did not know how to say it properly.

The problem for many people is not what Jesus said, but the mysterious manner in which he spoke. Various parties have attempted to define and describe what happens, as if there should be no mystery (μυστήριον) to the sacrament, at least none we cannot solve by cold, hard, human logic, using the correct philosophical paradigm--Aristotelian no doubt (wasn't Jesus an Aristotelian? No?). Each party believes its point of view to be self-evident, each certain that it is obvious what Christ meant by his very few words. No, rather I am brought back to my senses by Richard Hooker's famous indulgence granted to all, that it is acceptable to admit our ignorance.

After decades of theological acrobatics, flying through the academic air with the greatest of ease, and wrestling with the theoretical alligators of scholarship, it dawned on me to limit my explanations to what has been given by revelation. In doing so, I discovered how much my earlier and youthful, howbeit impressive, feats of academic heroism had distracted me from some of the most important elements of the revelation itself. Putting it another way, professing myself to be wise, I had become a real twit.

About this sacrament, I had been distracted from the obvious covenantal meaning that was abundantly clear to the Disciples who were present at the Last Supper. Those who partake of this meal are bound to the same covenant by which God binds Himself to fufill His promise. If we eat and drink this sacrament, we are bound to be faithful to the Lord; in turn God binds himself to forgive our sins and to give us all the benefits of the New Covenant that Jeremiah (Jer. 31:31-34) had foretold, and that the Lord Jesus was about to ratify by His death. But, by trying to define exactly what Jesus meant in his mysterious words, I was missing the clear meaning of other words, also spoken at that moment, that were not so mysterious to those who were present with him that night.

It is clear, from the same eleventh chapter of I Corinthians, that St. Paul did not see this sacrament as merely symbolic. To him it was a reality, a reality in which the bread was still bread, but much more than bread: "Wherefore whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord, unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord." (I Cor. 11:27) Truly, he saw Christ as present in the sacrament, and he rebuked the Corinthian Christians for failing to approach the holy presence of Christ with godly fear. This failure caused them to profane the New Covenant, and made them guilty of violating the most holy Presence of Christ himself.

Furthermore, St. Paul began his Institution narrative in such a manner as to speak about their attitude to the mystery rather than their intellectual understanding of it. "The Lord Jesus the same night in which he was betrayed took bread..." He began by reminding them that Christ had been betrayed before. He placed the whole Institution Narrative in light of that betrayal. He was telling them, by this, that their treatment of His Body was a new betrayal committed all over again, and that they were guilty. He told them that by mistreating members of His Body, the Church, they were guilty of handling profanely the holy reality of his mysterious Presence in the covenant meal.

I do not really understand that mysterious sacramental Presence myself, and neither do you. Neither did St. Thomas Aquinas, the Council of Trent nor the English Reformers (though the latter had the humility to know it). Frankly, St. Paul takes no effort to explain that mysterious Presence of Christ, by which the Bread is His Body. Rather, he speaks to the attitude of the heart about approaching God, so directly through that sacramental Presence, while not caring for the members of the same Body as it is also manifested in another mystery; that is, His Body manifested as the Church.

And, until we come to grips with the things that have been revealed very clearly, we waste our time trying to describe, to define and to explain fully, the things that remain deeply mysterious even in the same words by which they have been revealed. "This is My Body...This is My Blood...": At once, both a revelation and an unsolvable mystery.

Perhaps, then, He said exactly what He meant to say, no more and no less.

13 comments:

Donald said...

Dear Fr. Hart+,

Ouch! and thank you for another excellent, challenging article. I will be sharing these wise words with my parish very soon!

Fr. Don+

welshmann said...

Fr. Hart:

Somehow, the average Christian believer accepts the fact that Jesus is both God and man, without much fuss or bother. Theologians certainly know that the Incarnation is a deep mystery that raises some very hard questions. And yet somehow, the average believer just doesn't go there. They just don't.

What is it about the Real Presence that makes so many believers, myself included, raise their metaphysical defenses? Why do they "go there" in the first place?

welshmann

Derril said...

Father Hart, thank you for another fine essay.

Would you agree that having a proper "attitude of the heart about approaching God, so directly through that sacramental Presence" implies each person should make a specific personal Preparation for Communion or alternately, avail oneself of the sacrament of Penance, each time prior to receiving this sacrament?

Paul Rimmer said...

Thank you very much, Father. Your thought is as always clear, and your style whimsical.

Because of articles like this, I found that, in becoming Anglican, I could become more authentically Catholic, and so far kinder to my fellow man and more loving of God, than when I ever was under Rome.

Your essays here have helped lead me joyfully into the Anglican Church. Thank you.

Cherub said...

Fr Hart: "I do not really understand that mysterious sacramental Presence myself, and neither do you. Neither did St. Thomas Aquinas, the Council of Trent nor the English Reformers (though the latter had the humility to know it)."

You misunderstand both TAQ and Trent. The point was to show that the Real Presence is consistent with reason. But it is a miracle, and beyond human reason to prove or, in some final sense, explain. We accept the truth of the Real Presence on account of our trust in the Lord Jesus. St Thomas expressed this beautifully in the hymn Ado te which I learnt as a young Anglican boy:

"Godhead here in hiding, whom I do adore
Masked by these bare shadows, shape and nothing more.
See, Lord, at thy service low lies here a heart
Lost, all lost in wonder at the God thou art.
Seeing, touching, tasting are in thee deceived;
How says trusty hearing? That shall be believed;
What God's Son has told me, take for truth do I;
Truth himself speaks truly or there's nothing true."

TAQ and Trent used Aristotelian philosophy (fallible as is any human philosophy) as the best available philosophy to state that Christ is really present. But we believe it because Jesus, who is God has told us so. "Truth himself speaks truly or there's nothing true." Or as Queen Elizabeth I once put it (according to some sources), "what the Word doth make it, that I believe and take it."

Brian Davies said...

What I have always found puzzling about the Southern Baptist theology is their insistence on literalism in Genesis 1 but nowhere else!

As a scientist I find no difficulty in accepting a god, 'moving in a mysterious way his wonders to perform', who can design a universe where evolution produces us. One can further argue that the apparently inherently 'chaotic' properties of natural systems is reflected in human free will. Equally, cosmologists suggest all matter ultimately comprises 'strings' in a fourteen dimensional universe - and that leaves plenty of scope for a disc of unleavened bread to house a real presence.

Fr. Robert Hart said...

You misunderstand both TAQ and Trent. The point was to show that the Real Presence is consistent with reason.

Cherub:

If you had suggested to Thomas Aquinas that he did understand the mystery, he would have been very unhappy to hear such non-sense. So, about your comment, Thomas Aquinas, yes; the Council of Trent, no. The latter repeated an overly ambitious attempt to define and describe beyond the limits of revelation.

Cherub said...

Fr Hart: "The latter repeated an overly ambitious attempt to define and describe beyond the limits of revelation."

Well Father that is simply not the case. In its 13th Session the Council of Trent said this:


"CHAPTER I.
On the real presence of our Lord Jesus Christ in the most holy sacrament of the Eucharist.
In the first place, the holy Synod teaches, and openly and simply professes, that, in the august sacrament of the holy Eucharist, after the consecration of the bread and wine, our Lord Jesus Christ, true God and man, is truly, really, and substantially contained under the species of those sensible things. For neither are these things mutually repugnant,-that our Saviour Himself always sitteth at the right hand of the Father in heaven, according to the natural mode of existing, and that, nevertheless, He be, in many other places, sacramentally present to us in his own substance, by a manner of existing, which, though we can scarcely express it in words, yet can we, by the understanding illuminated by faith, conceive, and we ought most firmly to believe, to be possible unto God: for thus all our forefathers, as many as were in the true Church of Christ, who have treated of this most holy Sacrament, have most openly professed, that our Redeemer instituted this so admirable a sacrament at the last supper, when, after the blessing of the bread and wine, He testified, in express and clear words, that He gave them His own very Body, and His own Blood; words which,-recorded by the holy Evangelists, and afterwards repeated by Saint Paul, whereas they carry with them that proper and most manifest meaning in which they were understood by the Fathers,-it is indeed a crime the most unworthy that they should be wrested, by certain contentions and wicked men, to fictitious and imaginary tropes, whereby the verity of the flesh and blood of Christ is denied, contrary to the universal sense of the Church, which, as the pillar and ground of truth, has detested, as satanical, these inventions devised by impious men; she recognising, with a mind ever grateful and unforgetting, this most excellent benefit of Christ."

Paul Rimmer said...

Fr. Hart:

What do you think of the notion that "transubstantiation", even to the point it's defined in Trent, could be a good way to express in words something genuinely mysterious, so long as we don't attach to it (and all the Aristotelian baggage) the weight of dogma?

I've always found St. Thomas Aquinas's expression of transubstantiation useful, but not absolutely binding. I've also understood why it may be dangerous for some, because it is easily mistaken as what St. Lancelot Andrewes called "‘bodily’ presence of Christ in the sacrament in any sort of a natural mode." (via Fr. Steel)

This is especially true when the word "physical" gets tied to the mystery.

Fr. Robert Hart said...

The doctrine of Transubstantiation is based on an Aristotelian paradigm, and falls under the category of academic theory. It is too precise a definition to be seen merely as "Real Presence" -- a term that leaves the mystery where it belongs, namely, to God's Transcendence. God understands the mystery; we do not. Furthermore, after thousands of words are uttered and written, trying to explain how the bread and wine are His body and blood, we know nothing more than we did before. Meanwhile, the entire covenantal meaning is entirely neglected, even though that was the part that was made most clear to the Apostles.

Anonymous said...

Father Hart, I agree with you that, in the end, when all is said and done, the Real Presence is a mystery. But that is what the Church has always said. You say: "Furthermore, after thousands of words are uttered and written, trying to explain how the bread and wine are His body and blood, we know nothing more than we did before. Meanwhile, the entire covenantal meaning is entirely neglected, even though that was the part that was made most clear to the Apostles." This is not true. We do know more because we have used sound philosophy to try and understand just what Christ meant when he said those immemorial words. You did it your self when you quite correctly pointed out the contradictory nature of much protestant thinking. In other words, reason enables us to establish the limits within which true doctrine is to be held. Aristotelianism is just such a good philosophy which serves us well in determining the limits within which true belief is to be found. Much the same can be said about the homoousion etc. In the end it is not so much the Greek philosophy which is at stake. That philosophy was used by the Church to set down the proper parameters within which we are to understand what we now call the hypostatic union. I do not know why you think that the covenantal meaning of the eucharist is being entirely neglected. The academic literature and orthodox liturgies are replete with it.

Fr. Robert Hart said...

Aristotelianism is just such a good philosophy which serves us well in determining the limits within which true belief is to be found.

But, it is not the paradigm within which the Apostles understood His words. We cannot fully appreciate His meaning without the Jewish covenantal emphasis.

Much the same can be said about the homoousion etc.

The difference is, the Council of Nicea coined the word to express to express what was revealed clearly in Scripture. The development of Transubstantiation, or the rationale of Consubstantiation, or the simplistic reduction to mere metaphor, are all ideas that do not come from what Jesus said.

I do not know why you think that the covenantal meaning of the eucharist is being entirely neglected. The academic literature and orthodox liturgies are replete with it.

The liturgies cannot avoid it without deleting the Words of Institution. But, the ongoing academic discussion, for centuries, has been sorely negligent.

Bruce said...

Brian Davies wrote:
"What I have always found puzzling about the Southern Baptist theology is their insistence on literalism in Genesis 1 but nowhere else!
As a scientist I find no difficulty in accepting a god, 'moving in a mysterious way his wonders to perform', who can design a universe where evolution produces us. One can further argue that the apparently inherently 'chaotic' properties of natural systems is reflected in human free will."

I've had similar thoughts only I refer to it as a "stochastic process." A stochastic process includes a random element but is not limited to said random element. A model with specific, hardwired algorithms and a random number generator would be an example. Human free will can be thought of as residual randomness in the model.

It's not just the Southern Baptists. The Lutherans (at least the ones that aren't imitating the Episcopal Church) also insist on this. But I don't think it's in the great ecumenical creeds that they confess.