N. T. Wright’s Jan ’07 Calvin College lectures on Space, Time, Matter, New Creation and the Sacraments, which can be heard here, contain lots of good, stimulating things – and some stretching stuff:
Here are some paraphrased jottings arising:
Being immersed in the sacramental life of the church, talking about the sacraments is a bit like talking about eating or breathing. We are able to feed on the Supper without understanding everything that’s going on, just as we benefit from our breakfast without having a full understanding of the medical processes involved in its digestion.
Isaiah 54-55, pattern of new covenant, new creation and memorial offering
From the New Testament point of view, heaven is very important, but it’s not the end of the world. The goal of this creation is its fulfilment not its abolition: all things are to be made new in Christ, renewed, transformed and glorified.
The New Creation will not be some kind of atemporal eternality. God made time good and he made plenty of it.
Even the New Creation will be a project / programme (a growing tree with the leaves for the healing of the nations) – there will be work to be done.
What would it look like for time and matter to be redeemed?
If you can’t imagine what a non-corruptible physicality that’s a problem with your imagination, not with the concept.
[Wright spoke briefly about hell and denied being a universalist]
Since we have an embodied salvation we have embodied signs of it in the sacraments.
Good Friday is the 6th day of the week, the day of the creation of mankind and Pilate says, “Behold the man” [an interpretive maximalist moment!].
When you hear someone say, “in a very real sense” they probably mean, “I really want to assert this but I’m not sure how”. Likewise to say something is “mysterious” or “mystical” can just be a way of saying we don’t understand it.
In the Supper we eat food that comes to us from God’s future as the people of Israel ate grapes in the wilderness from the promised land, before entering it.
Isaiah 6; 11; Hab 2: Is the earth full of the glory of God or is it yet to be filled with it?
In our attitude to matter we need to avoid on the one hand superstition, magic and idolatory and on the other dualism, gnosticism and escapism.
Sacraments are in a way the opposite of speech acts (which do things by speaking). These actions (like a handshake or a kiss) do and say more than can be said in words.
The speech acts or acted speech of the sacraments prepare us for action.
In theological discussion you always have to say everything you believe or someone will accuse you of deliberately missing something out.
Luke 24 – word and sacrament go together. Sacraments without words would have no defined meaning. The sacrament is the word / story brought to action.
Churches with the pulpit only in the centre are like mosques where the word alone matters and sacraments have no place in the cultural life.
Though we must avoid errors like panentheism and pantheism, with the eastern orthodox we may learn to see the whole world is sacramental, or at least full of sacramental possibility for the Christian.
I am not a panentheist but because of 1 Cor 15; Rom 8 I am an eschatological the-en-panist – God will be all in all.
In the Anglican tradition we say of confession to an authorised minister that all may, none must, some should.
Some kind of penance, confirmation and ordination could be seen as a drawing out of what is implicit in baptism and the supper.
I would be happy to use sacramental language with a small ‘s’ of marriage, eating a meal and saying grace, and washing.
Baptism reminds us the watery creation narrative.
As the Lord’s Supper is a new Passover, Baptism is a new Exodus – through the waters of the Jordan into the Land of the New Covenant.
Paul talks about things happening through the sacraments. He dosen’t say its as if things happen or that we should keep something in mind.
I once heard a Roman Catholic cardinal say that world is full of baptized non-Christians.
Even in the first generation there were people in the church who were baptized and participating in the eucharist without a living faith (1 Cor 10-11) and they were courting disaster. They must be warned that God is not mocked.
Its not that someone has to have their Christianity all sorted out before they can be baptized but that there are times when Paul appeals for faith on the basis of baptism.
God welcomes us as we are but God’s welcome never leaves us as we are. Baptism is a call to holiness.
We sometimes talk about “baptizing” an idea as a superficial incorporation of an idea into the church – but that is not a proper baptism. Baptism is a call to die and rise, to be deeply transformed.
Martin Luther: when all else fails and the world seems dark I say to myself: “I have been baptized”.
Baptism is not a bare ritual. We must avoid ritualism and anti-ritualism.
Some Protestants are tempted to think that doing anything at all smacks of works / merit righteousness but we are to be embodied Christians. We must embrace creation.
The natural focal range of a new-born baby is the distance between its mother’s breast and its mother’s eyes.
I suspect that some children have a deeper and fuller faith than many who say the creed every week. Just as a small balloon and a big balloon can both be full, so a small child and an adult can both be full of the love of God, even though the adult needs to have a greater grasp of the love of God to be full.
In the eucharist we taste the new creation so that we can be agents of new creation in the world. That needs more than political and social activism. It needs the power of the Spirit.
The eucharist is not sympathetic magic so that the clock-work under the altar works properly.
Augustine: believe and you have eaten
We must avoid Western dualism between spirituality and action in the world.
As Torrance has suggested, some of the new Thomists like Eric Maskill might not be far off what Calvin is trying to say about the Eucharist.
Love is the highest and richest way of knowing – respecting the one being loved and entering into appropriate relationships with it
Maybe protestants can talk about eucharistic sacrifice since from in Bible, from a human point of view, sacrifice is always a response of gratitude, love and praise to grace.
I’m not saying there aren’t serious disagreements between Roman Catholics and Protestants on the Eucharist and that if we thought about it we’d see we all agree after all.
Roman Catholic polemicists sometimes accuse Protestants of adding something else to Christ’s sacrifice by the Eucharist since Protestants insist that the Supper is not a repetition of Jesus’ sacrifice.
In the eucharist sacramental time takes us back to the crucifixion and forward to the new creation in the present.
The Orthodox allow little children to participate in the eucharist and even give them a morsel of bread at their baptism.
Restricting admission to the Lord’s Supper to the confirmed was a medieval innovation by a bishop who wanted to boost numbers of confirmation candidates.
You can celebrate the eucharist anywhere (on a beech or in a hospital) but it is worth doing it in a wisely designed worship space, just as it is best to drink a fine wine from the best glasses rather than from plastic coffee cups.
The eucharist and baptism are narratives, stories: God’s story, Israel’s story, Jesus’ story, the world’s story, our story. The liturgy must tell this story.
Unity is central to the Lord’s Supper. All those who believe in the Lord Jesus and are justified by faith (Gal 2) belong at the same table.
Since the eucharist is a public event proclaiming the unity of the whole church, it is desirable that in normal circumstances authorised ministers should preside. Lay presidency (like a common law marriage) might lead those who preside over time to be thought of as “common law” ministers.
The minister wears a robe to preside at the eucharist not to say how important he is but to show that he doesn’t do it as a private individual but as an authorised representative.
If you don’t leave yourself open to the charge of antinomianism you probably haven’t preached grace quite loudly enough.
We baptise once and celebrate the eucharist regularly because you can only be born once but you need many meals, as the people of Israel came through the Red Sea once and received the Manna daily. Rebaptism is a theological nonsense though pastoral rededication may be helpful for some.
The union of complementary unlikes is one of God’s most fundamental laws. It is not possible to have gay marriages.
Sacraments are to the Christian life as sex is to a good marriage: they colour and give life to the whole, although they are not going on all the time. The whole Christian life is sacramental as a marriage is sexual.
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