The Eucharist

A few months ago, I was attending the morning service at my church on communion Sunday. As the pastor read from one of the standard passages and prayed over the elements, a little girl behind me started asking her mother: "Mommy, what are we doing?"  After some hushed conversation, presumably in a failed attempt to answer the daughter's questions quickly, I heard the mother finally say in muted exasperation: "We're just pretending."

I fought the urge to turn around and make a scene. This little girl's first lesson on the Holy Eucharist was that it was a game of make-believe, along the lines of playing house. I tried to remind myself that the answer was perfectly understandable -- after all, how would I explain communion to a young child?  But I still felt like the mother's response was profoundly wrong, as though it were a blasphemy against the Church and the people of God.

I grew up accepting the common Protestant definition of communion as an ordinance, a memorial done in remembrance of the sacrifice of Christ. But I had grown increasingly discontented with this answer as I grew older and wrestled with other theological traditions.

The Psalmist's words that "the heavens declare the glory of God" began to strike me as something more than mere poetry -- they hearkened at a reality, that Creation itself was imprinted with the fingerprints of God.  In Aristotelian terms, the final cause of Nature as a thing created is to magnify and glorify its Creator. Once you accept this view of reality -- once you realize that the world is invested with more meaning that subsumes and transcends the level of the senses -- it is almost impossible to think differently. The world is too colorful to think in hues of gray; the melody of nature is too sweet to ever compare to cold monotone. 

When Christ spoke the words over the bread and wine, that "this is my body" and "this is my blood," He changed those elements into something almost infinitely more.  Even if the words were purely metaphorical, we can see that the words would magnify and glorify the elements, because He allowed them to represent and reflect Him. Similarly, by choosing to represent Himself and His relation to the Church through the imagery of marriage, God transformed the nature of marriage into a profound testament to His love. Thus, even by the loosest standard of Protestant interpretation, the act of communion must be seen as a sacrament: a vessel of God's holiness.

God is present when we celebrate communion. The rest is semantics -- theologically profound semantics, but considerably less valuable than this foundational understanding.  Just as the mode of baptism ("sprinkle, dip or dunk") matters considerably less than the condition of the heart that receives it, the question of whether God is present locally within the elements (as in the Catholic and Orthodox understandings of transubstantiation, and the Lutheran doctrine of consubstantiation), or present generally in the ritual or the act itself, is of comparatively little importance.

But the sacred aspect of the Eucharist goes further.  For, when He spoke those words, He did not merely make the elements reflect His divine nature.  The blood of Christ is the blood of atonement, the forgiveness of sins, the essential act of atonement operating by the grace of God for the redemption of the individual soul and of a fallen Creation. And how can we forget that the bread does not merely reflect the body of Christ broken on the cross, but also the resurrected body, emanating glory, as well as the Body to which we all now belong? For the Church is the mystical Body of Christ.

Therefore, by partaking of the Eucharist, we do not merely participate in a memorial to His work, and we do not merely eat of glorified elements that reflect His nature.  We partake of the blood by which we are forgiven, and the body by which we are made whole.  We partake of our individual salvation and our corporate identity as the Church. Indeed, the Eucharist is how we are known as the Church -- for the sacrament of baptism is done for individuals, but communion defines us as a Body.

Since I was 18 months old, I've been diagnosed with severe anaphylaxis (allergy) to peanuts. Whenever I see that communion will be administered on a Sunday service, my first reaction is to get up, find an usher, and make sure that there are no peanut contaminants in the bread so I can participate.  Even if it's in the middle of the worship time, this takes first priority.  Communion is probably one of the most important elements of my Christian walk, and certainly one of the most sacred rituals in which I participate as a believer.

Dialectic on Catholicism: Introduction

I grew up an evangelical Protestant, which is perhaps as far removed from Catholicism as you can get within the Christian community.  However, I recently came to the realization that I share a fundamentally Catholic approach to certain doctrines and issues in Christian theology, which made me take a second look at Catholic doctrines and disciplines (particularly those I don't particularly agree with) to see what I might learn from their tradition.

I'm calling this series a "dialectic" because I hope to reflect that process in these notes: state my background and my original beliefs on a given issue (thesis), engage the Catholic approach to the same issue (antithesis), and identify my preferred approach based on the comparative strengths of both (synthesis).  I'd also like to identify any commonalities that might reliably point us to the rudiments of "mere Christianity," that wonderful phrase coined by C.S. Lewis that must be at the heart of any efforts at ecumenical unity and dialogue.

The series will wrestle with the teachings on the Eucharist and other sacraments, the principles and practice of canonization, the dogma of Mary, papal authority, and (if time permits or interest prevails) other issues such as church structure, eschatology, and purgatory. Sounds like fun, at least to the ears of a theology nerd.

A Sacramental World

Names are important.  Many instances in the Old and New Testaments, God seems to go out of his way to name or rename certain individuals. Abram becomes Abraham; Sarai becomes Sarah; Zachariah became the father of John; Saul becomes Paul.  Certainly this emphasis on names was shared by the culture -- Adam named the beasts and Jacob named his sons, and these names had real meaning. My own name is meaningful: my parents named me Alexander David, meaning "leader of men, beloved of God."

Whether names are primarily social constructs, or whether they hearken to something spiritually or metaphysically real, I can't really say.  But, though Shakespeare reminds us that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, we should remember that we would not remember the smell if a rose went by another name.  Words have a rhythm and a timbre, and some words just mesh perfectly with they object they denote.

All that to say, I've struggled with the name of this blog.

It was originally "Confessions of a Protestant Medievalist" -- the latter being my personal self-description, based on my encounter with medieval (Catholic) theology and doctrines.  But it was so much of an "inside joke" that it won't convey the meaning of this blog to those not already conversant in those doctrines.

At times I considered switching it to "Heterodox Reflections" or something along those lines, indicating that my approach to certain problems and doctrines tend to shy away from the norm of my evangelical Protestant background.  But I find value in tradition, and I wanted to emphasize that I believe any shift away from my Protestant roots would arise in conformity to a deeper or earlier Christian tradition.

Thus, most recently, the name changed to "Orthodox Reflections." But I was not contented.  For one, the title was so staid -- so boring -- that it didn't really describe anything significant about this blog.  It would discuss issues, and it would be grounded in Christian principles, but the name lacked any information to differentiate this blog from any other.

However, I think I finally found the name, a phrase to suit this blog's purpose. After a lot of theological reflection I've found that perhaps up to half of my theology is now rooted in Catholic understandings of God and the Church. I can't consider myself Catholic, when I still diverge so strongly from certain doctrines of theirs, but I am increasingly influenced by Catholic ideas.

Chief among these is the notion of "sacrament" -- of physical objects or deeds being not only signs but also vessels of God's grace. The Roman Catholic Church officially recognizes seven such sacraments  -- baptism, confirmation, communion, confession, last rites, ordination, and marriage.  However the doctrine of sacraments is far broader than that.  While these seven rites carry unique importance in Catholic tradition and Christian practice, they are by no means exclusive.  The world itself is a Sacrament.  It was not necessary that God create, and therefore Creation itself was a vessel of His grace bestowed upon the created for His glorification.

We live in A Sacramental World.  And now my blog has a name.

Book Review: "The Rite"

I read this book without knowing precisely what to expect.  I was interested in learning about spiritual warfare, especially from a Catholic perspective.  I knew that Father Thomas Euteneur (currently of the diocese of Palm Beach, formerly of Human Life International) had written a well-received book on the subject, Exorcism and the Church Militant. That book was unfortunately out of print, but Euteneur did recommend another work as a resource: The Rite: The Making of a Modern Exorcist, by Matthew Baglio.

Among the Catholic rites and practices, exorcism is decidedly the black sheep -- ignored whenever it's possible, and marginalized whenever it can't. Due to an explosion of reported possessions and instances of demonic warfare in Europe, specifically in Italy, the Vatican had decided to debut a course in exorcism for interested priests.  This naturally attracted a good deal of attention from local and international media, including by American journalist Matt Baglio.  Shortly after the course began, Baglio met Father Gary Thomas, a priest from San Jose, California, who had been sent by his bishop to Rome for training. Father Thomas had never witnessed an exorcism and knew virtually nothing about the subject, but was eager to learn and was soon apprenticed to a practicing exorcist, Father Carmine.

Baglio wrote The Rite as the story of Father Thomas' training. The narrative conceit is stunningly effective. Both Baglio and Father Thomas begin as a skeptic, but the book conveys their gradual exposure to the Rite and acceptance of the reality of spiritual warfare.  Baglio packs the book chock-full of anecdotes, not only from Father Thomas' experience, but from other exorcists around Italy, and various sufferers.  He also covers the theology of spiritual warfare, a historical survey of Catholic and Christian demonology, and (most intriguingly) modern medical and psychological views on demonic possession.

In an article published in The American, Baglio stated that he "wanted to take an unbiased, non-macabre, almost scientific approach to determine just what the Church actually taught about exorcism." The Rite was quite successful in this regard.  There are occasional sensational details, but on the whole Baglio conveys the surprising banality of the rite, and dispels many misconceptions that accompany the subject.  The Rite may have been too successful, in fact. It attracted the attention of Hollywood (the source of many of those misconceptions), and is the basis for the upcoming film "The Rite" (starring Anthony Hopkins as Father Carmine). Based on the trailer, I have little doubt that this film will be a typical Hollywood bastardization of the source material, but that hardly disqualifies the book as a splendid and invaluable resource for those who seek real theological and scientific content on this much-disputed area of Christian doctrine.

This was cross-posted at my book review blog, Worthy of Note.

Book Review: "Will Catholics be 'Left Behind'?"

When I was younger, I had a pretty strong interest in eschatology (from eschaton - the study of the "end times").  I think my interest was primarily motivated out of a love for storytelling.  The book of Revelation has so many wonderful and terrible images that it really does draw you in to the cosmic portrait being drawn, even if the portrait is as indecipherable as modern art.  This storytelling aspect was amplified by the "Left Behind" series, which now seems ideally suited for an impressionable young mind -- a thoroughly engaging plot featuring two-dimensional characters and absolutely abysmal writing.

As I grew older, I grew more familiar with some of the views on the book of Revelations, and I realized that "Rapture theology" was far from the only orthodox approach to eschatology.  My own views were shaped decisively in my freshman and sophomore years of college, when I engaged in a study of millennialist heresies in the Middle Ages and the Reformation.  For many years prior I had studied the history of economic thought, and I was frankly stunned by the many correlations I discovered between heretical eschatology and later utopian ideologies that had secularized these false millennial doctrines. This historical background helped demonstrate to me not only the theological dangers of over-emphasizing the eschaton, but the social and philosophical ramifications as well.

This book, "Will Catholics Be 'Left Behind'?", skilfully dissects the doctrines of "Rapture theology" that are so familiar to certain Protestant circles. The organization is a bit scatter-shot, surveying historical millennailists (focusing on the proto-dispensationalist heresies of Joachim de Fiore), major dispensationalist figures (such as Darby, Scofield, and Chafer), and finally the popularizers of the Rapture (especially Hal Lindsey and Tim LaHaye).
 
The book analyzes and evaluates some of the crucial doctrinal underpinnings of "the Rapture," and offers considerable clarity in defining various schools and camps of Christian eschatology. The distinctions between pre-millennialist, post-millennialist, and amillennialist interpretations, along with the divisions within Rapture theology (pre-Tribulation, mid-Trib, or post-Trib), are offered and explained. Finally, from the perspective of a historically orthodox Catholic (relying on church dogma and papal encyclicals), the authors presents a critique of dispensationalist theology and a positive affirmation of Catholic doctrine on the millennium and the eschaton.

I am not a Catholic, but I found the arguments both intriguing and compelling. It taught me a good deal about the doctrinal underpinnings of dispensationalism, especially the sharp dichotomy between the nation of Israel and the Church, a "two covenants" approach to eschatology that practically entails two separate "Second Comings" -- a preliminary Rapture alongside the final Parousia. That answered one of my main questions about dispensationalism: why the Rapture was considered a doctrinal necessity in the first place. The book also surveyed some of the more vitriolic strains of anti-Catholicism among dispensationalist writers, a bigotry that almost makes me ashamed to be a Protestant. On a more positive note, the author's case for the Catholic doctrine of eschatology also delved into issues of the Church as the Body of Christ, and the role of church tradition. This work is an engaging read, and an immensely valuable resource for studying Christian doctrines of eschatology.

This was cross-posted at my book review blog, Worthy of Note.

**Welcome, readers from the Ignatius Insight Scoop blog!**

Reflection on Certainty: #6

Why must you be sure?

Having lavished paragraph on paragraph to do the theme of certainty some degree of justice, I want to take a step back and ask the question: why?

Why must our knowledge be certain?  Why do we guard our storehouses of knowledge to only let in those statements to which no possible objection or counterargument may be raised?  Why does true knowledge only extend to those things which cannot possibly be doubted?

This assumption is common to both modernism and postmodernism; it is the framework in which this debate has been conducted.  But it is an assumption, and over the course of these notes I've begun to realize it is utterly unwarranted.

By definition, only God can be omniscient, and therefore only God can be certain.  We cannot see a painting that is hidden from our eyes; we cannot draw blueprints of a jail when we only see our cell.  On the contrary, we are human.  Our intellects operate on reason, on our capacity for critical judgment.  Only rarely do we grasp truth intuitively, as though we were perceiving an object or sensing a smell.  We analyze, we infer, we evaluate, and we deal with a variety of logical possibilities.  To such minds as ours, uncertainty is natural and inevitable.

Our desire for certainty is fundamentally a desire to transcend our own humanity: to become like God, knowing good and evil.  It's more than a little ironic that the most recent fallacy of the modern mind are precisely the same as the first fallacy, the first sin to which man succumbed.

Why seek what cannot be found?  I don't think even in heaven will we "know" with certainty.  Omniscience is not in our nature.  But the quest for certainty is even beyond futility.  It is an unhealthy obsession, not merely for flattering our sense of pride, but also for distracting us from our sense of self.

We are not pure minds. We are tripartite beings: body, soul, and spirit.  The mind (soul) is meant to guide us, but we are ultimately defined by our choices -- that is, our will (spirit).  Our obsessive focus on certainty distracts us from this fact. It permits us to identify ourselves with our mind and thereby justify our atrophied will.  We want certainty because we are cowards -- we want to be forced into Truth without having to judge for ourselves or face the consequences of our decisions.

God preserve us from such sin.  Let us be content with what resources we have been given, and let us be courageous enough to act on them.

Reflection on Certainty: #5

Are you sure?

Knowledge is regressive.  Every conclusion we reach relies on some prior shared premise.

Is there any piece of knowledge we can point to that is not grounded on prior knowledge?  Is anything truly self-evident?  I'm honestly not sure.  The axioms we often call self-evident, such as the law of non-contradiction, do not in fact seem to be self-demonstrating. They are merely so far above (that is, prior to) other statements that standard deductive proof becomes a practical impossibility. Self-evident axioms are so called not because they are demonstrated, but because they are so foundational to our rationality that rejecting them would be rejecting the very idea of rationality.

In short, the basis for what we call certainty is not our positive knowledge of something, but rather our inability to conceive of its opposite.

As humans, we are rational creatures.  Our minds work in certain ways, and don't work in others.  It is physically impossible to operate outside of those constraints.

This is what I call methodological certainty. We are allowed to feel and express certainty, by this standard, for those ideas without which we would not be able to function.  Methodological certainty concerns the sine qua non of our rational humanity: statements without which we are not. 

For instance, we might be able to deny the law of non-contradiction by our words, but it would not have the force of rational belief.  We could not defy it in action, much less in actual processes of reasoning.  Our minds don't function in that way.  We can conceive of these limits on our mind, but we can no sooner transcend them than we can transcend the intrinsic limitations of our physical bodies.

One danger is that humans are eminently capable of self-deception. We might deny a given statement, and we may even live and reason based on our denial of that, without ever encountering the logical consequences of that idea that would throw other aspects of our worldview in jeopardy.

What principles can we categorize as methodologically certain?