More Replies to the Scotist

Two Exegetical Notes

I really couldn't help but notice the priority dispute in Luke was this evening's Gospel:

“You are those who have stood by me in my trials; and I confer on you, just as my Father has conferred on me, a kingdom, so that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and you will sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel."

This passage immediately follows the institution narrative in Luke, paralleling what I was arguing from John a couple of weeks ago. Through baptism, Paul tells us in Romans 6, we stand with Christ in his trials retroactively. Thus, we are in fellowship with the apostles who dine with Christ in the upper room in our brokenness and even in our covert treason (but the example of Judas warns us against the latter state). I just want to make it clear. Jesus dines in two different ways. There are connections between his dining practices as countless exegetes of the multiple feeding episodes have pointed out. (Oh, how do I love Bede...the loaves represent the Law and the fishes the Psalms and the Prophets, so the multiple feeding episodes are within the Old Covenant but pre-figure the Eucharistic feast.)

In yet another era of overwrought and dehumanizing imperial power issuing under the cover of republican ideals at home, it seems foul to look for militarism at the heart of the Eucharist. But it is there. The Eucharistic feast is first prefigured in the victory feast in the Valley of Kidron in Genesis 14, where Melchizedek, the King of Salem (lit. the King of Peace) brings food and wine and blesses Abraham, whose enemies God Most High had delivered into his hands. This is a spoils dividing party. But when the real loot divvying comes up, we note an odd power dynamic. The King of Sodom takes everything. Abraham only demands a share for his colleagues and compensation for his expenses. It's hard to say why exactly Abraham does this, but our best guess comes from the beginning of Genesis 15, in which the Lord assures Abraham that the Lord will reward him, that is, the Lord, not the King of Sodom, will make Abraham rich.

And thus the Eucharist has this character of a spoil-dividing party. One thing to remember is what the Disciples probably think about the Kingdom on Maundy Thursday. Most likely think Jesus will lead some supernaturally-backed institution of a righteous kingdom in Israel that will smash the Gentiles. The many priority disputes therefore aren't about who gets to head the receiving line in Heaven. Instead, they are more about who will become Governor of the Transjordan. They are dealing with Him who is both the Lord and Melchizedek, and they are acting as if Jesus is the King of Sodom about to make them rich. But He shall lead captivity captive and ascend with captives in his train. The Lord gave the word, great were the company of the preachers, and the women divided the spoils. The Kingdom turned out somewhat different than expected. The Eucharist thus is both wedding banquet and a peculiar kind of victory party.

The analogy of baptism with the military induction of a Roman soldier is a Patristic trope if I remember correctly, and it's one to remenber.

I Want To Evangelize Aliens. Of Course, I Read Ephesians.

Let me point out that Augustine in City of God obsessively hoped to the time when Christ would be all in all. And yet he also writes in the very same volumes one of the most disturbing refutations of annihiliationism ever written. I find nothing in Ephesians that unambiguously implies any Pauline belief in universal salvation, nor the good premises of a bad argument, nor the good framework under bad premises that would allow me to argue for universal salvation.

I'm All For the Cognitive Content of the Creeds, Though I Follow C.S. Lewis When It Comes to Quicunque Vult

Not really much content here. I just want to be on the record that I believe God is omnipotent etc.

Jesus Offered Himself For the Hoi Polloi Amidst A Select Company

Let us suppose that Jesus offered Himself for the hoi polloi as the Scriptures do say in anticipation of universal salvation. Then why did He not share the first Eucharistic meal with a very large crowd as an example to the Church?

If Anyone Genuinely Believes They Have Received the Holy Spirit, Let Them Be Baptized

Acts 10:44 ff. Actually, it says that if the community recognizes this fact, they should be baptized. But I really do not trust discernment of spirits among Episcopalians these days. I've heard about too many parish search committee meetings...

On Exclusion

But let's be serious here. My Rector says that in order to talk across a divide, one must understand something about the motivation of one's opponent and understand that their views usually stem from good faith and genuine concern. I don't want to psychologize Scotist personally, but his arguments have provided a very fair look at the concerns of CWOB proponents. Deirdre Good's recent writings on hospitality may come from the same place.

I recall the personally disconcerting experiences of going to Mass at a Roman Catholic church and not partaking the Body and Blood of our Lord. I spend much of the Eucharistic Prayer in a mix of adoration and righteous indignation. But I also understand that if I were to commune, I would be doing something they regard as sacrilegious. The sacrilege may be entirely imaginary, but I just imagine how I would feel if my priest just had consecrated the Host and some Roman Catholic came and did something disrespectful to it, not recognizing it as the Body of Our Lord due to their erroneous blindness to the validity of Anglican orders. But... "And you shall love your neighbor as yourself..." (I've once been rejected at the rail in an Anglican church in Ireland, where the Eucharist is limited to the confirmed. I actually had been confirmed, but I was a bit younger than a typical confirmand.)

Yet exclusion is still painful. Rejection is painful. Americans spend much of their lives being evaluated, judged, scrutinized, quantified, and put within groups and put outside them. I can understand a desire that the Church be a place of greater inclusion. And so the CWOB proponents think there is a problem when most churches say, "If you're part of the club, you can come up for some food and wine." And those not in the club feel excluded, rejected, or possibly even damned. This latter idea seems to be at the root of Scotist's arguments. If we do not admit all to Communion, we say that God rejects all we do not admit. And he argues (correctly in part), we would be wrong to say so.

But rather than seeing the Church as one more place of isolation, we would be better off seeing it as a genuine community. So much community is fictionally created by where we eat, what we buy, and where we shop. Have enough money and you can be a part of something. One interesting part of my qualifying exam was when my committee said that they enjoyed seeing my enthusiasm for what I was doing. In very few arenas of life is your desire for an end considered independently from the means with which you can achieve them. But the Church is not like that. Theoretically, we take anyone willing to stand and die with Christ (with God's help).

When we commune together in the Eucharist, we say to one another, you are not just my neighbor, you are not just my brother, you are not just a random fellow human, not just another warm body. No, we say that we are all members of the same Body. We are little bits of the same organs and the same tissue with the same awe and the same goal, whose shield and reward is the Lord's. But when we give the Eucharist to the unbaptized by open invitation, we say the same thing. We presume an intimacy we have no reason to expect. It's a bit like soliciting from a stranger some fetishized action. The stranger has no idea what they're doing, but we're receiving some sort of intimate gratification.

And the understanding of which I speak is not necessarily nor optimally an intellectual one. It is easily reduced to an understanding of a need to change clothes or to change course or to have a revolution within oneself through Jesus Christ: a way of life always understood to begin with Baptism but to continue in hope through actions summarized in the Holy Eucharist. Sure, this gradual conversion doesn't work for everyone. Sure, some likely walk this path outside the Sacraments. But we always must legislate for the general cases as Ulpian says and let God work grace anyway where we have failed to shine Christ's light.

Replying to the Scotist on CWOB

Scotist graciously has provided a fairly good clarification of his comments to my recent piece on CWOB. I think he still is accusing me of heresy but at least he’s doing so in a relatively straightforward fashion by which he might readily accuse most of Christendom.

If there is anything clear from Scotist’s argument to this hard-nosed and newly minted Magister Scientiae, it is that the idea of universal salvation has gone too far. While I appreciate the deep compassion of Origen, certain 19th century New England controversialists, and our dear Scotist, I cannot be swayed by appeals to God’s irresistibility or that Christian ethics and Christian hope requires us to believe in the salvation of every ktisis . While this certainly would be a mark of success, we are unprofitable servants and creation has a few warps in the old woof. And as the Article on Predestination and Election reminds us, “Furthermore, we must receive God’s promises in such wise, as they be generally set forth in us in Holy Scripture: and, in our doings, that Will of God is to be followed, which we have expressly declared unto us in the Word of God.”

This particular Article (XVII, if you’re keeping score at home) is a most salutary one in that it admits predestination and election as both a blessing and a curse. And the best way to remove this particular curse is to treat all comers as if they were potentially the elect. For Scotist, this means that he would share the Eucharist with all comers in good order. For me, it means that we do not let the past unduly bear on font or table. We are not the authors of the Apostolic Tradition , who would bar unsavory persons from the waters of regeneration, despite the acts of our Lord, who admitted prostitutes and tax collectors to his service. We do not permanently excommunicate anyone and I know of no priest in this Church who would deny the unrepentant but honestly earnest for the Lord from the Sacrament at the last. Even the strictest penitentials of the ancient Church allow for this.

What I cannot admit from the Scotist’s argument is that we are mandated to hope for something that is contrary to the promises of the Holy Scriptures, which bars in sundry places for sundry reasons certain offenders from the New Jerusalem and speaks of actual non-specific people being damned. The Gospels speak of crops burning, outer darkness, and all of the other horrors which Chrysostom relishes in his sermons. Moreover, since most of us fall into the ranks of these offenders, we are clearly offered regeneration in baptism. These offenders we are but no more. We have been washed. We have been sanctified. We have been saved through Jesus Christ. The most universal salvation for which I have evidence is those who have excuse according to the light of nature as Paul says in Romans. I, like the apostles and the Articulators, know of no other name under heaven but Jesus by which we have salvation. But I have faith that the name of Jesus is written throughout the cosmos in every blade of grass and every pulsar.

And despite my vexation with a universe in which some are not brought into the fullness of the light of Christ at the end of things, I have enough confidence in God’s justice and our freedom to realize that this may just be the way things are. Why the Fall, if God is always irresistible? Why the Destruction of the Temple, if God is always irresistible? Why every horror of human being to human being, if God is always irresistible? Why does God limit his irresistibility?

When we offer communion to the baptized, we say nothing about the verity of their election, which is between them and God. Instead, we recognize their potential for election, that these persons have made a choice to subsume their identity to that of Jesus Christ, casting their crowns in the sea and prostrating themselves before the Lamb. We already have recognized the immanence of the eschaton in that by admitting them on account of their potential for election. We have no way of judging the potential of any other class of persons, though we have no grounds to assume any particular person’s state of grace.

Scotist says, “But do we know universalism--say, the doctrine that all are saved at the end of all things--is true? I do not think so. Nevertheless, Scripture leaves room for us to hope that all might be saved.” I claim that we have no such grounds for hope and indeed quite the opposite, nor is such hope incumbent on us. We have been allowed the freedom to choose damnation and to reject God’s Grace, probably because God is equivalently free. So great is God’s love for us. Nor does denial of universal salvation need have any deleterious impact on Christian ethics. We have no justification for conversion by the sword or any analogous tactic of discrimination. We are obligated to allow all the same freedom all sentient beings have received from their Creator.

Communion Without Baptism (CWOB)

Rev. Dr. Mom asked in the comments to my last entry what my thoughts on CWOB were. Well, as devoted readers of the blog probably know, I am agin’ it. I vaguely remember some conflict with the Scotist on the question, but I suspect I said little at the time that a diocesan committee will not hear provided that it is listening. But let’s take another look for the sake of completeness.

Rev. Dr. Mom says,

I would love to hear more of what you think of CWOB. I'm on a diocesan committee now that is studying (or trying to) the effects of the practice. Most of those on the committee believe it "essential for growth". I, however, am concerned not only with undermining the Eucharist but also with making our teaching about baptism irrelevant. Thoughts?

Every Sunday, I hear in the little break for announcements between the Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Table these words (or some variant), “Whoever you are and wherever you are on your journey of faith, you are welcome to receive the bread and wine made holy. We’re very glad you’re here.” This invitation is part and parcel of the charism of my present parish. Indeed, it might be said to be our creedal statement, since it and no other creed is said between the Sermon and the Sursum Corda. I can say with confidence that it has resulted in congregational growth. ILEOS c. 1975 was a sleepy suburban church in a small city with three other Episcopal churches. It had one principal Sunday service and an ASA you would expect. Today, it stands on the threshold of joining the very small club of Episcopal megachurches with active programs of education and social action, serving an ASA of 1400 and an active membership that drives from other states to be there. It has two principal Sunday services and two reasonably attended auxiliary services on Sunday and one on Saturday evenings. It has Daily Eucharist. Several times of the year, there are baptisms and welcoming of new members, never two or three at a time but several to a couple of dozen baptisms at once and dozens of new already baptized members. I don’t have the statistics in front of me, but from any quantitative standpoint, I belong to a healthy and growing parish. We even have a surprisingly large number of members in the 20-40 age range. There are still three other Episcopal churches in town. All remain, though I only have any knowledge about one of them.

But is CWOB necessary for growth? Well, talk to Christ Church, Plano or St. Vincent’s Cathedral in Ft. Worth, who have managed to compete quite well in the very competitive ecclesial environment of North Texas by bringing grounding and tradition to the conservative theology of their neighbors. Growth always has been a matter of the market. What plays well in Hollywoodland might not play so well elsewhere. I think it’s far more important to ask how growth and one’s values can be mutually inclusive. It very much reminds me of the old Sunday School question of whether to celebrate the Eucharist with pizza and strawberry shakes or some other food and beverage pairing. Well, all right, if the church’s purpose is to draw hordes of hungry nine year olds. But isn’t it more important to celebrate with some of the basic of most healthy foods of human civilization, the very same food and drink over which Jesus chose to give thanksgiving? Isn’t the basicness of bread and wine most representative of Body and Blood? These aren’t questions always easily answered. Imagine answering them in 14th century Greenland, where wine needed to be shipped from long distances through dangerous seas. Jared Diamon in his recent book, Collapse suggests that the Greenlanders should have been more flexible about many aspects of their medieval Christian lifestyle, which he argues doomed them to failure. How flexible must our values be if we are to grow and survive?

Looking at the Justifications
One very helpful approach to looking at CWOB is to look at its theological justification. There has been much talk on the blogs about theological justification lately. I think *Christopher is right to say that much of what we call theology traditionally is a formalization of what has arisen organically (if that’s a fair statement of his view.) But while certain things arise organically, they develop their theology simultaneously.

At the risk of making a false etiology, I’ll tell you where I think CWOB starts theologically. I’m sure part of it lies in the liturgical reforms in the era of Vatican II when there was a great deal of interest in the Eucharist’s origins as a more substantial and communal meal. Much was read again in the Gospels about Jesus’ table practices and Jesus’ feeding moments. Wait, some said. Jesus dined with sinners and outcasts. Jesus fed thousands indiscriminately. Jesus welcomed everyone to his table. Why shouldn’t we do likewise?

Others found inspiration in the prophetic tradition. The 1979 BCP marked the re-introduction of Easter Vigil to our little corner of Anglicanism. One of the suggested readings is Isaiah 55:1-11 (1-2 follows):

“Come for water, all who are thirsty; though you have no money, come, buy grain and eat; come, buy wine and milk, not for money, not for a price. Why spend your money for what is not food, your earnings on what fails to satisfy? Listen to me and you will fare well, you will enjoy the fat of the land.”

For these thinkers, the Eucharist is the eschatological feast freely offered to all without distinction.
Today, I heard a new argument. It focuses on the story of the Prodigal Son, in which the Kingdom of Heaven is compared to a father’s unconditional forgiveness of a wayward son. The argument then justified offering the Eucharist (presumably like the fatted calf) as the birthright of all who breathe.

Challenging the Justifications
It’s not hard to get into a Scriptural battle with the proponents of CWOB. But it is hard to agree on a set of rules. Argue too strenuously that eschatological feeding practices belong to the eschaton and you will be accused of denying God’s reign in the here and now or even worse be condemned as a Neo-Platonic despiser of the body and creation. Start asking about the business of the wedding garment of Matthew 22 and you will be told that all the best scholars think Matthew added the last bit. Jesus never said anything so cruel. Mention Paul’s concerns in 1 Corinthians 11 about discerning the Body and you might hear an earful of how Paul made up Christianity, distorted everything, really didn’t get Jesus etc. Or they might say that they don’t believe in Original Sin, because it makes God too vengeful and cruel. I think of Ezekiel, “O House of Israel, why do you say I am unjust? Are you not the ones who are unjust?”

My alternative response is to look at why the first Eucharist was so exclusive (as far as we know from the Gospels). In John 6, Jesus teaches his disciples that they will have to eat and drink Him in order to have eternal life. He says this in the synagogue at Capernaum (his home base as it were) and many of his disciples say, “This is more than we can stand? How can anyone listen to such talk?” And they stop going around with Him, but the Twelve stick around. John says nothing about the institution of the Eucharist in his Passover narrative. He doesn’t have to. In John’s narrative, this moment at Capernaum is the institution of the Eucharist without breaking out the bread and wine for emphasis. Jesus even at this moment reveals that one of the Twelve will betray Him. Everything is in fast forward. But this incident sets forth an important principle: Eating with Jesus is controversial because it is open to everyone, but eating Jesus is a much different matter than eating with Jesus. In every generation, eating Jesus requires a deep sacrifice. In the generation of the apostles, it required one to go along with the idea that Jesus was in union with God, that He would die a humiliating death (and they might, too), that cannibalism was lawful in a limited and metaphorical sense.

The idea of CWOB challenges us to think about how we eat with those outside the Body. Jesus’ table practices are lessons to us about how to engage with the world. I wonder what people would think if I started going out to the Sunset Strip at 3 AM with hot meals. But as in the Prodigal Son, eating Jesus or eating the fatted calf requires us to embrace difficult things, to recognize some infirmity in our nature, to recognize that as much as God loves us, He still waits for us to embrace that love in its fullness. Like the Prodigal Son, we, too, must go and say, “Father, I have sinner before God and you, I am no longer worthy to be called your son.” Is it any wonder that in some traditions, the newly baptized is clothed in white, washed with water, anointed with oil, and given a lighted candle. We might as well put a ring on their finger, for each baptized person is a Prodigal Son (or Daughter) and a well-beloved dinner guest, extended the unmerited and utterly inexplicable Grace of God. So Rev. Dr. Mom, I think you’re right to worry how the meaning of Baptism and the Eucharist is undermined by CWOB. And if I were on your committee, I would ask those enthusiastic about CWOB whether they think there is any difference between eating with Jesus and eating Jesus.