Though I haven’t read her book yet (I’m not really in her demographic), I like Dawn Eden (as much as someone can say that on the basis of a blog and youtube), I really do. I don’t want to pick no her. But it is hard not to comment on this.
In the Bible, you get this ambiguity in the prophetic critique: When the Northern Kingdom institutionalized improper shrines they are in danger of, and often compared to, idolatrous pagans. But as far as we know God never sent any prophets to Sparta or Carthage, and he certainly never called them “my people.” He continued to do that for Israel. They seem to be pagan and covenanted at the same time.
So, I’m not denying the historical Protestant position here, but I have to admit that reading about shrines in airports where the “real presence” is kept for adoration is pretty alien. It doesn’t look any different from something you might see in India or some other pagan culture where they still bow to idols.
When did this practice arise? Is someone going to seriously suggest that the Christians were carrying concecrated bits of bread around and adoring them as God’s presence and this never became a point of controversy between Jews and Christians that an Apostle had to address in writing? The reason we read so much about circumcision in the NT is because it was a huge point of controversy.
We simply have no hint of this practice in the first century in the Church. Rather, we find it when the Church spread out over time and space to convert the pagans, it found these and other practices to be acceptable. And now, of course, just like revivalistic meetings among Evangelicals, or laughter among some Pentecostals, there are a whole army of feelings and pious words arrayed around this practice to protect it from scrutiny.
Mark, as a Jewish convert and as one who resisted entering the Catholic Church because of reservations about what appeared to be idol worship, I can understand your visceral reaction to my post.
Without attempting an apologetic (my workday’s starting), I can tell you that what changed me was the belief in transubstantiation — that the bread and wine of Holy Communion, despite retaining their original externals, truly become the body and blood of our Lord. That is what the entire Church believed until the Reformation. There are many Bible verses that can readily be taken to mean this, such as 1 Corinthians 10:16: “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?”
The question then becomes, if you truly believed that Jesus Christ gave himself to us as a gift in the consecrated Communion host, and that He was really and truly present in it, how would you treat that host? How would you feel in its presence? That is the perspective from which I and others of the Catholic faith approach the tabernacle. What appears to be an object — by which I mean the host itself, not the tabernacle — is holy not because of what the material, manmade object it appears to be, but because of what Jesus and His disciples said it really is — His presence.
“Nehushtan”
“Nehushtan” …..good one. đ
Dawn, thanks for stopping by. I think you are right to view the participation of the Eucharist as a participation and partakining in the glorified human nature of Jesus Christ. Our union in Christ’s new humanity is strenghtened and renewed when we gather as a church (not sure what to think of some permissable Roman Catholic “gathering” which are virtually private and individual; but let tht go for now) and participate in the Eucharist precisely because Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit, is truly communicated and given to us.
I view that as common ground–though I suspect many Roman Catholics would disagree.
What I see no reason to affirm, and many reasons to deny, is that the Apostle Paul’s words are meant to refer to a local presence–bread in a tabernacle. When I read what Jesus did I see him praying and distributing on the spot. I see no reason why what happens in Communion should be extrapolated to some sort of static “presence” that is passed around and put in Airport meditation rooms.
Furthermore, I think the way you’re extrapolating from the text seems way too “protestant”–the way credobaptist find prooftexts for the “ordo salutis” and then extrapolate a way of Church life that we find nowhere revealed in the Old or New Testaments (i.e. “converting” children later in life even though they are raised in Christian homes). You want me to take the idea of transubstantiation as warrant for the practice of Eucharistic adoration. I think that the Biblical record makes extremely clear statements about such a practice and that, whether or not transubstantiation is true, adoration is plainly not. Whether this means Roman Catholics must rethink transubstantiation is an issue I have a strong opinion about, but it is outside the scope of this post.
However, as a matter of Church history, the doctrine of transubstantiation has a definite history that has been traced by Protestnat and Roman Catholic alike. It is not the one view before the Reformation because the Church held a variety of views within it.
In fact, the doctrine of transubstantiation came after various forms of Eucharistic adoration, not before. The moment someone decided to put a great space of time between the prayer and the partaking all sorts of metaphysical speculation was invited that could have been avoided if the two steps had been kept together in the Bible.
I do agree there are some OT indications of God’s presence in objects. But that was when man was still exiled from the sanctuary. At Pentecost, the fire did not fall on an alter and the divine glory drive away all the people there. Rather, the fire fell on people as living stones in the New Temple.
So you didn’t go find the “Real Presence” in a meditation room. Rather the Real Presence went through that security check, treated rather impersonally by other forms of the Real Presence. The Real Presence found the meditation room. And then the Real Presence subjected itself to what I can only regard as a mute idol. I can’t read about that and not be jealous for the true, God-made icon, the real image of God, that is each one of us, especially believers who have been renewed after the image of Christ.
And this is the offense of it all. God says it is spiritual to eat together as the Body, and we think it is spiritual to be alone.
âNehushtanâ âŚ..good one.
With certain presuppositions, perhaps. With others, perhaps not. On behalf of Dawn, one could point out the cosmos-altering significance of the Incarnation as rendering fatally weak any straightforward analogy between Nehushtan and consecrated elements. In that case, Paul’s simple and economic reply amounts to little more than reasserting iconoclastic presuppositions. The Reformed do not recognize the validity of the Sacrament of the Altar, so of course there’s nothing more to say than “idolatry.” Why bother?
Joel, if the incarnation meant that the divine nature united with a loaf of bread as one… thing, then your explanaition would make more sense. (Just like it would make more sense to justify iconolatry from the incarnation if the doctrine of the incarnatioin was that God and a picture became one thing with two natures.) But God became man and a human being finding the presence of Jesus mediated through a shrine of an impersonal object seems like exactly the opposite direction to go. People intercede and are means of grace, not things. The means of grace are things that people do to and for one another.
Besides which, I’m questioning whether it is right to detrmine the worth of a practice from “presuppositions” we think we find in the Bible. I’m asking us to extrapolate, instead, from the actual practices we find in the Bible.
Its always easier for me to believe, just as written in Mt 26:26, “And whilst they were at supper, Jesus took bread, and blessed, and broke: and gave to his disciples, and said: Take ye, and eat. This is my body.”, that the simple bread becomes His body at the very moment He said “This is my body” than to think otherwise. By then, the practice of adoration becomes a necessary and worthy act of worship, but not to the bread but what we believe is the body of Christ after consecration.
So Reynor, either this practice is totally necessary and worthy and yet no one ever thought of it until much later, or this practice goes all the way back but it occurred without a ripple of debate in the NT era. The Jews got up in arms about doing away with the distinction of circumcision but had no problem with the new sect “worshiping bread” as they would have seen it….
???
Mark,
Please help me, if I miss something here. The Jesus-following Jews got up in arms over circumcision and other things (like the inclusion of non-Jews), hence the first Jerusalem council. The traditional Jews had a more general problem with the Jesus-following Jews, seeing them as heretics, hence the stoning of Stephen. What if the Jesus-following Jews had no problem with the literal truth of Jesus’ words, “This is my body”? Then, why would there be a controversy? Unlike circumcision, which was long established Jewish ritual, the Real Presence, would be new and particular to the Jesus-followers. The traditional Jews were scattered by 70 AD, so specific theological complaints about the Jesus-following Jews’ new beliefs (as opposed to the setting aside of old beliefs) had to wait until the Jesus-following Jews were no longer considered Jews but rather Christians.
I agree with the basic dichotomy. If you don’t believe in the Real Presence, then you shouldn’t get involved in Eucharistic Adoration, as, to you, it is idolatry. But if you do believe in it, Adoration makes sense. As to the belief in “transubstantiation” coming later, I suspect Mark is confusing the coining of a new term with what was (and is) the standard belief in Catholic and Orthodox faiths (and some branches of Anglicanism, I understand).
Full disclosure: I am a cradle Catholic.
Mike, thanks for stopping by. Full disclosure back at you I’m a cradle Evangelical: first Baptist and now Presbyterian.
But I can only repeat what I have written: Circumcision continued to be a problem both within the Church and without. Your explanation simply does not do anything, in my mind, to change the fact that adoring at a shrine would be considered idolatry and proof that the Christian Church was evil.
Yet, mysteriously, this was never addressed.
Re: Transubstantiation–not just the name but the whole aristotelian formulation.
Mark, if you’ll forgive some extensive quotes, I think this relates directly to your
concerns. It’s from a historical essay by Father John Hardon, S.J. (a Jesuit priest),
and I recommend reading the whole thing at
http://www.therealpresence.org/eucharst/pea/history.htm .
Father Hardon’s essay begins:
“Belief in the real, physical presence of Christ in the Eucharist grew out of the teaching of the evangelists and St. Paul. They made it plain to the apostolic Church that the Eucharistic elements were literally Jesus Christ continuing His saving mission among men.
John and Paul were especially plain. The skepticism of Christ’s followers, when He preached the reality of His Body and Blood as food and drink, made John record the fact that “many of His disciples withdrew and no longer went about with Him.” Seeing this, Jesus asked the Twelve, “Do you also want to leave me?” Simon Peter did not understand any more than those who left Christ, but his loyalty was more firm. “Lord,” he answered, “to whom shall we go?” (John 6:66-68).
Paul’s letter to the Corinthians rebuked them for making the Agape, which should have been a beautiful sign of unity, into an occasion of discord. He reminded them that the Eucharist is no ordinary food. It is actually the Body and Blood of Christ according to “the tradition which I handed on to you that came to me from the Lord Himself” (I Corinthians II: 23-26).
At the turn of the first century, Ignatius of Antioch, on his way to martyrdom in Rome, had to warn the Christians not to be taken in by the Gnostics–a good modern term would be “visionaries,” who denied the Real Presence. Ignatius said these people abstained from the Eucharist because they did not accept what true Christians believe, that in the Eucharist is the same Jesus Christ Who lived and died and rose from the dead for our salvation.
Under the impact of this faith, the early hermits reserved the Eucharist in their cells. From at least the middle of the third century, it was very general for the solitaries in the East, especially in Palestine and Egypt, to preserve the consecrated elements in the caves or hermitages where they lived.
The immediate purpose of this reservation was to enable the hermits to give themselves Holy Communion. But these hermits were too conscious of what the Real Presence was not to treat it with great reverence and not to think of it as serving a sacred purpose by just being nearby.
Not only did they have the Sacrament with them in their cells, but they carried it on their persons when they moved from one place to another. This practice was sanctioned by the custom of the fermentum, that certainly goes back to as early as 120 A.D. The rite of fermentum was a particle of the Eucharistic bread (sometimes dipped in the chalice) transported from the bishop of one diocese to the bishop of another diocese. The latter would then consume the species at his next solemn Mass as a token of unity between the churches. It was called a fermentum not necessarily because leavened bread was used but because the Eucharist symbolized the leaven of unity which permeates
and transforms Christians, so that they become one with Christ.”
It is generally acknowledged that adoration outside the liturgy is a practice that developed over time in the western church. The east does not practice adoration except on particular days. But devotion to and belief in the real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist goes back to the beginning. According to St. Justin Martyr, circa AD 150:
“…And this food is called among us Eucharist, of which no one is allowed to partake but the man who believes that the things which we teach are true, and who has been washed with the washing that is for the remission of sins, and unto regeneration, and who is so living as Christ has enjoined. For not as common bread and common drink do we receive these; but in like manner as Jesus Christ our Saviour, having been made flesh by the Word of God, had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so likewise have we been taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of His word, and from which our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh. For the apostles, in the memoirs composed by them, which are called Gospels, have thus delivered unto us what was enjoined upon them; that Jesus took bread, and when He had given thanks, said, “This do ye in remembrance of Me, this is My body;” and that, after the same manner, having taken the cup and given thanks, He said, “This is My blood;” and gave it to them alone. …
…And on the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits; then, when the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things. Then we all rise together and pray, and, as we before said, when our prayer is ended, bread and wine and water are brought, and the president in like manner offers prayers and thanksgivings, according to his ability, and the people assent, saying Amen; and there is a distribution to each, and a participation of that over which thanks have been given, and to those who are absent a portion is sent by the deacons. …”
The description above sounds remarkably like the liturgies of Catholic and Orthodox churches today. Note that the consecrated Eucharist is delivered to absent Christians, a practice still carried out today by those who believe in the Real Presence and long ago abandoned among those who held it to be merely symbolic. Yes, the Real Presence can be folly to Gentiles. It should not have been a stumbling block to Jews per se, given the precedent of the Presence of God inhabiting the Ark of the Covenant. They would have understood God can dwell where He wills.
Craig, come now, everyone knows that this statement by Justin Martyr is ambiguous. Both sides use this passage to support their positions. With all due respect, you will need to do better than that.
Craig, I remember reading this passage years ago and thinking to myself that it sounded like a Protestant service; and it still does. Oh, and notice what is missing: The Mass
Mark, I notice that you took away my reference to an article on the history of Eucharistic
Adoration that addresses your concerns. I personally don’t like it when people put lengthy
quotes in my comboxes, so I can understand your deleting the quote, but I hope you’ll
allow your readers to see what it says. Here’s the link again:
http://www.therealpresence.org/eucharst/pea/history.htm
Craig, here is another good quote from Justin Martyr on the subject which helps
clarify the quote you posted:
“It is quite evident that this prophecy (Isaiah 33, 13-19) also alludes to the bread which our Christ gave us to offer ****in remembrance**** of the Body which He assumed for the sake of those who believe in Him, for whom He also suffered, and also to the cup which he taught us to offer in the Eucharist, ****in commemoration**** of His blood” (Dialogue with Trypho).
Dawn, my Askimet spam blocker took it out without telling me. I went and found it and it now appears at the time you sent it…
(I admit I took the liberty of taking out the hard returns in your first post. So my heart jumped into my mouth because I thought I must have deleted some substance without noticing!)
PS. See, I have no problem with long comments, but uneven hard returns are just wrong. đ
>>See, I have no problem with long comments, but uneven hard returns are just wrong.
LOL. Thanks for filling me in. The hard returns are due to my being on a borrowed computer that is having trouble with the Java something-or-other on your site. My combox stretches out all the way to the right, beyond the screen’s dimensions, and I hit “return” so I could see what I was typing.
I (also a cradle Presbyterian) don’t see how the idea of Christ’s Presence in the elements during the service necessarily leads to Eucharistic adoration. The anamnesis, the presence of Christ, is in the total sacramental action – without a congregation partaking of the elements they have no special power.
It wasnt less than Providential of Divine sort, as if there is something other than, that I have with me a book that has chapter dedicated to the topic at hand. I posted a couple of threads and posted an excerpt from the book. I hope these will help. http://forum.cafetheology.org/index.php?board=10.0
Stewart, I was not interested in playing apologetics tennis. I was simply noting out that Justin described the order of mass precisely in accord with the Roman Missal — readings, then homily, followed by prayers of the people, preparation of the gifts, consecration, Great Amen, and finally distribution of the Eucharist — and in terms very much like those I used at Easter to explain what was going on to my visiting Southern Baptist mother. The fact that Justin does not use the magic word “mass” is irrelevant.
And the fact that it is done “in remembrance” does not negate the Real Presence, because there is no reason that a symbol need be just a symbol. By analogy, the marital act (non-contraceptive, of course) per John Paul II’s “Love and Responsibility” symbolizes the vows taken earlier, but it also ratifies them and realizes the union. What consummates and realizes the union is the potential inherent in the gift of self one to another. Jesus gives Himself freely to us in the mass, both by His sacrifice at Calvary which the mass makes mystically present, and by feeding us true food (John 6) in the form of the Eucharist. His Presence is the potential in the Eucharist that means we drink it either to our salvation or to our damnation (1 Corinthians 11).
Enough; I’ve got to go to work.
Craig, what you see as “the order of mass” I see simply as the order of worship. One only finds the mass there if they were already looking for it. It really proves nothing. Whatever is going on there, it certainly isn’t the sacrifice of the mass; no sacrifice is mentioned. And if you don’t want to play apologetics tennis, I suggest you stop trying to play the part an apologist.
Stewart,
You are correct in saying that the document presented “proves” nothing. In my opinion, it is at least evidence that the mass follows the same order of worship that they did back in the time in which that document was written. But to say that, since no sacrifice is mentioned, then it “certainly isn’t the sacrifice of the mass,” is poor logic.
Mark, you wrote:
“I think that the Biblical record makes extremely clear statements about such a practice and that, whether or not transubstantiation is true, adoration is plainly not.”
Are you saying that, even if the bread becomes God in the flesh, adoration of what would be NOT bread anymore, but God Himself under the appearance of bread, is wrong??
Then you wrote this:
“Your explanation simply does not do anything, in my mind, to change the fact that adoring at a shrine would be considered idolatry and proof that the Christian Church was evil.”
I must be missing something as well. Are you implying that, even if the new Christians that converted from Judaism believed that the bread became the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, they still would have been up in arms about the notion of adoring Him in that way? Or are you simply saying that, because the Jews who DIDN’T convert to Christianity did not leave any record of having a problem with those Christians “worshiping bread, then that means that the practice couldn’t have been going on?
Well I for one don’t know too much about how long the practice has been going on for sure. If it started 5 years ago, it doesn’t matter to me. I don’t see how the length of time any practice has been popular within Christianity speaks to the moral nature of that practice…Can you help me understand that?
The same goes for the doctrine of transubstantiation. The metaphysics of it, to most non-Catholic or non-Orthodox Christians, naturally, isn’t going to seem very important. That is completely understandable. But the thing is…even if they just figured it out yesterday, and just started worshiping what you consider to be just bread yesterday, it still has absolutely no bearing on whether that practice is intrinsically good or evil. Or at least that’s the way it seems to me. Maybe you can explain why you believe differently.
Blessings,
James
LK 24, 35: “Then the two recounted what had taken place on the way and how he was made known to them in the breaking of the bread.” (NAB) From the road to Emmaus account in the Gospel of Luke. Laudetur Iesus Christus!
Stewart, you’re playing word games. Behold:
“And on the twentieth day of May, the future king entered the city, with a mgiht procession. Proceeding throguh the centre of the town, flanked by guards, he reached the appointed place, and a crown was palced upon his head, and he sat upon the throne of his father.”
Surely, no coronation has taken place; no coronation is mentioned.
[In other words, a missing term does not mean a missing meaning.]
Why didn’t my last comment show up? I wonder if this one even will….
Stewart,
The Baptist Church in which I was raised, and the local non-dem ‘Bible’ church both had (have) ‘communion’ only once a month, and placed it before the sermon. Not exactly ‘New Testament Christian’ practice in actuality.
Why does Justin need to use the word ‘sacrifice’? Does his using the word, or not, make the Eucharist a ‘sacrifice’ or not?
The Eucharist is, among other things, our participation in the one perfect sacrifice made by Jesus in fullfillment of Malachi 1:11. So whether anyone points this out or not is somewhat irrelevant to whether it actually is or not.
James T and Hidden One,
Fuzzy logic? You guys are saying that something happened because the text doesnât say it didnât happen? And Iâm the one with fuzzy logic? Well, I guess your right. But what about the water balloon fight? Just because the text doesnât mention it, doesnât mean it didnât take place.
Mark,
Found my way here via Dawn’s blog.
You said, “The Jews got up in arms about doing away with the distinction of circumcision but had no problem with the new sect âworshiping breadâ as they would have seen itâŚ. ???”
It’s always seemed to me that the Jews who followed Jesus would have been those who’d stayed on after the interchange between Jesus and the Jews recorded in John 6. Jesus was so clear about the meaning of the Eucharist that he lost a lot of potential followers over it. It would make sense that, for those who remained, that particular “issue” would have stayed at rest. For myself, I admire the resolute way that some Protestants are able to insist that the Eucharist is merely a symbol, in spite of Jesus’ words as recorded by John, especially when backed up by Paul in the course of 1 Corinthians 11.
A. Noel,
John 6 is good, but the entire debate dies in the early church as far as the NT record is concerned. Furthermore, nothing in John 6 says we must adore bread in a shrine.
The constant arguments seems to be:
I assert X and X has the consequence Y, therefore Y is permissable even though it runs entirely contrary to several commands and now information is provided anywhere in the NT that shows that Y is permissable.
Then we get
I assert X and that the early church believed X. Therefore, because Y follows from X every instance I can find of something like an affirmation of X counts as evidence that Y was always an acceptable practice.
I outgrew this method of arguing from Scripture back when I gave up credobaptism. Sure, I could extrapolate from a few doctrinal points (points that I still affirm, by the way) and deduce that the early church must have regarded their children as question marks until at some point later in life they were converted. But we see nothing like those concerns or practices anywhere in the NT or OT. It simply ceased to be satsifactory to me to argue from a few NT prooftexts for a way of life totally alien to what the NT revealed about the Church’s life.
So where is the practice of reserving the Eucharist for adoration?
Actually, Stewart, we’re [ok, I’m] saying that you can’t say it didn’t happen, if you want to put it that way.
Right, you can’t say the water balloon fight *didn’t* happen.
Pingback: Ominous Parallels at Mark Horne