Tag Archives: Salvation

Good? Friday

02 Friday Apr 2021

Posted by in Lent, Salvation

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When I was a child, I always wondered how the day when Jesus suffered murder by the state could be called Good. As I grew up and put away childish things and thoughts, I came to understand the story. It is the ultimate story of servant leadership. It is the story of how God himself came down in the guise of a man, to show us the way. Here’s a part of the story.

And so now we come to the climax. We have seen Jesus’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem, we have seen the Last Supper with its echoing call “Do this in Remembrance of Me”, we have seen the arrest during prayers in the garden.

We have seen Peter, renamed Cephas (the Rock) deny the Christ 3 times. We have seen the trial before the Sanhedrin, and the passing of the buck to the Roman, Pontius Pilate who could find no fault in this man but allowed him to be condemned according to Roman practice.

We have even seen the treachery of Judas, paupers who for 30 pieces of silver betrayed his Lord, soon repented, attempted to return the reward (which ended up funding paupers cemetery), and his death as a suicide.

And so now we come to the fatal procession from Jerusalem to Golgotha.

In one way or another, we will all walk the Via Dolorosa. One of the mottoes I use to keep trying to do the right thing, “No one, not even Christ, ever got out of life alive”. For me, that about sums it up. You may as well do the right thing, you might not get the reward on earth that you were striving for, but at the judgment seat, you will be rewarded.

Here is the story according to St. Matthew:

And they crucified him, and parted his garments, casting lots; that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, They parted my garments among them, and for my vesture they did cast lots. And sitting down they watched him there. And Pilate wrote a title, and put it on the cross, and the writing was, JESUS OF NAZARETH, THE KING OF THE JEWS in letters of Greek, and Latin, and Hebrew.

And the chief priests said unto Pilate, It should be written and set up over his head, his accusation, This is he that said he was Jesus, the King of the Jews. But Pilate answered and said, What I have written, I have written; let it alone.

Then were there two thieves crucified with him; one on the right hand, and another on the left. And they that passed by reviled him, wagging their heads, and saying, Thou that destroyest the temple, and buildest it again in three days save thyself. If thou be the Son of God come down from the cross. Likewise also the chief priests mocking with the scribes and elders, said, He saved others, himself he cannot save. If he be the King of Israel, let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him. He trusted in God; let him deliver him now; if he will save him, let him save him; for he said, I am the Son of God.

One of the thieves also, which were crucified with him, cast the same in his teeth. But the other rebuked him, saying, Dost thou not fear God, seeing thou art under the same condemnation; and this man is just, and hath not sinned; and he cried unto the Lord that he would save him. And the Lord said unto him This day thou shalt be with me in Paradise.

Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour. And about the ninth hour, Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli,lama sabachthani?(That is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?) Some of them that stood there, when they heard him, said, This man calleth for Elias. And straightway one of them ran, and took a sponge, and filled it with vinegar, and put it on a reed, and gave him to drink. The rest said, Let him be, let us see whether Elias will come to save him.

Jesus when he had cried again with a loud voice, saying, Father, it is finished, thy will is done, yielded up the ghost. And behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent; and the graves were opened; and the bodies of the saints which slept, arose, who were many, and came out of the graves after his resurrection, went into the holy city, and appeared unto many. Now when the centurion, and they that were with him, watching Jesus, heard the earth quake, and saw those things which were done, they feared greatly, saying, Truly this was the Son of God. And many women were there beholding afar off, which followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering unto him for his burial; among whom was Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Joses, and the mother of Zebedee’s children.

Now, remember this was on Friday following the triumphant entry the prior Sunday. How the mighty had fallen, from the crowd’s hero, one might say a rock star, to an executed criminal buried in a borrowed grave in a week.

This was the man many had expected to free Israel from Rome, there would be others for that mission, it would culminate at Masada and in the destruction of Jerusalem and the diaspora. The next ruler of the city, after Rome, would be Islam, contested by the Crusader knights. But until our own time, Jerusalem would not be ruled again by the Jews.

And so the Messiah, the King of the Jews died. The lesson would seem to be not to upset the applecart, to go along to get along, even to sit down and shut up, wouldn’t it?

It’s a pretty sharp lesson too. One of the most cruel methods of execution ever devised by man.

And so ends the story;

or does it?

By what authority?

28 Monday Sep 2020

Posted by in Bible, Reading the BIble, St Matthew's Gospel

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In yesterday’s Gospel, the chief priests and the elders put a critical question to Jesus, asking him by “what authority” he did what he did. It was a trick question. They were all learned enough in the Scriptures to know who it was had the authority to cleanse the courts of the Temple and to forgive sins – it was the Messiah. The question they really wanted to ask Jesus was whether he was the Messiah. Why did they not do so?

Part of the answer comes in verses 25 and 26 – “they were afraid.” Jesus put them on the spot by asking about John the Baptist. They were scared that if they said that his baptism was “of man” then they would fall foul of the people. But, of course, if they said it was “of God” they’d be asked why they had not believed him. Jesus was putting them in the same position with regard to their real question. If they had said that his authority was “of man” they would have fallen foul of those who had recently celebrated his entry into Jerusalem. If they acclaimned him as Messiah – well then what?

Then their world would have been turned upside down. They were a privileged class. They were, in effect, the “second son” to whom Jesus refers in verse 30. They paid lip-service to doing the work of the Father, but in practice they put burdens on the people and puffed themselves up. Like the rich man getting into Heaven, their privileges blinded them to the Good News. They prayed that the Messiah would come, they knew from their Scriptures that he would – one day. But that “one day” was that day, and they were in no way ready to receive him. It ran counter to their interests to do so.

That was no the case with the outcasts, who here are symbolised by the “tax collectors” and “prostitutes”. They, who had already lost all in the eyes of the religious and the righteous, had no barriers to receiving the hope brought by Jesus. For them, having their world turned upside down was a good thing. How remarkable for them, as for us, that in spite of the things we have done – and not done – we can receive the Good News. We are not asked to “earn” it by “good works”. But if we have received it, then we give as we have received, not in the hope of reward, but because we have been rewarded.

As with the elders and chief priests, perhaps our own preconceptions can blind us to the Good News. How hard is it for us sometimes to accept that Grace is free when we can feel that we work hard in the vineyard – and yet those who join at the final hour are rewarded as though they had done a full day’s work. But then which of us could ever be worthy of salvation? Which of us does not want that precious gift and to emphasise its preciousness in the way the world does that, by talking about the price paid; and here were are being told that even if we start by disobeying the Father, if we turn and do his work, then we are saved.

As usual, Jesus’s wisdom is beyond that of the religious establishment of his day – and not, perhaps just his day. We can set up all sorts of rules and regulations, dos and don’ts, but if we receive his word as children and obey, then we do his work.

Christianity without Christ?

25 Thursday Jun 2020

Posted by in Church/State, Early Church

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Gene Veith at Cranach had an interesting post yesterday on whether the Christian virtues can survive without Christianity. I think this ties in well to mine on NEO today on the immorality of Christian clergy supporting BLM, instead of continuing our own mission, the most successful in helping the disadvantaged in history, by far. Here’s part of Gene’s article.

The secular British historian Tom Holland has published a new book entitled Dominion:  How the Christian Revolution Remade the World (Basic Books).  Here is the summary from Amazon.com:

Crucifixion, the Romans believed, was the worst fate imaginable, a punishment reserved for slaves. How astonishing it was, then, that people should have come to believe that one particular victim of crucifixion-an obscure provincial by the name of Jesus-was to be worshipped as a god. Dominion explores the implications of this shocking conviction as they have reverberated throughout history. Today, the West remains utterly saturated by Christian assumptions. As Tom Holland demonstrates, our morals and ethics are not universal but are instead the fruits of a very distinctive civilization. Concepts such as secularism, liberalism, science, and homosexuality are deeply rooted in a Christian seedbed. From Babylon to the Beatles, Saint Michael to #MeToo, Dominion tells the story of how Christianity transformed the modern world.
His book shows just how different Christian values and ethics were from those of the Greeks and the Romans and how the Christian mindset has prevailed in Western Civilization even among his fellow secularists.  (Holland is an atheist.)  The Greeks, for example, considered compassion, for example to be a weakness, not one of the highest virtues as Christianity made it.  The principle from Christianity that all human beings have equal value was incomprehensible to the hierarchies of ancient Rome.  Today we assume that peace is better than war, a legacy of Christianity utterly foreign to the ancient Greeks, Romans, and European tribes.

It’s something that is easy to forget, and mostly we have.

Holland appears to think that it’s possible to have the fruits without the faith, to have Christian influence without the Christianity.  Strand, however, disagrees:
Christian ethics cannot be about merely upholding and claiming certain values that flow from the Christian faith. That would be to mistake the fruit from the tree. The very center of the Christian life is not what the cross teaches us morally but what the cross did for us in atoning for our sins and bringing us from life to death in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. The transformation of the person from death to life and the ultimate union with the Triune God in the City of God is the goal of all Christians. Their works of mercy and sacrifice for neighbor and their culture-building over millennia are a testament of this transforming power. We make a mistake if we think the fruit is the goal or that we can separate the fruit from the tree that produced it.

I would say that although principles such as love, equality, compassion and the like are still dominant, even among the secularists, they are starting to fade.  Certainly those who no longer believe in the key Christian teachings of atonement and redemption will have difficulty with the concept of forgiveness, and we are seeing that.  Secularists today say they believe in equality, but they are also demonizing and deriding the worth of those with whom they disagree.  And the strange embrace of abortion on the part of so many secularists, even liberals and progressives, undercuts their claim to be compassionate and supportive of the powerless.  It is, in fact, a reversion to the Greco-Roman practice of infanticide, with everything else that implied about the value of human life.

I should at this point go on and add examples of my own, but two things, I think this is perfectly lucid, clear, and self-evidently correct. Our morality will never stand on its own, its foundation is in our hope of redemption, not in earthly values. To claim otherwise is sophistry and sophistry which history has shown to be false. Without the hope of redemption, we return to the dog eat dog world of Greece and Rome, where the only reason for doing anything is self-aggrandizement. We see that happening already in our so-called elites, who are mostly post-Christian, for not believing in God, they seem to only believe in earthly acquisition and what may be even worse, they seem to think this is a zero-sum game.

Well, Christ taught us better, as they will find out one day. After all, the Lord did say, “Vengeance is mine”. And as I’ve said a few times, without hell there can be no heaven.

Aquatic Endeavors and Kanye West

01 Friday Nov 2019

Posted by in Consequences, Education, Faith, Lutheranism

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Many of us have considered swimming the Tiber, some have swum the Bosporus, some, including one of our founders here, have swum both, looking for an authentic presentation of our Faith. Tom Raabe at Real Clear Religion has some thoughts on another aquatic journey. He thinks, perhaps, some Evangelicals [and perhaps others] might want to consider swimming the Mississippi.

Reasons for their aquatic activities vary. Some like the art and architecture associated with the ancient faiths. Some like the ceremonial aspects–the liturgies, the veneration of icons, the Eucharist. Some like the history that oozes from Catholicism and Orthodoxy, a history that travels through great saints of yesteryear–through Augustine, Ambrose, Chrysostom, and Gregory of Nazianzus–but goes largely forgotten in contemporary evangelicalism.

Church-switching among evangelicals has always been popular. It’s become even more so now that so much of the conservative Protestant world has fled so purposely from symbolic architecture and time-honored aesthetics, and has chosen to worship in big boxy rooms with giant worship screens, all-enveloping sound systems, and Chris Tomlin-wannabes singing from the stage. Catholicism and Orthodoxy certainly offer something different from what goes on in that environment.

But evangelicals interested in “swimming” to a different tradition should consider traversing a body of water much closer to home: the Mississippi River, on which is located St. Louis, Missouri, and the headquarters of the premier conservative Lutheran church body in America, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.

He has a point, several in fact, one thing he says, and I want to emphasize is that when we do this we are not changing teams, at worst we are changing positions.

Go ahead and read his article linked above, in many ways, I think he’s got some very good reasoning on his side, especially as the world looks now.

In another although related matter, have you been listening to what Kanye West has been saying? What he is saying, and singing, I guess, not having heard his new album (or any others), sounds better than what many of our priests, pastors, bishops, archbishops, and sundry other Faith leaders are saying. Does he mean it, or is he trying to revive his career? Who knows, but we are the people who believe in redemption, so I think it incumbent to welcome him. One thing that struck Kylee Zempel at The Federalist, and it does me too, is that he is confessing, no he is proclaiming that Jesus is King, and we need to obey him.

I don’t know about you, but for me, that is one of the hardest things about Christianity. Obeying the Lord. If he actually lives that, or even tries, and so far he seems to be, that is a very long step to Salvation.

In Closed on Sunday (Too bad you British let your LGBTQWERTY folks run out the best American fast food and a Christian company) he sings:

Raise our sons, train them in the faith
Through temptations, make sure they’re wide awake
Follow Jesus, listen and obey
No more livin’ for the culture, we nobody’s slave
Stand up for my home
Even if I take this walk alone
I bow down to the King upon the throne
My life is His, I’m no longer my own.

How many of us manage to live that way? If he can, then God is indeed working in him. And so, while I doubt I become a fan of his, I certainly hope we can welcome him to our fellowship. We’re due some representation in cultural matters.

Praise God in all you do.

He is Risen

01 Sunday Apr 2018

Posted by in Easter, Faith, St Luke's Gospel, St Mark's Gospel, St Peter

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Well after Nicholas’s kind words yesterday, maybe I should share this. This is my traditional Easter Sunday post, although I edited it for today, it remains very much as it was.

That’s the importance of the day. Jesus the Christ is risen from the dead. This is the most important day for Christians.

Let’s speak a bit on the history. You may know that Easter is an Anglophone term for what nearly everybody else calls some form of Pasch. There’s a myth about that, which The Clerk of Oxford does a fine job of debunking.

How was Easter celebrated in Anglo-Saxon England? There’s a popular answer to that question, which goes like this: ‘the Anglo-Saxons worshipped a goddess called Eostre, who was associated with spring and fertility, and whose symbols were eggs and hares. Around this time of year they had a festival in her honour, which the Christians came over and stole to use for their own feast, and that’s why we now have Easter’.

Yeah, not so much, Eostre was mentioned in two sentences by St Bede, the rest is mostly 19th-century fabrication.

The women and the angel at the tomb, from the Benedictional of St Æthelwold
(BL Additional 49598, f. 51v)

The reenactment of this scene – the women and the angel at the empty tomb – forms one of the best-known elements of the early medieval Easter liturgy, famous because it is often said to be one of the oldest examples of liturgical drama. To quote from Regularis Concordia, as translated in this excellent blogpost at For the Wynn:

When the third reading [of Nocturns] is being read, let four brothers clothe themselves, one of whom, clothed in white and as if about to do something else, should go in and secretly be at the burial place, with his hand holding a palm, and let him sit quietly.  And while the third responsory is being sung, let the remaining three follow: all clothed with cloaks, carrying censers with incense in their hands, and with footsteps in the likeness of someone seeking something, let them come before the burial place. And let these things be done in imitation of the angel sitting on the tomb and of the women coming with spices, so that they might anoint the body of Jesus.

And when the one remaining has seen the three, wandering and seeking something, approach him, let him begin, with a moderate voice, to sing sweetly: ‘Whom are you seeking?’ When this has been sung to the end, let the three respond with one voice: ‘Jesus of Nazareth’. To whom he should say: ‘He is not here.  He has risen, as he said before.  Go, announce it, because he has risen from the dead.’ With this command, let those three turn around to the choir, saying, “Alleluia, the Lord has risen.’ When this has been said, let the one sitting turned back, as if calling them back, say this antiphon: ‘Come and see the place’.

Saying these things, let him rise and lift up the veil and show them the place devoid of the cross, but with the linens placed there which with the cross had been wrapped. When they have seen this, let them set down the censers which they were carrying in the same tomb, and let them take the linen and spread it out in front of the clergy, and, as if showing that the Lord has risen and is not wrapped in it, let them sing this antiphon, ‘The Lord has risen from the tomb’, and let them lay the linen upon the altar.

This is a dramatic replaying of the crucial moment in the Easter story, bringing it to life through the voices and bodies of the monks. Although presumably the primary audience for this liturgical play was the monastic community itself, it may also have been witnessed by lay people. That appears to be the implication of a miracle-story told by Eadmer, describing something which he saw take place as the ritual was being performed in Canterbury Cathedral in c.1066:

There is quite a lot more at her post which is linked above and recommended highly.

We have often spoken about Jesus the leader, and his unflinching dedication to the death to his mission. On Easter, this mission is revealed. It finally becomes obvious that His mission (at this time, anyway) is not of the Earth and it’s princelings. It is instead a Kingdom of souls.

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son,

that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

And so we come to the crux of the matter. The triumph over original sin and death itself. For if you believe in the Christ and his message you will have eternal life. This is what sets Christianity apart, the doctrine of grace. For if you truly repent of your sins, and attempt to live properly, you will be saved. Not by your works, especially not by your wars and killing on behalf of your faith, valid  and just though they may be,  but by your faith and your faith alone. For you serve the King of Kings.

And as we know, the Christ is still leading the mission to save the souls of all God‘s children. It is up to us to follow the greatest leader in history or not as we choose. We would do well to remember that our God is a fearsome God but, he is also a just God. We shall be judged entirely on our merits as earthly things fall away from us. But our God is also a merciful God. So be of good cheer for the Father never burdens his people with burdens they cannot, with his help, bear.

As we celebrate the first sunrise after the defeat of darkness, Hail the King Triumphant for this is the day of His victory.

 

He is Risen indeed!

And hath appeared unto Simon!

Even Simon, the coward disciple who denied him thrice

“Christ is risen indeed, and hath appeared to Simon!”

to Simon Peter the favoured Apostle, on whom the Church is built

Crossposted from Nebraska Energy Observer.

Into Holy Week

25 Sunday Mar 2018

Posted by in Easter

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I thought it would be a shame if this Christian blog did not have a post for Palm Sunday, as I noticed we didn’t this morning. And so I will do a hasty one, drawing on our collective beliefs. The one I have selected is one of Chalcedon’s from Palm Sunday in 2015. My comment on it makes a fair introduction, I think. This was my comment:

“My thinking parallels yours.The sacrifice, of course, hearkens back to the Temple but it echoes down in that far further. If an act, it echoes back to Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his only son, Isaac to God, and God’s message to him that he will provide the sacrifice, a ram, instead.

The quote in Lutheranism’s general confession is:

“We have sinned against You in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done and by what we have left undone”

The English isn’t as beautiful as the BCP but we have the meaning right, at least. And yes, at my age it is more often “what I have left undone”. Sort of sad, really, it was much more fun to confess what I had done. 🙂”

Here’s Chalcedon:

It will soon be Palm Sunday; Lent is coming to its appointed climax. In Sunday’s Gospel we get the first sign of a something which will become more prominent on Maundy Thursday – Jesus’ fear of what awaits him: ‘Father, save me from this hour’. He would have seen crucifixions; he knew what there was to fear. Crucifixion was intended to instil fear; it was brutal, bloody and fatal. Yet it was for ‘this hour’ that Jesus had come into the world. The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us so that He might be raised up as the propitiation for our sins. He died for our sins.

There is this something against which our notions of justice rail. How, we ask, can it be right for an innocent man to die for the guilty?’ What sort of Father, we wonder, sacrifices his son for rogues such as ourselves. Of late I have found praying the Sorrowful Rosary next to impossible; the envisaging of what happened to Jesus unsettles my prayer, and it is only by thinking on what was to come that I get through. But, as St Isaac reminds us, this is an act of love. There were, he tells us, many ways God could have chosen to save us, and by choosing this one, he shows us the extent of His love; I think He also shows us the extent of our sins.

Soon, then, we shall be following the familiar story of the Passion of the Lord, Perhaps its familiarity robs it of its power for us, so we might want to spend more time meditating on it. Every stripe applied to His back is a sin of mine; that Crown of Thorns he bears, they are the sting of my sins; and high on that Cross on Calvary my sins are forgiven, and through Him I am saved from my sins.

But my sins are not banished. By this stage of my life, it is more a matter, in the words of the old Anglican General Confession, of the ‘things I have not done’ rather that the things I have done. That I am conscious of that is a sign of growth I think; but it is also a sign that the journey continues. Words sometimes darken discussion.

I also commented,

“And of course Julian of Norwich, who in her illness also witnessed the scene, reminds us:

Whatever we inherit from the fortunate
We have taken from the defeated
What they had to leave us—a symbol:
A symbol perfected in death.
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
By the purification of the motive
In the ground of our beseeching.

or so we pray in this, and all, seasons.”

My thoughts this day echo his when he ends, as I shall, “But the path to the Resurrection leads through Gethsemane and the hill at Golgotha; at times the Cross is too heavy to bear – and save for His presence would be so.”

 

Intermission: Luther v Zwingli on the Eucharist

13 Friday Oct 2017

Posted by in Catholic Tradition, Lutheranism, Salvation

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Phillip mentioned yesterday that Lutherans have a very clear doctrine of the Eucharist, which is certainly true, and that the controversy between Luther and Zwingli highlighted the differences. That too is true. I didn’t want to go into it on his post, it is a bit far off topic. It is interesting, though, and last night I found a concise summary of the differences by Trevin Wax. It also highlights how it differed from Luther’s contemporary Catholic experience.

Luther’s view

In the medieval period before the Reformation, the mass formed the centerpiece of Christian worship and devotion. Three centuries before Luther began teaching in Wittenberg, the fourth Lateran council of 1215 established the doctrine of transubstantiation, which holds that upon the priest’s consecration of the bread and wine, the accidents (according to the senses) remain the same, but the substance (the internal “essence”) is miraculously transformed into the physical body and blood of Christ.

The implications of this doctrine were widespread. Laypeople began to adore the bread and wine from afar or superstitiously carry pieces of bread back home to plant in the garden for good crops or to give to an ailing animal for good health. To avoid an accidental spilling of the wine, the priests began giving only the bread to parishioners, keeping the cup for themselves. By the 1500’s, even the bread was withheld in most churches.

The mass had turned into a show instead of a sacrament. Some parishioners feverishly hurried from church to church to obtain the blessing of seeing more than one host in a given day.

Luther objected to the extreme practices brought by medieval superstition, but he continued to regard the “images, bells, Eucharistic vestments, church ornaments, altar lights and the like” as “indifferent.”

Two things in particular bothered Luther about the Roman Catholic view of the Lord’s Supper. First, he disagreed sharply with the practice of withholding the cup from the laity. So strongly did Luther believe in the laity’s participation in the mass that he condemned the Roman Catholic practice as one way that “Babylon” holds the church “captive.” (It should be noted however that Luther did not believe that withholding the cup necessarily invalidated the sacrament or that the Christians who were denied the cup during the previous centuries had not received sacramental benefits.)

Secondly, Luther believed that the Roman Catholic understanding of the sacrament as a “good work and a sacrifice” was the “most wicked abuse of all.” Luther argued forcefully that the mass must be seen as a testament – something to receive, not a good work to perform. The only sacrifice at the Lord’s Table is the sacrifice of ourselves. The idea that a priest could sacrifice the body and blood of the Lord was especially appalling to Luther and he considered this belief the most abominable of Roman errors.  […]

Another area in which Luther remained close to Roman doctrine is in the doctrine of the “real presence.” Up until 1519, it appears Luther agreed with the official doctrine of transubstantiation. In 1520, he criticized the idea quite forcefully, painting it as needless speculation based on Aristotelian thought.

A popular misconception among Reformation students is that Luther affirmed and promoted “consubstantiation,” but neither Luther nor the Lutheran church ever accepted that term. Luther simply refused to speculate on how Christ is present and instead settled for affirming that he is there. The presence of Christ in the Supper is miraculous and thus defies explanation.

Roman Catholic theologians strongly emphasized the moment of consecration, when the priest would lift the bread and say “Hoc est corpus meum.” At that moment, bells would be rung and all eyes would be on the elevated host, which had magically been transformed into Christ’s body.

Luther similarly emphasized the words of institution, but only because Christ’s command leads to the change, not because the priest has made a special utterance. In this and other practices, Luther was content to alter the understanding behind Roman Catholic practice without feeling the need to actually change the tradition itself.

Luther believed that the fruit of the Lord’s Supper is the forgiveness of sins. Roman doctrine held that Communion was for the righteous, those who have confessed their sins to the priest. Luther believed Communion was for sinners, those who needed Christ’s incarnation the most.

 

Zwingli’s view

 

Zwingli did not see the need for a “sacramental union” in the Lord’s Supper because of his modified understanding of sacraments.

According to Zwingli, the sacraments serve as a public testimony of a previous grace. Therefore, the sacrament is “a sign of a sacred thing, i.e. of a grace that has been given.” For Zwingli, the idea that the sacraments carry any salvific efficacy in themselves is a return to Judaism’s ceremonial washings that lead to the purchase of salvation.

Whereas Luther sought to prune the bad branches off the tree of Roman Catholic sacramentalism, Zwingli believed the problem to be rooted at least partly in sacramentalism itself. […]

What Zwingli could not accept was a “real presence” that claimed Christ was present in his physical body with no visible bodily boundaries.

“I have no use for that notion of a real and true body that does not exist physically, definitely and distinctly in some place, and that sort of nonsense got up by word triflers.”

Zwingli’s theology of the Lord’s Supper should not be viewed as an innovation without precedent in church history. Zwingli claimed that his doubts about transubstantiation were shared by many of his day, leading him to claim that priests did not ever believe such a thing, even though “most all have taught this or at least pretended to believe it.”

Had Zwingli’s modified doctrine of the “real presence” been an innovation, it would probably not have been so eagerly accepted by his parishioners. The symbolic view spread rapidly because Zwingli had given voice and legitimacy to an opinion that was already widespread.

In Zurich, the mass was abolished in 1525. The Lord’s Supper was celebrated with a new liturgy that replaced the altar with a table and tablecloth.

The striking feature of the Zwinglian observance of the sacrament was its simplicity. Because the bread and wine were not physically transformed into Christ’s body and blood, there was no need for spurious ceremonies and pompous rituals. The occasion was marked by simplicity and reverence, with an emphasis on its nature as a memorial.

Zwingli’s denial of the “real presence” did not result in the neglecting of the sacrament that would characterize many of his followers in centuries to come. He saw seven virtues in the Lord’s Supper that proved its importance for the Christian life.

Do read the articles linked above. While what he says on Lutheran doctrine is in accordance with what I know and believe, and what I know of how it was derived, and I am sort of assuming that as an Evangelical he knows a fair amount about Zwingli, I don’t know enough to comment intelligently about it. My original church had a fair amount of Reformed in it, but it was long ago, and I’ve long since come to believe in The Real Presence myself, actually before I became a Lutheran. It is just more consonant with the Lord’s words and the disciples’ reaction to them.

Ps, the short form

St Cyril and the Theotokos

28 Friday Apr 2017

Posted by in Bible, Catholic Tradition, Faith, st cyril of alexandria

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No brief survey can do justice to St. Cyril’s multiple contributions to our understanding of the Faith ‘once received’: his Trinitarianism and his Christology are the very summit of the achievement of the Eastern Fathers. His debt to Origen, St. Athanasius and to the Cappadocians, as well as to St. Irenaeus is obvious, but he brought their work to a new perfection. If the Western traditions have not always given him the credit that is his due – and his absence from the standard edition of the Church Fathers is much to its detriment `- then he has remained a powerful influence on the Oriental Orthodox tradition, not least in his own Coptic Church. A true Christology has to be related to a true soteriology, one that really transforms mankind and raises us to life in God.

This was why, when St. Cyril heard that Nestorius was speaking of the ‘two natures’ of Christ, he became concerned. He told bishop Succenus that because Nestorius ‘isolates the individual man born of the holy Virgin and likewise the individual Son, the Word from God the Father’, he ‘declares the holy Virgin is not the mother of God but mother of the man.’ [1]  The correct doctrine is that Christ is the pre-eternal Word born of the Virgin. St. Cyril knew that some were accusing him of an Appolinarian understanding of the Incarnation, and thought he was teaching a merger or a mingling of the two natures. This he dismissed as a ‘slander’, asserting what his own Church has ever held:

We affirm that the Word from God the Father united to himself in some inscrutable and ineffable manner, a body endowed with mental life and that he came forth, man from woman, become what we are, not by change of nature but in gracious fulfilment of God’s plan. In willing to become man he did not abandon his being God by nature; though he descended to our limited level and worse the form of a slave, even in that state he remained in the transcendent realms of Godhead and in the Lordship belonging to his nature.

So we unite the Word from God the Father without merger, alteration or change to holy flesh owning mental life in a manner inexpressible and surpassing understanding, and confess one Son, Christ and Lord, the self-same God and man, not a diverse pair but one and the same, being and being seen to be both things. [2]

There is ‘one incarnate nature of the Word’, and after union, there should be no speaking of two natures.

St. Cyril has been criticised for his use of the phrase ‘the one incarnate nature of God the Word’, and some hold that he was ‘taken in’ by an Appolinarian forgery which he thought Athansian in origin. A full discussion of this topic lies beyond the scope of this paper, [3]  but this does him a serious injustice. As he wrote to his agent in Constantinople. Eulogius: ‘there is no obligation to reject everything heretics say – they affirm many of the points we too affirm. [4] Apollinarius had come to the wrong conclusion, but he had identified the need for the Church to confess a single subject in the Incarnate Word. This had been at the heart of Alexandrian theology from Origen’s day, and has led even recent scholars to assert that ‘a single subject Christ, with an emphasis on Christ’s divinity’ was part of the Alexandrian tradition. [5] But this is to misread things. St. Cyril’s soteriology was a dynamic one, in which, as we have seen, enfleshment and the Logos were both essential parts of the Cyrilline vision.

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[1] L. Wickham, Cyril of Alexandria: Selected Letters, (Oxford, 1983), p. 73
[2] Wickham, p. 73
[3] McGuckin, St. Cyril, Chapter 3, for a full discussion.
[4] Wickham, p. 63
[5] Susan Wessel, Cyril of Alexandra and the Nestorian Controversy (Oxford, 2004).p.2

Is the Reformation over? Yes and no.

27 Monday Mar 2017

Posted by in Faith, Lutheranism

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Interesting stuff. This is written from an ELCA perspective. The ElCA has ecumenical yearnings to be again in communion with Rome, which I can understand but do not share. Not least because parts of the Lutheran church has done a better job of preserving what we believe than almost anybody else. Still, there’s a lot to learn here, and not just for Lutherans. All of our western churches are seeing similar things. Gene Veith of Cranach did a wonderful job of excerpting Sarah Hinlicky Wilson’s article, so rather than trying to do better, I’ll simply credit him.

. . .There are 4 million Lutherans in otherwise very Hindu India and another 5.7 million Lutherans in otherwise very Muslim Indonesia. There are nearly 20 million Lutherans in Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Madagascar combined. Far more modest numbers are found in the Americas, and of course all kinds of Lutherans are spangled across Europe, from the ponderous folk churches of Scandinavia to the tiny but resilient minority churches in Slovakia, Serbia, and Romania.

But it’s another thing to see the global face of Lutheranism in person, and in Wittenberg. Every November since 2009 my German colleague Theodor Dieter and I have taught a two-week seminar titled Studying Luther in Wittenberg, which collects the “diaspora” of Lutheranism for a high-octane fellowship of study. . . .

What we encountered was an enthusiastic reception far beyond anything we’d dared to let ourselves dream. We’ve spent time at the seminar table with an Inuit pastor from Greenland who told us how she has to order a whole year’s supply of communion wine because the ice prevents imports ten months of the year. And with a Senegalese pastor who, as an observant Muslim high schooler, read through a Finnish missionary’s entire library before finally being granted access to the Bible—on the conclusion of which reading, he said to himself, “The Qur’an tells how to save yourself; the Bible tells how God saves you.” And with a third-generation Lutheran pastor from Myanmar who was ecstatic to eat sauerkraut and sausages as well as to talk theology all day. Brazilian scholars laboring to translate Luther’s works into Portuguese and a Taiwanese pastor seeing unflattering parallels between 16th-century Christian practice in Europe and 21st-century Taoist practice in China.

Luther has traveled far indeed, and the farther he goes, the warmer his reception. The Africans and Asians we’ve worked with have found in this late medieval friar’s writings on faith and grace, sin and law, left-hand and right-hand kingdoms the answers to the questions plaguing their churches, their people, and their societies. The western and northern Europeans are generally slower to warm up, a little bored with the theologian who taught the ubiquity of Christ but inadvertently became ubiquitous himself. By the end we could usually bring them around. Still, I postulate a Law of Luther Reception: there is an inverse relationship between Luther’s cultural importance and that culture’s ability to hear him.

Which brings us to the question of Luther reception in our own equally exotic, if all too familiar, United States of America.

via Is the Reformation over? Yes and no. | The Christian Century

One thing she comments on, I think is worthy of note.

And then, right at the moment exotic foreigner Lutherans hit their cultural stride, got their church presidents on the cover of Time, and eagerly started building bigger barns, the winds shifted. Whether aggravated by their own choices or obediently following the way of all mainline Protestants, the growth transmuted into a free fall and has kept on falling ever since.

That is very true for the ELCA, the Episcopal Church, and even the Roman Catholic Church. It is not nearly as true for the LCMS, there has been a decline, a pretty big one, but if one was to look at baptism and confirmation statistics (around 13 in our churches) it has pretty much reflected the birth rate, which peaked around 1960. More here. Incidentally, there is a study floating around that says the UK was happier in 1959 than at any time before or since. Connected? Maybe.

She deals with whether the reformation is over, and with Luther’s aversion to Rabbinic Judaism, although he loved the Old Testament. perhaps more than the New, and with several other things.

Her article is well worth your time.

Battle Lines? Yes, but remember that the battle is already won

16 Thursday Feb 2017

Posted by in Faith

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A week or so ago I wrote a post about R, a dear and valued old friend who had converted to Christianity. He has now joined our community and this is his first post. I welcome him on behalf of the whole community gathered here. C451.

18 “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. 19 If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.”

John 15:18-19 English Standard Version (ESV)

This is my first post on All Along the Watchtower, and I hope that as someone recently come to Christ that I can make a helpful contribution to the conversation here.

My friend Chaldecon 451 recently wrote about the battle that surrounds us in a world where so much pressure is placed on our Churches, of whatever denomination, to conform to the free-wheeling, consumption-oriented, sexually-obsessed culture that surrounds us, which seems to be sweeping across us like a tsunami.

He is right in his description of the huge pressure being brought to bear upon us to change our reading of Scripture to suit the mores of the world around us. The media coverage of the recent decision by the Church of England to remain true to the Biblical definition of marriage as a union between a man and a woman attests to the hostility that Christians face in an age of rampant unbelief.

These are difficult times, but nonetheless, the lack of understanding apparent across the media when Christians have the audacity to suggest that God’s Word is presented in the Bible and we cannot change it in order that people can carry on committing sin without any pangs of conscience, is something we should not allow to cause us to despair.

As Our Saviour told his disciples, we should expect persecution and yes, even hatred, to follow our attestation of our Christian beliefs. We should remember, however, that throughout human history hatred has been rooted in fear – fear of the different, fear of the different, and, in our case, fear of the Truth that is Jesus Christ.

As one who was very recently an atheist, I look back at my unwillingness to embrace Christ’s Mercy and now understand how deeply it was rooted in fear. Fear of the things I thought I would have to give up if I became a Christian, fear of leaving behind my safety zone of consumer-driven existence, fear of giving up my ingrained idea that I was the centre of the universe. Above all, the (now very odd) fear that, if those pesky Christians were right, then I was in a lot of trouble. Those who attack Christianity do so out of fear, and the harsher their attacks the more they reveal their fear of the Word.

Viewed from this perspective, the weakness of these attacks are revealed to us. Time and again in the Old Testament God showed Israel how, no matter how numerous an army appears before the battle, the fear in its heart means it cannot stand against His people. We should then take these attacks as evidence of His Victory and feel energised by this knowledge of our enemies’ fear to bring the Truth of His Grace to the ears of as many as we can.

The battle is already won, and that should give us strength.

‘What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?’