Pastor,
Your premise seems right. We cannot overcome a splintered Christianity in the West without God's powerful help, and that help is most powerfully given in the Eucharist. I agree that sharing our Lord's meal together would be a focal point of unity and witness. However, I and many other Catholics share the Holy Sacraments side by side those who live completely on the other side of "the cultural battlefield".
May I make some observations. Persecution has resulted in the Church being driven "apart" geographically from the start. These days, persecution may be resulting in the Church (I include a very broad range of faiths here) being driven together "spiritually". Perhaps, God can make anything achieve His purpose--from the Holiest Sacrament to the most mundane insult.

On every Sunday, the focus of the worship service of each congregation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is blessing and distributing to everyone present, including small children, the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper. In one of the few set prayers in our church, taken directly from the text of the Book of Mormon, the young lay priest officiating kneels before the broken bread and says "O God, the Eternal Father, we ask Thee, in the name of Thy Son, Jesus Christ, to bless and sactify this bread to the souls of all those who partake of it, that they may eat it in remembrance of the body of Thy Son, and witness unto Thee, O God, the Eternal Father, that they are willing to take upon them the name of Thy Son, and always remember Him, and keep His commandments which He has given them, that they may always have His Spirit to be with them. Amen."

And then, in silence, the trays of broken bread are taken to each bench and passed along until each member of the congregation has eaten the bread while renewing in his or her heart the same covenants made at baptism.

Because every worthy male member is ordained in the priesthood, even those who are unable to congregate with other Latter-day Saints, such as American families teaching at a college in China, or a couple of soldiers at an outpost in Afghanistan, can still perform this ordinance for themselves, and weekly rededicate themselves to Christ, always remembering that they are part of the body of Christ, are His sons and His daughters, with reliance on His Spirit to guide them in their daily walk.

My fervent prayer, as a Catholic, is that of Jesus:

“I pray not only for them, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me. And I have given them the glory you gave me, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may be brought to perfection as one, that the world may know that you sent me, and that you loved them even as you loved me. " (John 17:20-23)

because I literally believe this:

“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me will live because of me.” (John 6:53-57)

I am well aware of theological differences on this and similar verses, but God is bigger than any of them, and I am always heartened by serious reflections on the meaning of Eucharist, such as that given above by Mr. Leithart. May it be fruitful!

Amongst all these wordly concerns about politics, economics, culture, and society, let's not forget the REAL reasons we celebrate the eucharist:

1) To have eternal life

2) Jesus told us to

In John 6:53-58 Jesus makes this clear. All other concerns are secondary.

Rev Leithart,

I understand that the Presbyterian/Reformed tradition sees the Eucharist as a sacrament, albeit relatively undefined. It is not seen the same as Catholics see it, nor as Lutherans see it. The Anglican/Episcopal position is that the recipient can see it as "the Real Presence" or a symbol, which is a largely meaningless position. The Evangelicals see it as an injunction and a symbol, and generally give it little attention on Sundays.

Making the Eucharist the focal point would have to assume some commonality, where in fact none appears to exist. Your appeal, it seems to me, is similar to that evidenced in the book Your Church is too Small. A particular set of criteria is selected, in your case, a set of criteria to which you already adhere, and you importune people to step up to that criteria. The author of the aforementioned book decided the criteria he could adhere to, including several of the early Church councils.

Noting the difference between transubstantiation (as the Passover Lamb of God Who must be eaten), consubstantiation, an ill-defined or completely undefined Eucharistic sacrament, and an injunction points out the need to find the truth.

John 6, where Jesus is quite specific about His Body and Blood, notes that the disciples who disagreed with Jesus left Him, grumbling.

We need an agreement about "what" the Eucharist is, before we can arrive at any other agreement about it.

A thousand thanks for this insight into the problem of brokenness. The splintering of Christianity is indeed a deep wound in the Body of Christ, and affects not only the spiritual health of its members, but also the proposals we offer for the Common Good. Our audience can easily dismiss our claims of truth, since the self-contradictions within Christianity give the lie to our truth claims.

Having made the case against splintering and in favor of unity, the author then states that the frequency of people turning to Rome, or Constantinople, is alarming. It seems to me to be consistent he should have said this trend is encouraging.

Peter, you're spot on! To move away from a disembodied, rationalism of "word-only" to imbibing in the audible, tangible, edible Word is remedial for Christ's Church and restorative for what is ailing Christ's Church. Also, you are correct to note that the centrality of the cross of our resurrected Lord, declared and participated in through Word and Sacrament weekly, gives solid grounding for the Church, or better yet, gives solid political grounding for the Church that liberates her from party agendas. She is reminded that her ultimate citizenship is in the Civitas Dei ruled over by the incarnate, crucified, resurrected and enthroned Lord. "When the Sign seals the Word, the church becomes a communion of martyrs ready to bear the cross because they have consumed the cross."

I am in favor of frequent celebration for many reasons, including those noted here.

It does not follow that more frequent participation in the Lord's Supper is indeed the panacea Peter is suggesting. If I say "The mark of the Church is community, of which the Eucharist is a part" it is no good to say "Yeah, but putting more emphasis on the table fixes it." What is the evidence for that? That some people think so? Or if I say "The key is obedience to the Holy Spirit," it doesn't help much to reply "Putting the Eucharist at the center of worship fixes that, too." Does it? Declaring that something is the Center in Christianity is always a risky idea.

The giveaway line was the false dichotomy that Christ-centered preaching isn't enough - Jesus said so - therefore your vision of how things should be must be correct. I share your frustration with those who claim it is enough - are they the full census of evangelicals? I don't know too many who fit that, frankly.

I think you are onto an important truth of the importance of this sacrament in the unity of the church. Yet you have stated it in a manner that is a quite rude and exclusive "you" accusation behind your polite "we" words. "Hey, Mack, you either get it about this communion thing or you're a hypocrite that the world should reject."

I agree with Donald Todd... You first have to define what it is before you can effectively summon broad evangelical support.


And if the Scriptures are not entirely clear on the 'whatness' of the Lord's Supper, then ask the early church.


2c


M

Hello, Rev. Leithart,

I think you are on to something. It obvious you have been reflecting on the meaning of the Eucharist for a long time. In my amateur opinion, that is nothing less than the work of the Holy Spirit in your life.

Allow me to add my two cents worth as a Catholic. God does indeed intend for us to be “one body because we partake of one loaf.” Here is the thing about the members of a body: the behavior of that body is chaotic and ineffective if its members are not animated by the same spirit. A hand with a will of its own insisting on doing its own thing is useless. One can't see straight if one willful eye has no regard for where the other has directed its focus. One can't really get anywhere if one's willful feet continually disagree. You get the idea.

Until enough of the members of the Body of Christ say with Him, “Father not my will but thine be done” there will be chaos instead of the conversion of the world.

“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” Currently, many members of the Body of Christ remain alone, exerting great effort at doing good things on their own – like the willful hand doing its own thing. When enough of us die to our own willful spirits the Body of Christ will bear much fruit in terms of the conversion of the world. A tiny, united Christian community that was ready to say “Father not my will but thine be done” even unto martyrdom, eventually brought about the conversion of the known world. Today, well over a billion Christians are, not entirely but for the most part, succeeding only at being in the world but not of it – and are not completely successful at doing that.

How much of the ineffectiveness of the Body of Christ on Earth today is due to convictions held so deeply that they have become more important to the one who holds them than the healing of the wounded Body of Christ, convictions that are really based more on willfulness than reason? Correct convictions are only arrived at by submission to the head of the Body, which is Christ.

So, the end of Christian ineffectiveness and disunity is to be found, I think, in union with the risen Lord in the Eucharist, so His glorified humanity will be mingled with our own, making us “one body – one loaf,” and as the Divine Humanity is mingled with ours, we let the Spirit that animates it reign in our humanity instead of our own willful spirits.

Where I said, "so His glorified humanity will be mingled with our own," I should have said "with our own HUMANITY," or "with our FALLEN HUMANITY", so as not to suggest that we have a glorified humanity, too. We don't . Yet.

I see the divide as a difference in whether the bread and actually become the Host or whether the bread and wine are symbols. As a Protestant, I believe they are symbols. Catholics believe it is actually the body and blood of Christ. This is a major divide and I don't see how it can be overcome. Although I certainly support Christians coming together and standing firm for what is right and just in the face of the immorality we see today.

As a member of an Evangelical church, I see the cultural challenge a bit differently.
While teaching an adult Sunday School class I asked the members to define the Great commission. The answer from all, was something like"Accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior so you can go to heaven." Basic protestant justification.
No mention of discipleship.

Now justification is certainly important, as the first step toward discipleship, but hardly the totality of it. When all brothers and sisters in Christ come to see that to learn of Jesus, and follow Jesus (caring for the poor, sharing the good news, comforting those in need, loving all, and meeting together where the Lord's supper is served, and more) then we will become the light that draws the culture

The problem is the cutting off of the Hebrew roots - without roots, any plant or tree will wither and die - and that is what is happening.

Rev Leithart,

You have definitely discovered the key. Saint Irenaeus writing around 187 AD wrote this:

"Our Way of thinking is attuned to the Eucharist, and the Eucharist in turn confirms our way of thinking"

The diverging 'theologies concerning the Eucharist' at the time of the Reformation plagued both Martin Luther [his famous meeting with Zwingli] and Archbishop Cranmer in England who attempted to have a counter-Council to Trent and unite with one 'understanding' of the Eucharist-to no avail.

The fact that you are raising this issue from the world of Evangelicalism is a sign of the yearning and search for a deeper sense of the Mystery, a deeper 'understanding' of the meaning, and a deeper appreciation of the implications of the Eucharist.

As a Catholic grandson of a Baptist, I cannot but say "Amen, and Amen"

As a Catholic, I would like to commend the author for asking these painful questions.

In my view, the disarray of the state of Christianity in our country has prevented the formation of a healthy mediating institution between the individual and the state. As my own bishops are finding out, civil power can now reach even inside the local Church they were entrusted with, and rearrange things as it sees fit - in spite of them. If this can be done to the Catholic Church, it can also be even more easily done to every other ecclesiastical body in our country, when the time is right.

I'm sure that the author of this article is familiar with de Tocqueville's prediction - which, as I see it, is being fulfilled in front of our eyes. Thus I propose that the view that the move to Rome is "alarming", is misplaced. The two facts, that we have thousands of organizations that use the name Christian, and that a realistic mechanism for their solidarity is not in sight, speak for themselves.

Yet, to be honest, I hope I'm wrong about the latter fact, and that God will help us regain what we've discarded.

thanks for this article, Mr. Leithart. My observations: The refrain coming from the Catholics are all concerned with the substance of the elements, and subsequently with the presence of the Lord.

While evangelicals (and Irenaeus himself) might not go in for Catholic dogma on these questions, they can do this: they can practice Communion as a form of renewing their covenant of faith with God (and with His people- something that I appreciated Leithart bringing out); and they can bind themselves to discipleship or, as I like to put it, participating in Jesus.

Catholics who insist on a particular assertion about presence and substance need to be as zealous in *agreeing* to these aspects of it (devotion, covenant renewal, brotherly love, participation in the cross).

And for the evangelicals, like Rick above, they do need to see salvation in general in with more texture than a two-track "faith + (optional) discipleship". Jesus was not only the way to God, but He was a supplicant to God, too. Our salvation comes by being "in Christ" or by participating in Christ.

If Evangelicals can see their faith as a commitment to participate in Christ- and not just to have a heart that is surrendered to the facts of the gospel story- then they will see faith as participation in Christ's faith, obedience as an expression of participation in Christ, preaching only His gospel as participation in his ministry, worshiping the Father through the ministry of the priestly son as participating in Christ's own worship, and obviously see communion as the fullest expression of participation, seeing that it captures the aspects typified in the Passover. I'm thinking of 1. redemption, 2. community/brotherhood, 3. covenant, 4. promised land, 5. identity remade in terms of blood sacrifice, 6. ritual proclamation, 7. sharing and charity generally, 8. ritual remembrance/ thanksgiving.

I think the Catholic concern with substance and presence are fair enough, but can we broaden our range of thought on the eucharist to include some of these other things?

The Passover itself did not address questions of substance and presence. The Last Supper didn't either- not in a conclusive manner. And the early church testimony is mixed on these questions. Irenaeus even flatly states that the bread and cup are symbols. Only over the course of time- after sticking it to the gnostics and their anti-materialist doctrine, after the inclusion of prayers that invited the Holy Spirit onto the food, after Cyprian's overuse of the priestly analogy in his invovlement in the confessors' debate, after the change in the prayer from one of thanksgiving to one of atonement, after the conscious change in offering a token sacrifice of food and other charitable objects to an offering that specified "thy son" as the object- after these things, then questions of substance and presence entered the fore. Thus, in a post-Constantinian "church" you had people threatening the nominally faithful with divine displeasure if they spilled the cup or dropped a crumb, the church barred the faithful from certain portions of the meal (they should have read "do this" by Leithart, or a contemporary variety of it, and been encouraged to "do" it). Chrystostom's threats sound more like day care management than they do a faithful friend inviting his friends to participate in Christ's kingdom.

Anyway, for those who are fixed on questions of substance and presence, and define the meaning and purpose of the meal only in those terms, I suggest that you are missing something important about the eucharist. Which I think is the accusation you are bringing against the evangelicals. So can you show me how to have a full, gracious, faithful and robust appreciation of the eucharist?

Sounds like Peter J. Leithart needs to move from Geneva to Constantinople or Rome.

The lady above, Fran, is right. Whatever shards of tiny churches hold on to the guitar rock no Eucharist version of Christianity will never give it up. It's actually quite scary the way these types of Protestants build up and hold on to animosity toward the Catholic Tradition--as if the possibility that Catholics are right threatens them more than the possibility that Satan or secularists are right.

Still, unfortunately, the joke is on them. The Church is a smaller proportion of society in Europe and North America because there are so many secularists, but its proportion of serious Christ believers in those two regions is going up.
It's not PC to say but serious Evangelicals and Protestants do defect to the Church at very high rates.
What's left at the social club churches are the people who were always there fore the social club aspects anyway (the serious people just gave it a hint of authenticity and you know humans are mostly about critical mass; if the successful people in town go to a church, then the people who want to be successful go to that church to and then at some point almost everyone just goes to the church to avoid being left out. In secular society just replace the church with a nightclub or a sporting event--it's ironic, churches are undone the same way they're built up, by critical mass of humans detecting that they want something that can be gotten from whatever institution).
It's quite clear to most of us that the Church's "staying power" comes obviously from Christ, but specifically from the Eucharist. All the churches that come up with innovative sexy new ways to propel Christianity forward wither and die within a few generations at most. (The Crystal Cathedral being sold to the Diocese of Orange is a poignant symbol of this.)

Hello, Fran,

You wrote:

“I see the divide as a difference in whether the bread and actually become the Host or whether the bread and wine are symbols. As a Protestant, I believe they are symbols. Catholics believe it is actually the body and blood of Christ. This is a major divide and I don't see how it can be overcome.”

Yet we have to overcome it somehow, don't we, for the sake of the restoration of the wholeness of the dismembered Body of Christ on Earth? Not that I know how to do that. ;o) Catholics have already provided evidence from the writings of the Early Church Fathers that makes it clear (to Catholics, anyway) that the contemporary Catholic understanding of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist has been there from the beginning. You are probably already familiar with all that as well as the Scripture passages usually cited by Catholics to support Catholic belief on the matter. So, my question for you is (or anybody else who cares to answer it), how do we get started in resolving this? I mean something that hasn't already been tried, since so far nothing has worked in terms of bringing about the earthshaking, world-converting results one could reasonably expect if the Body of Christ were made whole once again. (Not to mention the joy that would bring to the Heart of Jesus.) What would at least begin a significant movement in that direction?

Ben,

Having left evangelicalism for Catholicism, you are facing someone who had a real appreciation for scripture, which is what led me to Catholicism. Factually, I was reading scripture, and discovering that my denomination (like many) was discounting Jesus' own words. I wanted to be where Jesus' own words were honored as true, and not in the breech. I wanted literally to be where Jesus is seen as true, where His own words are the benchmark.

So, is the question of what the Eucharist consists of important?

When Abraham wins a war and takes spoils, he offers Melchizedek a tithe. Melchizedek accepts the tithe and brings forth bread and wine. Gen 14:19. Melchizedek is type of our Lord.

Abraham tells Isaac that God Himself will provide the lamb (for the sacrifice) when he is going to offer Isaac. When the angel stays Abraham's hand, a ram (not a lamb) is found and offered. Abraham is prophesying about a lamb provided by God. Gen 22:8

The Passover includes a meal involving eating an unblemished lamb. Note Passover, eating, and lamb. Exodus 12.

In the fourth of the suffering servant songs, Isaiah notes: "like a lamb that is led to the slaughter house" Is 53:7

"Look, there is the Lamb of God Who takes away the sins of the world," said John the Baptist. John 1:29

John 6, the descriptions of the Last Supper in the synoptics, and Paul in 1st Cor 10 and 11 are quite specific about what the Eucharist is. It is the fulfillment of an idea that originated in Genesis and finds its fulfillment in Jesus. It is about a sacrificial Lamb Which must be eaten as part of the Passover of the new covenant. It is about God making Himself available by changing the underlying properties of bread and wine into His Body and His Blood, while retaining the accidents (taste, texture, smell) of bread and wine. It is a sacrifice made present to us through time for our salvation.

Your consideration that I discard this belief comes from a mindset that assumes I am in charge and am capable of determining what should or should not be believed. To be exact, that is also effectively the position taken by the author of this article, although he is espousing a belief he is already invested in.

When I left evangelicalism for Catholicism, I did so understanding that I am not the Authority. Scripture does not commend itself to my interpretation. Jesus is the head of the Church He founded. God the Holy Spirit is intended to bring that Church to the truth. I am not here to put words in His mouth or to deny the words He has spoken. He is the King, I am a mere private in this army.

If I accepted your position, I should once again be a non-Catholic. Having been given the grace to persevere and find the place where Jesus' own words are honored by being believed, why would I want to leave?

Factually your offer is unacceptable. If I wanted it, I already had it and found it unsustainable, as in lacking of substance. I found the Substance - the only Food capable of getting one through this life into the life to come - and knelt down to receive it.

This article started with the idea of a Eucharist as central. I agree. What I do not agree to is to limit what that Eucharist is in order to achieve the greatest participation. Not all of the Jews who left Egypt made it to the promised land.
Not all of those hearing Jesus stayed with Him after He specified the need to consume His Body and His Blood in order to have everlasting life. John 6.

How can we agree on what the Eucharist is if we cannot agree on what (or where) the Church may be found?

I pray daily for the reunion of all Christians, but it won't happen if I have to surrender the beliefs I was graced to receive for something else, something less, and surrender to a lesser good while separating myself from a greater good.

I weighed your argument and found it wanting.

Cordially,

dt

Dr. Leithart,

How is the sorry state of the churches you are addressing here not simply the work of the aghast Luther and Calvin you mention? In what sense is 21st century American Christianity not the great fruit of Luther and Calvin?

While any Christian must acknowledge the mystical disparity between what you see and what is true of the Church, no one carps louder than educated Protestants about "the state of the Church." Catholics and Orthodox Christians, despite all the faults of their respective communions, are far more comfortable pointing at their churches, warts and corruption and all, and saying, "Yes, yes, this is it. This is what has been handed down to us from the apostles since the first century." Protestants can point to nothing and saying, "Yes, yes, this is it." There are always edits to make, changes to perceive. Luther and Calvin seem to have not started anything visible, but something mystical. Luther and Calvin always seem to have started the good things in the church of those who speak on their behalf, but never to have started the foolish things in the half million candy-club churches out there.

There is not much on earth, down the street, which Luther and Calvin began. When will Luther and Calvin ever take credit for what they've done? When will Luther and Calvin look at four hundred different denominations in the phonebook and say, "We were instrumental in starting this"?

Hello, Ben Embry,

“The Passover itself did not address questions of substance and presence.”

The type is not the anti-type. Although in time the Jews regarded the Passover rituals as making past realities present.

“The Last Supper didn't either- not in a conclusive manner.”

Catholics believe the Mass makes past realities present. For our Heavenly Father, past, present and future are all equally present to Him, so His beloved Son is always before Him in agony on the cross. At Mass we join our Father, Who is in Heaven, hallowing His name, in contemplating the sacrifice of His Son that made it possible for His kingdom to come unto us. Thank you Jesus for saying, “Father, not my will but Thine be done.”

Note that in the Greek, the accounts of the Last Supper, the first Mass, have Jesus saying “This is my body, that for you IS being given” and “This cup [is] the new covenant in my blood, that for you IS being poured forth.” He speaks of a future reality as though it is present. It is, one that is already present to our Father in Heaven. Check out Young's literal translation of Luke's account of the Last Supper and 1st Corinthians 20 to easily see this.

“And the early church testimony is mixed on these questions. Irenaeus even flatly states that the bread and cup are symbols.”

Where did he state, as the point of his remarks, not merely the usage of a word somebody else translated as “symbol,” that the bread and the wine are NOT the presence of the sacred body and blood, but are merely symbols?

“Only over the course of time … then questions of substance and presence entered the fore.”

St. Ignatius, who knew the Apostle John, writes in an epistle to the Smyrnaeans:

“They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they confess not the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ which suffered four our sins, and which the Father, of His goodness, raised up again. Those, therefore, who speak against this gift of God, incur death in the midst of their disputes.”

Obviously, the idea that the Eucharist was more than just a symbol of the presence of Christ, but a very real presence, is there from the beginning.

Ben Emry,

Substance and presence is important, because Jesus is present. I do think that the Evangelicals need to move beyond suspecting things, to an understanding of the sacramental economy. If Jesus Christ came in the flesh and entered this world of time and space, then the physical world has been sanctified and the sacraments are our encounter with God in this world, until he comes again.

This is why the gnostics rejected the sacraments, because to them the world was an illusion and Jesus was an angel in a sandbag.

Ignatius of Antioch is an early writer who wrote extensively on the Eucharist as both thanksgiving and sacrifice. There are many others.

They had a lot of serious things to say about the desecration and unworthy participation in the Eucharist. This is not something Constantine came up with.

The sacraments are linked to the incarnation. The deeper you study them, the more you start to realize this.

My answer to this cultural challenge would have been "busyness," that is, the challenge to set aside eating of the Idola Tree of busyness in order to re-establish the rhythms of life appropriate to a life of grace, gratitude and thanksgiving. However, Rev. Liethart's words here seem to be saying the same thing, only differently. Good piece.

I appreciate this post with its emphasis on the transcendence of the Eucharist. At the Table we have the didactic, the mystical, the individual, and the corporate - all melded into Jesus Christ; the nature of the Table lends itself to charity toward those who have varying understandings of its Nature - we are all pilgrims. I particularly appreciate the Eucharist seen as a Rock against the fads and fancies which not only engulf Evangelicalism but most elements of the professing Church - fragmentation is everywhere. The observation about the flag and nationalism is one worth pondering - well said.

Mr. Swenson fails to mention that the LDS use water instead of wine in complete defiance of the Biblical injunction.

The Catholic Church has fulfilled the judgment that the Apostle Paul predicted in Romans chapter 11. They, like the the nation of Israel, are holy and still part of the purpose of God, but have been broken off, in some measure at least, from the root due to their disobedience. Read Romans 11:11-21:

"Again I ask: Did they [Israel] stumble so as to fall beyond recovery? Not at all! Rather, because of their transgression, salvation has come to the Gentiles to make Israel envious. But if their transgression means riches for the world, and their loss means riches for the Gentiles, how much greater riches will their fullness bring!

"I am talking to you Gentiles. Inasmuch as I am the apostle to the Gentiles, I make much of my ministry in the hope that I may somehow arouse my own people to envy and save some of them. For if their rejection is the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead? If the part of the dough offered as firstfruits is holy, then the whole batch is holy; if the root is holy, so are the branches.

"If some of the branches have been broken off, and you, though a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root, do not boast over those branches. If you do, consider this: You do not support the root, but the root supports you. You will say then, 'Branches were broken off so that I could be grafted in.' Granted. But they were broken off because of unbelief, and you stand by faith. Do not be arrogant, but be afraid. For if God did not spare the natural branches, he will not spare you either."

Obviously the Eucharist, as practiced by the Catholic Church, did not have the power to overcome the worldliness, disobedience, idolatry and murder practiced by the Catholic Church leading up to the Protestant Reformation. For God's sake, they murdered holy men trying to place the scriptures in the hands of the people to whom Christ said, "If you abide in my word, then you are truly my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." Instead they wrapped people in chains of slavery and ignorance until God broke them free. That is what happened in the Protestant Reformation. God did not spare the natural branches, and he did not spare the Catholic Church.

When the Catholic Church repents of its sins, humbles itself, casts out its idols, and looks to God and his Word instead of tradition and the Pope, then there will be unity. Then Israel and the Catholic Church will again be grafted in. Can't you Catholics understand what Samuel told Saul, "To obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams" ? When you lift Mary, and church tradition, and the fallible Pope, the priesthood, and a thousand other things above the clear commands of Jesus and his infallible word, you are in disobedience even if you celebrate the Eucharist a thousand times. Just as Moses' bronze snake, originally a source of healing, became an idol, so the Eucharist is well on its way to being worshiped for its own sake. Do not be surprised if God somehow removes it from its central place for a time, in the same way that the bronze snake was smashed by Hezekiah, and in the same way that the temple was destroyed. If my Catholic brothers and sisters had spent more time in the word themselves, they would not need me to tell them these obvious things.

For our part, we will still regard the Catholic Church, and Israel, as holy, and part of the root and a central part the purposes of God. But we will not do what they do, lest we share their judgment.

I make these comments in a spirit of great love for my brother Christians who are not in my communion:

When one has turned away from the realities made present and effectual by the Sacraments, and from the teaching authority of a Church extending through all of time, then one must hold on doggedly to the inerrant word of God -- and I am deeply grateful to those Christians who have done so.

But words without embodied realities are like clear windows without stained glass, or white walls without paintings, or the passage of days in the year without special celebrations. Yes, I readily acknowledge that the best embodiment of our faith comes in the flesh, in deeds of Christlike love made possible by the gift of faith. But there is no reason why we should suppose that Jesus intended to withhold from us other embodiments of grace, when for example the word is baffling to us, and the preachers are arid or even disloyal. Then it is that the Church has power to reach us in our smallness. The doctrine of the real presence of Jesus is something that an intellectual will find hard to grasp and (duly) hard to explain, but a child will have no problem with it at all -- I speak this from plenty of experience.

We aren't ratiocinators housed in bodies. We are embodied spirits, spiritual bodies; and Jesus approaches us bodily, in the sacraments and in the Church. It is precisely the bodiliness of Jesus and His sacraments that rationalists of all kinds have always found repulsive -- and so the slide from sacrament to holy symbol to something-or-other we do sometimes to something-we've-outgrown parallels the slide from believing in Jesus as the Word of God made flesh to Arianism to a kind of Jesus-centered Unitarianism to the Unitarianism of our time to agnosticism and atheism. It's the inverse of what C. S. Lewis so aptly said, that if we seek heaven we will be granted earth into the bargain. I'd put it this way: if we ignore the grace of earth we will end by forgetting the grace of heaven.

Thanks, friends, for responding to my comment. First, let me say that I could have expressed myself better than I did. Some of the responses indicate that my meaning wasn’t adequately communicated, and I’ll try to point out where. Let me comment on Donald Todd’s words first.
First, you mention at the end of your comment that you weighed my argument. But I wasn’t really presenting an argument. I did say that I suggest that the sole criteria of “substance and presence” did not comprehend the fullness of the Eucharist, and I invited people like Donald Todd to make an effort to expound on their appreciation of other aspects of the Eucharist. Argument? I might be giving in to defensive pedantry by claiming that Todd misread me. If so, forgive.
Todd gave a good summary of the use of the word “lamb” in the OT scriptures anticipating Jesus, the lamb of God. Obviously, all professing Christians appreciate this. Jesus on the cross is the sacrificial lamb. The Eucharist is the memorial meal dedicated to this. There is no compelling reason to think that these references to meals and lambs cannot be other than transubstantiation as promulgated by Rome. Any adherent to consubstantiation could just as easily cull these good points from scripture in defense of his view, if he so chose.
I’m not sure if this fully appreciates all you wrote. Your testimony I leave untouched. And I still invite you to give a sign that you appreciate the full range of the meaning of the eucharist, unless you’ve already done that and I just missed it.
@ Harry. I think your best point that you made regards your quote from Ignatius. My answer to Ignatius’ use of realistic language is that the early church used realistic language in ways that we probably would not. That sounds lame, I know. The early church was very apt at using language in ways we wouldn’t. Like, for instance, consider Peter’s interpretation of prophecy in Acts. He refers to a verse in the OT that said that the kings of the earth had gathered themselves against the Lord’s anointed. He goes on to say that this was fulfilled when two middle-manager bureaucrats felt like their hands were tied in preventing a popular uprising in Palestine. That is, he says that this was fulfilled when Pilate and Herod worked together on the crucifixion. The kings of the earth? Set themselves against the Lord’s anointed? That’s one example. Another is the rather fluid use of the word “word” in Hebrews 4. In that chapter, the concept of word is all over the map. The spoken word preached. The written word. Jesus. Almost every verse brings up word, or promise, or preachment, or speech, or even the words spoken by God after speaking the creation.
Anyway, my point is that the realistic language might not be realistic in the way we most readily think of it. (Otherwise, why do Paul and the rest mention gathering to eat the “bread”? As in, “For as often as ye eat this “bread”… whosoever shall eat this “bread” unworthily…. But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that “bread”….”
Is this realistic language or symbolic? Was Paul dictating this letter with an abundance of “air quotes”? When he says bread, do the RC’s begin to explain, “Well, not REALLY bread. He meant literal flesh, see. He spoke realistically in ways that we normally don’t. So, Paul said bread, but we don’t take it realistically in our normal sense; only by appreciating the way in which realistic language was used in the pre-modern Near East can we correctly interpret that Paul’s word “bread” isn’t really bread, but flesh with the accidental qualities of bread.” Etc, etc.)
My other point is that none of Ignatius’s writing necessitates transubstantiation per se. I am asking RC’s if they see that this is so; it would really help to bridge the divide if you could indicate that, while disagreeing with everything except transubstantiation, you can sense the evangelical effort to faithfully engage in the eucharist as best as they can.
As for your quote request, harry, I’m really sorry to say that I tried to retrieve my notes on that, but I cannot find them presently. I did find this quote, though. “Just as bread from the earth, when it receives the invocation of God, is no longer common bread but the Eucharist, made up of two elements, one earthly and one heavenly, so also our bodies, in receiving the Eucharist, are no longer corruptible, for they have the hope of resurrection.” That’s from Irenaeus, I think. To my mind, he’s not endorsing transubstantiation or the RC occupation with presence and substance.
@ Savvy. I loved the conciseness of your comment. So sorry that I’m not returning in kind. First, I think I wrote poorly when mentioning the change from a sacrifice of thanksgiving to a sacrifice of atonement. Prayers, I called them, instead of sacrifices. Anyway, I think you are saying that Ignatius thought of the eucharist as a sacrifice of thanksgiving as well as a sacrifice of atonement. In my readings, I thought that the clearest statement of eucharist-as-atoning-sacrifice came when one of the liturgies says, “we offer Him to you”. The earlier ones never make that clear of a connection that the offered bread is the offered flesh of Christ.
Anyway, nothing of what you wrote confirms the necessity of the Roman Catholic view about substance and presence. So if RC doctrines about substance and presence are the summum bonum for your engagement in the eucharist, none of you have shown that your view is better than evangelicals’, because the reasons for believing what you do can also be evangelical reasons for believing what they do. So I return to my original request. Can you show evangelicals other ways that they are failing to appreciate the eucharist? Other ways besides agreeing with your notions of presence and substance? (Notice, I have no problem with you believing what you do. Many a true piety was nourished on mistaken understanding; don’t let me take piety from you. Rather, give me something that you yet have. Teach me more ways to appreciate the eucharist, if there are any. Why else should the eucharist be central?)

Hi, Dean from Ohio,

There has been terrible sin in the Catholic Church. Christ Himself hand picked 12 guys to lead His Church and one of them turned out to be Judas Iscariot. We aren't going to do any better than Jesus Himself did.

The fundamental question is not which denomination has no sin -- we would have to be suspicious of a Church that claimed sinlessness for itself because Christ said He came for sinners, and His Church will be full of them, as a hospital is full of patients. Patients sick with sin can get well in the hospital which is the Church. Sometimes some of the "doctors" and "hospital administrators" are very sick, too. We should not be surprised by that. That is why Jesus said:

"The scribes and the Pharisees have sitten on the chair of Moses. All things therefore whatsoever they shall say to you, observe and do: but according to their works do ye not."

Until the Chair of Peter was established, the people were to acknowledge the authority of those in the Chair of Moses. Their authority was not a matter of their being virtuous. Christ made perfectly clear they were anything but virtuous.

If Christ would condemn those in authority in the Catholic Church as harshly as Christ condemned those in the Chair of Moses, He would still tell us "All things therefore whatsoever they shall say to you, observe and do." In the history of the Church there have been Popes, I think, that Christ would have condemned. Luckily for us, I think, modern Popes have been very good and saintly men. All of the Popes throughout history, both good and bad, had the protection of the Holy Spirit in terms of the official teaching of the Church.

As for the protection of the Holy Spirit the Popes have, and the goodness of the modern Popes, consider that before 1929 all denominations were opposed to contraception. Now only one is. Did the Holy Spirit change His mind about contraception? Or did men change their minds? For a decade after Roe the abortion issue was derided as a "Catholic issue." That criticism was to the credit of the Catholic Church. The Didache, or "the teaching," from the 1st century, was probably the first Catholic "Catechism." It condemned abortion. The Popes have been teaching that taking the life of the child in the womb was wrong for 2000 years. The Holy Spirit preserved that teaching in the Church and the Catholics knew immediately that Roe was a disaster.

The question is whether God has established a new authority that replaced the Chair of Peter. If He did it turned out to be thousands of authorities opposed not only to the Chair of Peter but to each other. Or maybe He didn't establish a new authority, but the sins of those in authority in the Catholic Church at the time legitimately upset many people. I will give you that. Still, to dismember the Body of Christ was not the answer. The answer was to work with the Holy Spirit in the renewal of the Church, which has been an ongoing project for 2000 years and will continue to be till Jesus returns.

I started on this line of thought in a previous post.

Catholics believe the Mass makes past realities present. For our Heavenly Father, past, present and future are all equally present to Him, so His beloved Son is always before Him in agony on the cross.

The Mass is praying as Jesus taught us to pray. It is praying the “Our Father” in a very deep way. We join our Father Who is in Heaven beholding His Son in agony. We hallow His name, and we contemplate the sacrifice of His Son that made it possible for His kingdom to come. We ask the Father as Jesus says, “Father, not my will but Thine be done,” that His will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven. Jesus is giving everything - His very life - for us. He is giving us this day our daily bread. Right now before us, His very life under the appearances of bread and wine are being given to us – daily bread if we will but attend Mass each day. He had said, “I am the living bread which came down from heaven.” We will forgive others as Jesus does now in our presence. He forgives us and implores the Father to do so as “they know not what they do.” We are in the presence of the astounding, so very humble – scandalously humble really – act of love for us on the part of the almighty Triune God. We contemplate the Heart of our Father as He looks upon His Son. We contemplate the Heart of His Son whose very life is being poured out before us and out of love for us. We contemplate the Holy Spirit Who is anxious and ready to burst forth the instant our hearts are finally softened by these mysteries, to fill them with the Divine Love, leading us from temptation and delivering us from evil.

So, when we are at Mass, we do as Jesus asked us: “Do this in memory of me.” We remember all that is in the accounts of the Last Supper, the passion and the resurrection of Christ are happening before us. As we consider Him in His agony in the garden, so excruciating and pitiful it draws an angel of God down from heaven to console Him, we can whisper something to that angel to tell that poor, suffering man – and a poor man He was, as human as any of us in all things but sin. We can tell that angel something like, “Tell Jesus that [insert your own name here] from twenty centuries in the future is here with Him. Tell Him I love Him and thank Him with all my heart. Tell Him I am going to tell the whole world about His heroic love.”

And then as the crowd jeers and mocks Him as He is hanging on the cross, we get down on our knees and take our place under it beside His heartbroken, silent mother – another one whose excruciating and pitiful suffering ought to draw an angel down from heaven. As was foretold by Simeon, her heart and soul a sword of sorrow has pierced, in a way as real as the way a lance will soon pierce her Son. If an angel was sent to console her, too, the Scriptures do not tell us about that. If an angel was sent to her, we can then join that angel, if not, we can console her ourselves as we take our place beside her. Our presence will console her. And we should console our mother. That is who she is according to the Scriptures:

“So the dragon was enraged with the woman, and went off to make war with the rest of her children, who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus.”

We are her children, we who keep the command of God – “Do this in memory of me” – and hold to the testimony of Jesus.

Even though the crowd continues to jeer and mock the One Who loves them like no other ever has or ever will, we can be a part of the unseen crowd that is no less present that consists of countless billions of people throughout the ages who, through reverent attendance at Mass, are there, too, praising and thanking Him, believing in His promise that “He who eats my flesh, and drinks my blood, has everlasting life: and I will raise him up in the last day.”

And then there is the glorious resurrection. We are there for that, too. It seems to me Mass ought to end with the Hallelujah Chorus of Handel's Messiah followed by our giving the worthy King of Kings a standing ovation. I often imagine Mass being said at a huge stadium filled with people who understand exactly what is being made present to them. I imagine all of them thoughtfully considering those things something like I have described, or in their own, much better way. I imagine it ending with the Hallelujah Chorus and a standing ovation given to the worthy King of Kings consisting of cheering and thunderous applause like that never before heard on planet Earth – an ovation of exuberant praise and thanksgiving that is heard in the heights of heaven and the depths of hell. One that makes the dragon tremble who was so proud and bold as to be enraged at our mother.

“And there was war in heaven, Michael and his angels waging war with the dragon. The dragon and his angels waged war, and they were not strong enough, and there was no longer a place found for them in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down, the serpent of old who is called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was thrown down to the earth ...”

I imagine Michael, upon hearing that ovation, saying to himself, “At last there is an army ready to wage war on the dragon on Earth!” Michael and the hosts of heaven will join us in making war on the dragon here on Earth as soon we resolve to do that. We would be better at doing so if the Body of Christ were not dismembered as it is currently.

I don't think the ever so humble Jesus is expecting such an ovation from a packed stadium, but we should give people what they deserve when they are too good and humble to even expect it. And all of that still wouldn't be giving Him what He deserves from us. I think after a Mass like that the Holy Spirit would rush into our softened hearts as He is always so anxious to do and multitudes would leave that stadium resolved to convert the world or die trying to do so. The Early Church was able to do just that because they understood Who and what was made present at “the breaking of the bread.”

"... then those, indeed, who did gladly receive his word were baptized, and there were added on that day, as it were, three thousand souls, and they were continuing steadfastly in the teaching of the apostles, and the fellowship, and the breaking of the bread."

Peter, I recently read your closing essay in Blessed Are The Hungry - very helpful essay in this regard. The lens. Thanks for your consistent edifying work in the ministry.

harry,

Thanks for your thoughtful reply. I agree with much, maybe even most, of what you wrote. Thanks for your acknowledgement of the shortcomings of the Catholic church instead of a knee-jerk reaction otherwise. Your use of scripture is commendable also. Certainly no denomination or group has cornered the market on holiness, and sin is found in every part. Protestants have their sins to repent of too, and there is more than enough sin to go around. My comments were directed at the one-sided statements against evangelicals by Peter Leithart.

If Jesus had spoken about the Chair of Peter, I would agree with pretty much everything you wrote. But he didn't. He instead gave this distinctive to the Holy Spirit, who indwells every believer and is the one who will guide us into all truth. According to scripture, we are to obey our leaders in the local church and submit to them, not because they hold a chair or because they're infallible, but because they, under God, keep watch over our souls, and God will work through them. It's my view that the concept of the global Chair of Peter is one of the extra-biblical traditions that has been elevated to equal or surpass scripture, to the hurt of the Catholic church and Christendom. Scriptures supporting Peter as distinct from the other apostles exist, but they don't add up to the Chair of Peter. Similarly, I can't accept that God has kept official/infallible Catholic teaching from error, especially where it crosses scripture as in the doctrines of Mary. We don't need to rehash that here, since we've done that before in this blog.

That the Catholic church was consistent across the years on contraception is commendable. Humanae Vitae seems to have been remarkably prescient and wise. But consistency across time doesn't itself prove veracity or infallibility. Wasn't it only in the 1800s that some of the doctrines of Mary were elevated to the level of infallibility? Wouldn't the argument of consistency work against that one? I'm sure the Catholic church has an answer for that, but not one that I would be likely to accept.

Scripture commands us to repent of our own sin that we know of, and to bring faults of our brothers and sisters to their attention in the love and mercy of Christ. This is what I am trying to do, albeit imperfectly, and I believe you are too. For that I sincerely thank you. You've given me more to think about also. May God bless you and Peter Leithart.

Dean, how can we not worship the Eucharist when It is Jesus Christ Himself? And how can you criticize us for not believing in sola scriptura when you don't either? No Protestant does. If they did, they'd have to confess that not only is Baptism essential for salvation and that the Eucharist is indeed the Flesh and Blood of Christ (which some Protestants do believe), but also that the Church has authority to forgive sins, that the Anointing of the Sick has real spiritual value and that only a bishop has authority to ordain bishops, presbyters and deacons. No Protestant believes all five of these doctrines, but all of them are taught by Scripture. Why do you nullify the Gospel for the sake of your tradition?

Hi, Dean from Ohio,

I thank you also for your thoughtful remarks. They were indeed thoughtful and seemed to be a good summary of the Evangelical position. Although I have much to say about each point you made, I will refrain from doing so and simply offer the following thoughts instead in reply to your remarks.

A "fringe benefit," so to speak, of my having been involved in the Pro-Life movement over the years has been coming to know many saintly Evangelicals, and, I think, their coming to know that, as one of them confessed to me he had learned through working with Catholics in the Pro-Life movement, "Catholics are Christians, too." ;o)

The discovery of the Spirit of Christ in each other is the work of the Holy Spirit. That discovery for me has been one of the most beautiful experiences of my life. Yet at the same time it fills me with a desire to see the Body of Christ made whole once again. That desire in us, I think, is the work of the Holy Spirit, too. He is calling us to ever deeper unity. We know that is what Jesus wants because He explicitly and ardently prayed for that. And He set a very high standard for us. We are to be one even as He and the Father are One.

Often I think to myself, upon getting to know a devout Evangelical, "The Catholic Church needs you! Come home! We need your zeal! We need your devotion to the Scriptures! I want my brother beside me and together we will let the sacred mysteries made present to us at Mass sink into us and deepen our love for Jesus! We will consume them – and His very life!"

As for the the Evangelical devotion to the Scriptures that I would like to "come home" to the Catholic Church: what I am referring to in particular is your belief in the historicity of the Scriptures where many modern Scripture scholars -- Protestant and Catholic alike -- deny it for segments of the Scriptures the historicity of which the Church Fathers unanimously accepted. That unanimity of the Fathers was Christ's promised work of the Holy Spirit to lead the Church to the truth. Check out the work of Evangelical scholar K.A. Kitchen, in particular his "On the Reliability of the Old Testament." It is a fabulous work that exposes the silliness of much of modern Scripture scholarship. I should point out here that none of that silliness is to be found in the official teaching of the Church -- there is nothing in the Catholic Catechism that supports it, and there are the dogmatic statements of Church Councils and Papal Encyclicals and other Papal documents that refute it. Yet this silliness is taught in many Catholic (and Protestant) institutions of formation of clergy.

We really do need everybody in One Body. Many of the problems modern Christianity currently has would never have happened had we remained One Body. Please come home, Evangelicals! Not only the Catholic Church, but Christianity in general would greatly benefit by your doing so. I would love to see Catholic-Evangelicals confronting Christianity with the fact that the unanimity of the Fathers on the Scriptures was the promised work of the Holy Spirit – and informing Catholics (who should be Catholic-Evangelicals ;o) in particular that the Catholic Church dogmatically teaches “that it is permitted to no one to interpret Holy Scripture … against the unanimous agreement of the Fathers.” (see the writings of St. Vincent of Lerins – a 5th century Catholic monk, the dogmatic statements of the Council of Trent, Vatican I, and Leo XIII's encyclical Providentissimus Deus)

Where I said:

Many of the problems modern Christianity currently has would never have happened had we remained One Body.

I should have said, since it conveys more precisely what I meant:

Many of the problems modern Christianity currently has with Scripture scholarship wouldn't exist had we remained One Body.

harry,

Thanks again for your thoughtful and kind remarks. I would love to be one in a single body with all my brothers and sisters in Christ. May my prayers focus more on this!

myth buster,

I think your understanding of Protestant approaches to scriptural interpretation needs a little tune up; maybe a little removal of straw from the engine compartment.

There are many parts of scripture about which I have a less than complete understanding, but the literal blood and body of Christ is not one of them. Granted, I could be wrong, but the use of "hoc est corpus meum," as Luther famously said again and again while banging his fist on the table, does not by itself end all debate on the nature of the bread and wine. Jesus also said, "I am the door" and "I am the gate" for the sheep. When I see Jesus, I won't be looking for hinges on his right or left side. Anyway, I'm told that the "gate" for the sheep in a field enclosure may have been the shepherd lying down in the only opening. If anyone is going to tell Jesus he can't use metaphors, it won't be me.

For baptism being essential for salvation, I assert that there's not a drop of water in Romans 6. This isn't because I don't believe in sola scriptura, but because other verses make it plain that is not the case.

Of course anointing of the sick has real spiritual value. I once had a serious and apparently degenerative and irreversible medical condition. In simple faith, I went for anointing and prayer from my pastor. As the oil was put onto my forehead, I felt a warm feeling flooding the broken part of my body, and that day was the turning point in my healing. The whole episode--6 months of handicapped placards already past and another year of rehabilitation--worked more patience in me than any other single event in my life, and I thank God for it as well as the healing.

As far as bishops appointing other church servants, I will grant that the primary pattern in Acts was for Paul or one of the apostles to appoint these. But there are exceptions, such as Paul telling Titus to appoint elders in the churches of Crete, and telling Timothy what qualities to require in elders and deacons. Neither Paul nor Timothy were apostles, and I don't believe there is a single reference to either of them as a bishop (episcopos). Yes, they were tasked by Paul. But what about the Ethiopian eunuch? Phillip was an apostle, but there's no scriptural evidence that he went to Ethiopia to appoint these servants, and yet the church survives to this day. Also, not all of Acts is normative. The four incidents of baptism of the Holy Spirit seem to have been a welding together of different parts of the church into a single body by an undeniable work of God: first Jews (ch 2), then Samaritans (ch 6 if memory serves), then Gentiles (ch 10) and finally OT holdovers such as the disciples of John (ch 19). Indeed, Paul told the Corinthians they had all--even the most immature and carnal ones of them--been baptized by one spirit into one body. Apparently, this was without a separate visible event such as described in Acts 10. So we need to see what the other parts of scripture have to say about appointing of church servants before we declare all of Acts to be normative for us.

Sola scriptura does not mean tabula scriptura, where everything is open and flat instantly plain. Rather, it is leo scripturae, where, as Spurgeon said, the gospel is like a lion; turn it loose and it will defend itself. And without the Holy Spirit to guide and illumine us, we would understand nothing while flattering ourselves.

I grant you that someone who knows me and my beliefs will surely be able to ferret out inconsistencies, weaknesses, unbelief and only God knows how many other shortcomings in my approach to scripture; there are more than enough to go around. But they are not those you mentioned.

As the individual believer must submit to his pastor, so too must each pastor submit to his bishop, and in turn each bishop to the Magisterium. Protestants have forgotten entirely the office of bishop, and their pastors are more like deacons than presbyters (deacon means "minister"). It is not for the congregation to appoint a pastor, but rather for the bishop.

One of the blessings of the eucharist is that it provides opportunity to speak of one's faith. This is but one of the ways that the eucharist is a hub in the life of the faithful, and evangelicals will be blessed as they each speak their faith at the Lord's table.
The Catholics do this with recitation of a creed, but that is only one way to do it. Evangelicals might prefer a personal testimony of faith in believer's own words. Regardless of how the testimony is given, the fact that it is given does a number of things. It identifies you and it identifies the point at which the community is united (faith in Jesus Christ). Testimony also edifies others.

In Revelation, at one point it is said that the saints overcame the devil "by the word of their testimony and by the blood of the lamb". Speech invokes spiritual power- more so than just an interior faith that is never spoken.

Sometimes evangelicals might not be doing this at communion time. Sometimes communion might be presented as something between "you and the Lord", and no opportunity is given for testimony of faith, either communally or individually. Since the eucharist is a time of re-binding oneself to the covenant, to Jesus, to discipleship, it makes sense to ask for testimony. Without it, communion would be like raising a toast without saying what the toast is. It would be like a honeymoon without marriage vows.

So that's something that is core to participation in the eucharist, something that Catholics have been doing at mass, something that evangelicals can rightly enjoy to their benefit. If you find it difficult to speak your faith throughout the rest of the day, at work, with friends, whatever, one easy way to succeed in speaking in these situations is to restate what you said at the eucharist- assuming you said something. Try it. You will like it.

I would like to comment briefly, as I am one of those evangelicals who has moved to Constantinople, and until recently Peter was my pastor. Peter, by the way, is an amazing man, and the must humble of theologians I have known. I respect him a great deal. So, my disagreement shouldn't be taken as a personal criticism.

----

Jesus said, "by their fruits you shall know them."

Our fruit consists of our whole lives. Whole communities have fruit, whole Churches have fruit, whole traditions have fruit.

What is the reformed fruit, what is the Roman Catholic fruit?

Paul, in addressing the Church in Corinth, related their sinful actions in the Eucharist to their heretical, schismatic hearts.

By their fruits you shall know them.

In Paul's first letter to the Church in Corinth he corrected their practice of the Lord's Supper, and linked their inappropriate practice with disunity, heresy, and schism. (1 Cor 11:17-24)

Paul argued, as would the Church Fathers, that the Table reveals heresy, and schism, and approves those who are in the right. (v 19-20)

The Lord's Table reveals the true state of the heart, and by their fruits you shall know them.

As a result, the Lord's Table, because it is the sacrament of union, reveals divisions. In a sense, the Eucharist is Jesus' sword separating those who don't love Christ, who don't take up their crosses, those who mistreat their children, and who don't receive the prophets, from those who do. (Matt 10:34-42) This is so, because the Eucharist is Jesus' body and blood. This is so because Jesus' body and blood are for the holy.

Those who have no true taste for it will not eat of it. Those who have no true taste for it don't understand that it is the sacrament of unity, and consequently that every validly baptized member of the Church, who is not under discipline, is to eat of it. Those who don't have a true taste for it allow others to "go hungry” at the table while they are full. Those who don't have a true taste for it don't "discern the body (of Christ),” by understanding that the body of Christ (The Church) is made one in the meal. Those who don't have a true taste for it excommunicate duly baptized infants, and children, who have a rightful place at the table. Those who don't have a true taste for Christ's body and blood drink grape juice. Those who don't have at true taste for Christ's body and blood would rather drink mere wine and bread. Those who don't have a true taste for Christ's body and blood embrace late medieval, and modern, interpretations of the supper. Those who don't have a true taste for it treat it as "mere symbol" rather than "real symbol". And so on...

Those who don't have a true taste for it reveal themselves to be schismatics, and heretics, in the their perversions of the supper. Just as Paul pointed to the perversions of the Corinthians and coupled it with heresy, and schism.


By their fruits you shall know them.


For the same reason St. Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, and friend of the Apostles, warned the Churches of heresy by pointing to the Eucharist as a revealer of heresy. In the following quote Ignatius is referring the to heresy, and divisiveness, of the Docetists.


“They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they confess not the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins, and which the Father, of His goodness, raised up again. Those, therefore, who speak against this gift of God, incur death in the midst of their disputes. But it were better for them to treat it with respect, that they also might rise again. It is fitting, therefore, that you should keep aloof from such persons, and not to speak of them either in private or in public, but to give heed to the prophets, and above all, to the Gospel, in which the passion [of Christ] has been revealed to us, and the resurrection has been fully proved. But avoid all divisions, as the beginning of evils”. (Ignatius to the Church at Smyrna, 7 written in a.d. 110 shortly before Ignatius’ martyrdom.)


By their fruits you shall know them.


Following the Great Schism we find a handful of novelties regarding the Lord's Supper, in the western church, that can be traced back to the schismatic, and heretical, behavior of the West - just as all perversions of the table are a sign of heterodoxy, and division.


1) The abandonment of this historical and valid practice of paedo-communion - also called infant communion.2) The development of the doctrine of transubstantiation. 3) The practice of private Eucharists.4) The denial of the real presence of Christ's body and blood in the Eucharist.5) The failure to practice the Eucharist every Sunday in favor of monthly, quarterly, and annual celebrations.6) The rejection of the Eucharist as a valid sacrament for the dispensation of Grace.


In reality, this is a small sampling of errors, but I said this was going to be brief.


These errors are outright perversions of the Eucharist, and perversion of the Eucharist are signs of divisiveness, and heresy. And they lead to further divisiveness and heresy. They remind me of homo-sexuality in that they are heresies that are the result of heresies, and divisiveness, in the heart, in the same way that homo-sexuality is a consequence of unrepentant sin.

God had given them over to credo-communion, transubstantiation, private Eucharists, memorialism, and abstinence! (Lord have mercy)


By their fruits you shall know them.


What I'm about to say can be considered offensive. Please understand that I don't mean it to be offensive. We're all grown-ups here, and every knows that if I'm orthodox that means I believe that Roman Catholics and Protestants believe errors. So, then, as I was saying, these errors, and their underlying heresies, and divisiveness, are still enjoyed by Roman Catholics, and Protestants today. And they are a constant reminder that they do not have the fullness of the Truth, or constitute the catholic Church. They are constant proof that these Churches do not have a true taste for the Body and Blood of Christ, and thus no share in it.

Credo-communion - the rejection of baptized infants, and children, from the Lord’s table - is the most outrageous of these heresies, and reveals a deeply divisive Spirit. It is exactly the sort of perversion that Paul mentions in 1 Cor 11. Paul’s entire argument is that it is a complete abandonment of the Lord’s Table to let some go hungry while others are fed. The entire Church practiced paedo-communion up until nearly the turn of the first millennium. The Roman church outlawed the practice following the great schism. However, many of the churches in the west were already practicing credo-communion by that time - proving themselves to be divisive, and heretical. In fact, I believe the Great Schism would not have happened had the western churches not gone so far as to stop feeding their own children!

I believe that God gave the western churches over to the passions of their divisive hearts. They began excommunicating their children, effectively starving them by cutting them off from the life giving meal. Then they cut themselves off from the rest of the Church - the Holy Orthodox Catholic Church. All sorts of evils, and heresies followed. Then the western churches turned on themselves in a civil war producing all sorts of spiritual and physical violence. The reformers accelerated their march towards the abandonment of the Eucharist. Calvinist churches often celebrated the Eucharist sparingly rather than weekly. They denied the real presence and introduce other novelties. They set aside the centrality of the Eucharist - even while paying lip-service to it. They lessened the efficacy of the Eucharist. As time went on the Protestants splintered into thousands of divisions - each one, it seems, less Eucharistic than the last. The further these groups have strayed from the valid Eucharist the more division, and heresy, has resulted. Today there are some Dispensationalists who actually believe that the Lord’s Supper is not for the Church, but is for Israel alone! They don't even practice communion.


By their fruits you shall know them.


After all of this I can no longer believe that the gospel of the reformation is gospel of God’s grace. How could it be? God’s grace does not excommunicate Children. God’s grace does not refuse to practice the Lord’s Supper. God’s grace does not seek to understand how the bread and wine are the Body and Blood, but rather seeks to understand that the Body is one - because while His Eucharist is divided, it is never disunited. Grace does not disbelieve the word of the Lord declaring, “My body is true meat.” The Grace of God unites children in the covenant. The Grace of God visits us every Lord’s Day. The Grace of God rejoices in the mystical, ever unified, Body of Christ. The Grace of God has a true taste for the true Body and Blood.


By their fruits you shall know them.


For two thousand years the Holy Orthodox Catholic Church has revealed heretics, and schismatics, at Her meal. She has accomplished this by refusing to stray from the Apostolic tradition of the Life Giving, and All-Holy, Spirit. She has accomplished this through her suffering on behalf of all and for all. She has accomplished this by loving Her children, and feeing them. She has accomplished this through the purity of Her gospel. She has accomplished this because her meal is a true eating of the glorified Christ, and has divinizing power. She has accomplished this because She is the image of the invisible God, The Mystical Body of Christ, the Glory of the Only Begotten of the Father.


By Her fruits you shall know Her.


She is where the banquet is happening, and it is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.


Glory to God for all things.

Hello, Adam S. N.,

I am as staunchly Roman Catholic as you are an adherent of your faith, yet I see and acknowledge the goodness of those in other Christian denominations. The Spirit of Christ will be found wherever there are those who sincerely love Him, even if they do not possess the fullness of the faith from the Roman Catholic perspective. It is only right to acknowledge and revere the Spirit of Christ wherever we find Him. Charity and Truth demand that one does so.

Harry,

The Spirit moves wherever He choses. However, I don't know where he moves except that he moves within the Orthodox Church in a particular way.

With regard to Roman Catholicism, and Protestantism, I'm willing to judge the traditions themselves, in a general way, and not individuals. My above statement should be taken as a theological critique, written in a very rhetorical form, of Roman Catholicism,and Protestantism.

As a result I make no judgments about individuals except that I will applaud virtue wherever I find it.

I don't remember if I mentioned that Peter Leithart is a proponent of paedo-communion. In a sense, some of critique doesn't apply to the Communion of Reformed & Evangelical Churches (CREC) with which Peter has been involved for a number of years, and to which I belonged until recently. However, the Communion still holds explicitly to the Reformed doctrines enshrined in the Three Forms of Unity - with minor exceptions taken here, and there. As a result the CREC stands in the middle of the stream of the Reformed tradition. The Reformed tradition continued to build on the Eucharistic errors of the Roman Catholics with regard to divisiveness, disunity, discommunion, and heresy which are made evident in credo-communion, transubstantiation, private Eucharists, memorialism, exchanging wine for grape-juice, and ending in complete abstinence.


"For first of all, when you come together in the assembly, I hear that divisions exist among you, and I partly believe it. For there also must be heresies among you, that those who are approved may be revealed among you. When therefore you assemble yourselves together, it is not the Lord’s supper that you eat. For in your eating each one takes his own supper first. One is hungry, and another is drunken [...] Therefore, my brothers, when you come together to eat, wait for one another. But if anyone is hungry, let him eat at home, lest your coming together be for judgment." -- St. Paul, 1 Cor 11.


"Come together in common, one and all without exception in charity, in one faith and in one Jesus Christ, who is of the race of David according to the flesh, the son of man, and the Son of God, so that with undivided mind you may obey the bishop and the priests, and break one Bread which is the medicine of immortality and the antidote against death, enabling us to live forever in Jesus Christ." ST. IGNATIUS OF ANTIOCH "Letter to the Ephesians", paragraph 20, c. 80-110 A.D.

According to St. Augustin those who don't practice paedo-communion are not of "sound" faith.

“Those who say that infancy has nothing in it for Jesus to save, are denying that Christ is Jesus for all believing infants. Those, I repeat, who say that infancy has nothing in it for Jesus to save, are saying nothing else than that for believing infants, infants that is who have been baptized in Christ, Christ the Lord is not Jesus. After all, what is Jesus? Jesus means Savior. Jesus is the Savior. Those whom he doesn’t save, having nothing to save in them, well for them he isn’t Jesus. Well now, if you can tolerate the idea that Christ is not Jesus for some persons who have been baptized, then I’m not sure your faith can be recognized as according with the sound rule. Yes, they’re infants, but they are his members. They’re infants, but they receive his sacraments. They are infants, but they share in his table, in order to have life in themselves.” Augustine, Sermon 174, 7

"It is possible, then, for everyone in every church, who may wish to know the truth, to contemplate the tradition of the apostles which has been made known to us throughout the whole world. And we are in a position to enumerate those who were instituted bishops by the apostles and their successors down to our own times, men who neither knew nor taught anything like what these heretics rave about" Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3:3:1 [A.D. 189]).

Harry,

I realize that my comment sounds as though it is speaking of individuals, but it is not. I was referring to the 'heart' of the corporate bodies of Roman Catholics, and Protestants.

This is why I started by saying: "Whole communities have fruit, whole Churches have fruit, whole traditions have fruit."

In examining the fruit, both theologically, and historically, I fell in love with Orthodoxy. It wasn't easy. When I started studying theology seriously (at 14) I was entirely opposed to Orthodoxy, and any other high-church traditions, because of my up-bringing. My father converted from Roman Catholicism to protestantism, and I was raised low-church reformed baptist. So, in that sense, I had a lot to overcome.

I don't believe for a minute that the Spirit is not at work outside of the Orthodox Church, but identifying that movement is way above my pay grade. I know where the Church is, and where Her Eucharist is.

I was under the impression that the western Church had begun to practice credo-communion in the 9th, and 10th, century. However, according to Fr. Robert Taft, S.J. of the Pontifical Oriental Institute paedo-communion didn't fall out of favor in the west until the 12th century.

Here's the best part of his quote:

"So the plain facts of history show that for 1200 years the universal practice of the entire Church of East and West was to communicate infants. Hence, to advance doctrinal arguments against infant Communion is to assert that the sacramental teaching and practice of the Roman Church was in error for 1200 years."

Here's the rest:

“The practice [of communing infants] began to be called into question in the 12th century not because of any argument about the need to have attained the “age of reason” (aetus discretionis) to communicate. Rather, the fear of profanation of the Host if the child could not swallow it led to giving the Precious Blood only. And then the forbidding of the chalice to the laity in the West led automatically to the disappearance of infant Communion, too. This was not the result of any pastoral or theological reasoning. When the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) ordered yearly confession and Communion for those who have reached the “age of reason” (annos discretionis), it was not affirming this age as a requirement for reception of the Eucharist.

“Nevertheless, the notion eventually took hold that Communion could not be received until the age of reason, even though infant Communion in the Latin rite continued in some parts of the West until the 16th century. Though the Fathers of Trent (Session XXI,4) denied the necessity of infant Communion, they refused to agree with those who said it was useless and inefficacious — realizing undoubtedly that the exact same arguments used against infant Communion could also be used against infant baptism, because for over ten centuries in the West, the same theology was used to justify both! For the Byzantine rite, on December 23, 1534, Paul III explicitly confirmed the Italo-Albanian custom of administering Communion to infants….So the plain facts of history show that for 1200 years the universal practice of the entire Church of East and West was to communicate infants. Hence, to advance doctrinal arguments against infant Communion is to assert that the sacramental teaching and practice of the Roman Church was in error for 1200 years. Infant Communion was not only permitted in the Roman Church, at one time the supreme magisterium taught that it was necessary for salvation. In the Latin Church the practice was not suppressed by any doctrinal or pastoral decision, but simply died out. Only later, in the 13th century, was the ‘age of reason’ theory advanced to support the innovation of baptizing infants without also giving them Communion. So the “age of reason” requirement for Communion is a medieval Western pastoral innovation, not a doctrinal argument. And the true ancient tradition of the whole Catholic Church is to give Communion to infants. Present Latin usage is a medieval innovation.”

Hello, Adam S. N.,

Do you believe Christians outside your tradition, who love Jesus, possess the Spirit of Christ?

Thanks

Adam S. N.,

(Sigh)

Have you ever actually been to Constantinople? I mean, to the old parts of modern-day Istanbul? Tell me, how much influence does the Orthodox church have there now? In Taksim? On Istiklal street? In Eminonu? In Sirkeci?

Here's my point. You seem to paint with a pretty broad brush "by your fruits you shall know them." If the Orthodox church has had the only true, or most true, set of doctrines, then why did Christianity fail in Asia Minor? Why is that part of the world less than 1 or 2% Christian now? What fruits allowed their downfall?

At the rate we're going, I don't expect one stone in Washington DC to be left upon another in a hundred years, so I'm not lifting up American expressions of Christianity as a cure-all. But you're skipping over some huge contradictions with the eastern church in making such claims, and some circumspection is in order.

Harry,

That sort of question is so far above my pay grade as to be nearly entirely incomprehensible to me.

I'm sorry, I can't answer that question.

Dean,

Please don't take offense to my comment. As I said before it was steeped heavily in hyperbolic rhetoric.

The "fruit" I was speaking of was very specific fruit. And, in my view, it is the one of the most important fruits. It ranks right up there with holiness of life, and ascetic behavior. As you cant tell, I have a high view of the Eucharist. You can thank Peter Leithart, in part, for that. Peter helped me develop a higher view of the Eucharist.

I believe the Eucharist is Christ. Thus, I believe any perversion of it is a perversion of Christ. How do I define a perversion? Well, according to Paul's teaching in 1 Cor 11. EVERYONE who is a baptized member, in good standing, is to receive the Eucharist. To withhold the Eucharist is a perversion. If someone withdraws willingly because of sin, that is a different matter. If someone is excommunicated for sin that is a different matter. But to withold the life giving body of Christ from children is abhorrent.

A schismatic heart on an ecclesiastical level reveals itself in disunity with regard to the Eucharist. The docetists broke communion. The Roman Catholics broke communion, and then broke communion with their own children! And so on. This is the pattern of the Table. It has always been the pattern. It reveals disunity, schism, and heresy, just as Paul said. I'm not arguing that all heretics will abandon their children, I'm demonstrating the Eucharistic fruit of the greatest examples of schism, and heresy. No offense, but there you go. What else would you expect me to say?

As I said in my post, the Orthodox Church has given Herself for the life of the world. In the same fashion that Christ brought life through death, so the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church. The Church has suffered more persecution than any other group of people in world history. Ninety-thousand priests were martyred within the first 30 years of Communist Russia. Forty, or fifty million - how many, we don't know - Orthodox christians were murdered under that regime. Islam has murdered and tortured untold numbers of Christians through out the lands they've come to conquer. Yet through all of the dozens of tens of millions of Orthodox who have spilt their blood the Orthodox Church is still the second largest body claiming the name Christian. Had those men and women not shed their blood in Russia the number of Orthodox would far outweigh the number of Roman Catholics. Not that it is a numbers game as you seem to have indicated.

None of this causes me to question Orthodoxy! Christ promised, "the world will hate you". That doesn't mean that Christians will always suffer, but that unbelievers will hate the Church. The Church did nothing to deserve such persecution. It changed nothing! History has demonstrated, and scholars of all traditions have agreed that Orthodoxy has not not added to, nor taken away from, the liturgical, and sacramental practices of the earliest Churches. I once heard Douglas Wilson blame the fall of constantinople on iconography. Now, let me be clear, I'm sure Doug would qualify his statement, and I know Doug personally, He's a great guy! I love him. But, give me a break. The earliest house Churches uncovered by archeologists have icons in them! The catacombs have icons drawn on the walls where the Christians worshipped. We know that the early Christians collected the bones of the saints in order to "have fellowship with them" (See the martyrdoms of Polycarp, and Ignatius, for early examples), and that they buried those bones in the very caskets they used as alters for the Eucharist! We're talking early 2nd century Christianity here. On the other hand there's not a single quote from any father objecting to paedo-communion.

The Orthodox Church, like Jesus, was not persecuted because it didn't bear any fruit. It was persecuted because it was overflowing with fruitfulness.

The fruit I'm concerned with is the Eucharist, orthodoxy, liturgy, culture, holiness, and asceticism. I'm not interest in political power.

I should also note that "Christian American" is a bit of a myth. America was built as much on enlightenment philosophy as it was Christian virtues. I'm not denying the good influence of the reformation, I'm just pointing out that, philosophically speaking, America was far more an example of government by modern philosophy, and syncretistic theology. You may disagree, but there's nothing I can do about that! :-)

Hi, Adam S.N.

I asked you: "Do you believe Christians outside your tradition, who love Jesus, possess the Spirit of Christ?"

You answered: "That sort of question is so far above my pay grade as to be nearly entirely incomprehensible to me. I'm sorry, I can't answer that question."

Then how can you be certain that the Spirit of Christ is present in your own Church? I am certain that He is there in those who love Him. If knowledge of such things is impossible, how should we interpret Scripture passages such as:

"Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world." ( 1 John 4:1)

The world sees passages such as that as silliness. Believers don't. I don't think you see them as silliness, so I have to wonder why my question was incomprehensible to you.

I asked it because you made many interesting assertions in your posts that I might actually take the time to look into if the testing of spirits makes it seem worthwhile to do so.

Harry,

I know that the Spirit of Christ is present in The Church because His presence was promised by Christ, and He has always been present in The Church. Since His coming at Pentecost the Life-Giving Spirit has been present in the The Church. I have very little idea, specifically, how the Spirit of God is at work outside of The Church.

With regard to 1 John 4:1, The Church has always tested the spirits, and rejected false prophets. Testing the spirits is not something that can be done alone. John's command was given to the Church body. The Church must test the spirits.

I know many people who love Jesus. I make no judgment as to the Holy Spirit's work in any of their lives, because they are outside of The Church.

I'm not the kind of person to go waving around 1 John 4:2 as an excuse to make judgments about people. John was giving directions to his spiritual children as to the consideration of certain false prophets; specific falsehoods were in mind, and the Church was to come to conclusions about these false men as a body. I do not take John to mean that everyone who says that Jesus Christ had a fleshly body is of the Spirit of Christ. Many atheists believe Jesus Christ as a real person, in the flesh.

Matthew 7:22 comes to mind.

"Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?"

I don't believe that the men Christ has in mind are liars. I believe they really did do these miraculous things in His name. But they did not do the will of the father, and they did not bear good fruit.

I'm not trying to be mean, nor am I suggesting that only those who are full members of the The [Orthodox] Church are being made holy, or will be recognized by Christ on the day of judgment. Like I said, I'm a not in a position to be making any such judgments.

Hello, Adam S. N.,

Does the Orthodox Church have beliefs like these as expressed in the Catechism of the Catholic Church?

817 In fact, "in this one and only Church of God from its very beginnings there arose certain rifts, which the Apostle strongly censures as damnable. But in subsequent centuries much more serious dissensions appeared and large communities became separated from full communion with the Catholic Church - for which, often enough, men of both sides were to blame." The ruptures that wound the unity of Christ's Body - here we must distinguish heresy, apostasy, and schism - do not occur without human sin:

Where there are sins, there are also divisions, schisms, heresies, and disputes. Where there is virtue, however, there also are harmony and unity, from which arise the one heart and one soul of all believers.

818 "However, one cannot charge with the sin of the separation those who at present are born into these communities [that resulted from such separation] and in them are brought up in the faith of Christ, and the Catholic Church accepts them with respect and affection as brothers . . . . All who have been justified by faith in Baptism are incorporated into Christ; they therefore have a right to be called Christians, and with good reason are accepted as brothers in the Lord by the children of the Catholic Church."

819 "Furthermore, many elements of sanctification and of truth" are found outside the visible confines of the Catholic Church: "the written Word of God; the life of grace; faith, hope, and charity, with the other interior gifts of the Holy Spirit, as well as visible elements." Christ's Spirit uses these Churches and ecclesial communities as means of salvation, whose power derives from the fullness of grace and truth that Christ has entrusted to the Catholic Church. All these blessings come from Christ and lead to him, and are in themselves calls to "Catholic unity."

836 "All men are called to this catholic unity of the People of God. . . . And to it, in different ways, belong or are ordered: the Catholic faithful, others who believe in Christ, and finally all mankind, called by God's grace to salvation."

Adam S.N.,

Thanks for your reply. I did not intend to demean the history of the Orthodox church or its many martyrs; I meant only that there is no single tradition with all the fruit on its "side."

As I was thinking about this, something brought to mind the sequence of the last supper in Luke chapter 22. Jesus says, "This is my body ... this is the new covenant in my blood. But behold, the hand of the one betraying Me is with me on the table.... And they began to discuss among themselves which one of them it might be who was going to do this thing. And there arose also a dispute among them as to which one of them was regarded to be the greatest...."

While we are right, I think, to discuss our differences in a spirit of charity, let's not be like the disciples who so soon from the original Eucharist were justifying, then exalting, themselves. Jesus' answer was, as always, on the mark: "let him who is the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as the servant."

So here are my contribution for now:

To harry, in the last two nights I read through most every reference to Peter in the Gospels, Acts and Peter's epistles. I'm doing this, searching for what is true, and asking God to show me how I can best model his faith and obey his commands through Peter.

To Adam S.N., I recall an anecdote from Benjamin Rensburg, sometime pastor of the Union Church of Istanbul that meets in the Dutch Consulate. He described how he had much to learn from his friends and acquaintances who were Catholic and Orthodox priests in Istanbul. He then said, "When our ancestors were running naked in the mountains of Europe, their churches were worshiping the Lord." I look forward to experiencing such an opportunity, should the Lord provide it.

Yes, and no, as I understand it. Again, I dare not say anything more. I'm a lowly convert, and nothing more.

However, on my own part, I will say that Roman Catholics have rarely been willing to allow for mystery with regard to the secret things of God. As a result there's a perpetual attempt to answer every question, and turn every stone, in Roman Catholic thought. I believe that this desire is ungodly, and vain. God's thoughts are not man's thoughts, and man's thoughts are not God's thoughts. The Church is not a storehouse of philosophical answers, but is the Bride of Christ receiving His Life in a sacramental intercourse. Scholastic, or modern, theological, and philosophical, attempts at explaining everything in order to tickle our intellectual curiosities needs to be replaced by prayer, and asceticism, because prayer IS the answer.

I'm not saying there aren't any answers, I'm simply saying that the Church has spoken dogmatically where required, and one is not called by the Church to add to the Apostolic Tradition, but to pray.

If you're interested in an Orthodox understanding of these issues, I would suggest this paper: http://www.orthodoxinfo.com/inquirers/non-orthodox.pdf

Dean,

Just to be clear, I absolutely agree that there is much we can learn from each other. Simply because Peter Leithart is not Orthodox, doesn't mean I don't enjoy his Eucharistic Meditations. In fact, for the most part, I love his contribution to Eucharistology where it hasn't detracted from orthodoxy.

Again, the point I was driving home was that the eucharistic views of the Roman Catholics, and Protestants - from one degree or another - reveal that those traditions are heretical, and schismatic. Such is the nature of the Eucharist: it reveals schism, and heresy.

Very specifically, that is the fruit of which I am speaking.

I have done nothing but repeat the consensus of the Church. Don't shoot the messenger.

If accepting the Pope means excommunicating my children, then the Pope will have to find someone else to excommunicate.

Hi, Adam S. N.,

You wrote:

"I will say that Roman Catholics have rarely been willing to allow for mystery with regard to the secret things of God. As a result there's a perpetual attempt to answer every question, and turn every stone, in Roman Catholic thought. I believe that this desire is ungodly, and vain. God's thoughts are not man's thoughts, and man's thoughts are not God's thoughts."

If you don't mind saying, are those observations based on your personal experience with Catholicism or has someone told you that?

Thanks

I attended the Orthodox Church in America for 16 years, and I remember people comparing Communion without Chrismation to sex before marriage. I also remember the idea that they wanted people to feel pain when outsiders could not take communion. I also noticed that two of the most sadistic people I have ever met (not Orthodox BTW) were the two most anxious to bar non members from the communion in their church.

Therefore, I came to the conclusion long ago that Jesus just wants us to come to him for the strength he alone can give us for the health and correction of our souls. I doubt that it really matters to him whether we think of the Sacrament as the Real Body Blood Soul and Divinity or the Real Symbol of His Spiritual Presence. I think he really cares whether we live according to His Commandments in our daily lives.

It is based on my experience with Roman Catholicism - limited as it is. I apologize if my statement was a little harsh. I wasn't referring to individual Roman Catholics, I was referring to the organization as a whole. It just tends to leave very little for God alone to comprehend. Knowledge puffs up, and claims to unique knowledge (where the Church as a whole, and the apostolic tradition, haven't spoken) divide, and lead to heresy and schism. That is not to say that there isn't anything helpful in RC, and Protestant, scholarship. I'm simply comparing what appears to be the Roman Catholic tendency to the Orthodox tendency. The Christian faith is centered around faith, hope, love, unity, and prayer. Those fruits take visible form around the Eucharist. The Church needs to grow further into faith, hope, love, and unity, not doctrinal exactitude. That's not to say there isn't room for doctrinal exactitude where needed, but when a tradition produces millions of pages of doctrinal explanation into the mysteries of God I have to wonder if that fruit is the evidence of God's work, or mans. Meanwhile they ex-communicate their children from the Eucharist they have every right to participate in according to 1,000 years of Holy Tradition, and Paul's teaching.

Thanks, and your welcome, for what it's worth. ;-) Remember, my words do NOT necessarily reflect Orthodoxy, nor are they meant to.

Verity,

I agree with you in that Jesus doesn't care as much about exactly what we know, or can describe theologically/philosophically, about His presence in the Eucharist. What he does care about is that we eat it! All of us! Including our infant children! (1 Cor 11) And that we eat it in unity! (See my comments above for more detail)

Baring non-Orthodox Christians from the Eucharist is simply a matter of obedience. The Eucharist is for the Church. The non-Orthodox are not in the Church. There has never been a time when the Church has allowed those outside of the Church to participate in the Eucharist. It is not a sign of disunity, because non-Orthodox are not Christians in the most true sense of that word, and thus there can be no unity with them. Cordial relations, dialogue, etc., yes! But union, no!

A closed communion has been the teaching of the Church from the New Testament on ward. It is another sign of the unique faithfulness of the Orthodox Church. More important, however, has been the unity of its communion as evidenced in that fact it obey's Paul's command that every valid member, who is in good standing, should be communed.

Harry,

It appear that my comment never made it through. I was sure that I posted it ok. Oh, well.

My comment is based on my personal experience with Roman Catholicism.

Verity,

I agree that obedience is of prime importance, and that - to some degree - it doesn't matter that one "understands" the Eucharist. Let's be honest, there's no understanding the Eucharist anyway. It's a mystery. It's deep magic (I stole that from C.S. Lewis).

However, we are to obey the Apostolic tradition regarding the Eucharist. And that Apostolic tradition from 1 Cor 11, and from one thousand years of unaltered tradition, is that all men, women, and children who have been baptized must be included at the table so that they can partake of Christ unto forgiveness, and the healing of their souls. (See my above comments for more details.)

Adam,

I could not agree more with your first paragraph. I think that communion of infants is a fine thing and should be done.

I think that membership in the Church is delineated by Jesus, and He says that there are some outside the enclosure who belong to him and some inside who do not belong to him. To me the objective sign of membership is just how much one not only hears the word of God, but keeps it. Of course, we all fail and have to confess and repent. In my sixteen years visiting the OCA I got very much into the liturgies (St. John C., St. Basil, and even one St. James) and even sang in the choir. I saw that there were many fine people there who would have changed that rule about restricted communion and that there were some who would not and who would police the communion lines asking if strangers were actually Orthodox. Only Jesus can know for sure, but it did not seem to me that people were sinning any less there than in other churches.
When my OCA relative passed away, I attended for two more years and then decided that I needed to take the Eucharist also and that if I did not agree with the rules, it would be dishonest to join, so I left. I joined a traditional Mass society where we have priests from many traditions (even OCA) and when there are funerals they do not disinvite strangers, but rather tell them that we believe in the Real Body in Blood of Christ and that they must have spiritually prepared themselves for Communion.

All religions evolve. When I first started attending the OCA in the early 1970s, the priests would come out of the sanctuary with the Eucharist and many times no one would receive, sometimes only small children would be communed. I am glad that I was there to see the reform of that custom. On my last visit for vespers I noticed that the practice of general confession had been totally cut out.

A closed communion may have been the practice of the early Church. I am not certain of that. However, the practice of proxy baptism of the dead was a part of the early worship, and that has fallen into disuse only to be revived by the Mormons so far as I know. I do not believe that one has to be baptized in order to follow the Commandments of Christ. And that if one loves God enough to follow the Commandments, then indeed one is part of the sheep fold. The only real meaning I see for actual card carrying membership in a church is that if one wants to participate in voting policies in a congregation, one should be willing to go through the initiation rites of that congregation.

In any case I am glad that you found the Orthodox Church. I still have a soft spot in my heart for the Orthodox.

Hi, Adam S.N.,

Thomas à Kempis, a Catholic monk born in the late 14th century (ca. 1380) is generally believed to be the author of one of the most widely read Christian works outside of the Bible itself, *The Imitation of Christ.* The first very first chapter of the first book of four that comprise it succinctly states the Catholic idea on the depths of theology and Biblical scholarship. Here is an excerpt from it:

“The teaching of Christ is more excellent than all the advice of the saints, and he who has His spirit will find in it a hidden manna. Now, there are many who hear the Gospel often but care little for it because they have not the spirit of Christ. Yet whoever wishes to understand fully the words of Christ must try to pattern his whole life on that of Christ.

"What good does it do to speak learnedly about the Trinity if, lacking humility, you displease the Trinity? Indeed it is not learning that makes a man holy and just, but a virtuous life makes him pleasing to God. I would rather feel contrition than know how to define it. For what would it profit us to know the whole Bible by heart and the principles of all the philosophers if we live without grace and the love of God? Vanity of vanities and all is vanity, except to love God and serve Him alone.”

Here is an excerpt from the fifth chapter:


“TRUTH, not eloquence, is to be sought in reading the Holy Scriptures; and every part must be read in the spirit in which it was written. For in the Scriptures we ought to seek profit rather than polished diction.

"Likewise we ought to read simple and devout books as willingly as learned and profound ones. We ought not to be swayed by the authority of the writer, whether he be a great literary light or an insignificant person, but by the love of simple truth. We ought not to ask who is speaking, but mark what is said. Men pass away, but the truth of the Lord remains forever. God speaks to us in many ways without regard for persons.

…

"If you would profit from it, therefore, read with humility, simplicity, and faith, and never seek a reputation for being learned. Seek willingly and listen attentively to the words of the saints; do not be displeased with the sayings of the ancients, for they were not made without purpose.”


I don't find the vanity of which you speak in what is probably the work most widely read by Catholics, second only to the Bible itself, in the last five hundred years -- instead I find an exhortation to simplicity and humility.


Has it occurred to you perhaps that your harsh judgments upon that which it is apparent you have only a superficial knowledge might just might spring from a little pride and vanity in your own spirit?

All I have said about the Orthodox Church is that I was certain that the Spirit of Christ was in it in those who love Him. Review all the harsh statements you have made here about Catholics and about other denominations and ask yourself if you have acted in charity and shown respect for the Spirit of Christ present in those other denominations.

And tell us one more thing: according to the Orthodox Church, is salvation possible for those who consider themselves Christians, but are not members of the Orthodox Church? In a previous post of mine were excerpts from the Catholic Catechism about the Catholic Church's attitude towards the other denominations.

I don't agree with you. Without it, communion would be like raising a toast without saying what the toast is. It would be like a honeymoon without marriage vows.

Harry, let me attempt to answer your questions. After all, I attended with regularity for sixteen years and studied Orthodoxy in great detail.

Basically I did not find Orthodox practice to be exclusive except for the communion line. As an outsider I could do anything but vote in the meetings and take the sacraments. If I had died at that time, the priest would have done a funeral for me, but maybe not in the church. Confession was available with advice, but not absolution.

The Orthodox do think that other Christians are Christians and there are no problems if any validly baptized Christian marries an Orthodox Christian in the church. Of course, they hope that the non Orthodox will eventually convert. I did sing at a couple of weddings, and they are indeed beautiful events. The Orthodox believe that the Holy Ghost is in their church and that they can be sure of that, but He may or may not be in any other churches.

My discomfort with the Orthodox was not in the beliefs, but in the practice. I have never been a fan of closed communion. If any baptized Christian truly seeks the help of Christ in Physical Communion, then I do not see why such a person should be excluded. Most people do not understand doctrines anyway. I also could not join because the Chrismation service required me to say that I would obey the Orthodox Bishops. I do not believe in making any blanket promises or vows to obey anyone. Both bishops and laypeople should be obeying God's Holy Commandments, not each other. They should be serving the legitimate needs of each other.

I was also put off by the many derogatory comments made mostly by converts about other denominations. These people have chips on their shoulders and can't seem to exalt their own practices without putting down the practices of others. For instance I think that Catholic and Protestant weddings are just as beautiful and meaningful as Orthodox, and I see value to the wedding vows exchanged in Western Churches which are absent in the Eastern rituals. For all the elevated opinions of themselves that I heard, I knew of one case of adultery and I was shocked at the number of divorces. So I do not think that they are doing any better in that area than anyone else.

Marta, I do not know if your comment comparing the offering of communion to raising toasts was addressed to me or not. Remember that analogies are limited in their ability to accurately describe anything. If all communion services are like raising toasts to Jesus the Christ, then I guess all churches toast Him in some rite or another. The reception of Holy Communion on our part is our response to the offer of Christ to help us in this life to become more like Him in our dealings with our fellow human beings. The best case scenario is that we can become perfectly like Him. Only He knows just how sincere we really are when we take Him into our bodies in order to change ourselves into something Holy.

Verity, I think the Marta comment was addressed to something I had written in my comment about giving testimony. (Yes, I've been tuning in to the discussion since then.)

Anyway, without hearing a testimony from the communicant, what prevents me, the fellow communicant, from being assured that the communicant's whole involvement isn't about affirming the truth that Jesus wants the South to rise again, or that we are vowing to kidnap the children of infidels and convert them to Christianity, or that Starbucks coffee is morally superior to Javataza coffee?

Hopefully, all that sounds absurd- that it is an absurdity to use the eucharist as a platform for endorsing such causes or beliefs (especially since the last example is manifestly false!). So I ask, even if just to quell my fragile soul, could a statement be given by the communicant as to why the communicant is communing? Is it like Joshua's call to the Israelites to announce to whom their allegiance was ("as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord") or is it like a pre-game warmup to what Paul talked about in Philipians when he said that, one day, *every* knee would bow and "confess that Jesus Christ is Lord"?

Ben, the practice of individuals giving testimony before communion is something I have never experienced. I took communion a few times in Orthodox Presbyterian Churches and had to fill out a card with name and church membership. I do not remember if there was any testimony type question on them. Neither my companions nor I were refused communion. I understand that Lutherans have cards to be filled out by all communicants. According to a Lutheran friend that are primarily used to take attendance. At my church we, of course, say the Nicene Creed. I seem to remember that we said the Apostles Creed in the Presbyterian Church.

Can we say that anyone who says the Creed is qualified for communion?

This is a significant article. Having been of the evangelical persuasion for most of my life, I can truly say that The Eucharist was not exactly a missing piece, but definitely not an ever-present one. Taking communion was next to meaningless; had little impact on my spiritual life. I have come to a much deeper place of understanding over time--to the point that The Eucharist is the one portion of worship I can always count on to move my spirit into connection with Christ.

In making this transition to the "new" practice, I reflect that I came to it by way of gentle guidance and patience on the part of my priest. He provided a way of understanding; offered a graceful explanation; gave it time; let it ferment. I did not feel brow-beaten or berated or spiritually incompetent for my "flopping and floundering".

I needed the words of this article. It is well-written and gives clarity to my on-going journey. However, may I implore you to speak to Evangelicals in a tone of graceful, loving invitation vs. a spirit of demeaning? Which only has the effect of further alienation? If a greater communion is truly desired; if the purpose is to bring the two together, then enticement is better than coercion.

Truth is not arrogant. Delivered in love and kindness--real desire for goodness and communion among fellow believers--it has power enough for change.

As I write this, verity's Q's (4/5/12) was the most recent post. Just to put my comments on testimony into context, I was offering but one more way to explore the meaning and purpose of the Eucharist. I had earlier challenged the Catholics who limited their appreciation of the Eucharist to the twin concerns of substance and presence to offer the evangelicals a wider range of possibilities for meaningful engagement w the bread and cup. Harry shared a number of devotional meditations that he enjoys. I then offered a practice that I thought is inherent to the Eucharist, one that Evangelicals could espouse heartily and to their unalloyed benefit. There are other things one could consider as well besides the testimony of faith, but since communion isn't a one man show, I have declined from trying to put out a cornucopia of thoughts all by my lonesome.

Having said that, Verity asked if i think that confession of
Faith is sufficient to gain entrance to the table. I'll share my thinking on this. I definitely think that open communion is bad business. The sacrifice is made corporately, and there really should be some feature of quality control by those who minister the elements. On the other hand, a rigid closed communion winds up excommunicating some simply because of the shibboleths espoused by the group in question. (for example, one commenter- a former fellow traveller w Leithart, if I'm not mistaken- has made a large point over closing the table to children). I think that there is a golden mean between these two positions that I will call "close communion". This position ends up asking for two testimonies: a spoken testimony of faith and a lifestyle testimony of faith. You really don't know the lifestyle testimony unless you are "close" to the communicant. And it rather jives w Jesus' words about believing him for his words, or, if so desired, believe
Him for the works he has done.
The issue in 1st Corinthians 11 shOws that a Eucharist can be held in name only. Those people were not demonstrating a sound lifestyle testimony of faith, and Paul called them out on it.
Anyway, that's my way of thinking on confessing faith prior to communing. Obviously, this doesn't mean that you have to wait till you are a perfect saint to commune, but it does ask that you at least appear to be making good on your baptismal vows of renouncing sin and walking in newness of life.

and can I just call out the grown up in us for a minute? Here I am talking about how a confession identifies us, that words bind us, that you can't commune without saying something- something about you in relation to the body and blood of Jesus. And, further, you can't get baptized w/out saying something. You can't get married w/out saying something. Even paul, ina well-worn line from Romans 10:9-10 says that you get saved when you say something. An OT jew put his han on the head of an animal, said something, and tiok the life of the animal. Speech matters. No devil was cast out, none that I know of, without the power of speech. The Holy Spirit most often, by a large majority of instances in scripture, assists the believer in saying something. The apostles in Acts identified themselves regularly and specifically ( not merely a passing time or two) as "witnesses" of Jesus. That means "a person who has a testimony". They signed their names to their words, come what may. So, can we stop using pseudonyms on the web?

This is very up-to-date debate, specially now when German priests raise provocative questions for the Catholic Church, whose shortage of clergymen is worsening by the day. Most Americans, perhaps most American Catholics, do not know that the church allows married priests. But there have always been married priests in the non-Latin rites, like Ukrainian Catholicism or Maronite Catholicism.

Ben, Thank you for the reply. Let me address the two points that I think you are making and you can correct me if necessary.

First, the matter of using pseudonyms on the web. I did use my full name until I was seriously warned by a religious friend that I should not do so. People who know me might surmise that I am talking about them or about someone or some church that they know and and that would cause hard feelings. Whatever I say is meant to be suggestive of correction to those who need it, and people can figure that out for themselves. If someone thinks that I do not know what I am talking about, that person is free to think that I am living on another planet. I chose the moniker "Verity" because it is a real name with a real meaning, and had I the opportunity to have been able to name myself, I would have taken this name.

Secondly, do I understand what you are saying: Do you think that people should not be able to take communion unless they give a spoken testimony about their relationship with Christ before every reception? Do you know of any denomination that does this? Would everyone have to do this each time or would only the first time visitors to the church have to do this? Such a practice would probably seriously lengthen the service. It seems to me that this procedure would only work well in small groups.

Finally with regard to denominations whose rules close communion to non members: I have known in my life (and am now in my late sixties) four people who took communion and were breaking some of the commandments and who were not sorry for the harm that they were doing to other people as long as they got what they wanted out of the situations. Two of these people were rabidly against any stranger taking communion in their church. To such self righteous attitudes and entitled sinfulness I say "no." This is the reason I no longer attend such denominations.

Verity, your words about pseudonyms make some sense.

On creeds, I myself think this is a fine way to bear testimony. One plus about the use of creeds is that the rest of the congregation doesn't have to have their "orthodoxy radar" turned on (like you might tend to do in a session of ex tempore testimonies), and you can focus more deeply on your points of agreement, or points of communion.

With creeds being an instance of bearing Christian testimony, there are then lots of churches who practice this kind of confession as a part of their celebration of the eucharist. I can think of a few more, but let me instead extend to you the invitation to practice this core act of Christian worship with me.

Ben, Thank you for your comments. I had never thought of the creeds as being part of a testimony given before taking the Eucharist. I most often commune in conservative Anglican or Presbyterian Churches where creeds are recited and people are not labeled as outsiders when approaching the Lord's Table.

I think it was James Dunn who years ago complained about being in Rome and not being able to receive Communion because he was not a Catholic.

Catholics believe in the Real Presence and in the Eucharist as a sign of unity. To want to receive and at the same time proclaim that you don't accept the Church is a sad thing. If the catholic Church is not the one true Church then you should be going to the Church that is.

"People say that the doctrine of Transubstantiation is difficult to believe. I did not believe the doctrine until I was Catholic. I had no difficulty believing it, as soon as I believed that the Catholic Roman Church was the oracle of God, and that she had declared this doctrine to be part of the original revelation." --Newman. Note the chronology. Truth, unity, Eucharist.

The Gospel, the Truth, comes before everything else. How can we be unified and still go out to the world and say Abortion is not killing, yes it is, no it isn't.

It is a unity worse than disunity.

Adam,

60 million is the approximate (most likely minimum) amount of Orthodox Christians who were killed in the Soviet.

Then there is the huge number of Orthodox deaths from the Crusades, the invasion of the Turks and Ottomans, the genocide of the Armenians "When WW1 broke out the The Ottoman Empire was ruled by the "Young Turk" dictatorship which allied itself with Germany. Turkish government decided to eliminate the whole of the Christian population of Greeks, Armenians, Syrians and Nestorians. The government slogan, "Turkey for the Turks", served to encourage Turkish civilians on a policy of ethnic cleansing. "http://www.serfes.org/orthodox/memoryof.htm
, the killings in Kosovo / the Serbs, the current persecutions of the Orthodox Christians ALL OVER the middle east and Egypt especially (as one example: No clergy are allowed to wear their clergy attire in public or risk jail/fines/physical persecution in Constantinople, Turkey where the Ecumenical Patriarch resides), "Even in the United States, where so many Orthodox have found refuge, the Orthodox Native Americans of the Aleutian Islands were forcibly interned during World War II and many of their churches deliberately destroyed by the U.S. Army.

Unfortunately, the depth and range of the Orthodox suffering throughout the world in this century, remains largely unknown and unappreciated in the West.", and these are just to name a small amount of persecutions.

On the occasion of Joy Day tomorrow (the commemoration of all the souls fallen asleep in the faith), let us pray! Lord have mercy! Memory eternal!

WE know from the Didache that the Eucharist began as a Christianized Kiddush. Kiddush was translated into Greek as Eucharist. The original form of wine first then bread was retained. The Jewish prayers thanking God for bringing wine and bread from the earth were replaced by thanking him for Jesus the vine of David and the teachings of Jesus. That is, according to the Didache, the symbolism is wine = Jesus' messiahship, bread = Jesus' teaching. Then, of course, to the Gentiles, having the wine first made no sense, so they flipped it, bread first then wine. And this OT symbolism "vine of David" is less familiar to Gentiles than the concept of consuming the deity like in the worship of Mithras, so they changed the symbolism. Then, finally, the gospels were written, and subsumed the final Gentile symbolism into the account of the Last Supper. The Eucharist as we know it, with this pagan symbolism of cannabalizing the God, is not what Jesus established and therefore CANNOT be made so important as you want to pretend it is.